Tag: Jesus

  • So, you want to be great?

    “I aspire greatness with my life.”

    When I say that, almost universally people’s head will cock just a little bit to the side. American society, especially American Christian society, is so self-deprecating that you almost never hear a grown man say that.

    The truth is I am shocked how few people aspire greatness with their lives. If you don’t read anything else in this post, read this… “God wants you to aspire to greatness!”

    I believe aspiring to greatness is completely biblical. Check out how Jesus responds to his disciples. When his disciples ask him  he doesn’t shut them down. He simply tells them how to be great in the Kingdom! “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Mathew 18:1) “”What were you arguing about on the road?” But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.” (Mark 9:33b-34)

    In fact, Jesus makes it clear in his response that there is a path to greatness in this life!

    Aspiring greatness is good and important. The church needs more men and women aspiring greatness.

    Jesus doesn’t shut it down. Greatness isn’t bad. The thing is… Jesus cares most about how you aspire to greatness.

    “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:4)

    “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” (Matthew 9:35)

    Jesus makes it clear. The path to greatness is paved in child-like faith and servanthood. These are just two examples I’ve pulled from the Gospel narrative. There are lots and lots more!

    See, I’m stupid enough to believe that Jesus was telling the truth! Not only can I aspire  greatness in my life, I should aspire to greatness. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

    Here’s the thing that shocks me. Most people get this wrong. I read a lot of church leadership blogs and I follow the ministries of a lot of “famous” preachers in the country. People who are labeled by the evangelical community as “great.” And the shocking truth is that a lot of leaders labeled as “great” are feeding people a lot of lies.

    • There are a lot of church leaders out there who think that they can make themselves great by creating structures and organizations which ultimately serve them. I’m just going to say it… you see this most in the baptistic tradition church planting and megachurch movement. The polity lifts up organizational leaders as great.
    • There are others who believe that being a talented preacher makes them great. Trust me, this doesn’t happen to me. But you can see it happen over and over again as a new preacher emerges and everyone wants to listen to them. Next thing you know, that person’s head gets about 10 times its original size and they start to believe that their speaking ability makes them great by default.
    • What is doubly shocking is just how unapproachable some “great leaders” are. You couldn’t touch them with a 10 foot pole. In some cases, their staff can’t even touch them with a 10 foot pole! They are off limits. They have body guards. You can’t make an appointment to meet them. You’ll never get to have them in your home. You can’t email them a question. You can’t leave a message on their voice mail. You might not even be able to leave a comment on their blog! Some of the “great leaders” that we lift up today in evangelicalism simply believe they are better than you and me.

    They may be great organizational leaders, they may be great preachers, but they aren’t better leaders than you can be if you just obey Jesus’ path to greatness. Honestly, some of those “great leaders” often jerks who twist scripture to elevate themselves above you and me. A man who does fancy stuff just to draw a crowd but twists Scripture to make others serve him isn’t a great Christian leader, he is a false prophet! People who veil great preaching as a way to push book sales or seminar registrations or big offerings aren’t great preachers… they are fancy talkers. The Gospels and pastoral epistles are full of advice on how to treat fancy talkers and hypocritical false prophet jerks.

    You think I’m rude for calling them names? That’s nothing compared to the words of Jesus in Matthew 23. Hypocrites. Blind guides. Fools. Greedy. Self-indulgant. Snakes. Brood of vipers.

    You want to be great? Jesus makes this perfectly clear, all you have to do is serve the needs of others.

    The first disciples, Paul, and  the early church all turned the religious community of the day upside down... they were great leaders even though the had no right to become great leaders. They ruffled the feathers of “the religious” by showing the God could turn “just anyone” into a great leader. It wasn’t Levites or even Bible scholars who turned the world on its head, it was ordinary people serving their way to greatness.

    It is upside down to aspire greatness by serving. And it angers me to see the evangelical religious community lift up people as great when, in fact, they are old-style leaders and not servant leaders. When I hear stuff like, “You need to be born to a good family to be a great leader.” Or “You need to be a part of a big-fancy megachurch if you want to be successful in ministry.” That stuff is clearly not from God. It is completely devoid of fact. And yet I watch as people lay their loyalty/money/attention at these people’s feet while ignoring the truly great God has probably put right in their local church already.

    You want to know if a church leader is a great person? Watch him/her. Is he serving others day-by-day or are others serving him? Greatness comes meekly. It comes to those who serve. Jerks and false prophets… They are not great leaders in God’s eyes. Again, the New Testament makes it perfectly clear how to deal with them.

    Back to you.

    You want to be great? Serve the needs of others. Have faith that is so child-like you are called immature for zealously obeying the Bible.

  • That Slimy Boy

    Photo by Jon Ovington via Flickr (creative commons)
    Photo by Jon Ovington via Flickr (creative commons)

    While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Luke 2:6-7

    The incarnation of Jesus is messy business. Like, the physical act of it. Not pretty. As we approach the sterile corporate approved holiday of Christmas that we celebrate today, maybe we need a step back to remember just how messy Jesus coming to earth really was?

    I don’t know if you’ve witnessed child-birth personally. But I’ve seen it and it isn’t beautiful. It’s popular to say child-birth is beautiful… it isn’t! I don’t know where this notion comes from. It’s interesting, it’s miraculous, I’d even call it cool– but it is not beautiful in the sense of a Monet painting or the Christmas display at Marshall Fields or the Cubs winning the pennant. Child birth is anything but beautiful.

    And modern birth is a lot safer than it was back 2000 years ago. Even in today’s modern hospitals child-birth is still bloody, agonizing, stinky, and otherwise unpleasant. I can’t imagine child-birth outside of a hospital. Maybe you can. But to me it just seems really scary.

    Now put yourself in the shoes of a teenage girl. Away from home, pregnant for the first time… and your water breaks. Wonderful. Labor and delivery of Jesus was not in a hospital, hooked up to monitors, comforted by nurses and a lovely drug man offering pain management. Jesus was born outside of the inn. The text just highlights that there was no room for them in the inn, so Jesus could have been born in a barn or a cave or just outside.

    And who can blame the innkeeper? If you showed up at my house with a woman in labor– I’m not about to give you a room in my house so your wife can drop all that stink and nastiness in one of my rooms for a couple bucks. Would you let them into your place of business? I think not.

    We think of Jesus’ physical arrival in such clean modern medicine ways, don’t we? Let’s not lose sight of the blood and agony of Mary so quickly.

    • A young woman in a lot of pain.
    • Since she was traveling for the census, her mom probably wasn’t with her.
    • It’s reasonable to think that Joseph and Mary traveled with his family. So maybe Jesus was born within the presence of his grandmother or aunts? The text doesn’t say. Either alone completely– or this virgin was bearing her goods to her husbands relatives. Talk about awkward.
    • She sits down or squats to deliver a baby. No birthing suite. In the ancient world they let gravity do much of the work.
    • If modern child-birth feels touch and go, imagine child-birth in the ancient world? Hell on earth. It’s not like they had the option of a C-section.
    • As Jesus’ little head pops out we have no idea how scary that moment was for everyone there. But I will guarantee you no one pulled out a little suction thing and sucked the fluid out of Jesus’ nose.
    • No one felt safe enough to ask Joseph, “Would you like to help deliver your child?” I will guarantee you that. Joseph probably wasn’t even allowed to be present.
    • After delivery, no nurses took the baby to wash him and wrap him up to lay him warmly on mom’s belly while a doctor uses sterile instruments to clean up. How did they get that cottage cheese stuff off of him?
    • If Jesus was born in a stable or barn, let’s hope there wasnt’ a dog. They like to lick stuff like that. My dogs runs around and licks when the kids spill cereal. Yeah, let’s hope there wasn’t a dog present. There probably was.
    • No big moment when the doctor asks Joseph if he’d like to cut the cord.
    • The “it’s a boy” moment was just a confirmation of what the angels already told Mary & Joseph.
    • No one pulled a sterilized Jesus aside to check his Apgar score.
    • No balloon bouquet or digital pictures of the infant fly around the world so that family can instantly know the baby is healthy and mom is OK. Word probably traveled fast back to Mary’s family… but a couple of days at the very least.

    The act of Jesus coming to earth– slimy at best. Death defying to say the least.

    And yet, on December 25th, the entire world pauses to remember this moment. Messy, bloody, gross, and scary. The act of remembering, symbolized by the exchange of gifts and family celebrations, is celebrated in almost every country in the world! Even people who are diametrically opposed to Jesus celebrate Christmas.

    Black Friday. Mall parking lots. Santa Claus. Candy canes. Shopping lists. Ham. Credit card debt. Somehow God is in all of that, too? Something like 30% of retailers cash flow comes in the 30 days surrounding Christmas.

    That’s a lot of cash spent remembering a baby people don’t believe is the Savior of the world.

    The act of incarnation. God becoming flesh. 2,000 years later it is still sending shock waves, isn’t it?

    Messy, slimy boy.

  • Why Did Jesus Come to Earth?

    Here’s my notes from the youth group talk tonight. Feel free to use them however you’d like.

    Title: Why Did Jesus Come to Earth?
    Passage: John 1

    [download id=”3″]

  • Pushing Back to Find Sanity in Christ

    this-way-to-sanityClosing in on a year as “just a family in the pews” I have learned a ton about myself, my walk with Jesus, and what it’s like to be on the other end of church life. Having spent my entire adult life on the church leadership end of things I would often say, “I don’t remember what its like to just go to church.” This last year has been an amazing vantage point.

    When we first came to Harbor we knew right away that we wanted to be a part of it. We went to a service on Sunday and shared coffee with the pastor and his wife later that week. They told us their story and their vision for Harbor… Kristen and I were sold and let them know right away we were committed to staying on board.

    As the months went by we felt like we were getting sucked in and were powerless against it. What I mean by that is that churches have a tendency to get their tentacles on you and slowly wrap their eight arms around you so that you find yourself fully enveloped by its grasp until you wake up drowning in holy activity. One moment you are helping in the nursery and then you wake up to realize that you are serving at the church 7 days per week and 3 times on Sunday.

    Since I was new in my job and had just come out of serving at a church, I was determined that Kristen and I would stay out of the vortex. It may sound weird but people in our lives were firmly encouraging us… in order to reconnect with Jesus you need to do less church work and work more on your relationships outside of church. While I felt like it was a counter-intuitive approach to spiritual growth, I trust the people God has put in my life to tell me the truth… to tell me the truth!

    And yet we started getting sucked in. A weakness I am working on is that I have no ability to say no to something I have the ability/skills/talent to do. Someone from the church would pitch me an idea and my “no thank you” must have come out like a “yes, no problem.” Next thing I knew I was sucked in. It turned out the people in my life were right… and the breath of fresh air I was enjoying so much was quickly snuffed out and replaced with bitterness, anger, and temporary depression. We were right back where we started. In fact, we were probably worse off then ever.

    lead-weightFlash-forward to January and early February. I was fully freaking out about our involvement with the church on Sunday mornings. In fact, for some reason I was literally freaking out at church. I would be fine right up until we left. Then we’d pile in the car and I could feel my blood pressure getting higher. I’d get to church and be ready to explode. A little dizzy, on edge, and feeling the strong desire to flee. All my mind would be saying is, “Leave me alone. I just want to be left alone.” And the more people were nice to me the more intense the feeling. It was really one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. Mr. “I’ve got it all under control” was completely not in control. I’d tell Kristen, “I think I’m losing my mind.” I was being completely honest. I was really scared that I was actually losing my mind.

    Each time someone at church asked Kristen or I to do something it got worse. I kept saying to myself, “The kids hate coming to church, I hate coming to church, and I can tell Kristen is upset that we’re all upset.” While the calm rational side of me knew that we needed to worship on Sunday mornings the irrational, emotionally-charged side of me started to think that the best way to make these symptoms go away was simply to stop going to church altogether.

    [Enter wise council from stage left] Perhaps the solution wasn’t either of those choices? “Stay and be miserable or leave and do nothing are both crappy solutions.” That is when it hit me. What I really needed to do was meet with the leadership and push back.

    Gracious. That’s all I can say about my meeting with the staff. My experience with church leadership and AS church leadership has always been to tie someone’s involvement with church stuff to their spiritual growth. When people met with me to bail on things I always took it personally. I would always be polite and thank them for their service… but they’d leave and I would be annoyed. To look across a table and say… “I can’t explain the why, but I know that I need to say no-to-all for a while to find freedom and connect with Jesus” was so freeing. And to have those words embraced was incredible. While I’m certain the two men I met with were discouraged by the outcome of that meeting as they drove away… I was amazed at their maturity. They gained 10,000 points with our family simply by agreeing that our family needed to do nothing. (Not less, nothing.)

    fresh-airSo here we are three months later. Other than our uber-active community group my family is a regular family who fills the pew on Sunday morning, hosts a few friends on Monday nights… and that is it. I don’t know how long we will practice this new displine of “no-to-all” but I have to tell you that it is working. The more we push back from being super-involved the better things get for our family. More family time, more family growth, less busyness, less tension… these are all good things.

    I don’t know how long this needs to last. My feeling is that I need to guard our family like this until the desire to serve comes back. It hasn’t happened yet. And for once in our lives we aren’t in a rush to make something happen. But for now, we are embracing this new period of our lives. We are embracing a lifestyle of a new normality. It’s a renessaince of the soul that I am enjoying. Maybe a little too much?

  • Longsuffering in the church

    A key component to the personal preference sin so prevalent in the United States evangelical church is a lack of respect for the word, longsuffering.

    Now, there are plenty of proponents of the idea of short-suffering. In other words, if a church or ministry or job or anything in your life doesn’t meet your exacting specifications you need to bail on it immediately. Their argument is that life is too short to longsuffer and the church shouldn’t be patient enough to pay you while you longsuffer. They somehow tie personal preferences into integrity… so if you stick it out at a job or a church because you believe you need to stay, you are somehow violating your integrity because you are not working or attending that church with a 100% joyful heart. They deny that there is anything spiritual in enduring something unpleasant if there is a pleasant alternative.

    An Example for Relationships

    Friends, this lack of longsuffering as a spiritual discipline is also a major lie that has led to the elongation of adolescence in America. If you’ve done student ministry in the last decade you’ve seen it first hand. God gives Christians a single requirement for getting married, that person must be a believer in Jesus.

    Yet, over and over, I see perfectly eligible men and women elongate singleness (and in many cases adolescent dependency on parents) because they don’t trust God beyond their personal preferences. They need someone a certain height, weight, and cultural background. They need someone driven towards certain goals or career aspirations, who want a certain number of children, and want to live in a certain location.

    In fact, we’ve all seen our friends bend God’s single requirement for us in order to get what we want! So they will find “Mr. Right” and completely decimate their walk with Christ in the process only to later discover that he was “Mr. Wrong.” Or, they let their personal preferences get in the way of finding the man or woman God has made for them or allowing that relationship to get to the altar. It’s sad to see personal preferences get in the way of fulfillment in finding a spouse. Kristen and I have joked about this for a long time, but I think it is true. If we just randomly assigned people to one another based solely on “Do you love Jesus more than anything else” we think we could pair up about anyone. We are all imperfect. We are all unloveable. None of us are ideal. When we chose to love someone because they love Jesus… then you will experience what true love and romance really are. Surfacey stuff is ultimately just crap that won’t lead to happiness, anyway. Learning to love someone despite your own personal preferences is what leads to true love!

    Those of us who have been married a few years know that long suffering and marriage go hand in hand. (Heard an Amen! coming from Kristen‘s direction when I wrote that.) In other words, if what you like about your spouse is that they meet your personal preferences, your marriage is doomed! Here’s a hint, the more you trust God that He provided a spouse who completes your weaknesses the happier you’ll be in marriage. (It’s about trusting God more than you trust yourself.) When I see couples whose sole connection is wrapped around a personal preference... I can only hope that their marriage will last beyond that. One of the most powerful and loving things a spouse can ever do for the other is to love you despite your inability to meet their personal preferences.

    If we think of ourselves as the Bride of Christ, we immediately see the stupidity of personal preferences in the church dividing us. We, singular and corporately, are the Bride. In our towns there is a sole bride, not brides. And yet Jesus has to love us all how we want to be loved? Who is long suffering now? Who is having 2,000 communions on Sunday morning instead of one? Whose name is lifted up in a thousand styles instead of one?

    I look at belonging to a church a lot like a marriage.

    1. Let’s say, right now, you go to a church which is fine doctrinally but you hate the music. If this were a marriage would you leave? You would feel pretty childish telling a divorce attorney that you can’t stay married to your husband because he likes rap music. Now, country music, I’ll give you that… But no one would leave a spouse because of a musical preference. But people do it in church every day.

    2. Let’s say you go to a church who killed a program you loved. If this were a marriage and your spouse changed date night from Wednesday to Sunday, would you leave him? I doubt it. But people leave churches for stupid stuff like that every day.

    3. Let’s say you go to a church who mismanaged some money. If every marriage in America were in divorce court because of this, we’d be a in a heap of mess.

    4. Let’s say you go to a church where you didn’t like the liturgy. Would you divorce a person because they didn’t read the same Bible translation as you?

    5. One commenter said she couldn’t go to a church because she disagreed with how the church practiced communion. If that were a marriage and your spouse wanted “communion” in a way you didn’t like… you’d probably head to counseling before divorce court.

    Think of all the personal preference reasons people leave a church! There are hundreds of them. Church leaders are going bald trying to figure out how to keep everyone happy instead of trying to lead people in worship! I’ve been in dozens of staff meetings where the leaders were more worried about keeping congregants pleased than taking the worship service a direction we felt God was calling it to. In other words, we repeatedly compromised our convictions for the High Holy Calling of the personal preference god so many worship on Sunday mornings.

    What am I asking “the evangelical church” to do?

    Time to cut to the chase. I’m not naive. I know that there are divisions in place today and it is silly to say we should all come together as a single body. I know it is insane to dream of a united church community who worships together on Sunday mornings, in Spirit and Truth, despite the fact that some like rock music and some like choir. I know it is impossible to dream of a church who worshiped together despite the fact that some are white or black or Hispanic. I know it is ludicrous to think that churches could bundle their buildings together for Kingdom work beyond the realm of what they want their buildings to be used for. I know it is preposterous to think that churches could start talking about reaching communities instead of birthing more baptists or presenting more Presbyterians. I know it is arrogant to think that one church leader should willfully submit his congregation to another. I know it is crazy to dream of one church in one city reaching the 95% of lost souls despite tiny doctrinal differences.

    But my hope is that it can happen.

    And I dream and think these things because followers of Jesus are overpowered with a silly, insane, impossible, ludicrous, preposterous, arrogant, and crazy love that comes from a Risen Savior. He came to unite. He came to break down barriers. And he wants us to long suffer with one another as an act of worship of Him.

    That’s my hope. That’s my dream. And that’s what I think the evangelical church should be about in America.

    I’m nailing this thesis to my wall. Thoughts?

  • Who stole my Jesus?

    Right now I have a God-shaped hole in my life that can only be filled with an 8 inch plastic Jesus.

    Yesterday I went to the church to finish cleaning out my office. I snapped this picture when I was done as this is the cleanest the office ever was from the moment the painters told me I could move in. 

    As I gathered the last of my stuff I realized something. Jesus was missing. That’s right. Someone had stolen Jesus. 

    Jesus w/gliding action

    Also missing are the 10 Commandments which were affixed to Moses arm with a custom made peg. I find that highly ironic because not only was Jesus, the grace giver with gliding foot action missing… but so were the tablets upon which God wrote for Moses, “Do not steal.” 

    I’m not offering a reward for my missing Jesus… as he is always free. If you have my Jesus, would you please leave him in my mailbox or front porch? 

  • Paul’s Thougts of Christmas

    PaulPaul is 4. He is mostly into Power Rangers and otherwise lives in his own pretend world of karate chops, animals, adventures, and other play things. And while Paul rarely looks like he is paying attention in KidsTown he really learns a lot.

    Here are some things we talked about this morning:

    • When the advent calendar is over, it’s Christmas.
    • Christmas is about someone’s birthday, but not Santa’s.
    • Santa is just pretend, but Jesus is “for real.”
    • Christmas is Jesus’ birthday.
    • Why do we get presents on Jesus’ birthday? “I don’t know.” (He’s right, it makes no sense!)