Below are some random questions. Some are more reflective than others, but all are ones that cause me to think and do a bit of “soul searching.” Hope you spend some time thinking through them as well.
Tag: church
Jesus “hung out” with the wrong people! And it is Luke that seems to have noticed this more than any of the other gospel writers. In Luke 5, after Jesus had called Levi, the tax collector, to leave everything and follow him, Levi prepared an incredible feast and asked Jesus to attend. Many other tax collectors were at the party which disturbed the Pharisees so they asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
In Luke 7, Jesus is invited to a dinner at the home of a Pharisee. As Jesus took his place at the table, a woman who did not have the best reputation in town, stood behind Jesus at his feet and “wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.” When the Pharisee saw this he was aghast that Jesus would allow such a sinful woman near him. If Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known this woman was an outcast. Jesus should have sent her away.
As Jesus was leaving Jericho in Luke 19, he encountered a man by the name of Zacchaeus, a tax collector. Though it looked as though Jesus was going to leave Jericho without taking time to enjoy a meal, his encounter with Zacchaeus led to dinner at his home that evening. When the news got around that Jesus was going to eat with Zacchaeus, some grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”
In Jesus’s day, there was much hostility between the religious and the people of the land. The religious were those who took the law seriously. They were trained in religious law and stuck to a religious code. This caused them to not associate with those who did not take the law as serious. Specifically, there were food laws which meant Pharisees had to be careful as to what they ate and to whom they ate with. Table fellowship was a critical symbol of identity. And yet there was Jesus, eating with all those “tax collectors and sinners.”
But not only was Jesus going to the “religious outsiders,” they were also coming to him. Luke points this out when he writes that tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him (Luke 15:1). And as to be expected, this disturbed the Pharisees. And it is this hard-heartedness of the religious leaders that prompted Jesus to tell the stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. He came to rescue and restore. But the Pharisees didn’t get it.
I write all this above to ask ourselves this question: If we follow Jesus, who will we be drawn to and who will be drawn to us? Consider what Tim Keller writes:
Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.
Did not Jesus ask Simon and Andrew to follow Him and as they did, he would make them “fishers of men?” (Mt. 4:19). Did not Jesus also tell all His disciples that “as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (Jn 20:21). So let’s ask ourselves once again, if we follow Jesus, who will we be drawn to and who will be drawn to us?
1 Comment
How sad, then, when the church acts if it is in the religion business rather than in the Gospel-proclaiming business. What a disservice, not only to itself but to a world perpetually sinking in the quagmire of religiosity, when it harps on creed, cult, and conduct as the touchstone of salvation. What a perversion of the truth that sets us free (John 8:32) when it takes the news that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Rom 5:8), and turns it into a proclamation of God as just one more insufferable bookkeeper.
(taken from Kingdom, Grace, Judgment by Rober Farrar Capon, p. 177.)
Leave a Comment
What’s our problem in the church these days? There is no lack of research or books written regarding this question. However, as I have read and thought through some of the issues being raised about today’s church in the West, there is one quote that continues to come back to my mind again and again. It is by Mike Breen in his book Building A Discipleship Culture.
Breen writes:
We don’t have a missional or leadership problem in the Western church. We have a discipleship problem.
Is Breen correct in his assessment? Is discipleship the key?
Whenever I think about discipleship, I think of Jesus leading his small group of disciples as he taught them, encouraged them, prayed with them, empowered them, and sent them out to declare that the kingdom of God had come. And he did so, as Robert Coleman aptly writes, “for the salvation of the multitudes.”
We have to ask therefore, if we as a church are making disciples? And if we say we are, then are we seeing the gospel spread? Because if we are truly making disciples, then I believe we will, over time, begin to see the multitudes reached. It is disciples who make disciples. This means that if you are a follower of Christ, then you have been commissioned to help others follow Christ. Jesus’ disciples, in following Him, became “fishers of men” (Mt. 4:19).
So since it is true that it is disciples who make disciples, this means that it is not a one person job. It is for all followers of Christ. Ed Stetzer has recently written that when it comes to making disciples, you can’t mass produce them. “God did not plan for one person to disciple an entire church,” writes Stetzer, “and He didn’t design us to grow via mass discipleship.” Discipleship involves the whole body of believers. It’s not all on the shoulders of the pastor.
Paul told Timothy that “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). This is discipleship. It’s teaching others to teach others. We must pass what we know to others.
I don’t think I have written anything here that the majority of believers in a church do not know or have not heard before. The question is, “Are we doing this?” Are we making disciples who make disciples? And we may need to ask ourselves if discipleship really is a major problem in today’s church. You might not think that discipleship is the issue.
Regardless of what you might think today’s problem in the church might be, I pray that you (and me) not become too critical, but humbly realize that God is still in the process of building His church. And remarkably enough, He is using us to do it! The church is His Bride and though it is blemished at the moment, we know that God makes all things new.
Leave a Comment
Jared Wilson, in his book Gospel Wakefulness, lists 6 ways in which a gospel-wakened church seeks to live.
1. The gospel-wakened church resolves to love their neighbors.
The gospel-wakened church resolves to live for those outside its walls, to give herself away in love and on missions. She makes Christ’s business to seek and save the lost her business. When awe of Jesus captures a church, her people become missionaries to their own communities and contexts, making this vow: “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” And there is no greater good than Christ, no firmer foundation than him.
2. The gospel-wakened church resolves to look foolish.
A gospel-wakened church is a resolute church that embraces the loss of her reputation for the gain of God’s glory. She is willing to look stupid, irrational, impractical, silly…for the right reasons. She will spend as much or more time and money on others as she does herself; she will send her people into the farthest reaches of the world to die; she will eat and drink with sinners; she will welcome the broken and weary; she will favor the meek and lowly; she will cherish the powerless; she will serve and suffer and savor the sweetness of the good news.
3. The gospel-wakened church resolves to trust God’s Word.
The gospel-wakened church knows where truth is, she knows where hope is, she knows where wisdom is. She trusts no other words but the Scriptures.
4. The gospel-wakened church resolves to live in Christ-centered harmony.
With Christ’s glory beheld by mutual vision, the gospel-wakened church is harmonized, each distinct voice and gift joined in the unity of the gospel.
5. The gospel-wakened church resolves to be worshipful.
The gospel-wakened church can’t help but worship. Her affections are renewed, her sense of worship is wakened to the one true God above all gods.
6. The gospel-wakened church resolves to glory in the gospel.
How did Christ welcome us? With grace, despite our sin. With embrace, despite our demerits. With cover, despite our shame. With love, despite our animosity. With sacrifice, despite our unworthiness. That is how Christ welcomed us. The gospel-wakened church welcomes each other in that way, for God’s glory.
Leave a Comment
What are you going to do in church today?
The writer of Hebrews helps us to decide…
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near (Hebrews 10:24-25)
Are you going to “stir up” someone to “love and good works?” Are you going to be a catalyst for someone to be “salt” and “light” this week?
It’s easy to go to church and forget about our role. You may not teach a Sunday School class or serve in any “official” capacity (whatever that means), but according to the writer of Hebrews, you have a part to play.
You are to be one who “stirs” things up!!! The phrase “to stir up” is actually a pretty harsh phrase. It has the idea of spurring a horse to get it to gallup. It has the connotation of “provoking” someone.
The writer of Hebrews wanted to make sure that those He was writing to remained in the faith and continued to bear fruit. Therefore, he urged them to “spur one another” to get things going.
This is not always a comfortable thing to do. And yet, sometimes people need to be “stirred up.” We occasionally need people to challenge us to think about what we are doing. There are times in our lives that we need to be kick-started.
So are you willing to “stir things up” today? Or it could be that you personally need to be “spurred on”?
Do remember that as you “spur one another on,” and as others “spur you on,” it is done for the purpose of producing “love and good deeds.” So stay humble today and be willing to “stir” and be “stirred.”
Leave a Comment
In our Western culture, it seems that being comfortable is of utmost importance to us. Just watch TV commercials. Many of them are working to convince us that we need some kind of product in order to make our lives a bit more “comfortable” or “easy.”
This is particularly true when it comes to commercials about technology. I find the new Samsung Galaxy commercial especially interesting. The bottom line of the commercial is that Samsung’s tablet can do what no one else’s can. Need to do two things at once? Samsung makes it happen. Need more pixels? Samsung has it! Need better apps? Samsung has them. Apparently, Samsung makes life much easier and enjoyable.
Now, I’m not against Samsung or any technology for that matter. I enjoy technology and use it daily if not hourly. I’m glad for what it provides and the many ways it makes it easier to be productive.
And I’m also not against comfort per se. I enjoy and am thankful for the conveniences that I have. However, I do think that we need to be careful not to make personal ease our chief end. I realize this can be somewhat difficult for us as our culture does a pretty good job of discipling us in pursuing that which brings the most comfort.
The reason comfort can be a danger is that, according to Ajith Fernando in his book Jesus-Driven Ministry, it can have an effect upon Biblical wholeness. He writes:
We are seeing more and more people today who are moving to churches “where they feel more comfortable.” When did comfort become such a high value in ministry and church life? Was it when we left the path of biblical Christianity? The gospel is too radical and the needs of the world too urgent for us to ever be comfortable! But many Christians today have come to think that a major goal of the church is to entertain people and supply them with services that they want, such as a good youth program or music program. In such an environment, we are going to see people moving to churches where they are comfortable. The result will be that churches are going to miss out on some vital sources of enrichment through discomfort. They will become unhealthy by missing out on biblical wholeness. Biblical churches always are uncomfortable places because they are always looking for biblical wholeness.
No doubt these are some fairly stern words. In reading them it might help to know that Fernando has a different ministry context than those of us in the West. Fernando has worked with Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka for over 35 years and as a result, has witnessed and experienced much discomfort during his ministry.
Sacrifice is a key component in the Christian life. It is the way of the cross. Following Christ and staying committed to one another in a local church is not always comfortable or easy. At times it can be quite a struggle.
But according to Fernando, if we are going to develop “Biblical wholeness,” which I will have to say leads to ultimate joy, then the sacrifice of personal comfort will have to be part of the journey.
Leave a Comment
What is the most urgent need in the church of the Western world today?
Improved evangelism programs?
More missional awareness?
Revived worship?
Growing social ministries (feeding homeless, etc…)?
Stronger age-group ministries (children, youth, etc…)?
No doubt, all of these are important and many would say they are urgent needs. But according to D. A. Carson, the church in the West has a greater need. What is it? Carson writes:
We need to know God! We think rather little of what he is like, what he expects of us, what he seeks in us. We are not captured by his holiness and his love; his thoughts and words capture too little of our imagination, too little of our discourse, too few of our priorities.
David Wells, research professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, appears to agree with Carson’s assessment. He writes that God is now weightless.
It is one of the defining marks our Our Time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that he is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in Gods existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgments no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers’ sweet fog of flattery and lies. It is a condition we have assigned him after having nudged him out to the periphery of our secularized lives.
Wells writes further that because God rests lightly upon us, we will eventually find him uninteresting. “A God with whom we are on such easy terms and whose reality is little different from our own–a God who is merely there to satisfy our needs–has no real authority to compel and will soon begin to bore us.”
If Wells and Carson are correct, then we must seek to become churches who long to know God. Our desire must be as that of the Apostle Paul when he wrote: I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death (Phil 3:10).
For Paul, “to know Christ was the overarching and unfolding ambition of [his] life–a longing for an ever-deepening, ever-widening, personal knowledge of the Son.” It was his “passion to know [Christ] that energized [his] dogged devotion and his epic quest to take the gospel to the ends of the earth” (see Kent Hughes commentary on Philippians).
Could it be therefore, that the more we as the people of God know Christ the more all other needs in today’s church are met? Could it be that the compulsion to go deeper into the world with missions and evangelism springs from our intimacy with Christ?
Perhaps the prayer we need to pray for ourselves and for the church today needs to be based on Paul’s prayer for the church in Ephesus:
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe (Eph 1:17-19).
Leave a Comment