Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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5 Marks of a grace based church

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I recently commented on a post by Jeremy Myers on his Till He Comes blog. In response to my comment Jeremy asked the question, how can a grace-based church be identified? This post is an attempt at answering that question.

I came up with five things that mark a church as grace based:

  1. A grace based community points to Jesus
  2. A grace based community values every person’s story
  3. A grace based community speaks the truth in love
  4. A grace based community helps people become what God designed them to be
  5. A grace based community is not content to play church when the world around them is dying without a saving relationship with Jesus Christ

Points to Jesus

Grace

It seems like a tautology to say that every church should point to Jesus, but sadly this is not the case. While the legalistic churches I’ve attended would claim to point to Jesus, instead they point to men and they point to rules. In a legalistic system some person or group will be the final arbiter of what is right and whether someone is accepted.

In a grace based community, people are directed to Jesus who welcomes all no matter their current belief or practice.

Values every person’s story

The Apostle James warns us against judging people by external traits. Specifically he warns against giving rich people preferential treatment. While we may comply with the letter of this command, often the church violates its spirit.

How do we treat homeless people? Are we aware of the undercurrents in the society around us? How would we react if a drug addict or prostitute showed up on Sunday morning? How do we react to the gay and lesbian community?

The danger is that we can look down on people who practice a life-style with which we do not agree. We can condemn them before we even listen to their stories to find out how they ended up that way.

I think of how Jesus interacted with the woman at the well in John 4. He knew her story but valued her enough to draw her story out. She came to understand that despite Jesus knowing her story, he still valued and accepted her. The church should do the same.

Speak the truth in love

My experience is that churches tend to gravitate toward one or the other of these. Either truth is compromised for the sake of being loving or love is compromised for the sake of truth.

A grace based church does not withhold the truth, it does not compromise on the standards of holiness as outlined in Scripture. Neither does a grace based church use the truth to brow beat people into submission.

We need to speak the truth and be loving as people examine and consider the truth. This is why it is important to value a person’s story. Because of their background, some will have trouble trusting what we say. We need to give them time to process and patently answer questions and help them work through doubt and misunderstanding.

Helps people become what God designed them to be

When I interact with Scripture and other believers, I become painfully aware of areas of my life that are not what God would want them to be. This interaction also give me glimpses of what I can become as I surrender my life to Jesus. This is the process of discipleship.

The church should not condemn people for where they are, but neither should we allow them to stay as they are. We should always be spurring one another on to love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24).

It is not loving or gracious to ignore problems.

Not content to play church

If we do indeed have the Good News, then it would be the opposite of gracious to keep that good news to ourselves. We are not to play church and function as a spiritual club using doctrine and conformity to determine who is in and who is out.

If we are striving to live in grace, we will be like Jesus in the way we reach out to the community. Jesus lovingly challenged the people around them. For example, when the rich young man came to Jesus and called him “good teacher,” Jesus asked him “why do you call me good?” (Mark 10:18). Jesus challenged the young man’s assumptions to make him think about his world view.

If the culture around us is indeed lost and subject to eternal consequences for that lostness, should we not feel a sense of urgency in bringing them to safety? Is it not gracious to reach out to them?

Now it’s your turn

Can you think of any other marks of a grace based church? Please add them in the comment section below.

 

6 principles to avoid moral failure

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Moral Failure

To my knowledge, no-one who experiences moral failure set out to end up there. No-one gets up in the morning and declares that it looks like a good day to fail. Failure is not a goal; it is a consequence of choices made along the way. So how can we avoid moral failure? I think these six principles will help:

  1. Set a relational hierarchy. It is important to understand relational priorities. Jesus tells us that the two great commands are to love God and then to love our neighbor. From this, we know that the relationship with God is first priority. After God comes spouse, children, parents, etc. Understand your priorities and adjust your activities and time spent accordingly. Confusion with regard to relational priorities can open doors that should never be opened.
  2. Do not compromise. Set your standards and stick to them.
  3. Be more concerned about living rightly than being liked. Peer pressure does not end when formal education ends. Friends and coworkers can pressure you to compromise on your values in order to fit in. This can be particularly problematic in work environments when a lack of conformance might cause you to be viewed as not being a “team player.”
  4. Live in the truth. Don’t do anything or go anywhere that you would be embarrassed to have you spouse, children, parents, church family or pastor hear about. Don’t do anything that you would be prompted to lie about if confronted.
  5. Set your boundaries and do not cross them. If the goal is to avoid lust, shows or pictures that some would find acceptable may not be acceptable to you. Jesus said that it would be better to gouge out your eyes than participate in lust. So set a boundary at the point where lust is not a problem and do not cross over it. If you need help in staying within the boundary ask for it.
  6. Focus on ending well. Life is not a sprint, it is an endurance race. The analogy is no less true because it is over used. The secret to finishing strong is to keep moving toward the goal.

Do you have any that you would like to add? Please add them to the comments below.

Abusive Churches

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Abusive ChurchIn an article called Abusive Churches, Pat Zukeran lists eight characteristics of an abusive church. A summary of the characteristics in Pat’s words (bold emphasis added by me) is below:

First, abusive churches have a control-oriented style of leadership. Second, the leaders of such churches often use manipulation to gain complete submission from their members. Third, there is a rigid, legalistic lifestyle involving numerous requirements and minute details for daily life. Fourth, these churches tend to change their names often, especially once they are exposed by the media. Fifth, denouncing other churches is common because they see themselves as superior to all other churches. Sixth, these churches have a persecution complex and view themselves as being persecuted by the world, the media, and other Christian churches. Seventh, abusive churches specifically target young adults between eighteen and twenty-five years of age. The eighth and final mark of abusive churches is the great difficulty members have in getting out of or leaving these churches, a process often marked by social, psychological, or emotional pain.

My point in sharing this is twofold:

  1. I want to encourage church leaders to examine their leadership style against this list and see if there are areas in which repentance and reconciliation should take place.
  2. I want to encourage church members / attenders to examine the church they attend in light of this list. If you find that you are in a church that is described by these characteristics, find a new church.

Compulsion and manipulation should never take place in the body of Christ. Either God is in control of a local body or the leader is. There is no shared control. The leader should always keep in mind that he is an under-shepherd who is responsible to the Master Shepherd. The pastor or elder must never lose sight of the fact that he is leading his peers; we are all equal at the foot of the Cross.

I have been in churches that had several of these characteristics but I have never been in one that had all eight. Even so, I have found that the eighth item listed above is especially true. My experience is that coming out of a church that only had a few of these was indeed a painful process.

Satan is shrewd. If he cannot get us to embrace doctrinal error, he will trip us up with spiritual pride. Those of us who are identified as leaders in the church must be constantly vigilant in watching for pride to creep in. As I see it, pride is the foundation upon which the control and manipulation described above is built.

Leaders who walk in humility and submission to Jesus Christ will not fall into the eight errors listed above.

When labels are (mis)applied in the church

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Name LabelWe like to categorize other people by applying labels to them. Liberal versus conservative, rich versus poor, informed versus ignorant, interesting versus boring, popular versus nerdy, the list of possible categories is inexhaustible. Politicians use this tendency to categorize to their benefit by trying to portray themselves in a popular category while casting their opponent as the opposite.

There is  danger in carrying this drive to categorize people into the church. In the church there are to be no such categories; we are all equal when we come to the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Yet in some churches, people are categorized and labeled. People can be labeled as troublemakers, critics, backsliders, emotionally unstable, emotionally repressed, etc. Positive labels such as leader, teacher and supporter can also be applied.

Applying labels to people becomes a problem when it prevents them from growing into their God-given ministry potential. This is especially true when the labels are applied based on erroneous or incomplete information. Stephen Covey relates the story of the boys on the subway to illustrate how easy it is to misunderstand another person’s situation and actions.

One day on the subway, while quietly reading a book, Stephen was interrupted by two wild children that got on with their father at a subway stop.

The children were out of control, jumping up and down, running loudly through the subway car.

The father seemed not to notice or care that his children were misbehaving and disturbing commuters…

Stephen approached the father and wanted to scold him for not controlling his children and teaching them respect for others…

The father agreed, and sighed sullenly, saying “yeah, I just don’t know what to do or say to them. We just came from the hospital where their mother died from a random assault….”

I have seen people who have made suggestions get labeled as troublemakers. I have seen people who identify problems get accused of being divisive. On the flip side, I have seen those who are successful in business get tagged as church leaders despite their spiritual immaturity.

Church leaders must resist the temptation to label and categorize people in their congregations. Remember Paul’s words in Galatians 3:28:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (NASB)

Look at the Disciples that Jesus picked. Among them was a terrorist, a traitor, two brothers with anger issues, a fisherman with a tendency to say the wrong thing and a thief. The man that wrote much of the New Testament was a murderer. Jesus trusted this rag tag bunch to found his Church, people we would likely write off as being of little help.

The point is that if someone is causing a problem in the church, that problem should be addressed without labeling the person. God deals with our sin without labeling us, who are we to refuse to do this for others?

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