Category: Church Leadership

  • Titus 1 & 1 Timothy 3: Six Things the Bible doesn’t say

    Here are the two most often quoted passages from the New Testament about the qualifications of a pastor.

    Titus 1:5-9 [Brackets, mine]

    The reason I [Paul] left you [Titus] in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders [some translations use the word leader] in every town, as I directed you. An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

    1 Timothy 3:1-7 [Brackets mine]

    Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer [elder, pastor, overseer are basically the same word] desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

    6 things that Paul doesn’t say that American church culture often says are qualifications to be considered a pastor.

    1. You have to be a leadership expert, a proven leader with years of experience, a reader of books on leadership, aspiring to be a leader, and a regular at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit and/or somehow tangentially related to John Maxwell.
    2. You have to be an employee of the church. The same passage describes the biblical qualifications for a pastor as they do positions the American church almost never considers staff-level. (Elder, overseer)
    3. Aspiring to be a well-known preacher. “Able to teach” is a pretty low standard. I am fully “able to run” but you won’t catch me out there doing it too often.
    4. Be in possession of an Masters in Divinity from a denominationally approved seminary prior to seeking ordination. That said, education was a high priority in the early church. You couldn’t even be baptized or label yourself a Christian until you’d gone through about a one year process of intense discipleship. (Prior to baptism, new believers were called catechumen.)
    5. Be a great manager of programs and projects. Since the early church was organized around the idea of family, you didn’t need to take classes in organizational leadership to understand the dynamics of a family.
    6. You have to be an amazing self-promoter of both the church and your “personal brand.” Paul didn’t have a blog, Twitter, or Facebook. And yet he somehow managed to be spur on the most powerful viral message of all time.

  • Final thoughts on canceling church

    My post last Sunday about megachurches (and their copycat little brothers) canceling services the day after Christmas generated a massive response. Apparently, there were a lot of people who also felt it was a smidge ridiculous that in America we found an excuse to take a Sunday off while those in other parts of the world risk their lives to worship Jesus publicly on any day. And a good amount of people, especially those who commented, thought the connection between the persecuted church and canceling services was unfair.

    That’s OK. I’m a big boy and can handle people disagreeing with me.

    There were several spin-off posts generated which I’d like to call your attention to as they are worth reading:

    I learned three things from the post and its fallout.

    1. In general, American Christians don’t feel much of a kinship to non-American Christians. At least the majority of blog commenters would not put kinship above their individual churches rights to meet or not meet.
    2. Few people latched onto a central concept in the post that the church is our real family. I consider my community group part of my family, I’m left to assume that this family-feeling is not all that common. How can that be so?
    3. The priesthood of the staff is so deeply engrained that it was nearly 30 comments before someone brought up that churches canceling services could have just managed their resources/staff differently by empowering more lay people and depending on the staff less.

    In the end, the post did more than I could have hoped for. Rather than simply getting a pile of people to agree with me or disagree with me… it seems as though the post generated the exact discussion I had hoped for. And getting church leaders to critically think about their ministry is about all I could ever ask.

  • Pastor as Vocation

    Confession: I do as much or more pastoral ministry now than I did when I worked in a church.

    That is no knock on my friends in full-time vocational ministry.

    It is more an affirmation for the myriad of people I know who have stepped out (or been pushed out) of their ministry job.

    Leaving vocational ministry in a church for the great unknown is an identity crisis. These friends are left asking themselves, “Am I still a pastor?”

    I went through the same thing 2 years ago. You are OK. You are still very much a pastor, even if your paycheck doesn’t come from a church.

    I’m here to tell you this simple truth: When you are a pastor you are a pastor wherever you go. It’s a calling and not a vocation.

    My reality

    I opened this by saying that I do as much or more pastoral ministry now than I did while I worked at churches. So what does that look like?

    • Removed of the stigma of “going to talk to my pastor” I give a great amount of pastoral counsel. Instead of people coming to my office for that we meet at coffee shops, my house, and even bars. (Gasp!)
    • I love teaching at youth group. I don’t do it often enough to get into a groove… which keeps it from feeling like a grind.
    • I totally miss filling the pulpit. At the same time I’ve learned that I probably preach too much and act too little. I have a lot more time to do ministry rather than prepare a message.
    • We’ve rediscovered authentic relationships. When you work at a church your life is full of people who claim to be your friends– but it’s a positional thing. When you are a nobody in your congregation you have to develop friendships the old fashioned way. Better yet: When the positional ones come along you don’t feel obligated.
    • I’m ministering to people in my life that are a part of my neighborhood, work life, adult small group, and students in my youth group.
    • Straight talk, no B.S. (Stealing a line from a politician) That’s kind of how it feels. Free from the weirdness of people probing and constantly feeling like I’m answering every question on behalf of the church, I can just let it fly. Want to know what I think or what the Bible says? I don’t need a “church filter” anymore.

    Conversely, when I was a vocational pastor I was constantly thinking to myself, “This is it? I rarely spend time with people. All I do is run programs. I want to be with people and do ministry!”

    Interesting how freedom from the work of running a church has lead me to doing more pastoral ministry, right?

    A global perspective for the naysayers

    My fellow Americans, live in an ethnocentric culture. And American church culture is even more insular than American culture. Those of us who are in that culture have a very hard time seeing outside of it. So when I say things like “It’s a calling and not a vocation” most people in the church have no frame of reference. So while we’ve tied the concept of “I’m a pastor” with “I get paid to work at a church” we really get messed up when we no longer work for a church.

    Two things to chew on…

    Within Christianity: Outside of major Westernized countries almost no one who is a pastor does so vocationally. (Bi-vocational is the norm) In fact, the fastest spreading Christianity is spreading is absent of vocational staff and mostly without resources like buildings, Bibles, Bible study materials, etc. I’ve been pointing out the inverse relationship between church growth and church spending for months… but no one is lining up to cut their church budget/staff to see their church grow.

    Other religions: Outside of the Christian church most religions are run by either volunteers or people who have taken vows of poverty, sustained only by the meager donations of people in their care. The Latter-day Saints are an excellent example of this. Very few people get paid within the Mormon church and yet it is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.

  • Megachurches canceling services today?

    Last night my friend Gavin Richardson posted an interesting quandary on Twitter. To paraphrase, “Why is it that in some parts of the world people die trying to go to church while here in the states megachurches are canceling services because they did a big service Christmas eve?”

    Here was my response, “Easy. It’s a different Gospel. The Gospel of convenience/comfort bears no resemblance to one of suffering.”

    Let’s unpack this

    In Iraq, Christians gathered for Christmas Eve services in defiance of people who threatened their lives. (And had proven the threat just 60 days ago!)

    Throughout Iraq, churches canceled or toned down Christmas observances this year, both in response to threats of violence and in honor of the nearly 60 Christians killed in October, when militants stormed a Syrian Catholic church and blew themselves up. Since the massacre, more than 1,000 Christian families have fled Baghdad for the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, with others going to Jordan or Syria or Turkey. Though the exact size of Iraq’s Christian population is unclear, by some estimates it has fallen to about 500,000 from a high of 1.4 million before the American-led invasion of 2003. Iraq’s total population is about 30 million.

    Read the rest at the New York Times (Here’s the article Gavin linked to in his tweet)

    Unfortunately, Iraqi’s aren’t alone. There are Christians killed for worshiping Jesus every day. Throughout the world believers in Jesus suffer daily. If you’d like to hear their stories and understand their struggles more, I’d recommend subscribing to the Persecution Podcast published by Voice of the Martyrs.

    For a large part of the world loving Jesus is tied closely to suffering. Many are expelled from their families for following Jesus. Some are sold as slaves. Some are imprisoned. Some experience economic inequity. Many are breaking the law by meeting– even in private. Many are left as outcasts. Many go hungry while their neighbors do not.

    In the United States, some Christians won’t gather for services the day after Christmas because their leaders want to give everyone a day off. Their Bible apparently includes an out-clause in Exodus 20:8-11. Their Bible reads, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, except after Christmas when we give everyone the day off so they can spend time with family.”

    After gearing up for Christmas services throughout this week, several megachurches will wind down by canceling Sunday worship on Dec. 26th.

    Pastors and church leaders say taking that day off allows the staff and volunteers more time to spend with their family during a traditionally busy season.

    Read the rest at Christian Post

    For a large part of the United States loving Jesus is tied closely to convenience. We do things when it works for us. But when it is more convenient to not do something, we pretend like we don’t even see it.

    To summarize: In some parts of the world people risk death threats to worship while in other places in the world we’re taking the Sabbath off so we can spend time with family.

    Two different worlds

    We, in the United States, dishonor those in the persecuted church when we decide not to meet because it’d be more convenient. Any time you hear a pastor justify something like this by saying “we are putting families first,” you need to call them out. We are called to put God first. Period. 52 Sunday’s per year. 365 days per year. 24 hours per day.

    Why?

    The church is our real family. Coming to church, small group, or other forms of community is real family time. Partnering with those who suffer for the sake of Christ by continuing to worship no matter what is a real family expression of love. Healthy families get together. We suffer together. It is what we do. It is who we are. More importantly, it is who Jesus told us we need to be.

    Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

    Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.” Luke 18:26-30

    Taking the Sunday after Christmas off to spend time with family? What a slap in the face to the concept that the church is your family! This is the churches way of telling its congregant… “You aren’t my real family.”

    This is what happens when church becomes staff-driven and about programs as opposed to the simple expressions described in the New Testament. (Where one person, maybe, was employed… per city!) Church becomes about doing what is best for the staff and what is convenient to the programs. Staff and programs aren’t bad– they are good. But the organization isn’t and shouldn’t ever be about them. They are there purely to serve the family.

    We are to be real family to those without family. We are to be about the business of loving neighbors. We are to take care of widows and orphans. We are to feed the poor. We are to be about suffering alongside our brothers and sisters. We are to be about sacrificing for their sake.

    Be reminded that the early church spread fastest, furthest, and had the deepest impact when we had no paid staff, no property, and met in homes or borrowed spaces.

    Instead, they depended on one another as equal. Paul paints the picture again and again that the church is a body. We are inter-dependent. When one part suffers we all suffer. And when another part rejoices we all rejoice. Let no one in the church be more important than the other!

    My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? James 2:1-6a

    In the end, the megachurches who take today off (and the myriad of churches who follow their lead, since they are “church growth experts“) are exhibiting the hole in their Gospel. Not to vilify them– but to expose the places we need to help them repair. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time but they got it wrong.

    No more groupthink in church leadership. Instead, let’s move forward by compassionately living out what God has clearly told us to do in the Bible.

  • 3 Responses to a Broken Arm

  • Rejecting the priesthood of the staff

    And Reaffirming the priesthood of all believers.

    That the pope or bishop anoints, makes tonsures, ordains, consecrates, or dresses differently from the laity, may make a hypocrite or an idolatrous oil-painted icon, but it in no way makes a Christian or spiritual human being. In fact, we are all consecrated priests through Baptism, as St. Peter in 1 Peter 2[:9] says, “You are a royal priesthood and a priestly kingdom,” and Revelation [5:10], “Through your blood you have made us into priests and kings.”

    Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nobility, 1520

    Most people on church staff have no idea how to turn the reigns of their ministry over to the church. It seems counter-productive to lead without holding the reigns. The attitude is generally that church staff are the experts, seminary trained, denominationally ordained and battle-experienced to do the work. And the people in the pews won’t do anything even if you asked them to. On most church staff’s the concept of the priesthood of all believers is taken figuratively, dismissed as impossible in the literal sense.

    Hogwash.

    There is an inverse relationship in the church today between the increase in church staffing/overall spending and the decrease in the number of people we reach per capita.

    The Vortex We Created

    Somewhere along the line we, as church staff, started to think that we could do ministry better than people who don’t work at the church. We bought the lie that because people are busy that they can’t be functional body parts described in 1 Corinthians 12. Instead of leaning on Scripture to correct, rebuke, and train in righteousness to call believers to their responsibilities– we assigned them books on Christian leadership which affirmed that we were the ones called to do the work and they were called to write checks.

    Worse yet, we started to believe that being a pastor was a vocation of leadership and not a holy calling.

    We turned saints into spectators. Then we handed them literature that told them to pursue excellence in leadership and got mad when they left our hard-working church of 500 for a megachurch of 10,000.

    Many Luthers Wanted!

    We need brave men and women to publicly state the obvious– the current strategy isn’t working. It’s not a liberal thing. It’s not a conservative thing. It’s not an emergent thing. It’s not an old-fashioned thing. It’s no modern. It’s not post-modern.

    It is the church, universally failing to reach more than 10% of the population on any given Sunday.

    There is no hope that a staff-led church can reach your community much less the world. (My pastor has only been to my house once, he doesn’t know the names of any of my neighbors.) It is not mathematically possible because it is outside of the design. The hope of the world is not that we flock to bigger and bigger megachurches with more refined experts. It is the opposite.

    The hope of the world lies in individuals and families embracing a simple strategy of neighbors loving neighbors. As we, the body of Christ– messy, broken, and dependent– embrace our role as the God-ordained priests on our block, the church can get back to the designed multiplication strategy.

    Thought questions

    1. How is the identity of your pastoral calling tied to the responsibilities of being church staff? If you weren’t on staff would you still feel like a pastor?
    2. I make the argument that there is an inverse relationship between increased spending/staffing/programs and reaching people. Looking back at the last 30 years of history in your congregation, do you find that to be the case? Why or why not?
    3. Read 1 Corinthians 12. What are spiritual gifts lacking on your staff team? What are ways your current staff structure may be handicapping your church?
    4. What are ways that your staff’s ecclesiology or even church polity are getting in the way of the priesthood of all believers?
    5. What are practical ways you and your staff team can reaffirm the priesthood of all believers in 2011?
    6. Do you know the names of all the neighbors whose property touches or is adjacent to your own residence? What are ways you can love your neighbors better in the next 14 days?

  • Why did Jesus come here?

    It’s a perfectly logical question for this time of year.

    The incarnation of Jesus: God becoming flesh in the form of a baby. St. John covers this pretty good in chapter 1 of his gospel account.

    Here’s a hint: It didn’t have anything to do with Christmas. How do I know that? When Jesus was born they didn’t celebrate birthdays. His parents didn’t even use the Roman calendar we use to declare his birthday as December 25th. Maybe somewhere someone wrote down the day Jesus was born. Heck, we’ve got a 1 in 365 day chance that he was born on that day. But considering they used a 360 day calendar it’s safe to say that Christmas isn’t really about Jesus’s birth.

    So let’s instead focus on the incarnation of Jesus the Christ. All of that birthday stuff is just a distraction from the really good stuff.

    Christmas, from a religious holiday perspective, is about Jesus bringing the Good News to earth.

    I’m pretty sure the incarnation of Jesus has nothing to do with having his birth celebrated by giving one another gifts financed by debt. Oops. Sorry, too personal?

    And I surely know it had nothing to do with putting a ton of your churches resources into putting up decorations and hosting a pageant. God didn’t take on flesh as an outreach event. Yeah, I’m looking at you.

    The incarnation, a quick review

    1. John 1:12 – “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” [Let’s be honest, we like this statement best because it has to do with us. It’s OK, it’s good news to us. It’s awesome news to become a child of God!]
    2. John 1:9 – “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.“

    The Good News of Jesus is personal. I’m an evangelical and boy do I like that! It’s all about me, baby!

    Or is it?

    John 1:9 is oddly inclusive. It implies that it’s not just about me. And it’s not just about bringing people to church so that they can be exposed to the message of Jesus.

    The incarnation of Christ includes bringing a more general Good News to the earth. To everyone. And for those of us (myself included) who see the incarnation through an evangelical lens… this idea messes with our theology a little. We talk a ton about personal salvation and accepting Jesus into our heart. But John makes it clear that there is some general good news brought to the whole world through Jesus’ light.

    Think about the physics of bringing light into a dark room for a second. Let’s say you are in a dark movie theater. It’s full of people… a thousand of them. And suddenly the screen goes pure white.

    Who does that white light effect? Just the people who chose to be effected by the light? Of course not! Everyone who was in darkness is effected by the light. Personal choice has nothing to do with it. Everyone in the room was in darkness and is now experiencing some sort of the benefits of the light shining.

    So, as we think about the incarnation of Christ we must think about “What does it mean that Jesus brought light to the whole world, practically?”

    It’s a lot to chew on. And I’ll step away, asking you to reflect on these two passages which I think move believers towards the reality that Jesus is asking us to bring Good News to our neighborhood more than he is asking us to grow our church. (Specifically, he is expecting Good News to flow to your neighborhood through you.)

    Mark 12:28-31 – “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

    “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

    I love how the teachers of the law ask him a singular questions in Mark 12 and he gives them two answers. Take that!

    Ephesians 5:8-12 – For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said:

    “Wake up, sleeper,
    rise from the dead,
    and Christ will shine on you.”

    I love how Paul says, “You were once darkness.” Not, “You were once in darkness.” No, things were dark because of you. We’re all in the same boat there.

  • Farm Fresh Offerings

    Photo by Halliew via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Right out of college, Kristen and I were full of ideals about where we wanted to serve in a local church.

    We had a list of things we were looking for: Having been in the midwest for eight years we were ready for a geographical change. We wanted to see mountains and take a break from winter weather. We wanted a ministry in a small town that reached out to kids from broken homes, loving the unloveable. And we wanted to leave the big church world for the medium-sized church world where I could be involved in more than just one program.

    When we found the right place in Northern California. We looked past the rough parts of the job (Which would lead to us staying only a year) to tried to see the diamond in the rough. The ministry was in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It boasted the highest teen pregnancy and teen drug abuse rates in California. It was a strong, medium-sized church, and I’d have responsibilities in a bunch of areas.

    In truth, being my first experience in looking for a full-time ministry I asked all the right questions but didn’t listen for the right nuances to the answers. It was perfect and wrong at the same time.

    Worse yet, when it came down to talking about my salary package I based our salary off of what I hoped we could live on instead of what things were really going to cost. Visiting this small town with a big city mindset I just couldn’t have seen some of the hidden costs of living in the middle of nowhere.

    About 60 days into our new life in rural California I came to a painful realization. I had misunderstood what my utilities were going to cost in making my budgets and we were in trouble every month. (Water and electric were about 400% more than our place in Chicago. Combined, they totaled what I was paying in rent.) I had flat out negotiated for the wrong salary.

    I sweated out a couple of months hoping that it was just a fluke and we’d settle into a more affordable reality.

    It didn’t happen.

    Every month we had too much expense and not enough income. Kristen and I cut back and cut back. We cut back to the point where we were spending less but we just didn’t have enough for groceries. (About $100/month was all that was left over after fixed expenses.) A hundred dollars was basically covering formula and the basics. In truth, the only way we were making it was by accepting every offer for a meal that came our way! (After church every Sunday, every party people from the church had, stuff like that.) Another trick to hide our meal shortage was that I started taking tons of high school students out to talk so I could take them out so I could buy a meal and put it on the church credit card. (Taking home the leftovers was part of the deal.)

    But, as financial pressures tend to go, this was really stressing us out and stealing our joy.

    With my tail between my legs I took our budget to the elders. It was humbling to look at these older men and admit that I was going broke and needed help. I’ll never forget opening up my laptop and showing them the numbers on Microsoft Money. It was humiliating.

    Since the church was doing well financially I had hoped they would just increase my salary by a few hundred dollars per month to alleviate the pressure.

    I couldn’t have been more wrong.

    They chuckled. No, they laughed at me. They gave me the small town vs. city slicker grin I had long ago tired of. And they came back with two possible solutions. (Three if you count the sarcastic “you can live in a tent in my backyard” comments.)

    1. Apply for WIC and/or welfare.
    2. Allow the people of the church to offer you welfare.

    I chose the latter. And the elders quietly began to let it be known that those city slicker McLane’s needed food.

    From humiliation to humbled

    You know, as a pastor, you know in your head that your salary comes through the offering plate and that you, in turn, have enough to pay your bills because people give. You feel it but you don’t really see it as the process is rather sterile.

    But when you hear someone pull into your gravel driveway and get out of the car with a paper bag full of vegetables from their garden or a hen they’ve raised from a chick– it changes your perception of an offering.

    Our little family literally ate people’s first fruits of our churches labor.

    And it changed us forever.

    What had once robbed our joy became one of the few sources of joy in a ministry experience of sorrow.

  • Abram’s Call: An advent monologue

    Photo by Stephen Weppler via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    [Lights up]

    [The main character, Abram, walking his dog through his middle class neighborhood.]

    [His phone rings, the ringtone is Usher’s OMG]

    [Abram bounces his head to the song as he pulls the phone out of his pocket.]

    [Abram’s glances at the caller ID and stops cold. He raises his eyebrow for a brief second, thinking about letting it go to voicemail.]

    Abram: Ah, man. I don’t really have time for this today. Give me a break… OK, whatever.

    [Abram swipes to take the call]

    Abram: [With a little frustration in his voice] Hello?

    God: Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

    Abram: You don’t even say hello anymore? For once it’d be cool if you would at least say who it is. [pause] OK, OK… what do you want me to do? Leave the country and go somewhere? What do you mean by “leave?” You mean go for a little trip? Or do you mean I need to pack up my house, quit my job, and move? Are you OK? Have you been creating planets again? A little more clarity would be nice here.

    God: I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.

    Abram: [pausing, looking inquisitively at his dog, who just raised his leg to pee on a bush.] What does that even mean? You don’t even say hello, you tell me to leave the country…. and now, a great nation? All I ever asked you to do was to help me be a better dad. A great nation? I’m not into politics. I don’t want to become a great nation… I just want to now how to talk to my kids about the tough stuff… you know… sex and why the Cubs suck. Stuff like that. [Pause, catching up to the reality of who he’s arguing with.] Any way we can talk a little bit more about the blessing part of it and a whole lot less of this moving somewhere else bit? I mean… I’ve got my kids in a great school. There better be one heck of a blessing for me to talk about pulling the kids out of school. You know, I’ve got a wife. I’ve got to sell her on this idea. Blessing, yeah… talk about the blessing some more.

    God: I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

    Abram: [Letting out a little doubtful snort] You want me to tell that to Sarai? Have you met her? [raising eyebrows and envisioning getting punched when he tells her.] She’s pretty comfortable in our neighborhood as it is. She loves our house. She’s got a whole bunch of girlfriends. Our kids our happy. We’re safe. And you want me to go home and tell her that leaving all of that is going to make our name great? She’s gonna throw that back in my face, you know? And I don’t think I like the sound of “you will be a blessing.” I can’t sell that to her. She’s going to want to here that you are going to bless us. Not be a blessing, get a blessing. Work with me here, G.

    God: I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.

    Abram: [turning his heart from despair, slowly to more of a realistic tone.] Well, now we’re talking. Sarai’s gonna dig this part of it. So when our kids start at a new school and the other kids tease them because they don’t look right, don’t dress right, and live in a neighborhood they clearly don’t belong… you’re gonna have their back. And you’re going to make it pretty obvious that people are getting blessed because they bless my family, right? I’m getting the idea that you aren’t asking me if I’m willing to do this… so you’re starting to speak my language.

    God: And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

    Abram: [long pause, having been stunned into thinking deeply about those words] Whoa. OK… so what’s you’re saying is that if I go home and convince my wife to move from a house we love to a place to be determined later… that every person on the planet will be blessed through me? I’m not even sure how to respond. I guess I get to respond just by doing it, right?

    [Abram realizes that God has hung up]

    Abram: Hello? You still there? Yeah, I’m out here walking the dog… this canyon must have a dead zone or something. You’re breaking up.

    [Pulling his phone down, he sees the screen displaying “Call ended.”]

    [By this time, the dog has gotten tired of standing on his walk. So he’s laid down on his side. Abram puts his phone back in his pocket, stares off into the distance some more.]

    Abram: [under his breathe] Yeah, easy enough for God to call me like that. Now I’ve got to go home and try to convince Sarai. How would God know? Not like He has a wife.

    [Pulling on the leash and getting the dog going.]

    Abram: Come on. Let’s go. Good dog.

    [Light out]

    Narrator: So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

    Genesis 12:1-5

    Epilogue: It’s one thing to take the call. It’s another thing to put the call into action.

  • Pastor’s Freudian Slip Fail

    epic fail photos - Pastor Ego Fail

    Ouch. A little too close to home for a Sunday, eh?