Andy Cornett | living in the new creation

endlessly captivated by the person and work of the resurrected Jesus

on dust and ashes

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Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent. For a long time I discarded that tradition and went without celebrating Lent in any real way, but in recent years I have come back to do some thinking about it and recover a sense of worshipping with the whole church.

The season of Lent is an opportunity for reflecting, for remembering, for repenting as we recall the death and resurrection of Jesus. Lent isn’t for navel-gazing or moping: it’s for a clear-headed and far-sighted facing our own condition in light of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. We never repent thinking we could justify God’s forgiveness, but we always repent because of his staggering love for us that has wrecked and remade our very selves.

I don’t have much to add here, so here are two wiser voices that each offer a powerful mediation: one on Lent, and one on Ash Wednesday.

Sin ravages God’s Shalom in my life and in the world around me. I tell the truth about myself with the ashes on my forehead. I’m a sinner in need of grace. But friends, remember also, the ashes are placed on our foreheads in the sign of a cross. We are not without hope. We take our sins seriously with the ashes, we take God’s grace seriously by receiving them in the sign of the cross, because in the cross is the promise of resurrection, and new life in Christ right now.

Read all of Fred Harrell’s marvelous 2012 post “A Season, A Discipline, A Sign.”

I’m thankful that the ashes are about more than my own death. They’re about the death of the God whose brokenness and ultimate restoration heals my failure, who brings purpose to a life that could easily be written off as ordinary.

Read the full version of Micha Boyett’s 2011 personal “Ash Wednesday” post.

Find an Ash Wednesday service tonight and remember that you, too, are dust and ashes. You, too, have a faithful Savior – Jesus Christ. If you are local to Chattanooga, join us at Signal Mountain Presbyterian at 6:30pm. May your own heart sense the call of Jesus to leave life as you know it and follow him in the fire of love with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

prayer at communion

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I think a lot about praying in public: particularly in services of worship. There is much to say on the subject, but today my thoughts are on communnion. Whether you call it the Eucharist, Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, it is probably my favorite part of worship together.

Here’s a short prayer of consecration I’ve used in the past. Like many of my prayers, it’s cobbled together from a handful of old sources, Scripture, and my own thoughts. This one draws on some old Puritans.

grace and peace – Andy
—

Father God, today you graciously invite us to your table. You set before us a plate of simple fare: the bread and the cup. There are hungry people here, poor, tired, some weary, some heartsick, some longing, all in need of your grace.

We pray that you would take these elements and set them aside from their common use. By your grace, use them now for your purpose to share your own life and love with us.

Give us the eyes to see you present here by your Spirit. Help us grasp the height, breath and depth of your great love for us in the sacrifice of your son Jesus on the cross.

And as this bread and cup feeds our body, so may your Spirit feel our souls – until that day when we hunger and thirst no more because we sit down with you, Jesus, at your heavenly feast.

We pray this today in the light and strength of your name, our Risen Savior, Jesus Christ.

why youth ministry? [part 2]

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A few days ago I asked this question about the “why” of youth ministry: Is there any good or compelling reason that we continue to pour heart and hands, effort and energy into this work of youth ministry … or am we just keeping the car running? What do we find in Scripture that convinces us that this work matters and God calls us to it?

That post laid out a rationale for “why youth ministry” and contained my first three convictions. Here’s the rest.

4. Youth ministry is student work. The church faces a world in which many adolescents are both far from God and in the dark – and yet none less than Jesus himself is seeking them through the work of his Spirit.  Where possible, the church must partner with the family for the sake of declaring the gospel to the next generation (Ps. 71:16-18). But just as the church doesn’t forsake the parents but must equip them to (re)discover their God-given role in the discipleship of their kids, it must not also forsake the kids and students who do yet know Christ. That means the work of training and equipping adults and students from the church to go out and share in the mission: seek students, stand with them, speak out for them, love them, and bear witness among them to Christ at work in their midst.

5. Youth ministry is welcoming work. The church must welcome kids/students into its communal life of worship and witness and BE the extended family of God to those who have been abandoned. If Paul can talk about the church as the place of new humanity in Christ where Jew and Gentile stand before Christ together, it must be the place for adults and kids together in one body. When churches are tempted to divide by age, they must remember that to welcome kids is to welcome the Lord himself (Mk. 9:33-37). Our welcome here IS our worship (Rom 15:7-9). Part of making a home for kids and students means taking pains to make the long-term commitment to walk beside them into maturity as a whole human being renewed in Christ, ready to take up their vocation in this world.

6. Youth ministry is desperate work. To persist in this ministry you must heed the call of God to know him for his sake, to follow him in full knowledge of the cost, and to boast only in his cross. You must loosen your control, let go of outcomes, and lift your eyes to the risen Christ who speaks to your timid heart: “Take courage! It is I: do not be afraid… and I am with you. Always.” Fix your eyes on Him, make your prayer that of Paul in Phil. 3:9-14, and devote yourself to the work of the Lord because none of it goes to waste (1 Cor. 15:58).

why youth ministry?

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I remember one particularly galling Wednesday night several years ago. The previous days had brought a familiar mix of high-effort, low-response, excitement and frustration and discouragement – all rolled into one package. And when I walked away from a house that night I had just one simple question: why?

Let’s face it: there are times in youth ministry when you walk away from a small group study or a conversation with a family or a late-night program and the thought occurs to you … why I am doing this? Is there any good or compelling reason that I continue to pour heart and hands, effort and energy into this work of youth ministry … or am I just keeping the car running?

Early last fall I was at a conference where I got to hear Simon Sinek give a short talk on “The Power of Why”. His thesis: why drives the how, how issues in what. But this is the reverse of our normal practice where we focus on what, argue over how, and rarely figure out any justification for the whole enterprise.

So is there a clear “why” for youth ministry? Why this work with students, this endeavor within (or without) our churches to seek out and minister to teenagers? What do we find in Scripture that convinces us that this work matters and God calls us to it?

The more I reflect on these 15 years in youth ministry, the more convinced I am that youth ministry is really just one of the manifold ministries of Christ and his church. It is highly-contextualized ministry to adolescents that can take a myriad of local forms that all look to Scripture for both guidance and goal. I make no claim to have THE biblical theology for youth ministry, but I can attempt a few words of call, challenge, and comfort that have lead me to a theology for it – and for our day in the church. This is my why. This is what I believe.

Here are three – there are three more to come.

1. Youth ministry is mission work. The reality is that we have been called by a missionary God: a Father who sent his Son (for us!) and his Spirit (in us!) that we might be adopted into his family, united to him as sons and daughters, renewed in his image and participating in his kingdom. I’m growing to love 1 Peter 2 more and more: “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood” … to what end? “so that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”  We in youth ministry get to stand at the foggy adolescent intersection of childhood and adulthood, family and friend, church and wider society. We stand and say it, sing it out: the praise of God to those who are adrift in the fog and lost in the dark.

2. Youth ministry is corporate work. It is the church’s work. The church is the body of Christ, and where He is working, there the church is to be found.  This family of God, this fellowship of Jesus, is sent (via Son’s own authority! Mt 28:18ff, John 20:21) on the mission of making disciples to Jesus. Though we love the church and are passionately committed to it, we point to Christ, not it (or ourselves) – we want to see students called to a robust, sticky faith in Jesus Christ that is poured out in love for God and for people.

3. Youth ministry is family work. God desires for these broken human families to play their part in telling his story of redemption. God has designed the family such that parents have the primary spiritual responsibility of telling (and showing!) the story of God’s grace in creation, redemption, and restoration and then leading kids to know God: to love him heart, soul, mind, and strength with an everyday faith (Dt. 6).

[Update: read part two of this post for the remaining three convictions on why youth ministry.]

on the importance of being unimportant

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Happy New Year, everyone.

To listen to some in the last two weeks, you’d have though the world would have ended by now. Whether goof-ball interpretations of the Mayan Calendar or shrill warnings about the fiscal cliff, we all heard that the End was Near. I started to mentally compose a Facebook status for Dec. 20 laying out what I would do it was my last day in the world: namely, I’d carry on the work and the loves God has given me.

That made me remember a secret wish of mine. All my life I have wanted to be in or at an “Important” moment in time. I’ve wanted to be a student present at that famous lecture, a participant at some historic rally, someone who ends up known for some legendary phrase or work, or just a guy who can bounce grandkids on my knees and say “I was there that day when …” There’s this yearning deep within me to be Important, to have people (or posterity) recognize that Importance.

But so far? Not so important. At least, not Important to the “Important” people who keep lists of such “Important” things. And the funny thing is, somewhere in the last 5 years (I can’t tell you where or when) I’ve become okay with being unimportant. More than okay, actually – committed to the importance of being unimportant.

Everyday is an apocalypse in the best and broadest sense of the word – an unveiling, uncovering – a revelation and disclosure. Every day is both a culmination of all that came before (bearing us “ceaselessly into the past”) and the first glimpse of something fresh and new and green, unseen and untouched. I am more and more convinced that the truly “important” moments remain unimportant to the most Important. I want to revel in the small things, to be present in each moment as if a gift is placed in my hands, to know the names of things and the read the signs like the changing of the weather or the light in each season of 6:30am bus stops. I want to reread good old books and not worry about keeping up with the new ones. I want to love a small handful of lovely people well rather than worry about whether I’ve spoken to the Important ones. I’d rather answer questions like “are you home tonight?” with a smile and nod than give affirmatives to Important invitations. I’d rather live a life of substance in obscurity rather than an anxious, Important one.

Importance is actually a temptation for me. It’s a temptation toward controlling my own destiny or writing my own story. It’s me placing Me on the throne of my heart, and to despise the unimportant or scorn the lowly is a tell-tale sign that something has gone wrong in my heart.

I don’t know if the End is Near, but I know that any day could bring it. Every day actually does as both an end and a beginning. But I know that the Lord is near, and our gentleness is to evident to all. Gentleness: that sounds like an unimportant thing – a thing not to be worried about, but sought with gratitude in your heart to God.

None of this is meant to discount what you or I do: our work and our loves remain terribly important when seen in the right context. At the end of the Hobbit, Gandalf says something remarkable to Bilbo: “Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you that, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you, but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”

It’s not up to me to determine what is Important, because I do believe that all my adventures and escapes are managed by another. What I want to say is that I’m quite alright with being quite a little fellow in the wide world.

So Happy New year, everyone. Let’s raise a glass and toast the importance of being unimportant.

a prayer for the church on this day

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Lord, we come to you this morning on this new day, and we give you praise.
We say together with our lips: “This is the day The Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
You teach us to fix our eyes on you, to keep before us all that is pure, right, true, noble, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.

And yet, Holy Father –
There are days we we have a hard time rejoicing. There are days when we have a hard time seeing the right and the good. When instead we are weighed down by grief, when we are sick with anger. We know what we have here: this gift of this church, this community, these generations of adults and students, parents and kids. And we know that right now there are churches gathering in Connecticut who are missing adults and kids whose lives were taken from them on Friday.

You are the God of justice – why do you allow suffering like this? And how do we praise you in the midst of it?

God we often don’t know how to keep our eyes on you when we live in a world so sick and broken that we suffer catastrophes like this.

But we know you speak the truth when you teach us that all of us have fallen short of your glory. We confess that we live in a sinful world and we ourselves are sinners. Lord, on behalf of our culture, we pray that you would cast down our addiction to violence, our cynicism about it, our delight in it.
By the cross of your Son Jesus, root out anger and pride and hardness of heart among us. Shed the light of your unfailing love into our hearts to heal our wrong desires. Keep us fixed on the truth that you are near – you are not a joke, you are not a fiction, you are real and you are here and that must shape every aspect of our life.

Lord Jesus, We come this morning to praise you in the midst of our pain and fear. If we don’t speak that truth, then we’re faithless to our own community of kids and the generation after them. In You, Lord, is our only hope and trust.

So come, Lord Jesus. Bring a hope in You, our hope for Your new heavens and new earth. Make it a fire in our hearts that keeps us going. Keep before us that which is good, true, beauitful. Let our gentleness be evident to all, because you are near. Make us agents of your kingdom who redouble our efforts to witness to the life we have in you – life now and life to come. Help us to learn the new habits of mind and heart that you use to shape us into people who are truly Christ-like – who love and lead this world toward your purpose.

Come, Lord Jesus.

25 doors

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I grew up with Advent calendars. You might remember them – the paper-cut, pop-out, open-a-door-a-day-until-Christmas-kind. I loved them: the expectation, the sense that something is coming, the hint and promise of door 25 and the joy it marks.

Years passed and my faith grew up, too. I learned what was behind the calendar tradition. Advent is the Christian Church’s season of marking the “Advent,” the coming, of Jesus Christ into our world. It’s a time to remember the past, to celebrate his present reign, and live in expectation of his return.

I wanted a special way to mark this season for our kids, so several years ago my mom and I cooked up the Cornett Advent calendar. We bought a sweet, sturdy box with 25 doors – but the real gem is what’s inside. She put together 25 objects that we paired with 25 verses of Scripture to tell the story of Story, narrowing down to the life of Jesus and the details surrounding his birth. A year or two ago I finally sat down and did simple write-up of the days, themes, and objects.

A couple other things: Each year I throw some sweet treat in behind the doors as well (usually chocolates, truffles, etc.). Check for 2012. But this year I also dropped in 25 short notes, each one printed with a fact about the quest for clean water projects through the awesome Charity:Water. There’s enough consumerism all around us that it’s time to take active-countermeasures: focusing on a great need and the creative and effective ways people are meeting it ought to challenge and inspire us to live differently. We need the reminder that it is more blessed to give than to receive – and the best gifts mean life and light.

Merry Christmas!

History-making

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It may not be Monday, but here is today’s quote of the week:

The mission of the church is not merely an interpretation of history: it is a history making force. It is that through which God brings history to its goal, and only because this is so does it provide the place where the goal of history can be understood.

– Leslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society

It is a truly humbling thought that history might be made this week as we share in Christ’s mission.
It’s why 1 Corinthians 15:58 seems ever before me these days.

on ministry

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Today I start a new position, and I took some time last night to go back and remember some fundamental realities. These are my quotes for the week!

Ubi Christus, ibi ecclesisa – “Wherever Christ is, there is the church.”(Ignatius of Antioch).

It is not Jesus Christ who needs our ministries: it is our ministries that need Jesus Christ. (Karl Barth)

Wherever Christ is present in ministry, there my ministry may be found. All ministry is sharing in the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ. Our ministries must be displaced by the ministry of Jesus. We must be bumped aside firmly, perhaps mortifyingly. This is the crucifixion of ministry … and crucifixion carries the concept of redemption.

(all cited in Andrew Purves, The Crucifixion of Ministry, 13-14)

From one to another

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Sometimes the simple words in Scripture say exactly what you think and feel. Today as I leave New Hope and head to Signal Mountain, these speak as if from my own heart:

God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
(Philippians 1:8-11 NIV)

Amen! May it be so.