Category: Church

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Church Signs: When We Love Christ…

A few weeks ago, I saw another church sign that arrested my attention. This time it was in a good way. The sign read, “When we love Christ, we love others.” As I thought about the message on the sign, I thought about how true that is, and how it pretty much sums up our profession of faith in Christ.

There are a lot of people going around who proclaim their devotion to Jesus, who stand up in churches every week and loudly sing of their love for him. Now, it’s way above my pay grade to determine how many of those people truly belong to Christ, so I am not judging their spiritual state. I am simply putting this out there as an encouragement for all of us to look at how the way we relate to others matches up with who we say we are in Christ.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is spending time with his disciples on the night he was to be betrayed. He is giving them some last minute teaching and encouragement because he is going to be leaving them. One of the things Jesus gives to his followers is a new command. In Chapter 13, he says that the new command is to love one another as Jesus has loved us. This comes right after the Teacher performs a menial task and serves his disciples by washing their feet, and just before he lays down his life for them. Jesus says that this kind of sacrificial love for others is the way the world will know that we belong to him. In Chapter 15 Jesus calls us to keep his commands and obey his teaching, and then follows with the statement that his command is to love others.

In his first letter, John reminds his us of that command given by Jesus, and then goes on to state that love for others is a test of whether we are truly walking in the light or are still in darkness. John later says that our love for others shows that we have passed from death to life. If we hate, we are proclaiming that we are still in darkness. This love is to be shown, not by flowery words, but by action, by laying down our lives for others.

The command to love was given to followers of Jesus who were facing a world that was totally against them. They were told to love their fellow disciples because there was great danger that their fellowship could be destroyed if they weren’t willing to give themselves up for one another. We don’t face the same opposition that the early believers faced, but I would venture that all of us have either seen or experienced fellowships that have been destroyed by a lack of love. People have left churches, churches have split or dissolved because folks refused to think of others before themselves. Whole denominations have even come into existence because of a failure to love.

Some may say, “That’s all well and good, but we don’t have to show the same kind of love for those outside. Right?” I beg to differ. Jesus stated that the second greatest command was to love our neighbor. He also said that our neighbor was essentially anyone with whom we come into contact. The early church understood this. They were known for the love they showed each other and for the love they showed their pagan neighbors, even for the ones who persecuted them. The first Christians were known for their love. They were not known for their “spiritual” vocabulary, for their dress, for what they were against. Yes, they proclaimed truth. Yes, they were not afraid to speak out when a believer was not living out his profession. Yes, they proclaimed that Jesus was the only way, the true King. But, the sacrificial manner in which they lived out their lives in relationship to others put weight behind their words. They showed the world that this Jesus stuff was real and was life changing. With that they turned the world upside down.

Let us all look at our lives and ask ourselves if what we say we believe works out in our day-to-day relationships, both with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and with those who don’t don’t know him.

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Blast From the Past: The Screen in the Corner

This was first posted on November 11, 2010.

In What Good is God?, Philip Yancey tells the story of the brave young woman who helped spark the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. The opposition candidate, Victor Yushchenko, having already faced an attempt to poison him, had a 10 percent lead over the government candidate on election day. The government then tried to steal the election.

The state-run television reported the election results in favor of the state’s man. What the authorities forgot was the small inset in the lower right hand corner of the screen, where a young woman provided sign language interpretation for the hearing-impaired. While the announcer was trumpeting the defeat of Yushchenko, this courageous woman was signing, “I am addressing all the deaf citizens of Ukraine. Don’t believe what they are saying. They are lying and I am ashamed to translate those lies. Yushchenko is our President!” No one in the studio understood sign language. The message spread like wildfire and within days a million Ukrainians descended on Kiev and demanded new elections. The government was forced to give in, and Yushchenko became president.

Yancey makes the point that this is what the church should be, a small screen in the corner announcing that what the big screen is blaring is a lie. Those who control the big screen are telling us that our worth hinges on how we look, how much we make, what we wear, or what we do. As we look at the screen we see the bright and the beautiful, the rich and the famous, the powerful, those who are famous for simply being famous. The message is that we should strive to be just like them. That is the message we see on the big screen. Unfortunately, the message that is exported to the rest of the world is that everyone in “Christian” America is rich, spoiled, and decadent. And we wonder why so many hate Christianity throughout the world.

We have a perfect example of the small screen in the One we claim to follow. The big screen of first century Judaism told folks that the healthy, wealthy, and wise were the ones who could expect God’s favor. The kingdom of God was reserved for them. Along came Jesus, proclaiming that the kingdom was open to the downtrodden, the poor, the outcasts, the very ones that were seen as unworthy. His kingdom would not be built on military might, or on wealth, or on religious tradition. It would be built on love, and the ones on the bottom would enter before the movers and shakers of society. This message is even more revolutionary than the one which sparked the Orange Revolution.

The problem is that much of the church has either tried to control the big screen or has put up an imitation screen. We have our version of the rich and famous. Just watch Christian television. Take a look at the shelves in Christian bookstore, or the speaker lineup at any conference. Many of those people are fine folks with good ministries, but I don’t think you could argue that there is not a cult of personality out there. We just don’t do a very good job of broadcasting that subversive message that our Lord proclaimed.

Although there is still a great deal of “big screen Christianity,” there are those who are working in the corner, spreading the revolutionary message of a kingdom that doesn’t come with great fanfare, but arrives quietly and spreads like yeast, working its way through. It’s a kingdom that is built on sacrificial acts of love, not displays of might. Its subjects lay down their lives for each other, rather than using them to climb the ladder.

May their tribe increase.

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Blast From the Past: Who Is Your Pastor?

This was originally posted on February 28, 2012. With all the stuff happening with some very high profile preachers, it is still relevant.

Alan Knox points to a post over at More Than Cake, titled, Paparazzi Pastors Leading a Celebrity Church. There is an increasing trend among Christians today to follow what can best be described as “celebrity pastors,” whether those people be in a local church, another city in the same state, on the other side of the country, or halfway around the world. In the post there are listed a number of ways how these folks gain such a following.

It is dangerous when we try to “follow” someone who we don’t know, someone who is not a part of our daily lives. We know nothing about how they are living out what they are preaching, or if they even are living it out at all. The only thing we see is a carefully choreographed performance designed to make the speaker look good. Such performances can be inspiring, but there is very little instruction as to how it shakes out in the day-to-day. There are certainly no examples of how to follow Christ. Those must come from seeing each other in action.

As Alan states, “If you do not know someone – or are not growing to know someone – and if you never see them in a context other than speaking in front of a group of people, then that person is not shepherding (pastoring) you, regardless of what title the person may take for himself or be given by others.”

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Forgiveness and Reconciliation

I’ve been thinking a bit about forgiveness and reconciliation, and I have come to the conclusion that it is one of the biggest problems in our relationships with others, both in and out of the church. I also believe that very few of us really understand what it means to forgive and be reconciled. There are times when I struggle with this myself.

I believe that forgiveness goes much deeper than most of us know. So often, we see forgiveness as the kind of thing where we simply don’t hold something against another. And, there may be times when that is the case, such as when the other person has died. For those of us who follow Jesus, forgiveness also carries the idea of reconciliation. Again, there will be instances where that simply is not possible.

When Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone who sins against him, Jesus replied that he was to forgive 49 or 490 times. The number is not really the issue. Jesus is telling us that we are to forgive others, especially our family in Christ, as many times as necessary. That presupposes a relationship with that person. That’s where reconciliation comes in.

In Matthew 5:23-24, Jesus tells us that being reconciled with a brother or sister in Christ is a higher priority than worship. If there is something in the way of our relationship with another, we are to get that right before we come present our worship to God. I believe Scripture goes even farther. In 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Paul tells us that Christ has reconciled us to God. When we come to Jesus and become a member of God’s family, he doesn’t say to us, “Well, you’re forgiven and all that, so I won’t punish you. But, I don’t really want you around. I forgive you, but I don’t want to have a relationship with you, so stay away.” On the contrary, God welcomes us into a close relationship with him. He is pleased to be called our Father. As our Father pursues us and reconciles us to himself, so his children should pursue reconciliation with our brothers and sisters.

Beyond the family relationship, in 1 Corinthians 12 Paul tells us that we are all members of the same body. He even goes so far as to say that we are members of one another! I don’t totally understand what all that means, but is seems that our relationships with our fellow followers of Jesus are pretty important. Jesus said that the world would know that we belong to him by our love for one another. I fear that what the world sees is a lot of infighting, anger, bitterness, and a lack of forgiveness. Can we expect those outside to want what we have when it doesn’t seem to make much difference in what are our most important relationships?

God help us to seek reconciliation and show the love of Christ to a watching world.

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Sports? Yes, Sports

There was an on-line discussion a couple of weeks back about sports and the impact, positive and negative, that it has on people. I have been involved in sports, as an athlete or coach for fifty-two of my fifty-eight years. Currently, we are part of a church that has just a few folks interested in sports. It can make for some interesting conversations.

Our community’s mission is to show the truth, goodness, and beauty of Jesus to our city so that it flourishes. One of the ways we do this is through the arts. We have a number of artists and musicians, and there are many different ways in which they seek to carry out this mission. Jan and I love being in this spiritual environment and we are learning a great deal. I’ve even had a few artistic stirrings my self. As I see my artist friends do what they do as a way of bringing the kingdom of God to bear, I am thinking more and more how that can be done through sports.

Sports is one of those things that can do a great deal of good, or a great deal of harm. I am well aware of the problems in the sports world. I have known my share of athletes who were sure they were going to make it in the pros, and didn’t bother to study. I have known coaches who have been fired from their jobs, not because they didn’t produce capable student-athletes who were good citizens, but because they didn’t get into post season tournaments every season. I have seen the athletes, and coaches, who believe that the rules somehow don’t apply to them as long as they win.

Unlike the arts, sports has not been neglected or shunned by the wider Christian church. In fact, it has been embraced by the church as something good. That is not a bad thing in and of itself. The problem comes when we begin to make idols out of athletes, teams, etc. Don’t tell me that we don’t follow the lead of the culture when it comes to putting athletes up on pedestals. We just have a different set of criteria for who we put up there. Unfortunately, when our idols fall off the pedestal, the fallout is usually worse.

Yes, there are problems in the sports world. At times it can seem like the bread and circuses of the Roman Empire. On the other hand, sports can be a beautiful thing. I would even go so far as to say that one can find art in sports. The arc of a shot from behind the three point line, a soccer team moving the ball up the pitch with short precise passes, the graceful lines of a high jumper clearing the bar, the power of a sprinter exploding out of the starting blocks. All of these things have a beauty to them. Sports can also teach lessons that are life-long. The ability to work with others to accomplish a common goal is a useful thing. The discipline of practicing and constantly trying to improve skills comes in handy in many situations. Persistence learned in the heat of competition goes a long way toward helping one to not give up when things get tough.

As a follower of Jesus, I try to see the good in all of the abilities that God gives to those made in his image. Whether it’s a painter, an illustrator, a writer, a musician, or an athlete, all of the abilities we have are gifts to us from a creative God. As a Christian, I believe we have a calling to show the glory of our Father to a watching world through through those gifts. I believe that we can show the truth, goodness, and beauty of Christ through sports. Hopefully, I’ll have opportunities to explore ways to do that in the near future.

What do you think?

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World Vision Wednesday

Last May, a series of tornadoes devastated Moore, Oklahoma. A church stepped up and turned its building into a warehouse for supplies to help those who were affected.

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God In the Day-To-Day

In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, John the Baptist comes on the scene, baptizing and calling people to repentance. A group of priests and Levites asked John who he was. They wondered if he was the Messiah, or Elijah, or maybe the Prophet that was to come. They thought that, since he was baptizing and drawing large crowds, that maybe he was the Christ, or at least a forerunner. They were looking for a big name. After all, the Messiah would have someone major setting things up for his coming, someone who would make a splash. John, however, answered that he was nothing more than a voice crying in the wilderness. The priests then asked why John was baptizing, if he wasn’t an important person. He didn’t answer the why question, but again stated that he was a nobody who was  unworthy to perform even the duties of a common slave who would untie the sandals of his master. John also stated that the One to come was among them, but they were missing it.

The people of Jesus’ day were looking for a Messiah to come as a conquering hero, one whose arrival would be heralded by great prophets like Elijah, one whose rank would be obvious. Instead, he arrived as an ordinary man in a group of ordinary people and was announced by a strange character who wore skins, ate locusts and honey, and hung out in the desert. Not at all what they expected. All through Jesus’s time here on earth, he failed to live up to folks’ expectations of himself, all the while bringing God’s kingdom to earth. Finally, he died as a criminal, crucified by the forces of the empire. Most of the folks didn’t recognize that by dying, Jesus defeated the powers that be, including death itself. Most of them missed it because they were looking for the wrong thing in the wrong places.

I wonder how many times we miss Jesus. Like the 1st century folks, we have a tendency to look for the next big thing. We run from conference to conference. We read about this ministry or that church and their flashy programs, and try to copy them. Look at the speakers at conferences, or the popular speakers on television. They are the ones who have the huge churches, who write all the best sellers. We have created a class of celebrity Christians, just like other generations before us. Our celebrities are more famous because of the reach of media. We search for churches that have great music, dynamic speakers, and plenty of programs. We get so proud of them that we put their names on our cars, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and whatever else we can put out there for others to see. I wonder if we have given the watching world the impression that Christianity is for those who have it all together, that our celebrities are better than theirs. We try to compete with all the flash that is out there.

As humans, we can easily get our eyes off the One we say we are following and onto the ones who are putting on the show for us. I’m convinced that many of the scandals that have happened in recent years are because a ministry began with good intentions, and then got too big too fast for the people involved. Those people then began to believe their press and started to think of themselves as bullet proof. Their are plenty of examples out there of good people being corrupted by the celebrity cult.

If we are not one of those that “God is greatly using,” as evidenced by a lot of outward good stuff, we can too easily think that we don’t matter. A mother who stays at home to raise her children, a man who works your basic 9-5 job, the pastor who shepherds a small flock with no TV presence and no invitations to speak before thousands of people. These are the folks that get missed when we think about the ones God is using for the kingdom. We forget that Jesus came as an ordinary man. His arrival was proclaimed by an ordinary preacher. The spectacular was not a part of what he did. Most of his followers down through the centuries have been ordinary men and woman who were simply following their Master as they went through their ordinary days. These are the kinds of people who turned the world upside down in the 1st century.

If you are one of those “ordinary” pastors, moms, dads, whatever, take heart. Jesus does not ask us to be great. He simply calls us us to be faithful with what he has given us. Everything we have is a gift from our Father, and everything we do with love is important in his eyes. Simply live your life as a disciple of Jesus. Focus on loving God and loving others as you go about your day-to-day. Be who God made you to be. That is enough. Let God work through you as he worked through the countless unnamed disciples through the centuries.

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Blast From the Past: You Paid $11Million for What?!

This was first posted on July 9, 2009. I have edited it a bit.

Keith Giles over at “subversive1” turned me on to this story, which unfortunately is a picture of where the church as we know it in America has been going for some time.

11 million dollars for a new building for the church to worship in. 90 thousand dollars each month from the members’ offerings goes to pay off the loan. This amount would be higher if not for the gifts of the members. One couple gave 10 thousand dollars.

The trend in American Christianity the past few years has been to build bigger, more elaborate buildings. In a desire to reach more people, churches have been erecting large, comfortable, “worship centers” where folks can go listen to a kicking worship band, maybe sing along, hear the latest news about the church’s programs, enjoy an inspiring message from a top-notch professional speaker, listen to a couple more songs, and then go home feeling good about themselves for a few days. All the while, the spiritual life of the average church spreads and becomes more shallow. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind.

I personally have nothing against using technology to advance the Kingdom. I like good “worship” music. I have been challenged by and have changed my thinking because of listening to excellent speakers. What I have a problem with is the attitude that bigger is better, with the idea that we have to put on a show to get folks in the church building, and with the idea that we have to “get people into church” in the first place. Jesus told us to make disciples, not church members. It has been shown that many of these churches do a better job of attracting members from other churches than those outside the church.

I also have a problem with an 11 million dollar edifice and a 90 thousand dollar a month mortgage. 
That’s almost 1.1 million a year. Even with a fifteen year loan, the church will have paid out over 16 million dollars before the building is paid for. Imagine for a moment what a million dollars a year could do for the needy in the area where the church is located. Imagine the impact 15 million could have. I have heard it said that if the Christians in America would simply give a tenth of their incomes, global poverty could be brought to an end. Whether that is true or not, it is certainly true that the church in America seems to be more concerned with making itself comfortable than in serving the least of these. There are exceptions, but they seem to prove the rule. I know churches that spend almost all of their income on building debt and maintenance, and salaries.

I am becoming more and more convinced that the smaller, missional churches, wherever they meet, are the future of the church. As these small parts of the Body of Christ minister to each other and to the community around them, disciples will be made. As those go and make disciples, the Body will grow. Look at what has happened, and is happening in China, in India, in other parts of the world where small groups of followers of Jesus are bringing hundreds of thousands into the Kingdom. Look what happened in the first two centuries of church history. They turned the world upside down.

I’ll bet they did it without building multi-million dollar buildings.

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Church

The other day, a friend posted something on Facebook to the effect that the church needs to detox from religion and awake from its spiritual numbness. This is a common thought among many who feel the church has drifted away from what God intended. As many of you know, I have been critical of church in many ways, and I would agree with my friend’s statement. Having said that, I want to focus on what I think is a solution, or at least what is being done correctly.

I want to make a distinction between the Church as the body of Christ and church, as a local assembly or institution. The Church was given a mission. If we are in the body of Christ, we are commanded to love God by following Jesus, to sacrificially love others as Christ loved us, and to make disciples who also love God and love others. That is what we are called to do. How that will play out can and will vary according to time and culture. The basics remain the same. I believe that the church at times has done an excellent job of fulfilling the mission. There have been times where the church has failed miserably. There have always been local assemblies that have done what they were called to do, and there have been local assemblies that have failed. We tend to think of the first century church as the ideal,  but a good bit of the New Testament was written to correct problems in various churches. The local assemblies of the early church had some serious problems, ranging from division over leadership to major sexual sin. Down through the centuries church history has been up and down, as assemblies and institutions have drifted away from the mission. The Church, however, has always been there, advancing against the gates of hell and bringing the kingdom of God to bear.

Things are really not much different today. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. The church in the West has gone of the rails in many ways. Part of the reason is Christianity has become Christendom, and the mission of the Church has been lost in the mission of one side or other of the political aisle. We have been caught up in culture wars, building empires, gaining “influence,” and divisions over personality, tradition, or practice. Much of what is done is not very different from
what a number of other organizations do. Many gather each week to hear a motivational speech, or a
diatribe telling them how they must try harder and do better.

What I believe the church needs is not more preaching on 5 steps to be a better __________________, more ranting about getting rid of the “sin” and getting “right with God,” or more talking about influence in a particular kingdom of this world. I don’t care how big your church may be, how wonderful you’re weekly speaker is, or how many programs you have. If you are not making disciples who go out and give the good news of God’s grace and what Christ has done, you’ve lost me. I believe that the church needs to be reminded of what we were without Christ, what Christ did for us on the cross, and what we now are because of that amazing grace of the Father. We need to be taught what it means to follow Jesus as we walk through our day-to-day and try to love God and love others. We need to be in each other’s lives, not just one or, at most, two days a week. We need to be discipled and taught how to disciple others. We need to live life together in a community that is gospel-centered and concerned with joining Jesus in the mission of reconciliation. We need to see, and be, examples of sacrificial love for our neighbors. We need to rest in what Jesus has done, not in
what we do. These things can be done in a variety of local assemblies, from a mega-church with missional communities within the church, to a house church that is out and about in their neighborhood, to everything in between. The assemble can be part of a denomination, or an independent. Traditional or contemporary, or some mixture. As I have learned, you can find the Church within the church.

I take comfort in Jesus’ declaration the hell itself will not stand against his Church. Not because we are such great folks, but because we are the body of Christ. It is Christ that lives in us, and it is Christ
that is accomplishing the mission that the Father gave us. Does that mean we will always get it right?
Nope. It does mean that God can redeem even our poor efforts to do his will. The Church is there. It always has been and always will be. I do believe that the time is coming when the church as we know it will fade away, and the Church will be much stronger.

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Thoughts on Lent

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and our church held a service, with ashes and everything. It was the first time I had ever participated in such a service, having been raised in a tradition that pretty much ignored everything before Easter. The service was beautiful, and challenging. As I think about the season of Lent, a few things come to mind.

Lent is a way of remembering the journey of Jesus to the cross to die for our sins. It was for our sin that he died. It is always good to keep that in mind. Lent is also a season of sacrifice, of giving something up. That sacrifice can be anything from food to television, from smoking to the internet (if you’ve given up the internet, it’ll be a while before you read this). The problem with giving things up is that it can become an exercise in self-righteousness and self-justification.

Lent is a time of remembering that we came from dust and will return to dust. In other words, we’re going to die. As someone who believes that Jesus has redeemed our bodies along with our souls, this remembering comes with the knowledge that we will be resurrected, with real bodies as well as souls.  This union of body and soul comes in when we give up something physical in order to focus on the spiritual. For instance, if we give up food, we can remember that Jesus is our source of life. Unfortunately, this too can become an exercise in legalism.

I believe Lent can best be observed as a time of repentance. Not as an exercise in self hatred but as an acceptance of the fact that, on our own, we can not love God or others as we ought. We can’t live this life on our own. In Luke 9, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, to the cross. On his way, he calls others to follow him. They make various excuses, and Jesus tells them that they have to give up everything in order to follow him. Jesus calls us to follow him. Follow him to the cross, the place of death. He calls us to come and die.

The good news is that when we die, we find that it is then that we truly live. We live in Christ and he
lives in us. When we give it all up, we realize true freedom. As Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” When we give it all up we have nothing to lose because we have everything that we cannot lose. As we follow Jesus to the cross, we know that we have also been raised with him.

This Lent season, we remember. We give up, not because we need to “do,” but because Jesus has already “done.”