God Bless The Building Manager (July 30, 2006)
Blessed are those who work behind the scenes.
A few years ago at my former church I came down from the pulpit one Sunday a bit discouraged because I could tell people just weren't with me that day. (It is not hard to tell when hardly anybody is paying attention.) Somebody reassured me later that it wasn't that the sermon was so dull, but that the temperature was so hot. It was high summer and the church had no air conditioning. I was relieved to hear that explanation, and bought it eagerly. Of course it wasn't my fault! Who can preach so compellingly as to overcome the stifling opposition of a sanctuarial hotbox?
Air conditioning matters. It matters spiritually. A veteran missionary friend in Colombia told me that when Wycliffe Bible Translators got AC in their offices at the mission compound in Loma Linda, everyone's productivity suddenly skyrocketed.
When Faith Bible Church’s AC went out on Sunday, I thought sadly, "This is going to kill Vacation Bible School this week." Our volunteers' hard work stood to drown in a sea of triple-digit heat.
But it didn't. The AC got fixed. It got fixed because one of our members took a day off work on Monday - with whatever consequences he'll have to bear for that - to spend more than 5 hours at the church to make sure the repairers could get the unit working again.
Thanks Lenny!
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Sunday, July 23, 2006
The Courageous Confronter (July 23, 2006)
A Christian author friend told me that he wants to title his next book, No Balls: What's Wrong With Church Leadership Today. The title is a shock, but no more so than a statement St. Paul made to the Galatians: "I wish that those who insist that you be circumcised would cut off their penises" (Galatians 5:12).
Shocks are needed to make strong points sometimes. Paul used colorful language because he was fed up with Judaizers; my author friend wants to write No Balls because he's fed up with clergy. Specifically, he has talked with countless pastors, elders and deacons about coming to his aid in a grievance he has against a fellow believer, but all save one have politely refused to get involved. (I know the details of his grievance, and it is airtight. It isn't a murky "he said/she said," but a spiritual war with Gabriel on one side and Beelzebub on the other.)
How is any sincere Christian supposed to obey Jesus' command to "take one or two others along" (Matthew 18:16) to rebuke an offender if all the "others" turn coward and squeak, "Pray hold me excused: I cannot come"?
I emailed my friend that I did know one pastor who, when he discovered that an old friend was dumping his wife for another woman, dropped everything and got on a plane so he could appear on the man's doorstep early the next morning and let him have it. Now there's a pastor who can look down (ahem) and say, "Yup. Still got 'em both." I'm sure the adulterer's wife appreciated his eagerness to confront the creep who was making her life a nightmare.
I've got two teenage boys, and I hope that as they grow up they will be men and not eunuchs. Like Job, I worry that they might sin. What if I die and am not around to hold them accountable? I have told them, just in case, that if (God forbid) either of them ever pulls a stunt like so-and-so, then the other must fly half way around the world if necessary to appear on his brother's doorstep at dawn to rake him over the coals of righteousness.
Who else might be willing to perform the manly duty of rebuke? If my friend is right, the sad answer is, "Not enough pastors these days."
A Christian author friend told me that he wants to title his next book, No Balls: What's Wrong With Church Leadership Today. The title is a shock, but no more so than a statement St. Paul made to the Galatians: "I wish that those who insist that you be circumcised would cut off their penises" (Galatians 5:12).
Shocks are needed to make strong points sometimes. Paul used colorful language because he was fed up with Judaizers; my author friend wants to write No Balls because he's fed up with clergy. Specifically, he has talked with countless pastors, elders and deacons about coming to his aid in a grievance he has against a fellow believer, but all save one have politely refused to get involved. (I know the details of his grievance, and it is airtight. It isn't a murky "he said/she said," but a spiritual war with Gabriel on one side and Beelzebub on the other.)
How is any sincere Christian supposed to obey Jesus' command to "take one or two others along" (Matthew 18:16) to rebuke an offender if all the "others" turn coward and squeak, "Pray hold me excused: I cannot come"?
I emailed my friend that I did know one pastor who, when he discovered that an old friend was dumping his wife for another woman, dropped everything and got on a plane so he could appear on the man's doorstep early the next morning and let him have it. Now there's a pastor who can look down (ahem) and say, "Yup. Still got 'em both." I'm sure the adulterer's wife appreciated his eagerness to confront the creep who was making her life a nightmare.
I've got two teenage boys, and I hope that as they grow up they will be men and not eunuchs. Like Job, I worry that they might sin. What if I die and am not around to hold them accountable? I have told them, just in case, that if (God forbid) either of them ever pulls a stunt like so-and-so, then the other must fly half way around the world if necessary to appear on his brother's doorstep at dawn to rake him over the coals of righteousness.
Who else might be willing to perform the manly duty of rebuke? If my friend is right, the sad answer is, "Not enough pastors these days."
Sunday, July 16, 2006
So You Received Jesus Into Your Heart? So Have Many Apostates (July 16, 2006)
Evil makes cynics of us.
I know it has made one of me in an area that can be nearly fatal to a preacher: conversion. I call people to faith in Christ. It is what I do, and I am convinced that I would be disobedient to do anything else.
So why don't I get all excited about "decisions for Christ"? Because experience keeps teaching me the fragile and untrustworthy nature of such decisions. I trust in Jesus, but I do not necessarily trust in the steadfastness of those who say they have received him.
Here's a short list of those who have eroded my faith in people' ability to persevere: Charles Templeton, evangelist colleague of Billy Graham, became an outspoken atheist. Roy Clements, once one of England's most respected evangelical ministers, is now living with a homosexual lover. The minister who conducted my wedding also left his wife and announced that he is gay. I know two Wycliffe missionaries - one of whom translated the New Testament into a Colombian indigenous language - who left their wives and the Lord. My Arhuaco Scripture co-translator (about whose faith I once wrote glowing tributes), walked away from Christ. My ex wife, who once dedicated her life to missionary service and who encouraged me to enter the pastoral ministry, is now a cold-blooded apostate.
And time would fail me to list all the people I know who once received Jesus but who now live such reprobate lives that no one would ever guess they were once people of faith.
I have been fooled so many times by so many people that I am forced to acknowledge the hard truth that I cannot tell who will persevere in the Lord and who will not. If Charles Templeton can fool Billy Graham, and Wycliffe missionaries can fool their colleagues in Colombia and Brazil, and Roy Clements can fool the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and my wife can fool me, then who can't be fooled by
whom?
That which I have learned about the heart's inconstancy is what keeps me from saying to any new convert, "You have just been saved eternally - welcome to the family of God!" These words of encouragement are actually a prophecy that is both arrogant and naïve. Only God knows who will persevere and who will not. I don't know anyone else with access to that foreknowledge.
That is why I preach perseverance so much more than I do conversion. I don't care any more how you started - I care how you end up. Just as St. James said, "You believe that there is one God? Great - even the demons believe that," so I might say, "You received Jesus into your heart? Great - so did Larry Flynt." (The publisher of Hustler magazine was briefly "born again" in the '70s.) The mere decision to follow Christ really puts you on no better spiritual footing than that of Judas Iscariot. He decided to follow Christ too - for a while.
Excuse my cynicism. Of course I know there are legitimate conversions, and I know that I must not let grief over false brothers spoil my joy over true ones. But just as we must take our sufferings and let them make us patient, so we must take our disappointments and let them make us wise. Here is wisdom: something is begun, but nothing settled, when a man says, "I have received Christ." From that point forward we must preach perseverance both to him and to ourselves until on our deathbeds we can say, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith." Then into God's hands we may commend our spirits.
Evil makes cynics of us.
I know it has made one of me in an area that can be nearly fatal to a preacher: conversion. I call people to faith in Christ. It is what I do, and I am convinced that I would be disobedient to do anything else.
So why don't I get all excited about "decisions for Christ"? Because experience keeps teaching me the fragile and untrustworthy nature of such decisions. I trust in Jesus, but I do not necessarily trust in the steadfastness of those who say they have received him.
Here's a short list of those who have eroded my faith in people' ability to persevere: Charles Templeton, evangelist colleague of Billy Graham, became an outspoken atheist. Roy Clements, once one of England's most respected evangelical ministers, is now living with a homosexual lover. The minister who conducted my wedding also left his wife and announced that he is gay. I know two Wycliffe missionaries - one of whom translated the New Testament into a Colombian indigenous language - who left their wives and the Lord. My Arhuaco Scripture co-translator (about whose faith I once wrote glowing tributes), walked away from Christ. My ex wife, who once dedicated her life to missionary service and who encouraged me to enter the pastoral ministry, is now a cold-blooded apostate.
And time would fail me to list all the people I know who once received Jesus but who now live such reprobate lives that no one would ever guess they were once people of faith.
I have been fooled so many times by so many people that I am forced to acknowledge the hard truth that I cannot tell who will persevere in the Lord and who will not. If Charles Templeton can fool Billy Graham, and Wycliffe missionaries can fool their colleagues in Colombia and Brazil, and Roy Clements can fool the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and my wife can fool me, then who can't be fooled by
whom?
That which I have learned about the heart's inconstancy is what keeps me from saying to any new convert, "You have just been saved eternally - welcome to the family of God!" These words of encouragement are actually a prophecy that is both arrogant and naïve. Only God knows who will persevere and who will not. I don't know anyone else with access to that foreknowledge.
That is why I preach perseverance so much more than I do conversion. I don't care any more how you started - I care how you end up. Just as St. James said, "You believe that there is one God? Great - even the demons believe that," so I might say, "You received Jesus into your heart? Great - so did Larry Flynt." (The publisher of Hustler magazine was briefly "born again" in the '70s.) The mere decision to follow Christ really puts you on no better spiritual footing than that of Judas Iscariot. He decided to follow Christ too - for a while.
Excuse my cynicism. Of course I know there are legitimate conversions, and I know that I must not let grief over false brothers spoil my joy over true ones. But just as we must take our sufferings and let them make us patient, so we must take our disappointments and let them make us wise. Here is wisdom: something is begun, but nothing settled, when a man says, "I have received Christ." From that point forward we must preach perseverance both to him and to ourselves until on our deathbeds we can say, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith." Then into God's hands we may commend our spirits.
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