Hospitality Works (October 15, 2006)

I'll never forget the Sunday when I was 13 and I went with my Baptist parents to visit a Christian Reformed church. We were looking for a new church and somebody had recommended this fellowship to us.

After Sunday School several people (deacons!) stepped out into the parking lot to smoke cigarettes. (Baptists don't smoke - our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.) Then during the service the pastor baptized a baby! I thought, "Obviously we're not coming back here next week."

Then in the car on the way home Mom and Dad shocked me by saying how happy they were with the worship service and the people. We went back the next week, and the week after, and became members. How in the world did Baptists wind up at such a non-Baptist church? Because the Word of God was faithfully preached and the people were unbelievably nice to us from the moment we stepped in the door. We were invited into their homes immediately.

Eight years later as a missionary trainee with Wycliffe Bible Translators, I arrived early one Sunday morning at a large evangelical church in Grand Forks, North Dakota. I hung around the narthex and went to Sunday School and the service. Not one person so much as said "hello" to me the whole time. Just before I left I was washing my hands in the restroom when the person at the sink next to me greeted me and we talked and I thought "Finally! Someone here has the courtesy to greet a visitor." But then he told me he was a first-time visitor himself. I never went back.

Two years later I arrived with my wife in Urbana, Illinois, and, out of some obligation, we visited a church that we had no intention of going to long-term. But we were greeted kindly and were immediately invited to a member's home, and that is the church we attended for the duration of our stay in Urbana.

Twelve years later when I was pastoring a church in Melrose Park, Illinois, I took a phone call from a middle-aged woman in the neighborhood who was distressed about some spiritual issue. We talked and I read to her some Scriptures. I invited her to come to church on Sunday, and she surprised me by saying she had visited before, but... "But what?" I asked. "I don't want to offend you," she said. "No, no, please, speak freely," I said, as I thought, Oh boy, what did I do now?

She said, "Well, the people of your church are so unfriendly!" and my heart sank through the floor. I knew she was right. More than once from the pulpit I had spotted visitors sitting by themselves in the pew, and afterward they would file out by themselves as church members gathered in their groups and planned where they would go for lunch.

When you're stung by a fair criticism it is hard to know what to say. I probably answered her along the lines of a commercial I've seen lampooning bad cell phone companies: "That is a problem and we're working on it!"

Be hospitable. I preach hospitality because it is good and right and sweet and pleasant and honoring to God. I also preach it because, frankly, it grows churches.

No Excuses For Inhospitality (October 8, 2006)

When I was installed as pastor of Faith Bible Church, I was asked what I expected of the congregation. I said, "I'll keep this simple and say just one thing: hospitality. When people visit the church, I want you to welcome them into your homes and take them out to lunch."

I know that I might have asked for other things, or given a list of "Top 5" or "Top 10" priorities, or mentioned an all-encompassing theme like "love for the Lord" or "devotion to Christ". But I made a deliberate decision to be specific. I wanted to give a quantifiable goal, something unique to my values (what you wouldn't necessarily hear from any pastor), something easily remembered, something we could look back on and ask, "How have we done in this area?"

That was three and a half years ago, and if I had to do it again, I would give the same answer. As Solomon asked God only for wisdom, so I ask the congregation only for hospitality. No one should be able to visit Faith Bible Church more than three times without being invited into our homes or out for lunch. Ideally this should take place on the very first Sunday the person visits.

Hospitality is hard for some people to practice - maybe even a nightmare for the very shy. But I will not for that or any other reason back off from my demand for it. Next week, Lord willing, I will give my rationale for this priority. This week I'll just speak to some common objections.

1) "My spouse refuses to have visitors in our home."
Then try inviting the person out for lunch at a neutral location.

2) "I live far away."
Ditto.

3) "My house is a mess."
Ditto. Or clean it. Or bite the bullet and invite them over anyway. Maybe their house is worse than yours.

4) "I'm single."
Then it may be difficult to invite a couple or family, and inappropriate to invite someone of the opposite sex. But you're ideal for inviting singles of the same gender.

5) "I value my privacy."
Shame on you. Stop valuing your privacy.

6) "I'm a social misfit - I can't imagine anyone wanting me to host them."
Welcome to the club. My social confidence is about a 2 out of 10. Look, sometimes social misfits visit the church. Maybe God has specially equipped you to connect with them.

7) "I just started attending here myself."
Great! That means that you haven't learned any of our bad habits.

8) "I serve the church in other ways."
Great! I thank God for you. Now start serving the church this way too.

9) "After the service on Sunday I'm busy/I work/there is a football
game I want to see."
Make an appointment with the visitor for later in the week.

10) "I just don't have the money to take someone out to lunch."
If this is your hindrance, then ask me, even at 12:10 PM on Sunday, and as surely as the Lord lives, with God as my witness, if I have it I will give you the money to take someone out to lunch that afternoon. And if I don't have the cash I will loan you my credit card. I'm serious.

Be hospitable.

The Duty Of Public Reproach (October 1, 2006)

A seminary professor of mine was involved in a church discipline case and was disturbed that the elder board had determined to keep the matter quiet, handling it themselves. In relating the story to us he quoted 1 Timothy 4:20: "Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning."

The professor had a point. The Bible says that sinners are to be rebuked publicly. When was the last time you heard of a church member being publicly rebuked for grotesque sin? Maybe never. We're literally afraid to obey this command. Maybe the disciplined member will sue us! Maybe he will retaliate by splitting the church, gathering to himself sympathizers who hate church leaders for being so mean and puritanical. To rebuke a sinner is to open a can of worms - it is so much easier to leave the can sealed and move it off to the side.

That is what dozens of Roman Catholic bishops did when they learned about sexually abusive priests under their jurisdiction. They just quietly moved them to other parishes. What they needed to do was rush to the chancel at first opportunity and announce, "I'm sorry to say that Father So-And-So is a sick evil pedophile. We rebuke him in the name of the Lord. He is being defrocked."

How many thousands of boys would have been saved from subsequent abuse if the Catholic Church had done this, if it had just been willing to rake its creepy perverts over public coals of shame? St. Paul was right - others take warning from such examples. Some then will refrain from abuse not because they fear God or love holiness but because they are terrified of public condemnation. This is a good thing.

I don't mean to pick on Catholics; Protestants can be just as bad. I just finished a truly awful book, Broken On The Back Row by adulteress Sandi Patty. Multi Dove- and Grammy-Award winning Patty cheated on her husband with a married man, divorced him, lied to everybody about the affair for years, then married the man she had the affair with! Her church "dealt with" the issue privately (though it never, and still has not, excommunicated her for the adulterous remarriage. See Mark 10:12: "And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.").

The leaders of Patty's church finally brought the matter to the congregation only when Christianity Today published the story of Patty's infidelity and lies. Then the pastor had the gall to rebuke CT for "gossiping"! If I were I to speak to him, I would say, "Friend, the problem here is not CT's faithful publication of the truth. The problem is adultery, lies, church-complicit cover-up, and your ongoing defiance of Mark 10:12."

Public reproach is as much a church's duty as is public forgiveness and restoration.

Loss Of Salvation (September 24, 2006)

"Can someone lose his salvation?"

I was asked this the other day. I've been asked it before, and will be asked it again. It seemed good to write out a response.

I have come to believe that the key word in that question is the word "someone". Who exactly is the "someone" whose security of salvation we are questioning? Presumably "someone" here is understood to be "someone who believes in Jesus." But clarification is needed. Do we mean someone who believes in Jesus with living faith or dead faith? James distinguishes the two in James 2:14-17:

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

James says that faith without action is dead, and when he asks the rhetorical question, "Can such faith save him?" the answer is no. Even demons have dead faith, according to verse 19 of that chapter. And they're damned. (See Jude 6.)

So now the question is, "Can someone who believes in Jesus with living faith lose his salvation?"

I have one more thing to clarify first. By "believe" do we mean believe permanently or temporarily? For example, when Paul told the Philippian jailer, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31), suppose the jailer had asked, "How long do I have to believe before I can go back to my pagan religion?" Would Paul have given him a safe time period? Believe in Jesus a day or two, or a month, maybe 10 years - and that ought to do it? Or was it understood that the man was being called to permanent faith?

I don't think it is debatable that this, and all biblical invitations to believe in Christ, are invitations to believe in him permanently. What is debated, though, is whether it is possible to believe in him temporarily. Frankly it bothers me that this is considered controversial, since Jesus spoke directly to the issue in Luke 8:13 in the parable of the sower and the seeds: "Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They
believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away." Any who think it is impossible to "believe for a while" are met with a Scriptural rebuke in the plain words of Christ.

Now I feel hat the question we started with is answerable. "Can someone who believes permanently in Jesus with living faith lose his salvation?" Absolutely not. All such people are children of God and eternally secure. Nothing can separate them from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35-39). They hear the voice of Jesus, follow him, receive from him eternal life, and nothing can take them out of his hand. (John 10:27-28).

The (Only) Reason You Should Not Sin (September 17, 2006)

Sin displeases God, and that is the only reason you should not do it.

A study from Focus on the Family claims to show that teenage virgins do better later in life than teenage fornicators. Interviews conducted over 20 years with more than 7,000 people show that those who still had their virginity at 18 wound up making more money, having fewer divorces, and getting more education than those who had lost their virginity by that age. Lead study author Dr. Reginald Finger said, "It is very much as we suspected - that adolescent virginity has a significant impact on well-being in middle adulthood."

So what?

It seems that the point of the study is to show that virginity is good for you. It is in your best interests to refrain from sex while young. You'll be richer and happier in the long run if you abstain now. Don't you want what is best for you? Of course you do. But I believe it is morally poisonous to make that a motivation for doing right.

First of all, because a nasty existential backlash can occur when our lives do not line up with statistical probabilities. Case in point: me. A friend of mine lost his virginity at 17 and had to marry his pregnant girlfriend. I kept my virginity till my wedding night and married in the Lord. How have things turned out for my friend and me two decades after our wedding ceremonies? His wife is a faithful helpmate and loving mother to their children; my wife renounced Christ and left me so she could go pursue a godless lifestyle. As for the financial yardstick that Focus on the Family uses to help determine "well-being in middle adulthood," my friend is doing well; I am not.

If I had let the prospect of middle-adulthood happiness motivate my chastity as a young man, then I suppose I would now be bitter against God precisely to the degree that I had expected him to reward my obedience. But I am not bitter, and I am not resentful. (I may be a sad lonely wreck - but that is not the same as being bitter.)

Secondly, regardless of how things turn out for us individually, it is still not right to make self-interest a motivation for being good. Suppose we lived in a very different statistical universe. Suppose young fornicators generally had happier marriages, longer lives, better jobs? What if Focus on the Family's study gave the "wrong" results? What would they say to young people then? (I imagine they would burn the results.)

These questions are not merely hypothetical. Twenty-four years ago I heard a Romanian pastor explain how he warned young converts that if they trusted Christ their lives would get worse. "The secret police will have a file on you," he said. "You may not be able to continue your university education. You won't get a good job - you may have to work as a street sweeper." He told us that many responded, "I know that. But Jesus died for me. How can I do any less than suffer for him?"

That is the kind of motivation for goodness that we must instill in our young people and retain in our own hearts. Obey God not because you believe it will make your life better. Obey him even when you know for a fact that it will make your life worse.

Ministers Must Never Lie (September 10, 2006)

Yesterday I recommended to a relative that she try to get her pastor fired.

It takes a lot for me to say that, because as a pastor I'm sympathetic to my brothers in the vocation. My instinct is to take their side. I know the frustration of trying to keep people attending your church when they could go elsewhere; the fearful realization that you've got no job skills to fall back on if the ministry doesn't work out; the weekly panic of having nothing original to say for Sunday's sermon. People who complain to me about their pastors may be surprised to hear me say, "Well, in his defense..." or, "I had a similar situation myself" or, "I'm not sure you're being fair to him." Just as the Roman Catholic Church has been suffering a plague of pedophile priests, so the evangelical church has been reeling from predator congregations. I know one church that has evicted four good pastors in eight years! Pastor-killers need no encouragement from me.

So a minister has to screw up royally for me to say, "Get rid of him." What my relative's Reverend did wrong (among other things) was lie. She has caught him in several lies now, including a whopper last Sunday. A while ago he refused to take a prayer request for a missionary, explaining, "I don't pray for people I don't know." But when introduced to a missionary a couple days ago he exclaimed, "It is so good to meet someone I've been praying for!" Jerk. He is incompetent in several ways, but for me the lying is - all by itself - a covenant breaker. Tell him good-bye.

We all sin, of course, and to demand sinlessness on the part of your pastor is sinful. You have to put up with the fact that he's a little vain, a little lazy, a little controlling, a little gossipy, a little hot-tempered. Nobody's perfect, and Jesus is not available to pastor your church.

But there are limits. We all know that you can't have a pastor who goes around seducing the ladies. What I'm saying is you also can't have a pastor who lies. Better that he should steal from the offering plate (though that's bad too) than that he should bear false witness - whether in the pulpit or out of it.

Why do I place such a high value on honesty relative to other virtues? Because the gospel depends so crucially on it. We preachers declare to people that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God who died for sinners and was resurrected the third day, who reigns in heaven and who reigns in our hearts. But if we are found to be liars in other things, who is to say we are not lying about this?

Of all the sins committed in the early church, there was only one recorded that resulted in an immediate, divine death sentence. That was the lie of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Other sins could be rebuked and repented of (for example, Peter's racist lapse in Galatians 2), but lies could not be tolerated at all. When you are facing death by lions in the Roman Coliseum for the stand you have taken for Christ, you are not encouraged to hear an apostle confess, "I may have exaggerated a wee bit when I said I saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion." The apostles stood on the truth in the face of death. We who preach their message must stand on the truth in the face of life. Why believe us otherwise?

Pity Is Not An Insult (September 3, 2006)

The duties of charity and grace usually involve extending tokens of good will to those who are in need. But on occasion they also involve receiving such tokens from people who want to give them.

What sparked this thought was an article I read about all the hatred directed at Jerry Lewis by certain disability activists. For 40 years Lewis has conducted a Labor Day telethon to raise money for a cure for muscular dystrophy. His telethons have raised $1.35 billion. I think that most people with MD are grateful for his work. Utah Assistant Attorney General Steve Mikita, who has the disease, says, "He is worthy of a major, major pat on the back for a job well done." Sophie Mitzel, whose 7-year-old son Logan has a form of MD, says, "I don't know where we'd be without the tremendous help of Jerry Lewis."

But then there are the MD protesters who hate the fact that Lewis regards them as objects of pity. For about the last 15 years they have appeared at telethon locations across the country on Labor Day to register their offense. "Jerry Lewis has got to go," says Mike Ervin, founder of the mockingly titled "Jerry's Orphans." "The telethon gives a negative message about people with disabilities," says Laura Hershey, organizer of "Tune Jerry Out."

Can't they just say "Thank you"?

I think Lewis makes an excellent point when he says, "They want me to stop the telethon because I make them look pitiful. What is more pitiful than this?" Exactly! MD is a pitiable condition. But some people's pride makes their stomachs twist into knots of spiteful malice when they find themselves the objects of another's charity.
"Don't you dare pity me!" they say - as though pity lessened them, robbed them of dignity. It doesn't. Pity that is gently given and humbly received ennobles both the giver and the recipient.

The other day I heard about a relatively young man named Mike who, when he found out he had a serious disease, rounded up friends and told them about it and said, "I don't want anyone to pity me." Why not, Mike? You caught a bad break. Some people will need to pity you. Let them do that. Let them ache for you and offer their help. Your most courageous act now will not be to brush aside their charity, but to receive their grace with grace. Even Jesus was willing to receive - even asked for - the alert company of disciples on the night of his sorrow. (Matthew 26:36-40). But they were too tired to help.

Thank God for good souls like Jerry Lewis, who, at 80, is somehow not too tired to plow through another 22-hour telethon, motivated and energized by pity for the unfortunate. Pity is a good thing. A good thing to give, and a good thing to receive.