Christians May Not Actually Be…A Game Changing Idea
This core value, which has really crystallized at Quest Community Church in Lexington, Kentucky, is one, in my humble opinion, every church in America needs to adopt.
People who say that they are Christians may not actually be known by Jesus. They may actually not be covered in His blood. They may actually be destined for Hell unless we begin to ponder this question.
How would we do weekends, or weekdays for that matter, differently if we assumed that almost everybody attending a worship service, Bible study, small group, or cookout were not Christians?
I have a deep unsettling passion that the reason American culture continues to look less like Jesus is because many, if not most, of the people who attend mass or a worship service in churches around the country say that they are Christian while in reality the risen Son of God, Messiah, Jesus has not been embraced by them.
They have accepted an idea in lieu of embracing a person. Their fruit is rotten (Matthew 12:33).
Pete Hise, pastor of Quest, had six minutes to share about this core value. It’s worth six minutes of your time to watch, listen, and ask yourself whether or not you’ll be standing in a Matthew 7 line.
23 Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!’“
Pete likes the NLT, but I am loving the NET these days and I think that there is significance to being called a lawbreaker in light of the atoning death of Jesus. So, are you sure that you’ll not be standing in a Matthew 7 line? You cannot be called a lawbreaker if Jesus’ blood is on you. Have you been washed in His blood? If not leave me a comment, or pull me aside, or send me a note. Let’s talk about it.
Silver Bullet Ministry Kills
Posting on a Friday has never been a good idea for me. No one reads blogs on Fridays or Saturdays or Sundays. So, I may re-post this on Tuesday, but just felt like I needed to put this out there.
In ministry I always tried to look for the Silver Bullet. Made famous by the tales of werewolves I wanted to hunt down and kill ministry for the sake of fame, fortune, and self. I wanted to find THE Way to do the ministry and then settle into a routine. What I have discovered is that there are no silver bullets.
A Way may exist, but it will likely change for the next person to whom you need to minister, or it will change in a year or at the most two. In essence, my passionate search for Silver Bullets killed my ability to do ministry. Now that I am beginning to accept that a couple of things become absolutely clear about ministry.
1. There is a whole lot of freaking work to do! I mean if how you do ministry changes with every person, or every year, then the necessity to be a lifelong learner becomes a must.
2. There is a whole lot of freaking work to do! I mean if how you do ministry changes with every person, or every year, then you need to get some help. The older you get the more you already know how things work in the world. It’s called cynicism. The younger you are the less you care about how, and the more passionate you are about what needs to happen. My job becomes guiding passion, and in the mean time I might even regain some passion. I’ve quoted Seth Godin’s views bellow on this subject.
3. There is a whole lot of freaking work to do! I mean if how you do ministry changes with every person, or every year, then you need to pray. Pray for yourself, pray for your help, pray for those you help and who help you.
This is the hardest discipline for me to take time to do because I am a do guy. I mean I pray during my commute so I can get two things done at once. Sad, isn’t it. I’m in the process of letting Jesus change that in me.
4. There is a whole lot of freaking work to do…in me! Do not lose sight of the fact that while in the process of serving others you neglect what the Spirit is saying to you about what needs to change in you.
5. Don’t let the amount of work trump the individual. In ministry we cannot be led to do something in order to get the most bang for our buck. We must be able to be present with people, and more specifically with one person. It’s the spiritual discipline of fellowship, and if we choose to give our affection to the event over the person, then we have made the wrong choice. I need to read what I just wrote every day.
A newly-retired executive takes a job as an adjunct professor and really shakes things up. Both the school and the students are blown away by her fresh thinking and new approaches.
A forty-year old internet executive who has been running his company for decades misses one new trend after another, because he’s still living in 1998.
One thing that happens to management when they get senior is that they get stuck. (As we saw with the new professor, senior isn’t about old, it’s about how long you’ve been there).
If you’ve been doing it forever, you discover (but may not realize) that the things that got you this power are no longer dependable.
Reliance on the tried and true can backfire (Rupert keeps missing one opportunity after another, and keeps misunderstanding the medium he works in) or it can (rarely) pay off (Steve Jobs keeps repeating the same business model again and again–it’s not an accident that Apple has no real online or social media footprint. Steve believes in beautifully designed objects, closed systems and evangelizing to developers and creatives).
Worth quoting–one of Arthur C. Clarke’s lesser known three laws: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.”
The paradox is that by the time you get to be senior, the decisions that matter the most are the ones that would be best made made by people who are junior…
We Need a Cure for Quick Fixism
Why is it that people expect you to fix in minutes what took them days, weeks, months, or years to break? I often find myself initially feeling hopeless about a person’s willingness, or lack thereof, to work on the areas of their life that put them in the position in which they find themselves. I often rhetorically ask, “Why am I doing this?” While if I was on the bus pictured above I’d want out as soon as possible, but I’m pretty sure the events leading up to the bus being in this position may have taken weeks.
I’m not suggesting that the bus crept through the hole in that amount of time. I’m suggesting that the bus driver was preoccupied with a passenger whose child was being a distraction. The passenger, let’s say it’s a single dad, distraught by the recent loss of his wife has been unable to figure out how to help his child behave and is on the way to get some help. The bus driver is at the end of his shift and is looking forward to watching the World Cup at his favorite pub, but he has to get to his last stop on time to make that happen. So, the reason the bus went forward instead of reverse took weeks not moments.
When this happens I must remind myself of a few things:
1. Patience is a piece of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. When I lack it, then I’m forgetting something.
2. I need to be patient with others lack of patience
3. I should not expect others to be patient with their brokenness, especially when the Holy Spirit is absent from their lives. If they don’t know Jesus, then why should I expect them to act like they do?
4. My schedule cannot be determined by the chaos generated in others context.
It took a while for them to find themselves homeless and my immediate response to fix their situation may actually impede my ability to minister to their need for Jesus. Ever wonder why the people Jesus healed had to wait so long for God to finally heal them? Ever wonder about those who got a quick fix from Jesus? Did their lack of misery now lead them away from God instead of toward Him? I wonder if this is what happened to nine of the lepers. While I fully agree that my presence in the world should lead to more justice, mercy, grace, and love I also must recognize that suffering is used by God. So, when one chooses to buy cigarettes and comes up short on rent money maybe the only way to learn not to do it again is point out the choice to smoke over shelter and not provide shelter…at least not immediately.
