Approaching the Trinity

This week I read an article about the implosion of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. The article describes how a church movement that gathered steam over the past ten years broke and fell apart. It also describes the healing taking place, as many churches in the movement have turned away from their founding flaw, seeking renewal through confession, repentance and forgiveness. The errors of Mars Hill did not belong to one leader, Mark Driscoll, they belonged to many leaders and pastors who, believing in their own abilities to grow churches, trusted in their own ideas about growth. These ideas led them to become arrogant and hard hearted, choosing themselves and their own sense of giftedness over the love of Christ. Ultimately their arrogance was their very undoing. As they demanded more and more people get on their leadership bus, or get run over by it, many got off the bus and simply left. This caused the center of the Mars Hill network, the church Mark started in the hardest part of Seattle, the church of his pride and rise to nationwide leadership success to close it’s doors. Pride and arrogant leadership killed Mars Hill. Pride wounded many long before the physical church closed it’s doors. Many people questioned Mark and his staff about their attitude over the years, many times those asking difficult questions were ignored or labeled as too critical, that if they didn’t like what they saw they could leave. What could have been saved through early repentance was ignored and cast aside, causing the financial, social and spiritual collapse of what was once deemed a successful church.

In the wake of Mars Hill many ask, "What is it that causes churches to collapse?" I’ll never forget one of my university professors, who himself was a pastor out of inner city Seattle, taught us about the nature of ministry and what causes it to fail. He taught us this lesson by taking us to two country churches that were on the brink of closing their doors. The only thing keeping them going was his efforts as a temporary pastor. Yet he met with resistance. These churches had strongly opinionated lay leaders. Leaders who did not want to move forward, but believed that if they just kept things the way they were, and did as they always did, they would survive. These churches were old, and had history in their community. They were built by local hands. They were supported by local people. They were run by local people. If you weren’t local you couldn’t be trusted, because you might damage the history of the church, and remove the localness they prized over God’s timeless truths. These churches both closed their doors due to one reason. Pride. While at University I watched a pastor burn out with a similar prideful attitude. For too long he rested on his laurels, refused to make difficult decisions, yet came down harshly on anyone who didn’t agree with the decisions he made. He believed he could change a church through his own strength, even though he prayed many pious sounding prayers, his actions spoke more deeply of his heart than any of the words he directed to God. To say pride will close many church doors this year is an understatement. Pride kills a church long before it’s dead, and its pride that kills Christians in churches in the West. We simply believe in ourselves too much and place too little at the feet of God.

Pride is not the only killer of churches and Christians. When churches doors shut, pride isn’t always the root cause. The root of churches closing their doors has to do with taking our eyes off God. I say our eyes because it’s not always a single person’s responsibility; the community needs to look to God and have a right relationship with Him. I want to begin this writing series at the feet of God, because I know writing about God and how we practice God on a daily basis is difficult. We must ask difficult questions, not just about who God is, but about the culture in which we’ve learned about God. My intent is to ask difficult questions, and in some cases my questions will sound like heresy. Many a heretic has asked profound and difficult questions, but arrived at the wrong answers. My desire is to draw closer to God, and show how focusing on the three inseparable parts of God: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we can seek guidance through difficult times, turning away from mere cultural shifts in Christianity and embrace God at all times in all places. This is what will sound like heresy. That cultural shifts and values, while being of the utmost importance when they take place, do not ultimately lead us to God, even though they focus on parts of God. For if we focus on a cultural shift more than we focus on God we have forgotten why the shift took place: to bring us back to God. My full intent is to examine cultural shifts in light of how they relate to the Trinity, how they serve their purpose for a time, and how, when misunderstood and misused, can lead us away from God. For it is not culture or any one part of the Trinity we worship. It is a timeless triune God whose truth stands accessible for all peoples of all tribes, languages, ethnicities, intellects, incomes, continents and personalities. It is this God we worship, if we only trust in our culture we fail to trust in God. We must learn to embrace what is good about culture and seek for those elements that our culture does not possess. Serving and worshipping God means being both cultural and counter-cultural. We must be careful of falling into our culture’s trap and ideas of God, for this is the very thing that brought down Mars Hill. They came to a place where the way they worshipped God with their lives was too influenced by their American values. It was not simply their American values that brought them down, but their arrogance and refusal to take up Godly values. To live as Americans wholly guided by God, not just Americans living out American values speaking about God. It is not enough for us to live out the highest ideals of our own culture, we must put on and walk out the ways of God over and above our own culture. We must do more than speak about God, God must become tangible through our actions, so that though we may not speak of who God is, God is visible in our lives through our daily conduct. It is this daily living, this day-in day-out fulfillment that should speak for us about God, the words we use should only be icing on the cake. For if we have no action behind our words, our claims of Godly living lack substance, and we too can repeat the mistakes of many who have gone before us.

 I believe how we act is as important as what we say. As my church goings have taken me across a continent, I’ve had the opportunity to observe various Christian circles. What I have observed about these groups, is that they all claim similar truths, so similar in fact that if we were to read their statements of faith they’d all look quite the same, and we might believe that they all worship the same too, but this is not true. Some do not put into practice what they believe. Though their statements may word-for-word match another Christian circle’s statements, they do not live out those words. It is here we start to see the disconnect; that some love to speak of what they know about God, yet do not practice it. It is here we see errors and mistakes in practical Christian living. If these errors consistently form practice, and are not simple slips of the tongue, they lead to sin and sin when full-blown and widespread leads to heresy. It is the acceptance of heresy that kills a church, even while it continues to proclaim orthodoxy from the pulpit.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with these ideals, for he realized the Nazis took advantage of the best of German culture and twisted it for their own evil ends. German culture is not what lead to the rise of the Nazis, it was a people who were unable to practice the values of God outside of their cultural values. Bonhoeffer saw the Nazis bend what was good towards evil, and fought against their rise to power through a right relationship and action-led practice with God. Bonhoeffer wrote and lived on uniting speech and action. He lived what he believed, because he knew words alone were not enough to stop the Nazis. The Nazis had to be confronted with action, for it was the inaction of good people that led to the atrocities of an un-German regime that was a stench to the faithful sons of the country. Bonhoeffer and many others gave their lives living against the regime, for they understood it was their lives that needed to display their beliefs; they could not get away with passive disconnected faith. Indeed this disconnect made the Nazis successful in the first place. It is our same disconnection with God that passively kills our churches, and allows evil to reign in the place of what is good. We must seek God with our lives as much we pray and study the word.

It is through this line of thinking, this emphasis on study of the word, prayer and actionable living that brings me to the Trinity. For in looking to God I realize the answer has always been in God. Not just parts of God, but in the very fiber and relationship of who God is. For if we misunderstand the Trinity, we are prone to make the mistakes of the generations of Christians who have gone before us. Not just simple mistakes, that are the result of being imperfect saints, but the major sins and heresies that have marred the faithful. For we know worshipping God perfectly is impossible, yet we must still seek to worship him rightly, accepting correction and guidance, repenting and confessing our sins so that we may be made fully whole. For following God and being Christian means at once being justified before God, yet living in a world of sin where we are still prone to make mistakes. Following God means being forgiven of our sin, yet still making the occasional mistake. I say occasional mistake, because these slips and errors are to be expected. They are not to be habitual or intentional, for if they are they are a sign of sin reigning over us, sin that needs to be confronted and healed before it can bring death and destruction as it has in the case of Mars Hill. We cannot turn from our sin unless we know God, and find confidence in who he is and how he wants us to live. It is by knowing God our sin is destroyed, fully knowing God in all aspects of our lives, not just partial worship by giving part of our lives, but putting our whole selves before him. This is a struggle, for at first we do not understand what wholly giving ourselves means and only give part of ourselves to God. It is by continually giving these parts of ourselves to God we realize the need to give our whole selves and eventually make the step into living wholly devoted to God.

This is the end to which I will write in this series, acknowledging mistakes before God in living wholly devoted to him. For no one puts all of this into practice with perfect words and actions. Nevertheless we must press forward, unafraid of error, unafraid of receiving correction, unafraid of examining our lives and unafraid of drawing closer to God. My belief in honoring and practicing the Father, the Holy Spirit and the Son as the One true God leads me to confession, repentance, forgiveness, and into actionable demonstrable living calling into question the very cultures we live in and accept as holy. Culture is not Holy. God is Holy. God is above the accepted truths inherent in our societies, languages and personal lives. It is through His Holiness we begin to see truth, even though we may not understand it at first, we must press onward and learn to live by His light.

This is how I am approaching the Trinity, not with arrogance and pride, but with the realization of my deep need to understand who God is and to live His truth out. For I believe God has shown me who He is, and the faintest glimpse of my limited understanding has opened my eyes to something wonderful, powerful and life changing. I believe practicing the Trinity is key to restoring the Church. Not just our little churches, but the Church at large in Western culture. For what I will describe in the coming series is already at play. I am not describing something new, for those who seek and live out their relationship with God have been practicing the Trinity for centuries, and many are doing so now. My goal is to demonstrate this, to show times and places when practicing the Trinity corrects the church, to show how it has been used to correct the church, and how it is currently being used. By focusing on each inseparable part of the Trinity we can come to a greater understanding of who God is and how to live out His truth. The greatest issue in the West is how we live out God’s call upon our lives. It is this very question I lay before God, even as he has already given me a glimpse of the answer ahead. For I fully believe it is through God and by God we come to live out God, it is this pursuit of God that changes us, our communities, our cities, our states, our countries and our cultures. For looking back through history I see this is what the faithful have done. They have been marked by a right pursuit of God rooted in who He is: the inseparable Trinity.