Any ideas of your own?  Add them to the list!

Now, let’s set aside Driscoll himself and talk about what it means to be a “Peter Pan.”  It’s terrific imagery because:

• Peter Pan tries to avoid growing up and taking responsibility for the things grown-ups should take responsibility for.
• Peter Pan lives off in a fantasy world instead of dealing with the problems of the real world.

Guys, does that sound like you?  It sure as heck sounds like me.  It’s remarkable—and disconcerting—how much of the sin in my life falls under this heading.  But perhaps you’re not convinced.  I want to help us all out here by coming up with a (non-exhaustive) list of signs that indicate how you and I may be Peter Pan.  Many of these I gathered from looking in the mirror, while a few I gathered from observing other young men around my own age (these are geared toward guys in their college years or 20s).  I decided to err on the side of being harsh because I’d rather overstate my case than understate it.

You might be Peter Pan if…

• You spend hours in front of the TV set each day—watching TV or movies or playing video games.
• You spend hours on your computer each day surfing the Internet aimlessly.
• You prefer spending time at the TV or computer over actually interacting with the people around you.
• You always have your iPod earbuds in your ears, even for two-minute walks between classes.  You can’t stand the thought of silence (the horror of it!).
• You’d rather listen to your music than talk to people.
• You avoid talking to people you don’t know.  You just hang around your own cozy little circle of friends and never show interest in anyone new.
• You typically keep your bedroom door closed and your window blinds shut, blocking out the outside world.
• You use the fact that you’re an introvert as an excuse to avoid other people.  (Sorry, introverts—I’m one, too, and I know this is a crap excuse.)

…and you might be Peter Pan if…

• You catch yourself daydreaming frequently—in fact, most of your internal reflections are daydreams.
• You live your live vicariously through your daydreams.
• You let your daydreams become a substitute for real relationships and real action.
• You don’t do things you know are right, and you’re not willing to take risks because you know what will happen if you do; somehow, you have attained God’s knowledge of the future, O wisest of sages.

…and you might be Peter Pan if…

• You don’t get your homework done until the last minute (if at all) and somehow convince yourself that it will take care of itself without you having to lift a finger.
• You don’t go to bed on time because it’s too much work to get off your butt and get ready for bed.
• You don’t clean up after yourself because you’re lazy and besides, your roommates will do it for you, just like your mommy used to.
• You slack off on laundry, grocery store trips, scheduling doctor’s appointments, or anything that will take effort, because it’s just too hard.
• You waste time at work on one frivolous distraction after another (such as reading this blog) instead of actually doing work.
• You don’t keep track of your finances because you know that daddy will always be around to bail you out.
• You whine and complain about any inconvenience (including inconvenient people) that God would dare bring across your path.

…and you might be Peter Pan if…

• You really like a young woman but you’re too chicken to ask her out.  You’d rather spend your nights sleeplessly pining after her until she turns into an idol.
• You have every intention of staying single for reasons other than that it will free you up to serve the Lord more effectively (1 Corinthians 7:32).
• You think of a wife as being a “ball and chain” that will keep you from continuing in your carefree, selfish, indulgent lifestyle.
• You’re doing nothing—spiritually or financially—to prepare yourself for marriage and leading a family.
• You’re not actively looking for women whom you’d be interested in marrying.
• You don’t seek advice from older people on dating, marriage, and being a father.  You figure you’ll just cross that bridge when you come to it.  (It can’t be that hard, right?  And it can’t possibly be as important as my studies!)
• You haven’t thought through biblical principles that would help you know how to go about dating/courting a young woman.  You’re foolish enough to believe that because the Bible doesn’t use the word dating, God has nothing to say on the subject and you can follow what all your friends are doing.
• You let daydreams of marriage and sex substitute for the real thing.  Imagining these things is a lot easier than actually winning over a woman’s heart, so you just stick with what you’re good at.
• You get sexual gratification from pornography, which is perfect for a lazy bum who isn’t willing to handle the responsibilities of leadership and service that are part of the package of sex within marriage.
• You use sexual fantasy as a narcotic to escape the pain of the real world.
• You want a girlfriend because you desperately need someone to love you.  You’re needy and clingy.  You fear other people rather than the Lord.
• You have a girlfriend, and you desperately need her to love you.  You’re needy and clingy.  You fear her rather than the Lord.

…and you might be Peter Pan if…

• You are not actively serving in a local church like God has insisted that you do (1 Corinthians 12).  You only hang around your buddies in the college ministry.
• You don’t know anyone at your church who is more than four years older than you.
• You don’t seek out friendships with older men.  You make no effort to listen and learn from older men.
• You don’t get enough sleep during the week, and especially Saturday night, so you aren’t alert during the sermon to hear the things God wants to teach you.
• You’ve never taken time to leaf through your church’s hymnal and marvel at the rich doctrine found in the hymns inside (assuming your church uses a hymnal).
• You haven’t been baptized and you’ve never really put much thought into it.
• You skip the Lord’s Supper at Family Gathering service (KSBC only) and think it’s no big deal because being able to put off your homework until Sunday night is more important to you.  Never mind that Jesus told you to do do it in memory of him.
• You don’t care about church membership.  It’s something you’ll get to one day, maybe, if you feel like it.
• You care more about the Indianapolis Colts (or other local sports team) than you do about your church, its growth, and the people in it.

…and you might be Peter Pan if…

• You never spend more than two minutes in prayer, and your prayers sound like a boring grocery list of requests.  You never do anything that would force you to depend on God in prayer.
• You never pray together with other believers.
• You never pray for anyone except yourself.
• You don’t read your Bible for wisdom because you don’t need its wisdom to know how to sit on the couch and watch TV all day, or to spend all day studying for your classes.  You’re totally adequate for these things, so you’ll stick with what you’re good at instead of, you know, actually trusting and obeying God.
• You don’t memorize scripture because it’s “too hard.”  No, it’s not.
• You never share the gospel with anyone because you’re too afraid of what people will think of you.  If only that perfect opportunity would just fall into your lap…

…and you might be Peter Pan if…

• You feel more comfortable referring to yourself as a “guy” rather than a “man.”
• Other people feel more comfortable referring to you as a “guy” rather than a “man.”
• People don’t come to you for advice and help for difficult situations in their lives because they know that all you’re good for is your MP3 collection or your knowledge of sports trivia or your knack for acing engineering exams.

Most of these are sins of omission rather than sins of commission.  Many of the “bad” things mentioned aren’t bad in and of themselves (TV, music, sports, studies, etc.).  They’re bad because they replace something that should not be omitted.  Being a Peter Pan is all about sins of omission.

So we’ve identified some of the symptoms, but what is the cancer underlying all these problems?  What is behind this menagerie of sins?  Stay tuned for the sequel—part two out of three.

Also, if you can think of more signs of a Peter Pan, I’d love to read what you have to say.  A woman’s perspective on these would be helpful, too!  So please feel welcome to leave comments.

1.  Story time

The Shack is a story.  Narrative—fiction or non-fiction—is a very powerful means of communication, and it is very effective at getting across an agenda.  We could turn to the Bible itself as a prime example of this; throughout much of the Bible, theology is given legs through pictures of God actually at work through the course of history.  I have read several people who try to deflect criticism from The Shack by appealing to its nature as a fictional work, but even fiction can have an agenda (good or bad), and this book certainly does.  Young’s writing style varies from passable to cringe-worthy (the “gilt edges”/“guilt edges” pun about the Bible from p. 66 comes to mind); his chapter titles are incredibly corny; he can’t seem to decide whether or not to give God the Father a consistent sassy-black-woman accent.  Yet the fact remains that the story is at times emotionally moving, and Young is just good enough as a narrator not to get in the way of what he is narrating.

2.  God the mouthpiece

Young’s primary means of revelation is through the members of the Trinity.  Nearly all of the important teaching comes from the mouths of Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).  The result is that these three become Young’s spokesmen (or spokeswomen?).  As his mouthpieces, they say what he wants them to say.  In a sense, this is an inversion of the biblical pattern where the authors of scripture became God’s spokesmen, saying what he wanted them to say.  Now, The Shack is meant to be read as fiction; however, there is a certain air of authority when it is God himself saying the things Young wants us to believe.

3.  Mack the claqueur

Lest I appear more well-cultured than I really am, I’ll admit that I didn’t know what a claqueur was until last night.  I actually found out while looking at the Wikipedia entry for “laugh track.”  And that’s one of the major roles of Mack’s character—to provide the response to the Trinity’s teaching that Young wants the audience to have.  It is remarkable how many times, after a member of the Godhead finishes pontificating on a topic, that Mack is said to feel like he wants to laugh and cry at the same time, or is said to feel a great burden lifted from his shoulders, or is said to feel excited and bewildered.  Mack’s emotional responses are a sort of hint that Young provides us as readers; they are a subtle suggestion that we, too, should be feeling the same way, just like laugh tracks in sitcoms inform the audience that a joke has been told and that it is funny (unless the sitcom is That ’70s Show or Friends).

4.  Emotional buzz

I’m not sure whether to be comforted or not by the fact that many people don’t seem to be reading The Shack for theology.  I find it comforting because it means that much of the false doctrine taught in this book will be ignored.  But I find it disconcerting because it means that these people are not reading this book to know God more.  Anyone who is seeking to know God more is seeking good theology (the knowledge of God).  Rather than striving for “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8), many Christians are content to use books like this as a cheap drug, a means to getting an emotional buzz—a pseudo-spiritual “high”—that will get them through tough times.  The bad news is that while the God of The Shack may make them feel better for a little while, the “high” won’t last because Young’s God is so meager in comparison to the God of the Bible.

5.  Itching ears

There are others who are reading this book to know God more, and they are swallowing Young’s teaching hook, line, and sinker.  In my initial review, I referred to his God as “a Trinity invented by a 21st-century American.”  I doubt that this book would appeal to people outside of a modern Western audience.  It is grounded so firmly in the perceived needs and worldview of our culture.  We don’t want authority; we don’t want structure; we don’t want a sovereign God.  We want relationship without responsibility and blessing without being broken.  We want an idol carved out of God, where all his “rough edges” are sanded off and a newer, harmless deity is made for us to worship.  The Shack offers us this version of God, and it is no surprise that it has become so popular.  Paul warned Timothy that “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

6.  A vein of truth

Despite all these failures, The Shack does teach a lot of true things about God.  It does portray God as caring for his people, as a God of unconditional love, as a God who isn’t a tyrant over his own.  It reminds us that he is immanent—God with us.  It admits that we live in a broken world, full of anguish, sorrow, and hurt.  And it tells us that God wants to restore his creation to the full beauty and harmony that it was meant to display.

7.  The salt has lost its saltiness

Finally, let me be blunt.  This book should not have been written.  By this, I mean that the above truths should be so obvious to people within the church that they do not need a fatally flawed book such as The Shack to remind them.  Moreover, people outside the church should see the love of God manifested in his people and their love for one another (John 13:35).  You and I—we have failed to show others the one true God by the way we conduct our lives.

As long as we refuse to give ourselves up as living sacrifices to God, as long as we hold ourselves back, we will no longer be shining “as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15).  Let us live in such a way that no one around us is interested in reading The Shack because they see in us something resembling the true God.  It is certainly our responsibility to refute false doctrine (Titus 1:9).  But above all, let us remember Jesus’ commandment:  “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

So…the first.  If you haven’t read Gerald Hiestand’s review, do that first; then come back here.  Before I had read The Shack, I read his review, and it sounded over-the-top to me.  After reading the book, I’m convinced that, far from exaggerating the problem, Hiestand has put his finger on the single most dangerous theme of the book—that authority is a human construct brought about by the Fall, that God considers it “ghastly” (p. 122), and that it is incompatible with true relationship.  Though there are many serious errors in the book, this is one that Young relentlessly pursues throughout the course of his story.  He lays it all out explicitly on pp. 121-124 in a conversation among Mack and the members of the Trinity.  During the course of the dialogue, Jesus explains:

Once you have a hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or a system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it.  You rarely see or experience relationship apart from power.  Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you.

One possible response to this is to engage in an imagined philosophical debate with Young over whether authority or hierarchy really is incompatible with relationship.  Instead, I simply want to appeal to God himself—to the words given to us by God, not merely by William P. Young.  The true God reveals himself primarily through the holy and precious scriptures “which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).  The inherent goodness of God’s authority is stunningly obvious throughout the pages of the Bible.  The first recorded words of God to man reflect his authority in an unbroken, sinless love relationship with his creature; in a rapid series of commands, he tells the man and the woman, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion…” (Genesis 1:28).  That last one, especially, reminds us that man was created as part of a hierarchy, as God’s vice-regent over the creation.  Throughout the creation accounts of Genesis 1-2, prior to the Fall, God commands all things into being, and he commands Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16).  Throughout the rest of the Bible he issues commands and decrees, and one day he will return to rule the nations “with a rod of iron” (Revelation 19:15).  The one true God is not afraid of authority; he is not afraid to reign.

Because Young is familiar with the Bible, he can’t help but slip back into hierarchical terminology when referring to God, describing Jesus as “Lord of Creation” (p. 176) and “king of the universe” (p. 216).  But otherwise, he’s pretty consistent in applying this principle because he proceeds to denigrate the authority of the Bible, of the church, and of men.

The Bible

The only time Young mentions the Bible with more than a passing reference is when he attempts to devalue it.  This takes place on pp. 65-66, where he portrays it as God’s words “reduced to paper.”  It is not “overt” or “direct” communication by God.  It is “moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects…the intelligentsia.”  It limits God:  “No one wanted God in a box, just in a book.”

While Young uses biblical terminology throughout much of the book, he feels free to supplement the teachings of scripture with his own ideas about God, even going so far as to contradict the Bible if necessary to suit his agenda (as we have already seen).  He does not respect the authority of scripture as Jesus Christ did (Matthew 5:17-19).  He does not treasure its words as the psalmist did (Psalm 119).

The Church

Once again, every mention of the church as an institution is negative.  Using Jesus as his spokesman, Young explains that the church “is all about people and life is all about relationships” (p. 178).  It’s hard to argue with that…until we remember that to him, relationships are incompatible with authority.  Young’s Jesus insists, “I don’t create institutions—never have, never will” (p. 179).  This is utterly absurd; Christ did institute his church.  He gave it the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and baptism.  He established procedures for church discipline (Matthew 18:15-20).  His apostles, sent with his authority, affirmed the offices of elder and deacon (1 Timothy 3:1-13, Titus 1:5-9).  They laid out rules and guidelines for proper conduct in the church (1 Corinthians 14) and care for the widows (1 Timothy 5:3-16), among other things.  The Holy Spirit equipped the people of the church with spiritual gifts “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7)—including the gifts of leadership (Romans 12:8) and administration (1 Corinthians 12:28)!

If the church—local and universal—is not an institution, I don’t know what is.  Institutions are not inherently bad; in keeping with his response to the concept of authority itself, Young is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Just because the church can be twisted and imperfect doesn’t mean that structure and hierarchy are themselves evil.  In the church, they are the structure on which relationships grow and flourish.

Masculinity

Hiestand came down hard on this one, and after reading the book, I understand why.  Let’s set aside the jarring fact that God the Father appears as a woman (Young insists on veering from the almost exclusively male depiction of God in the Bible).  Beyond that, the author undermines male headship and strongly implies that women are superior to men.  As a result of pitting relationship against authority, Young ends up rightly affirming feminine virtues while criticizing a caricature of masculine virtues.  His Jesus explains to Mack, “Like most men you find what you think of as fulfillment in your achievements, and Nan [Mack's wife], like most women, find [sic] it in relationships.  It’s more naturally her language” (p. 146).  It’s not hard to figure out where this is leading.  Young spends the entire book rejoicing in relationships, so of course women, who are apparently better than men at this, end up being naturally superior to men.

Young’s Jesus goes on to say, “The world, in many ways, would be a much calmer and gentler place if women ruled.  There would have been far fewer children sacrificed to the gods of greed and power” (p. 148).  When Mack speculates that perhaps it would have been better if women were given the role of authority, Jesus responds, “Better, maybe, but it still wouldn’t have been enough.”  Then he goes on to insist that power in human hands always corrupts and is inherently bad.  So the damage has been done to masculinity; perhaps the world wouldn’t be a perfect place if women were in charge, but it would be better.

The Shack is all about a love relationship.  This would be a great thing if Young left room for other perspectives offered by the Bible, which talks about our spiritual journey as fearing the Lord (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14), as a sacrifice to God (Philippians 2:17), as slavery to a new master (Romans 6:15-19), as a battle “against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12; tellingly, The Shack never once mentions the devil or demonic forces).  But rather than leaving room for these and many other perspectives, he excludes them.

God has and will use The Shack to remind people that he loves them and longs for a deeper relationship with them.  For that, I praise God and marvel at his use of flawed instruments to accomplish his perfect will.  Yet I am afraid that this book will not only lead people astray with blatantly false teaching but encourage people to become fatally unbalanced in their understanding of masculinity, of the church, of the Bible, and ultimately of God himself.

• For local churches, outreach to nearby campuses should be a higher priority.  Don’t be passive about it!  Investigate ways to make your church more “college-friendly,” such as offering rides to campus or having church families “adopt” college students.  Also, be sure to educate the young people in your church before they head off to college…not only through teaching, but by expecting participation in the life of the church and encouraging relationships with adults.
• For parachurch organizations, local church involvement needs to be emphasized.  The goal of your organization should be to funnel students into a local church.  If your students are leaving you in favor of deeper church involvement, that’s a good thing.  Encourage it.
• Students should make local church involvement a priority.  It should rank as a higher priority than parachurch involvement.  If you’re heavily involved in Cru but your only involvement in church is to show up on Sundays, you’ve got it upside down.  Reverse your priorities and start obeying God.  (Caveat:  if there are no solid, Bible-preaching, gospel-centered local churches, I’d rather have you be heavily involved in a parachurch organization that is grounded in truth.)

A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have been so bold as to encourage students to leave parachurch ministries in favor of a local church.  I would have thought of the two merely as different options among a smorgasbord of perfectly good alternatives.  But as time goes on, and as I study scriptures to see the church in action, and then see the effect my church has on me, I feel more and more comfortable saying that every student needs a church—not just a place to show up on Sunday, but a place to grow one’s roots deep.  The church is the bride; the parachurch is the bridesmaid.  We don’t go to weddings to marvel at the bridesmaids but to focus on the bride.  So let’s make sure that we’re not neglecting the local churches that Jesus Christ came to establish.

At this point, I’d like to take a little detour and talk about a couple of related issues.  The first is the presence of campus churches—churches that are planted on campus that cater exclusively to college students.  The second is the lack of local church presence on Christian college campuses.

So, first things first.  What about campus churches?  Well, it’s pretty obvious why they exist.  They’re formed on the theory that college students hate the inconvenience of traveling off-campus to go to church, and that they’re more keen on spending time with other college students rather than with older people who aren’t singing the latest music or teaching things that are relevant to a student’s life.  My freshman year of college, I talked with a friend about how I enjoyed being a part of a church with people from a variety of ages and backgrounds; I liked getting out of the “campus bubble.”  He replied that he liked the “bubble” and that was why he attended a campus church.  He would rather spend all of his time around his peers than around older, more mature believers.  He was less comfortable around them, and a church like mine would have inconvenienced him.  I’ll go right out and say that I’m not a fan of campus churches because they do such a good job of isolating students from the depth of a local church comprised of people from all stages of life.

As for Christian colleges, you could simply read Part 2 and then magnify the problem by a factor of 10.  Christian colleges are themselves parachurch organizations, and they almost totally supplant local churches in the way that they minister to students.  The vast majority of Christian college students find their preaching in chapel and their fellowship in their dorms.  Other than a clock-in/clock-out attendance on Sunday mornings, they aren’t really a part of one of the surrounding local churches.

It all boils down to convenience.  In a convenience-driven culture, the local church doesn’t fit into the college mindset very well.  We must learn to value, to appreciate, to love the local church.

So is this taking place on college campuses throughout the United States?  I’m afraid to say that it isn’t.  Parachurch organizations such as The Navigators, Campus Crusade for Christ, and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship do the work of discipleship, holding Bible studies and large group events (some of higher quality than others).  In a sense, they do serve local churches indirectly by training students to follow Christ—students who, hopefully, will participate in churches after college.

But those last two words are key:  after college.  In the meantime, while in college, students involved in these organizations rarely show more than a minimal commitment to local churches.  Most of them show up only on Sunday mornings and leave immediately afterward, disappearing until next week’s service.  Some bounce around from church to church, looking for a killer preacher or worship leader to make their Sunday mornings worthwhile.  Some don’t even bother coming at all, failing to see the point of attending a church in which they don’t know anybody and in which they receive little discipleship.

There’s plenty of blame to go around.  For too long, local churches have done a poor job of explaining to their youth and to college students what the church is all about.  From junior through senior high, the youth tend to be quarantined into youth groups, isolated from older men and women in the church who can mentor them; they are not expected to participate seriously in the life of the rest of the church.  Furthermore, churches near college campuses often “hand off” the discipleship of students to parachurch ministries.  It’s tough to come down hard on them because it is difficult to reach out to students in a college environment.  Why not leave it to the experts?

Parachurch organizations have stepped in where the church has failed.  And praise God for using them to bring many students to Christ and develop many young believers!  Yet their very philosophy of ministry prevents students from participating in a local church.  Their Bible studies replace those of the church; students are expected to develop close relationships with their peers rather than people in the church they attend.  Lacking time to do both, they pick the convenience that the parachurch offers.  They end up spending their entire time in college with practically no commitment to a local church and no sense of participation in a local body of believers.  Many well-intentioned students are simply unable to use their spiritual gifts to build up the church as they are commanded.

When it comes to the commandments of scripture, most students are ignorant of what they are called to do.  In part 1, we saw that believers are expected to be involved in a local congregation.  Most college students do not follow this expectation.  They approach the decision between local church and parachurch as simply a consumerist decision—which one does a better job meeting my wants and (perceived) needs?  Which will make me feel more comfortable?  Which is the easiest and most convenient for me?  Of course, most local churches can’t hold a candle to parachurch organizations in these areas.

Sadly, so many college students miss out on the beauty of the church.  The parachurch organizations to which they have committed themselves don’t baptize their members.  They don’t celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  They aren’t led by elders and deacons.  They don’t practice church discipline.  They lack the diversity in age and experience that a church should have.  They cannot replace the church, nor should they try.

So how should local churches, parachurch organizations, and individual students respond?  Well…I’ll give my thoughts on that in a couple of days.  But tomorrow, I’d like to take a brief excursus and discuss how this relates to Christian colleges and to campus churches which consist of students only.

So why bring this up?  Well, I think it’s a good analogy to the relationship between local churches and parachurch organizations (which are institutions existing alongside the local church, such as missions agencies and campus student organizations).  Though both are necessary to the advancement of the kingdom of God, their roles are distinct from one another.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of biblically-modeled thinking in this area among Christians.  I’ll admit that the issue never even occurred to me until a few years ago, and even today I’m still developing and refining my understanding of the subject.  Here’s what I’m learning from the Bible so far.

First, even in New Testament times, there existed structures which today we would call “local church” and “parachurch.”  The former are fairly obvious; local churches were planted in cities throughout the Roman empire, typically gathering together in the only meeting places available—the homes of their members.  The latter were present in the form of apostolic bands—traveling evangelists who were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ.

Second, local churches were intended to be the primary arena for discipleship for believers.  After they first believed, there was no question that a community would be formed; new believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).  The apostles insisted on this sort of community, commanding believers to continue to meet together in these local fellowships in order “to stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24-25).  Believers were to be edified as they participated in the life of the church body, working to “build one another up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).  The churches celebrated the Lord’s Supper and baptized new Christians.  They were led by elders and deacons, as the apostles had taught them (1 Timothy 3:1-13).  They were given authority by Jesus Christ himself to discipline their members (Matthew 18:15-20), and the apostles also affirmed the need for church discipline (1 Corinthians 5).

On the other hand, the “parachurch” apostolic bands traveled from town to town, preaching the gospel in new places.  Their mission was to plant churches in each location they visited and to edify churches they had planted (1 Corinthians 3:6).  Their work was aimed toward the building of God’s church in the form of local congregations (1 Corinthians 3:9).  They continued the equipping work by writing letters, sending representatives (such as Titus and Timothy), and returning in person to teach and strengthen the churches.

In summary, the focal point of community and edification for the New Testament believer was the local church.  The parachurch structure existed for the sake of the local church, to plant it and assist its development.  Just as a bridesmaid does not call attention to herself but works to show off the beauty of the bride, so parachurch organizations, if they follow the biblical pattern, exist for the sake of local churches—not for their own sake, to perpetuate themselves.

So how does this principle apply to churches and parachurch organizations on a college campus?  More on that tomorrow.

There’s been a lot running through my mind over the last hour, and most of it has to do with a few series of blog posts I plan on writing over the next few weeks.  So please be patient with me as, Lord willing, I put together these (tentatively titled) blog series:

• Bride and Bridesmaids. The typical major college campus is loaded with parachurch organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ and The Navigators.  But are these organizations actually fulfilling their biblical role?  Are they replacing the local church?  If so, is that a bad thing?  Where should a college student seek to get involved?  And is this purely an issue on a secular campus, or is it present in Christian colleges as well?
• Ice Cream Parlor. With what sort of attitude do we view the church?  Do we approach it as consumers, looking for a particular experience or trying to get out of it what we want?  Or do we approach it as a family, where we build redemptive relationships with others in order to glorify God?  (I’m sure you can guess my answer already!)
• Guys or Men? What is the most troubling pattern I see among college-age guys (and older!) in the church?  Passivity.  It’s something I struggle with, too.  And it’s the source of a world of corruption both in ourselves and in our church.

As you can probably sense already, there will be a lot of passion in each of these.  In fact, I think they may be the most important things I have ever written here (and I could use your prayers as I write them!).  So please stay tuned, and stay patient…this may take a while.

2 Timothy 3:1-9
1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. 9 But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

It’s easy to hold to an “us vs. them” mentality in regard to the world outside the church. We could look at the moral standards of our culture and complain about the lack of godliness around us — while forgetting that we as Christians are called to be shining lights for Christ. Too often, the trouble comes from within; the focus in 2 Timothy seems to be primarily on people from within the church who oppose the truth. This is one of the devil’s favorite tactics — to divide congregations, each man against his brother (Ephesians 4:25-27). Often these divisions are avoidable, sometimes they are necessary, but always they are tragic. One important thing I’ve learned as part of a pastoral staff and as a pastor’s son is that the most dangerous enemy of sound doctrine and church unity usually comes not from outside, but from inside the church. So we must always be on guard for the souls of others, teaching, encouraging, and confronting in love; moreover, we need to keep watch on our own souls as well, so no “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12:7) develops within us.