A recent pole (I believe it was a Gallup pole) said that 40% of Americans make some sort of resolution. Out of that 40%, half of them end up quiting whatever there resolution is. That means that 20% of America doesn’t follow through on their resolutions. In my late teens and early 20s every New Years Eve I would start out making a resolution to read the Bible through in its entirity atleast once a year, loose weight, journal/blog daily, and be more consitent on follow through. I would do great until about the second week in February, then life would happen. Basically most years I was in rank with the one in five Americans that quit their resolution before they had accomplished the task. About five years ago I decided that making (and the inevitable not keeping) of New Years Resolutions makes pretty much as much sense as resolving to never sin again. Sounds good on paper but pretty impossible to do in reality.

Well it is New Years again and I am still done with the whole resolution thing. It’s time for a revolution. The Christian faith, the faith of Jesus and the apostles, was a revolutionary faith. I am not talking about what so easily passes for “Christian faith” in America. Christain faith is much more than just a list of social morals appealed to by the religious right and the religious left. Christian faith goes beyond felt flannel graphs boads of Jesus as a child in elementary school, the “Jesus freak” movement of high school, or even the conservative Baptist theology of my years in college and seminary, preparing piffy three point outlines with power point slides for Sunday sermons, or even my conviction to preach exegetically through the Scriptures. Note I am not saying that there is anything wrong with any of that. All of that has had a special place in my life. I am also not talking about a need for what some see as the reawakening of “true Christianity” in the ever growing emergent theology, a re-making of Christianity among “ancient future” lines, post-liberal, post-conservative, or even classic, modern, or contemporary, or post-modern approaches to Christian theology. I’m not calling for another resolution to anything but I am calling for myself to become a revolutionary.

Revolutionaries are change agents because they went beyond the status quo. They dared to be different then their country men and dream dreams that were not in the status quo. The fathers (and mothers) of the Reformation were revolutionaries. They did not take up the sword but the pen (Well atleast the Anabaptist Reformers didn’t, the Lutheran and Reformed theologians did make that mistake on select occassions) and with the written word they showed the spirit of going being status quo faith to a real and deep living faith.
As a pastor in an evangelical church, I have made a commitment to being a person of the Bible. So in this new year part of my reformation, part of my desire to be a true biblical scholar and modern day revolutionary is to really study the scriptures. The way I plan to do it is by reading a selection every day and blogging about it. I may miss a day here and there but I will make it up. Viva the Revolution.