First Christian Church Ministry Playbook

The Best Way To Argue

2011-01-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a picture I recently stumbled across during one of my many forays into the bowels of the Internet in search of worship images:

As you can see, somebody (presumably a believer) put up and paid for a billboard which declares "God Listens". A biblical truth to be sure, and one which the patron of the billboard certainly thought would cause non-believers to think about and maybe even look up toward the Lord. And somebody thought about it, alright. Somebody thought about a way to turn it into a joke. They did this by spraypainting "to Slayer (a very graphic heavy metal band)" underneath "listens" so it became "God listens to Slayer".

And I have to hand it to the spraypainter there. The suggestion that God listens to Slayer is indeed very funny and got a well-earned laugh from me.

There is more than humor here, though. There is also a lesson, a lesson about how to reach the world. The patron of the billboard thought he or she could reach the world with words, logic, argument. That's what the billboard is; it is a logical, wordy argument intended to lead non-believers to God. What the spraypainter shows us, though, is that these arguments, though good, often fail. They fail because people find loopholes in them. They fail because people ridicule them. They fail because people don't want to hear them.

There is one argument, though, that can never fail, that people can't find a loophole in and can't ridicule and can't help hearing. And that is love, love demonstrated in acts of service. People can counter every argument we put out there, every fact and analogy and example and story. But they can't counter love. They can't counter the good things we do for others, the good things we do in the name of God for others. That doesn't mean we should abandon all other arguments, of course. We shouldn't. We should "always be ready to give an answer", as Peter says in 1 Peter 3:15. But it does mean that we need to really work this argument, perhaps work this argument most, more than any others.

I laughed at the "God listens to Slayer" picture because it was funny. I also laughed at it, though, because it reminded me of a personal experience. After taking an apologetics class in Bible college, I was confident that I could argue The Faith with anyone and win. On one occasion, I entered a debate and cockily said, "I can prove the Resurrection!" One guy said, "How?" I said, "They never found a body (something we had learned in this class)." This guy then replied, "So what? They never found Hoffa's body, either!" Arguments, no matter how good they are, won't affect those who are determined not to hear them. But love affects everybody. So let's argue that way. Let's argue with love. It is our best apology. It is the best way to argue.

A Theology Of Suffering

2010-12-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

We go into the Christian bookstore. There we find rows of books written by "successful pastors". On the back of these books are pictures of these pastors. These pastors are always smiling in these pictures and are usually good looking. Sometimes their families are with them in the pictures and they are smiling and good looking as well. Inside the books are stories of the places these pastors have been and the experiences they have had and the places they have gotten to speak and the results they have witnessed and it is all overwhelmingly positive. Many of these books give us five or ten or twenty keys, keys that will grow our churches if we just implemented them correctly. And the image that is conveyed by those books, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is that these guys have it all figured out and that if there is trouble or stress or problems in our life and ministry then we must not have it all figured out, that we must not be doing something right, that there must be something wrong with us.

What I would like to suggest though, and what I believe we must keep in mind, is that this image is markedly false. This image of ministers and ministry does not match the image of ministers and ministry that we find in the Scriptures. The Bible does not portray the ministers of God as those who live perfect, privileged lives, not does it present success as being the automatic result of doing things correctly. Instead, the opposite is true. The Bible presents ministry as a struggle and ministers as those who struggle. Consider the following verses:

The Lord told him, "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight." (Acts 9:11-12)
For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflicts on the outside, fears within. (2 Corinthians 7:5)
Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? (2 Corinthians 11:23-29)
But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. (2 Timothy 4:5)

These Scriptures, and the many like them, very clearly connect ministry to suffering. And we need to make that same connection. I'm not saying that we should be masochists. I'm not saying that the bookstores and book publishers are wrong or at fault for creating and promoting the image that they have (actually, I think it's just the way of most media). I'm not saying that we should or will suffer all the time. But I am saying that we should understand that suffering is a part of ministry. I am saying that we should not see suffering as an indication that we are not doing right or are wrong. I am saying that we should not think less of ourselves or our ministry because we suffer.

If you're going to do ministry (real, true, genuine ministry), you're going to suffer. You're going to have opposition and trial. You're going to have enemies and attacks. You're going to have physical problems and family problems. You're going to have hurts and humiliations. Paul did. The Twelve did. Timothy and Titus did. Even Jesus did. So if you're going to do ministry, you must have a theology of suffering, a theology that accounts for the place of suffering in ministry; you must understand why suffering is in ministry, what it means, and what it doesn't mean. And what it doesn't mean, my friends and fellow ministers, is that you're wrong or doing it wrong; it might just mean you're right and doing it right.

Opinions And Smells

2010-12-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

One of our members was in the office the other day. While he was there, one of us said something about opinions. At that, this member said something I liked and that made me laugh. He said, "Well, opinions are like noses: everybody's got them, and they smell."

Now I laughed when our member said this little maxim, but it wasn't because this was new to me. It wasn't. I had heard this maxim before. I had actually heard a different version of this maxim years ago in a Dirty Harry movie. Dirty Harry had made the same point using another, cruder body part, one that's too crude to mention here. And not only have I heard this maxim before, but I have also agreed with it; I have agreed with it for some time. I agree that we all do have opinions and most of those opinions do smell. The opinions that we hold with such ferocity, that we live by, that we pontificate and pummel each other over the head with, are often not good. They are not good in and of themselves (they are often wrong or imperfect in some way) and they often don't do good (they harm more than they help).

Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to stop people from having and expressing their opinions; that is just a burden of ministry and life that we are going to have to endure. But what we can do is limit our own opinions and/or limit the expression of our own opinions. What we can do is keep from having opinions or keep the opinions we have to ourselves. We can do this, and we should do this. What I have experienced in my time with the church is that ministers are some of the most opinionated people around; they have opinions about every tiny little insignificant thing and don't mind letting others know what that opinion is. There are many ministers who can't sit through a service they aren't participating in or listen to a sermon they aren't preaching without talking loudly about how it's being done wrong and how they would have done it differently. But this is wrong, my friends. This only leads to personal unhappiness, the frustration of others, and the hindering of the Lord's work. And so we shouldn't do this or be this. We shouldn't have opinions about most of these things (we just plain shouldn't have them), and we certainly shoudn't spout those opinions off.

Opinions smell, my friends. This is true. So let's have as few of them as possible. Let's do our part to clear the air by keepin opinions to the bare minimum.

Leading From Security, Not Insecurity

2010-12-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

Here's yet another quote from my recent graduate class. The professor said that Christian ministers "must lead from security, not from insecurity". What he meant by this is that we should not lead in the hopes that doing so will gratify our ego in some way but should instead lead as those whose egos don't need gratifying, that we should lead not to get but to give.

Unfortunatley, we don't often lead this way. We often lead the other way; we often lead from insecurity rather than from security. Many people enter the ministry to earn the approval of others, to get a name for themselves, to fulfill some inner need or want. Many people use the ministry as a stepping stone to some other goal.

But when they do this, they are simultaneously doing several other things. They are weakening their minstry; a ministry founded on the desire to benefit the self will not last as ministry often requires denying the self. They are cheating their churches; the ministry they offer from this motive will never be as pure or good or effective as the ministry offered from the other motive. And they are insulting Jesus, the Jesus who came not to be served but to serve; they are using His sacrifice for their gain.

Clearly, then, we cannot be doing ministry in that way or for this reason. Instead, as those who want a strong ministry, those who want to prosper our churches, and those who want to honor Christ, we must do ministry in the other way and for the other reason. We must do ministry not for ourselves but for others and for Him. We must get rid of all false motives (yes, we all have them, and they may be very strong, but we can get rid of them) and operate out of the only true motive. We must lead from security, not insecurity.

With God, Not For God

2010-12-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

Here's another statement that was made in my latest grad class. The professor said during one of the class lectures that we as ministers/leaders/workers are working "with God, not for God". Listen to that again: we are working with God, not for God. What's the big difference and what's the big deal? Well, to work for is to be a lone gun or a loose cannon, to learn the skills and techniques and tricks and then go out on the field on your own laboring in your own strength and wisdom to produce something, while to work for is to be in a partnership (a junior partnership, to be exact), a partnership with someone who is not only laboring alongside you but actually above you, directing and leading not only your labor but the direction of your labor and the results of your labor. To work for is to have it all depend upon you, while to work with is to have very little if any of it depend upon you.

And this is indeed what we are doing in ministry. We are indeed working with God, not for God. We can see this in a few Scriptures. We can see in in 1 Corinthians 3:6-9, where Paul says, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow...For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building." We can see it again in 1 Thessalonians 3:2, where Paul says, "We sent Timothy, who is our brother and God's fellow worker in Christ." Both of these Scriptures speak of being God's fellow workers. Not His workers; His fellow workers, those who work alongside Him.

And what was true of Paul and Apollos and Timothy is true of us as well. We, too, are God's fellow workers. We, too, are working alongside Him. He, too, is working above us. This is, after all, His minister, not ours; it is His Gospel, His church, His Son. He, then, is the primary mover and shaker in this task, while we are just His hands and feet, His tools that He uses when and where and how He needs.

So it doesn't all depend upon us, my friends. It doesn't even depend primarily on us. It depends primarily on Him: Him who acts through us, Him who doesn't always or even often do things as we think He should or as fast as we think He should but who always does good things. And we should understand that it doesn't all depend on us. While we should work to the best of our ability, we should understand that the fates of souls and congregations and heaven and earth doesn't rest upon our work but upon His will. This is how we really work, and this is how we should understand that we really work. We should understand and work under the understanding that we work with God, not for God.

The Place of Personal Holiness

2010-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

While reading Keeping In Step With The Spirit by J. I. Packer, one of the texts for my last graduate class, I came across a statement I felt out to be shared. Here it is:

"It seems however that the activist spirit has infected us all. When, for instance, we think of the pastor's role and choose men to minister in our churches, we habitually rate skills above sanctity and dynamism above devotion, as if we did not know that power in ministry stems from the man behind the ministry rather than from the particular things he can do. Perhaps we really do not know this, though our fathers knew it; but if not, then it is high time that we learned it. The corrective we need comes from Scottish minister and revival preacher Robert Murray McCheyne, who a century and a half ago began a sentence thus: 'My people's greatest need is...' Now, how would you expect a pastor to complete that sentence? By specifying a program or some particular skill he would bring or a new way of looking at things or what? In fact, McCheyne ended it with the words, '...my personal holiness.'"

I believe both Packer and McCheyne are on to something there. Personal holiness, the personal avoidance of sin and personal obedience to God, is the minister's people's greatest need. It is the minister's church's greatest need. It is the minister's ministry's greatest need. The people and the church and the ministry need the minister to be holy more than they need him to be anything else, more than they need him to be skilled or smart or charismatic or innovative or outgoing or any of the other qualities that are so touted today.

Paul shows us this in the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus). He repeatedly tells Timothy and Titus, two young ministers, to pursue holiness. For example, in 1 Timothy 4:12, he tells Timothy to set an example in "purity", and in 4:16, he tells Timothy not just to watch his doctrine closely but also to watch his "life" (that is, his conduct) closely. In 2 Timothy 2:22. he tells Timothy to "flee the evil desires of youth". And in Titus 2:7, he tells Titus to "set an example by doing what is good". Paul, then, knew the value of holiness for ministry.

And we need to know the value of holiness as well. Having all the other qualities we've already mentioned and the many more that are held up in our present time will certainly help in ministry, but none of them will help the way that holiness will, and lacking any of them will not hurt ministry as much as lacking holiness will. A guy once told me that God can use "crooked sticks", and that is certainly true, but I'm sure He can and will and wants to use straight sticks even more. Let's be those straight sticks, then, not just for our own sake or for the sake of what is right but for the sake of our ministires. Let's pursue our people's greatest need. Let's pursue this personal holiness.

Taking It On The Chin/Taking One For The Team

2010-12-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

When I was fairly young, I watched a Burt Reynolds movie called Stick on network TV at my aunt's house. Early in the movie, Burt is in a bar and overhears a man saying something inappropriate to the female bartender. In reply, Burt beats the man's head into the bar, knocking him unconscious. As Burt drives away from the scene, his buddy tells him that the world is full of guys like the man in the bar and that Burt can't beat up everyone of them without eventually causing a great deal of trouble for himself.

Now this scene was important to me for two reasons. The first is that it was the first time I recognized dubbing in a televised movie. Burt and his buddy use some non-Sunday school language during this conversation, and though the network censors dubbed over this language with more acceptable language, I was not fooled. I realized that what I was hearing was not what they were actually saying. That was the first time I was ever aware of such a thing. The second and more significant is that what Burt's buddy said made a lot of sense to me. It is true that you can't beat up everyone who offends you in some way and that if you try you will eventually do more damage to yourself than to anybody else. Strange as it may sound, then, this terrible movie permanently affected me, permanently affected my philosophy of life; the principle that Burt's buddy lays out in that scene is one I always remember when someone offends me, one that I often follow when I am offended.

And it is a principle that all ministers must likewise remember and follow when they are offended. The sad but inescapable fact is that being offending is a part of ministry. People both inside and outside the church say and do offensive things to ministers. Sometimes they do it unintentionally, and sometimes they do it purposefully, but they do it. And if we strike back every time they do, we will eventually destroy not only ourselves but the church. The church can't stand that kind and amount of strife, even if it is warranted.

What this means, then, is that we as ministers must often resort to the old proverbial "taking it on the chin" or "taking one for the team". We must absorb such offensives rather than retaliate for them. We have to value the well-being of the church more than our own egos or feelings. Now this, like so many others practices of ministry, is not easy nor right nor fair. But it is necessary, necessary to the life of the church at large. And so it is what we must do. We must take these things on the chin; we must take these things for the team.

Taking It For What It's Worth

2010-11-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

The preaching class I recently took required me to do a little exercise. As part of this exercise I had to ask several people at church to critique my preaching. So I emailed around five church members and asked them to list what they thought were my strengths and my weaknesses in the pulpit. Soon their responses started rolling in. Most were pretty much what I expected (I am quite aware of my strengths and weaknesses, after all). Others, though, were not what I expected at all. They weren't even what I thought was right. They were wrong, wrong according to the philosophy of preaching I have tried and refined over the years. Some of them were so wrong that they could easily be classified as "from way out in left field". However, I did not dismiss them, not immediately. I thought a little bit about them. I considered them. I evaluated them for what they were saying and what that might mean for me.

And that's often something we need to do in ministry, something we need to do if we sincerely desire to improve in ministry. We need to think a little bit about how to do it better, about how we might do it better, about how people tell us we might do it better. Now I'm not saying we have to accept anything anybody says to us without reservation. I'm quite familiar with the fact that a lot of the "suggestions" (re: criticisms) people make of ministers are illegitimate at best and just plain empty-headed at worst. But I am saying that we shouldn't set ourselves so high up on a pedestal that we never consider that such people just might be right, that such people just might reveal something that we can improve on. What I'm saying is that we need to take criticisms for what they're worth, neither swallowing them hook line and sinker nor dismissing them out of hand.

That's what I did when I received these critiques. I considered what they said. Some of what they said I accepted. Some of what they said I rejected (rejected on good and proper grounds, not ego). But all of it I considered. All of it was taken for what it was worth. And I encourage us all to likewise take whatever criticism we receive for what it's worth. Yes, most of it will be baseless and should be discounted. But some of it could lead to improvement. Some of it could lead to improvement even if it is baseless. So take it for what it's worth, my friends. It might be worth a lot. Even if and when it is wrong, it might be worth a lot.

Tougher, Not Harder

2010-11-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

An older preacher once told me about the qualities I would need as a minister. He said, "Every minister needs the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros." That statement, as you can probably guess, is not original to him. I've heard it from several different sources, and I've heard several variations ("the hide of an elephant" or "the hide of an alligator"). Nonetheless, the sentiment is true. Ministers are often attacked, slandered, criticized, vilified, etc, etc, even by the people of their church, they people they are trying to serve and love. So ministers need to have the hide of a rhinoceros or an elephant or an alligator. Ministers need to have a tough hide, to be tough, to develop toughness.

There is a danger, though, in developing toughness. The danger is that toughness can easily turn into hardness, that developing toughness can easily mutate into become hard. Now those two terms sound synonymous, but they are not. Toughness is the ability to handle adversity, the ability to continue in ministry despite personal and professional attack. Hardness, in contrast, is the loss of love and zeal, a bitterness or cynicism towards ministry and people.

And I've seen many ministers become hard. Sometimes this hardness manifests itself as hatred towards other people; a minister no longer loves the people his congregation nor the visitors to his congregation. Other times this hardness manifests itself as a dissatisfaction with ministry; I've had many ministers tell me how horrible ministry is, how they wished they had never gotten into it, how I should get out of it. And other times this hardness manifests itself as a loss of enthusiam for ministry, a just-getting-by, going-through-the-motions approach to ministry; I once had a preacher tell me, "Yes, I've lost my fire, and one day you'll lose it, too!"

But this should not be us, my friends. We should not become so hard nor let such hardness manifest itself in such ways. The Christian rock group Petra tells us this; one of their songs says, "Don't let your heart be hardened, don't let your love grow cold. May it always stay so child-like, may it never grow to old." Rudyard Kipling also tells us this; in his poem "If", he says, "If you can wait and not be tired of waiting, or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated, don't give way to hating...you'll be a man, my son." Lee Ann Womack tells us this as well; in her song "I Hope You Dance", she says, "Don't let some hell-bent heart leave you bitter." Even Will Smith tells us this; in his song "Just The Two Of Us", he says, "Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, 'cause hate in your heart will consume you, too."

Whether you take this advice from me or from Petra or from Rudyard Kipling or from Lee Ann Womack or from Will Smith, you need to take it. Becoming hard is one of the dangers of ministry; becoming hard will destroy you and your ministry. So we must not become hard; we must not let the adversities and difficulties of ministry make us hard. Let's become tougher, but let's not become harder.

Forging Through Forgetfulness

2010-11-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

A member of our church recently told me that she was leaving our church because I hadn't "been there" for her when her husband died. At first I accepted this on face value; I figured that this accusation was true, that I hadn't been there for her at this time. But then I started evaluating this a little deeper, and as I did so, I realized that this accusation wasn't true, wasn't true at all. I had been there for her at this time: I had visited her husband repeatedly while he was in the hospital, I and my wife had visited her immediately after his death, I had done her husband's funeral free of charge, and I visited her at her home afterward (in fact, she had called and requested that I come over, and I did as soon as possible). I'm not exactly sure how I could have been there for her any more than I was. What I concluded from this, then, is not that I hadn't been there for her at this time but that she had forgotten that I had been there for her at this time.

And she is not the only one to forget such things, to be so forgetful. I've seen many church members in many churches be likewise forgetful of what I or some other minister or the church at large has done for them. In fact, we see such forgetfulness even in the ministry of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In Luke 17:11-19, Jesus heals ten lepers, but only one comes back to thank Him; only one remembered or cared about what Jesus had done for Him. At His crucifixion, none of the people Jesus had healed or fed or forgiven came to His defense (this, of course, could be because of the way the Pharisees and Sadducees timed and arranged Jesus' trials, doing them early before the crowds could get involved, but it is still worthy of thought). After His resurrection and assention, there were only 120 followers who gathered to pray in His name (Acts 1:15; again, there probably were more followers of Christ than that, but it doesn't seem like there was as many as there should have been; it doesn't seem like all the people He had helped during His earthly life were following Him at that time). People forgot what Jesus did for them. People forgot how Jesus had ministered to them. People forgot how He has sacrificed for and served them.

And people are likewise going to forgot how we have ministered to them and sacrificed for them and served them as well. Some people, anyway, are going to forget this. I have met many people who have remembered for years some small thing I did for them, but I have met many more (typically those who aren't kingdom-minded, who aren't on board with the mission and vision of the church, of who have had their feelings hurt in some way) who haven't remembered huge things I did for them. And that is something that we ministers simply have to accept and rise above. It isn't right. It isn't fair. But it is. And we have to accept it as ministers. We can't let it derail our ministry. We have to remember that this is what we have been called to do. We have to remember that what we do, we do not just for people but also and perhaps even more so for the Lord. We have to remember that while people forget what we do for them, God does not (Hebrews 6:10). And so we have to continue to do what we do for people in the name of Jesus even if they forget it. We have to continue to minister to people for the glory of God even if they refuse to remember how we ministered to them for the glory of God. We have to forge through forgetfulness, through the inevitible forgetfulness of those to whom we minister.

Get Healthy

2010-11-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

I was watching football yesterday, and as I watched, the commentators were discussing a team's upcoming schedule. This team will have a bye next week; they'll have a week off; they won't have to play. And commentator described this bye week in this team's schedule like this: "You've got a bye - get healthy." What he meant was that this week off gave this team the chance to get themselves healthy, healthier than they were at the moment. This bye week, if used correctly, could be this team's chance to heal their bumps and bruises so they could take the field the week after in top form.

This is something we need in ministry as well. We need bye weeks. We need times to get healthy.

I know we often don't think we need such time. I remember watching an old episode of Bonanza several years ago. In this episode, Hoss and Little Joe were helping a new preacher build a new church building. Hoss and Little Joe got tired and took a seat, but the preacher just kept working. So Little Joe said, "Hey, don't you ever get tired?" And the preacher, with a 2x4 in hand, his muscles-flexing, and a self-righteous smirk on his face, said, "Not when I'm doing the Lord's work.

So often we're like that preacher. We think we don't or we can't get tired when we're doing the Lord's work. But that's not true. We do get tired when we're doing the Lord's work. We get tired when we're doing the Lord's work whether we admit it or not. And so we need breaks. We need rests. We need time to heal so that we can keep doing the Lord's work, keeping doing it as well as it ought to be done.

I know you're doing ministry. But you still need some time off. You still need an opportunity to get healthy, to get back into top form, either physically or mentally or spiritually or all the above. You still need a bye week. Make sure you take it and take advantage of it.

Add To But Don't Subtract From Your Arsenal

2010-10-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

I've just finished my grad class on preaching. It was a very beneficial class that presented me with both another way to think about preaching as well as another way to preach. The professor gave the class a sermon structure or "form" that he called the "narrative form". This form has three parts (a conflict, a complication, and a resolution) and is intended to be more like a story than the classical three-point form (an illustration, three points, and a conclusion); it is intended to use the techniques of story-telling to make the sermon more exciting and effective. Now I picked up this form rather quickly, used it in my last couple of sermons, and liked it a lot. But as I was talking about this new form with my wife, she said, "That's great, but please don't give up on your old way of preaching." She was asking me, then, not to wholly abandon my old way of preaching for this new way; she was asking me to add this new form to my repertoire without subtracting the old forms.

And that was a reasonable request. In fact, it was a very wise request. What she was describing there is wisdom. Is there value in this new form? Yes, tremendous value on many levels. Does that mean, though, that there is no value in the older forms? Of course not. They still have a lot of value in their own right. This new form can do things the older ones can't, but the older ones can likewise do things the newer ones can't. There are times when I can minister with the new one but also times when I can minister with the older ones. To completely forsake the older ones for the newer ones would be foolish, and to reject the newer ones in favor of the older ones would be equally foolish. The only wise thing to do would be to add the newer ones to the older ones, to keep the old while incorporating the new.

Jesus Himself referred to something like this. In Matthew 13:52, part of His "Parables" sermon, Jesus says, "Every teacher of the law who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old." Jesus saw the truth of the Kingdom as something to add to the law; He saw the law as still having value in the age of the Kingdom (perhaps not equal value, but value nonetheless); He believed a person in the Kingdom could still bring kingdom treasures out of the law, and since there was much in the law that referred and applied to the Kingdom, this was no doubt true.

And it remains true for us today. Whether is it sermon forms or worships styles or songs or traditions or whose knows what, we shouldn't absolutely abandon the old for the new. We should instead add the new to the old; we should keep whatever still has value (as many old things do) and using it. I think of this as having an arsenal (an image that is a little militaristic, perhaps, but that works for me). If you were the weapons master of an arsenal, wouldn't you want to expand it as much as possible? Of course you would; that would increase the value of your arsenal and your ability to fight. Would you automatically get rid of older weapons because you got newer ones? Of course you wouldn't. That would devalue your arsenal and decrease your ability to fight. It is the same with today's ministers and leaders. We have arsenals (or, if you prefer, repertoires); we have storerooms; we have a cache of tools and techniques, and we should want to increase those, not decrease those.

We are blessed to live in a time when we can indeed increase our arsenal in this way, a time when we can indeed bring both old treasures and new out of our storerooms; we live in a glorious time when we have so many tools or weapons to use to make the maximum ministerial impact. Let's not waste that blessing by immediately throwing away the old for the new or vice versa. Let's not give up on the old ways just because we've learned a new way. Let's instead add to but not subtract from our arsenal.

Respecting The Ministry Of Others

2010-10-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

I had returned to my home church after a few semesters at Bible college and had been asked to preach. So I poured a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into a message and delivered it with all my might at the Sunday evening service. After I was done, many folks came up to me to say some nice words. But then the assistant minister came up. He had not been in the service but instead had been with the youth. And what he said (in an obviously sarcastic tone, I might add) was, "That was the best sermon I never heard."

Now maybe he was only trying to be funny, and maybe I was a little too sensitive, but I've always wondered why he felt the need to say something smart like that, why he couldn't instead have said something supportive to a young guy just getting started in the ministry. What I've realized lately, though, is that this statement wasn't the only such statement I've ever heard in my ministry, nor was this attitude the only such attitude I've ever encountered in my ministry. I have heard and encountered many similar statements and attitudes directed at many other ministers. So many times I've heard one preacher say something snide or condescending about another preacher, about what another preacher did or how another preacher preached. So many times I've heard one preacher slight the ministry of another preacher, as if their ministry wasn't a good ministry or a real ministry, as if their ministry was somehow less. It seems to me that some ministers think they are the only ministers, that the only ministry is their ministry, that the only way to do ministry is the way they do ministry. And it also seems to me that some ministers have no problem expressing this sentiment in their speech and body language.

But this is just plain wrong, my friends. No minister is the only minister, and no way of doing ministry is the only way of doing ministry. There is a dire need for ministers and ministries, ministers and ministries of all kinds, even ministries that are not like ours, even ministries that we think are somehow less than ours. I try to teach very deep Bible lessons; I like to show people the depths of the Word. Not everybody can teach in that way, though, and not everybody needs that or likes that kind of teaching. I've actually been told by some people that they didn't like my classes because they were too deep! There are some classes that aren't as deep as mine but yet reach some people better than mine do! So there is a need for diversity of ministries, and there is accordingly a need for ministers to respect diverse ministries.

Let us, then, not be like those who would speak sarcastically of the ministries of others. Let us not be like those who would look down on other ministers. Instead, let's respect the ministries of others, even when those ministries are done differently than we would do them, even when those ministries seem lesser than ours; let's not slight those others ministers, even when they're different from us.

Audience Specific

2010-10-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

The professor of the preaching class I have been taking made an interesting comment the other day. He was talking about the different services his church had. He said that his church not only had a traditional and a contemporary service as so many churches do, but that they also had a country & western service, a southern Gospel service, and a heavy metal service.

Now there's a part of me that looks as that as the consumeristic church culture that I dislike so much (and if the idea behind those services is marketing or offering a product, that is exactly what it is). There's another part of me, though, that looks at that as being a very smart thing to do, the very smart think that we could call being "audience specific" (and yes, I know I've already written about how the congregation should not be called an "audience", but that's the best term I have for this concept at the present time).

And that audience specific concept is an important one; the idea of tailoring your speaking and presentation to be specific to your audience, to how they think and to what they can accept, is a very important idea. One of the core truths of communication is that you have to know your audience and speak to your audience in a way they understand. You see this repeatedly in literature: children's books are not written as adult books are, nor are mysteries written as romances are. And you see it in ministry as well. There are plenty of times when I have to cut an illustration or a devotional idea from a sermon because it is not one that the people will get or appreciate; I've been asked not to talk about science fiction movies, for example, because most of our folks don't dig them. And I'm not the only one that needs to do that. All our ministers (Sunday School teachers, worship teams, children's aides, etc) need to do that as well so that they can minister in a truly effective way.

Now that part of being audience specific is one that we all can easily understand; we all can easily understand the need to be specific to your audience. There is another part of being audience specific, though, that's going to be harder for us to understand or at least to do. That is the fact that you don't always or even often get to choose the audience you get to be specific to. If you are ministering to a large church (such as the one my professor described), you might be able to choose your audience, that is, choose the audience you like; if your church is large enough to have a country and western service and you want to play country and western music, you can choose to minister that group and not to minister to the others. Most of us, though, don't have that option; most of us don't get to choose like this. Instead, we get our audience chosen for us; we have who God gives us and that's who we have to be specific to. And what this usually means is that we at times have to operate in ways we personally don't like. I wish I could toss in more science fiction or comic book illustrations; I wish I could talk about some cutting edge contemporary things; it would make my work a whole lot easier and enjoyable. But I know that wouldn't be very effective with our congregation, few of which are on the cutting edge. And so I must choose to abandon what I would like and go with what they need. And all our ministers must do the same; all our ministers must make that same choice.

One of my favorite Scriptures says "Here am I, and the children God has given me" (Hebrews 2:13). And that is where we are and what we have; we are in a place of God's choosing with the children of God's choosing. We can't always minister, then, in the way we think we ought to or the way we like; we can't always minister in the way that is good for us. We must instead minister in the way that is good for them. We must be audience specific, even with audiences it isn't easy for us to be specific to.

Picking Your Battles or Not Fighting On Too Many Fronts

2010-10-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Somewhere along the line I picked up the idea of a "multi-fronted war", that is, a war fought on two or more fronts. More than likely, I learned this during the WWII section of high school history class. Hitler, as you might know, made the decision to engage Russia in the east at the same time as the Allies in the west. This stretched his resources too thin and is the reason why many historians believed he lost the war.

There is a similar reality in ministry. There are wars to be fought, some with forces outside the church, others with forces inside the church. Now you may not like the terminology; you might not like the idea that we ministers, we who are supposed to love and serve, will simultaneously have to war and fight. To be honest, I don't either. Nonetheless, it is true. The reality, as anyone who has been involved in ministry for any length of time knows, is that ministry involves lots of warring and lots of fighting.

The key, then, is to not follow the disastrous pattern we've seen so many times in history, the disastrous pattern of fighting on too many fronts; the key is to not engage in every potential skirmish, to not go to the mat for any little things; the key is to pick your battles. Fights are costly; even when you win, they cost time and energy and that precious commodity of the hearts of your people. So they should only be fought when they really need to be fought, and they should only be fought one at a time. Some potential fights can be dismissed; you can choose not to fight them at all. Other potential fights can be postponed; you can choose to fight them later. Every potential fight, though, needs to be evaluated: evaluated in terms of what it will cost, what it will gain, and what else is going on at the time. Only after such a careful evaluation should we choose to engage, and often after such a careful evaluation we should choose not to engage.

We will have to fight at times; that is the sad fact. But let's not make that sad fact sadder by fighting stupidly. Let's not stretch our resources too thin by fighting on too many fronts; let's not do more damage to our fellowship then necessary by fighting fights that don't need to be fought; let's not join in every battle that threatens. Instead, let's pick our battles and so benefit ourselves and our people.

Self-Improvement or Good, Better, Best

2010-09-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

Good, better, best, never let it rest 'til your good is better and your better is best.

-Unknown

I learned the above saying in my early years of Bible college. It was something my preaching professor frequently tossed out to the class. Recently, I have heard this saying in a song form; a speaker at a local high school baccalaureate service sang it as a little chorus. It describes a unique approach to one's work, an approach that takes pride in improving the work done, that seeks to find and incorporate new techniques and tools, that isn't satsified with "good" but presses on until it is "better". And it is a good saying to keep in mind, especially for ministers.

This saying is so especially good for ministers to keep in mind for at least two reasons. The first is that ministry is the kind of work in which "good" can often get you by. The second is that ministry is the kind of work in which what was "good" ten years ago is often expected to be "good" today. There are many ministers who put very little effort into their lessons or sermons, not because they don't have the effort to give but because they don't have the will to give it. There are many ministers who are doing what they have always done in the way they have always done it. And there are many ministers who are surprised when such ministry produces little fruit.

Now I'm not advocating perfectionism; perfectionism can be just as deadly to ministry as the above two practices. What I am advocating, though, is that we evaluate our ministries a little more than we currently do, that we investigate to see if they can be done better, quicker, faster, more efficiently, or more effectively, that we search to find any avenue or area in ministry we have missed or can reach better than we currently are. What I am advocating is a spirit of improvement, of self-improvment, of improving ourselves as ministers and improving our ministries as ministries.

There's another saying that I've heard: "good enough for rock n' roll"; I've particularly heard this one from musicians who are tuning their instruments. And maybe some things are good enough for rock n' roll or any other arena of earthly labor. But the ministry is not earthly labor. It is eternal labor, the labor of Heaven, and there should not be any "good enough for" in it. Instead, there should be ministers who are constantly improving themselves and the work they are doing, who put forth the time and energy and care to make their good better and their better best.

P.S. So, McCoy, do you practice what you preach? Absolutely. As readers of this blog know, I have been taking a graduate level preaching course over the past several weeks. When some of my former Bible college classmates heard this, they said, "Why are you taking that class? You're the best preacher I know!" And the answer to that is two-fold: 1) I'm probably not the best preacher you know; thanks for the flattery, but I find it hard to believe, and 2) whether I am the best preacher you know is irrelevant; I want to be the best preacher I can be (not better than anyone else, as comparisons to others are meaningless in ministry, but the best preacher I can be). And so I seek to improve myself. Have I made great strides in preaching? Have I won awards for preaching? Have I mastered some styles of preaching? Yes to all. But I can still be better. And that's the mentality I'm encouraging here, a mentality that always seeks to improve the self for the advancement of the Gospel and the glory of God.

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles or How I Learned To Pick Up Sticks

2010-09-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Lao-Tzu

One wet and cold Saturday afternoon way back in my middle school years, I was assigned by my father to go out in the backyard and pick up all the sticks that had fallen out of our three trees. And you probably wouldn't think that three little trees could produce that many fallen sticks, but they did. There was a literal blanket of sticks under these three trees, a blanket of interwoven twigs and branches (at least there was to my young eyes; perception is always a subjective thing). As soon as I saw this blanket, I began to despair. How could I pick up all those sticks? There were too many to pick up. The job was impossibly big. And I spent quite a few minutes in this despair, quite a few moments lamenting the impossibility of this task. And then a funny thing happened. I bent down and picked up the few sticks that were at my feet. And then I picked up the next few I saw, then the next few, then the next few. Before I knew it, I had finished the job; I had not only finished the job but finished it much faster than I thought it could be finished. And what my middle school self realized in that moment was that the impossible job could be done if I did just a little at a time, that I was able to complete this task when I stopped looking at the whole of it and started looking at just the pieces of it.

I firmly believe the same principle applies to ministry. Ministry is an impossible job, much more impossible than picking up the fallen sticks from three trees. There is the local congregation to be concerned about, but also the church at large. There are doctrinal errors and practical errors and spiritual errors. There are causes and missions crawling out of the woodwork. There are sermons to preach and lessons to teach, newsletters to prepare, and attendances to count. There are books to read and Scriptures to study. There are questions to answer and accusations to refute. There are leaders to train and disciples to discipline and the lost to win. There are people to counsel and people to please and people who can't be either counseled or pleased. There are opposing religions and philosophies of all kinds, and, behind them, a fallen angel with the blackest heart in all of existence. Ministry is not just an impossible job; it is several impossible jobs layered one on top of the other.

And if we look at ministry in this way, if we look at it as a whole, we will be overwhelmed, just as overwhelmed as the middle school me under those trees. My suggestion, though, is that we don't look at ministry in this way, that we don't look at ministry as a whole. My suggestions is that we instead look only at one small part of ministry at any one time, that we focus on that small task that is right in front of us, and from there move on to the next, then to the next, and so on; my suggestion is that we do this huge work in the only way that we can do any huge work: in little bits, little bits that add up to a big whole.

The journey of a thousand miles does begin with a single step and it continues with many single steps; it can never be made in one large leap. We will never be able to pick up all the sticks at once, but we can pick up all the sticks one at at time, and we may be surprised at how quickly we do. So let's make that journey in that way, in the way of taking steps; let's do this impossible job one stick at a time.

The Myth Of The Greener Grass

2010-09-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of the field of psychology. I'm sure there is value in it, but I just don't like it, and never have (and there probably is some deep rooted psychological reason for this that a psychologist could help me with). I was not happy, then, to discover that I had to take not just one but six psychology courses as an undergrad in Bible college. And one of the few things that I remember from those courses was reading a book called The Myth Of The Greener Grass. If I remember correctly, this book was intended to steer people clear of adultery. It stated that people are often tempted to commit adultery because of the "greener grass syndrome", the human tendency of thinking that "the grass is greener on the other side", that something else is always better than what we have, and then showed that this tendency is flawed, that the grass is not really greener or the other side but just appears to be greener on the other side, that "greener grass" is indeed a "myth".

But it is not just potential adulterers who can be swayed by the myth of the greener grass. We church ministers/leaders/workers can be swayed by it as well. It is so easy to give into that myth in the ministry and in the church, to think that somebody else's ministry is better than ours, that somebody else's church is better than ours, that there is something wrong or less than our ministry or our church. It is especially easy to give into this and think this when we encounter problems in our ministry or our church. Here's the thing, though: it's a myth! It is undeniably a myth. Just as the greener grass syndrome is flawed in matters of relationship, so it is flawed in matters of church work. All ministries and all churches have problems, have hardships, have disappointments and failures. The only reason we think somebody else's ministry and church doesn't have these things is because we aren't somebody else!

I once heard a Bible college president state this very thing. There was a group of Bible college presidents meeting at my Bible college, and during the meeting they each got up and talked about all the "good things" that were happening at their colleges. But when the last president got up to speak, he started by saying, "Well, I guess it's my turn to lie now." And he said that because he knew that while such good things might be happening at these colleges, bad things were undoubtedly happening as well, bad things there were being glossed over.

And that's good to keep in mind; the fact that everybody, every ministry, every church has to face and go through and endure bad things is good to keep in mind. It is a fact that can keep us from getting overcome by such bad things, a fact that can prevent us from giving up on our ministry or our church. Yes, my friends, the grass looks greener, but it isn't; truth be told, the grass is just as green over there as it is over here and vice versa. Greener grass is a myth; we must always remember that it is a myth.

Exhortation Vs. Admonition

2010-09-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

More insight my current grad class on "Preaching That Connects": according to the class lectures, preachers should affirm more than they exhort, that they should practice less exhortation and more affirmation.

Make sense? If not, here's what it means. To exhort (at least in this usage) is to give a command or remind of a command. An example of exhortation in a sermon would be, "We must" or "We should" or "We need to" or "We have to" something-or-other. It focuses on the moral imperative of a truth, how we ought to respond to the truth. To affirm, in contrast, is to state a principle. An example of an affirmation would be "God wants" or "Jesus teaches" something. It focuses on the truthfulness of a truth, on the truth itself. Now exhortation and affirmation can say the exact same thing; for example, the exhortation, "We must believe Jesus is the Christ" is pretty much the same in content as "Jesus teaches that He is the Christ". However, they say it in different ways, and, according to the "Preaching That Connects" class lectures, affirmation says it in a better way, a way that demands more of the listener and yet is less wearying of the listener.

And I think this is correct. To be honest, I have gotten a little tired of exhortation, of "We must", "We should", "We ought", and so on. When I first started preaching, I thought such exhortation was a good way to present the teaching of the Bible, that it was clear and direct. But now, after sixteen years of preaching, I've found it to be stale and rather ineffective. Now I don't see it so much as clearly and directly presenting people with the teachings of the Bible but as beating people over the head with the teachings of the Bible. I have begun to change some of my statements, including the main statements of my messages, from exhortations to affirmations, and have found it to be a good way to present the truth, a superior way to present the truth. And I think that it would be such a good and superior way not just in my Sunday morning messages but in all areas of our church ministry; I think that we can use such affirmation rather than such exhortation in any arena where we are communicating truth.

We shouldn't eliminate exhortation completely; exhortation clearly is used by the biblical authors and thus clearly has a place in the church and in the communication of the truth (indeed, this statement is itself an exhortation). But we should try some affirmation once in a while as well; in fact, we should not only try some affirmation but try it more than exhortation. We should indeed exhort less and affirm more.

Speaking And Acting

2010-09-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

"Missed you at church today." Ever heard that one? Ever used that one? I have heard it; I have heard it said both to me and to others. I have used it, too; I have said it to others. And I hate it; I hate it immensely. Why? Because I have come to recognize it for what it is: not a sincere expression of desire for fellowship but an overbearing attempt to control behavior. What does it mean when someone says, "Missed you at church today"? It means, "Why weren't you in church today? You should have been in church today. You better be in church next week, or I'll ask you again." It is, quite simply, bullying.

And its not the only example of bullying speech, of speech that controls or tries to control or is in some other way overbearing, that I have encountered in the church. As I start to think about it, I realize that there are many more such examples, examples I can list simply off the top of my head.

"But don't you think" is one; this phrase often pops up whenever there is a disagreement on some bit of biblical interpretation or application; after hearing a view they disagree with, hearers often say, "But don't you think" and then proceed to tell the speaker what they think he/she should think. It is subtle, perhaps, but it is controlling.

"Strong doctrine" is another; growing up, the folks of my home church always used to talk about "strong doctrine", by which them seemed to mean some doctrine that they were strong enough to handle but that many others (particularly sinners or weak Christians) weren't strong enough to handle. To my great surprise, I learned in my later years that this phrase is not a biblical phrase at all; the Bible often talks about "sound doctrine" (that is, true teachings) but it never talks about "strong doctrine" (tough-to-accept teachings). "Got them told" is yet another; this is one that was often said to me while making a call (that is, visiting someone in their home) with another preacher or believer; after making such a call, my calling partners often remarked, "Well, we got them told". Along these same lines is "tell it like it is" or its more rural variant, "telling them how the cows ate the cabbage", which are often used as high praise for some preacher or teacher in the church. The problem with these two phrases is that they imply that the Gospel is not the good news but a disagreeable message, a disagreeable message that is and should be shoved down throats. Beyond these, there is, "I'm concerned about", which folks often use before describing some doctrine or practice they do not like, and, "I'm disappointed", which folks use while lamenting something (usually low attendance at some event, i.e., "I'm disappointed that more preachers weren't at the preachers meeting."), both of which are not only controlling or bullying but also frankly dishonest (the speaker is not concerned or disappointed but rather angry).

These examples (and many more like them) are common in the church; at least, they are common in the churches I have been in and served. But they shouldn't be. James tells us they shouldn't be. James, in 2:12 of his book, says, "Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom..."; in other words, speak and act as those who have been saved by grace. My friends, do those who are saved by grace use bullying speech? Do those who have been saved by grace present the Gospel in an ungracious way? Does "missed you at church" and "strong doctrine" and "don't you think" and "got them told" match grace in anyway? I don't think it does. And I don't think that's how we should speak.

Overcoming Evil With Good

2010-09-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite films is Man On Fire with Denzel Washington. It has some gritty parts and some unnecessary language, but it also has a good message, a couple of good messages, actually. One is a message about redemption, both the redemption of self from past sins and the redemption of others from present dangers. And another is a message about how to engineer that redemption, about engineering it the right way and not the wrong way. At one point in this film, Denzel is speaking to Sister Anna, a nun, and during this conversation, she and he together quote Romans 12:21: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." And when I heard that verse in that movie, it was the proverbial "light bulb over the head" moment; I must have heard that verse before, many times before, but only in the context of that movie did I really realize what we being said.

So what is being said in that verse? What light bulb come on over my head when I heard that verse in that movie? It is the fact that we are in a battle. I know we church ministers/leaders/workers often don't think that way, that we often think as if we're just good people getting together in a good community to do good work, but it is true. We are in a battle, a struggle not against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6). And we are getting hit in this battle from all sides; we are fighting this battle on many fronts. There are, as Ephesians 6 suggests, spiritual sides to this battle, things going on in the invisible realms that we can't see but that nonetheless have an effect on us. There are what I for lack of a better term call "attitudinal" sides to this battle, bad attitudes that we again can't see but that nonetheless have an effect on us. There are human sides to this battle, human beings who oppose us for whatever reason. There are evils of all sorts, spiritual and earthly, internal (inside the church) and external (outside the church), that are arraying themselves against us. We, like all Christians past and present, are being opposed by evil forces.

But we can't fight that evil with evil; we can't, as the old saying goes, fight fire with fire. Fighting evil with evil just means evil wins; even if evil loses, it wins. For example, if we fight hatred in our church with more hatred (the cold shoulder, the silent treatment, the shunning, all those old hateful tactics), which might push the haters out of our church, but what have we done? Become haters ourselves. It is so important, then, that we not fight evil with evil.

Instead, we need to fight evil with good. We don't meet hate with more hate; we meet it with love. We don't meet gossip with more gossip; we meet it with grace. We don't meet bad attitudes with more bad attitudes; we meet them with kindness and compassion. Only in this way can good really win; only in this way can good be the one standing when the dust clears off the battlefield.

Now that's not easy, my friends, I know that. But it is right, and I believe it will ultimately be effective. I believe love can conquer hate. I believe grace can conquer meanness. I believe good can conquer evil. And so I believe we must conquer evil with good; for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of the church, for the sake of our own hearts and souls, we must conquer evil with good and not with more evil.

We are in a battle. But in this battle, we must not fight in the ways or with the weapons of the world (2 Corinthians 10). Rather, we must fight in the ways and with the weapons of our Lord, who conquered death with His own death and selfishness with sacrifice and hostility with forgiveness; we must overcome evil with good.

Not Forcing The Hand

2010-09-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

Every so often, one of our ministers/leaders/workers approaches me with a plan to get more ministers/leaders/workers. It is a plan I call "forcing the hand". The minister/leader/worker in question intends to quit, to resign their position or stop doing what they are doing in the belief that this will in turn force somebody else, some less active or involved person in the congregation, to step up and take their place. I've seen many ministers/leaders/workers come up with and implement this plan over the years. What I've never seen, though, is this plan work; I've never seen this plan produce more ministers/leaders/workers; I've never seen any inactive or uninvolved person step up to take the place of the one who quit. What I've seen instead is ministries just stop and work just not getting done.

And I can understand the frustration behind the forcing the hand plan. I really can. It is frustrating to see that the old 20/80 ratio is still very much in effect, that 20 percent of the church family is doing 80 percent of the church labor. It is frustrating to see there are so many inactive and uninvolved persons in our congregation. It is frustrating to see that we could be doing so much more and doing it so much better if we have more help. So I can understand that frustration; it is understandable.

That understandable frustration, though, is no reason to adopt a faulty plan, which the forcing the hand plan obviously is. Forcing the hand simply isn't going to work. It simply isn't going to work because there are reasons why persons in our congregation are inactive and uninvolved. Maybe they just don't care; it's a sad but true fact that many don't. Maybe they are busy; it's a sad and true fact that many are. Maybe they've never thought about being active in church work. Maybe they aren't able to be involved in that particular labor. There are plenty of reasons why this is, and forcing the hand doesn't change any of them. Forcing the hand isn't going to gain us more workers; it's only going to cost us the workers we have.

We need more ministers/leaders/workers. We clearly do. But we can't create those ministers/leaders/workers by trickery. Instead, we have to look for them in advance, always scanning our congregation to see who might fill a role. We have to bring them up, training them to be able to fill that role. And most of all, we have to ask for them in prayer (something I've been doing every Wednesday for years). That's what we should do. We should look and train and pray. We shouldn't force the hand.

The Way Of Oblivion or The Art Of Fighting Without Fighting

2010-09-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

Story Number 1: In the movie Enter The Dragon, martial arts master Bruce Lee is sailing across a sea in a ship with a group of other fighters. One of these fighters is tormenting the ship's deckhands. Tiring of that, he then turns to Lee, asking him what his style is. Lee replied, "The art of fighting without fighting." The fighter demands to see some of this style. Lee agrees to show him, but says that he can't do it on the boat, that they will have to get in a lifeboat and row to a nearby island. The fighter agrees and Lee "graciously" allows him to get into the lifeboat first. Then, when the fighter is in, Lee releases the lifeboat, alienating him from the rest of the ship's population and neutralizing his antagonism all without throwing a punch. The art of fighting without fighting.

Story Number 2: In his book Every Man's Battle, Stephen Arterburn discusses ways in which men can defuse sexual temptation, particularly the temptation of adultery. One of these ways is the way of oblivion; Arterburn suggests that a man act dumb if propositioned by a lady other than his wife.

In a similar way, we church ministers/leaders/workers often face antagonism in the church; we are often tempted to fight, and we at times might want to give into that temptation. Fighting, however, direct fighting, the clear and obvious exchanging of blows, whether physical or verbal, will never turn out good for us. We must neutralize this antagonism and defuse this temptation in another manner; we must, like Lee, fight without fighting and, like Arterburn, be oblivious.

Imagine this scenario: someone with an axe to grind approaches us before or after service and starts making "suggestions", telling us what someone ought to do or how something ought to be. We could respond to that directly, retorting with the same hostility and hatefulness they are showing us and our church. If we did, though, we would probably start a whole volley of hostility, do a lot of damage, and more than likely give this someone a great deal of satisfaction. So that really isn't a good choice; it probably feels good in the moment, but it really isn't a good choice The other thing we could do is to respond to them indirectly, to act as if we didn't detect their hostility and hatefulness. Not only will this prevent that whole volley of hostility and that damage, but it will probably also grate on that someone a little bit; their inability to get either a rise out of us or what they wanted out of us will be "burning coals on their head".

So the way of oblivion really is the wiser way for us; the art of fighting without fighting is the better art for us. It is the way and the art that is going to allow us to do ministry as we know we should do ministry as well as neutralize and defuse those who want to attack and hinder our ministry.

Treating Others Better Than They Treat Us

2010-09-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

I met a local minister for dinner several months ago. During this dinner, I mentioned a certain group in the area. I said that this group was legalistic, judgmental, and mean-spirited, that they treated everyone outside their group as if they weren't "real Christians". This local minister agreed that everything I said was correct, but he also went on to say something else. He said, "But we need to treat them better than they treat us."

Certainly you can see the truth and the wisdom in that statement; certainly you will agree that this is what we as church ministers/leaders/workers should do. We should treat others better than they treat us. Paul describes this very thing; in 1 Corinthians 4:12 & 13, he says, "When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly". Not only so, but Jesus did this very thing; in Luke 23:34, He says while hanging on the cross, "Father, forgive them", and according to 1 Peter 2:21-23, "When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats." And we must do this thing as well.

Treating others as they treat us or worse than they treat us will never make the world a better place; fighting fire with fire just burns everything. We ministers/leaders/workers must find and follow a better way, and this is that way; we ministers/leaders/workers must treat others better than they treat us.

Using Your Gifts

2010-09-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Spiritual Gift Inventory. You're familiar with that little form, aren't you? You've certainly filled out some version of that form at one time or another. I have as well. I've filled it out many times, in fact. The Spiritual Gift Inventory is to the church what the 1040 is to the IRS. In fact, one preacher recently told me that he didn't think anybody could get into Heaven without filling out this form.

Now I myself have always been somewhat suspicious of the Spiritual Gift Inventory; I always questioned how accurately that form measures what it claims to measure. This suspicion was validated a couple of months ago when the professor of my Servant Leadership grad class said that gifts are discovered by experimentation, not by inventories.

So the Spiritual Gift Inventory may not be all that legitimate (on the other hand, it might be completely legitimate and I just may be too ignorant to see that; who knows?). The idea of spiritual gifts, though, of God-given talents or abilities, is certainly legitimate. The Bible clearly teaches in places such as Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4, that God gives each of His people such gifts and that God gives each of His people different such gifts; the Bible clearly teaches that each of us not only has such talents or abilities but that each of us has different such talents or abilities, that each of us is divinely and intentionally talented or able in different ways and to different levels.

And that, in turn, means that each of us will be different in ministry; each of us will have different places in ministry, different practices in ministry, different things that we do or don't do, different things that we can or can't do. It is crucial, then, that we understand this; it is crucial that we don't expect others to do what they can't do; it is crucial that we don't expect ourselves to do what we can't do. All gifts are good gifts, all ministry places and practices are good ministry places and practices, but not everybody is going to have all these gifts, not everybody is going to be able to be in these places and keep this practices. And they shouldn't be expected to.

Here is the rule: do the best you can with what you have and do the best you can at what you do. Use your gifts, but simultaneously, use your gifts; do what God has given you and don't feel guilty about what God hasn't given you to do. Nobody should expect less from you, yet nobody should expect more from you. And you shouldn't expect less or more of anybody else, either.

Uncooperative or Not Being Like Tom

2010-09-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

Anybody remember the character Tom from the classic movie It's A Wonderful Life? Nobody? Well I do. Tom was the crotchety old man in the bank run scene who came into George Bailey's building and loan with the crowd and demanded his $242, all the money he had in his account. Now George had a grand total of $2000 (his own personal honeymoon money, by the way, the money he had planned to use to see all the places he wanted to see), and he had a plan to use to keep the building and loan going. According to this plan, if each person with an account only took what they needed to survive the two weeks until the bank could reopen, they would each survive the financial crisis and so would the building and loan. Old Tom, though, would have none of that. He demanded his whole $242 dollars. He demanded this even though he didn't need all of this. He demanded this even though doing so greatly hurt George's plan for saving the building and loan and everyone else's chances of survival. He demanded this for no real good reason other than he was an uncooperative fool.

Many times, we church ministers/leaders/workers, can be Toms; many times, we can be just as foolishly uncooperative, foolishly uncooperative in a way that undermines and endangers the work of the church. Somebody else suggests something and we don't want to help. Somebody else does something and we criticize it. Somebody sacrifices for the good of the church but we think only about how it affects us. And I think we can see where this will end up, my friends; I think we can see that this will end up hurting the work of the church, the church itself, everybody in the church, and ultimately we ourselves.

So let's not be so uncooperative; let's not be like Tom. Let's not support failure, which is what we do when we don't support each other. Let's instead help others in what they are doing for the church, or, if we can't do that, then at least get out of their way as they do it.

Living And Learning

2010-09-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the story as it was told to me: a pop psychologist led a campaign against disciplining children in the 60s-70s; he wrote several books and made several TV appearances in which he said that disciplining children was wrong, and he became well-known and well-respected for doing so. A few decades later, this pop psychologist's daughter asked him to watch her daughter, his granddaughter, one afternoon. He agreed to do so. During that afternoon, this granddaughter proved to be such a holy terror that the pop psychologist not only rescinded everything he had said in the 60s-70s, but he actually spanked her as well.

Now I don't know how true that story is (which is why I have withheld the pop psychologist's name), but I do know that the principle it reveals is true. It is not uncommon for people to say or do or believe one thing only for time or experience to prove that thing wrong or invalid or ineffective; it is not uncommon for us to learn by living, for us to have to live and learn. This is true even of people in ministry and church work. For example, Moses had been judging all the personal disputes in Israel and had to be told by his father-in-law that doing so was not good, that appointing other judges would be better (Exodus 12:18-27). And Paul had tried to unsuccessfully to go to several different places before the Spirit finally led him to Macedonia(Acts 16:6-10).

It stands to reason, then, that living and learning is going to be an element of our ministry as well. And I, for one, don't feel the least bit bad about that. I know that the present spirit of church leadership (a spirit with which I have many problems) thinks that failing or doing wrong in some endeavor is a sin, that this spirit suggests that an errors or mistakes in the ministry of the church means that somebody in the leadership of that church is bad or wrong, but I don't believe that is the case. If God was against living and learning, He wouldn't have made us the way He did; if God wanted His people to be mistake- and error-free, He would have made us and our world a whole lot different. The fact that He didn't make us and our world a whole lot different, the fact that He made us as He did, tells me that He isn't all that opposed to living and learning, that He isn't all that dissatisfied with our making mistakes and learning from those mistakes.

Living and learning is simply going to be a reality of our ministry. And I believe we should embrace that reality. I believe we should not be afraid of making mistakes or of admitting mistakes; rather, I believe we should take mistakes as what they are: opportunities to learn to do better and to begin to do better.

Audience Participation

2010-09-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

More insight from the Preaching That Connects class: I have just about finished reading the class texts, and all of them encouraged what we might call "audience participation", that is, getting the congregation involved in the worship experience and the preaching event (terms you'll recognize from a previous post). For example, in the book Preaching For The Contemporary Service, Joseph D. Webb says that a sermon should not be a monologue (one person speaking to hearers) but a monological dialogue (one person speaking in a way that involves hearers (28ff)), and in Preaching, Fred Craddock says that a sermon should be constructed to have "amen" moments (moments when the congregation can agree) and "aha" moments (moments when the congregation can be surprised). And these are just a few of the comments about such audience participation, about drawing those in the seats into the sermon or into the worship, that these texts and other class materials made.

Indeed, this kind of audience participation, this kind of congregation involvement, this kind of drawing those assembled into the worship and the preaching and other service elements so that they are actually taking part those elements, is something we should strive for. I firmly believe that the service should be a participatory thing, that it should be active and not passive. I believe this so firmly, in fact, that I really don't like to refer to those who come to the service as an audience. They are not an audience (a group of consumers who have come to see or hear something); rather, they are a congregation (a group of Christians who have come to partake or share in something). God has called them there not to simply see or hear but even more to do.

That being the case, we must enable them to do; we must allow them to participate or share in in the service; we must make it so that the sermon and the worship and the communion meditation and everything else is participatory, not in a silly sense of, "Hey, let's get you out of your seat and moving your feet" (a sense we sometimes see in church), but in the solemn sense of, "This is a group activity and you are welcome to join in." Our purpose when we gather is not to "do for" but to "lead into", not to "put on a show" (as I've said before) but to "engage". And that's what we need to do; we need to conduct our worship service in a way that is participatory; we need to encourage audience participation.

Ad Hominem

2010-09-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

Two stories: The first comes from The Prehistory Of The Far Side, a collection of The Far Side cartoons. In this book, cartoonist Gary Larson talks about some of his hard-to-understand cartoons (of which there are many). One of these cartoons shows a Viking returning to his boat after a raid. This Viking is leaving a looted, burning village in his wake and is carrying off a woman as his captive. Waiting in the boat for this Viking is his dog, and, in what is the comedic element of this cartoon, the dog's tail is wagging. For those who missed this humor of this little scene, Larson explains it, saying, "I was just trying to suggest that it doesn't really matter what you do for a living or how big of a jerk you are, your dog still likes to see you come home(Prehistory Of The Far Side, p. 138)."

The second comes from my personal experience. During my senior year, my friends and I were sitting in the lunch room one lunch period. One friend said something about another fellow whom I had come to regard as an enemy. At the mention of this enemy's name, I made some rude comment. In reply, the friend who had brought this enemy up said, "Just because you don't like him doesn't mean I can't."

And what you see in both those stories is the danger in opposing persons, of making what are called in logic circles ad hominem attacks (which are attacks on an individual; ad hominem is Latin for "to the man") or even of having an ad hominem mentality. As church ministers/leaders/workers, there often have to oppose and attack things: false doctrines, false practices, bad philosophies, unprofitable actions, etc. We get into trouble, though, when we begin to oppose or attack people, when we allow a simple conflict (a conflict over ideas) to become an ego conflict (a conflict between personalities). It is not a good thing to do; this is not the kind of thing that is endorsed by the Bible but rather the kind of thing that is forbidden by the Bible. It is also not a profitable thing to do; it's not going to work because of the fact we see in these two stories, the fact that every person is liked by somebody (at least his dog if nobody else) and that those somebodies are going to get pretty upset when we attack that person, that those somebodies are not going to agree with us when we attack this person, that those somebodies will keep us from ever being completely successful in attacking this person.

Unfortunately, that is still what we frequently do; it may not be good and it may not be profitable, but we still frequently do it, we still frequently go after each other rather than after a thing. I have on many occasions seen church folks try to bring down a person for some reason. Perhaps at the beginning they were simply trying to object against some wrong this person was doing, but the longer the battle continued and the heavier it got, more and more emotion became involved and more and more their objection became not the wrong this person was doing but the person him or herself. In the end, what they ultimately wanted was not the end of the wrong but the end of the person; in the end, what they ultimately were pursuing was not the end of the wrong but the end of the person. I have even done it myself on a few occasions (as the above story shows). It is very easy to fall into this trap.

But though falling into this trap is very easy, falling into this trap is what we must avoid. Certainly you can tell from the above description that such ad hominem endeavors are not beneficial, are not profitable, are not godly. Certainly you can tell from the above description that such personal assaults are not going to help the church but hurt the church, are not going to result in pure doctrine and practice but rather are going to result in hate. Certainly you can tell from the above description that such ego conflicts are going to rob us of our joy in the Lord and our effectiveness in the world. So certainly you can tell from the above description that such endeavors and assults and conflicts must be avoided, that we must keep ourselves from getting into or indulging in them, that we must guard ourselves and our church against them.

Gary Larson was right; even the biggest jerk in the world has a few people who like him and who won't stop liking him. I was wrong; I never should have criticized that enemy (and let me tell you, I paid the price for it; that friend was a real flaky guy, so to be rebuked by him was really humiliating; to deserve a rebuke from him (as I did) was really humiliating; I really learned a lesson the hard way that day). And so we must be right and not wrong in this way. We must not allow ourselves to be dragged into such unprofitable and evil ego conflicts, such opposings of people, such ad hominem attacks.

Experiences And Events

2010-09-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

I started a new grad class this week (I'm always starting a new grad class it seems). This new class is one I'm very excited about. It's called Preaching That Connects. As I am always interested in preaching and in connecting, so I was very interested by and very eager to take this class. And as soon as this class started, I learned new things about the preaching part of the worship service as well as about the whole worship service itself. One of these things is that both the preaching part and the worship service should be "experiences" or "events". Both of the professors of this class (yes, there are two) consistently use those two terms in their lectures and other class materials; they both repeatedly refer to the preaching part as "the preaching event" and the worship service as "the worship experience". What they mean by those terms is that the preaching part and the worship service should be not meaningless rituals but meaningful encounters, deep and profound activities that impact and inspire and move and affect us.

And I think this is something that I have always known (which is really the way it usually goes; learning is more often than not realizing something you have always known rather than acquiring something you never did). I just didn't call it by those terms; I didn't refer to it as "events" or "experiences". If I called it anything, I would have called it "the sacredness" or "the solemnity" of the worship service, that is, the idea that something spiritual significant, something involving God and Jesus, was taking place. "Event" and "experience", though, is a little more specific, showing that this spiritually significant something is a meeting with God, an edifying interaction with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And I think the professors are right in using those terms. An event or experience is indeed what both the preaching part of the worship service and the worship service itself needs to be, and an event or experience is what we church ministers/leaders/workers should help them to be. Now we should help them be this not by improving or increasing the dramatic nature of these things; that would no doubt result in the performing mentality or the showmanship that I've spoken against at length in other posts. Rather, we should help them be this by encouraging and promoting this, by removing those things that distract from this, by enabling them to become this. Our worship leaders can state during worship that this is what worship is. We can work together in grace and love to really have events and experiences.

Worship is an event; preaching is an experience. All our gatherings are opportunities to encounter the wonder and beauty and glory of God. Let's remember that (as I did through this class) and let's help them to be that.

The Human Element

2010-08-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

Most who show up for a service are saying, "I came here looking for a friend, beginning with you, preacher." Most people are intent on building a silent case about how the communicator feels about them before they really tune in. Insomuch as the entire community has often failed them, they enter asking first, "Does anybody here like me?" And they are far more interested in making a friend than they are in understanding the Pentateuch.

Calvin Miller, Preaching: The Art Of Narrative Exposition

My ministerial training (the training for the ministry that I received in Bible college and seminary) and indeed my Christian training (my training for the Christian life that I received in my home church) stressed doctrine. In fact, that word doctrine was often cubed, that is, it was often said three times in succession, said as, "Doctrine, doctrine, doctrine", which shows just how much it was stressed during both of these trainings. The idea communicated to me by this was that The Faith is all about doctrine and that the church thus just needed to teach doctrine; the idea was that most people were primarily concerned with doctrine, that they carefully thought about and carefully evaluated doctrine, that they had firm stances on doctrine that they wanted to be reinforced by the church; the idea was that the most important thing for the church to do was to present people with the right doctrine and refute for people the wrong doctrine.

And I have to agree with the idea that doctrine is an important thing; doctrine (some doctrine anyway, the real doctrine of the Bible and not the contrived "doctrines" of men, the bizarre assumptions that men have engineered and then given that holy name) is infinitely important to not only teach but to know and to believe. I can't, though, agree with the idea that doctrine is the most important to most people; I don't believe that the number one thing on the minds of most people today when they walk through the church doors for the first time (or any number of times after that) is, "What is the doctrine here?", nor do I believe that the decisions people make about what to believe or not believe and what churches to stay with or leave are influenced solely or even primarily by doctrine. Rather, I think the things that are most on the minds of such people today, the things that primarily influence such decisions, are the things Calvin Miller identifies in this paragraph, things that involve how they feel and are treated (or feel they are treated), things that I for obvious reasons refer to as "the human element".

The fact that there is a human element to the people in our churches is indisputable. It is proven by the number of feuds we have in the church, feuds that have nothing to do with doctrine but everything to do with some personal slight or offense (feuds which we have had from the beginning, in fact; see Philippians 4:2). It is proven by the number of people who remain on the fringes of the church, looking around during the worship service to see if anyone is going to speak with them, then disappearing when it becomes obvious that no one will. It is proven by the number of hurt feelings and grudges we have in the church. It is proven by the fact that some people will leave not just a church but The Church because of how they've been hurt in a church. I've seen such things happen time and again, and so have you. We are humans who not only want to believe the truth but also be loved and liked and accepted and a whole host of other things besides, and so this element will always be an element of the church.

And we church ministers/leaders/workers need to be aware of that human element. While we shouldn't ignore doctrine (as some do; a preacher once told me he never preached about doctrine because "people don't care about doctrine anymore"; true story!), we shouldn't ignore this human element either. Let's teach doctrine, but let's also make friends; let's be doctrinal, but let's also be friendly, personable, and loving; when asked, "Does anybody here like me?", let's answer, "Yes."

Thankless Maintenance

2010-08-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I spent several hours pulling weeds out of the church flowerbed that faces the street. The neighbors had been complaining about these weeds for sometime, and I too had begun to think they looked bad (so bad they might drive visitors away), so I went out and pulled them. In the process, I got scratched and sunburned; I got my clothes irreparably dirty; and I got sore, so sore in my legs, in fact, that I am still a little sore today over a week later (you may wonder how I could get so sore pulling weeds; well, if you had seen these weeds, some of which came up to my waist, you wouldn't wonder anymore). But I got them pulled and now the flowerbed looks better and better represents us to the community. And all the neighbors and all our members noticed this and thanked me for this and appreciated that I did this.

Oh, wait. Scratch that last line. Nobody noticed this nor thanked me for this nor appreciated this. The neighbors may have noticed it, but they didn't thank me for it. I don't think any of our members even noticed it (which seems strange, because the weeds were, as I said, monstrously big and obvious).

And there are a couple of lessons that can be learned from that. The first is a lesson I was taught in Bible college; it is the lesson that there are some things you do that you want to do because they bring people into the church and others things you do that you have to do to keep the church from falling apart. We could call those second things "maintenance", which is what they are. They are the things we do to maintain the church, to either keep the building from falling apart or to keep the people in the building from falling apart. Those things probably aren't the things we wanted to do when we took up ministry; we probably wanted to do the growth things, the things that bring people into the church. Nonetheless, they are things we have to; they are things that have to be done. The second lesson is one I was taught by life; it is the lesson that you are very rarely rewarded for the good work you do, that many of the good works you do bring you no gratitude, not even from the people you do them for. This may seem pessimistic, but it is nonetheless true. Most good works (especially the maintenance works) are thankless works; most good works are thankless.

What does that mean for us, then? It means that if we want to be real ministers/leaders/workers we have to accept such thankless maintenance works; we have to embrace the fact that we have to do such things and won't be noticed or thanked or appreciated for doing such things. It means we have to truly believe that "doing good is its own reward" and thus continue to do good even though we won't be rewarded for it (at least, not rewarded here and now for it). This is what real ministers/leaders/workers do; they do thankless maintenance. And so this is what we must do.

Rejection

2010-08-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

On a recent episode of American Pickers, Frank and Mike, the American pickers of that title, were making some "cold calls", arriving unannounced and knocking on the doors of random houses to pass out flyers and see if folks were interesting in selling any of the items that they routinely buy. As they were doing this, they explained to the viewers that they often face a lot of rejection on such cold calls, that the people on whom they call cold aren't always receptive to them. As if to prove this, the fellow who opened the door at the very next house they knocked at told them in a very unfriendly tone, "You're interrupting me." When Frank and Mike tried to ask if there would be a better time for them to call, this fellow said, "You're disturbing me." He then threw their flyer down and slammed the door in their faces. And this clearly affected Frank and Mike. They were affected by it when it happened; it left them pretty flustered. They were affected by it hours afterward; they mentioned it a few moments later on that show. And they were affected by it days afterward; they mentioned it on a later show. They were hurt by this rejection.

Unfortunately, American pickers aren't the only ones to face such rejection. We ministers/leaders/workers often face such rejection as well. We can face such rejection when we make the kinds of cold calls that Frank and Mike were making (as I used to during my college days). We can also face such rejection in other areas. People can leave our fellowship, in effect saying, "You're not good enough to be my church". People can visit our fellowship and not come back, in effect saying that very same thing. People can avoid our classes or ignore our teachings. People can reject us in many ways. And like Frank and Mike, we can be hurt by this rejection; we can be angry that we were treated this way, we can be upset that we were treated this way, we can wonder why we were treated this way.

There is something we have to remember, though, when it comes to such rejection. What we have to remember is that it isn't us who are being rejected; rather, it is God. God Himself tells us this in 1 Samuel 8:17; there, when Samuel becomes depressed because the people have rejected his counsel, God tells him, "...it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king." In fact, God talks about how He is rejected by people often; see Numbers 11:20, Deuteronomy 32:15, and Matthew 21:42, in all of which God (or Jesus) claims to have been rejected (and those are just three of many). Not only so, but we see the prophets being rejected by various peoples at various times in their ministries, and we know that this same "Samuel principle" is in effect in those rejections, the same principle that it was not the prophets themselves who were rejected but God via the prophets that was rejected. And that same principle is also in effect in the rejection we experience in our ministries and works; that same principle is behind the rejection we experience in our ministries and works. People are often blind to the goodness of God and so often reject God through us.

No rejection is fun; all rejection hurts. There is nothing I can say and we can think to make it fun or make it not hurt. However, if we keep this principle in mind, if we understand why we are being rejected and who is really being rejected, it may hurt a little less. Rejection is sadly going to be a part of ministry (sadly for us who experience that rejection, but even more sadly for those who do the rejection, not realizing the glory of what they are rejecting). But it is not really us who is being rejected. It is the one in us, the one we represent, who is being rejected. Those doing the rejection might not know that, but we who are rejected by proxy need to.

Missing The Real Point

2010-08-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of friends were recently debating which president is "the worst president in history" (that was the key phrase of the argument). One friend said our current president is the worst president in history, while the other said that our previous president is the worst president in history. This debate got rather heated and ended when one friend stomped off angry and the other allowed him to.

And it's too bad that this debate turned out this way. It is too bad not just because two good friends got angry with each other, but it is also too bad because they got angry at each other for the wrong thing; they got angry at each other for nothing; they got angry at each other for a point that was not the point. Think about it: is proving that this president or that president is "the worst president in history" the point? Does proving either/or in this case really mean anything? Isn't the policies and actions that are involved here more important than that title? After all, it's the policies and actions that impact people, not the title "worst president in history". And isn't it possible that both presidents could have engaged in bad policies and actions? And isn't it possible that neither president could be the worst president in history, that another of our 40+ presidents could rightfully deserve that title? You see, then, that both of these men were wrong, that both of them were arguing wrongly, that both of them were missing the real point.

So often, we church ministers/leaders/workers miss the real point as well; so often we too get drawn into arguments that aren't the real arguments, into matters that aren't the real matter. And when we do so, it will often end as it did for my two friends; it will end in a relationship that is broken for nothing and in a loss of potential edification and opportunity and growth. We must always be sure, then, whenever we are arguing or discussing or doing or whatever that the points we are pursuing are the real points. We must always be sure that we haven't gotten sidetracked by a point that is no point at all, by a matter that has no meaning; we must always be sure that we aren't missing the real point.

The Blessing Of Getting Nothing

2010-08-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve,

I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked God for health, that I might do greater things,

I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

I asked for riches, that I might be happy,

I was given poverty, that I might be wise.

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men,

I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life,

I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for

- but everything I had hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am among men, most richly blessed.

This poem is anonymous; we don't know who wrote it. One tradition claims it was written by a Confederate soldier near the end of the Civil War, and yet another tradition (which may actually be a more detailed version of the previous one) claims that it was actually found on the body this soldier as it lay on a Civil War battlefield. I happened to find it in our church hymnals; as I was straightening up the sanctuary after services one Sunday, I was putting away a hymnal, and as I did, it fell open, revealing this poem, this poem in which this anonymous person speaks about the blessing of getting nothing that was asked for.

And the truth of that blessing obviously has application to each of us individually and personally. But it also has application to each of us ministerially, that is, to each of us in the ministry or church work that we do. If you are involved in such ministry or church work, you probably pray for that ministry and that church work; you probably pray for that work to be blessed in some specific way. Not only so, but you have probably seen those prayers go unanswered; you have probably had the experience of God not giving you what you wanted in or for this ministry or church work, of God not giving you what you thought you needed or had to have in or for this ministry or church work. And you've probably wondered why; you've probably despaired and gotten angry or anxious or frustrated or fearful; you've probably had negative thoughts about yourself as a minister or church worker and about God as God.

But I think the anonymous author was on to something when he (or she) said that he was blessed more by not getting what he asked for than he would have been by getting what he asked for. This anonymous author rightly realized that what he thought he wanted wasn't what he really wanted, that what he thought he needed wasn't what he really needed, that the way to get what he wanted and needed wasn't the way he thought it was. This anonymous author rightly realized that God was blessing him more by telling him "No" than He would have blessed him by telling him "Yes", by denying him than He would have by giving to him. This anonymous author rightly realized that there were greater things to be had than what he could see or identify; he even said he had a desire for these things that he didn't know he had, a desire he calls unspoken prayers.

And the same is going to be true for us. Maybe when God tells us "No" it doesn't mean that He is bad or we are bad; maybe it means that He has something better in store for us, that He is doing something better in us. Maybe there is (as I have said previously) a "big picture" to ministry and church work, a big picture that involves more than just the immediate, more than just the here and now, that involves the future and what we will be and be able to do and be able to handle in the future. Maybe it is a blessing to get nothing; maybe getting nothing is a big blessing for ministry and church work.

Promises For Ministry

2010-08-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Standing, standing, standing on the promises of God, my savior;

Standing, standing, I'm standing on the promises of God.

Russell Kelso Carter

Promises are a big part of the Christian faith, one of the biggest parts of the Christian faith, actually. The Christian salvation is based on a promise: it is offered to us as a promise and must be received as a promise (see Galatians 3:18, among many others). That's what makes it so good, great, and glorious. That's also what makes it so hard for many people (who are stuck in legal or "deeds" thinking) to accept.

Promises, though, are also a big part of Christian ministry. Not only has God given us all the promise of salvation by grace through faith in Christ, but He has also given us who have taken us His work promises about His work.

For example, there is this promise in Galatians 6:9: "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will receive a harvest if we do not give up." There is also this promise in Mark 10:29 & 30: "'I tell you the truth,' Jesus replied, 'no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in the present age...and in the age to come, eternal life.'" And there is this promise 1 Corinthians 15:58: "Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."

These are just a few of many promises God has made those who do His work, who engage in His ministry, who invest in His church: promises of reward, promises of recognition, promises of results. While we may not see these things now (as many ministers don't; as many ministers I know are currently worried about attendance and effectiveness), we will see them. They are promised to us. And so we need to work and minister and lead in accordance with these promises; we need to work and minister and lead standing on these promises.

Performing

2010-08-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Someone (who is real and dear to me and thus shall remain nameless) was recently telling me about their decision to leave their church. This person said that they had decided to leave their church because of the worship leader. When I asked them to describe what it was about this worship leader that made this person want to leave, this person used the word, "Performance." They said that rather than leading the congregation into worship, this worship leader was simply performing for his own gratification. This person then went on to tell me that this worship leader had also told the congregation, "If you don't like it, you can leave."

Now I (as you probably know) don't like the notion of people leaving their churches; I don't think this is what the Father wants us to do nor do I think it is a good thing to do. However, I have to admit that this person had a point. Actually, this person had two points. There are two legitimate transgressions which this person identified. The second is telling church members, "If you don't like it, you can leave." I don't know why some church workers say such things (and this is, unfortunately, not the only time I've heard of a church leader saying such things), but I do know that it is incredibly unspiritual, unbiblical, and just plain bone-headed thing to say to church people; it does not represent the spirit or teachings of our Lord and has no place in the church. Jesus wouldn't have said such things to His followers, and we shouldn't say such things to His followers, either.

The first, though, and the one I'm most concerned about, is performing. Again, this is not the only time I've heard a worship leader or musician be accused of performing. I've heard many such folks be accused of performing. I've heard many preachers be accused of performing as well (and seen many preacher performing with my own eyes). Indeed, it can be easy for those involved in the worship service to fall into the trap of performing. After all, the American church is set up for performing. We put a stage in a prominent place in our buildings. We like (even expect) to be entertained and we reward those who do entertain us. It is no wonder, then, that some begin to entertain us, that some begin to think they should perform, that some begin to think they are performers.

But while this is easy, it is not good. We are not to perform, but to lead, to minister, to instruct, to edify (1 Corinthians 14:26). We are not to seek applause but to offer service. Our attitude should not be that of "pushing ourselves forward" (2 Corinthians 11:20) but of "decreasing so He might increase" (John 3:30). Let us do so. Let us not try to become kings in His kingdom; let us not try to become stars in His service; let us not try to perform or be performers. Let us instead be what He has called us to be: leaders (which is much more humble than it sounds), ministers, and servants.

Pacing

2010-08-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

I just finished my last project for the class I mentioned in the previous post. It was a 10 page paper about how I've been affected by my past and how I will attempt to heal or change in the future. I didn't turn this paper in as soon as I was finished, though; I didn't need to turn it in, since I still had a week and a half before the deadline, so I didn't turn it in. Instead, I just closed it. Then I opened it again the next day, gave it a final review, and then turned it in. I did something similar during our recent VBS; now I planned and prepared many of the parts of this VBS, and there were times during this planning and preparing when I stopped, when I didn't plan or prepare any further, when I put off the planning and preparing for another day. Now why did I do this? Why did I sit on this paper for a night when I could have made the final review and turned it in right after it was finished? Why didn't I finish my planning and preparation for VBS when I had the chance? Why did I put it off for another day?

I did or didn't do these things because of what I call "pacing". I'm sure we're all familiar with this concept pacing; it is the quite simple concept of maintaining a steady but sustainable pace, of going at a speed fast enough to get you where you need to go but not fast enough to burn you out. Pacing is a common technique in the athletic world (distance runners keep up a certain pace in their races, and usually that pace is not the absolute fastest they can go), the military world (the Roman fighting phalanx allowed for the pacing of the soldiers; when done correctly, the average soldier would only need to fight for 20 minutes of each hour), and many other worlds. And it should be a common technique in the spiritual world as well, a common technique in the world of both walking with God and serving the church.

It is certainly a common technique for me. I pace myself in my daily devotions. When I first started doing devotions in Bible college, I would read six or seven chapters of the Bible a day (a practice encouraged by my Bible college professors). But I soon realized two things: 1) though I was reading these chapters, I wasn't really reading them; I wasn't contemplating them or absorbing them; my eyes were going over the words but my mind was just trying to get through the task, and 2) I was going to do devotions all of my life, and since there is only so much Bible to read, so there was no need to hurry. Now I read very little each day (usually one chapter, sometimes less, and I often read it several times over); I started doing this about five years ago, and have benefited from it; I learn a lot more reading less with comprehension than much without. I even take days off of devotions; I think this is appropriate. And I also pace myself in my church work; I don't try to do more in any one day than I should do. I learned early on the value of looking at a sermon through "fresh eyes", that is, of taking a break during sermon crafting and coming back to it refreshed. This is particularly helpful in getting through dry spells; when I just can't figure out where to go next in a sermon, I take a break, and when I come back, I usually have it figured out. This kind of pacing was even endorsed by a fellow minister; this minister once told me, "Delegate daily"; by this, he meant that I should find something to delegate every day, that is, to delegate to another day, to delegate to getting done some other time.

Now I'm not calling for pessimism or sloth or laziness; we all know the biblical teaching about such things. What I am calling for, though, is reasonableness, a very profitable reasonableness. Productivity drops off at a certain point; frustration builds up at a certain point; there is a certain point where "turning and burning" or grinding away or pushing through just doesn't make sense anymore. This has been scientifically proven beyond all debate, notably by Napoleon, who tried to make his soldiers work a ten day week instead of a seven day and almost killed them. It is also scriptural, being supported by the Sabbath concept if by nothing else. And so it is what we ought to do. Let's work for the Lord, my friends, but let's work for him at a good pace, a productive pace, a healthy pace. Let's practice pacing.

P.S. The above-mentioned minister often encouraged me to take a small amount of time everyday to relax myself. He said that I should stop in the middle of sermon writing or studying and do something that made me laugh or smile. His suggestion? Watch "The Hamster Dance", which, if you have never seen it, can be found here.

Functionality

2010-08-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

I just finished my latest grad class. This class was called "Heritage And Leadership". I had no idea what it was when I signed up for it; I thought it was about ministering to seniors (those with a "heritage" in The Faith). It actually was about me, about what wounds I may have in my heritage that are affecting me in the ministry. And this very helpful class covered a lot of territory; it encompassed things such as "attachment styles" (how someone attaches or do not attach to other people) and forgiveness. It also covered family relationships and family systems. Now these family relationships (or as others call them, the family cohesion) and family systems (or family flexibility) could be graphed on a spectrum. On one end of the relationships or cohesion spectrum was "enmeshed" and on the other was "disengaged". That spectrum can be diagrammed like this:

In the same way, on the one end of the systems or flexibility spectrum was "chaotic" and on the other end was "rigid". That spectrum can be diagrammed like this:

Not only so, but since these two family spectrums actually work together, these two diagrams can be combined to look like this:

And what should be obvious from these diagrams and the terms they use is that no family should want to be on either extreme of either spectrum. No family should want to be chaotic and disengaged or rigid and enmeshed or any of other possibilities. Those extremes and all the variations between them are what are called "dysfunctional"; the closer a family gets to these extremes, they will become less functional as a family. Rather, all families should want to be as close to the center of each spectrum and to the place where both spectrums intersect as possible, the center and place that is referred to as "attached" and "adaptable". In this area, families are connected; not overly connected or under-ly connected but appropriately connected. In this area, families have adjustability; there is a standard, but the standard can be amended when necessary and profitable. This is clearly the healthiest place on the spectrum; this is clearly the functional place; this is clearly the place for families to be.

And it is clearly the place for our church to be as well. Our church is a family; we are called that in the Scriptures (Ephesians 3:15) and we are to behave like that in our operations. As such a family, then, we face the dangers of being either rigid or chaotic and of being either disengaged or enmeshed and of being some combination of both. What we should be, though, is what every family should be: adjustable and attached. And nobody has the ability to help our church be that kind of family that more than we church ministers/leaders/workers do. Let us endeavor to do so; let us endeavor to help our church family be a healthy family, an attached and adaptable family, a functional family.

It Don't Come Easy

2010-08-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

"You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues, and you know it don't come easy..."

Ringo Starr, "It Don't Come Easy"

I'm not sure exactly what the "it" in the lyric above is referring to; I'm not exactly sure what Ringo is saying "don't come easy". It could be "the blues" which he mentioned earlier,or it could be something else (it could be anything else, actually; "it" could just be a vague term for anything that causes or requires hardship). I doubt very seriously it is ministry; I doubt that Ringo had ministry in mind when he wrote these lyrics. Nonetheless, it could be ministry, that is, we could reinterpret it as being ministry. We could do so because it is true of ministry; we could do so because ministry (or leadership or church work of any kind) don't come easy.

We see how uneasy ministry is (how easy ministry don't come?) repeatedly in the Scripture. Isaiah, who is today regarded as the "Prince of Prophets", had difficulties in his ministry; at one point he said to God, "Who has believed our message...?" (Isaiah 53:1), which probably indicates that the people had had preached to had not believed his message, that the greater majority of these people had rejected his message. Jeremiah had such a hard time in his ministry that he said this: " O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach all day long."(Jeremiah 20:7 & 8); his ministry, then, was also not well-received or appreciated by the people; in fact, the people ridiculed, insulted, and reproached him for his preaching, and he became so frustrated that he said he had been deceived by God. And the Apostle Paul likewise faced and endured incredible hardship in his ministry; when he was called into ministry, God said, "I will show him how much he must suffer for my name" (Acts 9:16), and he later described his ministry in Macedonia by saying, "this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflicts on the outside, fears within..." (2 Corinthians 7:5), and he even later summed up his entire ministry by saying, "I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?" (2 Corinthians 11:23-29). Even when things were going well, they still weren't easy for him; in 1 Corinthians 16:8 & 9, he says, "But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me."; even his open doors, then, came with opposition.

And if ministry didn't come easy for these men, then it isn't likely to come easy for us, either. We will, like them, have all sorts of hurts and setbacks and disappointments and losses in ministry: people won't listen to us, they won't accept our message, they'll attack us in some way. And because of the spirit of our age, the Bible bookstore spirit which bombards us with men and women who look as if their ministry is a breeze and they lead people to the Lord every time they step out of their house and they are loved and listened to, we might begin to think that the difficulties of our ministry is evidence that something is wrong; we might think it is evidence that we are doing ministry wrong or we are wrong. But this is not the case. Rather, the case is that ministry by nature is not easy. If someone makes it look easy, they are not being honest (they are hiding something). If it ever is easy for someone, then they probably aren't doing ministry; they may be doing something, but it probably isn't real ministry.

Don't be disheartened, then, by the hardships you face as a minister/leader/worker. These hardships might put you out with the Bible bookstore crowd, but it puts you in with Isaiah and Jeremiah and Paul and the many others throughout the centuries who are living proof that what Ringo said is right, living proof that "it don't come easy".

Knocking Off Knee Jerks

2010-08-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

Several older preachers (as I may or may not have said in previous post) have passed along to me the little maxim, "Never resign on Monday." What they were cautioning me against in that little maxim was reacting too quickly to the frustrations of ministry. In fact, what they were cautioning me against in that little maxim was reacting period to the frustrations of ministry; they were telling me not to react to the frustrations of ministry, not to have "knee jerk" reactions (that is, reflexive, radical reactions) to the frustrations of ministry.

This caution against knee jerk reactions, though, doesn't apply only to the preachers of the church. It applies to every minister/leader/worker in the church. Preachers aren't the only ones who can jerk their knees and resign on Mondays. All ministers/leaders/workers can do so as well. We can snap at those who do something we don't like. We can toss out snide comments in the worship service. We can quit. We can react in any number of similar ways.

We can, but we shouldn't. While knee jerk reactions of this type work wonders in movies, they will not work at all in real life. Such reactions will not improve the church or our ministries. Instead, they will damage our church and our ministries; they may even irreparably damage them. Does anybody think it would be good for me to start tossing around resignations every time I get frustrated? Does anybody think that would turn out well for either my ministry or the ministry of the church? I don't. I think that would ruin both. And the same is true of most reactions.

And so we need to stop those reactions. Conventional wisdom encourages those who are angry to hold off for a count of ten before speaking, but we of the church need to do more than that; we need to hold off until what we do and say is certain to be beneficial for the church, our ministries, and ourselves. Instead of reacting foolishly, we need to act wisely; we need, in short, to knock off the knee jerks.

Precision

2010-08-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

A member called me at the office a couple of days ago. This member needed help setting up his new computer, help which I who am more experienced in setting up new computers than I wish, was happy to give. Now setting up a new computer is a relatively easy thing. Setting up this members new computer, though was much more difficult for two reasons. The first is that we were trying to do it over the phone, which meant that I could not see what he was seeing on his screen, and the second was that this person did not know the proper computer terms and so could not accurately or easily describe to me what he was seeing on his screen. The end result was that it took much longer to set up this new computer than it should have which in turn led to me getting slightly frustrated (sinful, I know; please forgive me).

And this slightly frustrating event reminded me of what I believe is a great need in church work and church life: the need to be precise. This need was hammered into me by Jack Cottrell, one of my seminary professors. When teaching the book of Romans, Professor Cottrell repeatedly stressed the need to be precise; he was always telling us that we needed to be precise when discussing theology. What I see now, though, is that we need to be precise not only in discussing theology but in all our discussions. We ministers/leaders/workers must be precise in all our speech, because if we aren't, it can greatly hinder the collective understanding of what is being said; we must be precise in what we say so that the other ministers/leaders/workers will understand what is being said. Not only so, but we need to be precise in our thoughts as well; often times we have a desire for something or we sense a problem somewhere, but if we aren't precise in what that desire or problem is, we won't be able to fully realize or solve it. Precision, then, in speech and in thought, is key to accomplishment; precision in speech and thought is key to accomplishing what we want to accomplish in the church.

We can forgive those who are not savvy in computer terms; that's not really a big deal, no matter how frustrating it might be. We need to endeavor, though, to be savvy in church terms, to be savvy in the terms and the ideas and the communications we use to do the work of the church. So let's indeed endeavor to do that; let's endeavor to be precise.

P.S. While writing this post, I was reminded of a time when I wasn't precise. While working at the book warehouse in Cincinnati, I and a co-worker had gone into the upstairs offices to deliver some packages. As we did so, this co-worker asked me what he was supposed to do. Now what I meant to say to him was that he was to put his packages in a container on the outside of the office doors. But what I ended up saying was, "Put the thing in the thing!" Who could misunderstand that?

Waiting On The Lord

2010-08-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

The waiting is the hardest part...
"The Waiting", Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

I was raised by the TV. I'm not at all bitter about that; I'm more of the "my parents did the best they could" school than "my parents messed me up" school. Nonetheless, it is true that my hardworking parents didn't have as much time for me as either they or I would have liked, so they basically dropped me in front of a television and said, "There you go." Television, then, was my great mentor during my formative years. As a result, I sometimes have a distorted view of reality. I won't list all of the ways TV distorted my view of reality, as doing so could get me in a large amount of trouble. But one way it distorted my view of reality is that it made me think that problems should be resolved quickly; thanks to episodic television, I tend to think that every problem should be fixed within 30 to 60 minutes (that is, the duration of a half hour sitcom or one hour drama).

Unfortunately, it rarely works out that way. Problems in real life are very rarely resolved within such a time frame; most problems take days or weeks or months or even years to resolve. This is also true of problems in The Faith; this is especially true of problems in The Faith. Though it would be nice to think that all our ministry and church problems could be immediately fixed with a quick meeting or a easy change, the fact is that such immediate fixes are hardly ever the case. Many problems, if not most problems, even in the ministry and the church take very long time, even ages, to resolve.

And that is where the biblical practice of waiting or waiting on the Lord comes into play. As Christians and as Christian workers, we often have to wait for lengthy periods of time for God to resolve such problems for us. We see such waiting often in the Scriptures. For example, in 1 Samuel 13, Saul was instructed to "wait" for Samuel to tell him what to do (unfortunately, he did not do this; instead of waiting, he took matters into his own hands and made a mess of things). Psalm 24:17 encourages us to "be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord", while Psalm 37:7 tells us to "be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him". The classic Isaiah 40:31 tells us that "those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary." And these are just few of many. The fact of the matter, then, is that ministry isn't always about taking matters into our own hands (which will often yield the same results for us as they did for Saul), nor is it about solving everything yesterday, but rather it is often about waiting for God to do something in His time.

And that's what we need to do. The waiting, as Tom Petty so eloquently said, is the hardest part, but that is often the part that God has given us. When we look at the problems we face, then (financial difficulties, building issues, evangelistic and discipleship opportunities, etc ad infinitum), let us not look at things that we should fix or things that should be fixed instantly. Instead, let us look at them as things to wait upon the Lord for; let us wait for God to fix these things for us when He will as only He can.

P.S. I told the professor of my latest class that TV has led me to think that every problem should be resolves within 30 to 60 minutes. As he is a professional psychologist who actively counsels patients, he replied that he routinely resolves problems in 50 minutes (which is an "hour" of counseling time). The entire class thought that was pretty funny.

Proper Respect

2010-07-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.

Otis Redding via Aretha Franklin

I once heard a preacher at a family camp make this statement to the people of the various churches: he said, "If you ask a man to leave his home and travel across the country to be your preacher, you better respect him." Now the people of the various churches at this family camp did not clap at this statement as they often clapped at other bold statements, which makes me think that it fell rather flat. Nonetheless, it was said and it was heard (at least by me).

And it is also true. Preachers and all other church workers should be respected by the churches for which they work; some should be highly respected as they are diligent workers who have made great sacrifices to do church work, while others should be "at least" respected as they are people (that is, they should not be hated or disdained even if they aren't doing what they should for whatever reason or aren't doing it as good as they should for whatever reason).

It doesn't stop there, though. These preachers and church workers should respect the church for which they work in return. There should, in fact, be a mutual respect among all the people of the church; workers and congregants should all mutually respect each other. The Scriptures even describe and command such mutual respect. In 1 Peter 2:17, for example, our Apostle Peter says, "Show proper respect for everyone: love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king." So he not only tells us to respect everyone in general (which would include everyone in the church), but he also gives us a couple examples of what such respect for certain individuals or groups will look like.

Unfortunately, we often fail to do this, to show this respect. This was a big problem in the first Bible college I attended. The philosophy of this college, as evidenced both by direct statement and indirect attitude, was that the preacher is the true leader of the church and everyone else is just an obstacle that he manipulates to get what he wants. In fact, on one occasion, a professor said that elders are usually "stupid" and that the preacher needs to neutralize and compartmentalize them. Not only so, but we're all familiar with the "roast preacher" or "roast elder" phenomenon, the phenomenon by which the people and the workers of the church roast each other. Such neutralize and compartmentalizing and roasting is very common, even accepted and promoted, in the church.

It is not healthy for the church, though, nor is it right or godly. God doesn't want us neutralizing, compartmentalizing, and roasting each other. He wants us respecting each other. And so we need to both because this is what He wants and because this is what will make our ministry great. We need to show proper respect for one another; we need to properly respect one another.

P.S. The 1 Peter 2:17 passage is only one of several that command respect both in the church arena and every other arena of life. Look up respect in a commentary and see how often this word appears in the Scriptures and how widely it is applied.

Bureaucracy, Or, More Accurately, Bureau-crazy

2010-07-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to take a motorcycle riding class today. I say "supposed to" because I didn't actually get to. I arrived at the class five minutes after the starting time and was refused admittance. Now the class tardiness policy has been clearly explained on the registration forms, so I can't fault anybody for that. However, I was five minutes late because 1) an emergency vehicle had blocked the road and 2) I couldn't find the class site. Not only so, but I had also invested a significant amount of time, money, and energy getting my materials for the class and had excelled in the previous class, mastering the material that was taught. For all those very good reasons, I thought my five minute tardiness was understandable and should be excused. Alas, it was not. I was turned away nonetheless.

This is yet another perfect example of something that is very prevalent in our world and our society. That something is bureaucracy, that is, a slavish adherence to and overly harsh application of a rigid set of rules and regulations. While many folks seem to embrace such bureaucracy, I do not; I hate such bureaucracy; I think it is bureau-crazy.

And some of my opinion of bureaucracy no doubt comes from my cultural heritage. According to one of my sources, the ancient Scots were no fans of bureaucracy either; they favored common sense. They favored common sense so much that they would actually allow their legal judges to reach verdicts apart from precedent, even if one verdict contradicted another. They did so because they knew that there are times when bureaucracy just doesn't work, when the strict application of rule is neither far nor reasonable, when regulations do more harm than good. This is a mentality that I believe has been passed on to me.

The rest of my opinion of bureaucracy, though, comes from the Scriptures and the God of the Scriptures. Neither God nor the Bible seem to endorse bureaucracy. For example, in Isaiah 28:9 & 10, the prophet ridicules people for having a religious bureaucracy; he says,

Who is it he is trying to teach?

To whom is he explaining his message?

To children weaned from their milk,

to those just taken from the breast?

For it is:

"Do and do, do and do,

rule on rule, rule on rule;

a little here, a little there."

By being bureaucrats or bureaucratic, then, the ancient Israelites had corrupted the simple Faith into a complex but simultaneously childish religion, something which was not only contemptible but laughable (Isaiah is actually lampooning these Israelite bureaucrats here; it is possible that the final three lines are not even words at all but just gibberish which Isaiah tossed out to represent the Israelite bureaucrats nonsensical speech). Not only so, but you don't see a bureaucracy among the early Christians; instead, what you see is simple, genuine people living the simple, genuine Faith in simple, genuine ways.

And that is how we should be as well. I understand that we need rules and regulations to give us a general idea of what should and should be done, of how things should and should not go. But we also need what my Bible college psychology professor called "sweet reasonableness"; we need to be able to interpret and apply these rules and regulations with reason and sense and, above all, the Spirit. Let us do so, my friends, in our congregation; let us not be bureaucrats; let's not allow our church and our church practices become a bureaucracy or a bureau-crazy.

P.S. In case you're wondering, it probably was God's will that I didn't attend the class today. It benefited me in several ways, including writing this post!

Different Solutions From Different Thinkers

2010-07-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Heather sent me to the store the other day to get Cheerios. At the store, I found that the extra-big box of Cheerios was on sale (was, in fact, cheaper than the small box), so I bought that. When I got home, though, I discovered that this extra-big box of Cheerios was too big to fit in the kitchen cabinet where we normally keep the cereal. I tried putting it in vertically and I tried putting it in horizontally and I just couldn't get it to fit either way. Figuring, then, that I'd never get it to fit, that I had tried every option for getting it to fit, I gave up on trying to make it fit; I put it on top of the refrigerator and forgot about it. Today, though, as I went to get my breakfast, I grabbed a bowl and turned to the refrigerator only to see that the Cheerios weren't there. Confused, I looked around for the Cheerios without finding them anywhere. Out of desperation, I finally opened up the cabinet and found them there. My wife had put them there, had put them where I wanted to put them but was unable to put them. How had she done it? She had put them in there diagonally; she had turned the box diagonal and it fit just fine. Strange as it seems, I would never have thought of this simple little tactic; I'm a pretty good organizer in my own right, but I have my hard and fast thought patterns and they didn't include the diagonal. My wife, then, solved a problem I could not by thinking in a way I did not.

And this same phenomenon (as I realized as I poured my bowl of Cheerios) often occurs in the ministry. There are times when very good thinkers get stuck thinking in a few very good ways only to find that those very good ways don't apply very well to a particular situation, times when some other very good thinker thinks in a very different way and finds a different and better solution to a particular situation. And that that is not something to lament or regret or gripe about, my friends. Rather, that is something to praise and thank God for. This is how God designed us; this is how God set us up. He knew that no one person, no matter how good of a thinker they are, will be able to see the best solution for every situation, and so He put us together so that one person can see the solution that another person can't and vice versa. He made us to be a body (as described in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12) so that we could fill in what each other lacks and could benefit from what each other has, so that as a body we would be able to do more than we could as individuals, so that as a body we would be able to solve the problems we couldn't solve on our own.

And since God has set us up in this way, and since we can really benefit from this way, so we should really embrace this way. We should not take it upon ourselves to solve every problem, nor should we be reluctant to accept someone else's solution to a problem. Instead, we should see that there are different solutions from different thinkers and we should allow and embrace those different solutions to come from those different thinkers.

What You Win Them With

2010-06-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a little bit of preacherly wisdom that has been passed on to me: "What you win them with is what you win them to." This is one of those sayings that was tossed around by the older preachers in Ohio, one of those sayings that you would hear every once in a while at a family camp or revival meeting. And I wouldn't disagree if you said this saying is a little narrow and outdated. I would disagree, though, if you said this saying is wrong. I would disagree because I don't think it is wrong, not completely wrong. I think there is some truth to this saying; I actually think there is a lot of truth to this saying. I think that what you win them with is indeed what you win them to.

And since that is true, my friends, since it is true that what we win them with is what we win them to, so we have to be extremely wise about what we win them with lest we win them to the wrong thing. Say, for example, we win them with a show; we have a Sunday morning service that is entertaining and exciting and perfect and polished. What have we won them to, then? We've won them to a show; their loyalty now lies with that experience, and if that experience ever changes or lessens or if there is a better experience down the road, they will be gone. Or say we win them with "fire and brimstone"; we intimidate and manipulate. What have we won them to? We have won them to fire and brimstone, or, more accurately a fear of fire and brimstone, and if we ever stop intimidating and manipulating them in this way, they will be gone as well. Clearly, then, there are several wrong things to win them with, things that are not just wrong in principle and wrong in practice but wrong in result.

So what should we win them with, then? Well, to answer that question, we have to ask another: what are we trying to win them to? And that one should be obvious. We are trying to win them to Jesus, to a love for Jesus and a life lived with Jesus in fellowship with the people of Jesus. And since that's what we're trying to win them to, so that's what we should be trying to win them with. We should be trying to win them with nothing more and nothing less and nothing other than Jesus, our honorable, noble, powerful, wonderful Lord, Master, and Savior; we, the body (or even the embodiment) of Christ should be trying to win them with the truth and the teachings and the ways and the spirit of Christ. Now how will that turn out? Probably not as well as winning them with a show or with fire and brimstone, at least not at first. But it will turn out well in time; it will, in fact, turn out better in time. This may not produce fast results, but it will produce eternal results.

Maybe its a little narrow and outdated, then, but it is also true. What we win them with is indeed what we win them to. So let's win them with the right thing so we can win them to the right thing; let's win them with Jesus.

I Praise You, God

2010-06-28T08:00:00.001-07:00

Here's a new worship song the FCCPH band and I wrote. The video is not so polished and we need to work on our mix a little bit, but the spirit of the song shines through. If you missed it Sunday, give it a look/listen.

Doesn't Matter What They Say

2010-06-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

I heard two comments about myself today from two different sources. The first came from a teacher at the Christian school; she had heard me speak at the community Maundy Thursday celebration and she told me that she loved my message and could tell that I was "on fire for God". The second come from a fellow in town; he told me, "I know some folks say different, but I think you're a pretty good minister." Now that first comment was definitely a compliment; this lady "liked" me, I guess you could say, and so said good things about me. The second comment was a criticism; the fellow meant it as a compliment, of course, but in complimenting me he simultaneously revealed the fact that there were others who criticized me, other who didn't like me and so said bad things about me. So on one day, I got both praise and condemnation; on the very same day there were those who praised me and those who condemned me.

Now that is a contradiction, of course, and every contradiction needs to be reconciled. So how do we reconcile this contradiction? How do we reconcile this praise with this condemnation? How do we reconcile the fact that I was complimented by one person and criticized by others on the very same day? Well, we could reconcile it by saying that the praise/compliment was correct and the condemnation/criticism was incorrect (and the flesh side of me would really like to reconcile it that way). We could also, though, reconcile it by saying that the condemnation/criticism was correct and the praise/compliment was incorrect (and the flesh side of the others that fellow mentioned would probably like to reconcile it that way). There is another way to reconcile it, though, a way that really is the right way. We can reconcile it by saying that both are incorrect, or, perhaps more accurately, that neither is entirely correct and thus that neither really matters.

This is in fact the reconciliation of such contradictions that we see in the Scriptures. God's servants in the past were routinely complimented and criticized by various parties, but they did not give much credence to these compliments and criticisms. For example, in 1 Corinthians 4:3, Paul, speaking about how others spoke about him, says, "I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself." And then in 2 Corinthians 10:18, he talks about commendation in general and says, "For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends." (and what he says here about commendation would also apply to condemnation). Not only so, but in 1 Thessalonians 2, he talks about being praised and says, "We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else." (and again, what he says here about praise is also true about criticism). What Paul is telling us in all these verses, then, is that it doesn't matter so much what good or bad people say about us but that it instead matters far more what good or bad God says about us.

And not only do we see that in the Scriptures, but we can see that in a little Scriptural logic as well. For example, we know from the Scriptures that there were people who criticized Moses and Joshua and Nehemiah and many of the other ancient men of faith, and yet today these men are universally recognized as some of the greatest men in history. In the same way, we know from the Scriptures that there were people who praised Ahab and Jezebel and all the other kings of Israel and Judah, and yet today these rulers are universally recognized as some of the worst rulers to ever reign. What can we conclude from this then? That people who criticize and people who compliment are almost never right, that people who talk almost never know what they are talking about!

This is even something I have learned from my personal ministerial experience. When I first started preaching, it meant so much to me for people to say, "Good sermon" (or some equivalent); if they said that at the end of my message, I felt validated, and if they didn't, I felt rejected. After a few years of experience, though (or maybe even a few months; I'm not sure how long it took), neither hearing nor not hearing that had any effect on me. This was for two reasons: 1) I had learned what a good sermon is and is not and so could make that determination myself (i.e., I could know if it was a good sermon even if nobody said it was good and if it was a bad sermon even if everybody said it was bad), and 2) I had seen enough people sleep through my sermons only to tell me how good it was at the end of the service that I came to understand that those words are meaningless!

And that is what we must keep in mind as ministers/leaders/workers. People are going to say things, both good and bad, about us if we choose to be ministers/leaders/workers, but those things don't really matter; it doesn't really matter what people say, and we must realize that it doesn't really matter what people say. In fact, we not only must realize that it doesn't really matter but we also can't allow it to matter. We can't let the good things they say go to our heads, and we can't let the bad things they say go to our hearts. Let's not fret, my friends, over the criticisms or condemnations, and let's not gloat over the compliments or praises. Instead, let's do what is right (as I stated in the previous post), and then let's wait to see what God says.

P.S. The astute among us may have noticed that the title of this post is taken from the classic 80s song "Our Lips Are Sealed" by the Go-Gos. Strange place to go for theology, I guess, but as you know, I take it where I can find it.

Keep Doing What Is Right

2010-06-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

A fellow came to see me in the office the other day. During our visit, we somehow got on the topic of sports which in turn led to former football coach Tony Dungy. Now I had known that Dungy won a Super Bowl in 2007 as head coach of the Indianaoplis Colts. What I had not known, though, and what this fellow told me, is that Dungy had lost several playoff games in the late 1990s as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccanneers and been fired for it. This fellow then went on to tell me that though Dungy had lost these games and been fired for it, he did not change his coaching style or philosophy. Instead, he continued that same coaching style and philosophy in Indianapolis. He did the same thing in Indianapolis that he had done in Tampa Bay because he knew they were the right things to do and he ultimately got a Super Bowl ring to prove they were the right things to do.

Now I can't verify that what this fellow told me about Dungy is true; I can't verify that Dungy did not change his coaching style and philosophy after being fired. I'm not able to analyze things like coaching styles and philosophies so I just can't comment on it. But I can verify that principle, that principle of continuing to do what is right despite the immediate results, continuing to do what is known to be right despite what others say about it and how others react to it and how it happens to turn out at the present moment. I can verify that as both a good principle in general and a good principle that we need to implement in church work and ministry. The fact of the matter, my friends, is that the right thing doesn't always seem right, that the right thing doesn't always give us the results we'd like right away. Because of that, many people are quick to criticize or quit the right way; many people are quick to look for something else to give them the results they want as fast as they want them. But that is always a colossal mistake. It is a mistake because if we quit doing what is right, we are automatically doing what is wrong (or at least not as right). And while that wrong or not as right thing might give us some results, it will never give us the kind of results that the right thing ultimately will; it can't; it can't give us those results because it is not right. There is a great need, then, to stick with what is right, a great need for us to stick with what is right regardless of it's immediate results.

The right way (the way of grace, the way of love, the way of truth, the simple way of living and sharing Jesus) will work. It might not work as we would like or as fast as we would like, but it will work; it will ultimately bring us good and godly results. And so we shouldn't abandon it no matter what hardships it brings us. We should instead keep doing it; we should keep doing what is right.

The Payoff Of Pain

2010-06-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters in my Sunday morning message (it was the "Two Wisdoms" message which you can hear to the right). Specifically, I talked about a woman Lewis describes in one passage of that book, a woman who had an "all-I-want state of mind". After looking up that passage and including it in my message, though, something occurred to me: Lewis must have written about such a woman because he had encountered such a woman. In fact, Lewis could only have been able to write about that behavior and could only be motivated to write about such behavior by experiencing and presumably being hurt by such behavior. Lewis must have been pained to some degree by such a person at some point in his life, but that pain had paid off by enabling him and driving him to warn other believers about such a sin.

Now that pattern is not really unique. We see it repeated over an over again in all parts of life. I've always heard it said that pain was what made artists great artists (I once heard Katie Couric say something to that effect to singer Chris Isaak; she told him his rough life had made him a better songwriter, and he said, "I'd rather be a mediocre artist and have a swinging life."). I've also heard it said that "true wisdom only comes from pain" (that's a line from an Asia song). And I have heard (and seen and experienced) that pain (as demonstrated by Lewis and his all-I-want woman) is what makes good ministry. Though we tend to think that pain is nothing more than a penalty for a mistake, that pain is an indicator that we are doing something wrong, the opposite is actually true; pain could be preparation for better and lasting impact on the lives of others; pain could be an indication that God is teaching us something that we can share with others.

Ministry involves pain; sorry folks, but it does. It inevitably leads to painful encounters with the all-I-want state of mind and all sorts of other evil states of mind. However, that pain can have a payoff; that pain can actually have a huge payoff for ministry. It can enable us to speak out and oppose evil states of mind, speak out and oppose them in a way that echoes through the centuries, just like Lewis did. We're not going to miss the pain, my friends, so let's be sure not to miss the payoffs, either; let's seize pain for what it is worth and turn it around to be profit for the Kingdom.

P.S. The title of this post is a play on Lewis' The Problem of Pain, one of his more famous books in which he discusses such matters.

Competing With Horses

2010-06-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

In 1997, psychotherapist Richard Carlson released a book called Don't Sweat The Small Stuff...And It's All Small Stuff. Now I have not read this book, but I'm quite familiar with the phrase don't sweat the small stuff from its title. That phrase has been used by many people both before and after Carlson; it has been used by many people both before and after Carlson to encourage other people not to be overcome by small things.

And Carlson and the people both before and after him who have used that phrase are not the only ones to give us this advice. Our God has given us similar advice. He does so in the book of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 12:5, God speaks to the prophet, who had apparently become overwhelmed with his ministry, whose ministerial hardships had apparently brought him into despair and frustration and exhaustion, and He says, "If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?" In those two statements, God is using the classical logical technique of arguing from the lesser to the greater. In this case, the lesser is racing with men and walking through safe country, which both refer to the relatively small and easy ministry which Jeremiah was doing at the present time, and the greater is competing with horses and walking through the thickets by the Jordan, which both refer to the much larger and harder ministry which Jeremiah wanted to do in the future. Putting it all together, then, God was saying to Jeremiah, "How can you expect to do much larger and harder ministry in the future when you're allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by the small and easy ministry of the present?" or, to adopt Carlson's terms, "How can you hope to do the big stuff when you keep sweating the small stuff?"

That's a good question, my friends, one which applies not only to Jeremiah but also to us. Obviously, a minister/leader/worker, whether Jeremiah of old or one of us today, cannot aspire to do the greater when they can't handle the lesser, cannot expect to do much larger and harder ministry in the future when they allow themselves to be overcome by the small and easy ministry of the present, cannot hope to do the big stuff when they keep sweating the small stuff. It is an impossibility, one which I think we all can readily recognize. What, then, is the solution to that impossibility? The solution is just as Carlson says; it is to not sweat the small stuff, to not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the small and easy ministry, to not be worn out by men, to not stumble in safe country, to not allow despair and frustration and exhaustion to win. As much as I hate to chalk up ministry (or any other aspect of the walk with God) to human effort, I do think that's what God is calling for here; He is calling for Jeremiah and us to make an effort, an effort not to be overcome.

And I can't speak for you, my friends, but I can speak for me. I know that I do want to compete with horses. I know that I want to forge through the thickets by the Jordan. I know I want to move on to the larger and harder ministries. So I need to make this effort. We all need to make this effort, this effort to not be worn out by men, to not stumble in safe country, to not sweat the small stuff.

Loving The Lacking

2010-06-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a "joke" a fellow preacher told me a few years ago: Why are the seats in churches called pews? Because the people who sit in them are stinkers.

And as you can tell from that "joke", this preacher didn't think very highly of church people (which would certainly include his own people, the people in the congregation he served); we could probably even presume from that "joke" that he didn't even like church people. And the reason he didn't think very highly of or even like church people is because such people were often lacking, that is, they were lacking in their walk with God, lacking in their doctrine and their practice and their spirit in some way; the reason he didn't think very highly of or even like church people is because such people weren't as good as they should be (and there is no presumption there; I knew this guy and I knew that's why he didn't think very highly of or even like church people).

And I can understand that sentiment, my friends; there are plenty of times in which I too think that church people are lacking in their walk with God, that church people aren't as good as they should be; in fact, I've sensed this same sentiment in all of my ministerial friends; we were even warned about this in Bible college, warned that the spiritual climate in the churches would not be as high as it was in Bible college, a fact that has greatly disappointed and devastated some of my ministerial friends. So I can understand that sentiment, my friends, the sentiment that church people are "stinkers".

But while I can understand that sentiment, I cannot accept it. I cannot accept it because it is wrong. We see how wrong this sentiment is in 1 Thessalonians 3:10. Now all through 1 Thessalonians 1-3, Paul talks about how much he loves the Thessalonian Christians; he says that he always thanks God for them (1:2) and knows God has chosen them (1:4) and that he loved them as a mother (2:7) and as a father (2:11) and that he shared his life with them (2:8) and that he longed to see them (2:17) and that they were his hope, joy, and crown (2:19). So he clearly has very strong positive feelings for these people. But then in 3:10 he says this: Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. From that, we see very clearly that Paul's love for the Thessalonians was not based on the spiritual perfection of the Thessalonians; it could not be based on the spiritual perfection of the Thessalonians because the Thessalonians were not spiritually perfect. They were lacking something. Now Paul doesn't say what that something was. It could have been a doctrine. It could have been a practice. It could have been a spiritual quality. It could have been a zeal for the Lord. It could have been anything. Whatever it was, though, it was important, so important that Paul planned on giving it to the Thessalonians when he was finally able to be with them again. And yet, even though they didn't have this important thing, even though they were lacking in some way, Paul still loved them; he still loved them tremendously.

And we need to do likewise. As spiritual leaders, we are by necessity going to be somewhat more mature or complete than those we lead; we will be default be able to see areas in which they are lacking. But we can't allow that to make us think poorly of them or dislike them; we can't allow that to convince us that they are stickers and regard them as such. Rather, we have to love them anyway; we have to love them greatly anyway. That's what Paul did, and that's what we must do. We must love the lacking.

Irrigation

2010-06-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

This post was published as my monthly article in the June newsletter. I published it there because my passion for the topic greatly grew as I began to think about it. I had originally intended it to be a post, though, a post that would follow on the previous one (Aggregators), and so wanted to reprint it here.

We of the church talk and have talked for years about "planting seeds", that is, planting the seeds of the Gospel in people, doing or saying something that will implant a kernel of the faith in others' hearts, a kernel that might come to fruition at some later time. Now this idea of planting seeds is indeed a biblical idea; we see this idea in Matthew 13:3-23, Jesus' Parable of the Sower, where "the seed" represents "the message about the kingdom", and in Mark 4:26 & 27, Jesus' Parable of the Growing Seed, where "seed" again represents the message about the kingdom, and in 1 Corinthians 3:6, where Paul says, "I planted the seed" and 9:11, where he says, "...we have sown spiritual seed among you". However, planting seed or seeds is not the full idea here; there is another part to it, one we don't talk about so much: the idea of watering or irrigation.

Every farmer, of course, knows the value of irrigation, of watering or bringing water to the crops. Probably most non-farmers know it as well; you only have to look as far as the desert or as far back as the last drought to see what happens to crops and plants where there is no water. The biblical authors knew the value of irrigation as well; in that 1 Corinthians 3:6 verse we just referenced, Paul not only says, "I planted the seed" but he goes on to say, "Apollos (a fellow preacher of the Gospel) watered it". Not only so, but water in general plays a large part in the Faith and is often referenced in the Bible. Our Lord Jesus referred to "the living water" or "water of life" He had to offer (John 4:10 & Revelation 22:17), and many other Scriptures refer to it as well (Zechariah 14:8). Jesus talked about quenching "thirst", the spiritual desire for forgiveness and fulfillment that people have (John 6:35). The Holy Spirit is often symbolized by water. The Greek word for Heaven literally means "place of water" and Hell, where the Faith is not, is described as a place without water (Matthew 12:43). Since water, then, is referenced as part of the Gospel-sharing process and is such a large part of the Faith, so it makes sense that watering is something that those who share the Gospel and are in the Faith will do; so it makes sense that we must be irrigators of a sort.

So how do we do this? How do we water or irrigate in this way? We do it by keeping the source of water open and available, but keeping the Lord Jesus Christ, the Living Water Himself, and access to the Lord Jesus Christ flowing in our lives and our church. We talk and think about Him. We sing songs to Him. We pray through Him. When someone needs help, we bring them to Him. When someone needs forgiveness, we confidently extend that forgiveness to them in His name. We quite simply irrigate by irrigating; we water by being saturated ourselves; we soak ourselves in Jesus and so soak others; we make sure that we are fully hydrated, and in so doing we hydrate others.

One of our classic hymns describes this world as "a dry and thirsty land" (which itself is a biblical phrase, coming from Ezekiel 19:13). And that is indeed what it is; this land we are in is without doubt dry and thirsty, and the people in this land are parched. It is easy to see, then, what a little water would do for this land and this people; it is easy to see what a little irrigation can produce. We need, then, to not just plant seeds but also to water them; we truly need to be irrigators.

Aggregation

2010-06-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

The host of a local morning radio show recently referred to Matt Drudge, who may be familiar to you from his influential website The Drudge Report, a website often mentioned on the news and in the newspapers. Now I wasn't surprised that this host would refer to Matt Drudge; many such hosts do the exact same thing. I was surprised, though, at the way this host referred to Matt Drudge; he referred to him as an "aggregator".

Now an aggregator is one who creates something by culling pieces from something else. In Matt Drudge's case, he creates his website by culling important and revelatory news stories from other websites, gathering them all in one place for easy access and to communicate a particular worldview (and yes, I am familiar that Mr. Drudge represents a particular political perspective, but because we are discussing the work of the Kingdom, which is infinitely more important than current politics, we will ignore that political perspective as we normally do). Drudge isn't the only such aggregator, though, nor the first. Probably the most famous aggregator of all time lived and worked a couple of decades before Drudge and the Internet. His name was Bruce Lee. Lee created his unique martial arts style (called Jeet Kune Do, in the off chance that you're even remotely interested) by culling various moves from other martial arts styles. I was even taught to be an aggregator in Bible college; we were trained to create teaching notes by reading several different commentaries, taking any pertinent information out of them, and leaving the rest. This is, in fact, how I still prepare my teaching notes today (though I do a lot more personal interpretation now that I've been studying the Bible for long enough to do so) and how I write my grad school term papers as well (the term paper I'm currently writing, a paper on the Cambrian Explosion, is almost entirely aggregation, as I know nothing about the Cambrian explosion and so am not able to personally comment on it to any degree).

And I have to think that such aggregation can play a part in the ministry and work and life of the church, a large part, in fact; I have to think that we church ministers/leaders/workers should be such aggregators. How do we do something we need to do but don't know how to do? By seeing how others have done it, leaving the bad parts, and taking and adapting the good parts. How can we better do what we already know how to do? In the same way. Aggregation works and works greatly for Drudge and for Lee, and it can work and work greatly for us.

Innovation is okay, and maybe we all would like to be innovators. But I think there is much to be said about aggregation, and I think that the church can undoubtedly benefit if we all were aggregators.

Pleading With God's People

2010-05-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

You have probably heard the phrase "herding cats". This is a phrase that many church workers have used to describe ministry (you can find an example of a church worker using this phrase to describe ministry here). Now these church workers have done so (in case you don't know) because herding cats is very difficult to do. Cats are far too independent-minded to be herded; cats are so excessively independent-minded that it nearly impossible to guide or lead a group of them. In the same way, many people, particularly many church people, are so excessively independent-minded that it is likewise nearly impossible to guide or lead a group of them; they each seem to have their own opinions or agendas or preferences, opinions and agendas and preferences that keep them from following the leader even when the leader is taking them to a good place in a good way, opinions and agendas and preferences that make guiding them very much like herding cats.

There is another phrase, though, that is an equally good and appropriate way to describe ministry, one that carries the same idea as "herding cats" but it is a little less frivolous and a little more serious. That phrase is "pleading with God's people". Now I don't know if many church workers use that phrase to describe ministry; I don't know, in fact, if any church workers use that phrase to describe ministry; I may have coined it myself. It is, though, clearly an element of ministry that we see in the Bible; the Scriptures show us repeated examples of God's leaders pleading with God's people, pleading with God's people to do what God wanted them to do, pleading with God's people to go where God wanted them to go. Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb pleaded with the Israelites about going up to take the Promised Land, and even after they did so, the Israelites refused (Numbers 14:5-9). Jeremiah pleaded with the people of Jerusalem to surrender to the Babylonians and not to flee to Egypt, but they refused on both counts (Jeremiah 38:17 43:19-22). Jesus pleaded with the religious leaders not to reject Him, but they too refused (Matthew 23:37). Paul had to plead with the Galatians to return to the Gospel and with Euodia and Syntyche to agree with each other (Galatians 4:12 and Philippians 4:2).And that's just a sampling, my friends. If you look at the history of the Faith, you see the preachers and teachers of the Faith repeatedly pleading or having to plead with the people of the Faith (not the people of the world, mind you; the people of the Faith!) , and just as often as not, you see the people of the Faith refusing to do what they were pleaded to do and paying the price for it.

And without being overly pessimistic, I would say that this is still the lot of Christian ministers/leaders/workers today. God's people today are very much like what they were back then: they are stubborn and rebellious, they are self-centered and self-absorbed, they refuse to listen, they go their own way, they make mountains out of molehills, they get sidetracked, they major in minors, they ruin everything because they will sacrifice nothing. And our job is to plead with them. How I'd love if that weren't so, my friends; how I'd love it if we were mighty generals on horseback who commanded the immediate respect and obedience of the troops. But we're not, and apparently God doesn't want us to be. He apparently wants us to be pleaders; He apparently wants us to plead with His people. So that is what we must be and that is what we must do.

Coalitions And Counter-Coalitions

2010-05-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

Heather and I went out to eat the other day. As we entered the restaurant, I noticed a small group of people sitting around a table. Well, actually this small group of people was huddled around a table; they were leaning in real close, talking to each other in whispers, glancing left and right as if to make sure no one overheard or observed them. They looked, in fact, like they were planning some sort of conspiracy. And as soon as I saw this small group of people, two things came to mind. The first was the word coalition. And the second was, "I've seen coalitions like that in the church."

Now I don't know why I identified this group as a coalition. That word certainly isn't in the Bible (at least the New International Version of the Bible). But while that word isn't in the Bible, that concept certainly is. The Bible speaks at length about what it calls factions, divisions, schisms, and camps, all of which are pretty much coalitions, pretty much like the conspiratorial group Heather and I saw at that restaurant, pretty much small groups that have split off from and are conspiring against the larger group. And just as that concept certainly is in the Bible, so those groups certainly are in the church. They shouldn't be, of course; one truth I was taught in my youth is that no believer or group of believers should ever separate from and trouble the body at large, and that's a truth I still hold strongly to today. Nonetheless, they are, and while their success rate might be questionable (I don't think the majority of them are as successful as they would like to be in doing whatever it is they would like to do to the church, though I could be wrong about that), their ability to frustrate and hurt the church is not.

Unfortunately, we can't stop people from forming such coalitions. But there is one thing we can do: we can determine not to form counter-coalitions, that is, not to form a coalition to counter theirs. This is the natural tendency, isn't it? We see a group forming a coalition against us and we respond by forming a coalition against them. But what does that get us? Warring coalitions. And even if our coalition is the winning one, what we're left with in the end is indeed a coalition, the very thing we were trying to prevent, the very thing Christ says we should not have in His church.

I think there is a better option, and that better option is to remain open, friendly, and loving to all, even and perhaps especially towards those who have determined not to be open, friendly, and loving towards us. I think the best way to handle a coalition is not to try to beat it but to try to win it, to try to win it over, to try to lovingly infiltrate and influence it until we have gradually eroded it. Now will this work every time? Of course not. I'm not even sure it will work all the time. "The heart is deceitful above all things", and when people allow their hearts to get so hard that they start forming coalitions, it is awfully difficult to soften them up. Nonetheless, I still think this is the best option to take; win, lose, or draw, I think trying to win over coalitions rather than win against them is the better choice.

So let's be aware that we will face coalitions; people are going to get upset with us and form little factions, divisions, schisms, or camps against us. But let's be determined not to form coalitions of our own; let's be determined not to form coalitions against them (much as we might want to); let's be determined not to respond to coalitions with counter-coalitions.

One Of Six

2010-05-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

A local preacher recently stopped by the office to visit with me. During that visit, this preacher made a comment that I found very interesting; he said, "The average preacher leaves a church because of six people." What he meant by that comment was that it only takes six people (i.e., six negative, griping, complaining, overbearing people) to make a preacher not only want to leave his church but actually leave his church. That's it. That's all it takes. Six people total can make a man so unhappy, can so demoralize him, can so weigh him down, can so break his spirit that he wants to and does leave.

Now I am not bringing this to our attention because I am wanting to leave (I don't) or because I have identified six people who make me want to leave (I haven't); that's not what this post is about. I am bringing this up because I thought it was interesting (perhaps daunting) that so much good can be undone or wrecked by so little bad. Six people is not much, is it? Even in the smallest of churches, six people is only about 10% of the congregation. And if such a small percentage can ruin a man's ministry in a particular location, what else can such a small percentage ruin? The evangelistic efforts of the church? The administration of the church? The spirit of the church? The old folk saying goes, "One bad apple spoils the whole bunch," and that principle is indeed true in the church. It doesn't take a majority to wreck what we are doing; it only takes a minority.

Unfortunately, I can't stop people from choosing to be bad apples, from choosing to be the kind of people who ruin things (have you noticed yet that the fact we often can't stop people from doing unproductive things is a theme in this blog?). What I can do, though, is encourage us not to be such bad apples, to encourage us ministers/leaders/workers not to be the kind of people who ruin things. This, in fact, was my first thought when this preacher made this comment to me; the first thing I thought after I heard this comment was not, "Who are the six in my church?" but rather "I hope I will never be one of such six." And I hope you share that thought with me. We can't change the fact that people will choose to be bad apples, but we can choose not to be bad apples; we can't change the fact that some people will be one of six, but we can determine never to be one of six.

Doing It Like The UFL Does It

2010-05-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

The UFL again, Doug? Yes, again. I know that early in the blog I spoke repeatedly about football in general (see the "Being On The Same Page", "How To Be On The Same Page", "One Spirit", and "A Sunday Afternoon Message" posts) and the UFL (the United Football League) in particular and the good things they were doing as they started playing professional football, good things I thought we as a church could do/needed to do (see the "We Speak With One Voice" post). And I know that some of you (particularly those of you who aren't football fans) got a little tired of hearing about it. Nonetheless, I have to go back to the UFL today, because as I have been following the league through their website and Facebook posts (something I do everyday) I have witnessed a couple of other good things they are doing, good things that we as a church could do/need to do.

One of these is building relationships. The UFL consistently talks about and tries to build various relationships in the communities where its teams are located (you can see one example of this here). It doesn't just come into an area to exploit it, then, or expect something from it; it comes into an area to be a part of it, to have both give and take with it, to have a relationship with it. This is something we of the church need to do as well. In fact, it is something many in the church already do. Church planters always speak of building relationships in the community in which they are church planting, and missionaries likewise always speak of building relationships in the fields one which they are ministering. And an established church such as ours needs to do likewise. (I discovered this, in fact, the hard way while in Crestline. Our church there was mostly composed of people from the surrounding towns and we had very little to do with Crestline itself. On one occasion, I heard a Crestlinian say that our church was "just a bunch of Galionites", that is, people from Galion, the next town over.)

Another of these is not trying to compete with the NFL. The UFL has repeatedly stated that it does not and will not attempt to compete with the NFL but instead exists alongside the NFL and in conjunction with the NFL; the UFL even says that its purpose is to fill vacancies left by the NFL. This, too, is something we of the church need to do. We need to not compete with other churches. There is no need to compete with other churches, is there, as there are plenty of sinners to go around. We need also to not compete with the world. This is something many of my college peers believed we needed to do (they often talked about creating service or activities that would compete with worldly entertainment) but something that I always been leery of (I have always thought this was a losing proposition; I don't believe we can beat the world on the world's field, and I think that even if we did we would in the process cease to be a church). The church is not to compete with other churches but complement other churches, and the church is not to compete with the world but to be the opposite to and the alternative of the world.

Yet another of these is understanding that growth and progress takes time. The UFL realized that they would not have a successful league right away; in fact, the league owners stated that they would not start making a profit until three to five years after inception, that for three to five years the league would be losing money. Realizing that, they did not try to start big, impressing people with a full rooster of teams and a full 16 game schedule. Instead, they started much smaller, having our four teams and a six game schedule during their first year. They didn't even advertise much during their first season (in fact, I thought I heard them say that their first season, about which I was so excited, was really just a trial run, and they may be considering this season a trial run as well). They are taking the long view, working on product more than image (trying to have good teams playing good ball rather than good advertising), developing a groundswell and a grassroots following. I think we need to do the same in the church. We must first understand that results take a long time and must allow those results that time, we must second not try to do more than we need to or can, and we must third focus so much more on content (which isn't really "product", but kind of corresponds to it) than on image.

I've always been skeptical of applying business models to the church for the simple fact that the church is not a business. But I think the UFL business model or at least some aspects of the UFL business model can be applied to the church. I think the church needs to do it like the UFL does it; I think the church needs to build relationships, not compete, and take time/be small.

Sun Tzu

2010-05-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Wasn't this story party of your May 16th sermon? Yes it was (you can in fact hear that sermon in the sermon player to the right), but it was planned as a blog several weeks before it worked its way into that sermon. I hope you benefited from it the first time around, and I hope you benefit from it even more this time.

Sun Tzu, an ancient Chinese military strategist, wrote a book called The Art Of War, and he starts that book by telling of an occasion when the king of the Wu province challenged him to train a group of women. Sun Tzu answered this challenge by taking these women, giving them spears, forming them into companies, putting the king’s favorite concubines in charge of those companies, and teaching them how to follow marching orders. Having done that, he then gave the order to face right. Unfortunately, the women did not face right; instead, they all simply laughed at Sun Tzu. So Sun Tzu told the women, “Okay, if the army misunderstands the first time, the general is to blame.” He then re-taught them how to follow marching orders and then gave the order to face left. Once again, the women all laughed at him. So he told the women, “If the army misunderstands the first time, it is the general’s fault. If they misunderstand the second time, it is their fault.” Then he had the king’s two favorite concubines beheaded. After that, the women marched wherever he wanted them to go. (You can read this story in its entirety here.)

In the same way, the people of the church often don't follow the leaders of the church, and while that is sometimes the fault of the leaders, it is just as often the fault of the people. Sometimes people won't follow us because they just plain don't want to follow us; sometimes people won't do what we ask them to do and what the church needs them to do because they just plain don't want to do it, just as those women just plain did not want to do what Sun Tzu ordered even though they fully understood the order. You've heard the old saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink", and that is true (at least, I suppose it is true; I've never lead a horse to water before, but I have seen the general idea behind that old saying played out in other areas of life, so I'm fairly confident in it). A preaching professor in Bible college told me once that sometimes a sermon is bad because of the preacher and sometimes it is bad because of the audience, and that is true, too (I know for a fact that it is true; there are times when it is so obvious that the group isn't interested in listening that the sermon falls flat even if it is good and my delivery is good). I personally have had people go out of their way to misunderstand what I am saying to them or frustrate what I have asked of them (which is precisely why, my friends, I find the story of Sun Tzu and the women so poignant; at such times, at times when people elect to interpret what I have said or respond to what I have asked in the absolute worst possible way they could, I ask myself, "I can't be that bad of a communicator or a leader, can I?" and then I remember this story). So the fact of the matter, my friends, is that sometimes our failures aren't our faults; sometimes they are the people's faults.

Now I'm not telling us that sometimes our failures aren't our faults so that we can use it as an excuse for every failure. That would be very un-leaderlike of us. But I am telling us this so that we don't internalize every failure, so that we don't take every failure personally. This is unfortunately the way it is, and we have to accept that this is the way it is; failure due to the stubbornness of other people is an unfortunate yet-all-too real part of leadership, and since God did not give us the privilege of beheading such people (for good reason, I'm sure), so it is a part we have to accept and roll with.

Appreciation

2010-05-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

I am rather apologetic. You have probably noticed that. You have probably noticed that I will apologize for anything and everything, including things that aren't my fault and that I have no control over. It is raining outside, someone complains, and what do I say? "I'm sorry." (And it really isn't that I'm actually sorry, my friends; it isn't that I think I have done something wrong. It is more that I just don't know what else to say.)

I'm also, though, rather appreciative. You have probably noticed that as well. I make it a point (or at least try to make it a point) to tell people "Thank you" for the things they do for me and for our church. And that is not only a better thing to be, but it is something I have determined to be, determined to be, I think, from a very early age. I learned when I was young that nobody owed me anything, that even if I should expect people not to hurt me (a reasonable expectation, to be sure) I should not expect people to help me. Therefore, when people do help me, I am thankful for it; I am thankful no matter how large or small the thing they have done for me is; I am thankful because I know they didn't have to do it.

It is the same with the church. Nobody really has to do anything for or help our church (practically speaking, anyway; there may be theological reasons for them to help our church, as it is something God has told them to do, but there is no practical reason for them to help our church). And we church ministers/leaders/workers should realize this and so be thankful, abundantly and expressively thankful, when people do anything helpful for our church. As a rule, we should always thank people for anything they do for our church. Also as a rule, we should express appreciate far more than we express dissatisfaction. We should, in short, be intentionally and overwhelmingly appreciative; thankfulness should be a clear and palpable part of our church spirit or culture.

Maybe I don't need to apologize as much as I do, my friends, but I do need to thank as much as I do, and so do you; we all need to have and to show such appreciation.

Sunday's Coming

2010-05-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Hey All, this one made me laugh. I think it's got a good point, but I'm not exactly sure what it is.

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Longevity

2010-05-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

I was at a ministers' meeting in Ohio. And there was one minister there who had more clout with the group and with me than most of the others. He had more clout with the group because he served the largest church (which, rightly or wrongly, is typically how it goes with ministers). He had more clout with me because he had bought my lunch once and I always find it hard to disagree with people who have bought me food. And at one point in this meeting, this minister turned to the two youngest ministers at the table (me and another fellow) and told us this: "Fellas, don't stay in one church too long. Move any chance you get."

Now I can't be too hard on this minister for giving us this piece of advice because I know that he was particularly disturbed when he gave it to us; he had just decided to leave the congregation he was serving for one in Kentucky and so was probably dealing with some hard feelings and also probably not a truly unbiased source of wisdom on such matters. I do, though, have to say that I disagree with this advice; I disagree with it completely. I don't believe that ministers or leaders or workers or anyone else in the church should move any chance they get; I believe they should stay where they are. I believe that longevity is of immense value in ministry. In fact, I believe that without longevity there is no ministry.

I believe this because ministry changes, one could even say deepens, the longer it goes. The first couple of years are pretty fluff, just settling in while everybody still loves you. The second couple of years are foundational, establishing what will come later. It isn't until the next couple of years that things really start happening; in fact, it has been estimated that a minister really doesn't start being effective at a church until his fifth year. (I wish I could document this, but I unfortunately can't.) What happens, then, if we leave before we reach that five year mark? We don't get into the truly effective years, do we? I once heard a Bible college professor put it like this: "The average minister changes ministries every three years. Thus, the average minister who has been ministering for fifteen years does not have fifteen years of experience but the same three years of experience five times over." (Again, I wish I could document this but, again, I unfortunately can't.) And that is true, my friends; it is so true that you really have to wonder if the ministers who are changing ministries every three years are even doing real ministry at all.

Do we do any other area of life like this, my friends? Do we put money in a mutual fund for one year? Do we go to the gym for one day ? Do we change spouses every few years? Of course not. We can all easily see how ridiculous and unproductive/destructive such scenarios would be. And it is the same with ministry. Ministry is not a sprint but a marathon (you've heard that before, I'm sure; it certainly isn't original with me), and it thus requires marathoners; it requires men and women who are going to stick at it to the end. And that's the kind of men and women we need to be. We don't need to be moving any chance we get; we need to be staying where were are. We need to have longevity.

Breaking The Cycle

2010-05-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Back in November of 2008, I went to a "Pastors Appreciation Breakfast" that was held in Fremont and hosted by KFAX. At this breakfast, I was given several books, DVDs, and CDs (I had actually known that I would be given these books, DVDs, and CDs at this breakfast, which is precisely why I went to this breakfast; nothing says "Pastor Appreciation" to me like free media). Now I worked through the DVDs that day and the books that month, but it took me a lot longer to get to the CDs. I finally did, though; I finally listened to the CDs sometime in mid 2009. On one of these CDs was a message from a Louisiana (I think) minister. In this message this minister talked about his rocky family life. He said that there was a pattern of divorce and abandonment in his family, that his grandfather had divorced his wife and abandoned his kids and that his father had likewise divorced his wife and abandoned his kids. He called this pattern "a cycle" and "a culture", and he then went on to say that he knew he would have to break that cycle when he got married, that he would have to overcome that culture when had kids, that he could not allow himself to perpetuate that behavior even though he had been raised in that behavior and affected by that behavior.

And we often have to do the same in the church. There is often bad behavior in the church (hatefulness, hostility, control, abuse, etc), bad behavior that is so perpetual and perpetuated that it can indeed be considered a cycle or a culture. Often times this cycle or culture goes back several generations; this bad behavior is so perpetual and perpetuated, because the people who are perpetuating it are themselves products of it, having been subjected to it and molded by it. You've heard the saying, "Hurt people hurt people" (with the first hurt there being an adjective and the second a verb), and that saying is true. We have hurt people hurting people in our churches; we have hurt producing hurt in our churches; we have this cycle, this culture, this pattern.

Now we as church ministers/leaders/workers could ourselves to be caught up in that cycle or that culture or that pattern; we could get caught up in it in at least two ways. The first is that we could elect to simply go with it; we could say, "Hey, everybody's being hateful (or whatever) so I'll be hateful (or whatever), too." This is an easy choice, of course, but it is also an obviously bad one. The second is that we could elect resist it in kind, to "fight fire with fire", to attempt to overcome hatefulness with more hatefulness. This is a harder choice, and it is not as obviously bad as the first one, but it is bad nonetheless. This choice will not stop the cycle or change the culture; it might control it, but it won't stop or change it. If we opt for this choice, we won't have eliminated hate (or whatever), we will simply have become the most successful haters (or whatever).

I suggest, though, that we church ministers/leaders/workers don't get caught up in that cycle or that culture or that pattern in either of these two ways; I suggest that we instead break that cycle or culture in our church in a unique way, break that cycle or culture by practicing and demonstrating and cultivating the exact opposite. This seems to be what our Apostle Paul is suggesting in Romans 12:21, where he says, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." This is also exactly what our Lord Jesus Christ did, when He broke every ungodly cycle and culture in the world not with physical or emotional domination but with self-sacrifice. And this is exactly what we need to do as well. This is the hardest course of all, my friends, (which is precisely why they call it "breaking the cycle" and not "dodging the cycle" or "opening the cycle" or "working things out with they cycle"), and if we take this course we will undoubtedly take it on the chin time and again (we will have to bless when cursed and love when hated and show mercy when judged, etc.). But this is the best course (Isn't it? Isn't good better and stronger than evil? Isn't right better and stronger than wrong? Isn't love better and stronger than hate?), and it will in the end produce the best results.

So let's not simply go with it, my friends. And let's also not fight it with it. Instead, let's stop it; let's stop what needs to be stopped in the only way that will really stop it; let's rise above it and overcome it and put an end to it. As that minister broke that cycle in his family, so let's break similar cycles in our church.

Disciples

2010-05-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Insight can come from unlikely sources. This particular one (which kind of dovetails on the previous post) comes from a very unlikely source. At some point in time during the early 2000s, I had the TV on for background noise. What I heard in the background noise was a story about a dispute between rappers LL Cool J (one of the staples of my high school years) and Cannabis (don't know who he is or if I even spelled his name right). Some other rapper (whose name I never caught) was being interviewed about this dispute, and he said this: "LL Cool J has his disciples, Cannabis has his disciples, and I have my disciples." (And I can't document this quote, but I would love to; if anybody can find it, let me know.) In other words, he was saying that different people will naturally have different groups of disciples or different people will naturally be the disciples of different teachers.

And that is not only a true statement but one that church ministers/leaders/workers need to keep in mind. There are many teachers in the church and these teachers are going to have different groups of disciples. That's the way it is and that's the way God apparently set it up to be. I'd love to think that I could disciple everybody, that every single Christian could be my disciple (and indeed there are times when I think it should be that way, when I think that I have the teaching or approach or philosophy that everyone should be hearing and following). But it just isn't going to happen. I don't even think it would be good if it did happen. The church is a body (a fact abundantly established in the Scriptures), and the body has different parts with different functions (a fact also abundantly established in the Scriptures). We are a people with many different personalities, styles, languages, vocabularies, likes, dislikes, etc. Nobody, then, could be the disciple of everybody, and no Christian teacher could have everybody as his or her disciples, and we shouldn't expect it to be that way. If someone decides they don't want to be our disciples, that's the way it is; it's kind of too bad, as I know we have plenty to offer, but it also might be rather good, as they may not be able to receive what we have to offer.

So let's not get upset about those who for whatever reason don't want to be our disciples, my friends. Instead, let's focus on the disciples we have and do the best we can to teach, work with, love, and enjoy them.

You Can't Please Everyone

2010-05-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

But it's all right now; I learned my lesson well.
You see, you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself."

"Garden Party", Ricky Nelson, 1972

Okay, I knew I'd have to get that out of the way, and now that I've done so, I can get down to seriously talking about pleasing people, or, more accurately, not pleasing people. We unfortunately live in a world in which it is very difficult to please people, a world in which people are very easy to displease, a world in which people are very vocal when displeased. Now this doesn't seem to bother some of us (some of us are apparently gifted with immunity to the displeasure of others), but it does bother a lot of us. I'll admit that it bothers me; I don't want to be a "people pleaser" (something Paul condemns in Galatians 1:10 and 1 Thessalonians 2:4 & 6), but I also don't want to be a people displeaser, either; I don't like thinking that I have displeased people and am hurt when I discover that I have displeased people. And maybe you are, too.

But here's the bottom line, my friends: it's going to happen. People are going to get displeased with or be displeased by us and there's nothing we can do to stop it. As I said in a previous post, people have "great expectations", too great expectations, actually; people expect too much from each other (much more than God does, by the way; God, who, as James says, "does not find fault", is apparently rather easy to please). There is no way, then, in which we who are trying to do ministry as well as simply live our own lives are going to continuously and constantly and completely meet those expectations; there is no way in which we are going to be able to always please these people.

And not only is it true, my friends, that we're not going to be able to always please these people, but it is also true that we shouldn't even try to always please these people. Are you familiar with Aesop's fable about the old man, his son, and their donkey, the fable in which this old man and his son are taking their donkey to market and are criticized by passersby about how they are riding or not riding it? (If not, you can find it here.) This old man and his son try every combination of riding or walking alongside the donkey to match the comments of the passersby (old man riding, young man walking; young man riding, old man walking; both riding; both walking) only to end up trying to carry the donkey, at which point they lose their balance and drop him off a bridge into a river. The morale of the story? "Please all, and you will please none."

And the same is true of ministry. If we try to please all,we will please none, least of all God; if we try to please all, we will destroy ourselves and our ministry. My prescription, then, is not to try, not to try to please all. Now that is not to say that we want to be self-centered jerks who can't take advice or adjust to meet the needs of others, but it is to say that we don't immediately change what we're doing or saying or believing to match every whim that comes our way, that we don't worry overly much about unwarranted and unjustified and unnecessary criticisms.

You can't please all, my friends, because some can't be pleased at all. So let's not try to do what can't be done, and let's not worry about what can't be changed. Let's do what we believe God wants us to do in the way we believe God wants us to do it with the resources, gifts, and talents at our disposal to the best of our ability and let's not worry about those we're not pleasing.

Why I Don't Watch Deadliest Catch Anymore

2010-05-07T08:00:00.001-07:00

A new season of The Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch began a few weeks ago. So did a new season of Mythbusters. A few months before that, there was a new season of Dirty Jobs. Now that's not weird; shows begin new seasons all the time. What's weird is that I haven't watched them; I haven't watched any of them. These shows used to be my staples; I used to love Deadliest Catch and Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs. But when the new seasons started this year, I just plain didn't tune in. And it wasn't because the shows had gotten bad or changed format or offended me in some way; as far as I can tell, the shows are as good as ever. It is that I have just gotten bored with them; no matter how new and good they are, I have gotten tired of them. And such getting bored or getting tired is not just something that happens to me and not just something that happens with TV shows. Rather, it is something that happens to everybody with everything; we humans just tend to get bored with stuff, even stuff that we used to love, even stuff that used to entertain us.

So what's that mean to the church? It means that people will get bored with the church if they look at it only as entertainment and that we will bore people as a church if we attempt to present ourselves as or operate along the lines of entertainment. Just as I inevitably got bored with these TV shows and stopped watching (even though they did nothing wrong and did not diminish in quality), so people will inevitably get bored with and stop going to such a church; so such a church will inevitably get boring and lose people.

Now I can't stop people from looking at church as entertainment, inevitably getting bored, and leaving; I wish I could, but I can't; I've seen it happen multiple times, I've seen people decide that "this church" feeds them better (by which they really mean "entertains them better") than "that church" and so "leave" to go to "that church", and I know that these people have been wrong to do this and I know that doing this will not ultimately satisfy these people for the rest of their lives as they they think it will (any more than any new show will ultimately satisfy me for the rest of my life), but I can't stop it and so there's no point in speaking against it. What I can stop, though, or at least affect in some way, is us presenting the church as entertainment, us seeing this people doing this and concluding that we have to as entertaining as other churches are to keep people from doing this. It is a normal reaction, my friends, to see this phenomena and think that we must compete with this phenomena, that we must become as entertaining as these other churches are, that we must fight fire with fire. It is a natural reaction, but it is also a fatally flawed reaction. The fatal flaw comes from the fact that, as we have just established, people will become bored with such entertainment, no matter how good it is. Therefore, if we choose this path, we will either be stuck in a continual cycle of having to find new things to entertain people (which doesn't sound too great to me) or eventually watching people make a mass exodus from us (which doesn't sound too great to me either).

And you don't have to take my word for this, my friends. Listen to someone more experienced and wiser than me: renowned and respected Christian author and teacher Tony Campolo. In the recent movie Lord, Save Us From Your Followers (a movie that discusses how ineffective Christians are in the world today and how Christians could be more effective in the world today), Campolo says this: “The major problem of this culture is not the gay issue, is not the abortion issue – as important as these are. The thing that’s going to destroy evangelical Christianity in the next 25 years – and it will – is its willingness to be at home with the commercialism and with the consumerism of our society...Our kids are growing up as consumers, not as people who are committed to the mission of God in the world.” (You can find that quote here) So consumerism, Campolo says, looking at the church and presenting the church as a product to consume, looking at the church and presenting the church as entertainment, will destroy the church in the next quarter of a century, destroy the church within most of our lifetimes.

And I believe Campolo is right. I believe most of us will see a time when the consumeristic/entertainment-based church absolutely collapses in upon itself for the simple reason that it is unsustainable. And we should not be a part of that collapse; we should be something else, something that is sustainable, something that will survive the collapse and thrive after the collapse. That something is a real, genuine, authentic, sincere body or community of Christ followers. We might not be nearly as entertaining as some churches are, but if we are such a body or community, if we do what we have been called to do and make real, genuine, authentic, sincere followers of Christ, we won't need to be.

Class Notes

2010-05-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

Hey All, this was a newsletter article, as I'm sure some of you realize, but I wanted it to be available to those how don't get the newsletter, so I'm posting it here.

The best piece of advice I was ever given during my Bible college career was to “approach every class with an open mind”. This advice was given me by Keith Little, the senior minister of the Pleasant View church I was serving during my last two undergrad years. I had told him I wasn’t too enthusiastic about some of the classes I was required to take and his reply was that I should approach those classes with an open mind because I never knew when a “dream might be awakened”, that is, when something in or about these classes might influence me in some way.

Recently, I had to return to this advice. Around the beginning of the year I decided to finish my masters degree through online courses with Hope International University, and because I had not paid attention to the registration deadline, I was unable to enroll in the class I really wanted, Jesus And The Kingdom Of God, and instead had to take a class I needed, a class called Dynamics Of Servant Leadership. And I wasn’t too thrilled about taking this class for several reasons, one being that I have been acquainted with the idea of servant leadership for some time and so thought I already knew what this class would be about and the other being that I have never really liked leadership theory all that much. Nonetheless, I remembered Keith’s advice and so kept an open mind as I began the class work.

And I’m glad I did, because the class turned out to be great. It turned out to be so great, in fact, that I really wanted to copy all the materials and share them with all our leaders and workers in our congregation. I can’t do that, though, both for technical reasons (I can’t figure out how to rip the online lectures) and ethical reasons (the university probably doesn’t want me doing that). I can and want to, though, is share a some of the notes I took in this class, a select few of the ideas I jotted down. Here they are:

“Servant-leadership has the potential for healing relationships. Many people have broken spirits and emotional hurt. Servant-leaders recognize that they have an opportunity to ‘help make whole’ those they come in contact with.”
“The servant senses that much has been lost in recent human history as a result of the shift from local communities to large institutions as the primary shaper of human lives.”
“Jesus was a great leader because He was willing to sacrifice, relied upon God, and was empowered by God’s Holy Spirit.”
“To the extent that we desire/expect more than Christ received, we desire/expect too much.”
“The biblical leader is a servant, a shepherd, and a steward.”
“Leaders must overcome the temptation to power, fame, and success with the antidotes of dependence, obedience, and submission.”

And I could go on at some length here; these notes cover only the lectures and do not touch the readings or the discussions. Suffice it to say that a dream was if not awakened than at least renewed for me by this class, the dream I’ve had for some time about God’s church being a healing community of sacrifice-minded individuals who rely on God and our led by servants/shepherds/stewards of God. And as I have shared a little of my class notes with you, I hope that this dream is awakened with you as well.

Marketable

2010-05-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

I was in the hair care aisle at Target the other day looking for some shampoo. The guy next to me was looking for some "Just For Men" hair color. After he grabbed it, he told me that he was recently divorced and looking for a new love so he wanted to cover up his gray hair. Now I don't know what this fellow felt the need to tell me this; I just must have a face that makes people feel like they can and should tell me all the dark secrets of their lives because it happens all the time (and trust me, this one doesn't even come close to be the worst I've been told). What I do know, though, is that he used a very interesting word when he was talking about covering up his gray hair; he said he was doing it to make himself more "marketable".

And I don't know how you feel about that term, my friends, but I don't like it. In fact, I quite frankly hate it; I quite frankly hate the idea of this man or any other person thinking that they have to make themselves marketable, that they have to market themselves. I hate it because I think people are precious beings not cheap products; I hate it because I don't think people should be turned into or should turn themselves into commodities, because I don't think people should be commoditized.

And the same is true of the church. I don't think the church should be turned into a commodity; I don't think the church should be commoditized; I don't think we should be making or should be attempting to make the church marketable. Now it seems like I am alone in that thought; while I am no hater of the "church growth movement", I still have to say that it seems like much of that movement is about marketing the church, that much of modern thought about growing the church (which itself is a flawed concept; we shouldn't be thinking as much about "growing the church" or as we should think about fulfilling the church's Great Commission to make disciples of all nations) is to do so by making the church marketable in some way. And I think that's a mistake. I think it is a mistake for several reasons. The first is that when you market something you automatically lessen it (you turn it into a product or commoditize it, as I said above, which aren't good things to do), and I don't think the church (the body of Christ, the absolute greatest reality on the planet) needs to be or should be lessened. The second is that if we start depending on marketing then we will become dependant on marketing; if our strategy for growth or for fulfilling the Great Commission is to market ourselves or market the church, then marketing is all we will ever get to or be able to do; if we have "won" people by marketing, then we will have to keep them by marketing, and that doesn't sound very beneficial or happy to me. The third is that marketing is fundamentally dishonest; it was not that the man in the hair care aisle didn't have gray but that he was trying to cover up his gray, i.e., trying to present something as other than what it really was; and I don't believe the church should be or needs to be so dishonest. Marketing, then, for all these reasons, is not a good strategy or practice for the church; it might seem successful or desirable in our human eyes, it might seem like it gets results, but it is still not a good strategy for the church.

There's nothing wrong with being presentable and making an effort to be presentable; I think we should be presentable within a reasonable level; I believe I've even written about that before. But I think there is something wrong with marketing. I don't think we should get into marketing, my friends; I don't think we should be trying to market the church; I don't think we should be trying to make the church marketable. Instead, I think we should be what we have always been, what God wants us to be: a family with all kinds of gray hairs, but a very good family nonetheless.

Changing Hearts

2010-04-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

During the 1980s, somebody got the bright idea to remake the classic TV anthology horror show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. So they created new episodes of this show, episodes that aired on the USA Network. One of these episodes featured William Katt, who was then and always will be one of my personal favorites simply because he was The Greatest American Hero. In this episode, Katt played a doctor who was in love with one of his female patients, a female patient who needed a heart transplant. When her bid for a heart transplant was denied (for reasons I can't remember today), Katt took matters into his own hands, robbing an organ bank and even killing people in the process, then performing the transplant himself. Later, as this female patient was recovering and Katt was out of her room, another doctor came in to check on her. It quickly became clear that this other doctor had feelings for her and vice versa; in fact, this other doctor asked this female patient when she would tell Katt that she was breaking off their relationship and starting a new one with him. In reply, she said that she would do it soon but didn't know how to do it; she didn't know what to say to Katt. At that, the other doctor, in what was the last line of the show and which was meant to be the big twist ending, said, "Just tell him you've had a change of heart." (Get it???)

And that's been on my mind lately. It's been on my mind lately because I have begun to realize just how often God's people have similar changes of heart, just how often we of the church have a similar change of heart about each other, about how our hearts for one another can change. I was told in Bible college this would happen; I was told in Bible college this would happen in a radical way: I distinctly remember one professor telling us that people in the church would turn on us, and that in fact the people in the church who were the quickest to receive us when we first came to the church would actually be the quickest to turn on us. And I have indeed experienced this in my ministry; I've had people who were quick to receive me be just as quick to turn on me, hate me, and attack me.

We see this not only in our ministerial experiences, though; we see this often in the Bible. Saul had a change of heart toward David: first he loved him, then he became jealous of him and tried to kill him (1 Samuel 18:5-9ff). Laban had a change of heart toward Jacob: he first liked Jacob, then began to despise Jacob (Genesis 30:1 & 2; literally, it says, "Jacob noticed that Laban's attitude toward him was not what it had been."). Nebuchadnezzar had a change of heart toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; he began to hate these three trusted advisers when they refused to bow down to his idols (Daniel 3:19; the NIV says, "and his attitude toward them changed", but the NASB says, "and his facial expression was altered toward Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego" and the KJV says "and the form of his visage was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego"). And if you look real closely at each of these examples, my friends, you will see that not only were there such changes of heart or attitude or faces, but that these changes of heart or attitude or faces were unwarranted and unfair and unjust, that Saul and Laban and Nebuchadnezzar should not have had the changes of heart or attitude or faces that they did.

And the same is true when it comes to us. Sometimes we have or are tempted to have changes of heart or attitude or faces towards each other, our fellow workers in the kingdom, our brothers and sisters in the congregation. But what we must understand, my friends, is that these changes of heart and attitude and face are not only destructive (Did any of the above stories turn out well for the person whose heart was changed? Absolutely not!) but also mostly unwarranted as well; even when they are warranted, my friends, they are unwarranted; even when somebody does something to tempt such a change our heart, that change of heart is still disproportionate and unfair and not beneficial to us and to the church.

So let's keep such changes of heart and attitude and face out of our church, my friends; let's keep such changes of heart and attitude and face out of our family and the work we are trying to do as a family. Our heart and attitude and face affects the work we are trying to do as a family; it affects it immensely; it affects it negatively. Let's not allow such an immense and negative affect to occur here. Do we control our hearts or do our hearts control us? I believe we control our hearts, and I believe we really need to control our hearts when it comes to each other; I believe we need to keep our hearts from changing for the worse toward each other.

With The Army You Have

2010-04-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

You might remember a famous (or infamous, depending on your politics) statement made by Donald Rumsfeld, our former Defense Secretary. When questioned in December of 2004 about the military's lack of armament for U.S. soldiers in Kuwait, Rumsfeld replied by saying, “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

Now I don’t want to get even the slightest bit political here (as you know, I do my best to keep personal political views out of our church family), but I have to say that there is some value to that statement for us as church workers. We, too, must go to war with the army we have and not the army we wish we had, that is, we have to do ministry not with all the tools, resources, volunteers, opportunities, etc. we wish we had but with what tools, resources, volunteers, opportunities, etc. we actually do have. And there isn’t anything wrong with that. While modern church growth experts encourage us to strive for “excellence” in all we do as a church and to not do it if it isn't "excellence", I am quite comfortable doing the best I can do. Should we not go on the battlefield to fight the “good fight” because we don’t have this or aren’t that? Should we not try to spread the Gospel because we don't have all the things somebody else uses to spread the Gospel? I don’t think so; while I think that excellence is nice if you can pull it off, I think there is equal value in “doing your best” (that is, after all, a biblical phrase, isn’t it?); I don’t think there is any shame in doing the best you can do at the time with what is in your hand at the time. And I think there are several folks who would agree with me on that point. I remember an older hymn called “Little Is Much When God Is In It”, and I also know of a more modern song by the Christian rock band Petra called “I Am Available”, part of the lyrics of which say to God, “I know that my ability is not Your main concern; It's my availability and willingness to learn." As you can see in those songs, my friends, success on the battle field doesn't always (or perhaps ever) depend on how well-armed we are; rather, success on the battle field depends on how much God is doing to do through us when we get out there.

I don’t want to sit out the battle and I know you don’t either. So let's not to worry or fret or feel bad about what army we don’t have, and let's certainly not be intimidated by the army somebody else has. Instead, let’s fight with what army we do have, and let's see what God will do when we fight with what army we do have.

A Good Story

2010-04-25T08:00:00.001-07:00

There are many ways to think of God, many analogies we can adopt specifically for God as our Creator and us as His creation. The more technical might envision God as an architect and of us as His design. The mathematical could picture God as a mathematician and us as His equation. The more artistic might see God as an artist or songwriter with us as His painting, sculpture, or musical. I, though, am a storyteller (if not by trade than at least by hobby), and so I imagine God as a storyteller as well, as the Grand Storyteller, in fact, and as us (all of us, starting with Adam and continuing until whoever is here at the return of Christ) as His Grand Story.

So what does Doug’s personal view of God have to do with our work as a church. Plenty. You see, there are certain elements that a story must have to be a good story. There must be heroes and heroines, virtues and victories. But there must also be villains and conflict and dire straits. Here’s a anecdote that I heard from my best friend Matt. He heard Kurt Vonnegut, a well-known author, speak at some college on one occasion, and he told me that Mr. Vonnegut said, “Stories used to go like this: three brothers went in search of the sacred beaver. They found it.” Good for the three brothers, right? But not good for us. That’s not a good story, not a story that excites us or encourages us or moves us in any way. For a story to do those things, it must have those bleaker elements; those elements may not be enjoyable but they are essential. They are so essential, in fact, that every movie made today has them; Blake Snyder says in his book Save The Cat!, a book about screenwriting, that every single movie ever made has a “false defeat”, a moment when it seems like the good guys have been overcome and all is lost.

Since, then, God is telling a story using us, since then we are His story, doesn’t it make sense that we would experience some of these things as well, not only in our personal lives but in our church work? Doesn’t it make sense that we are going to face villains and have conflict and be in dire straits and go through false defeats? I believe it does. The superficial success-oriented mentality that dominates our society today would say that such things are evidence that we are wrong and/or are doing wrong, and so would most of the church growth books that you find in the Christian book stores. But I disagree. I think they are evidence of the exact opposite; I think they are evidence that we are doing right or are in the right. I think they are evidence that we are a part, perhaps a very important part, of God’s story. In fact, I think the only scenario in which we wouldn’t experience such things is if we weren’t a part of God’s story.

So let’s not allow ourselves to be discouraged by such things, my friends. They are not failures or mistakes or shortcomings on our part. They are instead the normal elements of every good story, the normal elements of God’s grand story, the shadows that are necessary to make the light that much brighter. And when we come to real resolution of this story, the resolution brought about by our Lord at His return, we will look back and say, “Man, that was a good story. And I’m glad I was part of it.”

Leadership That Blesses

2010-04-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

I was working this afternoon on the final paper I have to write for my Dynamics Of Servant Leadership class, the last assignment I have to do before I can be done with this class and move on to the next one. As I was working through this paper, I went back through my class notes and came across something I wanted to share with all our ministers/leaders/workers. This something had to do with the different "levels of leadership". According to the class instruction, there are five levels of leadership. They are as follows:

Position - based on rights or intimidation; people follow you because they must
Permission - based on personality; people follow you because they like you
Production - based on results; people follow you because of what you've done for the organization
People-Development - based on reproduction; people follow you because of what you've done for them
Personhood - based on respect; people follow you because of years of building relationships (helping them develop and leading them through difficult times)

Now you can probably see that the levels get better as they go higher, that each type of leadership is a greater or higher or more noble type of leadership than the one before it. In case you can't see it, though, the instructor of the class directly stated it. He said that levels 4 & 5 are the best levels and that the church will be "truly blessed" when her leaders are leading in those levels.

And I certainly agree with that. I think what levels 4 & 5 describe are not only the best levels of leadership, the levels that will bless the church, but I also think they are beautiful levels of leadership. We can order people around, making them do what we want them to do, or we can love people, get to know people, spend time with people, and see that we all naturally begin doing what God wants us to do.

These are the best levels of leadership; these are the types of leadership that will truly bless the church. May our church be truly blessed in this way; may we help our church be truly blessed in this way.

Seeing The Big Picture or Thinking Fourth Dimensionally

2010-04-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

There's a scene from the 1990 movie Back To The Future 3 that I have always liked (and that I'll do my best to recreate from memory). In this scene, Marty McFly and Doc Brown are discussing their plan to drive the time-traveling DeLorean car toward a billboard featuring marauding Indians. When Marty questions this plan, thinking that he will crash into the billboard, Doc Brown says, "Marty, you're not thinking fourth dimensionally. You'll instantly be transported back into 1885, and those Indians won't even be there.", that is, though Marty would crash into the billboard if he was traveling normally, he won't actually crash into the billboard because he will be traveling through time and the billboard thus won't be a factor, something he would have realized if he was thinking as a time traveller rather than a normal traveller (or, as Doc Brown puts it, was thinking fourth dimensionally).

And thinking fourth dimensionally, or, to put it another way, seeing the big picture, is something we ministers/leaders/workers need to do as well. There is indeed a fourth dimension or big picture aspect to what we are doing in the church and in the world as ministers/leaders/workers; we are not moving normally, moving along only one plane (as Marty thought he was); we are moving as time travellers; we are moving in a large, multi-layered sphere, a sphere that is much bigger than what we can see with our eyes or understand with our minds at the current time, a sphere in which things might ultimately be much different than what they appear now. We, then, need to operate and understand that we are moving in such a sphere; we need to be thinking as time travellers or seeing the big picture.

So often we don't do this; so often we, like Marty, can see only the here and now. We expect immediate results or immediate consequences from our ministering and leadership and work, and when we don't get them, we pout or despair or get angry or give up or kick everything to pieces or do all the above. I have become convinced, though, that this is a huge mistake; I have become convinced that we should not be looking so much for immediately results as for eternal results. The story God is telling, after all, is not an immediate story, is it? It is a story that started millennia ago and that will continue perhaps for millennia more. Why do we think, then, that our ministering or leadership or work should get results this second? Isn't it possible that we won't and even shouldn't see results from our ministering or leadership or work for a long period of time, for years or even decades? Isn't it possible that we won't and even shouldn't see results from our ministering or leadership or work in our own lifetimes, that we are perhaps doing ministry or leading or working for something that won't even come into fruition until we are gone? I think it is possible. I think it is, in fact, reality.

So let's not focus on the immediate, my friends; let's focus on the eternal. Let's remember that there is more going on here than just a straight line, more going on here than what we can see, more going on here than the here and now. Let's remember the fourth dimension that God is creating with His wisdom as only He could, and let's think fourth dimensionally; let's try to see the big picture that God is painting and try to understand our place in it.

When Fishermen Don't Fish

2010-04-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

I like to give credit where credit is due. I think giving credit where credit is due is a biblical principle, in fact. Unfortunately, I can't give credit for the saying, "When fishermen don't fish, they fight", a saying you might have heard me tossing around in a few recent messages. I can't give credit for this saying because I don't know where it comes from; I don't know who coined it or first said it; I don't even know where or when I first came across it. So I just can't give credit for it.

But while I can't give credit for this saying, I still want to claim this saying. I want to claim this saying because I believe in it. I believe that when fishermen don't fish, they do indeed fight; I believe there is a direct correlation between how much fighting fishermen do and how much fishing fishermen do. Need proof? Watch the Deadliest Catch TV show on the Discovery Channel, the show about Alaskan King Crab fishermen. These guys often fish and they often fight. And what I've noticed is that they fight when they don't fish and they don't fight when they do fish. In fact, I've also noticed that they stop fighting when they start catching fish and they really stop fighting when they really start catching fish.

So the statement "When fishermen don't fish, they fight" is a truism. But why does that matter to us? Because we church ministers/leaders/workers are fishermen (or fisherpersons, if you prefer) of a type; we are "fishers of men"; we are called fishermen or fishers of men by our Lord Himself, who likened our sharing of the Gospel in hopes of making converts to fishing (Mark 1:17). That being the case, I believe this statement about fishermen and fighting has application for us, four distinct applications for us to be exact. Let me break down these four applications with the four possible permutations of this statement:

When fishermen don't fish, they fight - that is, when we don't actively and intentionally endeavor to share the Gospel, we will ultimately end up quarreling with each other about anything and everything
When fishermen fight, they don't fish - that is, when we actively and intentionally endeavor to quarrel with each other about anything and everything, we will ultimately end up not actively and intentionally endeavoring to share the Gospel
When fishermen fish, they don't fight - that is, when we actively and intentionally endeavor to share the Gospel, we will ultimately end up not quarreling with each other about anything and everything
When fishermen don't fight, they fish - that is, when we actively and intentionally endeavor not to quarrel with each other about anything and everything, we will ultimately end up sharing the Gospel

Now hopefully you can see what I am trying to get at by taking you through these four permutations of this statement, but in case you can't, let me lay it out clearing: it all comes down to fishing, to whether or not we want to and do fish. Fishing is both a barometer and a corrective to fighting in our congregation. Do we see that we are fighting in our congregation? That probably means we are not fishing as we should, that we are feeling that frustration that all fishermen naturally feel when they don't do what they were made to do. Do we want to stop fighting in our congregation? Then we probably need to fish some more. Just look at how happy the Deadliest Catch boys are when they pull in some plugged pots. Nothing ends fights quicker than a good catch.

So let's keep this statement about fishermen and fighting and fishing in mind, my friends; let's keep the importance of fishing in mind and in practice. Let's endeavor to fish and not fight; let's endeavor to not fight and fish.

P.S. As I was writing this post, as I was in fact writing the line about the Deadliest Catch boys just above, a commercial for Deadliest Catch came on. What did the announcer on this commercial say? "A good catch has all riding high." See!

P.P.S. As I was writing this post, I was also reminded of a story by southern comedian Jerry Clower. Clowers talks about a sheriff who goes fishing with some old country boys. When the Sheriff and these boys are out in the water on a boat, the boys pull out a few sticks of dynamite, light one, then throw it in the water where it explodes, sending dead fish floating to the surface. The Sheriff says, "That's illegal." So the boys light another stick of dynamite and shove it in his hands. The Sheriff again says, "That's illegal," to which the boys say, "Are you gonna argue, or are you gonna fish?" (In case you don't get it, the Sheriff has to throw the lit stick of dynamite into the water; once it's lit, he has no choice, legal or not.) And we need to ask ourselves the same question: are we gonna argue, or are we gonna fish?

2x4s or The Multiplication of Combination

2010-04-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

I love buying 2x4s. I love walking into Home Depot and walking out with a 2x4, showing everybody that I can and will soon be working with a 2x4, cutting and sawing and nailing a 2x4. Quite simply, a 2x4 makes me feel manly; I feel manly, in fact, just saying, "2x4" as if I know what I'm talking about.

Besides just giving me a sense of manliness, though, the 2x4 also gives me a lesson, a lesson on church leadership as it can and should be, on what church leadership can and should do. This lesson comes from the tolerances of a 2x4, from how much weight it can support. On its own, a 2x4 can support at most 607 pounds; put anything beyond 607 pounds on it and it will break. However, if you need to support more than 607 pounds, you can easily add another 2x4. But that's where it gets real interesting thing, because if you add another 2x4, they will be able to support not only 1,214 pounds (that is, the sum of what each of them would be able support independently), but 1,821 pounds (that is, three times what each of them would be able to support independently). Together, their effectiveness does not simply double but it actually triples. When they are combined, their abilities are not just added together but multiplied; they are not only able to do more together than alone but they are able to do exponentially more together than alone.

I believe the same is true of ministry. We can do some on our own in ministry, maybe even a lot. But we will be able to do exponentially more together. A synergy is going to occur when our talents our combined, a synergy that will ultimately equal more than just the sum of our parts, a synergy that is certainly desirable, a synergy that is, in fact, essential (after all, you wouldn't build a floor with just one 2x4, so why would you build a church with just one person).

So let's combine, my friends, as ministers/leaders/workers; let's combine not only our efforts but ourselves so that we can have this synergy, so we can have this ability or power or potential that is more than just the sum of our parts, so that we can have this multiplication that comes through combination.

Some Will Be Sheep

2010-04-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

John 21:15-19 is a fairly well-known passage of Scripture. In this passage, Jesus "reinstates" Peter, restoring him to being a Christ follower and church leader; since Peter had denied Jesus three times, so Jesus asks Peter to confess his love for Him three times. And each time Peter does so, each time Peter says he loves Jesus, Jesus gives him this instruction: "Feed my sheep (or "Feed my lambs" or "Take care of my sheep)." Now sheep there obviously refers to the followers of Jesus, to those who would come to follow Jesus after Peter. And this isn't the only time we see such people referred to as sheep in the Scriptures; this isn't the only time God refers to such people as sheep. Jesus compared Himself to the "good shepherd" who "lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11) and spoke about "other sheep that are not a part of this sheep pen" (John 10:16; this was more than likely a reference to the salvation of the Gentiles) and gave the Parable of the Lost Sheep (which is clearly about lost people; Luke 15:4ff). The author of Hebrews spoke of Jesus as "that Great Shepherd of the sheep", thus describing Him as a shepherd and people as the ones He shepherds (Hebrews 13:20). And Peter himself would later refer to the church as "God's flock" and the elders of the church as shepherds or under-shepherds (shepherds under or working for the Great Shepherd Jesus; 1 Peter 5:2ff).

Now this term sheep is not a flattering term or at least not a wholly flattering term; though it does carry some positive connotations (the close intimacy we can have with our Lord), it also carries some rather negative connotations; since sheep are not very intelligent or self-sufficient, so this term highlights their vulnerability and need for protection/guidance. And seeing all these references to sheep, seeing all these verses in which God Himself speaks of His people as sheep, has led me to a conclude something. It has led me to conclude that there will always be sheep in the church, or perhaps more pointedly, that some in the church will always and can only be sheep, that some people will always be so vulnerable and will always need such protection/guidance.

Now this seems to contradict a general assumption that many Christian ministers/leaders/workers have, the assumption that every follower of Christ can be matured into a minister/leader/worker of their own, a minster/leader/worker who is going to be able to understand all the Christian teachings and discern right from wrong and feed or sustain themselves. This general assumption was, in fact, directly communicated to me in Bible college (the Bible college professors actually seemed to think that we could and should force or drag people into such maturity), and it seems to be less clearly but no less actually held by many contemporary preachers. But though I wish that were the case, my friends, though I truly, honestly, and enthusiastically wish that every follower of Christ can be matured into a minister/leader/worker of their own, I have to admit that I don't think it is. I think many followers of Christ can be so matured, a fact indicated by the Bible. But I also think many followers of Christ either can't be or won't be so matured, a fact equally indicated by the Bible. I think some followers of Christ will never be able to understand (or care about) all the Christians teachings or discern (or care about) right from wrong or feed or sustain (or care about feeding or sustaining; see a pattern here?) themselves. I think many followers of Christ are and always will be sheep-like rather than shepherd-like followers of Christ.

So what should take from this fact, then? Am I saying that we shouldn't try to mature people, that we should be happy to let them stay sheep? Certainly not; the church would be greatly weakened if we did such a thing. Am I saying that we should separate those who will always be sheep from the rest of the group? Again, certainly not; we're not qualified to do such a thing. Then what am I saying? I am saying that we should have the understanding that some will always be sheep, either by nature or by choice, that we should accept that they will always be sheep, that we shouldn't hate or look down on or abuse them because they are sheep (something that can happen, by the way, as we see in Zechariah 11:8), that we shouldn't get angry or disappointed with them because they are sheep or try to force them with a heavy hand to stop being sheep. Instead, we should do what God has told us to do with/for them; we should shepherd them, feed them, take care of them.

Some will be sheep. A sad fact, maybe (I'm sure all of us want everybody else to come up to our level; I know I do). But also a true fact, and one that we have to account for as we minister and lead and work. Some will be sheep, and that is why we must always be shepherds; loving, kind, compassionate, gentle, good shepherds.

Working Wounded

2010-04-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Speaking of wounds (as I was in the last post), it isn't just those coming to us who are wounded; it is we who are wounded as well. Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest and author, writes a book called The Wounded Healer, which is a phrase he uses to refer to someone who heals despite his or her own wounds, a phrase he applies to church ministers/leaders/workers. And it is a phrase that resounds with me; I am undoubtedly a wounded healer; as the Psalmist says in Psalm 129:3, "Plowmen have plowed my back and made their furrows long", and I think this is true for me as well. I have my share of wounds or furrows or scars or whatever you want to call them; in fact, I sometimes think I have far more than my share.

And the problem with wounds on ministers/leaders/workers is that many people think they shouldn't be there; many people (ourselves included at times) think that ministers/leaders/workers shouldn't be wounded in any way, that wounds are a sign of God's displeasure or lack of involvement, that wounds disqualify a person from spiritual service. Look at the images that you find on the backs of Christian books and in Christian magazines, the images of the authors of those books and magazine articles. Aren't those images engineered to imply that these authors (or singers or speakers or whatever) aren't and haven't ever been wounded, that they are above and beyond being wounded? And isn't the unstated but all too evident suggestion that there is something wrong with being wounded, that if we were really living right or doing right then we wouldn't be wounded? Of course they are and of course it is.

But these images and those suggestions are not correct, my friends; they are far from correct, in fact. Wounds don't always signify failure; wounds often signify success. Imagine, if you will, that we are examining two sets of ancient armor, the kind of armor the knights of old wore. One set of armor is pristine, shiny and unmarked, while the other is blemished, dented and scratched. We might come to the conclusion that the first set of armor belongs to a better knight, might we not? We might come to the conclusion that the knight who belongs to the first set of armor is better than the knight who belongs to the second set of armor. There is another conclusion, though, perhaps a more accurate one, that we might come to. It could be that the knight who belongs to the first set of armor has never been in a battle, that the first set of armor is so pristine because it has never been used or tested; it could be that the blemishes on the second knight's armor are not a sign of weakness but of strength, not of defeated but of victory; it could be that his armor has been beaten up because it (unlike the first knight's armor) has been used. In the same way, wounds are not necessarily a sign that we aren't living right or doing right; rather, wounds can be a sign that we are living right and doing right.

And that's what we have to keep in mind as we evaluate our own wounds. Instead of allowing these wounds to make us feel bad about ourselves, we ought to allow these wounds to make us feel good about ourselves; we ought to feel good about the fact that we have been in battle and survived and now have a lesson to share with others. Sure, maybe other people don't have the wounds we do, but maybe those others haven't been in the battles we have and haven't learned the lessons we have; maybe our wounds are not so much a negative as a positive; maybe our wounds aren't a liability in ministry but an enhancement to ministry.

Several years ago, I saw an interview with a professional wrestler on television. This wrestler was talking about the way in which wrestlers get beaten up during their shows. This wrestler then went on to say, though, that it is surprising what a person can do despite being beaten up. And it is the same with us. We can surprisingly do a lot despite our wounds; we can, in fact, surprisingly do a lot not in spite of but because of our wounds; our wounds can make us more valuable rather than less valuable for kingdom work. We truly can and should be wounded healers; we truly can and should work wounded; we truly can and should be the working wounded who help the walking wounded.

Being Aware Of Wounds

2010-04-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

I recently listened to a lecture for an online class I am taking through Hope International University, a class called "Dynamics of Servant Leadership". This particular lecture was about "Greenleaf's Maxims of Servant Leadership", which are, quite simple, maxims (principles or practices) of servant leadership (leading as a servant, the humble but effective kind of leadership promoted by the Bible) that had been identified by Robert K. Greenleaf (a recognized leadership expert). Now there were 10 of these maxims, all of them insightful (and some of which I'll certainly share at a later time). There was one, though, that hit me harder than any other; that one was maxim #3, the maxim labelled "Healing" and defined in this way: "Servant-leadership has the potential for healing relationships. Many people have broken spirits and emotional hurt. Servant-leaders recognize that they have an opportunity to “help make whole” those they come in contact with."

And I think Greenleaf is really on to something there, and that we all need to be onto it as well. The fact of the matter is that most people in our world today are wounded; most people are walking wounding, carrying inside of themselves very painful hurts and scars, hurts and scars that may indeed be so painful that they actually are driving these people to some degree. The even greater fact of the matter is that most people who come through the doors of our church are going to be even more wounded; as Jesus taught us, it isn't the healthy who need a doctor but the sick (Mark 2:17), which implies that you have to realize that you are sick in order to seek treatment. It stands to reason, then, that those who come to our church (in effect seeking treatment) are going to be among the sickest of all. And we must understand that they are among the sickest of all or at least sick in some degree and treat them as such; we must understand that these people have a great need and have overcome the tendency to hide or the tendency to attack by coming to our church to meet that need and we must respond accordingly. If we don't, my friends, if we ignore their wounds or exacerbate their wounds, we're going to be guilty of hurting them rather than helping them, of sending them away more hurt then they were when they came to us in the first place. I can't tell you, in fact, the number of times I have seen this happen, the number of times I have seen a hurt person coming to the church and not finding the assistance or acceptance they need or a hurt person coming to the church and thinking they have found the assistance or acceptance they need only to have that assistance or acceptance jerked away from them, to be attacked because they said or did something "wrong". I don't think I need to tell you how heartbreaking these experiences have been for me personally, not to mention how heartbreaking they must have been for the hurt person.

And I also don't think I need to tell you that we shouldn't have such heartbreaking experiences in our congregation, that we should instead offer assistance and show acceptance to such sick and hurt people. Let's not ignore the broken spirits and emotional hurts that come through our doors; let's not put doctrine or practice above those spirits and hurts; let's not attack and so break and hurt further. Let's instead be the servant leaders that Greenleaf described, the servant leaders that are described in the Bible (see Matthew 12:20, for example), the servant leaders who heal relationships and make whole those we come in contact with. Let's be aware of the wounded among us; let's be aware of wounds.

Dogs And Tails

2010-04-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

As some of you know (because I've told you, probably on more than one occasion), I missed a grand total of 2 classes during my Bible college years; not two days but two classes, one because I had food poisoning, passed out in front of the girls' dorm, and went home before my last class of the day and one because all other classes except that particular class were cancelled for the day and if I skipped that class I could get in a full day's work at my part-time job (the teacher of this class, by the way, told me later that she would have skipped too if she could, and she told me that before I even gave her my reasoning). And there was a reason I didn't miss class during my Bible college years; there was a reason that I was rather obsessive about always being in class during my Bible college years. That reason was that I developed the belief very early in my college career that on any given day in any given class any given professor could say something which would make a huge difference in ministry, something which would enable me to help people at some point during my ministry. Since I knew this was always a possibility, I was always in class.

And now I see that I was correct in this philosophy; now, some ten years later (TEN YEARS NEXT MONTH!!!), I see that there are several things said by professors in class that are still influencing my ministry and/or my philosophy of ministry. One of those was this rhetorical question: "Does the dog wag the tail or does the tail wag the dog?" This rhetorical question was asked during chapel (I believe) by the Bible college president (I know for a fact), and though I can't remember now in exactly what context this rhetorical question was asked, I still see in that rhetorical question a principle that we ministers/leaders/workers must be aware of, the principle that we ministers/leaders/workers must truly be the leaders of the church and not the leadees, that we ministers/leaders/workers must not allow those who aren't ministers/leaders/workers to dictate how we lead.

Now I think you can see this principle in that rhetorical question easily enough; the idea is simple: the dog is the head or leader of the animal, the tail is the behind or follower of the animal, and so the dog should be wagging or directing the tail and not vice versa. What you might not as easily see is how this applies to church and why I would endorse it. In many ways, this seems to smack of the dictator-like mindset that I not only often oppose but that our Lord Jesus Christ condemns. But I would suggest to you, my friends, that it only seems that way; I would suggest to you that this principle is not nearly as dictatorial as it sounds. The simple fact of the matter, one that is unquestionably established by biblical teaching, is that some believers have been appointed by God to be leaders and others to be followers, and while these leaders must realize that they are mere stewards (under-shepherds of the Great Shepherd, to use a biblical analogy), they are nonetheless leaders and thus nonetheless lead. When the leadership of these leaders, then, is in some way confounded or resisted by the followers, there must be an exercise of leadership; the leaders must establish that they are the leaders and they are going to indeed lead as they have been appointed to do. This exercise of leadership does not have to be cold or harsh (it would, in fact, be far better if it were not), but it does have to be; we leaders have to understand that we are leaders and the followers have to understand it as well.

If the tail wags the dog, you really have no tail; and if the followers direct the church, whether through pressure or coercion or whining or threatening or what have you, you really have no church. We can't allow that to happen. We want to be gentle shepherds to all, just as our Lord is a gentle shepherd to us, but we must be shepherds nonetheless. We cannot allow the lunatics to run the asylum (not a great analogy to our people, I know, but it accurate illustrates the ideas); we cannot allow the children to run the school; we cannot allow the tail to wag the dog.

One Size Does Not Fit All

2010-04-11T08:00:00.001-07:00

I've been trying to buy a hat, specifically a Scottish-style hat, a tam or a balmoral in the MacKay or at least Black Watch tartan. Now I have been looking for this hat on Ebay (which is where I get just about everything), and what I have discovered as I have been looking is that these hats come in sizes. I hadn't realized that hats came in sizes because most of the hats I have worn in my life have been ball caps which are adjustable and the few hats I have worn that weren't ball caps just fit by some lucky coincidence. But now I have learned that hats do come in sizes and that I have to get the correct size; I learned this the hard way, in fact, as I ordered a balmoral that was about two sizes too small and that I tried to force onto my head only for it to hurt more than I ever would have thought a hat could. Now some of these hats are advertised as being "one size fits all", but after the too-small-balmoral debacle, I have become leery of that phrase. I don't think it is possible to have a hat that fits all; I think that if you have a hat that fits all, what you will really have is a hat that kind of but doesn't really fits all, a hat that will fit everybody to some degree but won't fit anybody well.

It is the same with ministry and church work. There is no "one size fits all" in ministry; there is no such thing as one minister who can do every aspect of ministry or as one ministry that can be done by every person or one minister or ministry that can mean everything to everybody. So many times we act as if there are; we wonder why this person isn't doing this or "isn't doing it this way (or "my way" or "the way so-and-so did it)"; we compare the ministry that one person or group is doing with that of another person or group and criticize it for being different from that of the other person or group; we feel bad about ourselves because we are not doing the same things or getting the same results as someone else. But I would like to suggest we stop doing this wondering and comparing and criticizing and that we free ourselves from this feeling; I would suggest that we embrace the truth that there is no "one size fits all" in church work, the truth that one size does not fit all in the church.

After all, we see this truth in the Scriptures. Not only do the Scriptures clearly teach that one size does not fit all and that God does not expect one size to fit all in passages such as Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 (where we get the analogy of the people of the church to the different and differently-functional parts of the body), but the Scriptures themselves are not "one size fits all". Every book of Scripture is significantly different from the others; Romans is not the same as 1 John which is not the same as Psalms which is not the same as Mark. For this reason, we all seem to have our favorite books; there are books that seem to speak to us and books that don't seem to speak to us. 1 John, for example, is a mystery to me; I can pretty much understand it line by line and treasure many of its sayings, but I always feel that there is a bigger picture (or perhaps nuance) to the text that I am completely missing. That being the case, I don't appreciate 1 John the same way that I do Romans, whose bigger picture is clear (or clearer) to me. Does this mean that 1 John is a lesser book, a failure in the Scriptures? Absolutely not. In fact, I think it is safe to assume that there are many people (perhaps people from a different time or language or cultural mindset) who are the opposite of me, who can appreciate 1 John and not Romans; I think it is further safe to assume that God purposely engineered the books of the Bible to be different in this way with the foreknowledge that some books would resound with some people and that some books would resound with other people, that God purposely engineered the books of the Bible to be different in this way so that everybody would at least have one book that resounded with them.

And we are like the Bible in that way. We are all different; we have different airs, ways, vocabularies, philosophies, etc. That does not mean, though, that one of is is right or has it right and that the others are invalid or wrong. It just means that we are each just one book in the library, just one part of the body, just one cog in the machine. This is how we should see ourselves; this is how we should see each other. There is no "one size fits all" in the church and we shouldn't think there is; one size does not fit all and we should not expect it to.

Service Vs. Ministry

2010-04-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

I got a flyer in the church mail the other day. This flyer was advertising a new church that would soon be "launching" in the city. And I didn't bother to wonder about the rather bizarre fact that those launching this new church had sent this flyer to an existing church; I have finally given up wondering about things like that. I did wonder, though, at some of the language on this flyer and the understanding (or better, misunderstanding) of the work of the church reflected in that language on this flyer. One section of this flyer listed all the "services" that the church "offered". Now these services were not worship services, not appointed times of meeting for worship and prayer and discipleship and training, but rather amenities, things like child care and refreshments. This flyer, then, was blatantly appealing to consumeristic whims; the language of this flyer was proclaiming the willingness of those launching this church to meet the wants of potential churchgoers; those launching this church clearly misunderstood the work of the church to be that of service, that is, customer service, the gratification of the wants of customers.

And I don't want to unfairly condemn those launching this church and producing this flyer; I really don't. I'm sure they are good people doing the best they can to share the Gospel in an incredibly difficult climate; we've all (myself certainly included) made mistakes and errors in seeking to share the Gospel in this incredibly difficult climate, and I'm more than willing to pardon this flyer and the language of this flyer as such a mistake or error. What I do want to do, though, is condemn the understanding of the work of the church reflected in the language of that flyer, the misunderstanding of the work of the church as being a work of such service.

Now you're going to say to me, "But Doug, isn't service what we are supposed to be doing? Aren't we supposed to be servants or serving others?" And the answer to that is both "Yes" and "No"; yes, we are to be doing service or being servants, but no, we aren't to be doing this kind of service or being this kind of servants. We are not to be doing customer or consumeristic service but instead ministerial service. We are not to be serving in this way but ministering in a way that on the surface may look and sound the same but yet is something else entirely, something better and more noble. We are to be doing ministry, which is significantly different from service as represented by this flyer and this misunderstanding of the work of the church.

So what is the significant difference between ministry and service? What is this significant difference that gets me so worked up and agitated? It is the significant difference between need and want. Ministry meets needs, real needs of other people whether the people are aware of or appreciate those needs or not, while service meets wants, superficial wants that might be framed in the language of needs but that are not actually needs. And I'm sure that all of the parents reading this can understand the difference between these two things; I'm sure all of the parents reading this have faced the tension of the need of their children to eat vegetables and the want of their children to eat ice cream, and I'm equally sure that all of the parents reading this have chosen to give their children vegetables rather than ice cream. It is the same in the work of the church. We are to give people what they really need, what will be good and beneficial for them, even if they don't understand why they need it or don't like it or would prefer something else. Yes, there are times in ministry when we give people what they want or when they want what they need, and those are happy times. But there are also times in ministry when we have to give people what they don't want or when they don't want what they need. There have been times in my ministry, for example, where I've had to tell a person to stop a certain sinful activity, that was not fun for me or for them, but it was necessary (and the downfall these folks have faced when they rejected my advice and were finally forced to pay the price of their sin shows how necessary that ministry was and how much they really needed it).

We even see this in the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus often met the needs of people; for example, He fed the 5,000 when they could not find other food. He often, though, did not meet and did not try to meet the wants of the people. When this 5,000 tracked Him down the next day and demanded that He be their meal ticket, feeding them every day, He refused and told them to pursue "the bread of life" (John 6:1ff). Jesus also refused to alter His teachings even when people complained about how hard they were to live out or left Him because of them (John 6:60ff); unbelievably, there were people using that standard excuse that they "weren't being fed" by Jesus (can you believe that?), and yet that didn't persuade Jesus to change His approach. He kept doing what was really needed, not what was simply wanted.

You can also see this by using pure logic and analogy. What's a good example of customer service? The fellow who takes my order at a fast food joint. Let's say this fellow gives me great service (smiles, takes my order politely, fills it quickly, gets it right, pleases me in every way) and let's say that because of this great service I keep going back to this joint and this fellow. A successful example of service, right? But what has it produced? Relationship? Discipleship? No. It has produced nothing more than a transaction and, barring the introduction of some other element (such as personal discussion) it will never produce anything more than a transaction. I only go to this joint and this fellow because I get the service I want, and if I ever stop getting the service I want, I will quickly go to some other joint and some other fellow. Is that what our churches should be? It that what God wants His churches to be? Should ministers and other church workers be intent on creating the best transactions they can so that they can attract and hold onto the most customers they can? I don't believe so. I believe, rather, that this kind of service is wrong not just theoretically or theologically but practically , that this kind of service is a corruption of what God wants from the church and will not create what God wants in the church. It may pack a building and it may produce all kinds of good feelings, but it will not produce what God wants in the church. God wants disciples, not consumers; God wants development, not gratification; God wants a permanently committed family not a temporarily satisfied customer base.

So I don't believe we should be offering this kind of service, my friends; I don't believe we should be over-extending ourselves to offer this kind of service; I believe that if we try to offer this kind of service, we will eventually become stuck in this kind of service, stuck by those demanding this kind of service and threatening to leave if they don't get this kind of service. Rather, I believe we should be doing ministry, which may not be as exciting and appealing but which will ultimately produce much better results.

Leading Vs Driving or How To Handle The Sheep

2010-04-07T08:00:00.001-07:00

We had a wonderful older minister in our area of Ohio, an older minister who was well-regarded in all the churches and who had been raised in a farming family. He was raised in a sheep farming family to be exact, and on one occasion he taught me one of the tricks of sheep farming. He said that sheep cannot be driven as cows can; you can't go behind sheep with whips or prods and drive them. Instead, he said, you had to lead sheep; you had to go ahead of them and get them to follow you. The best way to do this, he said, was to cut a small hole in a bag of feed, toss that bag over your shoulder with the hole pointing behind you, and then just walk. The sheep would naturally come after you to get the feed that fell from the bag. That way, you could take them wherever you wanted or needed.

And that sheep farming trick certainly has application to church work, application which is probably obvious to all of you. People are more like sheep than like cows; the Bible even indicates this in the many times it compares people to sheep (yes, there are times when the Bible compares people to cows as well, but those times are rarer and none of them are flattering). And like sheep, most people cannot be driven. I know we often want to drive them; I myself, when frustrated by some error or problem in the church, almost instinctively begin thinking of how I can drive the people through that problem: how I can preach some tough sermons or lay down some harsh laws or make some disparaging statements about how "disappointed" I am that this is happening or that isn't happening. Unfortunately, though, or maybe even fortunately, this just isn't going to work; trying to drive people like this won't solve the problem; trying to drive people like this will likely make the problem worse; trying to drive people like this will likely only drive people away. Hitting people only makes them hard, and hard people aren't what we're trying to produce as a church.

What we need to do instead, then, is lead the people; what the people need instead is to be led. And that means several things for us. It means we must know where we are going (how can we lead if we don't know the way?). It means we have to be going there or have been there ourselves (how can we lead if we don't know where or what it is we're leading to?). It means we must have something to offer them (there must be food; we must have that feed sack on our shoulders). Most of all, though, it means we don't drive or hit; it means we instead demonstrate and motivate and encourage and reward.

Is this the easiest way to do things? Probably not. Is is the fastest way to do things? Certainly not. But I believe it will prove to be the best way to do things. Getting good and lasting results is rarely easy or fast (bad and temporary results, on the other hand, can be both), but they are nonetheless good and lasting. They are the kind of results I hope to see in the church. And so this is the kind of thing we need to do in the church. Let's learn that lesson from that old sheep farmer, my friends; let's not try to drive; let's instead lead.

P.S. Since initially writing this post, I have listened to a lecture for my "Dynamics Of Servant Leadership" class, and in that lecture the professor said that Christian leaders are not to be cowboys driving cattle with a whip but shepherds leading sheep with a staff". Great analogy!

It Isn't Always (Or Even Often) Us

2010-04-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

I finally finished the book Heather bought me as a return gift from the men's advance, the book simply called Highlanders, the book on Scottish Highlander history. And I came across a lot of interesting information in this book, a lot of which was about the Faith and the ways of the Faith in the Highlands. Some of this information was about a fellow named Sandy Gair who like to dress in Old Testament-style garb; on one occasion, a group of divinity students was taunting him, saying "Behold - Isaac", "No, behold - Jacob", "No, behold - Abraham", to which Sandy Gair replied, "In truth, I'm Saul the son of Kish, sent in search of his master's asses. Seems I've found them." (If this makes no sense, look up 1 Samuel 9:1ff.) Some of this information was about David Stephen, who was both a minister and a dancer, which was quite unique at the time as dancing was considered a sin. On one occasion, Stephen met a woman on the road, a woman who was so profane she was called "Maggie Hell". This woman began rebuking Stephen for his dancing, and when he realized how shameful it was to be rebuked by a woman named "Hell", he decided to give up dancing for good. Some of this information was about John Grant, who toured the Highlands looking for those who were "Christians indeed" (that is, really Christian). He found two.

And some of this information, the some I really want to tell you about today, concerned a man named Alexander MacLeod. He led a revival in the Highlands, a very powerful revival that resulted in the conversion and renewal of thousands. Now that isn't really all that extraordinary; there have been many such revivals in church history. What is extraordinary is that MacLeod was not a good preacher. Rather, he was a bad preacher. The author of Highlanders says he was "average" and his preaching "commonplace". Beyond that, the man who baptized MacLeod once complained about his preaching, saying that he hoped eternity wasn't as long as one of MacLeod's sermons. Not only so, but MacLeod's congregation wasn't that great, either; it was mostly comprised of "pagans", those who barely knew the doctrines and practices of the Faith and who couldn't host a decent service if they tried. And yet, from (or perhaps we should say through) this average preacher and this under-average congregation came one of the greatest revivals of the day.

And what this shows, my friends, is that ministry doesn't always or even often depend on the people doing it, on their skills or traits or abilities. Rather, ministry far more often depends on the God behind it; God far more often uses the average and commonplace and poor to accomplish the great. And I don't know that we are actually average and commonplace and poor today (I would hope not!). Nonetheless, I am still comforted by this truth, this truth demonstrated in Alexander MacLead and his congregation and the many like them throughout history, the truth that it isn't always or even often us, the truth that revivals and the other lofty accomplishments of the Faith don't depend on us, the truth that there is One higher and mightier and more wise and powerful who is above us and is working all these things through and despite us.

P.S. The information about all these unique Highlanders can be found in Highlanders: A History of the Gaels by John MacLeod, pages 227-31.

Turning Rotten Tomatoes Into Breakfast In Bed

2010-04-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

I read the book Soultsunami by Leonard Sweet for the Cincinnati Bible Seminary class "Dynamics Of A Healthy Church" somewhere around 2001. In this book, Sweet, who was at the time the Dean of the School of Theology at Drew University, told of an occasion when he had been publicly accosted by some students for allowing a secular movie to be filmed on the school grounds (the movie, if you're interested, was Deconstructing Harry, a Woody Allen film). After being "roasted" by these students and handling their roasting in a spiritual way, Sweet says he was approached by another student, one who was much more amiable. This student told Sweet that he had learned something from him that evening. Sweet then asked the student, "What could you have possibly learned from me this evening?", and the student replied, "I learned that when people throw at you rotten eggs and tomatoes, you can serve them breakfast in bed." (And if you'd like to read this account yourself, you can do so here).

And that story has been very influential to me over the years; I have probably been as influenced by that as the student who witnessed it was. I have come to believe, in fact, that this is a lot of what we do and what we have to do as ministers/leaders/workers, that a major part of our ministry is to take all the rotten eggs and tomatoes that people throw at us and turn those things back into breakfast in bed for them. Now I didn't say that this was a part of our ministry that I enjoy (I don't) or that comes easy to me (it doesn't), but it is a part of ministry that has to be done. People, for whatever reason, like to throw rotten vegetables at their ministers and leaders and workers; they like to roast us; they like to get in our faces and wag their fingers and make accusations and threats. And we have to take those ugly things and somehow transform them into beautiful things; we have to do this for us and for them and for the church.

We are, then, my friends, or we need to be or we at least need to try to be chefs, very special chefs who have to make very poor ingredients given by very hostile guests into a very lavish meal. It isn't easy, as I said before. But it is also noble, even beautiful. It is something that you'll be proud of at the end of your days and in eternity. And so it is something we need to be doing now.

P.S. I have all the notes from the "Dynamics Of A Healthy Church" class; the professor (a wonderful man named Joe Ellis) gave them to us in a complete, typed manuscript. If anyone would like to read them, I'd be happy to pass them along.

Listening For Agreement

2010-04-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, when I was still in Ohio, I went to a region-wide preaching meeting along with some people from my congregation. And I can't remember much about this meeting (as usual). I do remember, though, that at one point during one of the messages of this meeting, a man in the row in front of me turned around and asked me, "Is that the way you see it?", and he asked me this, of course, in such a way as to imply that it definitely wasn't the way he saw it. Now I don't know today what the "it" in question there was; I don't know what that preacher said about "it" that was different from the way this man saw "it" (I probably wasn't listening, to be honest). What I do know, though, is that I didn't like this man's question and I didn't like the way he asked that question; to me, the question itself and the way it was asked demonstrated a spirit, a spirit that in my experience is not at all like Christ and yet is all too prevalent in the church of Christ, a spirit that I for lack of a better term call "disagreeableness". It is a spirit that seeks to disagree with someone or something; this disagreeableness is searching or scrutinizing everything someone says for the express purpose of finding some grounds on which to disagree with it or with them, no matter how small those grounds might be.

And I know that some practice such disagreeableness in the belief that by doing so they are safeguarding the doctrines of the Faith, that some maintain this spirit in an attempt to keep false doctrines out of or away from the Faith. But the fact of the matter is that such disagreeableness is not a good way to do this; the fact of the matter is that this disagreeable spirit does more to harm the Faith than it does to help it. This is because such disagreeableness, such a disagreeable spirit, looks too closely at things and oftentimes looks at the wrong things or looks at things from the wrong angle. The bottom and undeniable line is that if you want to find something to disagree with, you will; if you want to disagree with something, you will find something to disagree with, even if it isn't there! Communication, as I have established in an earlier post, is not an infallible science; communication is always and will always be fraught with plenty of opportunities for misunderstanding and/or misinterpretation. This disagreeableness, then, this disagreeable spirit, is doing nothing short of inventing disagreements, of creating disagreements where there don't need to be disagreements, of fostering disagreements between the ministers of God.

That being the case, I suggest we adopt a different and better spirit, a different and better practice. I suggest we adopt an agreeable spirit or an agreeableness; I suggest we adopt a practice that I call "listening for agreement" or "listening for what you agree with rather than what you disagree with". Now I'm not sure where I first came across this practice. I had thought it was one of the Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Successful People", but I have since discovered that it isn't. It's quite possible, then, that I just invented this practice and this description of this practice myself. Nonetheless, I have held to it for years and still hold to it today; I still believe it is a valid practice; I still believe it is a valid spirit, and one that is definitely needed in the church; I still believe it is a practice and a spirit that is going to enable us to really accomplish for the Lord rather than merely debating what or how we are going to accomplish for the Lord.

And so I encourage us to have that spirit and practice. Don't be like that old fellow in Ohio who didn't see "it" that way; don't be so disagreeable and/or so determined to be disagreeable. Rather, be agreeable and be determined to be agreeable (or at least more agreeable); listen for agreement, for you agree with and not what you disagree (or might disagree or can disagree) with.

Bigger Than Us or Not Destroying What We Didn't Create

2010-03-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school, I saw a movie called Winter People (don't ask me why I saw it, because I don't know; let's just say I did). In the movie, Kurt Russell plays a clockmaker who takes up with a group of backwoods folk in North Carolina. At one point in the film, one of the more ignorant and violent of these backwoods people expresses his contempt for Russell by blowing one of Russell's clocks to pieces with a gun. As soon as he does so, Russell jumps to his feet and, with no regard for how much larger and tougher this man is than he, screams, "How can you destroy what you can't create (or something to that effect; I was unable to document the exact quote, but I know it is something close to that)?"

And I always thought there was a very deep and significant truth in that statement. To destroy anything is bad, but to destroy something that you are not skilled or knowledgeable enough to create or recreate is especially bad; it seems to me that wrecking something you had no hand and could have no hand in making is ever greater and more grievous sin than simply wrecking something you did or could have had a hand in making.

And I have further always thought that this truth applies to the workers of the church; it applies to all of us as we work together in the church. The fact of the matter is that none of us had a hand or could have had a hand in making each other; to use another phrase, all of us are bigger than each other and for that reason should be somewhat sacred to each other. You may have heard me say, for example, that my ministry is bigger than First Christian Church or anyone at First Christian Church, and this is true: my ministry really started when I was taught the words of the Scriptures and the ways of the Faith by my parents as a child and started in earnest when I loaded up the car at 19 and headed off for Bible college and was in full effect long before I knew of First Christian Church and could be in full effect long after First Christian Church is behind me (though, of course, I hope that never happens; I hope there never is an "after First Christian Church" for my ministry); my ministry involves personal sacrifices of time, money, energy, and heart, sacrifices that First Christian Church had no part in and so should be respected by First Christian Church. I have always been aware, though, that the reverse is also true; First Christian Church is bigger than I: it was in existence long before I was born and has a history that extends far beyond me, facts which likewise should be respected by me. So we are bigger than each other, and it would be a travesty for us to damage each other or for either of us to damage the other; I have always been rather adamant about not allowing anyone at FCC to damage my ministry, but I have also always been convicted that I should do nothing to damage FCC.

Lately, though, I have been thinking that this same truth applies not just to my ministry and not just to First Christian Church but also to each and every person who is touched by my ministry and by First Christian Church. Again, all these people are bigger than us; they had life before us and will have life after us; they are God's children, bearing His image and heading for His eternity. And the fact of the matter is that just by encountering us, they could be affected forever; their experiences with us may forever establish how they feel about ministers or how they feel about churches. And that must be respected as well.

The inescapable reality, my friends, is that we are all moving in spheres of beings who are bigger than us, beings we did not and could not create. And that reality should fuel and steer the way we regard and treat each other; we should regard and treat each other and everyone else we meet as those who are bigger than us, those we did not and could not create.

Seeking First To Understand, Then To Be Understood

2010-03-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have read Stephen R. Covey's book The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. I don't remember when or why I read this book (it was quite possibly for one of my last undergraduate classes), but I did read it. And though I don't remember when or why I read this book, I do remember at least one of its habits, at least one of those seven habits of highly successful people. That habit is, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" (which is actually the fifth of the seven habits). What Covey meant by this is that we should endeavor to really understand (not just merely understand or think we understand or assume we understand) what others are saying to us before we try to make others understand what we are saying to them, that we should try to truly understand where others are coming from before we try to force them to understand where we are coming from.

And Covey is not the only one nor the first one to describe and promote such a habit; rather, we find this habit described and promoted centuries before Covey in the pages of the Scriptures. One of my favorite Scriptures to describe and promote this habit is James 1:19, where James says, "My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry..."; that phrase quick to listen is almost exactly what Covey is referring to with "seek first to understand"; it means making an effort to and putting a priority on hearing the other person and doing so before or above making an effort to be heard by the other person. Not only so, but Proverbs 18:13 says, "He who answers before listening— that is his folly and his shame.", which is again similar to that "seek first to understand" idea and which is merely one of many, many instructions about talking and listening and communicating in Proverbs. So this is a fully biblical habit.

And it is also a logically necessary habit. It is a logically necessary habit because communication is a not an easy practice but rather a difficult practice, a practice that is filled with opportunities for all kinds of mistakes and missteps. Many people don't realize this; many people think communication is merely a matter of talking, something that anyone can do. But this is not the case at all. When I was in Bible college, I took a class on interpersonal communication; I was very intrigued by this class, so intrigued that I applied to study communication at a graduate level at The Ohio State University (and was rejected - twice). One thing I learned in this class is that communication is a five-step process, that there are five steps to any type of communication. These five steps are: 1) the communicator (or source) has an idea, 2) the communicator encodes that idea in some form of language, 3) the communicator sends that encoded idea to a receiver, 4) the receiver receives that encoded idea, and 5) the receiver decodes that encoded idea. This five-step process can be diagrammed in this way:

Notice how open communication is to misinterpretation; notice how many things can go wrong in this five-step process. The communicator may not fully understand his idea himself and so can't properly encode it (he "doesn't have the words", as we say). The communicator may encode his idea incorrectly (he says "mad" instead of "bad" or something). Something could happen to that encoded idea as it is sent (windy or loud conditions garble it somehow). The receiver could receive the encoded message incorrectly (he could hear "mad" instead of "bad" or not hear fully). And, most likely of all, the receiver could decode the encoded message incorrectly (his own personal issues cause him to hear it in a way it wasn't meant). Looking at all the things that could go wrong here, my friends, it is no surprise that we often don't understand each other; rather, it is far more surprising that we ever understand each other, that we ever fully, really, truly receive the idea that another person is trying to communicate to us.

Therefore, we really must work at understanding; seeing that misunderstanding is such a great possibility, and knowing that misunderstanding can create such great problems (how many arguments/debates/discussions do we have in the church simply because we have misunderstood something someone has said?), so we must work at being sure we haven't misunderstood, work at being sure we have correctly understood. This habit of seeking first to understand and then to be understood should not be a habit only of highly successful people; it should be a habit of church ministers/leaders/workers as well.

Great Expectations

2010-03-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

In his new book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, Donald Miller talks about the happiness level of the people of Denmark. He says the people of Denmark have been found to be the happiest people in the world, and the reason they are the happiest people in the world is not their financial status, physical health, or social freedom but rather their expectations; they are the happiest people in the world because they have "low expectations", because they don't expect more or better from things and people and life than they should. Miller even relates a conversation that 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer had with one Danish man. In this conversation, Safer said that Americans, thinking that the happiness level of the people of Denmark has something to do with Denmark itself, will want to move there, to which the Danish man, knowing that the happiness level of the people of Denmark really has to do with the people themselves rather than the country and so can't be had just by moving, replies, "Well, honestly, they will probably be let down." (Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, 202)

And I found it interesting that I ran across this anecdote in this book at this time, because I myself have been thinking a lot about the expectations that people have, particularly the expectations that people have of their churches. Lately folks have been telling me that they are leaving their church or thinking of leaving their church because it isn't meeting their expectations. And I find this rather strange for several reasons. The first is that we don't see anything like this in the Scriptures; we do not see the people in the Bible leaving their churches period, much less leaving their churches because their expectations weren't being met. The second is that it makes me wonder what their expectations are; what exactly are you expecting your church to do for you, anyway? And the third, and potentially most important, is that this kind of thinking (or not thinking, as is probably really the case) is not going to be profitable; I'm fairly certain that those who are demanding others to meet their expectations are always going to be disappointed because it is never going to happen; no person or thing can possibly meet your every expectation every time, and thus no one can possibly be content if their contentment is based on persons or things meeting their every expectation every time. Great expectations, then, (and that is undoubtedly what they must be, else why are they not being met? they must be expectations above and beyond what is normal) will never lead to happiness but will instead always lead to unhappiness, and those who leave churches because their great expectations aren't being met will always be leaving churches because their great expectations will never be met.

I think the Danes are on to something, and I really hope that someday the people of the church get on to it as well. Happiness doesn't come from having great expectations; disappointment and disillusionment do. Happiness comes from low expectations; happiness comes not from changing your state but from changing yourself; happiness comes from not expecting (or demanding) more than you should (more than what you would want God to demand from you). And that is the kind of change (or kind of move) we of the church ought to be making; those are the kind of expectations that the people of the church should have of their church and of each other; we ought to be leaving our great expectations, not our good churches.

The Celtic Way Of Evangelism

2010-03-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

As most everybody knows, I am of Celtic descent (both Irish and Scottish) and I enjoy being of Celtic descent; I wasn't raised Celtic in any sense, but my name and my roots are Celtic, a fact I realized and embraced very early in life and continue to research and celebrate today (as most of you undoubtedly know and are tired of). Lately, I have been visiting a website about the Scottish games, and the last time I was there I saw a banner advertisement encouraging people to learn about their Celtic heritage through DNA testing. Seeing that advertisement, I had a horrible thought: supposed I took that DNA test and discovered that I wasn't Celtic at all?!? Now this couldn't happen, of course; I know I am Celtic; I can prove that my great-great-grandparents were from Ireland, and I can also prove that not only is my own name Scottish but my great-grandfather's name is also Scottish (Harris, a sept of the Campbell clan), which makes me doubly-Scottish. Nonetheless, I had that thought and was troubled by it; I have enjoyed my association with the Celts and would hate to lose it.

But I was only troubled like this for a time. This troubling thought soon passed because I really that I wouldn't lose my association with the Celts; I wouldn't lose my association with the Celts even if DNA testing somehow proved I am not Celtic; I wouldn't lose my association with the Celts because they were not/are not a people who take their associations away from those that want them.

The Celts, you see, were an open people, a very open people. They allowed other people to come to them. Author George G. Hunter speaks about this in his book The Celtic Way of Evangelism. There, Hunter says that the early Celtic Christians were quite willing to allow others, even those who didn't completely share their faith, doctrines, or practices, be a part or participate with them. We also see this is the clans. Contrary to popular belief, the clans were not homogeneous family of close relatives that shielded itself from everyone who was not a relative; rather, the clans were a group of different families in one area that united around one particular chieftain. The Campbell clan, as I mentioned above, included not just Campbells but also Harrises and even other peoples. I experienced this when I went to the Scottish games to register with my clan, the MacKay Clan. I was afraid they wouldn't accept me as my name is slightly different (though a legitimate form of MacKay and in fact the one modern name that is closest in pronunciation to MacKay) and as I couldn't prove any legitimate descent from MacKay. I was very happy, then, when the deacon who took me to the games went up to the MacKay tent and said, "McCoy?", at which the man in the tent replied, "Sure, we'll take a McCoy." (This same deacon later told me that any clan would have adopted me if I had come around with a couple of bottles of Guinness to share.) The Celts, then, were very receptive to other people; they allowed other people to participate with them even if those other people weren't exactly like them.

And I think that is what we of the church need to do as well; I think we of the church need to be open in this way. So often we keep "outsiders" at arm's length; we don't allow them to truly be a part of us until they have proven beyond doubt that they share all our doctrines and convictions (this was perhaps more of a problem in Ohio than it is in California, but I think the tendency is nonetheless still here). And that is undoubtedly a mistake; that kind of closed-ness might attract some stalwarts, but it is going to repel most seekers; few people are going to stick with it long enough to truly become a part of us if we are so closed. I think a much better way is to allow people to be part of us if they want to, to allow people to "belong and then believe" rather than forcing them to "believe then belong". Admittedly, it sometimes seems weird to me when some occasional attender (a person who rarely or irregularly attends our meetings) refers to our church as "their church" or to me as "their preacher", but what does that really cost us? Anything? Of course not. So why shouldn't we let them do it? Why shouldn't we make it easy for people to be or feel a part of us? Why shouldn't we do this in the very reasonable hope that in this way they will begin to share our doctrines and convictions, our beliefs and values? Why shouldn't we have our arms open to all?

I don't think there is any reason why we shouldn't do these things; I don't see any reason why we shouldn't take this approach. I believe the Celtic way of evangelism, the Celtic way of being open, is a good, right, and beneficial way, and thus I think ti is the way we should take, whatever our DNA might say.

Certain Sermon Misconceptions

2010-03-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

In addition to having a rather deep and convoluted philosophy of ministry (which I share with you here in the playbook), I also have an equally deep and convoluted philosophy of preaching. And I don't need to share all of my deep and convoluted philosophy of preaching with all of you (though, if you would like to know it, I'd be happy to share). But I do need to share a few parts of this philosophy with you (and have in fact been wanting to share with you for some time); there are a few parts of this philosophy that I think would benefit you (and our entire church) to know. These parts are the misconceptions about my preaching (or any preaching, for that matter), what I call "certain sermon misconceptions".

The first of these misconceptions is the idea that any one sermon can solve any one problem. Often, there will be an issue in the church (something like gossip or selfishness or laziness or lack of commitment or the like). And invariably, someone will see this issue in the church and then say to me, "Doug, you ought to preach a sermon about this issue (whatever it may be)," as if my preaching one time about this issue will completely correct it. And I wish it did work that way, my friends; I really, really do; I'd be making a long list of issues to completely correct with single sermons. Unfortunately, it does not. One sermon will not correct any one issue; one sermon will not solve any one problem. Sermons are not like bullets that can kill evil acts and wrong thinking with one blow. Rather, sermons are more like meals; one meal will not make you healthy or unhealthy; it takes a constant, consistent diet to make you healthy or unhealthy. So what I try to do in not try to fashion bullets but rather try to provide a constant, consistent diet (if you look at my sermons, in fact, you can see the major themes that are the staples or "food groups" of this diet: the glory of Jesus and our need to be devoted to Him heart and soul, the grace way of salvation, and the manner in which we should think of and treat each other). There are several jokes or stories that fit in line with this way of thinking as well. You may have heard of the letter one fellow wrote to a newspaper editor saying that he had heard thousands of sermons over the course of his life but couldn't remember a one of them and so thought that sermons must have any value. In reply, the editor said that he had eaten thousands of meals over his lifetime and couldn't remember a one of them but still knew they had done the job of nourishing his body (thus suggesting, of course, that sermons work in the same way; you may not remember them, but they can still affect you). You may also have heard of the Sunday when it was so cold and snowy outside that only one old farmer showed up at church services, and so the preacher decided not to preach. The farmer, though, told him, "If only one of my cows shows up at the barn, I still feed him", and so the preacher did preach. In fact, the preacher preached for a long time, so long that when he was done, the farmer said, "If only one of my cows shows up at the barn, I still feed him, but I don't give him the full load of hay" (which again carries the suggestion that a sermon is like food or feed). So I'm not trying to compose the perfect sermon that's going to solve any one problem or correct any one issue; I'm trying to maintain a diet that's going to make us healthy people.

The second misconception is that I preach about problems in the church, that I see something that is wrong or that I don't like in the church or the church people and I preach against it. I can understand where this thought comes from, and I can believe that other preachers do indeed do this (I know for a fact that other preachers do this, actually), but I do not. I will preach according to the seasons (doing Easter sermons at Easter and Christmas sermons at Christmas, etc), but I do not preach according to what may be or may not be going on in the church. Instead, as most of you know, I plan out my preaching a year in advance, mapping out the 52 Sundays of the year and creating what I call a "preaching schedule" for that year, a schedule consisting of several series of messages based on certain themes (I will go through one book, for example, or look at several episodes in the life of Jesus or several texts that use the same phrase); I leave room for what I call the "Single-Shot Sermons" (stand-alone messages that don't fit any theme) and also for the leading of the Spirit (I will change the schedule if I feel led to preach about a certain idea), but I never just grind some axe or take on some sin that I saw last week. In fact, the big secret of my preaching is that it is motivating more by what I like than by anything else. Winston Churchill wrote a book about the history of England, and one scholar has said that this book is so incomplete, focusing on Churchill's personal favorite parts of English history and passing over others, that Churchill should have been called it, "Things In History That Interest Me". Well, the entire canon of my preaching could honestly be called something similar; it could be called, "Things In The Bible That Interest Me", because that's really what it is. Those three staples of the diet that I mentioned above? Those are not only things that I think are important but things I am passionate about, things I like. And that, more than anything, I why I preach on any particular topic: not because I see it being done or not being done in the church, but because I see it in the Bible and I like it.

And the third misconception is that I take swipes or shots at people in my sermons, that I will say something about a particular individual while I am preaching. Again, this is something I know other preachers do (I distinctly remember one preacher telling me about a time someone in the church was gossiping about him and so he prepared a sermon about gossip and delivered it "right at" that person). It is not something, though, that I do. In fact, I think it is safe to say that I never have done it and I know it is safe to say that I never do it now. I never do it first because it is evil; using the pulpit for a soapbox, using the pulpit to kick a person when they can't kick back, is one of the most ungodly things I can imagine, and I just plain don't use it that way. I also never do this, though, because it is illogical; it just isn't a good way to use the pulpit. Say I did have a grudge or gripe against a person, and I spent all week polishing a sermon that was going to put them or their wicked acts or their errant theologies to shame. You know what will happen? THEY WON'T BE THERE THAT SUNDAY! I can't be sure whose actually going to be in church on any given Sunday; why, then, would I prepare a whole sermon against a person who might not be there. I know some people think I do this, but I don't and wouldn't; it plain and simply just doesn't happen.

So those are my certain sermon misconceptions. I've been aware of them and how erroneous they are for some time, and I think it would bless our church if you were aware of them and how erroneous they are too.

Ministry Faith

2010-03-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Faith is a critical part of the life with God and the ministry or work of the life with God; it is such a critical part, in fact, that the life with God is often referred to as The Faith (search that phrase in any concordance; you'll be surprised how often it is used in the New Testament). We know that we are saved by faith (a faith that I refer to as "saving faith", the faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and the Savior of man), of course, and that we are to "have faith" (a faith that I refer to as "daily faith", simply because I can't think of anything else to call it). Lately, though, I've been thinking that there is another kind of faith, or at least a kind of faith that is a somewhat distinct form of the daily faith; lately I have come to realize that there is a ministry faith, a faith that we church ministers/leaders/workers must have, a faith in which we do our ministry or leading or work, a faith that our ministry or leading or work will not be in vain, in vain for either us or the church or the kingdom.

Indeed, no church minister/leader/worker wants to think that he or she is working or laboring in vain; the Apostle Paul mentioned this in Philippians 2:16 (where he he wants to "boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain") and 1 Thessalonians 3:5 (where he says he fears his "efforts" in Thessalonica had been "useless"), as well as in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 (where he talks about our work here on earth surviving the judgment by fire and entering eternity with us). The problem is, though, that our minister/leadership/work often appears to be in vain and that we often react to this appearance. Older ministers have cautioned me against this; they have warned me, "Never resign on Monday morning", and they have done so because they know that it is all too common for a minister/leader/worker to feel down about his ministry/leadership/work, especially immediately after doing such ministry/leadership/work. I'll admit feeling this way myself; I'll admit that none of my 15-plus years in ministry has yielded the results I hoped for when I first began Bible college and continue to hope for today (results that include weekly if not daily conversions and baptisms and believers who grow in the Faith and demonstrate the behavior towards each other and the unity and maturity and desire for the things of the Faith described in the Bible); I'll admit that there are plenty of Monday mornings (and, even worse, Sunday evenings) when I feel like my ministry has been fruitless and that continuing to minister will be worthless, when I fear that I will be like Father McKenzie of "Eleanor Rigby", "writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear". And maybe you have felt/are feeling that way as well.

And that's where ministry faith comes in. We have to believe and then act upon the belief that our ministry is not fruitless and that continuing to minister is not worthless. Indeed, we have the promise that this is true; God says in Isaiah 55:11 that His word does not go out void, and Paul says in Galatians 6:9 that we will reap a harvest if we continue to do good without growing weary and giving up. And we need to cling to that promises just as Abraham clung to his promise of a son (he hoped in it "against all hope", as Paul says in Romans 4:18). We are involved in the same kind of struggle or quest that the ancient heroes of the Faith were involved in, and we need to respond to that struggle or quest in the same way they responded to theirs. We need to have faith; we need to have ministry faith.

Growth (or How I've Stopped Praying)

2010-03-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

I commented on numerical growth (the addition of members to our congregation) a little bit in the previous post. That in turn led to this post, which I have been planning for some time.

Most of my delivered messages are online. They can be found and heard through our church website, my Facebook page, this blog, and iTunes. Periodically, I look to see how many times these messages have been heard (ok, I look every three hours or so to see if any of them have been heard!). Surprisingly, the one message that has been heard more than any other is the message called, "My Prayer For Our Church" which I delivered May 4, 2008, just a few months after coming to FCCPH. This message immediately became my most listened to message and has remained that way; there are a few that have gotten close, but this one has always stayed on top. And that has always surprised me because I considered this to be one of my personal messages, one of the messages that was really only intended for our church, one of the messages in which I simply talked to us as a church about us as a church; I've always wondered, "Why do so many people care what I have been praying about our church?" This has also, though, begun to embarrass me; the fact that this message has been listened to so many times has begun to embarrass me because it contains an error; it has begun to embarrass me because I no longer pray for our church the way I describe in that message. If you can remember back that far (and if you can't, the sermon player is just over at the top right!), I said that there are three major parts to my prayers for our church: 1) petitions for what I think we need as a church (which includes me being improved as a minister, my ministry being protected from attack, revival among our people, blessings for our elders, deacons, trustees, and all other church workers, the addition of other elders, deacons, trustees, and church workers, financial providence, and, most of all, the right spirit), 2) petitions for each member of our church (I pray for every single one of you by name and, if I know it, by need), and 3) petitions for growth. And that third part is the part I have changed. I no longer pray for growth; I no longer pray for our church to grow.

So why do I no longer pray for growth, for our church to grow? Well, there are several reasons. The first is that I was never confident that I could pray that prayer selflessly (without concern for myself); sure, most of my motives were good (church growth, after all, is a good and necessary thing), but some of them weren't so good (quite frankly, I'd like the church to grow so I could be seen as a success in ministry, and that's just not a good motive). The second is that I don't think growth is everything we modern Christians have come to see it as; when I was still in Pleasant View (around the year 2000), I read a book called Church Growth Is Not The Point by Robert Hudnut; the main idea of this book is that we shouldn't be as obsessive as we are about growth, that we shouldn't see growth as the only or even main standard of measurement for the church, and I think there is some truth to that (as someone has said, "Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell", an idea that supports Hudnut here). The third, though, is that I found something better to pray in that spot, something that I can confidently pray selflessly and that is the everything we modern Christians need to see the church as. That something is effectiveness. I no longer pray for our church to grow because I now pray for our church to be effective, effective in evangelism and effective in edification, effective in discipleship and in fellowship, effective in every way and area in which our Lord has asked us and needs us to be effective.

And I think that is, as I mentioned, a better prayer. I think it is a better prayer first because it supersedes growth. If we are effective, we will grow, so growth is included there. But we will do more than that. We will also affect and change and benefit and give to ourselves and our visitors and our community; we will not only be amassing a crowd but transforming that crowd and those beyond it into true disciples or followers of Christ. I think it is a better prayer second because it sidesteps growth. The fact of the matter is that growth isn't always an option; some of God's greatest preachers never saw growth in the lifetime. Noah is a prime example; Noah preached while building the ark but never saw one convert (according to assumption, he preached for 120 years, that is, the length of time it took him to build the ark; whether this is completely accurate or not is disputable, but it is clear that he did preach yet made no conversions); he was, however, still effective and is listed in Hebrews 11 as a hero of the Faith. In the same way, there are times when growth just isn't a possibility or just won't happen for whatever reason. But we can still be effective; we can still be discipling the ones we have, or serving the community, or walking with God. So effectiveness is better than growth; it is far better (and nobler and stronger and greater) than growth.

And that's what I'm praying for (and working for) in our church now. I'm not praying for numerical growth so much (even though I'd still love to see it and believe that one day we and all other churches like ours are going to see it in a great way). I'm praying instead for effectiveness, for us to be effective. That is now my prayer for our church.

P.S. Since writing the post, the numbers have changed. "My Prayer For Our Church" is no longer my most listened to message; two messages, in fact, have now been listened to more. One was a message from Hosea (I think) and I forget what the other was. Way to prove me wrong, listeners.

Notes From The Elders' Meeting

2010-03-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of posts ago, I told you about five "Cs" that came from a recent elders meeting. Those Cs, though, weren't the only things to come out of this meeting. There were a few other ideas we kicked around as well.

One was that what we do as a church (whether that be evangelizing the lost or edifying the saints, the two main jobs the church has been given by God) should be a natural process, that is, it should be something we do naturally. So often we talk about programs, but if there is anything we should have learned by now, it is that programs aren't that effective. Why aren't they that effective? Because they are unnatural; they are an unnatural system of rules or procedures we have adopted to try to correct a natural problem, and for that reason, they will never work very well. A better solution is to change the nature. If we are by nature evangelistic and/or edifying, then we won't need programs; if we aren't by nature evangelistic and/or edifying, no program or amount of programs is really going to change us.

The second had to do with effectiveness. How do we know when what we are doing for evangelism and/or edification is effective or not? I believe that one way we do this is we measure resources against results. This question, in fact, was asked me by one of our church workers, and I answered it in this way (which I now share by permission of that church worker):

An effective ministry is one that achieves its goal with a reasonable use of resources and a minimal effect on the congregation. Thus, there are three components that must be balance for a ministry to be an effective ministry: 1) it actually does what it aims to do, 2) it does not drain an inordinate amount of resources (monetary, material, or volunteer), and 3) it does not adversely affect the larger church to any great degree. If any one of these three are not met, a ministry might not be an effective ministry even if it is doing good things. For example, if we decided to bring youth to the church by hosting a motocross extravaganza in the sanctuary, we might bring in 300 kids, and it might look like it was effective. However, if we destroyed the church building in the process, we would be left with no place to do ministry in the future, so it would really be ineffective.

As stated in that answer, there is a balance of resources and results that must be maintained. If an activity doesn't require or consume a lot of resources (whether financial or volunteer resources), we can allow it to continue even if the results are not there (after all, "we may be planting seeds we can't see yet", which is something we always say when we are discussing these matters and is admittedly true). If an activity does require or consume a lot of resources, though, and doesn't have a lot of results, we need to carefully consider whether or not to continue it (sure, it may be planting seeds we can't see yet, but if it is that resource-intensive, we really need to find another way to plant those seeds).

The third is actually doing what we are intended to do. I mentioned this in the answer about effective ministries I quoted above, and it is again similar to the content C of the previous post, but it merits mentioning again. My preaching professor at Bible college taught me that we have to keep asking two questions about the church work: 1) what's business and 2) how's business. And I believe that is true. We need to be constantly asking ourselves "What does God want to do?" (which is the proper question for the church) and "Are we doing it?" There are a lot of nice things we could do, my friends, but we need to really do those things the church has been commanded to do; we need to really be evangelizing and edifying as we have been commanded to do.

And the last of these things was growth, which includes both numerical growth (the addition of new people to our congregation) and spiritual growth (the increase of Christian knowledge and understanding in the congregation). Without doubt, growth is always important to a church; every church says they "want to grow". How do we do it, though? I believe there are two ways. The first is retaining those here (i.e., not losing the members we have) and the second is retaining those coming through the door (i.e., keeping the visitors the Lord sends our way). Not only so, but another thing to keep in mind is that growth should be natural; this falls in line with the first thing I mentioned above and it is absolutely true. You who are parents know that you don't have to force your kids to grow; if they are healthy (well-fed, protected from illness, etc), they will grow on their own. The same is true with the church. We should be aware of the two ways we grow, but we shouldn't try to force that growth. Instead, we should work on being/staying healthy, and allow the growth to come naturally.

So the elders and I are kicking around some good ideas. But we don't want to be the only ones kicking them around. We hope you will keep these five Cs and these four things in mind as well.

What If Starbucks Marketed Like A Church

2010-03-16T22:34:00.001-07:00

This one comes to me from Scott Williams. I don't know how to apply it or even what to say about it. But give it a look.

P.S. Since posting this, I have checked out the video creators channel on YouTube. There, I found this quote: "After ministering on the streets of Russia, the jungles of Thailand, and the slums of India, I've had a hard time dealing with our American Church Mentality." Listen to what that experienced person was saying: the self-centered consumeristic spirit of American Christianity is harder to handle than some of the harshest and poorest conditions on the planet!

How Much Is Too Much

2010-03-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

I once read a book by a Christian author named Steve Sjogren (don't ask me to pronounce it). I can't remember what this book was (it could have been Conspiracy of Kindness or Outflow or Irresistible Evangelism or 101 Ways To Reach Your Community; the book was about evangelizing in our modern society using acts of service, and all of those titles and books seem to be about that, so it could have been any of them). I also can't remember why I read this book (it could have been for a college class, but I know I was in Crestline at the time, so that seems unlikely). What I do remember, though, are two things. The first is that Steve said one of his evangelistic tactics was to go to fast food places and clean their bathrooms (and props be to him for having the courage, humility, and stomach to do that). The second is that Steve said that no one person can do more than three things effectively. They can do more than three, but they won't be very effective at it; the more they try to do, the more the quality will begin to slip. Three things, then, is the effective limit.

And I think this is very applicable to us as Christian and church ministers/leaders/workers. I think we have a limit and should be aware of that limit. Without doubt, this will be difficult, as there is lots of work that needs to be done and few workers to do it; the statistic I have always heard is that 80% of necessary church work is done by 20% of the church members, and I'd imagine that is probably true. Nonetheless, I think there are ways to make this happen. One is not to make things harder than they have to be; I have always been a firm believer in the beauty of simplicity, and I think we need to have such beauty in our church labors; let's keep it as simple as possible. Another is to not do things we don't need to do; we create a lot of jobs for ourselves that don't really need to be done; if it doesn't really need to be done, let's not do it.

And there are probably other things we could list here, other ways to help us limit what we are doing. The bottom line, though, is that we need to limit it; the bottom line is that when we do too much we aren't really doing a lot at all or, to put it another way, when we do too much we aren't doing as much as we think we are. If three is the limit, then that's the limit. Let's be aware of that limit when it comes to assigning work to others as well as when it comes to assigning work to ourselves.