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Forward!

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Yesterday I mentioned that for the final round of the blogging tournament at PlantingSpace.com, I wrote two articles and then submitted the one that I thought was best. That’s not actually true.

I only wrote one, which is the one you find below. I showed it to my wife for her input. She liked it, made some suggestions, and then said that it didn’t sound quite right. It seemed too…aggressive. Too bloody. So she and I talked about a few other ideas. She came up with an idea I thought was so good, I invited her to write it. So she did. That is the post I submitted yesterday. So, if I “win,” it is actually my wife, Wendy, who wrote the “winning” post. But hey, since we’re married, the two have become one, right?

Anyway, here is what I was going to submit until she came up with something better. If you still want to go vote for me (Wendy, actually), you can do so here.

When Jesus says He will build His church (Matt 16:18), He also implies where He will build it. He says that as He builds His church, the “gates of Hell will not overcome it.” Since gates are defensive, apparently Jesus and His church are camped right outside.

Jesus has Hell under siege!

And church planters are the ones who are advancing the kingdom. They look around their communities, find the most hellish places, and armed with weapons of grace, kindness, compassion, mercy, faith, hope, and love, hurl themselves headlong at the gates. With full abandon, in blinding bloodlust and with cries of holy rage, they swing fiercely with their swords, cry out desperately for aid, risking all, …just so that one more might be saved. And one more. And one more.

Now is not the time for fatigue. Now is not the time for rest. Now is not the time to pursue happiness. We must swing, and swing again, until our biceps burn and our breath comes in ragged gasps. And if our sword breaks and we are left with nothing but our bloody fists, we must continue swinging.

Those gates must come down. Those people must be freed.

There’s the trumpet call! “Forward! Forward!” is the cry.

And when the battle is done, and the gates of Hell have fallen, Jesus, the Victorious King, will rise above the cheering throng, and with tears in His eyes, raise His sword in salute, and shout for all to hear, “Well done, My Mighty Men of Valor! Together, we have built My church.”

Faces

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I made it to the final round of the blogging tournament over at PlantingSpace.com. Thank you voting for me in the previous rounds. I also want to thank Mark Doebler who has also made it to the final round. His posts have been excellent. He pastors The Grove in Peoria, IL, so if you are near his church, go check him out.

In this final round, we were supposed to encourage church planters to keep planting churches. Just like last week, I came up with two possible submissions, and then submitted the one that I thought was best. I will give you the other one tomorrow. I chose this one for a very special reason, which I will also share with you tomorrow. (I hope it doesn’t disqualify me!) If you want to vote for Mark or me, you can do so here.

Faces. We see them everywhere and every day. Some faces are recognizable and incite feelings of love, passion, tenderness, and happiness. Other faces give rise to feelings of anger, wrath, jealousy, or fear. It’s these faces that must push us forward, these faces that must motivate us to reach out with the love of Jesus.

You know the faces you need to reach. We all have them in our lives. They are the faces of God’s children, many of whom are far away from Him. Others don’t even know His name except in a curse. A handful of these faces knew God once, but no longer believe He cares about them any more. Still others feel that God couldn’t possibly love them after what they’ve done.

They are the faces of divorce, lust, abortion, drugs, abuse, violence, death, heartache, heartbreak, loneliness, fatigue, rejection, and pride.

They are the faces of your grocery clerk, your mailman, your boss, your neighbor, the homeless person you’ve walked by for years on your way to work, the pregnant teen whom you believe is just reaping what she’s sown, the bitter widow, the ex-con.

The list goes on and on, and it includes you and me.

Yet somehow, we think we don’t belong on this list. We know the truth. We are different.

But if that is so, it’s only because someone in your life answered God’s call to reach out to you, and help you out of the muck you were dwelling in.

God is calling again for people to go out and be His hands in the world; hands of love, grace, kindness, friendship, and truth.

Are you going to see the faces in your life for what they are, or for who they can be? It’s your move.

Almost done…

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I read my last seminary book ever yesterday! I finished off with Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World. Now I just have to put the finishing touches on one more paper, fill out a couple forms, and I AM DONE. Woohoo!!

I am so ready to be done with seminary, I’m not even going to walk. I’m ready to be away from those “Hollowed Halls” forever. Yes, that misspelling was intentional.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed seminary. More on that after I graduate…

Isms

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I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently from all sides of the current “Emerging Church Movement” debate. It seems that those who oppose the Emerging/Emergent Church Movement have one primary concern/complaint. It is this:

The emerging church is headed toward syncretism. As they embrace/engage the post-modern, post-Christendom, emerging generations, all in an effort to contextualize the Gospel for the culture, they actually lose the Gospel itself, and become indistinguishable from the culture.

I find this critique highly amusing and terribly sad all the same time. Why? Christianity, as it is most often practiced today in the west, is a highly syncretistic brand of Christianity. So much so, that the average Christian in the average church is nearly identical in values and behavior from the average non-Christian. We are all given over to materialism, consumerism, greed, and selfish meism. Talk about syncretism!

The warning to emerging churches is a good warning, but it’s coming from a segment of Christianity that needs to remove a plank from it’s own eye.

Shut the Door! I'm Changing!

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I wish I could be at Exponential this week. Instead, I’m going to Exposed, which I am actually a bit more excited about. Why? For three reasons. First, Exposed is more “grassroots” which fits me better. Second, since it’s smaller, It will be more intimate and relational. There will only be about 30 of us, so I’m hoping to make some life-long church-planting friends. This would be nearly impossible at Exponential. Finally, Exposed is closer to me, and therefore, cheaper, which also allows my wife to come. Yay!

Of course, as the title of this post indicates, I’m also feeling a bit exposed right now. I’m changing, in a lot of ways, and it’s somewhat scary and embarrassing, while at the same time exciting and exhilarating. One thing is for sure, I’m closer to Jesus than I’ve ever been before.

Anyway, I was reading Scott Hodge’s blog today, and he is going to Exponential, and he attended a pre-conference session in which the following questions were asked:

    What is the Missio Dei?

    What is the Gospel?

    What is the message of Jesus?

    What makes a church a church?

    What is evangelism?

    How does it happen?

    What is the relationship between Christ and culture?

    Does activity guarantee maturity?

    What can numbers tell us?  What can’t they tell us?   

    What does it mean to lead?

    What does it mean to go?

    What does it mean to gather?

    What does it mean to be faithful?

    What is hope?

As I read this list, it hit me that nearly all my answers to these questions have changed over the past 12-18 months. It really startled me. I thought about doing a blog post on each question to explain what I used to believe 2+ years ago, and contrast it with what I believe now, and why I think I am experiencing the changes that I am, but probably nobody would be interested in this but me. So I won’t bore you.

Instead, you might want to ask yourself the questions above, why you answer them the way you do, and how those answers lead you to live your life. My changes and current views on these questions are causing me to be more concerned about following Jesus, making disciples, caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, loosing the captives, living on less, loving others, and making friends with people on the fringes than ever before.

Where do your answers to those questions lead you?

I’m a Co-Author

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writing a novel author

I’ve been invited to co-author a story with one of the best selling novelists ever! He’s sold more books than Tim LaHaye! It is quite an honor. I can hardly believe it!

I have already seen an outline for about the first half of the story, and from what I can tell, it’s going to be amazing. It’s basically the true life story of someone who is very similar to me, which I suppose is why I was chosen. It ultimately is a story about a man who constantly searches for truth, and he spends all his time and money in this search. Yet every time the end of his search seems near, and truth seems within his grasp, something happens which makes him realize he has been asking the wrong questions all along.

There are twists and tragedies in the plot that seem almost excessive. Just when it seems that the author has developed a pattern for the main character, everything changes. I talked to the main author about this, and he assures me that this is the way it happened in real life, and that all these turns must happen because they are preparing the man for something that will occur later in the story. I don’t know what that is, since I’ve only seen about half of the story so far. The author tells me that though he’s written the first half, he wants me to help author the second half. I’m not sure I’m up to it, but if he thinks I am, I’ll give it a shot.

Who is this author? It’s God. He is the best-selling author of all time.

And what’s the story we’re writing together? It’s my life.

I’m reading a book right now called To Be Told by Dan Allender and it has really helped me view my life as a coherent whole that is going someplace (I don’t exactly know where) rather than just a string of events while I’m in a holding pattern for heaven.

Furthermore, it helps me see that I can help God write my future. I can make choices and decisions that make my life more of an adventure romance full of tragedy, risk, and triumph than a mind-numbingly dull home video of a dog playing in the grass.

Such a perspective also helps me view the frustrations of life with a little more significance. The frustrations are not just bad and annoying things that happen, but are actually twists and turns in the plot of my life story which build the conflict and will eventually lead to the climax of wherever this story is headed.

And where is my story headed? Well, God hasn’t let me see the end of the story yet, but He is letting me make decisions about how the main character of my story responds to the trials and frustrations of life in the story. These decisions will help determine where the rest of the story goes.

It is true what someone once told me: First we make our decisions, and then our decisions make us.

So sometimes I purposefully make decisions that will make for “a better story.” I don’t want my story to be about how I watched thousands of hours of TV and lived to tell about it…

calvin and hobbes writing a novel

Oh, and by the way, this co-authorship opportunity isn’t a special privilege reserved for me only. You are writing the story of your life along with God. So how are you doing in writing the screenplay of your life? Is it going to be a blockbuster?

Simple Church by Thom Rainer

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Simple Church Thom RainerOne of the books I read this week was Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. Though I was excited to read it, and agree in principle with the “Simple Church” concept, that every church needs to drastically simplify what it is doing so that it can do a better job of making disciples, I was a tiny bit disappointed with some of the approaches used by the authors.

The book is based on a survey of hundreds of growing churches across the country which experienced at least 5% numerical growth each year for at least three years. They surveyed these churches on what they were doing and how they were doing it. Here are my complaints with Thom Rainer’s Simple Church approach:

First, it does not appear that they asked the growing churches they surveyed where their “growth” was coming from. Much of it could have been transfer growth. I don’t mind “transfer growth” if Christians are leaving sick churches to attend healthy ones, but that is not the reason most Christians transfer. Most just want to go where they get the best show.

Second, it seems they only surveyed larger churches (of 300 or more) and churches with buildings. This is odd since about 90% of the 485,000 US churches are under 80 people. Also, the most “simple” churches in the country are house churches (of 30 or less). It would be interesting to see if his stats fit with house churches.

Third, I am so tired with people thinking that numerical growth equals church growth. It doesn’t!

Church growth is when believers grow and develop into Christlike maturity. This can occur even if the number of people in a particular group is decreasing. Thom Rainer’s survey reinforces the terrible and misleading idea about what constitutes “church growth” and thus, his whole study is skewed.

Finally, it seems that there is a real breakdown in the ability of the churches that were surveyed to get their people into community service (mission). Though the people may be progressing through the simplified discipleship track, few make it to the goal of mission involvement. I wonder if this isn’t because Mission should be placed first, as suggested by other books on the market (e.g. The Forgotten Ways).

Of course, despite these “complaints” of mine, I do think it is a really good book since most churches desperately need simplification.

6 Things NOT to Look for in a Church Leader

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leaders Are you looking for a leader for your church, ministry, or organization? Make sure that along with things you do look for in a leader, you do not pick a leader based on the following six characteristics.

Oh, and I learned all of the following the hard way. At one point or another, I allowed people to be leaders based on one or more of the following characteristics, and lived to regret it.

How to Pick a Leader You’ll Live to Regret

  1. Pick a leader based on how much money they give to the church.
  2. Pick someone who has lots of influence in the city or in the church. (Note: Though leadership is influence, Godly leadership requires Godly influence.)
  3. Pick a leader simply based on who wants to be one. (Note: Yes, it’s okay to desire leadership (1 Tim 3:1), but it seems that most who desire it are power hungry.)
  4. Pick leaders based on who is initially very supportive of you. (Note: If they show up in church one day, and are supportive and encouraging…and want to be a leader, watch out!)
  5. Pick a leader based on how talented they are at something you desperately need in church (like music, or children’s ministry).
  6. Pick a leader because they talk a lot about their leadership skills. (Note: Leaders listen more than they talk, and are not proud or boastful.)

Now, after weeding out leaders with these six “disqualifiers” if there is anybody left in our “potential leadership pool” … Congratulations! You’ve found your leader!

And always remember … it’s okay to be “leaderless.”

After all, if we have no leaders, it forces us to look to Jesus as our leader. And He does okay…

Still need a bit more help looking for leaders? Here is my main suggestion: If you are looking for leaders, the best place to look is in the silent servants of the church. Who shows up and just serves, not looking for recognition or glory? These may make you best leaders.

We have “Servant Leadership” backwards. We think that “servant leadership” means that leaders should serve. Actually, when we look at what Jesus teaches about “servant leadership” He is saying that servants should lead and that leaders should be taken from the servants. So you want to find leaders? Look to the servants.

Don’t ask your leaders to serve. Instead, ask your servants to become leaders.

6 Ways Good Leaders are Like Marshmallows

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marshmallow leadersIf you want to find good leaders in your church, you need to look for marshmallows.

No, not people who are puffed up and white. We have enough of those already…

Instead, look for six other good leadership qualities which leaders have in common with marshmallows.

First, good leaders, like marshmallows, are tasty.

Marshmallows can make bad things taste good (Marshmallow Yams) and good things better (Ever eat a Fluffer Nutter?).

Similarly, good leaders are enjoyable to be around. They will be people of grace, kindness, tenderness, and compassion.

Second, good leaders bind together and are sticky.

Rice Crispy Treats would be just a bowl of cereal without the marshmallows. And have you ever tried to get melted marshmallow out of your hair?

Good leaders bring people together and bind them around a common purpose or goal.

Third, good leaders always rise to the top.

Ever try to sink a marshmallow? It can’t be done.

People naturally follow good leaders and good leaders naturally lead. In your church, who do people look to for solutions? Who do they go to for answers and advice? Who do they turn to for comfort and safety?

Fourth, good leaders are multifunctional.

Marshmallows are not only good for eating, they can also be used to generate laughs (Chubby Bunny anyone?) and for endless holiday crafts.

Similarly, good leaders are flexible enough to work in a variety of situations and flow effortlessly from one role to another.

Fifth, good leaders are often singed because they’re frequently near fire.

A good church leader storms the gates of hell. They make friends at the fringes and take risks where they might get burned or come home smelling like smoke.

Sixth, when good leaders get in the fire, they actually get bigger.

Good leaders learn best in the forge. If they can stand the heat, they will increase their leadership skills, expand their sphere of influence, and become great leaders.

good leaders

I love my new job

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I love my new job. It pays me beans, but I basically get paid to read while I work. Last week, I read three books. So far (it’s Tuesday), I’ve read two more.

I’m realizing that while I’ve been in seminary, my mind went into reverse. There is something about my rebellious flesh that cannot enjoy a book if I am required to read it. Though, if truth be told, most of the assigned reading at seminary is mind-numbingly boring. Not all, but most.

Anyway, since I got this new job, I’ve been reading about two books a week, and I can feel my mind starting to reawaken with creativity and life. I love it. I don’t want to sleep or eat. I just want to read, think, and write. My mind is on fire with ideas. It’s my resurrection from the land of the dead.

I’m not sure what job I will get next (this job ends in mid May), but whatever it is, I need to keep reading (even if it’s not at work). I also don’t think I’ll go on for a Ph.D.  I’d get Permanent Head Damage, and I’m not sure I’d pull out of that kind of tailspin.

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