Mark Chironna

Bishop, PhD U B'Ham, Theo-Semiotician, DMin, Psychology, MA., BCC Coach, Musician

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

I am grateful to @Lensweet, who reminded me on more than one occasion that “recency is relevancy” is a falsehood that, sadly, sells even in the Church. The lie is older than postmodernity, though our perpetual present has made it louder. When it comes to the ancient wisdom of the faith once-for-all delivered to the saints, how recent something is tells us nothing about whether it is true. Those of us driven, consciously or unconsciously, by “recency is relevancy” ultimately scramble to stay relevant because we fear the world will stop listening. We trade being in the yoke of Jesus for relevance, without recognizing that “relevance” is a market category and that the market rewards whatever is the hot-ticket item this season. The Cross of Christ was never “relevant” in that sense. It was true, and it is as true now as it always was. It has outlasted the empire that crucified Him and every empire since. Whatever we build by chasing relevance will be ours, so we need to ask ourselves, “What is the legacy we are leaving behind?” If it is our own legacy, divorced from the faith ONCE-FOR-ALL delivered to the saints, it isn’t much of a legacy.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Christ is the Good Shepherd. He deeply cares for the shepherds He has given to His Church. Many shepherds have come to experience exhaustion rooted in the unspoken demand to be service providers in an attention economy. When a congregation expects a production week after week, it receives a performance, not spiritual formation. In that setting, the shepherd becomes the CEO of a production company. But no shepherd, no worship leader, and no flawed, fallible human being can produce God’s presence on demand. The shepherd’s call was never to satisfy customers. The call has always been to cure and care for souls, and the One who laid down His life for the sheep still tends those He has sent to tend them.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Many pastors genuinely lose sleep over low attendance and attendance metrics. The struggles are understandable. Yet they are not divorced from a performance culture baptized in consumerism. The anxiety that keeps a pastor awake in such seasons masquerades as spiritual, but truth be told, it is borrowed from a market economy, where productivity is understood as growth, and that kind of growth is the only proof of life. In a postmodern culture, history matters little if at all, and forgetting it becomes a practiced discipline, albeit a sinful one. The Church has been through lean seasons before, and the pastor who dismisses that history ends up repeating it in ignorance, convinced that every empty seat is a verdict. The moment we fail to consider, first and foremost, that Christ builds His Church, we take on a responsibility our own shoulders cannot bear. Jesus also said He is the Vine and His Father is the Vinedresser, and the Vinedresser has no problem pruning back the Church from time to time, regardless of the church growth metrics of quarterly returns. He prunes so it will bear more fruit. May we never forget that the Lord of the Harvest has never asked us to manage His outcomes.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

If we walk out of a worship service saying we weren't moved, we are making an assessment shaped by far more than sound theology. It can reflect preference and bias. We live in a culture that has trained us to judge every experience by the residue of the feeling it leaves us with, so when the feeling fades, we assume God has left us in the lurch. In a consumer culture, worship has become a commodity, a product we review and critique after the experience. If we truly want to be faithful, we begin with the understanding that worship is an offering we bring to the Triune God, and that remains true even on those Sundays when nothing in us stirs.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

If you have ever heard someone say, “I’m not being fed,” you know the complaint can mean almost anything. Some preachers say nothing, no matter how many words they use, so some who complain have good reason. Paul understood his calling as a stewardship from God: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to make known the mystery hidden for ages and generations, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Many a contemporary pulpit has traded that charge for something more marketable and defends the trade as meeting people where they are. In practice, it has agreed to serve an appetite the wider culture had already formed. A congregation raised on uplift and practical tips learns to judge preaching the way a customer judges a meal, and in that setting “I am not being fed” can mean everything from “the sermon ran long”, to “the preacher asked too much of us”, or “this was not to my taste”. The mystery of Christ in us offers no quick fix. It asks us to be searched. It can also unsettle us. The telos, the intended end, is to remake us. A consumer will ask, “Was the meal satisfying?” A disciple of Christ will ask whether the Word has found them out. The complaint may have less to do with the menu than with an appetite trained elsewhere.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Christ opens the Scriptures through the path of the cross. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:26). Beginning with Moses and the Prophets, He interprets the Scriptures concerning Himself in light of His suffering and glory. The cross is not an interruption of God’s purpose; it is part of its fulfillment.

At the table, their eyes are opened. Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. Then they recognize Him (Luke 24:30–31). The church has long heard Eucharistic resonance in this scene: the Christ who interprets the Scriptures is made known to them in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:35).

At the moment of recognition, the risen Christ vanishes from their sight (Luke 24:31). Luke does not portray this as the end of their encounter with Him. What they received on the road and at the table becomes their testimony. They return to the gathered disciples and tell how He was made known to them. His disappearance from sight must not be confused with the absence of the living Lord.

Their hearts burned before they knew whom they saw. Looking back, they recall Jesus speaking with them and opening the Scriptures (Luke 24:32). They were drawn toward understanding even before they could name the One beside them. The burning heart is not a substitute for recognition but part of the journey toward it (Luke 24:46–49).

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Christ, in a single act of authority, both opens and closes the book. Luke draws our attention to this by carefully pairing verbs for unrolling and rolling up the scroll (Luke 4:17 & 20). Here, the Lord Himself governs not only the unveiling of the text but also its completion. When the scroll is rolled up, all eyes are drawn to Him, and the words themselves give way to the living Presence they were always pointing toward.

He opens the text not only by what He reads, but by where He chooses to pause. He stops at Isaiah 61:2a, before the words about the day of vengeance, and in doing so, His very reading becomes an act of interpretation. In this, He reveals the heart of the present moment as the year of the Lord’s favor.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

https://t.co/Rj1wyuYiUu

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Suspicion is one of the most common temptations in seasons of waiting, and we're all vulnerable to it. Sometimes it rises from our own hearts, and sometimes the enemy of our souls lends it a voice. Prolonged delay is more common than most of us realize, and when the answer we have prayed for does not come, our fears begin to multiply. The powers of darkness are quick to take advantage of that and deepen the pain we already carry. Their most effective suggestions rarely sound like the enemy at all. They sound like us and often borrow the language we have learned to trust:

"I need to protect my peace. I'm done getting my hopes up about this."

Beneath that statement lies an accusation that is much harder to hear:

"God is indifferent to you, and He has been unfaithful."

Suspicion is one of the most common temptations in seasons of waiting, and we're all vulnerable to it. Sometimes it rises from our own hearts, and sometimes the enemy of our souls lends it a voice. Prolonged delay is more common than most of us realize, and when the answer we have prayed for does not come, our fears begin to multiply. The powers of darkness quickly take advantage of that and deepen the pain we already carry. Their most effective suggestions rarely sound like the enemy. They sound like us and often borrow the language we have learned to trust:

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

The powers of darkness are always looking for the gap between what happens to us and how we make sense of it. In other words, the meaning we make of it and the interpretations we arrive at. A troubling event unsettles us, and fear and anxiety rise before we have time to understand what it means. The powers of darkness lie in wait to exploit those moments. How? They move in to supply an interpretation before we can and offer a false conclusion, one that rarely, if ever, sounds like an accusation (even though it is).

It comes as a question. Hence the seductive nature of the deception:

"Are you sure you have prayed enough?"

"What makes you think God will answer your prayer?"

"What if God is withholding from you?"

It’s the oldest strategy there is. In the garden, the serpent never told Eve that God was cruel. The creature asked, "Has God indeed said...?" and let the question do its work. The questions move from our effort to our confidence in God to the character of God Himself, and each one draws us further from the truth. The aim of the powers is not simply to make us anxious. They aim to have us see God, ourselves, and our circumstances through a lens that is no longer accurate.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

The voice of suspicion rarely announces itself with drama. Instead, it slips in quietly. It sounds like common sense. It speaks to self-preservation. It may also present itself as wise, prudent caution. It never thunders accusations against God. Instead, it settles in as a subtle thought, often accompanied by a tightening in the body (if we are paying full attention). It then offers a reflexive conclusion or a familiar inner story that repeats in the background of our awareness.

[MICHAEL LEE WOMACK @WomackPoetry26]

In his book, On the Edge of Hope: No Matter How Dark the Night, the Redeemed Soul Still Sings, Dr. @markchironna openly shares what he learned in his own three-year battle with darkness. Integrating the best of theology with Christ-centered psychology, he offers scriptural and holistic truths that will help lead you out of the murky depths.

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"I highly recommend this book to anyone who is going through a storm or knows someone who is!". -- @kvministries, senior associate leader, Bethel Church, Redding, California

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@Chosen_Books

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

The Church’s problem in a disoriented culture is often not a lack of information. It is misdirected attention. A people can be fully informed and profoundly unwise. It can know every cultural development, every political controversy, every institutional failure, every social trend, and every new outrage, yet become increasingly incapable of seeing reality in the light of Christ.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Thomas Aquinas compared Jesus' humanity to a tool in a master's hands. A tool genuinely does something of its own. For example, a brush really spreads paint. However, the painting comes from the artist employing the brush. In the same way, Jesus' human actions are truly His own, and His divine nature works through them to bring about one result. So Thomas Aquinas speaks of two ways of acting that produce one work.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

When Jesus walks on water, He walks with real human feet, yet He walks in a way no ordinary person can.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Jesus is fully God and fully human, and He acts in both ways at once. When He heals someone, God is truly at work, and a real human being is also truly at work. Neither one swallows up the other.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

The Ark was not simply a box containing sacred objects. Its theological center was the mercy seat, the golden covering above the tablets of the covenant, where the high priest sprinkled blood on the Day of Atonement. God told Moses that He would meet with him there and speak from above it, from between the cherubim. The place of divine speech was the place of atonement, and mercy was set over the law.

That pattern must govern any account of carrying glory in Christ today. Divine glory is never detachable from divine character. When Moses asked to see God's glory, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed His Name: merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, yet by no means clearing the guilty. The glory of God is not raw force. It is the weight of God's holy, merciful, truthful, just, and covenantally faithful being.

That glory has now been revealed in the Incarnate Son, fully God and fully human. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and in those words the Name spoken to Moses sounds again. Paul describes Christ with the very word the Greek Old Testament uses for the mercy seat, and in Him God shows Himself both just and the One who justifies. The Church does not replace the mercy seat. We carry the glory only as those who have been met there, and the glory we carry bears the shape of the One who was lifted up for us.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

When the Church encounters a cultural crossroads without a clear map, it must not confuse strategy with divine guidance or visibility with true glory. It is called to follow God's presence in Christ, to be inwardly shaped for contemplation and discernment, and to carry the weight of that presence through priestly service for a world immersed in deep waters.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

The God who speaks does not ask us to set discernment aside in order to honor Him. Prophetic claims that are shielded from examination, cut off from memory, placed beyond judgment, or made immune to correction bring Him no glory. Whatever truly comes from God has no fear of the light. It can be weighed in the communion of the Church, tested against the apostolic witness, remembered faithfully, and, where needed, corrected with humility.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

How far is my soul from the quiet?

I wonder whether we ever adequately sense the distance between the noise we live with and the quiet we long for. We inhabit a culture that wants us to ruminate endlessly on everything that can irritate us.

It baptizes us in outrage and keeps the fires of anger and vitriol burning day and night. Sooner or later we have to ask what is happening to our souls.
It is as if we have misplaced them. Before the Enlightenment there were thinkers who reduced human beings to matter, but they remained a minority voice.

The common conviction of Church and culture alike was that we are embodied souls. Now, in what many call a post-truth age, we are told with growing confidence that we are simply the culmination of chemical reactions, and that consciousness itself is nothing more than the activity of our inner chemistry.

These two things belong together. If I am only chemistry, then outrage is only stimulation, and whoever controls the stimulus controls me. The attention economy does not need to persuade me that I have no soul. It only needs me to live as though I have none. The noise is the reduction practiced every day. Too many churches have answered the noise by turning up their own volume, as though the soul could be reached by the same means that are exhausting it.

The quiet tells a different story. In the quiet I discover that I am more than my reactions, that something in me was made to listen, and that the One who formed me is still speaking. The distance between my soul and the quiet is real, but it is not the final word. God has not stopped calling us home.