Christ Following, culture, life, ministry
I want more!
I want more than surface, more than artsy, and more than self promotion wrapped in “ministry”.
I want more than book deals, recording contracts, Dove Awards, the CBA, and Jesus used to push a product.
I want more than Christian culture, trite blog posts, music recommendations, and to stop being told whats “relevant” because it’s not!
I want more than an impotent, powerless American church that measures success by numbers and name recognition.
I want more than cloning dressed up like discipleship and concerts dressed up like worship.
I want more than rock stars, more than celebri-preachers and all of those who want to be like them.
I want more than green rooms, name dropping, and reserved seating.
I want more than a slick communicator in hundred dollar jeans telling me how to live a balanced life because I don’t want to live a balanced life!
I want to be totally sold out and spent for Jesus.
I want to live in humility and servanthood.
I want to see God’s power healing the sick, saving the lost, and delivering the oppressed.
I want to see a generation on their faces, worshiping a holy God, even when there is no music, no lights, and no stage.
I want the church to be a lighthouse where the lost, abused, broken, and bound can find mercy, freedom, and forgiveness.
I want to swim in the deep end. I want to be provoked to give more, pray more, discover more, and experience beautiful intimacy with our Savior.
I want to see our resources poured into things that will have eternal significance, to be Roaring Lambs, salt and light, and agents of change.
I want something real.
I want more!
ministry, Uncategorized
Risk is… risky. How’s that for profound? We like sure things. When we invest out time, money, and energy into something we want to KNOW it’s going to succeed. It’s heartbreaking to put yourself out there, pour yourself into a project, or invest your life into something just to have it fail. I know. I’ve been there. In 1999 I sold most of what I owned, packed up my family, and moved to Ireland to plant a church. You know what happened? It was an epic failure… More on that later, but let’s take a deeper look at this thing we call risk.
Look at the great successes in our world and in scripture. Esther’s role in the deliverance of her people, Moses and the Israelites at the bank of the Red Sea, David standing up against Goliath. How about William Wilberforce against the slave trade, The Pilgrims coming to America, or any of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Today, we only read their stories from this side of their struggle. We hear about the victory. But to them, in that moment of engaging in a mission, they had no idea how things would turn out. They were risking everything with no promise of success. I’m so grateful they decided to risk it all!
I want to share a couple of things I’ve learned when it comes to risk:
If you want to do anything of significance, it’s going to require risk. From planting a church, to establishing new relationships, to reaching the lost, or helping the poor. From writing that book, to interviewing for that job, or preaching for the first time it all requires risk. There’s a chance for failure and we have to be willing to live with that because the moment we decide to stop taking risks we lose all potential for doing anything great.
All risk in God’s economy is worth taking. This one is tough, especially in a culture that worships security. We want to know that, whatever risks we take, we’ll still be able to live at the “standard of living” we are currently living at. I think, as Christians, we should be far more concerned with our standard of dying than our standard of living. We’ve been fed the gospel of success for so long that the idea of a venture not turning out as we hoped leaves us feeling disenchanted and hopeless. The truth is this: when we take a risk for the sake of Christ, whether we fail or succeed, it was totally worth taking.
1st Corinthians 15:58 says, “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.”
NOTHING you do for the Lord is ever useless! What an amazingly comforting word! That means my failure to plant a church in Ireland was not useless. Something came out of it even if I never saw it. And truth be told, I don’t regret doing it. I risked, and I lost, but I also gained, and I’m sure there were people who were blessed along the way.
So go ahead and take that risk! Focus more on obeying God’s call and less on what-ifs. “be strong and unmovable”. Whatever the outcome, it will have been worth it!
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Christ Following, life
“I’m not worried about what I’ve done. It’s what I could have done that troubles me.” – A.W. Tozer
I’ll admit it. Between the ages of 15 and 30 I put off a lot of things. Somehow I thought, “I have a long time to accomplish that.” and that line of thinking brought on a certain passiveness that today I regret. Now, here I am, almost halfway through my life with such an urgency to do something great for God that it’s almost paralyzing. My greatest fear? That I’ll reach the end of my life having made little to no impact on the world around me; that somehow I will have missed it and I’ll be full of woulda shoulda couldas.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the 15+ years I’ve been in ministry. It’s just that somehow I believe that there’s something… more. More than Western church work. More than preaching, more than music, more than programs. I mean, if that was what we’re supposed to do, then why are so many going to hell? Why are there starving? Why are people still being sold as slaves? Why do 80% of young people leave the church? Why is the divorce rate just as high in the church as it is outside? Why are 1,500 pastors leaving the ministry every month?
I really do love the local church. I don’t know where I’d be without it. It’s through the local church that I found an awesome relationship with Jesus. That’s where I learned how to pray, found community, and received blessing after blessing from the Father. My question is, “What aren’t we doing?”
Notice, I didn’t ask, “What isn’t the church doing?” After all, WE are the local church. Remember when that missionary came and said he needed help in South Africa? Remember when the Holy Spirit pulled on your heart to go and you didn’t? Do you recall the many times you felt a tug to give to help those in need? You made a mental note to write a check when you got home, but the check was never written. How about that calling to work with the teenagers at your church, but life got in the way and you never got any further than just mentioning it to the youth pastor? I know I’ve been there. My whole family would have been to Africa, I would have had a book written, and thousands of my hard earned dollars would be poured into hundreds of projects by now if I would have just done what I’d meant to do. It’s too bad we don’t get points for good intentions.
Here are a few things we can all do to shorten our list of things we didn’t do:
Start writing down the things you felt you were supposed to do, then start doing them. Sounds overly simplistic, I know, but sometimes the mere act of writing a thing down gets it out of the realm of whims and into a greater sense of reality. Why not? We write down goals like the car we want to buy and the vacation we want to take. Why not write down the things we want to do for God? We’re always looking for God to tell us what to do. Maybe He’s been quiet because we haven’t done the last 20 things he told us to.
Tell somebody. Have someone in your life who will hold you accountable to your dreams. It’s too easy to blow things off when the emotion dies down and it’s all just a big idea rolling around in your head.
Take a small step. Put a couple dollars in an envelope marked “Missions Trip”, commit to serving at only one youth event, or pray five minutes a week for your pastor. Remember, a very small thing is better than no thing and you’ll be surprised at how several baby steps can add up quickly.
So how about you? What are some things you felt called to do but didn’t? What are the things you haven’t done? You can post some things here and have a bunch of people praying for you. Let a life of no regrets be your goal!
* My apologies to all those who commented on this post. I lost it during maintenance and had to repost it. Feel free to comment again!
culture, Jesus, social justice
In our culture, it’s so easy to become caught up in the game of appearances. What does my car say about me? What about my house? Am I perceived as successful? Smart? Or do people see me as needy? Do I look like I’ve made some bad decisions along the way or am I a success story in the eyes of my community? What about my clothes? Do they reflect my social status (or make me look even better?)
Funny how we care so much about our social standing. We love the preferred treatment. It’s nice to be able to go straight to the front of the line, sit in the green room, be recognized, be served. There’s a pecking order, and we like to be at the front of it.
It’s not hard to tell who’s at the front of the pecking order either. Celebrities receive special treatment and are often treated to complimentary you name it. The CEO gets the best parking spot, and the good-looking get the benefit of the doubt. They are the greatest in our culture, the kings and queens of western society and we play along as we work extra hours, bend the truth to sell more and motivate ourselves with GQ and Car and Driver.
Then there’s Jesus. Wham! The King of Kings, the famous one. The most influential man to ever walk the planet (after He created it). He comes along and declares a new system. In Luke 9:48 he says, “Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me also welcomes my Father who sent me. Whoever is the least among you is the greatest.”
That’s it! We have a new standard for greatness! The least are now great. The poor are deserving of attention. The needy are to be honored and the sick are to be loved. What more needs to be said? We now have the tremendous privilege of serving those whom Jesus stuck with, stood up for, and identified with.
When you see Jesus begging today, give Him something. When you see Him in Africa, Asia, and India honor Him. When you see him sick with AIDS or living on the street, welcome Him. He’s The Greatest.
*I originally posted this on the Worldhope.us blog. A great organization helping those in extreme poverty. Check them them out at www.worldhope.us.
Christ Following, life, prayer
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
“Discipline is freedom.” Wrap your brain around that! I read through Foster’s book with an equal amount of conviction and excitement about a disciplined life. I’ve always considered myself a relatively disciplined person (at least in a few areas) but I know I could use an adjustment here and there. I learned a long time ago that praying for God to help me be disciplined was crazy talk like praying for longer hair or bigger muscles. Discipline is a choice and a daily decision. It’s not just going to come over you by supernatural influence.
The thing I’ve found though, is that it really DOES bring freedom! I meet with people all the time that are struggling. They struggle with their commitment to Christ, they struggle with their weight, they struggle with their marriage, they struggle with… everything! It astounds me how many times the answer just comes back to discipline. To the struggling believer, I ask, “How’s your prayer life?” The answer is usually a long list of activities that are taking priority over prayer. I see friends struggling with their weight that just can’t seem to establish a discipline of exercise and restraint, pastors with declining churches that won’t discipline themselves to read, grow, and learn a better way, and families falling apart that fail to discipline themselves to say no to all the things that compete for their time together.
I know that’s a pretty general approach to many of the problems that we face. My intention is not to come off as insensitive and all “Drill Sargent-y”. But isn’t it much easier to wish than it is to take practical steps to do? I turned my life over to Christ 25 years ago. I’ve seen many wonderful people turn away from the faith during that time, and I have the pleasure of worshiping alongside others who were with me when I made the most important decision ever. When I look at the lives of those who fell away, gave up the fight, and abandoned their relationship with God, I find only one common thread, only one difference between them and those who are still serving Him today, and it’s a lack of discipline to seek God. That’s it! We all had similar problems, obstacles, and issues. It’s just that the disciplined ones stayed. Hence the old saying, “He who prays stays, and he who fasts lasts“.
There’s an old man in his 90s that I know from the YMCA. His name is Ernie. He swims six days a week! Because of his discipline, he has energy, he’s strong, mobile, and sharp as can be. He didn’t start swimming when he turned 90. He’s been doing it for decades, and now he experiences a great deal of freedom for a man his age. Many men, younger than him, come into the gym feeble, sickly, and tired because they they spent so many years without discipline and now they’re there under doctor’s orders. I don’t know about you, but I want to be like Ernie!
Being disciplined helps you to last. It brings freedom from bondage. It conditions you to serve better. It creates a condition in you that allows God to transform you!
If you don’t believe me, give it a try. Pick a discipline, like prayer or reading, and stick to it every day for six weeks. You WILL notice a difference! Your desires change. You start to long for the good stuff. Your capacity for achievement increases because you’re growing and expanding. Your mind even starts to sharpen because you’re forcing yourself to develop new habits (a side effect to counter-intuitiveness).
I believe so strongly in the power of discipline that, if it doesn’t help you, I’ll refund the money I charged you for reading this blog 😉
One last thing. If you do decide to give it a try, think about posting your benefits on this blog. You never know who you’ll encourage!
