Pastor's Circle - Steve Blakemore

Steve Blakemore is the Professor of Philosophy at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and the pastor of Wesley Chapel He joined the Pastor's Circle to talk about the new year. Below are the "CliffsNotes" of his interview.

2012 is the end of the world?

According to the people who have studied this thing, 2012 is when the Mayan calendar predicted the end of time.

How should we as pastors talk to our congregations about the Second Coming?

First of all, I think we need to talk about the Second Coming to people in very serious terms, but in hopeful terms, and in responsible terms.

What I mean by that is this: quite often, people take the Second Coming and make it an escapist doctrine: the world's just going to keep getting worse, and we just have to hang on until Jesus comes.

In Biblical terms, the Second Coming was always a hope, a hope that Jesus was going to come and bring his Kingdom.

And because we teach that hope, we have to say to our congregations that anything that is not of the coming Kingdom is not going to matter.

Why would we invest our lives in things that don't matter? Let's be about things that are of the Kingdom, rather than things that will perish.

What's your take on New Year's resolutions?

When I was younger, I was much bigger into trying to make New Year's resolutions, until I realized that I was an abject failure at keeping them.

Resolutions are about people realizing that time is passing in their lives. Even in very ancient cultures, people look at the beginning of the year as a time to look at beginning life anew.

There's something about marking the passing of time that can be sobering to us. In that sense, there's some helpfulness in taking a serious look at our lives in view of who God is calling us to be.

I think it does have some benefit. Accountability could probably help us there, though.

How important is it to reflect on the past year?

In the book of Deuteronomy, it is all about remembering the law of the Lord. Remembering what God has done is the inspiration for laying down a new trajectory in life.

What cultural challenges will the Church face in 2012?

One of the things that most concerns me right now is the potential for a divide among Christians in regard to how we should relate to the political field.

One of the great challenges we're going to have to face is probably how we're going to think about the Church's relationship to the State.

How do we think about politics? What do we do when we find a Christian, a true believer who believes in big government? Or when a big government Christian finds someone who doesn't agree with him?

I think this new election year that we're facing is going to be a real time of potential division for Christians. That's the kind of cultural thing that worries me.

Pastor's Circle - Steve Blakemore

Steve Blakemore is the Professor of Philosophy at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and the pastor of Wesley Chapel He joined the Pastor's Circle to discuss. Below are the "CliffsNotes" of his interview.

How important is the Advent season?

I'm glad you asked, because I think it's a shame that so many Protestant denominations have forgotten about what's called the "liturgical year."

It sounds boring, but it's just the calendar of the church that was established to help us live our lives around the life of Christ.

Advent was established by the church to be a four-Sunday period to have a time of introspection, a time of reflection, and even to some degree, a time of fasting.

Last week I was challenging my congregation about whether we really have taken seriously the idea that Jesus became flesh to redeem all flesh.

We always complain about the secularization of Christmas, and then we don't do anything to establish a greater meaning for that day.

What can families do to create a deeper meaning for Christmas?

One of the things I would suggest they do is to create some family rituals. "Rituals" sounds dead, but they aren't dead, they're just things we do to shape our lives.

Years and years ago for Advent, my wife got a wreath that we stuck four candles in, and each Sunday after church we would light a candle and have a devotional reading.

Another thing families could do is something like what we're doing at Wesley Chapel, which is that we're all fasting one meal a week.

We're setting aside the money that we would spend on that meal, and we'll put that in an offering on Christmas day. It's a way to give of ourselves to remind us that God gave himself for us.

You've talked for years to people about trying to capture and reclaim your family's life by what you do together.

We are a time-enslaved people, enslaved to clocks and calendars. It's so easy to forget to just stop and sing a song together, or read a passage of Scripture. 

What about churches that won't have services on Christmas Sunday?

Those are basically just pagan institutions.  

Pastor's Circle - Steve Blakemore

Steve Blakemore is the Professor of Philosophy at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and the pastor of Wesley Chapel He joined the Pastor's Circle to discuss. Below are the "CliffsNotes" of his interview.

Talk to us about this upcoming "Personhoood Amendment."

It's always interesting to me when people want to talk about abortion, that they make it a matter of "rights." The rights of the woman over her body versus the rights of the unborn child.

People lose perspective on this one question. Exactly what is this "entity" within the mother's womb? The Personhood Amendment makes people grapple with the fact that the life within the mother is indeed a human life.

I think that's what the Amendment drives forth.

Do we need to reconsider the way we look at birth control?

I think there's no doubt about that. One of the things this discussion does is make people uncomfortable, because it forces us to move beyond "sound bite" discussions.

We have to get into deep discussions about the very nature of human life.

I remember in 2008 Rick Warren asked both Obama and McCain when life began. President Obama said it was above his pay grade.

It's certainly not above his pay grade to acknowledge the humanity of the life in the mother's womb.

When it comes to things like birth control, we have to think about how much we allow our convenience to determine our actions.

How do we persuade others using a Christian worldview?

First of all, for us to think about persuading, we have to teach Christians how to think as Christians.

People would be amazed how much other values systems influence what they think, and then they just baptize those systems in the Christian worldview. What does the Bible say? What does the Christian faith tell us?

If we go in fully informed, and able to think as Christians, but go in asking people with big hearts even towards those who are wrong, there should be compassion in our hearts toward them.

What are we trying to do, win arguments or win people?

So humility is an important part of it?

Every Christian can inform themselves not just about the issues, but about the Christian values that we have to embrace.

Not just personhood, but about poverty, how free market should be thought of in a Christian worldview, how we should view democracy.

We should be a people who are just as intense about winning the person's soul and mind as we are about the issues.