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24-Jan-2011

Posted by : David

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Salt and Light

Category : church

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When we walk into a dark room and flip the light switch, we are immediately oriented to everything in the room.  When the light is flooding the room, we don’t stare at the lamp.  The source of light is never the focal point.  The source simply provides the resources to see everything else.

The same is true for salt.  No one just eats salt.  But we love what is salted.  It provides flavor and enjoyment to the things we eat.  The source of flavor is not the focus.

That is why our local church is so important.  She equips us to be salt and light to our little slice of the world.  The church  should never be the only focal point of ministry, but a means to an end — to equip for ministry. This is accomplished through her ministry of teaching, authority, leadership, and relationships.  As we are brought to Christ together, through His word and sacraments, we gain resources for our work, families, outreach, and loving service.

The local church, when operating according to her God-given commission, orients us to everything else. When we ignore the local church and her structures for equipping, we unwittingly find ourselves adopting false “equippers.”  We will always adopt SOME way of seeing the world: through the media, education, family history, or some combination of all of these.  And these institutions are not equipped to orient you towards life.  The sum total of their wisdom only leads us back into a dark, flavorless world.

Jesus Christ died and rose to give us a community.  Not a community that operates as a end in and of itself, but a community that gives us vision for everything.  For the sum total of God’s wisdom, given through our participation in the local church, is the confidence of seeing and, with that sight, blessing others.

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24-Aug-2010

Posted by : David

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Christianity was Atheism

Category : Christian Life, church

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When Christianity arrived in the Roman empire it was called atheism.  It was the non-religion.  There was no temple.  There were no sacrifices, no performance, no ritual to appease God or the gods.

Christianity was altogether a puzzle to the onlookers outside of the church.

But, the devil had his people ready to fight this “non-religion.”  And the way the devil fought was to make Christianity religious.  Jesus could still be important, as long as it was “Jesus and” — Jesus and keeping the law, Jesus and certain customs and rituals.

This means that Christianity’s greatest threat was not external, but internal.  It was not towards abuse of freedom, but to made a slave again to works.  Jesus’ work was not forsaken, just added to.

Are we free from this threat because the Jewish nature (keeping the law) has disappeared from our churches?  Should we read Galatians, Romans, Timothy and Titus, as mere history lessons?  No, we need to see how “Jesus and” creeps into our churches.

It may not be Jesus and circumcision anymore (thank God!), but here are four ways that “Jesus and” threatens our churches:

1.  Jesus and correct doctrine. What pleases God is not just Jesus’ work, but doctrinal exactness.  Certainly we need to strive for correct doctrine, but not so that “we can be seen to be right.”  The goal of correct doctrine is love (1 Timothy 1:3-5).

2. Jesus and the “correct” church.  — You please God, in this view, by Jesus — and being a part of a church that gets everything right.  They preach right, disciple right, church “services” are right, everybody dresses right, etc.

3. Jesus and spiritual experience — Jesus is important, but you also need an extra spiritual experience, a second blessing, to really know that God is with you and empowering you.

4. Jesus and keeping His commands — This is the predominant threat.  Obedience is seen as keeping you in the faith (we obey to preserve our salvation), not to express our salvation.

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02-Aug-2010

Posted by : David

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Why Our Church Gives 100% to Missions

Category : church

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Our church gives 100% of its budget to missions.  That’s because our church is a mission.

Staff salaries are mission.  Benevolence (our fund to support those who are in need financially) is about missions.  Paying the rent, again, missions.

And why shouldn’t we think of church in America like this?  Are we still under the assumption that we are the chaplains to our culture, to use Ed Stetzer’s apt illustration?  We are missionaries.  We are not at home, even in our home country.  We don’t share similar world views with people outside of the body of Christ.

It’s hard to think like missionaries.  It is not intuitive to see the world where WE LIVE as missions.  After all, it’s home.  We speak the same language, we wear similar clothes, listen to similar music.  But we have forgotten, or maybe never learned, that we are really different.  This culture doesn’t share similar assumptions about God, man, justice, love, righteousness, etc.  We don’t have a common language anymore for these concepts.

So we must adapt, just like a missionary would.  No missionary would think that the culture where they are sent has to adapt to the missionary’s cultural norms.  The missionary, if they are worth anything, seeks to understand the culture and then find creative ways to communicate the gospel in a way that the people will understand.

All of this is rooted in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.  If we are to walk as He walked, then we need to be a missionary like He was; a missionary that did not look to his own interests, but the interests of others.  The Son of God came in a way we could understand.  He laid aside His rights as God to reach us — why should we not do the same?

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28-Apr-2010

Posted by : David

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Church as Appendix

Category : church

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“…life starts when the church ends.” – Jay Z “New York” Empire State of Mind.

If you wonder how young people view the church today just look down at your stomach and touch 3 to 4 inches to the right of your belly button.  That’s your appendix.

It’s the part of the body that you completely ignore until something goes wrong with it.

For us who love the church and see the gospel message as the hope of the world this is a harsh reality.  But the “church as appendix” view should be understood and not condemned.  No doubt many reasons exist why this has happened, but to help people trust the church again Christians must repent of this view.

Instead Christians have to understand that the church, centered around the gospel, is the heart of a society.  The heart pumps life into the rest of the body.  When the heart is weak life is miserable, when the heart stops, life dies.  That is why Christians can’t “appendicize” God.  He has to be the life-giver of everything we do.  He has to saturate our work, relationships, ambitions, goals, finances, even our rest and recreation.  If not, our individual parts will grow weak, and, in turn, even a society will decay.

And that is what revival is all about. It’s God revealing to the believers that He is not an appendix, but the source of life.  And when believers grasp that reality en masse, then the culture begins to feel the lifeblood return to the individual parts of society.

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27-Apr-2010

Posted by : David

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The Break-Up Process

Category : Leadership, christian culture

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When you pastor a church you get broken up with multiple times a year. Or better put, people leave your church.

But it’s just like a breakup.  You’ll hear, “it’s not you, it’s me.” “I just don’t think this church is our best fit.” And on it goes.

When this happens it stings.   You want more information.  You ask, “is there anything I can do to get you to reconsider?”

Then you get angry and think about how you are better off without them — “if they just want to be consumer Christians then fine, let them poison another church.”

But then you feel mildly guilty about those thoughts because you should want what is best for them.  And then the slow shame begins to creep in.  You think, “Why didn’t I measure up?” “What could I have done different to make them happy?”  “What is it about me or my leadership that could have prevented all this?”

And then eventually you just accept it, not because you can explain it, but because it just is.  You can’t change it.

So what is a leader to do?  You can understand the break-up process.  Often when people leave it is as if they are saying, “you don’t measure up so I am going to withdrawal.”  And that is why the gospel is so important; because when you didn’t measure up to God, He didn’t withdrawal from you, but came near and helped you.

And what comfort that is!  And that is what can keep you from demonizing people when they do leave.  If God is not making you pay for your sins, you shouldn’t make them pay for theirs either.  And although the break-up is still tough, you actually can legitimately ask, without the shame, “What can I learn from this?”

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