Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

Home Archives for Mark McIntyre

On dealing with the hurt caused by churches

Posted on Written by Leave a Comment

Mahatma Gandhi said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” I admit that I am a Christian despite the church and not because of it so I can relate this statement.

But, before I get on my soap box and denounce the church, I must remember that I am one of those Christians. I must immediately admit that I let myself and others down on a regular basis. Even though I grade myself on a curve, I still fall far short of my own standard. I can’t even think about approaching the standard set by Jesus Christ.

In short, the problem with the church stares back at me in the mirror every morning. I am the problem with the church.

So how do we respond to this? Do we just say, “well, that’s just the way it is” and go have another beer? Do we give up and buy into the “spiritual but not religious” nonsense? Do we keep hopping from church to church until we find a group that allows us to operate totally within our comfort zone? Or, do we strive for something better?

When Jesus gave us what is commonly called the Great Commission, he included a part that seems to make much the American church uncomfortable since we largely ignore it. He describes the disciple making process as “teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.” Since we are to teach everything that Jesus commands us, we have no wiggle room for letting anything out.

Question: are we striving to yield to God like Paul commands us in Ephesians 4?

” . . . assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Ephesians 4:21–24 (ESV)

We are called to put off and put on. It is the analogy of taking off a garment and putting on a different one. We take off the dirty garment and put on a clean one.

This implies choice and volition. We need to choose to pursue different behavior and we need to have the will to do it.

This is not a call to pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps spirituality. Earlier in the letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells us that we begin life, “dead in [our] trespasses and sins” (2:1) but God made us alive with Christ (2:4-5).

Salvation is a gift and cannot be earned. We contribute nothing. Christ’s righteousness is given to us as a status, the theological term for this is imputation. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us when we have responded to Christ in faith.

So then, why is it important to do the putting off and putting on?

In preparing for an upcoming sermon, I ran across a writer who made the point that not only is Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, it is also imparted to us. In other words, while the imputed righteousness allows us to be viewed by God as righteous, we are also given the power to actually live righteously. The same power that caused Christ to live a righteous life is imparted to us so that we can also live the same righteous life.

We don’t earn any points with God by our behavior. We have perfect status already. So then, what is the motivation for obedience and righteous living? Off the top of my head, I can think of four reasons:

  1. Living as we were designed to live will promote inner peace.
  2. Living as we were designed to live will promote peace with others.
  3. Living as we were designed to live will display the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who desperately need it.
  4. Living as we were designed to live will remove barriers to our fellowship with God.

So, what is the best way to deal with the hurt that is caused by churches (the purported topic of this post)?

First, we must realize that we contribute to the hurt. It is harder to be severe on others when we are aware of our own shortcomings.

Secondly, we must look for a fellowship of believers that is honest about their own failures while at the same time seeking to be obedient to Paul’s commands regarding putting off and putting on.

This is complicated by the fact that our inner Pharisee can quickly turn the good motivation for obedience into Pharisaical legalism and checkbox thinking.

The question to ask yourself, especially if you are a church leader, is whether the leadership of the church understands the Gospel and is seriously committed to living it out in every aspect of life.

We can allow no shortcuts, no qualifications, no excuses.

The question to ask is, are we seeking to observe (do) everything that Jesus commanded us to do?

The call and the gift

Posted on Written by Leave a Comment

I heard a speaker recently talk about ministry as a fusion of calling and gifting. Both the call and the gifting are given by God to those he chooses to minister to his church. And both the calling and the gifting must be operational for ministry to be effective.

The call should be a product of an ever deepening relationship with God. As the name implies, gifting is the ability to do the ministry that one called is to do.

The gifting along with the talents and personality of the one called are given by God to meet the needs of the church.

The danger is that a minister can lose sight of his call and rely almost exclusively on his gifting. A gifted speaker can churn out entertaining and perhaps even helpful sermons without being in touch with the God he claims to serve. In my lifetime, I have seen too many preachers get caught in egregious behavior that was performed while they were continuing in what appeared to be successful ministry. Apparent effectiveness is not necessarily an indication of a deepening relationship with God.

On the flip side, a man can feel called to ministry but not have the gifting, talents and abilities to function in the role he feels called to fill.

This is why it is necessary to have a presbytery or some other governing body to evaluate and qualify those who feel the call to ministry. But it should be understood that when a pastor is ordained, the ordaining group is simply confirming that the gifting is indeed operational in the candidate as he ministers to the body. The gifting must be validated and affirmed by mature believers.

For the minister to be effective, he must acknowledge that both the gifting and calling come from God and the minister is dependent upon God for maintenance of them both. This requires humility.

It does not require the kind of humility that is self deprecating or self defeating. It requires the kind of humility that understands that God could use anyone, but is grateful for the opportunity to be used. Like any other gift, the giver should be thanked for providing the call and gifting to go along with it.

Paul writes about this in Ephesians 4 when he says,

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Ephesians 4:11–14 (ESV)

God gives. Man can only receive.

On dealing with insecure leaders

Posted on Written by Leave a Comment

It has been my observation that the amount of control that a person attempts to exert over their environment is directly proportional to their level of insecurity. Insecure people feel a need to control their circumstances and the people around them.

This fact makes it extremely troublesome when the insecure person is put in a position of leadership. Insecure leaders tend to micromanage their people and can be very critical of everyone around them.

Now, before we jump all over the insecure people around us, we need to apply the log and speck rule and face our own insecurities. We need to do this because we all have them.

I am learning that for Christians, the antidote to insecurity lies in a proper understanding of how much we are loved by God combined with a proper understanding of his power. In other words, God has been, and will always be, in loving control of what goes on around us. A proper understanding of how much he loves us will allow us to assume that everything will eventually work out well.

When I lose sight of the fact that God is in control, I can allow the insecurities of the people around me (and their corresponding attempts to control me) to push me toward acting out of my own insecurity. When I allow this to happen, things quickly spiral out of control.

Since this blog often discusses church leadership issues, I would like to make a comment or two about insecure church leaders.

I have found that insecure church leaders will often inhibit those they lead from using their gifts to their full extent. Optimally, a church leader should be helping members identify and develop their gifts. The leader will then encourage them to seek opportunities to use those gifts for the benefit of the church body.

Insecure leaders, whether it is consciously or unconsciously done, thwart those in their care and do not allow them to operate in freedom. I can think of two reasons for this:

  1. Insecurity can cause the leader to attempt to monopolize the attention of the group. If he gets his validation from his position of authority, he will not want anyone else to siphon off some of that validation.
  2. Insecurity can cause the leader to act out of fear that others would do something that is outside of his vision for the church. The insecure leader will take upon himself authority that is not his since it is Jesus’ church and not the leader’s church.

One of the things I enjoy about presbyterianism is that decisions are to be made by a group of individuals, not a single person. In a true presbyterian church, the elders and pastors have equal authority. Each can speak into the blind spots of the others on the leadership team.

Trusting that God is the one who pulls the leadership team together allows for my insecurities to be negated by the collective wisdom of the other elders. If each elder has this attitude, then none of the leaders will feel the need to control the direction of the church body. We are then in a position to allow Jesus to direct the body.

My experience is that this is never perfectly done. This is because we all have insecurities and our enemy is expert at manipulating use through our insecurities. We act out of selfish, self-protective motives.

As leaders, we need to heed the words of James:

“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

James 5:16, ESV

If we are honest about our insecurities with our fellow elders, if we confess our desire to manipulate and control, then Jesus can begin to work through us to build his church.

Perhaps every elder meeting should start with prayers of confession and repentance.

The danger of Method-Du-Jour thinking

Posted on Written by Leave a Comment

I am constantly surprised by the tendency of churches to embrace what I call a method-du-jour mentality. The internet is full of apparently successful church leaders who are willing to provide instructions on how you can produce results similar to theirs.

Some church does something. It appears to be successful based on attendance numbers. Others then seek to find the method or program that was used to generate the good result. We shorten the sermon, use video feeds, turn up the music, redesign the décor, or hire consultants to try to produce similar results.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to attract large numbers. Jesus attracted crowds wherever he went.

There is also nothing inherently wrong with trying new things. Jesus, in the parable of the wine skins, reminds us that God’s work is new in every generation. Jesus did all sorts of new things like touching lepers, treating immoral people with respect and healing people on the Sabbath.

But the danger is that we can be so focused on methods and numbers that we lose sight of our mission. Our mission is to make disciples.

Perhaps at issue is how we define disciple. At its root, the word translated disciple means learner, or student. The disciple is one who learns from his master. A disciple is not one who makes a claim to be a follower Jesus. A disciple is one who actually follows Jesus and learns from him.

I am haunted by Jesus’ declaration in Matthew 7 that not everyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus is indeed a true follower. Jesus says:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'”

Matthew 7:21-23 (ESV)

Perhaps an analogy would be helpful here.

If a car manufacturer focuses on speed of production and number of cars produced and loses sight of the quality of those cars, that company will likely go out of business. It will go out of business because the buyers will get frustrated with the product and stop buying their cars. The board of directors for that company will be held responsible for the decline in quality and corresponding decline in sales.

In the same way, based on the Matthew 7 passage quoted above, I believe that Jesus will hold church leaders responsible for the quality of the disciples we claimed to produce in our ministries. When we stand before our Lord, we will have to answer for how many of those disciples are turned away because they were not true disciples.

There is nothing wrong with trying new methods if we remain firm in maintaining our goal of producing real disciples. To be a disciple is to be a learner. The learner must be taught.

Disciple making takes time. Disciple making takes commitment. Disciple making takes life-on-life contact.

The word rapid doesn’t apply here. So then, why are we enamored with churches that experience rapid growth?

Perhaps we have forgotten that the growth of the church is ultimately not our responsibility (see 1 Corinthians 3:6).

Categories

Archives

Blogger Grid
Follow me on Blogarama