Church Grammarian

Dear friend,
I am a church grammarian. That’s a short way of saying I shepherd people into good words, good thinking, and good actions. I am also quite aware that people don’t want to learn, and that some people learn slowly. Church life will always be filled with good, average, and poor students, but the ones who do excel are always the ones eager to hear the Word of the Lord gladly. For this reason, I teach and re-teach the alphabet of the Christian faith for Christians need to know their language.

Within my grammatical education, I try to convey the idea that we need to be around other grammar students. We learn best together which is generally why the least educated about church grammar are those who choose to study church grammar on their own. This didactic approach fails too many tests, including the verbs, nouns, and adjectives of church life. You can’t grow in church life without knowing what to do, who the people are, and the attributes that make up such people. In sum, self-learning is self-defeating.

The grammar of the Gospel is quite clear: Jesus died, he rose and ascended for us. Yet, our grammar tends to reflect the “I” without the “they.” The secret of church grammar is that everything Jesus did was for us. Without the “us” there is no “I”. You are placed in a setting of “us” and “they” for a reason. It’s God’s approach to education. When you flee this basic classroom principle you begin to forget the basics. In the church, “We believe,” “We confess,” and “We affirm,” are the fundamental elements of who we are.

Yours truly,
Pastor Brito, Ecclesiastical Grammarian

Some notes on Theology for a future introduction to Theology for the Laity

I am currently working on an introduction to theology for the laity. I hope it will prove beneficial for new Christians and young folks wanting to deepen their faith.

If we have ever come across the word “theology,” our first impression, unless we are predisposed to pursue these subjects, is to view theology as a very impersonal enterprise. But the type of theology we are after is “a theology that reflects upon the God whom Christians worship and adore.”[1] Doing theology is an act of charity to the world. What theology ought to do is change us, so that we are better prepared to change others.

The work of theology ought to make us better students, better husbands and wives, better children, and better laborers in the kingdom of God. Theology is the Christian’s daily workout. When you stop doing it, you become frail and open to sickness and disease.

Theologizing is what we are after, not so much as an exercise to strengthen our intellectual prowess, but as an exercise to serve our fellow church-men. We love best when we know God most.


[1] Alister McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (Oxford, Blackwell, 2001) 137.

The Need for All Saint’s Day

Dear friend,
what I decry in our evangelical culture is the distaste for anything that is old. I have often said that most evangelicals believe church history began when Billy Graham was born. I exaggerate to make the point that we are untrained in the ancient. We don’t read our forefathers. We don’t relish their words. Therefore, we keep innovating worship, adding our human ingenuity to church methodologies, always trying to outdo the next local assembly in gadgets and lights. And the church keeps losing; losing the youth, losing our identity, losing our history, and losing our Gospel.

For this reason, we need All Saints’ Day! We need it to remind us that we come from a long line of faithful travelers “tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.” Our history is not a beginning history, but one that has begun long ago. We follow in their train; a noble army of men and boys, the matron and the maid. We continue their journey to that eternal city.

Happy All Saints’ Day!

The Unreliable Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

Writing for The Gospel Coalition, Jeff Robinson concludes his post on legends about martyrs with this indictment of the famous Foxes’ Book of Martyrs:

Unfortunately, that famous book is not the one you want to get if you want to understand ancient martyrdom, or even the martyrdoms of its primary period (the English Reformation). The work is widely recognized by scholars as offering a one-sided presentation of its subjects. It was written for the purpose of arguing against the Roman Catholic Church, and it spares no excesses in its attempt at driving home its point. Though enormously popular ever since its publication in the 1500s, it’s basically worthless as an accurate source for the martyrs of the ancient church. All scholars know this.

Unashamedly Reformed

I was in a friendly conversation with a fellow pastor some years ago. The tone changed rather quickly when I spoke positively about C.S. Lewis. In his perspective, Lewis was a dangerous writer who could lead people away from the safety of Reformed confessionalism.

Suddenly, in his eyes, I had gone from a faithful Reformed pastor to someone compromising my orthodoxy. The experience was so shocking and his tone so harsh that I kindly asked if we could continue this conversation another time and left. I knew nothing fruitful would come from that chat. Of course, we never continued that talk and I am frankly grateful. Such reactions stem from an over-reactionary perspective of theology. The idea is that we must be glued to our Reformed forefathers and read nothing else outside our tradition for fear that it might damage our pure ideas of interpretation.

As we approach Reformation Day, I find myself more and more grateful to God to those within and without my particular tradition. Those of us in the Reformational camp have a greater responsibility to provide a framework that is more whole, more catholic, and more complete than other traditions. After all, we produced the Puritans, Bavinck, Kuyper, Van Til, Bahnsen and Sproul. From the Reformation stemmed this gigantic sense that everything in the world is Christ’s and we are in him which means we seek to bring Christ to everything.

The idea that Lewis’ peculiar views on the imprecatory Psalms, for instance, would be a threat to the Reformation is absolutely bizarre. I could easily find peculiarities in Luther. However, the idea that Lewis’ genius would contribute to a more robust Reformation is precisely the kind of world we need to embrace. If the modern Reformed man or woman lives in fear that such and such an author or thinker will remove us from the Reformation, then we have adopted a very narrow view of the Reformation. We have failed to see precisely Calvin’s vision for the church, the Puritan’s vision for the world, and Kuyper’s vision for the culture.

So then, read broadly, hold on to your convictions closely, explore Christendom unashamedly and go to Narnia often. To be Reformed is to be unafraid; it is to know God and to know self.

Solus Christus!

Kanye West and Christian Everything-ism

Dear friend,

Jimmy Kimmel asked Kanye a few days ago if he was a Christian artist. Kanye’s response was quite powerful both theologically and culturally. He paused and answered: “I am a Christian everything!” One can only hope that his child-like faith will increase and his zeal continues. His response was a slap in the face to the lukewarm and apathetic lifestyle of modern Christians.

We are approaching one of the most glorious days in the Church Calendar–All Saints’ Day–where we remember the Christian bodies torn by lions and burnt at the stake. These martyrs didn’t embrace a portion of their faith, but all of it. But in our day, we still see the vestiges of the compartmentalization of the faith inside the church. “Just a little church on Sunday, but don’t expect much else from me.” “I am an introvert, so I like to stay on my own,” “There is too much going on for me to get involved.” This is lukewarmness exemplified.

The Gospel affirms Kanye’s response: “I am a Christian everything!” Christian, are you pleased with an abstract and non-committal faith? Are you satisfied with a few words of divine morality? Do you want more? Or are you content with the neutrality of your safe space? Are you willing to embrace the Gospel in all its fullness?

You see, there is no biblical rationale for lukewarmness. In fact, Jesus repudiates that philosophy with harsh language:

“And you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am going to vomit you from my mouth.”

The danger of living an unattached, uninterested Christian life, divorced from the community and fearful of the accountability of faithful Christians is that the first attractive philosophy that comes your way will demand very little except the affirmation that the Gospel has it all wrong. By then, your Christian armor is so punctured by your slumber that you will welcome that philosophy with great ease. Your choice is to stay within or be spat out; to embrace a total faith or little by little distance yourself from the full Gospel. Choose you this day!

In Christ,
Uri

Kanye: God’s Humorous Art Piece

We are living in interesting times when cowardly evangelical men fail to lead their families in godliness, church attendance, tithing, and fellowship and so much more. Membership in a local church is now viewed as optional. There was actually a time when membership in a local body was your identity marker like your baptism. But now people jump from church to church (sometimes several in a short amount of time) with a profound disdain for the pastor and the people’s liturgical and sacramental and shepherding role in their lives.

So, now we enter this stage when a world-wide celebrity enters the evangelical scene with an absolutely well-done album covering all the basics of what a true evangelical man ought to look like and think like and feel like and act like. Further, he affirms how a man ought to lead his house:

“Follow Jesus, listen and obey. No more living for the culture we nobody’s slave. Stand up for my home. Even if I take this walk alone, I bow down to the king upon the throne. My life is his, I’m no longer my own.”

But beyond all that, we are looking at the zeal of what I hope to be a new Christian so eager to explain his new-found faith that his Bible reading flows clearly through his lyrics. It’s true that Kanye has a lot of undoing to do; he needs no penance. In Christ, he is a new creation. But if he genuinely follows Christ in this toxic culture, he can be a powerful voice that can reach millions and millions. His undoing will be like a sweet aroma to so many who long for something more permanent than the temporary pleasures of this world.

Kanye may be God’s greatest humorous art piece in my short life. My hope is that God’s humor through the conversion of men will awaken the silliness of the modern evangelical man and awaken them from their slumber. https://open.spotify.com/album/0FgZKfoU2Br5sHOfvZKTI9…

The Science of Gratitude

The results are in! Gratitude wins the day by a landslide. In fact, as a result of this monumental victory, psychology departments are developing entirely new areas of study on the little-known fact of gratitude. According to Robert Emmons, author of “Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier,”

“Gratitude is literally one of the few things that can measurably change people’s lives.”

There are measurable benefits! Did you hear that?

Linked to this discovery is the helpful suggestion made by Michael Hyatt that keeping a gratitude journal can be immensely beneficial as we build an arsenal of gratitude pages. Ending the day by listing the reasons for thanksgiving, however small, can actually serve as a rich spiritual exercise.

Of course, we are aware that psychological journals are behind the times. Gratitude has always been a Christian virtue. St. Paul had already broken the news. Later, in the 20th century, Bonhoeffer alluded to this in his remarkable little book, Life Together. There, he takes us back to the glories of gratitude in community life. For Bonhoeffer, if you don’t know where to start in the gratitude journey, start with thanking God for your community. He writes:

“If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.”

The Christian faith is a food religion. The heart of it is found in the death/resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. He became for the world the bread of life. This bread then becomes the food for hungry souls to feed. In the Christian tradition, it is articulated most clearly in the table of the Lord. The table is a table of joy and gratitude; so much gratitude that it is usually referred to as the Eucharistic Table. The word “eucharistia” means “thanksgiving.” Emmons says that “when we feel grateful, we are moved to share the goodness we have received with others.”

It is this sharing of food that forms this table of thanksgiving.

Gratitude builds us in love and compels us to share in the shalom of God with others. To whom much is given much is required. To those of us who partake of God’s goodness often and daily, we are called then to compel others with our own lives and words to share in this community of gratitude formed by the God who gave us His own life.

The Myth that the Reformation was a Break from Liturgy

There is a myth that when the Reformers broke from Rome, they broke free from liturgical worship. True Protestant worship is spontaneous and unconstrained by liturgical forms. Who needs a bulletin? Let’s just follow the Spirit.” This is the general belief of most evangelicals in America– that breaking from Rome is breaking from liturgy. Of course, everyone has a liturgy; some are thought through, others are not. And because of this supposed idea of how a Reformed Church should be, many Protestants have ended up with spontaneous and entertainment-driven worship. But here is the irony of all of this: before the Reformation, the people would gather to be entertained by the Roman Church. Now they were not entertained by skits and praise bands as many do today, rather they were entertained by seeing the priest do his magic. In those days, the priest would take the bread and wine and magically it would be turned into the substance of Christ’s body. But when the magic was done the people themselves did not take the bread and wine; only the priest took the bread and wine. The people just sat there and listened to the priest talk in a language that they did not know. It was a sort of passive entertainment. Do you know how the Reformers reacted to this magical trickery and this passive entertainment offered to the people? The Reformers said: “Enough of this!” “The Reformers rediscovered the biblical truth that the whole congregation is a priesthood called to offer up spiritual sacrifice before God.

The Reformers insisted that the people together with the minister do the work of worship; that people instead of sitting down passively and watching the trained musicians or the priest do his trick were now going to become themselves living sacrifices unto God. So, instead of only the trained musicians in the choir singing, the Reformers began to take the laity, the common people, and trained them to sing. Luther, of course, was a much better trained musician than most of the Reformers, so he began to compose beautiful music. He began to train the congregation to sing robustly, not like monks, but like warriors. And Calvin, who was not musically gifted, hired a musician to put the psalms into music b. So, you see what is happening is that the  passive nature of the people in worship, where only the professionals sing–that is in fact still prevalent in our own day– has much more in common with Roman Catholicism than it does with Protestantism. The Reformers wanted the congregation involved in the liturgy: in the singing, confessing, and every other part of worship. Therefore, the Reformers did not abandon the liturgy, they corrected the liturgy of Rome. Instead of only priests and trained singers involved in the church, while the people remain silenced, the Reformers involved the entire congregation in sacred worship.

Many of you who have probably visited a Roman Catholic Church may say, “The modern Roman Catholic church is not like the Catholic Church of the 16th century.” The modern day Catholic church has services in English and the people sing and the people take the bread and wine every Sunday. Do you know why this is the case? Because many years after the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholics realized that the Reformers were taking over the world and that they were losing the game and so they concluded: “We need to imitate the Protestants.”

It is not uncommon to have someone visit the congregation I pastor in Pensacola and say that our liturgy looks Catholic. But this means that they have bought into a myth. It is not that our liturgy looks Catholic, it is rather that anything that the Catholic Church does that appears in any way similar to what we do at our Church was learned from the Protestant Reformers, not the other way around. Do you think the modern day Protestant understands the Reformation? I would like to think they do. But every time you hear these myths stated remember what really happened. Remember and remind non-Reformed people that the Reformers loved the unity of the Church, they believed strongly that the people should read their Bibles in the context of the church, that the Reformers believed in predestination because the Bible taught predestination, and that the Reformers, not Rome, restored worship to the people.

Why do we celebrate the Reformation? Because the Reformers believed that the ancient paths of Moses and Paul were good paths and that we should walk in them and find rest for our souls.

Why I am Reformed

Dear Friend,

You inquired so honestly about why I am committed to a Reformed vision of life, that I feel compelled to at least give you a brief overview.

First, it’s important to note that I am Reformed in the catholic sense. By “catholic,” I mean in the sense that I have high regard for other traditions. While I am committed to particular features of the 16th Century Protestant Reformation (see below), I am in no way committed to abiding by every doctrine that sprung from that era. However, when I do disagree with my forefathers, I don’t do it flippantly, but with tremendous respect and caution. They were so loyal to the Scriptures that when I disagree with their interpretation I do it with as much humility I can muster.

Second, I am compelled by the Reformed faith because it exalts God to a place of highest honor. Of course, other traditions exalt God, but the Reformed faith places God as the center of all thinking, living, doing, and abiding. In a culture so heavily invested in the wants and desires of men, the Reformed tradition places the glory of God above all earthly glories.

Third, and perhaps one of the central aspects that drew me to the theology of Calvin, Luther, and Bucer was their immense love for the Holy Bible. The Bible was for them the central and primary authority over all matters of faith and practice. Instead of relying on methods of apologetics that excuse or draws us away from the text, the Reformed faith is unapologetically biblical. God is and therefore everything flows from that presupposition.

Fourth, and I owe this largely to Martin Luther, but what draws me more and more every day to the Reformed faith is its principle that when you sing you pray twice (see Augustine). Luther believed that the congregation needed to be committed to singing God’s words and sound theology. I still recall my first experience in a Reformed church and singing:

His kingdom cannot fail;
He rules o’er earth and heav’n.
The keys of death and hell
To Christ the Lord are giv’n.

I never heard such piercing and powerful lyrics. For the Reformed, the congregation is the choir.

Finally, I am Reformed because of Abraham Kuyper’s mission to apply the Christian faith to every sphere of life. He once wrote: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” For the Reformed, to be a Christian is not just a state of being, but a verb. A Christian christianizes. He brings the joys of heaven to everything he touches on earth.

If I had more time, I’d talk about the Church and how the Reformation renewed a true vision of the Church, but I think my outline above should suffice. Again, thanks for your question and I am looking forward to your feedback.

Yours Truly,
Uri