I wonder why I don’t have enough or strong enough faith sometimes. But really, that is just a roadblock I construct, not one that is actually there.
Faith is a gift. It isn’t miraculously or heroically pulled out of our insides, but dropped in our hands and heart when we open them widely enough. And it often hurts when it lands there. You do not get what you need from God by having enough faith, but you ask for faith so you can experience what it is that God has already given you.
The act of turning to God for more faith, is an act of faith already. To ask for it is evidence that the request has already been granted. Trust it.
My 89 year old mom is wonderful. As healthy as she is, her short-term memory is pretty well gone. But she’ll beat you at Scrabble or do a crossword puzzle faster than you. We have great conversations… often the same one.
The other day I called and as we chatted she asked me about my church, so I told her what is going on at Jacob’s Well. Then she asked what she often asks, “Are you going to be building a church?” I once again explained how it was our plan to keep using public spaces, like the school we are in now, because of the baggage many people who don’t go to church have about churches.
Then she said, “Oh good, you’re busy reaching people, not just building a church.” And I said, with a tear forming in my eye, “You got it, Mom. I don’t think I could say it better myself.”
There is something very special when your mom or dad understands the heart of what you are about and pats you on the back for it. Thanks, Mom!
If you are interested in’ our commitment to not owning a church building (or being a church, rather than having one) check out these previous posts.
I know many pastors and church developers read this site, so here is a series of thoughts that I’ve been discovering or been taught. Hopefully you’ll be able to implement what is of value before you have to learn them the hard way – like I did…
You’ve heard people say, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” well, not always true. Some of the characteristics that make me a better pastor for my congregation, make me a worse pastor for my family. In particular it is being there for the congregation. Always being available is great, but if you are, your congregation and community will take advantage of you, and you will not be available for your family.
Message to your congregation/community: “You are important to me!”
Message to your family: “Other people are more important to me!”
Spouse and kids can be (and rightly so) hurt and resentful. And how can they argue?!? You are doing good and important stuff. The laundry list of the things I get dragged into each week stuns me, and the little my family hears about it often shocks them. Not only is it good and important, but it is supposed to be God’s work. How can your kids, or your husband or wife, compete with that? How can they say, “I want more of you. Don’t give so much to God.” They can’t. Well actually, they often do, but they do so through rebellion, giving up on the church, God or you.
Your kids just want a dad, or a mom. They don’t want you to be a pastor, or a superhero for St. Whatever’s.
Boundaries are part of the answer. Have inviolable time set aside for the family. Don’t just make sure you are at the important events in their lives, set aside enough space to be part of making the memorable, unimportant moments.
Don't be SuperStupid
Better than boundaries is making sure the ministry of your congregation belongs to the congregation, not you. Don’t worry, you won’t become dispensable. The “S” on your chest may just be standing for “Stupid” instead of “Super.” [That's a Rick Warren line...] There is more than enough work that you will not be able to pass off to someone else. But the truth is that God pulled the people who make your congregation together because they need each other, not just because they need you. Design the DNA to turn your people to each other. More gifts, more hands, better ministry.
And you… you can do what you are uniquely called and equipped to do. And… you can let your family know that nothing God gave you is more important than they are.
This past Sunday [Feb 15, 2009 worship series Relationship911 at Jacob's Well] I had everyone read this passage aloud with me. Ephesians 5.1-2. It’s The Message paraphrase. I knew it was strong, but when I heard everyone read it together the power of it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Read these verses. Slowly. Repeat.
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that. Ephesians 5.1-2 (The Message)
In the evening I led the spoken word part of the service at The Source in Stillwater and we read it together again and it was even clearer. How can anyone NOT want to be part of this guy Jesus’ movement? How can you NOT want to be loved by this God?
Okay, it is The Message paraphrase and if you read these verses in a straight translation they aren’t quite so inspiring. But I did some careful comparison. The paraphrase captures the heart of what the Greek is trying to say, but does so in a way that speaks to the hearts of people today.
I’m not writing about that controversy (I think they are right, however. I was a math and science geek in my earlier life… still am, I suppose), but I am very interested in Tyson who takes his obscure and hard to understand discipline and does two very important things with it. 1) He makes science understandable and very interesting to the larger public. And 2) he steps from his field to make some very clear and important observations that relate to everyone.
That’s what I hear in the quote above; a profound observation that could change the world. The world would have far fewer victims if we all did our homework. His insight applies to religion as well. While I believe God’s truth is from beyond our understanding, I also believe it is understandable. We may not be able to author it ourselves, but when articulated it resonates with us and recognized by us. Something like John 10.4.
When Martin Luther was defending his works in 1521 he purportedly said,
“Unless I am fully convinced by testimony of Holy Scripture and evident reason… I am neither able nor willing to recant, since it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience. ”
God’s wisdom is greater than human knowledge, but not illogical. It is what human knowledge reflects when it approaches wisdom. That was what Paul was getting at in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and it is the premise of the wisdom tradition in the Old Testament.
The best educated person will not fall for the phony side of religion, but will see the value of God’s wisdom manifested in an authentic community of faith. Education, knowledge, sophistication are not antithetical to God or faith, but innoculations against bad theology and poor practice.
Was not wisdom the first of God’s creations? (Proverbs 8.22)
Being the pastor of a church that was created to reach people who have given up on or don’t like church, I have to speak differently. I can’t assume Bible or theological knowledge, and even more so, I can’t assume “buy in.” People are skeptics or at least questioning. And since we aren’t just trying to get a batch of those folks in and up to speed so that we can move on this is a permanent, not temporary, mode.
Here’s the question I get asked and struggle with a lot: How do you create a worship experience, especially the teaching/preaching part, that meets the needs of those totally new and even outside faith, and those who are now in and ready for more? Can you speak to both at once?
My answer: Yes you can, and here’s how. The temptation, and even the downfall, of many established churches full of established believers is to speak to where people are in their faith, and that creates a split between the different places are spiritually. Lyle Schaller says this is what we call “preaching to the choir.” Think about it… faith is process, it is either growing and changing or dead. In reality there is little difference between the person who is new to faith and the one who has a long history. We all have a long, long way to go.
I aim at the movement of my target; flying, not sitting ducks. I don’t preach to where any one (seeker or believer, if you want to use that language) is, but to the movement within them. We are all on a winding road that takes attention, practice, skill and grace. None of us can see down the road too far, and it should never be an option to stay where we are right now.
Preach to the pilgrim, the sojourner, the learner, the restless within each person and yourself. That is what we all have in common, it binds us together, and it is the place that God’s Spirit is most at work.
I’d love to hear the reactions of people who hear my preaching. Is this a concern or a frustration for you? What works or doesn’t work for you? I’d love to hear!
I totally missed it at Jacob’s Well today. We are just finishing up a series called “Extreme Makeover: World Edition” and I was trying to chase down the parts of life where God has prepared us to be the big movers in the remaking of the cosmos. The last thing I talked about was the fact that we need to have God-sized goals. No one ever failed God, or life, by having too big of goals. God thinks big. Very big. Building a galactic nursery for stars is thinking big.
I wanted to leave everyone with a question that would help us keep our goals like God would like them. And I had it figured out my question a week ago, but for some reason when sent my copy to the people who print out our Sunday Paper (that’s what we call our worship program) I forgot and gave them a different and less potent question. I caught it too late, but I was going to straighten it out when I preached… Nope, missed again.
So here it is. It’s a question I wrestle with often, but never often enough. I hope you spend some time with it and take it’s implications seriously. It is one of the most important questions of our existence.
It is simply this:
“Can you accomplish your goals without God’s help?”
Here’s another thought that grew out of our Missing God series at Jacob’s Well. We miss God not because God isn’t there, and not just because we don’t know where to look, but because we eliminate certain places as potential “Godspots.” Among the many reasons for doing this, one is close-minded, and even anti-intellectual. It turns its back on parts of learning because they might distract or lead us astray. It fears knowing too much.
Herodotus created this map 2500 years ago. It certainly isn’t too much knowledge from our perspective. It is just enough for the next step of discovery. Millennia later Copernicus and Galileo had other maps and many people thought they were trying to know too much. But it wasn’t too much, it was barely enough. It allowed them, and eventually us, to know the universe better and consequently understand our relationship with God better.
There are those who would say we know too much today. We look skeptically at the stories of the Bible. We know about other world religions and forms of spirituality and human wholeness which aren’t typically associated with Christianity. That threatens people who fear the disruption of their understanding of God. It is too much knowledge from this perspective.
The threat isn’t too much knowledge, it is not enough knowledge to fully know God. When we refuse to learn about God from all areas of revelation we get an incomplete picture of God and end up worshiping an incomplete God.
We don’t know too much, but we do know so much that we have a chance of knowing God better than we have ever known God.
On Sunday, Dec. 14, at Jacob’s Well I was exploring what it meant that the magi (or kings or wisemen) – a bunch of outsiders – knew that “the king of the Jews” had been born, but no one inside knew it. [Read Matthew 2] Interesting… in fact Herod not only didn’t know, but when he caught wind of the possibility he used that information to try to stop it.
I commented that, at its worst, the church does the same thing. The institutional church is humanity’s plot to acknowledge God, because it can’t do otherwise, but to de-claw and render God harmless. It doesn’t want God upsetting what it has going.
Then I shared that it is the hope of Jacob’s Well, and the need for every person who is part of it, to make sure that God is allowed to be dangerous. To let the pregnancy of God’s advent turn our world upsidedown and never leave things the same.
The infant Jesus is a beautiful and gentle sign, but it is important to remember that he had a full set of teeth. He meant and still means business. We want to be the kind of church that lets God be dangerous.
I wish I’d known about this project a few months instead of a few weeks ago. (Where was I?!? Well, anyway, see the video we showed Sunday, Dec. 14, below.)
While the project is new, the conspiracy of which it speaks has been going on for a long time. Jesus was God’s trump card in the process. As we talk about “Missing God” at Jacob’s Well these four Sundays before Christmas (Nov 30 – Dec 21) we are looking at all the places that God is around, bigger than life, but we keep missing it. Advent, God coming into the world, is exactly this. It is the world pregnant with God’s presence waiting to burst out at the right time – and it is continually the right time.
This was God’s conspiracy to disrupt our complacency, to wake us from our indifference, to get our eyes off ourselves, to open our hearts and minds to God’s presence and the possibilities which exist when God is that real and present. May we be part of the change!
pretty well gone. But she’ll beat you at Scrabble or do a crossword puzzle faster than you. We have great conversations… often the same one.
I heard 
Being the pastor of a church that was created to reach people who have given up on or don’t like church, I have to speak differently. I can’t assume Bible or theological knowledge, and even more so, I can’t assume “buy in.” People are skeptics or at least questioning. And since we aren’t just trying to get a batch of those folks in and up to speed so that we can move on this is a permanent, not temporary, mode.
I totally missed it at Jacob’s Well today. We are just finishing up a series called “
On Sunday, Dec. 14, at 