What are the guiding values of Nerdchurch?
Here’s an overview of our guiding values. Your questions and comments are welcome via our Contact page.
Ask questions,
And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. (Luke 2:46-47)
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you (Matthew 7:7)
Nerdchurch welcomes and celebrates questions. We cultivate an appreciation for questions. We know how it feels to have an overflow of questions. So does Jesus. He’s big on questions.
The Bible gives us (exactly) one story about Jesus’ growing-up years, found in Luke 2:41-51. On a family trip to celebrate Passover, twelve-year-old Jesus stays behind in Jerusalem. The group has already gone a day’s journey back towards Nazareth before his parents realize he’s missing, so by the time they get back and find him, it’s been three days. They find him in the temple, surrounded by doctors, asking and answering questions.
Jesus is surprised that his parents have been searching for him.
Really. That was how absorbed he was, three days into a lore discussion with the biggest theology nerds at GodCon. Who knows where he’d slept, or gotten a bite to eat? He shows no awareness of the passing of time, or why it might not be obvious to his parents where he would be.
Jesus said he had to be “about my Father’s business” (2:49). Other translations supply “in my Father’s house,” but en tois tou patros mou is literally just, “in the things of my father.” Jesus didn’t mention a house. He was talking about the activity that was taking place. Where people were talking about God and the things of God, asking and answering questions, that’s where Jesus belonged. That’s where he put himself, right in the middle.
It wasn’t about the Temple, it was about the questions. Read through any of the gospels and notice how Jesus asks questions, and responds to them–often, with other questions. You’ll see his enthusiasm.
If you’ve been in church or ministry settings where questions were not welcome, were shut down quickly by how they were answered, or were treated as a sign of rebellion or disloyalty against the church, or against God–then you’ve been somewhere middle-school Jesus would not want to be.
Find somewhere your questions are heard and respected.
be yourself,
for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)
Thou dost establish equity, (Psalm 99:4)
Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. (Mark 16:15)
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God. (Romans 15:7)
You might as well be yourself, right? Everyone else is already taken. Seriously, the person you are inside is the you that God already sees, and loves. God sets a spectacularly high value on you! He delights in your uniqueness and respects your freedom.
Jesus sends his disciples with the gospel–good news–to every creature. Everyone needs the gospel, and everyone is invited to receive every benefit of the gospel. One of those benefits, according to Jesus, is being part of his family. Another is being filled with the Holy Spirit. When we receive one another as Christ received us, God is glorified.
The church has consistently struggled to keep up with the way Jesus includes people in his family, and gives the Holy Spirit. Those struggles run through the gospels and the rest of the New Testament, and continue through church history up to the present day.
The value of being yourself does not mean we expect anyone to share more than they feel right about sharing. If you’ve experienced that church was not a smart or safe place to be yourself, or to share your gifts, you might have reasons to be wary. Maybe you feel like testing the waters before opening up. That’s just common sense; and lot of us can relate.
use your powers,
Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. (Matthew 25:21)
Now concerning spiritual gifts , brethren, I would not have you ignorant. (1 Corinthians 12:1)
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. (1 Corinthians 12:7)
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
We may or may not think much of our abilities, but each comes with an opportunity to be faithful and level up in God’s kingdom. So we encourage everyone to use their powers, for good!
All too often, the Holy Spirit and his gifts have been neglected, misunderstood, and even feared. To summarize a process which started during the New Testament period and is still running towards its conclusion, mean people produce mean versions of religion marked by selfishness, greed, arrogance, lack of compassion, and manipulation. The result is a semblance of godliness that rejects the power of God.
Sometimes, the ‘mean people’ are us. So the wisest way to read Paul’s warning (quoted in full, so as not to cherry-pick) is not to assume it’s about someone else. It’s potentially about any of us. A balanced study of church history shows a clear inverse correlation between the church wielding coercive-manipulative power, and spiritual-moral power. To optimize one is to turn away from the other. No one can serve both.
One of the most fruitful ways for nerds to exercise their curiosity, inventiveness, and willingness to be socially ‘strange’ is to invest in discovering (or rediscovering) how to cooperate with the Spirit in exercising spiritual gifts for the benefit of all. This is a research program that is still active and wide open for new developments.
trust Jesus!
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. (John 6:47)
I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, (John 10:9)
…who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. (1 Peter 1:21)
This value is the last, the secret-sauciest, and potentially most misunderstood.
You’re definitely welcome at Nerdchurch as a non-christian or ex-christian, or as an adherent of another faith, or as someone who is still undecided. In his ministry, Jesus didn’t bully people into believing in him, or expect people to make a faith decision or confession as a condition of helping them. Jesus loved people as they were. If he hadn’t, it would be meaningless to tell his disciples to love one another “as I have loved you.” They knew how he loved people, and how in an atmosphere of love and acceptance people found it possible to hope and believe again.
As people got to know him and trust him, Jesus would encourage them that they could trust him practically and fully, trust his Father, and trust the Spirit who would come after he went away.
Religion can be a bewildering landscape of ‘shoulds’–traditions, obligations, aspirations, and more. There is practically no limit on the shoulds that can apply to our lives. We all fall short of them. This can turn into one of the biggest pressures and pains of life.
Jesus says that whoever believes on [eis, literally “into”] him has eternal life; and whoever enters by [dia, literally “through”] him shall be saved. And Peter says it is by [dia] him, that is, Jesus Christ, that Christians’ faith and hope may be in God.
You can see how radical Peter’s statement is when you consider how many of his readers ‘believed in God’ before they even heard of Jesus. For Peter, meeting Jesus–and meeting him again after his resurrection–brought a spiritual rebirth, with a radically different quality of life, faith and hope in God.
When reborn Christians say things like, “It’s not about religion, it’s about Jesus,” this is the kind of experience we’re trying to point towards. It doesn’t mean we’ve completely shed our layers of religious programming, some of which we may not even be aware of. We probably haven’t, and won’t. It doesn’t mean we are fully psychologically free from ‘shoulds’ from non-religious sources, either.
But we have come into contact with a new kind of life, entered through Jesus, that pulses with a radical quality of freedom and possibility. Trusting Jesus fuels our freedom to ask questions, be ourselves, and use our powers without being paralyzed by fears.
‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus. And yes, he does have a sense of humor. Woot!
