The ‘One Another’

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Nehemiah 4:19

“Then I said to the nobles, the rulers, and the rest of the people, “The work is great and extensive, and we are separated far from one another on the wall.”

There is the very tangible reality in our daily lives that we are separated far from one another “on the wall”.

There is no doubt that the “work” we are involved in as the Body of Christ is vast and extensive from our point of view. As we look at the “walls” that lie in disrepair and comprehend that its “breaches are many” (Isaiah 22:9), we begin to understand the scope of all that has been done, and begin to understand the reach that still has to be accomplished in our own communities, to the ends of the globe.

What greater thing is there than pouring our very lives that have been redeemed from the slimy pit and have now been washed clean, purged from the stains of our guilty consciences and shot-out lives, into the great and eternal “work” that we have been called to and given gifts by His Spirit which enable us to engage ourselves in this work effectively and profitably for the renown of Jesus’ name.

There are those that each of us know and love and care for in the Body of Christ that are fighting and laboring and toiling, expending spiritual and physical blood, sweat, and tears in this “work”. They are the ones that fill the seats on Wednesdays and Sundays, falling asleep, nodding off during our sermons, not making it to the discipleship classes, the home fellowship or mid-week study all the time, “‘cuz I’m just plumb wore out”.

They are the ones who are directly involved in the “front lines” work of the ministry. They are the ones forging ahead day in and day out into the vast hordes of men and women, young and old who don’t believe. And it is at those moments that we feel so separate from one another in the work that God has set before us to do.

And here in Nehemiah 4:16 we see the position of the leaders in the “impossible” work in Jerusalem…namely repairing the breaches, rebuilding the wall. The leaders are positioned squarely behind the “frontline”. Yes, they are also directly involved in the work themselves, fighting, laboring and toiling alongside.

But they are also functioning “behind the scenes”, watching, directing, re-directing, encouraging, equipping, etc.

With this picture in mind, one thought stands out. There is the necessity that we must teach, by our lives and by our words, that in the work of the Lord and in the service of the Lord, in desiring to accomplish the task that is before us, there is a needed balance, with which we will be able to be most effective in our watching and in our working.

We, as pastors, have been separated from “waiting on tables”, so to speak, and strive to be constant in our giving of ourselves, our entire lives, to the ministry of the word and to prayer. Our desire, our goal, our calling, if you will, is to excel in being the leaders that God has gifted us to be so that you might be the best equipped, as you each are laboring and toiling on the front lines, rebuilding the walls.

It is the Body working together, every part functioning in the role and giftings that the Lord has given each of us.

Ephesians 4:11-16

We have been given the grand opportunity to glorify God in coming alongside one another in this Great and Extensive work that He has called us to, gifted us for, and given leaders in His Body as He has seen fit to equip us for the work He has prepared beforehand for us to walk in.

1 Corinthians 12:27

“Now you are the body of Christ (corporately) , and members individually.”

The U.S. military…a useful analogy

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I’m sure I’m not the only pastor and/or teacher of the scripture that is constantly on the lookout for a good analogy or illustration that can help bring clarity to one or more of the truths contained in God’s word.

In my search for just the right analogy to describe the Christian life in general, especially in the way it contrasts with the way everyone else is living life, God has given me one that both believers and unbelievers have told me is the most understandable they’ve ever heard.  I’d like to pass it on to those of you who read this blog to see if it might be useful to you.

Before I continue though, please know that this analogy is most effective for those in a culture and a country that has a governmental and military structure somewhat similar to what is found in the U.S.A.

Here it is:  The all volunteer military– it’s characteristics and it’s members interaction with the government and other citizens not in the military.  This is what I mean:

1.  A person must choose to become a part of it, just as a person must make a conscious choice to surrender to Jesus as Lord and Savior.

2.  To choose to join, by necessity you must also choose to turn away from pretty much everything else that has been a priority in your life, which includes the right to do the work you want to do, the place you want to live, and many other things that you no longer have control over….because you’ve chosen to surrender to an authority higher than yourself.  Easy to make the connection to the follower of Jesus here, right?  Repentance.

3.  But, you don’t stop being a citizen of the U.S.A. or being governed by it’s laws and you’re still subject to the punishment that is the result of disobeying those laws.  Sort of like the dual citizenship and the responsibilities that go along with each citizenship that was clearly expressed by Jesus in response to whether taxes should be paid, and by Paul in Romans 13 and Phil 3:20….for example

4.  Instead, you not only must remain a good citizen of the U.S.A., you must also live obediently to the new government that you have chosen to live under.  That new government is called the Uniform Code of Military Justice, (UCMJ).  Certain actions will be a violation of the laws of both governments.  But other actions that you are free to do as a U.S.A. citizen without violating the law, are actually violations of the laws of the UCMJ and you will be held to that higher standard and punished if you violate them.  The followers of Jesus, although free to do things that the culture or the government doesn’t consider unlawful, nevertheless don’t participate in those things because they are living with an accountability to a higher law.  And when a follower of Jesus violates the principles of the kingdom, other members of the kingdom hold him accountable.

5.  Those who are not a part of the U.S. military, are free to choose what the ultimate goal of their life is.  Those in the military are not.  Everyone in the U.S. military shares one common, ultimate goal:  to obey the commander-in-chief as he makes decisions that have the best interests of the whole country in mind.  That obedience will at times require the individual soldier to surrender life itself for a cause greater than his own interests.  For the follower of Jesus, He is the commander-in-chief and His goal of glorifying God through self-less love does at times require His follower to give up his/her life too.

6.  Every person that voluntarily joins the U.S. Military is required to go through a basic training.  For Americans, basic training exists to destroy the individualism and independence that are at the top of our cultural mountain.  Individual identity in the military, although recognized, is subjugated to finding your identity as part of a group/community.  For a soldier to think and act independently and to place individual needs/wants above what is best for the group, cannot be tolerated.  To tolerate such behavior is to potentially cost the lives of others.  As followers of Jesus, we enter the kingdom as individuals, but we are actually newly born into a “body” that has many parts with many functions and all are interconnected.  We have a crucial role to fill, but never in a manner that is disconnected from other members of the body and the body itself.

7.  Although some war situations will cause a U.S. military member to only interact with other members of the military, that is generally only for short periods of time.  But at some point it will always be the case that every member of the military will have to interact daily with civilians–those not living under the UCMJ.  And regardless of how contrary civilians live in contrast with the standards of the UCMJ, the military person will willingly give up his life, if necessary, for those living so opposite of the standards he lives with.  The follower of Jesus won’t just die for other believers, he will be willing to die for those who hate Jesus and hate him because he loves Jesus.

Although there are other angles that can be extracted I think these are sufficient for now.

Let’s be thankful for the U.S. military…in perhaps more ways than we have in the past.

 

 

 

Get S.M.A.R.T.

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About a month ago a friend challenged me with the question, “How do you gauge your spiritual growth?” This friend is an associate pastor within a very large church that requires their staff to chart out spiritual growth goals every 6 months. And these goals are not ambiguous or undefined. In fact, each pastor is accountable to someone within the pastoral team as to how well they are accomplishing their growth goals. To be very honest, it’s been awhile since I wrote out specific goals for growth. Unfortunately we [pastors] sometimes assume growth as a given, as if it were growth by osmosis via proximity to the “Church.”

The numbers don’t lie. Both Barna and the Schaeffer Institute have found that more than 70% of pastors only study the Bible when they are preparing for sermons or lessons. Only 26% “of pastors said they regularly had personal devotions and felt they were adequately fed spirituality.” Not only do the numbers not lie, they’re incredibly challenging. Perhaps such apathy and atrophy in the pastorate is why the profession of “Pastor” is near the bottom of a survey of the most-respected professions, just above “car salesman.”

I certainly didn’t realize it when I stepped into the pastorate, but this is a profession that chews up and spits out many who occupy it. The average pastor lasts only five yeas, which is startling, considering that I just began—last week—my 5th year pastoring Cross Connection Escondido. Peter Drucker once stated that the four hardest jobs in America are the President of the United States, a university president, a CEO of a hospital and… a pastor. I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that if you are to survive in pastoral ministry, you’d better be proactive about your spiritual life, which I believe holistically involves every other aspect of your being too (i.e. physical, mental, emotional, etc…).

When I first began in the ministry as a youth pastor, the theme verse for our youth group was 1 Timothy 4:12…

Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

Over the last several months I’ve been brought back to 1 Timothy 4 a number of times. Another verse of the same chapter says…

For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.

– 1 Timothy 4:8

This verse is often jokingly put forth as a reason to abandon physical exercise, which is an obvious misapplication. But the glibness with which it is often thrown about in some ways lessens the impact and importance of what is being said. We need to be physically and spiritually well exercised, especially pastors.  Most certainly spiritual exercise, or godliness, has longer lasting benefits (in this life and eternity).  If we are to be exemplary in word, conduct, love, spirit, faith and purity, then we need to make sure that we exercise ourselves toward godliness. Thus, I’ve been challenged to more diligently set some S.M.A.R.T. goals (Specific • Measurable • Achievable • Reliable/Realistic • Timely) about my spiritual and physical disciplines; because there are far too many in my “profession” that do not finish well.

Pronouncing Blessing – A Lost Art?

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For about the last five years, I have ended nearly every worship gathering that I have had the pleasure of leading by doing a Benediction.

May the LORD bless you and keep you
May the LORD cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you
May the LORD lift His countenance upon you and give you peace.

And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
And the love of God
And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
Be with us all now and forevermore.

This benediction is simply the Priestly Blessing of Numbers 6:24-26 with 2 Corinthians 13:14 added to the end of it. I have always enjoyed putting these two Scriptures together as the Blessing of Numbers 6 is focused on the Yahweh, the true and living God. Those capital letters show that LORD is God’s personal name, in the Hebrew, YHWH. By adding 2 Corinthians 13:14 to it, we get the full Biblical revelation of who YHWH is: Father, Son and Spirit, the blessed and glorious triune God.

It is simply the speaking forth of two Scriptures. But for some reason there is tremendous power and comfort in hearing the God’s blessing proclaimed on and over a group of people. In many ways, this speaking of blessing is a lost art in post-liturgical Protestantism, as this practice is often not the norm. We often forget that words are creative (both in Genesis 1 and James 2). Yes, we believe in the priesthood of all believers, but there is also something powerful and special when the pastor of a congregation will stand in the midst of the assembly and pronounce God’s blessing.

It is my hope and prayer that we will all grab hold of the tremendous opportunity to pronounce blessing upon people. I pray that pastors would bless their congregations publicly and often in Jesus’ name. Would to God that husbands will share the benediction with their wives and vice versa. Would to God that parents would share it with their children. Would to God that brothers would bless their sisters and vice versa. That employers would bless their employees and the employees would return suit. That blessing would be proclaimed across party lines, denominational lines, socio-economic lines, across international boundaries and unto the ends of the earth.

BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION: Monologue or Dialogue?

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Natural Extremists

We are prone to extremes.  One issue we tend to go to one extreme or the other on in the church is that of biblical learning.  On the one hand, there are those who are committed to preaching the Bible in the form of monologue.  When they think of Christians learning the Bible, they envision a lone preacher standing before a crowd, delivering a studied and crafted sermon in the power of the Holy Spirit, spitting presuppositions and propositional truth.

On the other hand, there are those who are committed to learning the Bible through sharing and dialogue.  When they think of Christians learning the Bible they picture a group of friends sitting down together to share how the Bible impacts them personally.  They see themselves sitting with friends over lattes in a coffee shop, or over dinner in a home, informally discussing what a portion of scripture means to each person in the group.   They value the contributions and interpretations of each person who is present.

I’ve seen some people who are so committed to teaching and preaching the Bible in monologue, that they are skeptical of any kind of sharing context where multiple people contribute opinions and perspectives on the meaning or relevance of the Bible.  Still I’ve seen other people who are so committed to the truth that “God can and wants to speak through all believers” come to a place where there is no room in their thinking for monologue preaching, or designated pastors who serve as primary Bible communicators for a specific community of believers.

Both/And

My contention is that both extremes are wrong, and that this is one of many areas Christians need to have a Both/And way of thinking.  I believe the reasons the monologue crowd values their preferred method are generally biblical, and that the reasons the dialogue crowd values their preferred method are generally biblical as well.  I believe that helpful leaders will help those entrusted to them by God to see the value and place of both monologue and dialogue in growing the church in the knowledge of God through His Word.

A Small Case for Monologue

1 Corinthians 12:29- “Are all apostles?  Are all prophets?  Are all teachers?”  These are rhetorical questions in context.  The apostle Paul is arguing for the unity of the body through the diversity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Because we all have different gifts, we all need each other.  God has designed the body to be dependent upon Him by being codependent upon what He’s doing in each other.  Not all have a Spirit-given gifting to teach God’s truth in the same way, or at the same level.

Ephesians 4:11-12: “And He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”  Each of the gifts described here are Bible communicating gifts at their core.  Apostles preach the gospel and plant churches.  Evangelists major in preaching the gospel and equipping Christians to do effectively do the same.  Prophets have a teaching ministry that is trans-movement/denomination, and a ministry which applies biblical truth to timely issues under the spontaneous leading and enablement of the Holy Spirit.  Pastors and teachers give biblical counsel and didactic instruction of the Word to God’s people.  But four times we are told that only “some” are given by God to perform these functions in the ways these men do.  Only “some” are to build the body in these particular ways.

1 Timothy 3:2 tells us that an overseer must be “able to teach.”  This is not a requirement for deacons.  This implies a unique teaching ministry for those called to serve as the governing body of the church.  We can add to this verse 1 Timothy 5:17-18: “Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.  For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘the laborer is worthy of his wages.’”  The Bible is to be our method for determining how to think about these issues.  That’s why Paul built his case from “Scripture.”  And what Scripture demands, according to Paul, is that some of the governing leadership work hard at teaching the Bible more than any other Christian or leader in the church.  Their job is so important that they are to be paid to fulfill that role as they do it well.

We could go on, but these texts amply demonstrate that God intends there to be monologue-style Bible preaching and teaching in the church.  He has not gifted all to teach the same way.  He does not gift all to deduce the meaning of Scripture the same way.  Specifically, men who are called to be the leader of the leaders in the church are Spirit-gifted to preach the Word, and be the doctrine-setting authority in the local church.

A Small Case for Dialogue

But I’m not just for monologue in the church, but for dialogue as well, and so is the Bible.

Colossians 3:16- “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”  This exhortation was given to all the members of the Colossian church.  They were all to play a part in “teaching and admonishing one another.”

Hebrews 10:24-25: “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”  If there are a couple verses that support the idea of believers encouraging each other in small group community over lattes, these are them.  Considerately stirring each other up to love God and people, and serve God people as we “gather,” is the job of “us” as believers, not just “me” as a pastor.

Conclusion

Preaching the word in monologue is biblical and necessary.  If a Spirit-gifted man isn’t at the helm, preaching the Bible faithfully in collaboration with other Spirit-given leaders in the local church community, heresy abounds, and the church becomes a pool of ignorance.  Men who are specifically called to fill such a “leader of the leaders” function are not allowed to function in their gift.  Frankly, some need to repent of their radical commitment to the autonomy of the individual in the church.  Some would reduce the church to a leaderless weak state in the name of all believers being “equal” and “usable by God.”  We are all equal.  God does use us all.  But the question is how does God use us?  For some, they are called to be primary teachers and preachers in the church in ways others are not.  Let them do their job for the health of the church and the glory of God.

Additionally, God really can and does speak through every believer.  God wants to display how He has changed His kids through sharing in dialogue in small group type contexts and house churches.   The Holy Spirit wants to manifest Himself, and His edifying work, through every Christian.  This means that while pastors need to uncompromisingly engage in the monologue preaching of God’s Word with authority, they also need to help the local church develop contexts of dialogue and sharing.  We need to get over our need to control everything that is thought and said, and remember that Jesus is the real senior pastor of His people.  To be sure, you are His instrument in a unique way when it comes to teaching His truth.  But the goal of your ministry is to enable the body to do “the work of the ministry” which includes “teaching and admonishing one another” without you standing over peoples shoulder all the time.  As pastor James Macdonald said recently, “The biblical picture isn’t that the pastor ministers to the body, but that the body ministers to the body.”

So, pastors, lets preach the Word like crazy, and take no guff for doing our God-given job.  But let’s also make sure we don’t quench what the Holy Spirit wants to do by not developing and encouraging contexts of sharing, where each member of the body of Christ can have a voice and be used.  I don’t do this perfectly, but I’m working on it.  Join me.

Senior Pastors AND Missionaries: Unique stresses Unique needs

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In a few weeks I’ll be transitioning my church in Phoenix over to a younger man that in many ways is a better fit for the neighborhood where our church building sits.  My wife and I will then relocate to the San Diego area which will make it possible for me to be nearby my mom and dad as my dad’s health is failing fast.  We will also be living near our two daughters and 3 of our grandchildren, which is really the icing on the cake of Grace that God is serving us once yet again.

Ministry-wise, I’ll be rejoining Shepherd’s Staff Mission Facilitators full-time and serving as the Director of Church Relations and Missionary Care.  Although I’ve been consistently involved in pastoral-type care of missionaries and encouraging and training church leaders to care for their missionaries since my return from the mission field in 1993, having the opportunity to concentrate on doing so in a full time capacity is extremely exciting.  And needless to say, the machinery of my mind has been humming at warp speed as I think and pray about the needs and the possibilities that are ahead.

With that as a backdrop and at the risk of being misunderstood, I’d like to use the following questions and a few observations to provoke everyone, but ESPECIALLY Senior Pastors regarding ministry to missionaries:

Why do “Senior Pastors” conferences exist?

Why does the “Senior Pastor List Server” exist?

Why do a large percentage of Senior Pastors have as board members of their local church, Senior Pastors that are pastoring in other cities or even in other states?

Why, when a Senior Pastor needs wisdom and seeks out counsel regarding an aspect of leadership or a major challenge within their church, does he usually make a call to someone else who is now or has been a Senior Pastor at some time in the past?

Why does a Senior Pastor usually let loose with a little chuckle and a grin when one of his Assistant Pastors has filled in for him during the week and on a Sunday morning, and then says that he “knows what it’s like to be a Senior Pastor now”?

Obviously, the underlying answer to all of the above questions is that being a Senior Pastor is a unique calling that brings with it unique challenges and stresses that it’s hard for someone who hasn’t been a Senior Pastor to understand or relate to.  No Senior Pastor that I’m aware of is ashamed of being convinced of that in any way, nor should they be.

And even though we’re open to God using other brothers and sisters to speak into many areas of our lives, when it comes to ministry issues or family issues that are tightly connected to ministry, we know that usually only someone else who is or has been a Senior Pastor will really be able to grasp what we are dealing with and perhaps give us some good Godly counsel.

If the questions and observations that I’ve written above have any credence, (and I believe they do), then I believe what I’m about to write is worthy of at least some consideration.  Here then, are a few more questions:

Is there anything uniquely challenging or stressful about a person receiving and sharing the vision God has given them to represent Him in a different country to people of a different language and with radically different culture?

Is there anything uniquely challenging or stressful about having to trust that God will provide the money to do that through churches or brothers and sisters in Jesus that you may or may not have relationship with?

Is there anything uniquely challenging or stressful about liquidating pretty much every one of your belongings in order to fulfill the vision that God has given you?

Is there anything uniquely challenging or stressful about disconnecting yourself, your wife, and your children from anything or anyone that is familiar and then resettling them in a foreign country?

Is there anything uniquely challenging or stressful about the reality that once you begin living in this other country that if you or your family members need things like medical care or dental care, it is difficult to obtain and is probably of a different quality than what you’ve had access to in the U.S.?

And finally….

Is there anything uniquely challenging or stressful about learning to live in a completely new culture and environment and learning a new language at the same time your trying to help your family adjust AND engaging in the “ministry” that you’re convinced God called you to?

Here’s where I’m going with this:

If we can justify specialized ministry for ourselves as Senior Pastors and encourage and even make it possible for other Senior Pastors to do the same, then might it not also be possible that missionaries also deserve some type of specialized ministry and that we should encourage and make it possible for them to obtain it, especially if they are members of our church that we have commissioned and sent to the mission field?

Having been both a missionary AND a Senior Pastor at the same time overseas, and a Senior Pastor of two different churches in the U.S., I can tell you by experience that the unique challenges and stresses of being a Senior Pastor in the U.S., as real as they are, do not compare with the unique challenges and stresses of living and ministering in a cross-cultural environment outside of the U.S!

If you’re tracking with what I’m saying, (and even if you’re not), and especially if you’re a Senior Pastor, here are a few things you might consider doing:

1.  Begin viewing the missionaries you know with the same level of regard for their unique situation as you do your own unique situation as a Senior Pastor.

2.  Increase your personal inventory of understanding of what missionaries experience by doing some specific reading about the subject and pray about having your church leadership do the same.

3.  Whenever possible, set up a meeting with someone who has lived on the foreign mission field and ask them to share with you the unique challenges and stresses they faced or are facing.

4.  Encourage, and possibly even pay for your missionaries or other missionaries you know to attend missions conferences.

5.  Even more importantly, encourage or pay for a missionary to attend one of the many specialized missionary retreats that take place in various parts of our country and around the world.

I could go on and on with things to consider but I’ll leave it alone for now.

The bottom-line is that if we unashamedly recognize the unique challenges and stresses involved with being a Senior Pastor and we seize what’s available to assist and encourage ourselves, shouldn’t we seriously consider encouraging and maybe even empowering missionaries to do the same?

Intentionally Limiting…

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I love living in the day and age in which we live. We have immediate access to information and I love information! Let’s be honest, I am an information junkie. Growing up in a heavily technological age and then with the internet coming onto the scene, I feel that I have lived my entire life on information overload.

God has been doing much in my heart and life lately. Things like quietness, solitude and simplicity have been at the fore of my heart and mind. I find God is continually simplifying and refining my life. But as God has been stirring my heart for simplicity, I have begun to realize something about all of this information. When you have access to everything, you end up being an inch deep and mile wide. Let me explain it to you. Back in times before there was unlimited access to information, people got to go down deep with just a few things. Instead of scavenging everywhere in unlimited fields, people knew one field very well. Today it is not so. For most people (including myself), we have such access to information that we rarely ever connect to the ethos of few things. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not making a moral judgment about this. Instead I am trying to articulate that the sword cuts both ways, in some ways amazing and in other ways limiting.

Let me give you some personal examples. When I first got into listening to jazz, I owned 3 jazz albums (Miles Davis – Kind of Blue, John Coltrane – A Love Supreme & Bill Evans – Sunday at the Village Vanguard). I listened to those albums over and over and over again for the better part of a year. Even to this day, I can sing many of the solos on every one of these albums. I soaked myself in them and they became part of who I am. But then the world of unlimited music kicked in. Before I knew it, I owned thousands of albums. I grazed in each field but never truly got to know any of those fields nor internalized the music.

Fast forward to my conversion. I had a Bible and I devoured it. Someone gave me a copy of JI Packer’s Knowing God and Andrew Murray’s Humility (I think they were trying to tell me something ;-). I devoured those books. Read them over and over and over again. But in the same way, ultimately the world of Christian books opened to me. Now thousands of titles later (in print, e-book, and on various computer programs), I find myself an inch deep and a mile wide with everything. I imagine that many of you are like me. You get a new book (or album), you read a bit of it and then you never finish it. You get going, you get distracted reading something else and then you put it down.

So I decided to take action and intentionally limit my reading. I decided that I was going to focus on a few authors for the entire year. I decided that I was going to spend an entire year with Eugene Peterson, Abraham Heschel, Henri Nouwen and John Stott. I have to be honest, it has been a total blast! I feel like I am soaking in these men’s writings in a much more special way than just grazing. By making an intentional decision to soak rather than graze, I find myself being shaped in new and different ways.

So my question would be this, “If you were to chose four authors to focus on this year, who would they be and why?” I’m not saying your ‘Desert Island Authors’. But those who would be nourishing your soul specifically right now and why. I am also assuming that you would be reading the Word of God.

Blessings

PREACHING FOR DECISIONS

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To Preach or Be Personable

As I survey the landscape of much of Christian ministry, it seems clear that the preferred evangelistic method of the day is to be relational, and missional.  For many, the days of preaching the gospel openly to a crowd (at church or anywhere) and calling for people to believe then and there isn’t effective or necessary.  Instead, people say what we need is to focus singularly on making long-term friendships with people who don’t know Jesus, and evangelize them through acts of service and conversation in the context of our friendship.

Let me be clear up front about the fact that I’m all for missional living!  I’m all for relational evangelism.  I’m all for organic witnessing.  But I think that our current obsession with the missional/relational approach to evangelism is only half of the portrait of biblical evangelism.  I believe that as we engage in the one-to-one relational evangelistic mission, we must not ignore or despise the place of preaching to crowds, and calling for decisions.  We need a both/and approach.

I come from a theological and philosophical background which promoted skepticism about calling people to respond to the gospel on the spot in a public way.  This is partly due to the abuses sometimes seen in the ministries of so-called evangelists.  But nut-jobs aside, I can remember hearing godly men give legitimate invitations to believe the gospel, and criticizing them.  I thought that it seemed like emotionalism, and lacking in emphasis on discipleship.

 Encountering Invitations in Acts

Today I give public invitations for people to believe the gospel and be saved every week at the church I serve.  I’m in a very different spot than I used to be on the issue of invitations.  What ultimately brought me to where I am today on this was surveying the points of appeal that are recorded in the Book of Acts.  As I set out to try and get a biblical perspective on invitations I had two questions: 1. Are on-the-spot invitations to believe biblical at all? 2. What is the primary thing offered to unbelievers for believing in Jesus in the appeals recorded in the Bible?

What I discovered in my survey of Acts were numerous points of appeal where the apostles called their hearers to respond to the gospel in faith right then and there.  Secondly, I discovered that the main benefit of believing in Jesus that the apostles offered to people publically was the forgiveness of sins.  It wasn’t a better life now or even a personal relationship with God (though of course the latter of these is not wrong).  The primary thing they promised people for believing in the gospel was forgiveness.  This makes sense considering Jesus’ declaration that the Holy Spirit is right now on a mission convicting the entire world of sin, and failure to believe in Christ. (See John 16:7-11)

A good example of this is seen in Acts 2:38 and 40: “Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins; and you shall receive the promise of the Holy Spirit…And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying ‘Be saved from this perverse generation.’”

Peter believed in calling people to make an immediate, public profession of faith in Jesus.  He believed in having them demonstrate that profession of faith with action (baptism).  He offered forgiveness to all who heeded him.  He didn’t do so casually or briefly, but with many words exhorted them to be saved!  This same kind of process permeates the testimony of the book of Acts.  On your own time consider the following passages: Acts 2:38-40; 3:19 and 26; 10:42-43; 11:14 and 21; 13:38-39;14:21; 16:3-34; 17:30-34; 18:4-8; 19:4-5; 26:17-18 and 28-29; 28:23-24.

 Objections to Decisions

For various reasons people object to any kind of public appeal to immediately believe in the gospel.  For some their reason is theological.  I’ve heard some from strict Calvinistic backgrounds object to such an appeal on the basis that it is God who makes the decision.  If you believe a person has to be born-again before they believe, there’s no cause for passionate appeals to respond to Jesus right now!  God will take care of their response in His time, so just relax.  They believe it to be miss-leading to tell people to believe.  In response I’d point out that Peter disagrees, if you consider his appeal in Acts 2 alone.  Whatever theology drove him there, he was perfectly content to make passionate, persuasive pleas for people to believe in Jesus right now for salvation, and get baptized.

Others object to appeals for decisions on the basis of emotionalism.  To be sure, some evangelists are simply able to stir emotions and get professions whether they preach the gospel or not.  But this doesn’t mean its wrong to be emotional when you preach the real gospel.  I would contend that if you believe people will spend eternity in hell without trusting in Christ, you’d better be a little passionate and emotional when you call them to faith!  If you’re not, I wonder where your hearts at, and how much you believe the gospel you preach.  I heard Pastor Pedro Garcia tell a story about a question he was asked at the end of an evangelistic service he preached.   At the closing of the service a man inquired, “Are you always this passionate when you call people to receive Christ?”  What was Pedro’s emblazoned response?  “How can we not be!”  Some of us need to ask that question.

 Objections to Common Methods

Still others are bothered by methods utilized to give people a chance to express faith in Christ publically.  We’ve all heard the “Now with every head bowed and every eye closed, if you want to receive Christ just raise your hand up, and I’ll pray for you” approach.  I used to criticize it heavily, and others like it.  Now I even use it sometimes.  Why?  The truth is that the most biblical way to call people to faith in the gospel is to call them to believe, and then call them to demonstrate that belief by getting baptized right away.

As a church meeting in a school, our baptismal is an inflatable portable hot tub originally designed for camping!  So I can’t call people to believe and get baptized at every service.  When we do baptisms we do them open invitation style, and its always beautiful to see how God uniquely blesses the call to believe and be baptized with conversions.  On the other weeks, I figure that giving people some practical way to respond is better than giving them none.  So sometimes I ask them to raise their hands as a symbol of appeal for God to save them in light of the gospel.  Sometimes we just invite them to come pray with us after the service if God’s spoken to their heart.  I find God blesses the offering of a variety of opportunities for people to publically express the faith of their hearts.  What I know is we see people come to Christ in our services when we give them practical ways to express faith way more often than we did when we weren’t offering methods like this.  It also helps us see who God’s been working in so we can follow-up with them.

The funny thing I’ve found is that most who criticize people who use methods other than baptism to immediately demonstrate new faith in Christ don’t call for immediate decisions followed by baptism either.  They don’t really call for belief at all.  When you consider the biblical record, to me, the burden of proof is on them.

How About You?

Do you ever make an appeal for an immediate response of faith to the gospel?  Why or why not?  What practical methods do you use to encourage people to demonstrate their heart’s response of faith to the gospel?  Do you think your theology or practice in this area promotes or hinders you and your church from experiencing the blessing of seeing people come to faith in Jesus the moment they hear the gospel?  Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

 

 

Pastoral Busyness as Idolatry

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Most pastors that I know, including myself, struggle with being excessively busy. We see how many things we can pile on our ministerial plates. We know that ministering within a local congregation itself is more than a full time job. Most people, who have never walked in the shoes of a pastor, imagine the pastor sitting all day with his feet up, sipping coffee, reading the Bible and generally basking in the Shekinah. For many of us, we expected this when we sensed the Spirit’s call for us into ministry. But in reality, for most of us, it is long days of counseling. Sure there is coffee, but normally accompanied by the tears and struggles of the person sitting across the table from you. There are continual issues, emails, phone calls, meetings and preparation. Whether it be physical (like a broken sound system, coffee pot or a balky back), emotional (us on the top of that list), relational (no there are never any interpersonal conflicts in church), societal (some real world happening that is dramatically impacting) or spiritual (growing in Christ is a messy business), it really never ends. For most of us, instead of basking in the Shekinah, we drag ourselves into the pulpit with broken prayers for the Spirit to speak despite ourselves. And that leaves out budgeting, family time and the most important reality of a prayer life and relationship with God Himself. Please don’t feel that I am complaining or lamenting. I am not. I am just trying to set the stage.

You see all of that is more than a full time job (and for many of us, we also work a day job). But yet, for so many of us, there are a million and one other things that we find ourselves doing in God’s name. Chaplaincy, disaster response, blogging (like I am doing right now), countless hours doing innumerable good things. Oftentimes, pastors have a ton of additional things that they are involved in. For many of us, if we are not busy, then we are not pastoring. If we are pastoring and also busy, then we have value in the ministry. If we can say that our calendar is full then we justify our existence. When we get to the end of our day and we are exhausted, we can say to ourselves, “You are God’s man, well done, good and faithful servant!”.

But we are valuing ourselves not by the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His love and grace. Instead we are valuing ourselves by our busyness. I have often asked myself, “Would I be bored in my Christian walk if there wasn’t so much ministry to do?” I struggle with my own heart’s response. I would be restless and bored. That makes me nervous. Should I be restless or bored with Jesus alone? We all know the answer to that!

INEXPERIENCED AND ALL-KNOWING

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When I Knew Everything

I had been a Christian for two years.  I was sitting in a service at a church I’d recently started attending.  As I listened to the pastor preach his sermon I found myself asking hosts of critical and, I thought, righteous questions.

“What is this guy even talking about?  Why doesn’t he preach expository sermons?  Why doesn’t he emphasize this or that doctrine more?  Why does he use that method to invite people to trust in the gospel?  Is this series ever going to end?  Why doesn’t he just hire someone else to take his spot and move into a subordinate role?  Why can’t he come up with a vision and mission I can get on board with?  Does our church even have a mission and vision?”  Blah, blah, blah.

 The funny thing (perhaps sad thing) is that when I was in my season of offering church leaders my hardest and most continuous criticisms over these kinds of issues thinking I was all-knowing about everything to do with church/ministry, I was totally inexperienced.  I’d never spent a single day in the shoes of a pastor, delivered or prepared a single sermon, led a Bible study, crafted any kind of mission or vision statement, trained teams, planted a church, or anything else.  And yet, I thought I had all the answers about how to solve everything those above me were doing wrong.

I describe myself during those days as suffering from what I now call “New-believer syndrome.”  This isn’t to be a knock on new followers of Jesus at all!  Not all new Christians go through what I did.  But the truth is that its very common for new Christians to go through a season after only being saved for a short time in which they get really critical and arrogant.  That was me.  My mindset was like, “Well of course I know everything about Christianity and the church!  I’ve been a Christian for six months, haven’t I! “

Getting Educated

Fast forward.  Now I’ve been in vocational ministry for over seven years.  And what God has slowly showed me through granting the education of actual street-level experience beyond the education of books I’d read and messages I’d heard early on about ministry is that I really knew far less than I thought I did!  I think back to those days of criticizing and challenging my leaders with embarrassment and shame.  I praise God that He was gracious and didn’t give me the cosmic knee-capping I deserved in my arrogance and ignorance.  As I got opportunities to lead I began to discover why leaders do things at times that I used to scoff at.  I learned that there are many things about ministry that you just can’t understand unless you actually are in the positions and go through the experiences.

 Meeting Others Who Know Everything

Now that I’ve been in vocational ministry, served as a pastor and planted churches, and have done lots of leadership training I’ve had the wonderful experience of meeting people who currently have the critical mentality from which I used to suffer.  The saddest and most heart-breaking thing I sometimes see is when people are stuck in this mentality five, ten, or even twenty or more years after meeting Jesus.  As I look back at my own experience and journey and observe others who are stuck in a spirit of criticism there seem to be some common contributing factors to developing this mindset:

1. Pride has always been a struggle

If you have a history of being arrogant, self-important, and a know-it-all in general before becoming a Christian, pride becomes an area of temptation the enemy really hammers you on in your new relationship with Jesus.  Much of those critical thoughts come from your own sinful flesh, and the rest of them come from demonic temptation at work in your mind.

2. They read far more books about the Bible than the Bible itself

For about the first two years of my relationship with Jesus the only times I’d actually crack my Bible open was when I was looking for a proof text to support a doctrine I’d learned from another book, or when I was at church.  What this led to was me using other books as my lens through which I filtered the Bible rather than me using the Bible as the lens through which I filtered the other books I read.  Because of this, when I got into debates about the criticisms I was voicing I would inevitably quote human authors instead of God’s word to prove my point.  That’s a dangerous place to dwell.

 3. They do most of their studying in isolation

Many people who come to Jesus today don’t get involved in local churches.  There is a huge disconnect here.  In the book of Acts no one who got saved refrained from getting involved in the life of the local church.  That isn’t to say you’re not saved if you aren’t in consistent community with other believers who make up a local church.  Its simply to point out that your willful practice of not being in community with a local church is way out of step with the biblical example.  God isn’t merely saving disconnected individuals scattered throughout the world; He is saving a people, a called-out assembly, and an interconnected, interdependent body.[1]

 The biblical example shows us that studying is to be done in community under experienced and equipped, spiritually gifted leaders.[2]  Personal Bible study is so valuable and necessary.  But so is study in community. Without others who are more spiritually mature and biblically educated challenging our conclusions and criticisms we develop unhealthy perspectives and unhelpful attitudes.

If pride has always been an issue for you, you read more books about the Bible than the Bible itself, and you do most of your study in isolation, you are a prime candidate to become today’s Inexperienced and All-knowing!

 Exhortations

Maybe you are one of today’s Inexperienced and All-knowing in the church. Or maybe you’re dealing with one of them right now.  If you’re dealing with one, chances are that you played the part of the Inexperienced and All-knowing of yesteryear.  But let me wrap this post up with encouragement for you both.

To today’s Inexperienced and All-knowing, please stop!  You don’t know as much as you think.  You’re hurting your leaders, not helping them.  And Jesus really is quite able to take care of His people without your arrogance and methods.  He’s chosen the leaders who are over you and you need to submit to Him by submitting to them, even though they are weak.  Have you considered that their weaknesses might be the precise reasons God chose them?  Read 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 and ask God for illumination.

To yesterday’s Inexperienced and All-knowing the message is simple- Don’t kill anyone!  Humble yourself and remember your own journey. First, repent to God for your former attitudes.  Next you may need to repent to the person you used to criticize.  After being a lead pastor for two months that is exactly what I had to do and it was healthy for me and the other pastor.  Lastly, deal with this mentality in those who come your way with grace and boldness.

“And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient…” 2 Timothy 2:24 NKJV

 “Preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season.  Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.” 2 Timothy 4:2 NKJV

Peace

[1] Eph. 4:11-17; 1 Cor. 12; Acts 2:41-47; Ephesians as a whole.

[2] Acts 2:42; Titus 1:9