Tag: rant

  • A rant on discipleship

    A few week’s back Joel Mayward asked if I’d participate in his blog series on discipleship. He asked some great questions and really got my mind churning, plus I was in one of those pre-lunch moods. Here’s a taste of what ended up being a holy rant on the topic.

    What is discipleship? 
    I’d like to start off with two push backs on your question itself.

    First off, discipleship is a made up word. Let’s acknowledge that for what it is. Every time I type it in Microsoft Word or on my blog it always pops up as a misspelled word. Because it isn’t a word. More to the point, it’s a made up word because we don’t really even have a word to describe what discipleship is.We are trying to smash the relationship that Jesus had with his disciples into a modern construct of a ministry model. The very problem of a lack of discipleship comes from trying to make it a quantifiable process that is replicable so that we can point to a person as church leadership and say, “This is how I know people are growing in their relationship with Jesus.” It’s a McDonald’s-style phrase that just falls flat in the face of what Jesus and the early church actually did, as documented in the New Testament. So I want to start off by pushing back on the very word, discipleship. Jesus told us to make disciples, (Matthew 28:19) not create a process whereby all people can follow 6 easy steps or run the bases or complete a wheel of discipleship. Those are modern simplifications which have proven to have horrible impact on the life of our churches.

    What is the greatest barrier to this in youth ministry?
    2. As I opened this with, we are living in a day where we’ve tried to create a process called discipleship as a replacement for how Jesus and the early church actually did it. So when we talk about making disciples we think of programs when Jesus never had that in mind. The disciple-making process is a lifestyle, not a program. So a major roadblock we hit as leaders is that our adult volunteers think they’ve been “discipled!” Moreover, we have a culture which is so “easy” focused that very few have the stomach to get involved. Decades of crappy “discipleship models” have created undiscipled, undisciplinable followishers of Jesus.
    And these are just two excerpts! You can read the rest on Joel’s blog.
  • Why youth ministry can’t just become family ministry

    Why youth ministry can’t just become family ministry

    There’s a growing movement within the American church that puts youth ministry under the umbrella of family ministry. There are youth ministry organizations, publishers, conferences, and lots and lots of people highly interested in this model.

    To over-simplify: The idea is that youth ministry should be an extension of the over all family ministry of the church. So, youth ministry is really just another part of the organizational chart which fits nicely between kids ministry and young adult ministry.

    I think we need to push back from this organizational simplification. There’s a very good reason why youth ministry is the way it is. Namely, modern youth ministry emerged in the 1940’s to reach lost students the church didn’t care about. (The church, as a whole, was late to minister to adolescents. This gave birth to parachurch movements like YoungLife and Youth for Christ.)

    Youth ministry sprang up to meet the need of teenagers who wouldn’t naturally go to church. Or who didn’t fit in because their parents don’t go to church. Or those who will never fit into the stiff collars of a traditional church. Youth ministry has always been the organizational oddity that helps those students experience Christ.

    Any attempt to fold youth ministry into a church that isn’t currently reaching those kinds of kids and adults… is destined to make youth ministry sterile. 

    Putting youth ministry into the box of family ministry is misunderstanding that it’s historical place in the church is missiological. Historically, we are more tied to evangelism than we are discipleship.

    Don’t Misunderstand the 1-eared Mickey Mouse

    Chap Clark, very poignantly and famously pointed out that youth ministry too easily becomes an organizational island, what he called “the 1-eared Mickey Mouse” in the church. In other words, many youth groups have their own mini-culture, their own goals, values, and norms.

    I love Chap’s observation. It’s true. But I would argue that it’s not altogether bad. Further, I would argue that maybe the church needs a few more 1-eared Mickey’s to start reaching some more types of people. (But that’s another rant for another day.) The problem is that when you let the business people run your church– having a 1-eared Mickey Mouse is a bad thing. And so some of these emerging models of family ministry have at their core a desire to kill the 1-eared Mickey, folding youth ministry in.

    But don’t forget– if that 1-eared Mickey Mouse is reaching people the rest of the church organization fails to minister to, that’s a very good thing. And some of what you get when you fold it in is backfiring.

    Sanitizing Youth Ministry is a Bad Idea

    As I read the books, listen to the speakers, and read between a few lines… I think that the motivation for some people is to make youth ministry tidy. Some of these folks who say that youth ministry is really just a step in the family ministry food chain attend/work/consult with churches who reach a very sterile, homogeneous group of people. It looks like they are reaching a lot of people but they are really good at reaching a certain kind of person while excluding large, growing portions of the population.

    Bottom line: If you make youth ministry revolve around the family you automatically exclude students who don’t have families who go to church. Sure, you don’t exclude them by name or even intentionally. But when you start having father/son trips and retreats for the whole family– if you lived in a home with your grandma who didn’t come to church, how welcome would you feel?

    If you make youth ministry fit around the vibe and rhythm of your church instead of the local school system you’re automatically limiting who you reach.

    On and on. Youth ministry can be very powerful as an organizational island.

    Moreover, youth ministry was created to take some risks. To do things that got the Jones Memorial Carpet ruined. To reach the lost kids instead of the right ones. To connect the unconnected to the most important family they could ever have.

    The answer isn’t a sanitized family ministry. The answer is a realistic integration strategy that gets people of all ages and backgrounds out of programs and into community.

    This rant has exceptions: Let me point out, and cut off some of the negative feedback I get when I post things like this, that while I’m making generalities there are exceptions. The church we attend is one of them. They head this off because top to bottom they are reaching “the wrong people.”

  • Making the Bible Accessible

    “The Bible isn’t for people outside of the church to understand. So it isn’t your place to make the Gospel accessible.“

    That may be the dumbest quote I’ve ever heard in relation to using sound missiological principles to reach a dead and dying people group. And yet, this quote apparently came from the mouths of smart, biblically authoritative evangelicals upset with the work of a young leader.

    Just so people know: This isn’t the position of middle-of-the-road evangelicals. It’s not even the position of anyone reasonably conservative in the evangelical world. It’s a radically fundamentalist position which denies the very presuppositions of evangelicalism!

    History counters this statement: The evangelical missions movement of the 19th and 20th century saw hundreds of thousands give their lives in work and thousands more give their lives as martyrs making the Gospel accessible to unreached people groups. Such a statement slaps those people in the face.

    Such a statement devalues the activity of nearly every evangelical in their daily workplace. It denies the action of church planting. It denies the the very notion that we, as believers, can impact the Kingdom with our actions.

    In short– its not an orthodox position. We must rally behind those who are reaching the lost!

    It is our job, as believers, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, to bring the Bible to the lost and see the Gospel renew the people and their land. (Ephesians 2:10)

    The statement above is why the church needs a change in leadership. We need people with level heads who are smart, savvy, and reasonable. Those holding extreme positions are not bad people. They just shouldn’t be in authority.

    Middle-of-the-road evangelicals are tired of culture wars. We are longing for fresh voices and fresh leadership. We simply want to right wrongs, reach the lost, and love their neighbors. (All in the name of Jesus, under the power of Jesus, and for the purpose of making Jesus known) We will continue to distance ourselves from extremist.

    While extremists lament and pontificate, we will continue to reaching the lost, righting wrongs, and loving our neighbors.

    People at high levels who say/think/perpetrate these thoughts devalue the entire purpose of the Gospel in order to protect their own self-interests. At the end of the day, that’s what the statement must be about. Protecting their self-interests. The statement isn’t true and doesn’t represent the tenants of our movement— so to say such a thing reveals that they are putting their own interests above all else.

    The lesson is– if you take a stand for truth you must be willing to stand up against the religious establishment, and continue to speak the truth in love despite their sneers and allegations of heresy.

    Today is no different than the time of John Wycliffe, who died shunned by the religious establishment.

    Sadly, shunning is part of reforming.

    For those who are bringing fresh wind into the sails of the movement, my encouragement is to boldly ask those people set aside what they are comfortable with for the sake of the Gospels spread.

    The spread of the Gospel to unreached people groups, whether home or abroad, is never comfortable. It has never been comfortable. And we cannot win hearts until we are willing to walk in the tension of discomfort for the sake of others.

  • C.S. Lewis is to Christians What…

    C.S. Lewis, famous dead man

    C.S. Lewis is to Christians what McDonalds is to American children. C.S. Lewis is to Christians what beer pong is to college students. C.S. Lewis is to Christians what Dave Ramsey is to those who suck with money.

    I first heard of C.S. Lewis in 6th grade. Lori, the girl who sat behind me and I had a crush on, read the Chronicles of Narnia. Every day during our free time she ignored me so she could read these books. I was trying to impress this girl with my witty humor and dashing 6th grade looks and these silly books were getting in the way.

    From there, I never heard him referred to until college. He was never referred to in an English or literature class. As a freshmen at Moody Bible Institute I got exposed to the cult of Lewis. My roommate had the full set of weathered and dog-eared Narnia books. He claimed he re-read them every year. In classes, people referenced him in nearly every speech and practice sermon. I took a literature class where a professor read from a Lewis book with a quivering voice before reverently closing the book and clearing her throat. I heard story after story from people who had profound experiences with Mere Christianity or the Screwtape Letters.

    On and on it went. Through college it just seemed to get more intense. After college the child-like fascination I saw as a student mushroomed into something more bizarre as I stepped into church leadership.

    Here’s what I’ve learned from being in the church 18 years…

    • American Christians have a love affair with C.S. Lewis.
    • We quote him like he’s a 4th member of the trinity. Lewis is that authoritative in most Christian circles.
    • A C.S. Lewis quote book might as well be the 67 book of the Bible in most preachers hands. Not sure how to move a point? Quote Lewis!
    • I’d be willing to bet that on any given Sunday in America there are more references to C.S. Lewis in sermons than there are references to the Old Testament. Do a study… my money is on Lewis.

    As you can tell, I’m a little tired of Clives. (OK, a lot) I’m happy for those who have had profound experiences through his words. It is really cool to me that his books have meaning to so many people. I’m not a hater. I don’t hate Lewis. I’ve read Lewis’ stuff. (How do you think I graduated from Moody?) I just don’t revere his work as magical. I think he’s OK, but mediocre compared to authors of his era.

    But lets keep Lewis in perspective. He is not God. His words are not to be more revered than Scripture. His words shouldn’t be quoted as if they are Scripture. I think he’d probably be ashamed of how highly he is revered in some Christian circles. Let’s call it what it is… idolatry.

    A dose of reality for fans

    C.S. Lewis is not the great literary genius Christians claim him to be. Comparing him to his contemporaries reveals it. Is he of greater literary significance than any of these?

    I could go on. I went through some lists of the top authors/books of the 20th century… you won’t find Lewis in any top 20 list. Random House doesn’t even have a Lewis book in the top 100 of either their editors or readers selections.

    But the point is simple: There’s a lot of hero worship of C.S. Lewis going on.

    Knock it off.

  • Church Leaders Love Status Quo

    Yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a link to a blog post by John Ortberg, a very successful author and pastor in the Bay Area of California.

    The blog post is titled, “Stop Trying to Change the World” and is aimed at people like me and you.

    Ultimately, we’re not the ones in the world-changing business. Our claims otherwise imply that history and humanity can be controlled and managed through human efforts. And–partly because of the law of unintended consequences–those attempts always end up doing more harm than good.

    Only God can change the world.
    Christianity is not first and foremost about creating values or establishing justice or championing righteous.
    It is about the greatest good:
    God Himself.

    Now, I understand that the blog title was written as a bait & switch to draw people like me into a discussion as his rhetoric quickly comes down from the bold title. And I understand that there’s a good chance Dr. Ortberg didn’t even really write the blog post since he likely has people to do that for him.

    But my thought for John Ortberg is pretty simple. I can see why you’d be against people in the church changing anything that might rock the boat. You’ve got it pretty good.

    Isn’t he breaking the rich-white-guy rule? Aren’t rich white men, based on his zip code he’s probably in the top 5% of earners in the United States, who live in comfortable suburbs full of gated communities supposed to either be all about social justice or just not talk about it at all?

    Speaking out against change… seems kind of out-of-place for a guy who writes books called “If You Want to Walk on Water You Have to Get Out of the Boat.”

    I don’t know which passage of Scripture leads Mr. Ortberg to say, “He says that because of the way power is widely viewed in our day, talk about ‘redeeming the culture’ or ‘transforming the world’ is largely understood as implying conquest, take-over, or domination. It means ‘our side will defeat your side by coercing everyone to do what we want.” The way I see church history, it’s precisely this tactic of seeking justice and serving the local community that lead to the rapid spread of Christianity! As the church cared for widows, orphans, lepers, and stood up for the oppressed, the church became an unstoppable force in culture because armies could destroy a community or people but the love that lived within and gave freedom both physically and in people’s hearts was unstoppable! Within 400 years of Christ, the emperor of Rome gave his heart to Jesus!

    Ortberg paraphrases the Jews in Babylonian exile as an example of God’s people being blessed for not changing the world. He neglects to mention why the Jews were in exile in the first place!

    The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD’s temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. They set fire to God’s temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there. 2 Chronicles 36:15-19

    And why did God hand them over the Nebuchadnezzar? Let’s see what those prophets, aka the Book of Jeremiah, whom God’s people mocked, had to say:

    • “I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable.” Jeremiah 2:7
    • “I had planted you like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock. How then did you turn against me into a corrupt, wild vine?” Jeremiah 2:21
    • “Your own conduct and actions have brought this upon you. This is your punishment. How bitter it is! How it pierces to the heart!” Jeremiah 4:18
    • “This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD.” Jeremiah 9:23-24
    • “You are always righteous, O LORD, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” Jeremiah 12:1

    I could go on. But anyone can read Jeremiah and see that the Jews weren’t exiled to Babylon to be some kind of faithful presence among the Babylonians. The Jews were taken into exile because they sinned against God, making a mockery of the law, and suffered a 400+ year timeout!

    I’m positive I am reading Mr. Orberg’s words incorrectly. Certainly, no pastor and Christian leader really thinks that the church is not supposed to be an agent of change within its own community?

    Certainly, we are not called to maintain a status quo when thousands of people in our country are sold as sexual slaves, millions oppressed by banks in debt they can never get out of, our economy completely dependent on illegal immigrants for our way of life while not granting those individuals basic civil rights the majority enjoys, and churches who gleefully oppress and belittle the people they are called to reach.

    Certainly the church is called to help our country, a nation full of no-fault divorce, more than half the kids living in single-parent homes, crumbling schools systems, a prison system over-flowing, drug-addiction, porn-addiction, on and on… right?

    Are we?

    Or maybe I’m just immature and idealistic.

  • Picky, Picky

    Photo by tostadophoto.com via Flickr (creative commons)

    Apparently contentment is not a Christian virtue anymore.

    If you hang out with Christians for any length of time, you’d think pickiness is a requirement of the faith.

    • “I really wasn’t into the message on Sunday. I mean, 95% of it was cool… but he said something about fathers I didn’t agree with. So I tuned him out.”
    • “We haven’t found the right church, we’ve been looking around, and nothing quite fits us.”
    • “I’m definitely not called to singleness, but I just haven’t found the right guy.”
    • “I used to be into the NIV, but I had to switch because I just don’t like the gender exclusive language.”
    • “I would help with the kids ministry, but [sipping a latte from Starbucks] my Sunday mornings are just too busy already.”
    • “I could never go to a church if the staff is a bunch of white males.”
    • “My church serves little snacks-n-stuff after the service. Which is cool, but I can’t believe they serve cheap pastries and coffee that isn’t fair trade. I mean, that’s gross on a lot of levels.”

    Need I go on?

    We live in communities that are reached by fewer than 10% of the population and yet we worry about this crap? Seriously? It’s like your house being on fire and being more worried about saving your wedding photos than your children.

    Shame on us. Shame on us for caring more about the desires of the 10% who come than the 90% who don’t. Shame on us for being so bored that we care about the things that don’t matter instead of simply obeying what Scripture teaches. Shame on us for making grey areas, black and white areas. Shame on us for blaming our inability to fulfill the Great Commission on issues.

    “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” — Jesus

  • Church vs. Government

    Christians make strange political bedfellows

    Have you noticed that a lot of Christians are exhibiting a hatred for our government?

    I just don’t get it.

    For those who are mad about the latest government program… (yesterday it was social security, today it is health care, tomorrow it will be something else.)

    Just some friendly reminders

    • Anger isn’t the answer, it just make you look silly.
    • Agreeing with everything isn’t an option, we live in a pluralistic democratic society.
    • Living in denial of the situation we live in isn’t an option.
    • Pointing back to founding fathers of the nation is silly, they are dead.
    • Separating from society isn’t a biblical option.
    • Moving to Canada isn’t an option, they don’t want you.

    What is an option?

    • Changing your attitude.
    • Being a part of the solution.
    • Loving your neighbor.
    • Caring for your neighborhood and proving it with your actions.
    • Being hospitable to people you don’t know.
    • Stop waiting for your church to start a program.
    • Putting the needs of others above the needs of yourself.

    If you are Good News to your community you have to live like it.

    If you aren’t willing to be Good News to your community, than shut up and let the government do what you aren’t willing to do.

    Doing nothing tangible and also complaining about the government doing a bad job at your job… let’s just say that’s not “Good News.”

  • My blogging process

    Photo by m-c via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Posting something almost daily at adammclane.com is a challenge. So I thought it’d be fun to write about that process. Perhaps this will provide an insight into my daily life or maybe it’ll even help someone figure out a new process for them?

    Three main sources of my daily post

    1. I wake up and have something on my mind to write about.
    2. Pre-planned posts.
    3. Rants.

    Typically, I write in the morning. I leave for work at 8:00 AM and I often start writing at about 6:30 AM. Most days I am literally pressing the publish button, hopping in the shower, and dashing off to work!

    1. For stuff I write in the morning.
    These are my journal posts. They tend to ramble more. These are also posts that I mostly write because I have to or the thought will take over my day. It’s hard to explain that, but I think I’ve disciplined myself to wake up thinking about something. There’s definitely a spiritual discipline side to it as well. I’m going on 6 years of daily public blogging… so it’s probably as much a habit as a discipline. But I really dig getting up early to write. And the pressure of having to finish by a certain time helps. (Donald Miller has a great post about using a timer to blog)

    2. For stuff I pre-plan.
    I’m a doodler. And if you’ve spent time with me you’ve probably seen me listen to something, or finish a conversation, and pull out my iPhone to take notes. (I also carry a notebook for this and use Post-its for the same purpose.) I use Evernote to organize that mess into a list. I have one ever-edited note called “blog posts” which is simply a list of things I want to blog about at some point. Some of those items on the list have partial posts that match… these are things I doodle while in meetings, sitting in church, on the trolley, or in a plane. Some of them are just main ideas, some of them are fully edited posts, and some are pictures of things I’ve doodled in my notebook.

    Sidenote: Almost every morning I look at that list and decide do I want to write about something on the list or something on my mind? If I chose to write something on my list instead of what is on my mind, I always make sure to capture a couple sentences of that thing have on my mind for a later post.

    3. Rants
    Rants are a healthy part of the blogger diet. The part of ranting that I’ve tried to eliminate from my blogging diet is the immediate rant. (That’s blogger junk food!) I used to allow something to fire me up and then I’d write a scathing response. Bam, done. My new self-imposed rule is that I don’t publish a rant right away. Instead, I prefer to allow it to sit in Evernote for a while and add it to my list of things to blog about. Then, when I’ve had some time to reflect, I can decide when to publish the rant as well as how I want to edit it. Some of my most popular posts of all time started as rants, fermented, and got re-edited to something else. But a good rant is fun and I let ’em fly on occasion.

    Other types of posts

    There are a couple of genres of blog posts I didn’t include here. These are my more spontaneous posts. Book reviews, family updates, and video posts. There’s not much pre-planning or  deep thought that goes into them. Which is why I typically publish them on weekends or when I’m on the road. And the truth about those posts is that they are more meaningful to me than they are to the reader.

  • The Goal of the Staffless Church

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    Which came first? The staff who ran the programs or the programs which required the hiring of staff?

    No offense to my friends who work at churches– but I wonder if their goal is to secure a job for life or to work themselves out of a job as quickly as possible?

    When I read church growth strategy books and articles I’m always amazed that they only talk about getting larger budgets, larger buildings, and larger staffs. Never mind that it’s a horrible strategy. Most think tanks only think about one strategy… how to get bigger. The idea of getting more efficient is ludicrous.

    When I read about the church of the first 100 years after Jesus I see a church growth strategy of “get in, train people up, and get out as fast as possible.”

    Here’s a centuries old tried and tested church growth strategy we have rejected: With no staff your church will grow.

    The “if you build it they will come model” of the last 50 or so years has lead to utter devastation of the church. Numbers are down big time. Sure, you can point examples of big churches. And no doubt people will leave comments saying how awesome their programs are. But the percentage of Americans regularly involved in the local church has declined sharply in the current multi-staff model.

    The fact remains that a church with less staff will be forced to be the church more than a church with programs where people show up and everything is done for them. This “worked” for thousands of years. What we are doing now isn’t working and we all know it.

    At some point someone decided that everyone needed to be on staff at the church. So we hired a music pastor. A worship pastor. A youth pastor. A children’s pastor. An associate pastor. An administrative pastor. A senior ministry pastor. And all of that staff required administrative support. Oh- and they’ll need offices and space– so we’ll need a bigger building.

    If I put my businessman’s glasses on I examine this trend and say: You’ve added a lot of overhead. Your business multiplied by 25 times, right?

    Wrong. The strategy didn’t work. But now we have an entire industry of church workers in an environment where they are reaching fewer and fewer people with bigger, more expensive programs. Now we’ve created an entitlement that simply isn’t sustainable nor is it leading to the growth long ago predicted.

    It’s almost too easy for me to point to examples of this in other countries. (We certainly saw this in Haiti.) But it’s also true among the exploding Latino and African-American churches in the United States. With almost no infrastructure they reach thousands. In your own community it is likely that there is a church kicking butt with nearly no overhead of staff or a building.

    I’m well aware of the biblical justifications that church staff deserve to make an income. Yes, I’ve used that myself. I’m not arguing that you have a right to claim that to be true. I’m merely questioning the strategy and inviting you to recognize that this strategy has seemingly paralyzed the church.

    Even those who bring up the Pauline argument for getting paid in ministry often neglect to mention that Paul also didn’t implement this strategy in all the places he ministered. Nor did he ever buy a house and start a family.

    Some questions to get you thinking

    • Where does the offering at your church go?
    • Where did the funds in Acts go?
    • How much has your church grown in the last 10-30-50 years using the current staff-heavy strategy?
    • What would it look like if say… 90% of that offering were given away in your community to feed the poor, care for the sick, take in orphans, protect widows, on and on?
    • Don’t you think that would be good news to the neighborhood?

    What I’m not saying

    • The church is wrong to have staff
    • The church should fire staff
    • All of my friends who do associate level ministry are bad/dumb/hurting the ministry of the church in their community
    • My own church is bad, filled with money hungry punks who make fat salaries. (Um, they all raise their own support!)

    What I am saying

    • A church as effective as the Book of Acts is possible today.
    • Churches should ask hard questions about meeting the needs of their community.
    • A lot of church growth strategies are really “church growth industry” growth strategies.
    • Church leaders should challenge their assumptions of what they know vs. what they know to be true in Scripture.
    • It is possible for the local church to reach 90%+ people in your community.
    • We should not be satisfied to “pay the bills” and reach 5-10% of our community.

    “Wake up, O sleeper,
    rise from the dead,
    and Christ will shine on you.    ” Ephesians 5:14

  • 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.