Connecting with International Students in Austin

In the Wall Street Journal article, "Ambassador Training," Katherine Mangu-Ward asks, "What are we teaching 600,000 foreign students about the U.S.?"

She contends that foreign students, especially those from countries with troubled relations with the West, can become America's best "ambassadors" when they return home. Many are from elite or middle-class families, and since they are on student visas they are required to return to their home country upon completion of their American study program. This, she says, gives us a prime opportunity for influence. Students from many countries that are hostile to America come here with nothing more than a caricature of American people and our culture. Ms. Mangu-Ward writes:

Aida Sykes, a rising senior at Yale and a native of Tanzania, says that she came to U.S. with an impression of American culture heavily influenced by television sitcoms. "I am not really going to learn anything from these people," she thought. "I will teach them that there are more people in this world besides them." She remains unimpressed by American foreign policy, but she has changed her mind about one thing. Says Ms. Sykes: "Americans are human, so to speak."

Well, that's a start!

The article is particularly relevant to those of us in Austin, given that we have a good percentage of the 600,000 foreign students here in Austin universities.

Ms. Mangu-Ward wants us to look for ways to expose international students to American culture beyond the cardboard caricatures they came with, but I have an additional motivation for highlighting her article. We believers also need to look for ways to expose international students to real Christianity. Many students who come with little understanding of American culture are from countries with little religious freedom. Their two-to-six years on a student visa may be their only real chance to interact with Christians and explore Christianity.

Let’s not waste that chance. Pray for ways to build personal friendships with international students, and help us look for ways to connect Hillcrest with service opportunities to these students.

Religion in Public Life: New Poll of American Attitudes

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a much-discussed poll last Thursday. The poll examined American religious convictions and their attitudes toward religion in public life. A few reactions:

Both parties will have a harder time appealing to religious motivations in the Fall elections. A scant 26 percent see the Democratic Party as friendly to religion, and while 47 percent see the Republican Party that way, that’s down from 51 percent last year. Significantly, the number of evangelicals who see the GOP as friendly to religion, dropped from 63 percent last year to 49 percent this year.

It appears that, on the left, recent efforts to rally religious “progressives” to liberal political causes may prove difficult. And on the right, it doesn’t look like conservative politicians will be able to take the evangelical vote for granted. The poll didn’t explore the reasons for the waning enthusiasm of evangelicals over the GOP, and it doesn’t appear that evangelicals are changing parties. Likely they will just stay home on voting day this year.

The public wants more religious influence in public life, but they’re wary of more religious influence in public policy. Most Americans (59%) continue to say that religion's influence on the country is declining, and most of those who express this view believe that this is a bad thing. Seventy-one percent of respondents wanted more religious influence in American life. There’s less enthusiasm, however, when it comes to religious influence over government policy, especially among Democrats. About a third of Republicans said they thought religion's influence on government was growing, and by a wide margin (23 percent vs. 10 percent), they saw that as good. Among Democrats, 45 percent said religion has a greater impact on government now, but they generally saw that as bad (28 percent vs. 14 percent). Independents agreed with the Democrats. From the poll report:

Fully 69% of Americans say that liberals have gone too far in keeping religion out of schools and government. But the proportion who express reservations about attempts by Christian conservatives to impose their religious values has edged up in the past year, with about half the public (49%) now expressing wariness about this.

It appears that the public is open to religious influence in the public square, but what is perceived as religious imposition is not welcome. In other words, it seems that people are open to seminars and op-ed pieces and sermons designed to change minds, but wary about rallys and voter guides and campaigns designed to change laws.

The Philiadelphia Inquirer article, “U.S. conflicted on religion,” was one of many American papers covering the poll. The poll also reviewed America’s opinion about Israel, science and religion (specifically evolution), the environment (especially global warming), the Bible, and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Man Shall Not Live By Krispy Kreme Alone

Twenty-seven percent of Baptists are obese according to a recent study--and their church culture may have something to do with it.

In her article, "Weighty Matter" Cathleen Falsani reported on a study by Ken Ferraro, a Purdue sociology professor who studied more than 2,500 adults over a span of eight years looking at the correlation between their religious behavior and their body mass index.

He found that about 27 percent of Baptists were obese. That's compared with 20 percent of "Fundamentalist Protestants" (Church of Christ, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God and Church of God), about 18 percent of "Pietistic Protestants," (Methodist, Christian Church and African Methodist Episcopal), and about 17 percent of Catholics. (No mention of Greek Orthodox, though--and, hey, I saw the meals they were serving in My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

On the other end of the--um--scales, his study found that only 1 percent of the Jewish population were overweight, and less than 1 percent of other non-Christians, including Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists.

So, what's with the Baptist waistlines? Given that Baptists tend to eschew vices like smoking and drinking, Ferraro says, "Baptists may find food one of the few available sources of earthly pleasures." I'm sure his tongue was planted firmly in cheek with that wisecrack. Our preference for organizing fellowships around "comfort foods" probably has more to do with it. As Homer Simpson so eloquently put it on his way to a First Church of Springfield picnic: "If God didn't want us to eat in church, he'd have made gluttony a sin."

"America is becoming known as a nation of gluttony and obesity, and churches are a feeding ground for this problem," Ferraro says. "If religious leaders and organizations neglect this issue, they will contribute to an epidemic that will cost the health-care system millions of dollars and reduce the quality of life for many parishioners."

Anyone up for a power walk around the parking lot?

Discovering Mat Kearney

Is that a Coldplay song on the radio? It may be a song from Mat Kearney's April 2006 CD release, Nothing Left to Lose. Kearney, who hails from Oregon and has spent time as a youth pastor is now opening for the John Mayer/Sheryl Crow tour.

His 2004 debut Bullet earned widespread acclaim and a nomination for GMA New Artist of the Year. It also quickly attracted the attention of a mainstream label. In an interview with ChristianityToday.com Music he said, “I'm a Christian, but I felt like I had a message for a lot of people. So I made a record that I felt could stand up to any artist out there, from any market, based on excellence of music.”

You can listen to his CD in its entirety on his website and read a review of the project at ChristianityToday.com Music.

The War for China's Soul

"They treated us like dead dogs," he says. "Some of them scoffed at us as we lay there, saying, 'Where is your God now? Why can't he help you? If you want to go to heaven, we'll help you get there right now.'"

That was how one Chinese Christian described his recent treatment at the hands of authorities in "The War For China's Soul," a fascinating article in TIME magazine. The unnamed witness was a volunteer working on a half-completed church in a suburb of Hangzhou 112 miles southwest of Shanghai. From the article:

Financed by local Christians, the church was to serve a community of 5,000 parishioners. Hundreds of them gathered at the site on the afternoon of July 29, some joining the construction crew building the church. Others, many of them elderly parishioners, sat on plastic chairs surrounding the church, singing hymns. About 2:30 p.m., thousands of uniformed police and plainclothes security officers appeared at the construction site. The police cleared a way through the crowds for a few drill-equipped backhoes, and the authorities then demolished the church.

Witnesses say police bludgeoned people indiscriminately with nightsticks. "They were picking up women--some of them old ladies--by their hair and swinging them around like dolls, then letting them crash to the ground," says a man who watched the clash from across the street."

The reporter contends that treatment like this is happening as a reaction to the spread of Christianity and the formal and informal challenges it creates to the centralized Communist leadership. "Christianity is finally taking root and evolving into a truly Chinese religion," the reporter writes. "Estimates vary, but some experts say Christians make up 5% of China's population, or 65 million believers."

This is one of those articles that will lead you to pray. Many of our Christian brothers and sisters in China face significant challenges to the worship and witness that we take for granted. However, the growing Christian presence in China needs protection not only from persecution but also from heresy. The article reports that, in addition to the spread of traditional Christianity, strange quasi-Christian groups with questionable beliefs are also growing.

I happen to know of one small group of Chinese Christians and their seeking friends who gather in an apartment to sing, pray, and then listen to one of my sermons from our website. You don't need to know any more than that to pray for them, so take a moment to ask God's blessing on them!

UPDATE: Chinese authorities have dismissed the reporter who posted comments on the Internet that formed the basis for the TIME story. Reuters reports:

Zan Aizong, bureau chief of the Zhejiang office of the China Ocean News newspaper, recently converted to Christianity and was baptised in July. He denounced his dismissal as a blow to freedom.

"The authorities are doing whatever they can to crack down on reporters who dare to tell the truth," Zan told Reuters. "They deprived me of my freedom some days ago, and now they are taking away my job."

Earlier this month, Zan said he was detained for a week on charges of "spreading rumors harmful to society" in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, after issuing reports on the Internet, criticizing the demolition of a nearby church.

What Is Your Church's Attitude Toward The Spiritually-Curious?

A church will fall into one of four categories in its attitude toward seekers:

Seeker-Hostile: Church groups with this mindset view non-believers as a threat. Most in this mindset, of course, would say that individual believers must be kind to non-believers and look for ways to share the gospel. But they would insist that corporate life of the church is no place to involve a non-believer. Therefore, the study topics, conversations, and even jokes in the Bible study classes or worship services create an environment hostile to a seeker's questions or objections.

Seeker-Indifferent: Church groups with this mindset are indifferent to the concerns and questions that non-believers have of the faith. They believe the job of the church is to provide Bible studies and activities that meet the needs of believers. Churches that are seeker-indifferent may have evangelistic activities and support mission causes, and they may encourage the individual members to witness to non-believers. But it simply doesn't occur to these churches that they have a responsibility to engage the concerns and questions of spiritual explorers.

Seeker-Sensitive: Church groups with this mindset focus on building believers while connecting with the seekers that believers bring with them. In one sense, the aim of worship services and Bible study groups in these churches is the same as it is in seeker-indifferent churches: the church exists to build a strong community of believers. But seeker-sensitive churches pursue this goal with a sensitivity to non-believers who have begun to be attracted to the faith through their friendship with believers.

Seeker-Targeted: Church groups with this mindset direct everything they do toward reaching the non-believing world with the gospel. The music, the sermon topics, the approach to Bible-study . . . it's all done with the aim of catching the attention of non-believers and persuading them to embrace the gospel truth.

I want us to be a seeker-sensitive church. I do not believe that our only reason for our worship services and Bible studies is to reach non-believers--these events are gatherings for believers to lift up the Name of God and study the Word of God. But while Hillcrest worship services and Bible studies exist to build believers, they also exist to connect with earnest seekers that believers bring with them. I believe we should be a place where people find and follow Jesus together--that's a nice summary of our mission.

Among several of the speakers and writers I enjoy, the word for this kind of church is missional. In fact, the word "seeker" has fallen out of vogue in circles that prefer the word "missional" to describe a biblical church. For example, I viewed a couple of clips from Mark Driscoll belittling the "seeker" approach and contrasting it to the "missional" approach (here and here). And yet, the way he describes a missional church--and his call for "cultural immersion" in this clip and "relating to sinners" in this clip sounds exactly like my defintion of a "seeker-sensitive" church.

I'm reminded of one of my seminary professors who drolled that the pronunciation of the name "Augustine" changed with every generation of graduate students: one generation would pronounce it "AWE-guh-steen," and then the next generation would pronounce it "awe-GUH-stin." The professor drily remarked that it was simply an indication of young bucks trying to distinguish themselves from the previous generation of scholars.

I wonder if the same thing isn't going on among younger leaders like Driscoll. Maybe each new generation of leaders has to invent their own labels to express the biblical mission of the church.

At any rate, whether a church is labeled "seeker-sensitive" or "missional" isn't nearly as important as whether the label the church chooses is properly defined and accurately communicated.

These clips were prepared to promote John Piper's Desiring God National Conference in late September. Other video clips from interviews of the conference speakers can be found here. By the way, on the topic of being a church that is "missional" and sensitive to the non-believing world, you really should view the clip from the always-intriguing Tim Keller. Excllent!

The Open Hand and the Closed Hand

Fellowship and partnership with other believers is only possible if we know how to distinguish between non-negotiable convictions on the one hand, and those issues where freedom and flexibility is allowed on the other hand. To that end, I liked what Mark Driscoll had to say in this video clip about putting certain matters in the “open hand” and putting other matters in the “closed hand.” He says that Christians get into trouble when they put issues in one "hand" that really belong in the other. Good stuff.

The clip was prepared to promote John Piper's Desiring God National Conference in late September. Other video clips from interviews of the conference speakers can be found here. I'll add some reactions to some other video clips in later posts.

What Kind of Advice is Your iPod Giving You?

A study has just been released confirming what most parents and youth workers already know: regular exposure to sexual lyrics contribute to sexual promiscuity. A recent AP article reported:

Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found. . . . Songs depicting men as "sex-driven studs," women as sex objects and with explicit references to sex acts are more likely to trigger early sexual behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the study found.

The study, based on telephone interviews with 1,461 participants aged 12 to 17, most of whom were virgins when the study began.

"Teens will try to deny it, they'll say 'No, it's not the music,' says Natasha Ramsey, the teen editor for Sexetc.org, “but it IS the music. That has one of the biggest impacts on our lives."

No wonder the Bible says (Psalm 1:1-2, NLT):

Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or stand around with sinners,
or join in with scoffers.
But they delight in doing everything the Lord wants;
day and night they think about his law.

We’re constantly bombarded by “advice” from songs, films, and TV shows. Even provocative ads that pop up on MySpace tell us, “It’s nice to be naughty.” Wise is the person who will take the steps to reduce exposure to all of this “advice.” As this most recent study shows, we really are impacted by it all.

From the Bench to the Barstool?

Most of us know the experience of sitting at the lunch counter or on a barstool near a man who has the answer for all the world's problems. It can be an entertaining conversation to hear him spout off about how to solve the Mideast crisis or why gas prices are so high or who was really behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But when Jon Wisser opined about the heart-breaking news of sexual scandal at an Austin church, he wasn't on a barstool or in a diner booth. The judge for the 299th Judicial Criminal District Court was being interviewed by the local Fox News affiliate.

Since he was the presiding judge over a similar scandal involving a staff member at the same church in 1998, it makes sense that the media would ask him for a comment on the latest police report.

His response? In last night's Fox-7 News report, he said, "The media is filled with stories about various religious orders . . . especially the Catholic church has been under constant siege all over the world for sexual improprieties of young people . . . we've had monks recently just south of Austin . . . and now this. I can see where some citizens would start thinking that any male who goes into these religious orders or ministers is somewhat suspect."

Huh?

This response went way beyond the scope of the current unfolding scandal to remark on all ministers in general. Were the judge's comments misrepresented through a reporter's sloppy editing, or did the judge think he was chatting with tavern patrons over a cold one? Either way, this segment was a grating insertion into last night's report.

Coulter-ism

You say that the Episcopal Church is "barely even a church." Why?

Because it's become increasingly difficult to distinguish the pronouncements of the Episcopal Church from the latest Madonna video.

Ann Coulter, author of

Godless: The Church of Liberalism,

in a Beliefnet interview

Checking Out Audioblogger

Making Sense of The Da Vinci Code

This week someone asked me how to get a copy of the sermon series, "The Da Vinci Code Breakers" that we covered back in May. One place you can find that is on our iTunes podcast. Scroll down to the month of May for the sermons, "Trust the Story of Christ," "Understand the Nature of Christ," and "Experience the Community of Christ."

You can listen to single sermons by clicking the button, "Get Episode." You can also subscribe to the "Hillcrest Sermons" podcast and get sermons delivered to you every week. You don't need an iPod to use iTunes on your computer.

By the way, once again, the Austin-American Statesman front-page story about our sermon series can be found here. And links to resource material about The Da Vinci Code can be found on our website.