Thoughts from Uganda (five months later)…

This past July, I had the honor of leading a mission trip to Uganda with Four Corners Ministries.  It was my third trip to Northern Uganda in the last 6 years with FCM.  The story of what God is doing in that region through the ministry of Four Corners and Abaana’s Hope is virtually impossible to adequately put into words.  But if I were able to personally take you there, you would find a holistic and thriving Christian community in the midst of the African bush where darkness, hopelessness, and lostness once reigned.  Our primary work for the past decade has been among the Acholi people, a people group once ravaged by a 20-year civil war in Northern Uganda.  The sovereignty of God has now opened another door of ministry for FCM to work directly among the 1.5 million refugees and displaced people from South Sudan who have relocated to Northern Uganda.

The team that I led this year was composed of 8 team members – 5 pastors, 2 young men who feel called to ministry, and a good friend of mine who came to take video of the trip. Few of the team members had a connection to each other, outside of their personal connection to me, before meeting at the airport in Atlanta.  However, by the end of the journey, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and the shared experience of gospel ministry had bound us together as brothers-in-Christ.  The primary purpose of our trip was two-fold: 1) to provide a “vision trip” experience for those who were first-timers to see and feel the ministry impact among the Acholi and the great need for the gospel among the South Sudanese; and, 2) to lead two “leadership training conferences” among pastors and church leaders in the region around Gulu, as well as in the refugee camp in Adjumani.  While I could write a long description of all the experiences we encountered on that trip, I will forgo that detailed description in lieu of several thoughts and observations I still have several months later.

First, the vast majority of the American evangelical church is clueless about the global state of lostness and the deep need for the gospel throughout the world.  Like many people I know, I grew up in a Southern Baptist culture where we talked about the importance of missions and heard many stories of what God was doing through missionaries around the world.  However, until I personally began to go to places where Christ has not actually been named, I had no idea how deep the need is for the gospel around the world.  Lostness is easily hidden behind empty numbers and statistics.  Once I came face-to-face with people who, only a few years ago, not only lived in dire circumstances personally and economically, but also in deep spiritual hopelessness without any personal gospel witness, my eyes were opened to a whole new reality.  The numbers and statistics faded into the background and were replaced with names and faces – Carolyn, Grace, Stephen, Vincent, and hundreds more.  I began to see the spiritual darkness in that one remote part of the world first-hand.

I attribute this ignorance in the church pews for the most part to the ignorance in the pulpit among my fellow pastors about the global state of lostness.  I have witnessed firsthand that most pastors are too preoccupied with measuring our personal value by the size of our own pithy little kingdom outposts and competing with our fellow churches in town to even give any thought whatsoever to the fact that billions of people around the world have no gospel witness at all.  In many other parts of the world, churches aren’t fighting over a measly pool of easily-disgruntled and rarely-satisfied religious consumers because there aren’t enough professing Christians to fight over.  Brother Pastor, I plead with you, stop measuring your ministry worth by metrics that aren’t even registering in the portals of heaven.  Jesus made it clear that heaven throws a party when one lost sinner repents, but he never said anything about this past Sunday morning attendance eclipsing last year’s at your church.

A second thought that keeps recurring with me is that the brand of Christianity that the evangelical church is exporting around the world is embarrassingly insufficient and inadequate to accomplish the Great Commission.  As in many other parts of the world, the evangelical witness that the American church has sent to central Africa is saturated with prosperity-gospel heresy.  In comparison to many countries in Africa, Uganda is considered very friendly to Christianity and “Christian influence” is seen throughout the country.  However, like most of our pragmatically-induced evangelical culture, as long as someone identifies as a Christian or pastor, we check that box and move on.  A deeper exploration of many of these pastors and churches reveals that what is being proclaimed in these pulpits is just an Africanized version of the prosperity garbage filling many American pulpits and public airwaves.  The prosperity gospel is simply a form of animism (the worship of the spirit world) dressed up in Christian language.  Ken Mbugua did an excellent job presenting this in his article “Africa, the Prosperity Gospel, and the Problem of Unguarded Churches“.

There are many underlying reasons why we are not having the global impact we claim we are having.  For one, the American church continually equates effectiveness with numbers.  Our decades steeped in the “church growth” mindset have indoctrinated us into believing that numbers equals success.  Our donors in the states want to hear about the thousands that are reached in one area and are not impressed when a church only reaches 8-10 people in a year.  Africans understand our fascination with numbers, so they easily report thousands of new converts and dozens of new churches planted.  But, this doesn’t mean that the people reached have actually responded to a biblically-faithful presentation of the gospel, that they have truly repented of their sin and trusted Jesus instead of adding another deity to their pantheon of spirits, or that they are genuinely being discipled by another, more mature believer.  Another reason is that pastors in many areas around the world are being funded by American ministries, but there is no accountability for what they preach from the pulpit or teach their members.  Pastors promise parishioners if they come to church and pray to Jesus that he will give them abundant crops or insure personal health.  Most pastors have little to no access to biblical or theological training.  What little training they have quite likely didn’t offer basic instruction in biblical interpretation, biblical theology, or defining the gospel.  At one of our leadership trainings, I was grieved when we asked several pastors in the refugee camps a basic question about the gospel, many of them gave “works-based” answers that were void of any concept of salvation by grace and grounded their own personal salvation on the fact that they were pastors and not sinners in need of grace.

Even with these sobering realities, I am more excited about the future of missions than ever before.  It was one of my greatest honors to lead these 7 men and show them firsthand what can blossom in the midst of great spiritual darkness when you give people the simple gospel and let the word of God do the work.  I am excited about the new Pastor Training Center that we are launching through Four Corners in 2019.  I believe that this ministry will help us begin to push back lostness in dramatic ways by training men in gospel-centered ministry and networking them together for accountability and mutual disciple-making.  I eagerly anticipate seeing possibly thousands of displaced South Sudanese find the hope of Christ in the midst of their personal pain and displacement.

Please join me in praying for the Acholi people, the Olubo people, the Nuer people, and many of the dozens of level 1-2 unreached people groups in central Africa.  If you want to know more about how you or your church can personally support real, gospel-centered ministry among hard-to-reach peoples, please leave a comment or reach out to me on Facebook.

Till all the nations hear!

Restarting…

I’ve finally decided to restart my blog after an almost two-year hiatus.  I launched this blog a couple of years ago with the intention of deepening the habit of writing and putting my thoughts into tangible words.   At one time, I held the vain belief that I might be a repository of spiritual wisdom that the masses were clamoring for.  And, I mistakenly thought that once I opened the computer to start typing these thoughts, not only would the words flow fast and furious from my fingers, but the masses would clamor for more.  I envisioned a post going up and within hours reaching thousands of views.  I dreamt of starting a platform for myself and several ministry friends where the conversations we were having around coffee at the conferences would launch into the greater evangelical world.

Then I discovered something – writing is hard.  Whether typing into a blog or simply writing into my journal, writing is hard.  To write, I have to slow down, and I don’t often have time to slow down.  To write well and consistently, I have to unplug from social media and turn off the extraneous electronic devices.  I have to concentrate more on thinking.  And it’s hard to do that when my mind is preoccupied with listening to the latest sports podcast or binging the newest Netflix offering.

I am painfully discovering the truth that if I don’t make certain practices in my life an intentional discipline, the will suffer from unintentional neglect.  Whether that’s wrestling through God’s word, personally discipling a few other men, or creating meaningful experiences and conversations with my family.  For my personal and spiritual health, I need to let go of some of the things that don’t matter to focus more on some of the things that should.

So, I will try in this space to wrestle through the discipline of writing and, hopefully, have something worthwhile for you to read from time to time.  Thanks for stopping by.  Hope to see you again soon.

Seeing Past Your Church’s Mailbox…

There is a troubling little secret in ministry that that often goes unnoticed by the average church member, but it can have toxic and dangerous implications on us in pastoral ministry.  It’s the dangerous combination of personal ambition, the need for validation from others, and the tendency to base “success” in ministry solely on pragmatic valuations like growing numbers or statistics that are most quoted and measured in denominational headquarters.  The result is that many people I know in ministry seldom see past their own church’s mailbox.  Sure, we all know how to give external lip-service to the fact that when it comes to evangelical churches, we are all on the same team.  Even while we do so, we often secretly harbor thoughts of envy, skepticism, or comparing statistics. We know how to say “Amen” when a brother shares that he had three new families join the church Sunday.  As we do so, some of us are actually affirming other voices inside our heads and hearts.  “I’m a failure because nobody moved an inch after my sermon.”  “Yeah, if I had his location and his budget and his building, I would have people walk down each week too.”

This dangerous mix shows up subtly in several ways.  First, there is the inevitable barrage of questions at pastor’s meetings, “How many are you running in Sunday School?”, “So, have you guys gone to two services yet?”, “Did you hear about _________ Church and how many they had on Easter Sunday morning?”  The hidden suggestion is that success is measured mostly by numbers. Increasing numbers equates to ministerial success and pastoral fidelity.  Very rarely do I ever talk to a brother in the ministry whose first question to me is “How’s your time personally in God’s word lately?”  or “What are some ways that you’ve been wounded in ministry recently and how can I pray for you?”  When I do meet someone who displays such an others-first spirit, I usually want to stay around a while and talk.

The other way this often shows up is in the sanctified “pastor brag”.  In this case, pious ministers have learned the art of touting their recent successes followed by a quick “Praise the Lord” or “It’s all God’s doing.  Nothing I’ve done.”   I have noticed that these pastors are usually very quick to tell you how many people have walked an aisle or been baptized recently, but they are often silent about the people that have left the church.  I don’t usually hear stories from these men about having a two-hour lunch with a young man who just needed to be discipled and know God’s word better.  Sometimes I think the pursuit of the one gets lost in the midst of pursuing the ninety-nine.

Recently I found myself in another such meeting where some of these dynamics were at play.  After about 20 minutes of the usual pastoral bloviating about numbers and statistics, we heard someone speak about the work that God was doing among an unreached people group in another part of the world.  We heard stories about how the gospel had been changing lives and bringing hope to a place that had no access to the gospel just a few years before.  We also heard about a vision to partner with existing churches to plant gospel-centered churches among unreached people groups.  We were reminded in a very powerful way that lostness is a global problem and that there are great pockets of the world that have no access to the gospel.  We were reminded that the task of planting churches falls on existing churches.  Missions organizations don’t plant churches. Healthy churches plant churches.  It dawned on me that with so many “successful” churches in our midst that surely there will be a rush to partner to accomplish the task of expanding the gospel to unreached people groups.  When the speaker finished, he gave time for any follow-up questions.  Surely this would be the moment when the light bulb would go on and a new vision for global ministry would be ignited.  Sadly, that was not the case.  One of my fellow ministers asked a question about what the process would be like if his church wanted more info.  (I also found out later that he actually did schedule a follow-up appointment for his church to begin partnering with the organization.)  After that was answered, there was a minute of awkward silence, followed by a thanks to the speaker for coming.  That was it.  No other questions asked. A few warm handshakes and let’s all get back to our offices.  After all, who has time for anything else when you have so much success coming in your own front door?  Anyways, isn’t the task of global missions best accomplished by writing a check to missions agencies and letting them deal with the issues?

I came away from that meeting with the same feeling I have had dozens of other times.  When it comes to ministry, most of us in church leadership have a hard time seeing past our church’s mailbox.  We all want to see the yearly ACP statistics at the annual associational meeting to see how we stacked up against the other churches in the area.  When a family leaves one church to start attending another church down the road, seldom does the pastor of the new church ask why they left the old church, much less suggest that the family needs to go have a talk with the former pastor to make sure they are leaving for a biblically sound reason.  After all, why run off a good prospect?  Church members who transfer from another church usually make better tithers than new people that we reach.

The fact of the matter is that any and all statistical analysis about church membership in the United States shows the same facts – church attendance and identification are declining while population in the United States is increasing.  The vast majority of our metro cities in the United States have larger numbers of unreached people than some countries around the world.  There are still over 6,000 unreached people groups in the world representing a population of over 3 billion people.  Meanwhile, in the places where the largest representation of evangelical Christians live, we are so busy swapping sheep and fighting over wayward church members that we don’t even see the vast mission field that God has called us to.  Surely we can do better than that.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not mad at anybody.  The reality is that I know that deep in my heart is that same propensity to only see my church in my local geography and try to create pragmatic ways to get the numbers up so that I can get the validation of my peers. Often I want people to walk an aisle on Sunday just so I can have something to share at the minister’s meeting on Monday.  But, I know that God has called me to more than that.  I know that God has placed in my life a strategic opportunity to partner with a fellow pastor in Boston who has the opportunity to reach more Indians and Asians in greater Boston than reside in my whole county.  I know that God has placed an opportunity for my church to be able to seed the seeds of the gospel bear fruit in Northern Uganda among a people group that can have life-changing effects on that country for generations.  These endeavors are costly and time-consuming.  And they don’t always increase the bottle line on the ACP.  But, as a friend of mine said recently, “We do this because the gospel changes all things for all people.”  And, God keeps reminding me every day that His church doesn’t stop at my mailbox.

It’s Not THAT Big of a Deal…

One of the great twists of our sinful, fallen hearts is the capacity that all of us have towards self-deception and rationalization when it comes to the sins that so easily embed themselves deeply in the hidden chambers of the human heart.  For many of us, we have a keen eye when it comes to finding faults in others, while at the same time, we can easily dismiss those ways in which we fall short of the glory of God.  This is the issue at the heart of Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:3-5, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Many Christians have simply adopted the mentality that fighting sin is simply a matter of avoiding “the big ones” that make everyone’s list of no-no’s while treating other sins that may not make everyone’s “Top 5” as just the accepted way things are.  In the process, we develop “coping mechanisms” that allow us to walk around as “eye inspectors” while at the same time bumping into people with our own log.   We may try to cover our sin with righteous behavior. We become Pharisees that are adept at keeping the big requirements of the law while ignoring things like justice, mercy, and grace.  Or, we may try to “reclassify” sin.  We engage in this whenever we take something like impatience or a loose tongue and say, “Well, I wouldn’t classify that as a ‘sin’.”  Meanwhile, we forget that God never gave you and me the job of classifying anything as sin.  He’s already done that and made it clear.

One of the chief ways we try to incorrectly deal with sin is by the act of minimizing.  Again, this comes when we primarily define sin as “the biggies” that we all inherently know we need to avoid.  But, we even forget that the “Top Ten” list that God gave to Moses not only included prohibitions against stealing, but also against coveting our neighbor’s property.  So, when we allow things like home improvement shows or our neighbors brand new sports car to create within us an unhealthy desire to want something that God has not in his sovereignty provided for us at this time, we get in trouble.  When we only define idolatry and graven images as the shrines in a Buddhist temple in Tebet but don’t see the obsession with our mutual funds as a form of idolatry, we miss the whole point.   When we engage in gossip in the church and reclassify it as “sharing a need” or “prayer request”, we minimize the danger it is to not only our tongue, but to our very soul.  When a sports team or an organization cuts corners and engages in unethical behavior and its  managers or constituents say things like, “Everyone’s doing it” or “That’s just what you have to do to stay ahead” we take what is called cheating and minimize it.  When a student doesn’t see the inherent wrongness in cheating on a test or plagiarizing another’s work in his or her paper, he has minimized sin and is on dangerous ground spiritually.

The problem is that deep-down at heart, we simply find it too easy to deceive ourselves and think we’ve done a good job at deceiving others.  But when we get to the point that we rationalize, minimize, or reclassify sin, we have stepped outside of the truth of the gospel and we have inadvertently placed ourselves outside of the need for grace.  As Paul Tripp says in his book “Dangerous Calling”:

“If you aren’t daily admitting to yourself that you are a mess and in daily and rather desperate need for forgiving and transforming grace, and if the evidence around has not caused you to abandon your confidence in your own righteousness, then you are going to give yourself to the work of convincing yourself that you are okay.” (Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry”)

So, Christian, any time you hear the words, “It’s not THAT big of a deal”, you should shudder in terror, especially if you ever hear them coming from your own lips.  Whenever you are tempted to minimize your impatience, your arrogance, your discontentment, or your lack of self-control, take a moment and ask the Holy Spirit to do a surgical work in your heart and propel you to the cross of Jesus where those sins have been crucified.  Don’t allow refined, or what Jerry Bridges calls “respectable sins”, to set up a home in your heart.  And, don’t allow yourself to become comfortable pointing out the specks in others eyes until you have submitted to the Holy Spirit and asked him to do some spiritual ophthalmology on your own.

Your social media posts and Ephesians 4

Paul said some pointed words in Ephesians 5:29 that I think we need to dust off and revisit in the light of our current social media culture.  “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Eph 4:29 ESV)

I believe if Paul were writing these words today in the midst of our often-toxic social media culture, he would write it this way: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths [or off your fingertips], but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”   We live in a time where everyone has a platform.  Everyone has their own little corner of the internet in which they are sovereign.  Everyone has an opinion and everyone thinks their opinion is not only correct, but that everyone else would do well to share the same opinion.  This can often turn a place like Facebook or Twitter, which are provided to give us a sense of connectedness to others, into a battle zone.  Even worse, I think that oftentimes we will engage in social media dialogue in a much harsher way than we would if we were face to face with that same person.  The isolation of social media allows us to vent all of our thoughts and feelings without interruption, but also oftentimes without careful evaluation.

Social media can be a wonderful opportunity and potentially a powerful tool for the advancement of the gospel.  It can also become a cesspool where we see the worst of the human heart.  I once heard Andy Stanley describe how most of us have learned over time to put a filter over our mouths to control what we want people to think about us.  But every once in a while, something pierces through that filter where we say something hurtful, critical, or inappropriate.  We usually respond by saying, “I don’t know where that came from.  That’s not the kind of person that I am.”  But, the truth is that it really is the person that you are.  You were harboring those thoughts and emotions all along.  You just let something through the filter that you didn’t intend to let pass.  When it comes to social media, I think many of us have taken the filter off.  Consequently, we get on tirades about political topics.  We offer our uninvited opinions about current social issues. Or, we just get mad and vent about something online.  The post may give us a temporary sense of vindication, justice, or validation.  But, as followers of Jesus Christ, what often gets lost in the wake is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  What real victory did you win if you silence someone who disagrees with you about a topic, but you lose the opportunity to speak the gospel into their lives?  There will certainly be times when, as Christ followers, we will need to speak up for what God’s word says about certain issues.  When we do, we must make sure that what offends the other person is the uncompromising nature of the gospel and God’s word and not our approach or our attitude.

In Ephesians 4:29, Paul gives us some great wisdom regarding the way we use our social media platforms.

• Does what I am typing reveal a corrupt side of my heart where I have refused to let the Holy Spirit have control?
• Am I about to post something that could be interpreted as slanderous, unnecessarily hurtful, or little more than salacious gossip that profits nobody and puts a bad light on the Lord Jesus Christ?
• Is what I am about to say going to be something that “builds others up” or is it going to be something designed to tear others down?
• Is what I am about to type “fitting to the occasion” in such as way that it may show a difference of opinion, but does so with grace and truth?
• Will what I have posted give grace to the readers?  Will it reveal a heart that is being transformed by grace?  Will it be something that leads others to a greater appreciation for Jesus and his grace?

Let me share you some further tests that I am trying to apply to myself when I use social media.  I don’t always get these right.  I still sometimes allow my cynical and sarcastic wit to take an unhealthy place in my heart.  But, I also realize that whatever platform I have has been given to me by God and should be stewarded just like everything else he has provided me with.

• Do my Twitter and Facebook posts reveal the heart of someone who has been “crucified with Christ” and who no longer lives, but in whom Christ lives?  Would this be something that ultimately puts the Lord Jesus Christ in a good light?
• Am I using my social media platform wisely as a tool to make disciples and advance the Great Commission?
• Am I just posting this for my personal validation or am I posting this because I sense the Holy Spirit seeking to lead me to speak on this topic?
• Am I applying the three-tests rule: “Is what I am about to say true? Is what I am about to say necessary to the cause? Is what I am about to say wise or helpful to the situation?”

Like I said before, I don’t always apply these tests perfectly.  I still allow my passion for the Red Sox or the Bulldogs to give way to a dig at the Yankees or Rebels from time to time. I still allow my comments to be controlled by cynicism more than by the gospel.  But, I think if all of us from time to time would step back from the keyboard and ask some wisdom questions before we typed in that post and hit the “share” button, we would find our journey through the social media maze to be much more enjoyable and profitable.  What other tests do you apply when using social media?

How (and Why) Our Average, Normal Church Has Partnered On a Personal Level to Plant Other Gospel-Centered Churches

What can an average-size, “normal” Southern Baptist church do personally to make a difference for the gospel?  In an era where church attendance is declining and church resources are more limited than ever before, is there any way that the “average” church can really do anything of significance to make a kingdom impact for the gospel of Jesus Christ?  In an era where most of the attention and recognition in the evangelical world goes to “mega” churches with large auditoriums and multi-million dollar budgets, can the average church in a rural area or a declining town do anything tangible to help make the Great Commission a visible reality within and beyond its walls?  These are the questions that I am many pastors of smaller, normal-size churches are faced with regularly.  These are the questions I sought to address in my first few years as a new pastor at a regular-old church in a typical town in the Bible-belt, Southern, evangelical culture.

When God called me to the blessed opportunity to pastor Sixth Street Baptist Church in July 2009, it was my first opportunity to sit in the first chair as a Senior Pastor after having served for 18+ years in various support ministerial roles in very different and distinct churches.  As I began, I was faced with all the reasons why our ability to accomplish the Great Commission in a personal, tangible way was limited – our community was not growing because the largest employer had laid off hundreds of people, our church had been through several years of numerical decline, we were going to have to reduce our budget because receipts did not match expectations.  These are the same challenges that the vast majority of pastors face every day.  Most pastors are called to lead churches with smaller numerical metrics in average, rural communities.  If you divide total attendance at SBC churches by the total number of SBC churches, the average worship attendance of an SBC church is about 122.  Around 50% of SBC churches average less than 200 people in attendance.  By these numbers, SSBC is a very normal Southern Baptist Church.  On a typical day, we may average about 180 people in worship. On a good day, we might break 200.

So I ask myself often,  “What can the average pastor of an average SBC church realistically expect to accomplish in a personal, tangible, measurable way to accomplish the Great Commission?”  I would submit to you the answer is “more than you think at first.”  When I began my tenure here, our church had been doing what most churches in our stage of life do.  We were giving a generous portion of our budget through the Cooperative Program of the SBC and we occasionally put together a mission trip to go somewhere to assist in some construction needs or put together some service projects and Backyard Bible Clubs.  (If you aren’t Southern Baptist, the Cooperative Program is a funding mechanism that allows every SBC church to contribute to one large fund that allows them to financially support gospel-centered work in their own state as well as support thousands of missionaries domestically and internationally and partially fund six seminaries for theological education.)  I am a very firm believer in the Cooperative Program and very thankful for it.  It allows the average church in the SBC to partner together with other average churches their size to do more than all of us could do separately on our own.  It really is a perfect example of synergy – the sum of the whole is greater than the collective sum of the individual parts.  But, I have also seen a great temptation by many churches to allow our personal support of the Cooperative Program to become an end rather than a means of our accomplishing the Great Commission.  I believed that God expects more than that from our church.

So, we began a conversation from the the very beginning about how we could do more and what specifically God would have us to do, without sacrificing the Cooperative Program in the process.  I believed God wanted us to accomplish two main goals – have a global footprint somewhere (or multiple places) internationally and partner with a church plant in a metro-city domestically.  Since 2010, our church has had people on the ground serving in some capacity in the following countries: Dominican Republic, Guinea, Swaziland, Ukraine, Kenya, and Uganda. We helped send a family full-time to Uganda and began a partnership with Four Corners Ministries there.  Since that time, FCM has planted a vibrant gospel-centered church in the African bush called Living Stones Community Church.  In addition to that, in 2016, we added a directly monthly support in our budget to partner with Indian Community Church in Waltham, MA.  Our church freed about $6,000 in financial resources to support these endeavors and have committed to sending teams to both of these areas at least once a year, if possible.

Here are 4 Reasons Why We Want to Have a Direct Role in Planting Gospel-Centered Churches:

1. It reminds us as a congregation that the “church” is much bigger than our little corner of the world.  It’s too easy in church leadership to develop a “silo” mentality where the vast majority of your mental energy and internal resources are spent on trying to build up your numbers.  We must remember that lostness is a global problem and, that, as churches, we are called to impact lostness in tangible ways.
2. Being able to put tangible names, faces, and stories to the Great Commission brings energy to the vision.  One of the benefits of having direct partnerships is that puts a names and faces on the topic of missions.  When I speak of the Acholi people or of Indian Community Church, my church members have greater energy and engagement than when I speak solely of national entities or mission funds.  Since we have enlarged our missional net through direct partnerships, the amount of money our church has given to missions has increased, not decreased.
3. Because we want to find ways to counter lostness directly and not just complain about it.   Again, I must remind myself continually that lostness is a global problem.  And much of the angst that we as believers feel about the direction of our country or the state of our world is directly tied into the problem of global lostness.  Until the gospel penetrates the hearts of people, lost people will continue to think and behave like lost people.  And the choices of lost people have consequences and baggage that affect all of us.  So, instead of insulating ourselves in holy huddles and decrying how bad the world is getting, God has called us to go into the world and make disciples.
4. Because gospel multiplication, not personal preservation, is the primary job of the church.  We have heard the stats for years about declining baptisms and plateaued churches.  Many of us have a weekly reminder of limited and declining resources, financial and personnel.  The natural tendency in those moments is to try to keep the ship afloat.  However, we need to remember that as the people of God in the kingdom of God, we don’t operate from a scarcity mentality; we operate from a kingdom mentality.

One truth became apparent to me early on in this process – We couldn’t wait until we had more money coming in before we freed up the money necessary to do missions.  I believe that a greater vision of the Great Commission will free up resources that currently lie dormant in your congregation.  The reality for most of us is this: all the money that you need to accomplish the Great Commission assignment that God has for your church is already in the pews of your church.  We just have to find a way to free up people to see a greater vision than they currently do.

 

Why “Having It Your Way” Might Not Be Good for Your Soul…

Do you remember the old Burger King commercials that used to come on television that touted to consumers to come to Burger King so that you could “Have It Your Way”?  The campaign which began in the 70’s was designed to appeal to consumers’ desire of personal sovereignty as opposed to the rigid and cold offerings of BK’s competitors that pre-made their burgers and threw them out under a warming lamp.  There is a deep, innate desire in each and every one of us to be the ultimate determiners of our future and only to engage in those options which have the greatest appeal to us and to reject those options that we find less appealing or entertaining.  Some of us remember as a kid when our parents didn’t ask us what we wanted for dinner.  Instead, they had a plan of what they were going to make and they put it on the table with the expectation that we would eat it, whether it met our preferred taste palate or not.  For that reason, many of us “learned the hard way” that green beans or broccoli were good for us when our tastes told us that french fries or ice cream were what we really needed.

One of the great American values is “choice” and the ability to have what you want, when you want, with whom you want, and to whatever amount you want.  To suggest to anyone, at any time that their “choice” might not be good or healthy for them is often met with not only stiff resistance, but sometimes accusations that we should not be so “judgmental”.  In our culture, the “consumer is king” and there is no shortage of suitors out there vying for your consumer dollars.  However, it’s one thing to deal with consumer sovereignty in the fast-food market.  It’s quite another to deal with it in the living, organic Body of Christ that has existed for 2,000 years, primarily at the margins of society and not necessarily under the auspices of cultural favor.

When I began in ministry in the early 90’s, the “seeker-sensitive” movement was beginning to blaze a trail across the evangelical landscape.  The two pillars of this movement at the time, Willow Creek Community Church of Chicago and Saddleback Community Church in Orange County, CA, became the standard that most of us young seminarians aspired to.  Most of the conversations I remember with my seminary classmates was about “church growth” and baptisms and how to create “environments” where “unchurched” people felt comfortable and appealed to them.  I naturally devoured every church growth book I could get my hands on the next several years.  I went to the conferences at these churches to learn the secret of getting more people into church.

For the most part, everything I read and everything that many of us built our ministries on was built on two main premises.  The first was”consumerism”.  Find out what people want in a church and what they don’t want and, as long as you cannot find any reason why it violates the Scripture, give them what they want.  If they want shorter sermons that are marked with funny stories and “life principles” to help them be better people, then give them that.  If they want upbeat music with modern lyrics instead of old, out-of-date hymns that speak of the “mighty fortress” of God, then give it to them.  The second premise was “pragmatism”, the idea that if something “works” and gets them in the door, as long as you couldn’t find a Bible verse condemning it, it must not only be ok, it is probably the way the Holy Spirit is “leading” at the present time.  Pragmatism can be a deadly poison that assumes that “numerical metrics” serve more as an indicator of blessing than the long-term development of the fruits of the Spirit.

Then one day, as I continued to read my Bible and evaluate the words of Jesus, I sensed a question from the Holy Spirit I had never considered and still troubles me to this day.  I don’t mean for this to sound super-spiritual, as if I know the answers more than anyone else does.  It was just that as I evaluated my “growing” youth ministry in my “growing” church that appeared to be continuing to ask questions based primarily on consumerism and pragmatism, I couldn’t answer this question:

“If you continue to build a church that’s all about the people, at what point do you tell the people that the church isn’t really all about the people?

Now, let me take a moment to clarify some things.  I am not “anti” big-churches.  I don’t think “mega” churches are the problem.  I don’t think that big numbers are a sign of gospel compromise any more than I think that big numbers are a sign of spiritual blessing.  I also don’t believe that everybody in the new “attractional church” movement are trying to pad numbers on the backs of biblical compromise.  (If you don’t know what the “attractional church” is, it’s the modern-day cousin of the “seeker-sensitive” church) I believe that most people in the attractional church movement sincerely desire to see lost people saved.  I believe that some of them are doing a good job of building conversational bridges with lost people.  I will reserve my comments on the evangelistic approach of attractional churches for another day.  My present concern with this movement is that I believe a lot of present-day “atractional” churches are built at the core with a philosophical approach designed not only to attract the “unchurched”, but also to appeal to those already in the church who see a better show up the road.  I have yet to see many leaders of larger attractional churches articulate an answer to the criticism that they take a “big box” approach to spirituality that draws people from smaller churches away for a flashier, more appealing option.  I have yet to hear a story of a pastor of a large attractional church actually ask someone who is already a member at another church nearby why they are changing churches and suggest to them that rather than abandoning their church for a flashier option, that they should go back to their “normal” church and plug into the mission there. (I have heard Matt Chandler from Village Church suggest to people that if they are only there for the show and aren’t really on board for the mission that “we need your seat.”  I don’t consider Village Church to employ an attractional model.) I have yet to hear any such pastors that have had a serious conversation with someone about severing ties with brothers and sisters in Christ at another church just to appeal to better music and cool videos.

Now, inevitably, whenever a smaller church pastor expresses concerns about larger churches, the expected reaction will be one of jealousy, pettiness, or trying to ignite an internal squabble while the lost are going to hell.  I know those accusations.  I made them a lot when I was the youth pastor in a larger church.  I am none of those things.  I am just concerned that we are just beginning to see the effects of decades of consumerism and pragmatism in the evangelical church today and I don’t think all the results are positive.  As I stated in the title, I don’t think “having it your way” is necessarily good for your soul.  So, let me just end this post with some observations that I am trying to resolve as a Christian and church leader regarding the current evangelical landscape going forward. Here are a few concerns I have regarding “having it your way”.

1. It has the potential to turn you into more of a personal consumer of religious products than a productive member of the body of Christ.  At the end of the day, your boring “traditional” church that you belonged to for so long actually needs you to invest in the people there, to serve others there rather than being served, and to help steer a course that accomplishes the Great Commission in your context.  As one of my friends has often said to people who have left his church for the large, big-box church up the road because his small church didn’t have a youth ministry, “If you stay and work with us, you will become the answer to your problem.”
2. It continues to foster a mentality in the younger generation that church is all about your wants and wishes rather than about Christ and his word.  As a veteran of 15+ years of youth ministry built on pragmatism, I can tell you that approach didn’t bear as much fruit as I had hoped it would.  And, we continue to see a never-ending stream of younger evangelicals who leave the church of their teenage years simply because we cannot compete with the entertainment value that the world has to offer.
3. It often ignores the discipleship mandate of self-denial that Jesus himself taught should mark his disciples.  Nobody really wants to talk about this much, but Jesus made it clear to his disciples in Luke 9 that following him began with self-abandonment, not self-fulfillment.  Paul taught us that one of the qualities that the Spirit is developing in us is “self-control”, the ability to not have to have it our way all the time.
4. The statistics bear witness that 40+ years of pragmatic and consumeristic ministry models have not worked as well as we would like to think.  While the present trends suggest that the mega-churches are still “growing”in numbers, the number of conversions and baptisms in the evangelical world are still shrinking.  By all accounts, the present evangelical church is more biblically illiterate than ever before. With 100+ translations available on our smartphones right now, we still don’t know what the word of God says, much less how to apply it.  Finally, a conversation has emerged in recent years in the evangelical world about the priority of “disciple-making”, realizing that we have filled our pews for decades with infantile Christians, if not outright unconverted persons.

So, where do we go from here?  I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know at the present time if I have any tangible answers.  I am not trying to suggest to anyone that your church is bad.  I hope over time to be able to wrestle with these questions through this forum.  I would suggest that whether you agree with my assumptions or not, you might read Jared Wilson’s book, “The Prodigal Church“.  Jared has written a lot over the last few years about some of his concerns and articulates many of the feelings I have had.  I ask that if you are in a larger, attractional church that you read this book with an open mind and not as an attack on your church or your pastor.  I think he brings up issues that many of us have not taken the time to consider regarding the church and its present trends.  Whatever your position, I hope that we can all undertake a constructive conversation about the church, what it means to be a disciple, and how we can accomplish the missional mandate of our Lord and Savior.