How To Heap Burning Coals On Your Enemy

I continue to ask, Will our children have faith?

It happens, even among pastors, the spiritual leaders of Christian communities of faith. What happens? Pride and self-aggrandizement. This is why Pastor W insisted that he alone knew what was best for the congregation. They would have a new form of what he called contemporary worship. From his observation and experience this was the only way to reach the youth of the community. His was to be the only way to keep them with the church. The church needed to get past its outmoded fascination with old and outdated liturgical traditions of the past. It must become modern and contemporary with an ever changing world.

So Pastor W threw his weight around. He did not listen to the leaders and elders of his congregation. He did not consult with other pastors in the region. He simply did it! And when twenty families finally walked out in protest—some major, long-time members of the church—Pastor W simply shrugged. That was their choice. He and his followers were moving forward to educate, encourage and train the next generation and to reach out to those outside the congregation's fellowship.

In my previous post I emphasized the importance of living within a community of faith so that our faith in the Risen Christ might be passed on to our children. What I did not say was that within that community there is often conflict, confusion and quarreling about how to do just that. The decades old worship wars within the Christian community give evidence of the same. The Apostle Paul anticipated that in his guidance given to the churches in and around Rome. Though he wrote that "we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another," he also pointed to a long list of failures to bear witness to Christ's love within that body. Here's a brief summary:

• demanding that we adjust our values in order to relate to the world around us
• emphasizing individual rights by insisting that I know what is best! 
• refusing to use the gifts God has given in service of my community of faith
• pretending to care for and love others, with a hidden agenda of gaining personal glory and influence
• outright, obvious and open laziness
• slandering those who slander you
• spreading gossip about any and all who disagree with your personal viewpoint

This list goes on and on. Take another look at what Paul writes in Romans 12:1-21. He knew and wrote about the challenges we all face when living together in community. We carry our sinful natures along with us. His final advice:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head" (Prov. 25:21-22). Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. - Rom 12:19-21 ESV

Heaping Burning Coals? 

by Lois Tverberg - OurRabbiJesus.com

What's the deal about heaping burning coals on his head? Sure sounds like a cruel, even malicious way of getting even. Why appeal to such desires? How in all the world is this a way of witnessing to our children about the love of Christ the Lord? Dr. Lois Tverberg explains:

The picture of putting coals on a person's head initially sounds like a picture of causing burning pain, but it really is not. Instead, it seems to be a picture of stirring up the coals of a fire to rouse it back to life again. It is a picture of stirring within a person a response of remorse, when they see your kindness in the face of their meanness. This must also be the sense of Paul's passage - we cause our enemies to be remorseful for their actions toward us, and in doing so we overcome evil by doing good.

Another example of why living together in community is critical to the task of passing on the faith to the next generation.

Who Is Winning The Worship Wars?

This past Sunday on the way to our second home in Colorado, we attended worship at a Lutheran congregation that has two different services, one traditional and one they call contemporary, featuring loud rock-style music. Reluctantly, we went to the 11:00 a.m. Contemporary Service. As before, I found myself troubled by what I saw and heard—or did not see and hear. I also struggle to put into words my thoughts and feelings. So I did a little online research that I share today.


The research suggests that pastors are more concerned about the type of music used in worship than are the worshippers. The Barna Group's research shows that congregants are more concerned about prayer, the sermon, quiet moments for reflection and communion - http://bit.ly/kJ8C1v. Barna also discovered that church-going adults are more focused upon themselves than upon God. He concludes that the church needs to focus upon the God who is worthy of our worship and offer ourselves in response to His love and mercy toward us in Christ.


Along with many, I am concerned that much of what is called contemporary worship is extremely shallow, banal, childish and man-centered. This relates to what Brian Doerksen, a writer of contemporary music, says. In an interview about his work and about contemporary worship, Doerksen responds to a question about why he put out his recent album of songs about God's holiness. He says,

"Two reasons. The positive reason is, when I went to withdraw and seek God at the beginning of last year to learn what he wanted me to do, I had such a powerful encounter with him and his holiness. The more I meditated, the more it became the only thing I wanted to sing about.

The negative reason would be simply my deep concern about some of what is going on in the modern worship explosion—the shallowness, the man-centeredness, the banality. I wanted to do something that was about God and his core attributes. A song like "Holy God" is a God song, not a song about our feelings toward God. It's not our response to God. So this was my way of saying, "Think on these things." 

As pastors and worship leaders develop services, they must ask about the principles guiding them. What theology is reflected in these services. What makes the service authentically Christian and Christ-centered? So often we have not thought these matters through. Instead we simply go along with what feels right or what we perceive to be a style that will attract a certain group of worshippers. In an article in Christianity Today  Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger write,

"At the end of the day, culture is an arena from and to which God speaks, but also one that distorts God's self-revelation. So it is not only acceptable but also necessary that we bring popular culture and its symbols into the church, for through them God engages us, and we respond to him. But since culture's symbols can also distort both God's engagement and our response, we must be wary.

"The church has used and adapted thousands of cultural symbols for worship that reflect and shape its view of God and of the gospel of salvation. Pulpits, kneeling benches, vestments/robes, fish symbols, pictures of Jesus and the disciples, video screens, incense, movie clips, and so on all affect the church's view of God and the communication of the gospel. The result has been a consistent tension in the church between form and function.

"If the forms of worship are meant to communicate God and his message of salvation (the function), then as culture precipitates a change in forms, this change necessarily affects the function. The basic question the church must address is, Do changing worship forms adapted from popular culture facilitate an authentic encounter with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit as described by the Scriptures and understood by historic Christian orthodoxy?" 

Let me leave you with that question for today. Ponder it very seriously. The church has been thinking about this for 2,000 years. We have much to learn from that history. We also must repent of the hubris that causes us to decide that current generations are wiser and more faithful to the Gospel than the generations before us.