A Radical Invitation

Has the first word of the biblical salvation message has been lost through disuse? Given the climate and message of today's evangelical church, one has to wonder. Jesus preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The Apostles preached, "Repent!" Even when just counseling the woman caught in adultery Jesus said, "Go and sin no more." Let me ask you, is that the kind of thing you preach?

Where is the "REPENT!" in today's preaching? It just isn't part of the evangelical fabric that's in fashion these days. Have we become so afraid that people will not respond to that nasty little word that we have abandoned it and now depend on manipulation and marketing instead? When we rely on such measly human efforts that utilize enticement and stroke the flesh, what sacrifice is any respondent prepared to make?

The discipleship crisis the American church is in today starts with the message that initially enlists today's supposed disciples. Folks that enter thinking they don't have to turn, won't turn after they enter. I'm not a fan of fire and brimstone preaching--faith, not fear, is the only motivation that sustains a life of following Jesus--but to become a Christian a person must embrace their own death and trust Christ to raise them to a new (and better) life. People today, though all-modern-and-educated, must  still hear and respond to the call to repent and follow Jesus, as any disciple in any former age did.

Christianity is about a radical change in direction, a night and day difference in one's life. The result of a new birth cannot be the same old, same old, for birth means leaving an old way of life for a new one, or it's not birth at all. For those would who style themselves as radical and innovative preachers in this day and age, the message that actually matches that characterization starts with the word REPENT! Now that's a radical invitation that stands a shot at producing new life.

Communicating the Gospel

What does it take to communicate the Gospel? The message is rather simple: God came to earth in the form of a man named Jesus, lived sinlessly as that man, willingly accepted the weight of every other man's sins upon his own shoulders, died the death that was due that sin, and then rose from the dead on the third day thereby demonstrating that he'd overcome that sin and the death due it. To everyone that believes that good news and thereby embraces Jesus as Lord (and follows him), the victory over sin and death he achieved is shared with them.

Now a lot of effort has been and is made to analyse, criticize, synthesize and publicize what makes communication successful. That is particularly true in regard to the Gospel, because it accomplishes nothing if it's not shared. As would be expected in a venture that is so reliant on communication, the church world is up to its eyes in books, conferences, magazines, blogs, and courses on effective, relevant communication. Are those efforts misplaced? 

I find it remarkable that Jesus, our prime example, at the critical moment in extending his ministry, did not commission communicators to help him fulfill his vision. He neither relied on the instruction of experts in the field, nor enlisted those so instructed to do his bidding. Instead, gasp, he chose friends to help him, and not even well-spoken ones at that! That is counterintuitive at best, not at all what a wise leader should do--so why did Jesus do it?

Obviously, the quality of communication is not what converts sinners. Could it be that a church's true evangelistic success (that is on people actually becoming born again) depends more on whether or not Jesus has friends in that congregation than on how well that church markets its message? Is this not a Spirit thing after all? If his friends are not capable of communicating the gospel message with effect, and the onus seems to be on their bad technique, it may well be that it's not the gospel they are actually trying to communicate.

A Letter to the Vision-Driven Church, Part I

‘I know your deeds, and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate...       Revelation 2:19-20a  NASB

In his message to the church at Thyatira, Jesus pinpoints trouble in a church that seemed to know where it was going. Look at his description: notable deeds, love and faith, service, perseverance, and a trajectory in mission that resulted in latter deeds being greater than former ones. I think any of us looking at that description would say, "What a great church, now that's the way to do it!." Particularly, in today's business and marketing laden approach to church planting, church management and growth, those qualities would seem to be the core of producing the right kind of success.

Now please don't misunderstand what I'm saying, those were great characteristics. This church was relational, it was engaged and moving, they were focused. They knew what they were trying to accomplish, and they were getting after it. But as important as these considerations are, what cannot be overlooked is that they were not allowed by Christ to be substituted for proper teaching and upright behavior.

The message to Thyatira that perhaps today's church needs to clearly hear is that passe things like doctrine and discipline really do matter, at least to God. I fear that under the current church-growth regimens so widely practiced by congregations swallowing up whole the population of church-goers, discipline never rises past the level of showing the door to anyone who doesn't quite buy the leader's vision. Doctrine isn't anything more than the joyous knowledge that as long as you fit the profile the church is trying to attract and submit to that leader's vision, God loves you.

It is not enough to have a vision that drives your church. It is not enough to know one's mission and to dedicatedly pursue it. Even if one is successful in that aspect of church life, Christ may find significant and disastrous fault with such a church. Church discipline is a key aspect of church life as Christ would have it. False prophets, false teaching, immoral practices all have to be addressed via discipline. Talk about turning today's wisdom on its head--vision, evidently, is not a suitable vector for close-mindedness in church according to Christ, but doctrine is.

The Tension of Living in Two Worlds

...the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
1 Corinthians 7:29-31 (NIV)

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
1 John 2:15-17 (NIV)

I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.
1 Corinthians 5:9-10 (NIV)

We live in this world but are not to be of it. That's quite a lot to pull off-- a little like taking a bath without getting wet. One of my children did that once, or so he said, but this is not a command we can get away with lying about, and certainly our Father is no father who can be lied to. So we lay ourselves down, like a rope in a tug of war, and attempt the impossible.

Whatever our hands find to do, we must do with all our strength-- not half-hearted, not lacking in ambition, whether our careers or even just avocational interests. God cannot be honored by sloppiness or lack of commitment, so we concentrate our skills and attention and yet...

We try love our neighbors as ourselves, to take up the cause of the widow and orphan, and to respond to the fallen on the way. It requires not an unnoticeable amount of time and effort, and even some material. We focus on the effort to make the world a better place by easing the suffering so prevalent, and often end up squeezing the Gospel out of the picture and embracing a humanist ideal. Hmmm....

We are citizens of the land we live in, regardless of whether we give it much thought or not. In some countries, it does not demand that much from us; in America, civic duty is always clamoring for the Christian's attention: jury duty, taxes, elections, the incessant stream of e-mail warning us that the country will go to hell in a hand basket if we don't call our congressman today. Evangelicals decided to make a political stand part of their spiritual agenda in 1980. Since then, if anything, the country's decline has been more precipitous...

This world is not our home. To be too at home here is destined to make us too strange to him who matters, and too antagonistic to his interests in our lives. To go off on our own, even as if on a mission from God, to make this world a better place is bound to corrupt the mission we do have from God, and frustrate the Spirit he gave to fill us. The tension of living in two worlds is apt to tear the best of us in two: could any of us ever endure if it were not for the grace of God?

Good Church/Bad Church

If the letters to the Seven Churches in Asia represent, as I have posited, a representative communication to the whole church throughout all time, then at any given time there would have to be some good churches, some bad churches and some that are a mixed bag. I think that was what was intended to be communicated by Christ Jesus, and is what has, in fact, been observed throughout church history.

Good churches, as Christ sees it (modeled by Smyrna and Philadelphia), are not necessarily what the average Christian today would call successes. Afflicted, poor, weak, persecuted by false believers and the state are qualities that Christ attributed to those pleasing churches. Despite their apparent lack of achievement, they are affirmed by Christ and promised a good end upon his return. Makes one rethink his or her commitment to church growth and being a Christian success, doesn't it?

Bad churches, as Christ sees it (modeled by Sardis and Laodicea), are indifferent, self-satisfied, sloppy morally, and materialistic. They have forgotten the Word and are in danger of being forgotten by Christ upon his return. Do the descriptives mainline or historical pop to mind here? A reputation for being the living church certainly doesn't make one so.

Mixed churches, as Christ sees it (modeled by Ephesus, Pergamum and Thyatira), are those that would otherwise be good churches except for some glaring flaw. Of the three, I find Ephesus the most troubling. Its description would make it the poster child for thriving evangelicalism today, but its loss of first love has it endangered instead. Really, it's stunning, shocking, and for me, an evangelical pastor, dismaying. Can anyone really be sure that Evangelicals are Rapture ready?

The other two suffer from readily evident and similar problems: instead of rousting false teachers, they tolerate them. As a result, some church folk are enticed into idolatry and sexual immorality. Though we live in a time that values toleration, perhaps these examples tell us this is no time to go soft on fornication and homosexuality.

Be Like Jesus

Distractions are some of our greatest enemies. They do not confront us with malice frontally, their blows, if they land at all, are only glancing. They don’t have to be dangerous or even lethal-- a butterfly on the windshield wiper can be just as distracting to our drive as a bee in the car. Like the old saw which says that a man may be the head of the family, but the wife is the neck, so distractions seek to turn our attention from where we were going.

The Bible warns us about distractions. Most of them are not intrinsically evil, but some of them are. A family will be a distraction, it's unavoidable, and not evil in the least (quite the opposite in fact). An unrelenting drive for "success" and status is distracting, particularly from trying to achieve our point in being here, and is evil at the core. Oddly, benign or evil distractions can stop ministry in its tracks.

Multiple choice exams, in order to add a degree of difficulty, often instruct their takers to choose, not the answer, but the best answer. A response can be wrong, not because it isn't true, but because it isn't full. When tolerances are high, quality control is a cinch: when the fit is tight, we have to be more choosy. I wonder how much of what we teach and practice in the church settles for something in the ballpark, but actually misses being in the game? The church at Ephesus certainly has some lessons to teach us in this regard.

Even the litany of discussions about the church seems somewhat distracting to me. So many are writing and reading about, mostly, what has already been said by someone at some time. Mention anything to a brother or sister today and you're likely to hear, "have you read so and so's book/article/blog about ..." So much information, so many concerns, too many choices, urgencies everywhere, the flesh in the midst of it all, excuses overflowing. So much effort in planning and prospecting and trying to get ahead.

Can it be that hard to just be like Jesus? 

Maybe it's time to just do that!

When Less Is More

What are the three best things anyone can do to aid evangelism?

1) Love (John 13:34-35; 1 John 4:7-8; Hebrews 10:24; 1 John 3:16-20; Galatians 6:10);

2) Demonstrate the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:4-5; Hebrews 2:4; 1 Thessalonians 1:4-5; Luke 24:46-49)

3) Be ready with your answer (1 Peter 3:15-16; John 9:24-38; Acts 26:1-29; 2 Timothy 1:8a; Luke 9:26).

We don't need to drink liquor with the world in order to win them, or to gyrate and grind with them at dance clubs, or to use vulgar language, or to entertain them, or to be entertained with them in order to have something to talk with them about around the water cooler. Evangelism is not offering the world more of what it already has, but that which is divinely different! Not different just for difference sake, nor different by artifice, but the difference that arises naturally, really supernaturally, when God is in the place.

If people will not heed the invitation to put their trust in Christ and walk with him now, when that invitation is accompanied by the demonstration of love, Holy Spirit power and personal testimony, then they don't need to be in God's company in eternity. Not because they are anymore wicked than any of us, but because they will not surrender to the will of God and the leadership of his Spirit. God alone is good, and if one can't agree with him, he or she needs to burn in hell! 

No one is fit for, nor could they possibly stay in heaven if they're not absolutely surrendered to God's will. Such surrender is the very stuff of faith, hope and love. It's what Jesus demonstrated during his earthly journey. So whatever Christians do in the name of evangelism, that whatever has to resolve in a call to the not yet surrendered to surrender unconditionally to Christ.

A church that accommodates human willfulness for the sake of evangelism, instead of confronting it, provides no service to anyone except Satan. Silencing the call for repentance, or expanding the tent of salvation to enclose sinful human perversity is not evangelism, nor even pre-evangelism. It's just participating in another's sin. If that is actually what it takes to grow the church in post-modern society, then growth is a diminishment which actually makes less more.

Church As Family

The word says that God sets the lonely in families. Families are a mark of his compassion and grace. Of all his inventions for the benefit of humanity, in my my mind, none beats the family. In America, however, we suffer a debilitating disease, which infects the broader West as well-- family has lost it's cachet and is not valued as highly as it once was. We have actually become anti-family in many ways, and our disease is wasting our society.

That situation is not limited to our families of birth but applies to our families of rebirth as well.

There seems to me to be a panic among religious prognosticators in the West concerning the future of Church. They read the tea leaves and blare their trumpets, "if something isn't done soon, we'll lose the next generation!" So, much discussion has ensued about the proper paradigm for the church in our day. What can be done to make the church relevant, resilient, and resurgent in the generations coming of age?

If God never said anything about the subject, our brainstorming might be appropriate, but he has spoken in his Word and we should at least have a clue. No model is offered there for church other than that of family. In any age, in any culture, church is meant to be seen as the family of God. Believers are brothers and sisters in the Lord, we all share one heavenly Father, and are instructed to love each other in a familial manner. If church is an institution, the institution it is has to be is the family.

The paradigm that works to produce the body God desires is the Church As Family. Fan clubs for religious superstars, social service agencies aiming to treat societal ills, social clubs giving members a place to belong, playgrounds, spas, mass entertainment venues, or religious businesses opening branches everywhere possible in an effort to dominate the market are not models taught by Jesus or described by the Word. Even if one found organizational success in adopting these unscriptural modalities, that would not equate to divine endorsement.

To be honest, I don't know why we even think in terms of trying to satisfy some element of population that isn't satisfied with a biblical paradigm. If those not satisfied don't drop their self-indulgent notions and submit to Christ as Lord and the Word as the rule of faith and conduct, do they even belong in the church? Church is the family of God, anyone not an actual brother or sister is merely a visitor. Some accommodation may be made for a visitor, but who turns their ongoing family-life upside down because a visitor drops in?

Some might say, "do it for evangelism," however, most evangelism doesn't occur within the confines of church services. Besides, evangelism is not presenting something other than Christ crucified and risen, nor calling for something less than repentance and faith concerning him. Believing in Christ and yielding to his Lordship is how we become part of the family. The unrepentant, the unyielding, those not surrendered, and the self-serving are not saved whether they're in church or out, accommodating them can only mean not accommodating Christ.  

Christianity isn't a popularity contest and following Christ isn't going to win anyone friends amongst those that don't follow Christ. The truth is what sets people free, and seeing brothers and sisters love one another is what makes the world know we're actually followers of Christ. If we actually want to build on the foundation Paul laid, then church has to be family. Anything else is wood, hay and stubble good for nothing but smoke and flame.

Christianity Is Selling Death

I've grown tired of both the church shoppers and the church marketers of our day. When I hear someone ask, "What does your church have to offer me or my family?" it's about all I can do to not have my head explode. It's not like it's anything new, Jesus had to put up with the same kind of self-centeredness, but that doesn't make it easier to take. Church is not a supermarket.

What consumer benefits a church might offer has nothing at all to do with whether or not it is the place God desires a believer to be in order to grow and serve. God has a divine appointment for each of us, and finding it should be our goal. Then, with patience and grace, serving God and our brothers and sisters there should be our occupation until (and only if) God appoints us some place else.

We certainly have no right to treat our brothers and sisters as disposable and divorce ourselves from their fellowship because we've decided we can get a better deal somewhere else. God is the one who has made us parts of the body and he alone gets to appoint us to our place in the body. What business does any church leader have, then, of dangling a carrot, trying to coax a believer to make a decision about where they belong on a basis other than God's appointment? 

And evangelism is not soliciting suitors like Tamar enticed Judah. We can't initially camouflage the message of repentance and surrender only to unveil the truth of  obedience and sacrifice later. Can it be any wonder that when it's time to pay the piper, such converts are as a fickle and disloyal as the rest of our hedonistic, consumer-driven society. If we tickle the flesh to get folk in, we'll get nothing but a giggle from them when they're called upon to stand up and be counted for Christ.

The gospel is good news and every biblically legitimate means needs to be employed to get it to everyone, but the often unspoken stark truth about its message is that embracing it means buying into your own death. The old-fashioned notion of fire and brimstone is unpopular these days because it's just not marketable. I don't care for it myself, it doesn't reflect biblical preaching in my mind, but the biblical message isn't any more palatable. The message Jesus preached to potential followers: "deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow me."

I'm dumbfounded amidst a church world that doesn't understand it's own message. I mean, really, how can such a thing as church marketing even exist? It's not just oxymoronic, it's plain moronic too! No, it's even worse, it's faithless, and it's ruining the heritage of God. Let the self-centered consumers and ravenous church hawkers beware, you will reap what you sow. 

So, we can build cathedrals of wood, hay and stubble, selling emptiness to the empty-headed and empty-hearted, but if we want to do what Jesus did, then we must come to terms with this: Christianity is actually selling death.

Waking Up from the American Dream

A hotly debated issue these days is the relevance of the church in post-modern society. On one side of that argument, there’s a new movement that purports fitting seamlessly in with the world in the name of evangelism. Folk who believe that perspective cite the Apostle Paul as the foremost promoter of relevance, but clearly, Paul never promoted living worldly lifestyles in the name of evangelism. He merely said, more or less, "when you're eating with a heathen eat what the heathen eats."

I see no liberty to translate that into "watch what they watch," "buy what they buy," "pursue what they pursue," "do what they do." No, we're called to be different than the world. If our lifestyle looks like the unbelievers around us, it’s not a good sign-- it means were in sync with the world and out of sync with God. His ways are not mankind's ways, so Christians need to make His ways their ways rather than the world's! 

If our manner of life and our aspirations look in all practical measures just like the unbelieving world around us, why would any of them buy into the gospel we promote? In that case, they already live exactly the same way that we do but without the hassle of religion. What point would there be in adding religious trappings that don't actually make a difference to their lifestyle? The long and short of it: Christians ought to stand out from the world even while they're living in it--different values, different activities, different dreams. 

The difference is what, in fact, makes evangelism attractive to the world. The hope we have must strike a different chord than the hope they have or they won't be puzzled enough by ours to ask us about it. They won't find our dream intriguing in the least. If we're serious about bringing people to a life-saving, life-transforming faith in Christ, we're going to have to wake up from the American dream and start living God’s.

Why Leave A Church?

We live in a mobile society. Folks are shifting from one place to another constantly. I wouldn't think, given such a circumstance, that it would be unexpected that folk would be shifting churches in the shuffle. That's fine, it goes with the territory, but folk are also leaving churches they otherwise would not have to, and it raises the question: "Is OK to leave one's church?"

People leave their churches for all sorts of reasons and in all kinds of conditions. Some leave churches wandering out of a fog bewildered, some surf the edge of the blast wave after a big blow-up, some leave at the end of the left foot of fellowship, and some lose motivation or faith and fall off more than they depart. Some leave because they find another place more attractive, and some just want something new. Everyone that leaves has their reasons, I'm sure.

I doubt that many are legitimately motivated when they choose to leave a church, but I do think that leaving a church can be the right thing to do...

If that church doesn't uphold the Scripture as the infallible rule of faith and conduct;

If that church embraces universalism;

If that church becomes libertine or antinomian; 

If that church adopts legalism...

You get the point. There are practical and doctrinal issues that are so fundamental and non-negotiable, that if a line is crossed there, then we must cross ourselves off the roll. Even if this is the case, I don't think one should leave such a church without a fight. Not that one should seek to win an argument or engage in a turf war, but that one should contend for the faith and for the souls in that body. Don't let them wander off to hell without an effort to save their souls! However, if they won't hear, and won't stand on sound doctrine, then one must leave!

At times, a bone of contention arises between folk that, given the nature of the personalities involved, cannot be resolved. If continuing together in mission is impossible, separating unto mission is acceptable.  It is still unfortunate in the grand scheme, but as long as it is done on reasonable terms and doesn't result in an unending grudge it may be the preferable course of action. We can disagree without being disagreeable, even if it means one going one way and the other going another.

At times, folk are being appointed in the body according to the wishes of the Spirit of God, and leaving one congregation and going to another is precisely what God wants! It's easy to discern this if one is moved to a distant place; it's not so easy if this change takes place in the same town. Regardless, each of us is a gift to the body and we must understand that God gets to place us where he wishes. Actually, I wonder how much dissatisfaction people feel in church is actually just the dissonance in their souls caused by not discerning where God wants them.

There are acceptable, justifiable, and quite spiritual reasons to leave one church and go to another. 

And then there are reasons which are neither expedient nor justifiable.

It is not justifiable to leave a church for selfish reasons. Church is about Jesus being Lord, not about the churchgoer getting what he or she wants. Christians are not customers, the church is not a business and spiritual ministrations are not consumer goods. To treat this God-ordained endeavor as if any of these things were true is an insult to grace. And leaving a church for greener pastures is unacceptable for clergy or laity.

It is not expedient for those who have been appropriately corrected, or who have been properly spiritually directed, to leave a church rather than humbly submitting to that which has been rendered for their spiritual development. The flawed natural constitution of humans beings means that we grow as Christians only to our lowest level of incorrigibility. That cannot excuse a lack of obedience to the Word or to the brethren. Escaping correction or rejecting direction in one body doesn't give one a blank slate to start in another (regardless of whether one is clergy or laity).

There are occasions where the godly will be justified in leaving a church. At times it will be the absolutely right thing to do. Even if it is, it's never something left merely to our discretion or preference. Jesus is head over the body, so he gets to plant us where he wants. 

As for us, we need to stay where we're planted, grow and bloom.