Category: Theology (page 16 of 21)

You’ve got a smell…

December 28, 2010 / / 2 Comments

…and you probably don’t even know it.

Your house smells a certain way.  So do your clothes.  Your car.  Your dog.  And your shoes.

But you’ve gotten used to it.

And you have no idea whether that smell is sweet or sour.

Over time, our sense of smell dulls when we enter our own home because it becomes “normal.”  Routine.  Habitual.

Which can be incredibly dangerous.

Whether it’s a good smell or a bad smell is irrelevant.  It’s our smell, so we don’t notice it.

And it’s the same way in our spiritual lives.

We get into routines, we find our niche, and we get comfortable.  And growing comfort lends itself to a lack of introspection.  And a growing sense that “normal” is good, whether it is or not.

Why not invite someone you trust to help you see (and smell) where things aren’t lining up?  Because other people see things you don’t.

Is there someone you can ask to come alongside you in 2011?

 

A generous Christmas

December 20, 2010 / / 2 Comments

(image by Dan Johnson)

Logan’s Roadhouse is running a holiday special right now.  Buy a $30 giftcard for a friend and get a $10 giftcard for yourself.

Great deal, right?!?

Great marketing, right?!?

It gets people in their restaurant three ways…once, for the person buying the gift card, once on their return visit (with their $10 giftcard), and once for the receiver of the $30 card.  Brilliant.  And I’m sure they’re going to sell lots of those this season.

I know why.  And it’s not simply because all of your friends love Logan’s.

It has to do with greed.

You see, it’s true that it’s more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).  But our human hearts are dark cauldrons that are deceptive, even to ourselves (Jeremiah 17:9).  And if there’s a way that we can get a gift at the same time we give one, we’re going to do just that.

What’s motivating the sales of these giftcards is the promise that your money won’t be solely spent on someone else.  That the joy you’ll get in giving isn’t simply in serving someone else, rather it’s in  getting a slice of the pie that you’re giving away.  This is a great way to give, expecting something in return.  In that process, you rip the true blessing out of the gift.

I’m not upset with Logan’s in the least.  They have no reason to promote generosity…their goal is to build a successful business, and their principles here violate no laws.  Their practices just happen to play into the tendency of our hearts.  “Their mouths speak of love, but their hearts are greedy…” (Ezekiel 33:31)

The Apostle Paul said it well, “…what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7:15)  As much as we strive for generosity, greed continues to creep in.  In subtle, seemingly insignificant, seemingly generous ways.  Like expecting something in return when you give a gift.

But I believe that it really is more blessed to give than to receive.  I’ve experienced it.  The joy in giving your resources to someone else who can never pay you back is unexplainable.  It’s in those moments that I feel as connected to my Maker as much (or maybe even more than) as any other time.  Because He’s done that for us.  He’s given (and continues to give) blessings “pressed down, shaken together, and running over.” (Luke 6:38)

So this Christmas, try being truly generous.  Give.  Share.  Sacrifice.  And don’t expect anything in return.  Not a return gift.  Or a returned hug.  Or even a “thanks.”

You’ll get your payment.  It’ll be in the form of joy.

Have you ever been given a gift, but known it wasn’t given out of a generous heart?

How are you serving someone this Christmas, expecting nothing in return?

 

Quit hiding

November 15, 2010 / / 5 Comments

My son has figured out how to manipulate.  Funny…I don’t remember teaching him that.

And funny how that sticks, and so many other things that I teach him don’t stick.

His recent move is learning how to hide.  He’ll get something that he knows he’s not supposed to have (for instance, his pacifier, which is only a nap-time thing).  Just the other day, he was sneaking through the kitchen, slowly and quietly behind the big chair in our living room.  I could see his feet.  And his head as he was “sneaking” just a little too far.  I said, “Rex?  What are you doing?”  …No response…  “Rex, do you have your pacifier?”  Still no response.  He froze.

So I got up to “find” him.  When I saw what I knew he had, I asked him to go and put it away.  So he did.  Kind of.

He walked around the corner of the kitchen towards his room, and stopped.  I suppose he didn’t realize that I can hear his feet when he walks on the floor.  And I knew that he had stopped well short of his room.  Turns out I had to walk him by the hand into his room to be certain that he did what I asked him to do.

But it’s not just my son that’s good at hiding.  Even we, adults, are good at it, aren’t we?  In fact, our forefather, Adam, invented the game.  After he and Eve had eaten the fruit that God had told them not to eat, they hid.  First with leaves (Genesis 3:7).  Then among the trees.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”  And he [Adam] said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.'”

As God questioned them about what they’d done, both Adam and Eve proceeded to shift the blame away from themselves, trying to further manipulate and deceive the all-knowing, all-seeing, God.

Rex, my son, had nothing to fear.  Nothing as far as my relationship with him was concerned.  There were consequences he had to face because he had disobeyed me.  But his relationship with me was unchanged.  He’s safe with me.

And we’re safe with God.  We can be open and honest, and trust that He’ll never leave or forsake us.

But it’s often not God that we’re concerned with, is it?  It’s other people.  We’re afraid that we’ll be rejected, laughed at, ridiculed, and scorned.  Afraid that we’ll lose our influence and our status.  Afraid of being known.  Hiding our true selves from others is rooted in a fear of man.  Which is an incredibly dangerous place to stand.

Be open and honest with God.  He knows your heart anyway.

Then work on being open and honest with your friends.  God’s placed them in your life on purpose.  They’re meant to help you carry the burdens and the secrets you’re struggling to carry on your own.

Hiding is a game that we need to quit playing.

Who can you be open and honest with today about the burdens you’re carrying?

Fear of man will prove to be a snare,
but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe. Proverbs 29:25

 

Pete Briscoe, The Mystery of it All, RightNow 2010

November 11, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Pete Briscoe opened up the main session at the RightNow Conference 2010, in Dallas, Texas.  Pete is the lead pastor of Bent Tree Fellowship in Dallas.

How do you evaluate a good trade?  A good trade is what you get is better than what you gave up.  A bad trade is getting something worse than what you gave up.

There was a trader in Scripture named Paul, who traded in a Rabbinic lifestyle for Christ.

Referencing Ephesians 3, here are

5 things Paul traded for

1. Christ (v. 1). Paul was Christocentric, because everything in his life revolved around Christ.  In fact, he even considered himself a prisoner of Christ.  And no matter what his circumstances were, he realized it was for Jesus.

It’s not a matter of trading things in for ministry.  It’s about trading them in for Christ.

Leadership is walking with Jesus and taking others along for the ride.

2. Paul traded law for grace (v. 2). God’s unmitigated love for us.  Pete shared the story of Jean Val Jean from Les Miserables, who was given grace and encouraged to be a trafficker of grace.  Later on in life, he rescued Cosette from the hands of miserable parents, and made her his own daughter.

Grace isn’t something that we simply see and enjoy…we are called to be traffickers of Grace.

3. The mystery (v. 3). Mystery is something that was once hidden.  But now it’s available to the whole Church.  This mystery referred to is Christ himself.  And the fact that Christ indwelling us.  Apart from Christ, we can do nothing.  But as we rest in Christ, He will bear fruit in us.

We’re called to be Christ-intoxicated people, traffickers of grace, and partakers of the mystery of Christ living in us.

4. The Church (v. 6 ). The Church isn’t perfect, but is a unique group of people.  And we take Christ to the world (making it unique).

Parachurch organizations work with, not against the church.

As imperfect as the Church is, never turn your back on her.

5. Ministry (v. 7-8). Paul became a minister of the Gospel because God has given him the gift of ministry.  Which means we shouldn’t compare our station in life to others.  And the one he’s got you in…that’s God’s gift to you.

There are seasons in ministry:

  • This rocks!
  • This works.
  • This sucks.

But whatever season, this text reminds us that ministry is a gift.  We need to be fully engaged in the gracious gift of ministry that God’s called us to.

 

Matt Carter, Transitioning “small group” to “missional community”

November 10, 2010 / / 3 Comments

Matt Carter is pastor at The Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, TX.  He led a main session at the RightNow Conference.

Transitioning “Small Group” to “Missional Community”

The more and more people get on mission, what you have to be careful of is that your people will love their mission more than they love their Savior.  Because the more this happens, the more you’ll find Jesus leaving your mission.

Don’t love your calling for Christ Jesus more than you calling to Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 4:11

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers

God gave the saints to do the work of the ministry.  What causes the body of Christ to grow?

The American Church is declining exponentially.  What causes the body to grow?

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. – Ephesians 4:16

When each part is working properly.

The American church isn’t growing because it’s built off of an attractional model churches: Sunday is the starting point, as opposed to a home based/cell based model, starting church at that level.

We shouldn’t necessarily chuck the attractional model of the church.  Because that model still has a place, where these larger attractional churches can do some things that smaller churches can’t do.

But the attractional model alone is incomplete, and isn’t the answer to turning the tide of our church away from lostness in our country.

What prompted Matt to think that the attracional model alone not work?

1. The track record doesn’t show it.

Bob Roberts poses this question:

What if, in an attempt to see the United States come to Christ, that over the next 10 years, we were going to start 1000 megachurches?  Would we reach America?  No.  We could not.  Because that’s what we just did over the last 10 years.  We in America have launched that many megachurches over the last 10 years.

2. A growing sense of restlessness in the American church.  18-30 year olds aren’t ok sitting on the sidelines of ministry, especially if they’re walking with Jesus.  They’re hard-wired to be a part of something bigger than themselves.  They want to be a part of world-change.  For far too long, the church has placed the burden for mission on clergy, and there’s a growing tension from the everyday person in the pews, wondering why the church in Acts is so different than the American church.

3. Austin Stone is at a crossroads, because they’ve outgrown their current location.  They could continue launching more sites and build bigger buildings.  But these strategies do not change the city of Austin.  What if, instead of taking the extra effort to grow an additional 3,000 people…what if we equipped and trained those additional 3,000 people to go out and live on mission?  Everything changes in the city of Austin.  Jesus would’ve made a horrible American megachurch pastor, because he purposefully ran people off.  He instead took 12 ordinary guys, poured his life into theirs, and released them to go.  And these 12 men changed the world.

What do we do from here?

Is it possible to do both?  To attract people by the hundreds and thousands…and release them by the hundreds and thousands?  Yes.

Through missional communities.

The Transition: 3 ways

1. They changed the definition of success for their small groups.  Here’s success now: is the group gathering, having Bible study, meeting each other’s needs…and has the group moved beyond just gathering?  Have they found a pocket of lostness in the community, and found a way to engage that lostness?  Have they lost community?  No, because there’s nothing on earth that fosters community better than mission.  When we aimed for “community” alone, we rarely got community.  When we aimed at mission, we got mission and community.

2. They changed how they trained their leaders.  They began to teach them how to think and live like missionaries.

3. They’ve created a system that encourages people to teach the Bibles themselves.  So that they can leave The Austin Stone and, as a group, go to another country, and teach the Word there.

4. They have raised the bar on what these groups can do.  The people in your church can do more than you would ever dream they could do.  Do you truly believe that?

People are hungry to be used by God.

Challenge them.

Train them.

Release them.

 

The Linchpin

November 4, 2010 / / 7 Comments

My pastor, Ron Edmondson, often says that we as a church staff need to be at the point where, if any of our staff members disappeared tomorrow, we could carry on without missing a beat.  I’ve heard him say that a lot, and I almost saw it put into practice in my own life just a few months ago.

I was stuck in London because of a volcano.

I was stuck in London because of a volcano.

I put that sentence in there twice so you would know it wasn’t a typo.  I mentioned it in my post HERE, and you can read the Guardian’s article HERE.  Welcome to my life.

Based on my original flight schedule, I was planning on being back ~a week earlier than our upcoming small group launch, but this volcano was threatening my on-time arrival.  Needless to say, I was a little concerned.  About as concerned as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs (as we say in the South).

I was talking back and forth with our staff, updating them on our lack of progress, and beginning to think about the possibility of pushing back our small groups launch.  Then Ron dropped this bomb in my lap via email:

I hate that you can’t be there, but we have to be prepared enough that we don’t revolve around one of us being there or not being there.  Something could always happen like this and the ministry must go on… There are some things just out of our control.

Basically, what I heard was, “You’re dispensable.”  Mark my words: our staff could’ve pulled this event off, and it would’ve been awesome.  I have no doubt.  But hearing that was difficult.  Why?

Not because I want to be important, or need to feel powerful.  Or because I’m narcissistic and think that the ministry has to revolve around me, and I have to be in the spotlight.  Honestly, I’m not a spotlight guy…I’m content spending my hours in the background.  But here’s why it bothered me:

I want to be a linchpin.

A linchpin* is a fastener that secures the add-on at the business end of a tractor.  It’s a small piece, but without it, you can’t do much with your tractor, and your tools will continually fall off.  It’s an irreplaceable piece of equipment that allows more work to be done more efficiently.

And that’s what I’m working to do in my current position at Grace Community Church.

I want to be doing meaningful, Kingdom-building work in a way that fits my gifting…with all of my might.  I want to innovate, create, encourage, and train in such a way that, if I disappeared tomorrow, it would be noticed.  And I say that with every ounce of humility I can muster.  I want to become indispensable.

I feel that if I’m not working to become indispensable, I’m not serving the Church well.  I’m just doing a job, punching the clock, and doing mediocre work.  My good friend Matt Harmer rightly warns that

Being average is contagious.

I just can’t see how God is pleased with mediocre, half-hearted work.

And I’m convinced that if you’re not working to become a linchpin, you need to start working differently.  Or find a new job.

Ever been caught in the trap of mediocre work?

Is God ever pleased with half-hearted mediocrity?

*I read Seth Godin’s Linchpin when it was released earlier this year, so I don’t claim creative rights to this idea…though the story is most definitely mine.

 

Christian “alternatives”

November 1, 2010 / / 14 Comments


Sue, talking with Reverend Tim Tom: “You know who else hit a rough patch? Jesus. He was dead.”

I recently watched the Halloween episode of ABC’s The Middle.  The show’s not my favorite, but I loved this episode.  One part made me laugh harder than I’ve laughed in a long time.  My favorite quote was from Frankie, played by Patricia Heaton.

Whenever there’s an exciting event for kids, the church offers an…alternative.

The shot moves to a group of teens, standing around an empty room, ringing in the new year…at 8:00 pm.

Ever been a part of a Christian “alternative”?

Like maybe a “Souper Bowl” or a “5th Quarter?”  Maybe a New Year’s Eve celebration that included praying in the new year instead of kissing the one you love?

How about an alternative Halloween party?  I have.

I remember when I was a kid going to the church gym to do a Halloween alternative.  I know that all of the parents involved (including mine) were well-meaning.  But…here’s what happened.  In one corner, you got to fill out a maze.  If you completed it, you got a piece of candy!  A fruit-flavored Tootsie Roll.  In another corner, you tossed bean bags (imprinted with a cross, no doubt) onto the board, and if you made it in the hole, you got another piece of candy!!  In another corner, if you wrote out your testimony, you got two pieces of candy.

Is it healthy for the Church to offer alternatives for these holidays?

Or is it healthier for the Church to equip her people to be salt and light in their community?

I believe that it’s more effective, and God-honoring, to free people up to be a vital part of their community.  Church leaders can sometimes get into the mode of thinking that offering more and more options for people to come back to the church building is the best way to control equip people to become growing followers of Christ.  This line of thinking forgets that the more and more that people come to the church building, the less and less they can invest in their neighborhood.  In effect, the church can tear people out of the communities that God has placed them in.

What’s your best memory from a Christian “alternative”?

Does your church offer alternatives?  Is that the best way to reach your community?

 

Healthy Accountability

October 28, 2010 / / 10 Comments

(graphic by Kyle Key)

Is it healthier to…

1. Be regularly accountable to someone who is like you, who struggles with some of the same things you struggle with, and who knows exactly where you are coming from (because he or she has been, and maybe even still is, there)?

2. Be regularly accountable to someone who is not like you, struggles with things you do not struggle with, and has no issue with the thing(s) that easily entice you?

3. Be regularly accountable to nobody but God and yourself?

 

Leveraging Blogging

October 21, 2010 / / 6 Comments

I don’t write my blog posts so that I would hit the Top 100 Christian blogs (though I do love the stuff that Kent, at ChurchRelevance.com puts out).  I write them because I process things externally.  The best way I work out my thoughts is to put them out publicly for people to see and critique.

It’s just how I’m wired.

Which means that this blog benefits me more than it will ever benefit someone else.

But, since I’m writing it on a consistent basis, I thought it prudent to leverage the platform to the best of my abilities.  So here’s some suggestions I’ve got for you if you care to leverage the power of blogging.

Leveraging your blogging platform

1. Consistently write posts. Don’t let weeks or months go by without a post.  You gain influence through consistent posting.  Even if it’s once/week, consistency is important.

2. Write substantive posts. Deal with real issues that people face.  Answer questions people are asking.  Dig into issues that are important.  Pictures are great…but if you want to leverage influence, put some substance in there.

3. End your posts with a question. I always try to invite dialog, because I am not simply trying to broadcast information.  My aim isn’t to put together a good monologue.  I want criticisms, questions, comments…and I’ve found that others want the ability to chime in.  Ending my posts with a question help people know how to best jump in the discussion.

4. Make your posts shorter. My rule of thumb is to keep my posts less than 500 words.  I know that if I get over 500 words, I lose people’s attention.  So I try to get rid of the fluff, and get right to the meat of what I’m trying to say.

5. Read other blogs and comment on them. Engaging others on their turf, on their platform, is a great way to interact.  And if your goal is to leverage influence through blogging, this is a great way to do it.

6. Connect your ideas through other social networking platforms. Broadcast updates through Twitter and Facebook.  Add your info to Networked Blogs.  To PostRank (see my thoughts HERE on measuring success by social engagement).

7. Move beyond the screen. Don’t let interaction stop at the comments section of your blog.  Schedule up a face-to-face conversation.  Get a TokBox going.  A great value of social media is that it can get you further relationally with those you’re developing a network with online.

What am I missing?  Would you add anything to this list?

Have you worked on any of these things?  Any success?

 
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