What are you a disciple of?

Matt. 16:23 "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

I don't know what we think being a disciple in the evangelical and mainstream church means - but I often struggle to believe it looks like what Jesus describes in the Gospels.  It seems to me that being a disciple is an unconditional surrender of ones entire life to Jesus.  It seems that becoming a disciple is a radical re-orientation of ones priorities, time, energy, and vision to align completely with the person of Jesus.  One question that I think can be helpful in determining what you are a disciple of is this one:  What forces or powers or people direct your major decisions about your life?  What forces or powers or people direct your daily decisions and the use of your time, energy, attention, and money?  The answer to these questions are the answer to what you are a disciple of. 

If I had to answer the above questions on behalf of most well meaning, active folks in the church I would list them as such:

1. Family - for most people the most important force/power/people that determine why they make the major decisions they do is their spouses, children and to a lesser degree their extended families and close friends.  Why are you moving?  Its best for my family.  Why did you get a new job?  Its best for my family.  Why did you join the church?  Its best for my family.  Why the new car, why not give more generously, why not change your schedule, why not serve more faithfully?  Because of my family.  We follow our families before we follow Jesus.

2. Career - This varies of course depending on whether or not you may have a career but I'd put it in the top two forces that determine the major decisions Christians in the church make about their lives.  What brought you to this town?  My job.  Why can't you make it to small group?  I'm working.  Why are you always so tired and irritable?  I use all my energy at work.  What is getting in the way of you being a better parent and spouse?  I work too much.  Our careers and jobs are often what we follow, abide in, and dictate our lives according to. 

        Before I move to the next item, let me make a comment about how the above two forces dominate most of the conflicts that Christian families and individuals encounter.  We can never seem to balance our families and careers the way we want to...its a constant tension.  Many people come to church to "focus on their families" or to "get balance in their lives" between these two forces.  What many Christians don't understand is that Jesus doesn't come to give us balance between our families and careers, he comes to give us a new way to live.

3. Money - Even folks who know money isn't the biggest priority in life tend to make money one of the major forces in their decision making.  How much we work, what kind of work we do, how much we save, our credit crisis, the houses we live in and the cars we drive are often dictated by money.  The bible actually gives money a name as an idol in competition with God - mammon.  Jesus says we have to choose to serve either Him or mammon.  We can't do both.

4. Comfort/health/well being - Rest. Vacation.  A nice house.  Time alone.  Time with my family.  Time at church.  A nice car.  A boat to hang out in.  Weekends with the boys.  Weekends with the girls.  Exercise and diets.  Why do we do all of these things? Usually because we are following our comfort, health, and well being.  Are any of these things bad?  Of course not.  I'm more concerned with the WHY than they WHAT.  Our motivation is to be comfortable, healthy, and well and so we try to add this to the balance of family, career, and money.

5.  God - of course God is on this list!  But its a rare occasion to see Him first.  I know countless people who love Jesus and deeply desire to follow him with more of who they are.  The sense I get, however, is that most do not feel they have the option to follow God wholeheartedly because there are at least 2-4 other forces/powers/people who drive their lives and decisions before God.  What we often forget is that Jesus calls us to deny ourselves and lose our lives SO WE CAN FIND IT.  God wants us to have life and have it to the full.  We fill in the few open spaces in our schedule with God and squeeze our time and energy to the last drop trying to be better Christians never truly reorienting our priorities. What an exhausting and futile task it is to try and fit God anywhere. 

The church is complicit in this broken orientation.  We proclaim a gospel that does not ask people to radically covert their allegiance and priorities but one that asks for a little more time, a little, more money, and a little more effort.  The church is part of the problem. 

Let me close with some good news (gospel).  Jesus loves your family more than you do.  He knows how to love your spouse and kids better than you do.  He knows what decisions will be best for them in this life and in an eternal sense.  Jesus cares about your calling, your gifts, and your passions.  He put them in you in the first place.  He cares that you do meaningful work, work that makes a difference and work that you are satisfied with.  Jesus is concerned with your well being and health, he provides what you need and always wants to do good and not harm to you.  Jesus wants you to be at constant rest and joy in Him, he wants to lead you to a life of abundance and provision in his grace.  EVERYTHING WE PUT BEFORE CHRIST COULD BE BETTER CARED FOR IF WE SURRENDERED THEM TO CHRIST.  When Jesus asks us to deny ourselves and lose our lives for him, he is not asking us to damage our families, careers, comforts, finances, and well being - he is asking to do greater things with all of them than we could ever do ourselves. 

What size God do you have?

Hey everyone.  Haven't posted in a few years.  But I'm wanting to write again so here we go. 

God is big.  Bigger than my plans.  Bigger than my vision for ministry.  Bigger than every person I have the potential to impact for Christ in my entire lifetime.  God's vision encompasses the universe.  God's timeline encompasses all of history and eternity.  I am here for a moment, the blinking of an eye, and will occupy the space of a speck of sand on the ocean floor. 

I say all of this not to suggest that I don't matter to God.  If the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ means anything, it means that the breath of a moment that is my life has significance to God and it has God's attention and care.  Every life matters immensely to the infinite God.  The reason I bring up how big God is in comparison to my human cares and efforts is because it is so helpful when living my life to get perspective.  If faith is anything - it is positioning ourselves in the right divine, eternal, and ultimate perspective.

I spend a whole lot of time so focused on MY world, the world as I perceive and experience it, that I lose sight of God's vision of me, my neighbors, my ministry, and the world.  When I lose this perspective, the tendency is to make my god into someone who fits into my limited perspective.  Instead of allowing myself to be stretched into the eternal, I attempt to take the infinite and cram it into my finite time, space, and perspective.  This has huge ramifications for our daily walk of faith and can severely limit our experience of God.  Let me give you an example:

When it comes to my dreams for ministry - I often find myself praying that God will make my dreams come true.  I seem my dreams as being given to me by God, and I appeal to God to come and make them a reality...ASAP.  The way this feels is like getting a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.  Getting God to back my energies and efforts is exhausting, frustrating and usually disappointing.  He makes for a horrible employee and even worse volunteer.  Do you ever feel these things in terms of your faith journey?  This is the result of being small, staying small and trying to making God small. 

If I were to allow God to be big - it may make me bigger too - at least in my perspective and attitude.  If I recognize that God is working throughout history and across the world to accomplish salvation, deliverance, redemption, and wholeness and that this occurs on God's time and in God's way - I start to simply shape my efforts and energies according to God's commands and characteristics.  I know that God, at any moment, could easily bless and accomplish all of my wildest dreams for ministries in a moment.  But I also know that the big God knows more than I do.  He knows more about my life, about where I fit in a bigger picture, about all the lives that I brush alongside and influence, and about how it all works in the eternal plan to restore the world.  My big God knows this and I can choose to trust Him as I seek to do work that is consistent with His character and revealed intentions.

Hebrews 11 really speaks to how this looks in the lives of the faithful.  Countless faithful ones through the generations have chosen to abide in and adhere to God's character and revealed purposes through their whole lives...even when they don't see the visions fulfilled in their life spans.  It is far more faithful to ask God to bind me to His grand and big work in the world than to ask God to come and bless my uncertain, narrow visions.

Do my visions and dreams for my life and ministry have something to do with God's big purpose in the world?  Sure.  But my relationship with my plans has more to do with how the American Dream has told me that I can be anything I want to be in this life, than it does with the gospel that says I have been included by grace into an infinite ministry that I have some unique, but small, part in. 

Dogs are in the Plant Kingdom, right?

          A dog is an animal.  An oak tree is a plant.  I don't wait for it to rain for my dog to get water.  I don't put bowls of dog food out at the trunk of the white oak tree in my back yard to nourish it.  Why?  Because animals process and utilize water and food differently than plants.  If I treat an animal or plant like its a species from a different kingdom, I could cause it major harm.
          This concept follows for human groups.  People function in groups in different ways.  There are countless types of people groups, but some that are particularly applicable to the church: businesses, organizations (public, non-profit, etc.), movements, and organisms.  We usually talk about the church as an organization, because in its institutionalized form, that is what it most resembles.  In the last 20 years, strategists have talked about the church in terms of business models.  Larger churches take on many of the characteristics of a business in their staff, facility, and programmatic functions.
          It is not as frequent that we talk about the church as a movement, though at times of its most effective and transformative work, this is exactly what it becomes.   Think of the early church movement, the monastic movement, the Methodist movement, or the Civil rights movement.  We hardly ever talk about the church as an organism.  This is interesting, because when we look at the church in the bible, it appears to function more like an organism than anything else.  an organism appears to be a singular entity, not a group.  But it is a group in so many ways.
          Every organism is made up of multiple cells, multiple body parts, and multiple organs.  An organism is the furthest thing from a singular being - it is the most stunning example of a group of individuals bound together to accomplish a singular purpose.  In the New Testament, the Church is called the Body of Christ - one body with many parts.  It functions not as an organization or business, but as a movement of people - or better put - a movement of organisms.  Each church is like a network of cells and parts that make up a body at work and these many bodies work in widespread concert with one another to accomplish movement-level transformation.
          We have got to stop talking about the church in terms of organizational and business models.  More importantly, we have to stop TREATING the church like it is an organization or business.  The church is (as God designed it) something other than what the western world has made organized religion to be over the last millennium.  We cannot feed dog food to a tree.  And we cannot expect a thriving church by pumping it full of the things that make organizations and businesses run.

All about Relationships

          I often speculate about the future of the church in our local communities and broader culture.  What will it look like to be the church in 10, 15, or 20 years?  What will our established churches become?  What new ways will the Christian faith be expressed, practiced, shared, and experienced?  There are a few observations I have that inform my speculations as I think about the future.  Let me be clear, these speculations are not and should not be the determining factor of "how" and "why" the church should evolve or change.  The "how" and "why" for the church is always God's Spirit.  But making observations and looking into the future as best we can will help us see what it is we are doing that must change and what it is that must not change. 
          My main observation about the effectiveness of the church is that authentic and engaged relationships are the only thing that will sustainably advance the gospel of the Kingdom of God.  Put another way, if we as the church do not engage in authentic relationships with new people who are currently disengaged or alienated from the Good news of God's Kingdom, the gospel will not advance in a sustainable way.  Programs, ministries, acts of benevolence, publicity, and worship services are only as effective as the relationships they produce, nurture, and strengthen. 
          This is why I believe our focus must be on establishing and strengthening relationships more than maintaining facilities, building staff, and producing programs.  If you think about it, the "success" stories of any program or ministry is a story of relationships.  If relationships are indeed the point and method of the gospel itself (which I believe they are), then the church's focus should be on relationships.  If our call is to extend the gospel hope to those who do not have it, then our focus should be on building relationships of authenticity with those people.
          The challenge with this relational focus in the church is that it requires commitment from members, many of which never signed up for such intensive and personal responsibility.   The good news is that all of us were made for relationships - they come naturally out of us and feed us as they take place.  If we can somehow create opportunities for disciples in established churches to naturally initiate relationships with those who are not disciples, we may have a future after all. 

It starts small

          You may have heard a line from that hymn once upon a time "let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me".  For years, I thought that was kind of a cop-out.  I'm all for personal peace, but we'll never have peace on earth if we only worry about ourselves!  We have to get others to be peaceful too!  But as I grow-up (a perpetual process for me) I'm starting to believe that if I really live out the values I care about the most in my daily life and in every circumstance, there is the power to send ripples across the globe. 
          It starts small.  Jesus started small - on purpose.  He could have preached to thousands of people every week for more than just 3 years (instead it's only recorded that he did this a handful of times).  He could have built the best church ever and established worldwide programs and ministries over the course of a rich and lengthy tenure as Savior-in-residence.  But he went small.  Very small.  His locale was no where near the center of the world at that time, his clientele were far poorer and less educated than the movers and shakers of the day, and his preferred method of transferring his ethos and kingdom on to future generations did not include vast networks of thousands - it was made of 12 people. This was small stuff.  Why only 12?  Why in Galilee?  Why only 3 years? 
          If I had 3 years and was stuck in the hill country of Texas, would I spend the vast majority of my time with the same 12 people?  Is that really the most effective way to begin a global, earth-shifting movement?  Apparently it was the perfect way.  It started small.  From what we can tell the early christian movement (which exploded to include a good half of the Roman Empire in less than 300 years) never had a church with over a hundred people.  Maybe they would gather in big groups sometimes, but their method of discipleship was modeled after the one they were disciples of: KEEP IT SMALL. 
          For Christians today, we must start even smaller than 12.  We must begin to personally live out, embody, and radically display our Kingdom values in every day life. If we can do that we are exceptional among the saints.  If we can then extend such Kingdom living into our immediate family we accomplished a great thing.  If our family can then witness to and teach a few other families to live out the reign of Christ in the world, we will have become the epicenter for transformation in our community.  And if a church can be mobilized to act according to its gospel principles and Jesus culture - it will do nothing short of change the world. 
          You see, spreading the gospel and bringing light into the world is not about getting more people together.  Its about having people actually live out what Jesus taught in their daily lives - with their families, at their workplaces, in their financial decisions, in their social circles, and during their trips to the grocery store.  Do it right - beginning with your life, see where it goes and who takes it up for their life, and who knows what kind of things will happen.  It starts small. 

Does the Church believe in Resurrection?

          We don't like to die.  In fact, we avoid the end of life like it could kill us.  But the core of the gospel message is that death is not the end, it is the beginning.  The central moment of Christ's life isn't his triumphal entry into Jerusalem or his feeding of the 5,000, but his lonely death on the cross. 
          Why is this moment the climax of the gospel?  Because it exhibits a love that is eternal, victorious, and powerful.  By laying down our lives, we will find eternal life.  Jesus puts it this way in John 12:  "²⁴Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.²⁵    Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." 
          Do we believe this? Do we actually believe that if we try to survive we'll actually die and that if we lay down our life we'll actually live?  Such a paradox takes tremendous faith in a God that we cannot see.  Jesus had this faith with his own life and ministry.  And his faithfulness was rewarded with the Resurrection.  He laid down one life to take up another life.  He had faith that dying was the gateway to living. 
          I believe the modern church has come to a time when it must choose to die if it is going to live.  The mainstream institutional church must give up its current form and die if it has a chance of living in a new form down the road.  But we must not die because it is our only way to live, we must die because we have a savior who died and He is also our Lord, Master, and Guide.  We must die not just as individuals but as a church if we are to follow in the way of Jesus. 
          It will take tremendous faith for the church to realize that the most successful action it can take in the eyes of God is to lay down its life.  We think that by avoiding death and preserving the church as we've known it is honoring God, but it is actually an act of faithlessness. 
          We must die to church being about us.  We must die to a church with walls and beautiful buildings.  We must die to a church that exists to meet the needs of the saints rather than equipping them for the work of ministry in the world.  We must die to churches that are refugee camps for a people who are still fighting for a Christian culture rather than an alternative Kingdom.  We must die to spending our money and energy on things that make us comfortable.  We must die to the very way of doing church that many of us have come to call home over these last centuries. 
          But I believe that if we die to ourselves, we will find eternal life and the gospel will go on in ways we could have never imagined.  The church that dies is the church that is resurrected.  Do you believe in the Resurrection, Church?

The Failure of the Pastoral Role

I don't doubt that there are biblical and Godly reasons why certain persons should be in certain types of leadership in the Church.  I've come to terms with the fact that hierarchy can be holy.  But the way that the modern church has turned the office of a "Pastor" into a kind of all inclusive Christian role is simply wrong.  Pastors and lay-persons are both responsible for maintaining this problem.  For many who grow up in church in America, the pastor is expected to do a lot of things that I believe all Christians are supposed to do.  In our modern institutional churches in the west, the pastor is expected to do the work of the church rather than lead the church.  This distinction may seem insignificant, but I believe it is largely responsible for the disengagement and low commitment level of many congregations.  Let me give you an example.  "Pastor, why haven't you visited Mary in the nursing home yet?  No one from our church has seen her since she arrived at the new facility." Visitation of the sick, dying, and bereaved has NEVER been a biblical role reserved for Elders in the body of Christ.  If anything, it is a responsibility of all Christians.  "I've stopped coming to Church because the pastor would just walk by me like I wasn't even there.  She only greeted me once a month before worship."  Keeping up personally with each individual in a large church is impossible for one person, but I have found people countless times who become inactive or leave the church altogether because "the pastor didn't really reach out to me".  Aren't all Christians supposed to reach out to one another?  Since when is it the expectation of one person to do what all Christians should be doing.  Let me be clear, my issue is not that Clergy persons have too much to do (in fact I think we can get pretty lazy sometimes).  My issue is that by taking on so many responsibilities that belong to the whole church, Pastors give everyone else excuses NOT to be Christians in their daily life. When I do the "rounds" at church, greeting persons and introducing myself and learning something about their life, I'm not trying to be a good pastor, I'm trying to model Christian behavior that we should all embody.  When I visit the sick or comfort the grieving I'm not filling the tasks of an ordained elder, I'm showing other Christians how they too should care for their own.  When I teach from the scriptures the truth of the gospel I'm not imparting some secret knowledge to a group of students, I'm exemplifying that a knowledge of the bible and its message is available to all.   When Pastors are expected to do the work of the church (be the body of Christ by themselves), they become products for a needy people and eventually those churches will die.  The only biblical and sustainable model for pastoral leadership is one where everyone is empowered to do the work of the church and no one person is expected to do it all.