From Sampler to Sower

The third session of the Holiness Summit at ONU followed very quickly on the heels of session two.  After a 15 minute break we filed back into College Church’s sanctuary, being met at the door by ushers passing out half sheet fill-in-the-blank handouts for a message entitled “Sanctification for Dummies.”

I wasn’t sure what to think of these portents, especially following the depth of Dr. Quanstrom’s message.  It was a morning session rather than an evening service.  The congregation gathered were primarily pastors, university professors and theology students.  I wasn’t sure we were really eager to hear the doctrine presented for the sake of “dummies.”

The presenter for this second session was Rev. Mark Fuller, pastor of the Grove City Church of the Nazarene in Grove City, OH.  Chaplain Benson prepared us for his message with an invocation in which he declared “We don’t want to be mere dabblers, but doers.”  After a time of worship, a student read Romans 12:1-2 from the New Living Translation – certainly more accessible than some of the other translations, but it left me wondering if something of the power of that passage was lost in translation.

Rev. Mark Fuller, Pastor, Grove City Church of the Nazarene

Rev. Fuller began his sermon by telling about his personal history as a minister, and about how God led him from focusing on church growth strategies to focusing on being a pastor of a church that boldly proclaimed the message of holiness.  He was no longer content to present simply a generic evangelicalism, he understood more fully that God had raised up the Church of the Nazarene for the propagation of the doctrine of heart holiness.  And in that vein he would pastor.

From that introduction, he began a sermon which, while preaching recently in his own church, he felt led to present at this Holiness Summit.  The message was cleverly titled “Sanctification for Dummies” and sought to “unpack the message of Romans 12:2 with a computer metaphor” in keeping with the computer self-help book motif.

This verse, he argued, challenges us to do four things.  First, we are called to beware of viruses.  In much the same way that computer viruses work by duplication and multiplication, the attitude and  values of the world infect our mindsets as they are replicated in our thinking.  He cited some Barna statistics about the amount of time Americans spend exposing themselves to various entertainments compared to the very short time they spend exposed to the the things of God.  Is it any wonder the distorted values of the world are replicated in our thinking.

We are in danger of being infected by the same three viruses that 1 John 2:16 say sum up everything the world has to offer: the lust for pleasure, the lust for what we see, and the pride we take in our possessons.  Clearly we need “God’s spyware” to protect us from these viruses.

Which brings us to the second challenge – we must download God’s software.  1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 declares that God is fully capable of preserving us blameless, stressing that the God who promises is faithful to do this.  We know we need God’s spyware to protect us from the viruses of the world.  The good news is this software has already been purchased for us by God.  He makes it freely available to us.  All we must do is download it that we might be protected.

Thirdly, we need to replace the default files in our minds. In the same way that, by default, a computer opens certain files and programs when it starts up, our minds revert to certain default ways of thinking.  Fuller shared an illustration from carpentry.   A project he was working on required a piece of wood cut with a crosscut hand saw.  He measured once and cut twice.  The first time he was about a quarter of an inch off.  Fortunately he caught his mistake and measured again to start a new cut.  Unfortunately the saw tended to fall back into the same groove he had already begun.

The good news is that Romans 12:2 says that we can change the way we think.  (At least it does in the New Living Translation.)  Likewise Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5 we can take every one of our(?) thoughts captive and hold them accountable to Christ.  (At least it does in the NIV.)

Employing now a mixed metaphor, Fuller instructed we need to be careful to avoid falling back into the same old grooves of thinking we tend to boot by default.  Files that need replacing include:

• I am victimized by circumstances. (What he called “If only thinking.”)
• I am defeated by others (“It’s their fault this happened.”)
• I  am accountable to no one (“I am . . . I can . . . I, I, I.)

Instead we need to install these “mind-renewing files”:

• I am responsible to God
• I must remember God
• I am reliant on God

Finally, Fuller taught, we need to actually run these divine applications.  We’re not just going through this process so that we will be able to know what God’s will is.  Rather having discerned God’s will, it falls to us to begin doing it.  As Philippians 4:9 says, we must put into practice what we have learned.  “A transformed heart means nothing if it does not result in a transformed life.”

While Fuller certainly used “Sanctification for Dummies” as a computer metaphor throughout his explanation of Sanctification, like many metaphors at several points it felt forced.  God’s sanctifying work seems much more profound than merely downloading some software and running the applications.  While a helpful introduction to God’s plan for a transforming work, like a lot of “for Dummies” book, the doctrine came off as overly simplified.

What’s more, this presentation seemed to obscure the fact that sanctification is God’s work.  I’m sure that’s what Fuller meant to convey when he stressed that unlike so many software downloads “God’s spyware” is freely available.  He stressed that God has already purchased our sanctification.  However, throughout the rest of the message, the work of sanctification fell to the operator.  Drawing on the phrase from the NLT I felt the most uncomfortable with, Fuller stressed that what really must happen is that we must change the way we think.  If I can just reprogram myself to think differently everything will fall into place.  Or, to use his other metaphor, if I’m just really careful, I can stay out of the old grooves of infected thinking.

The problem is, I can’t reprogram myself.  I know. I’ve tried.  God’s solution for my problem isn’t telling me I have to change the way I think, it is that He must transform me by renewing my mind.  I’m not the subject doing that transformation.  I am the object transformed.  And while I’m sure that Fuller agrees with that point, it was obscured by the self-help metaphor he employed for this presentation.

However, I was impressed by some things about Fuller’s presentation.  It cited scripture throughout.  It was, up until that point in the program, the most scripturally grounded message we had heard.  Granted, at times it did feel like a Warren-esque exercise in proof-texting (like his appeal to 2 Corinthians 10:5, which seemed to look only to the words and not the context of the verse for the meaning.)  But the entire outline was determined by his exposition of Romans 12:2.

Even more impressive to me, however, was his transparently loving character.  Fuller is clearly a man that loves God, and loves people.  And maybe even more importantly for a group of pastors, he’s a man who is in love with his calling.  His character and demeanor were refreshing and inspiring.