ECIPLESHIP for Passionate Christ-Followers

“But they presumed to go up to the heights of the hill country, although neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses departed out of the camp. Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and defeated them and pursued them, even to Hormah.” Numbers 14:44-45 ESV

It was all so stupid. The obstinate Israelites had exercised their unbelief by choosing to not enter Canaan. When the people heard of God’s judgement (Numbers 14:26-35) — that they would all die in the wilderness over a 40-year period — they decided they would then enter Canaan no matter what.

• “Obedience” that looks good is not necessarily obedience.
• Sorrow for sin does not necessarily make us right with God.
• Our actions will not make us right with God — only our submission and worship will.

As we can see by the above verses, their hearts were still far from God. They went forward with their plan of making things right, but they left God behind. He had already told this nation to go into the wilderness, but now they were heading into Canaan– without God!

We see that the Amalekites and Canaanites “defeated them and pursued them, even to Hormah.” Hormah is inside of Canaan some 60 miles south of where they crossed the Jordan River. It’s amazing, really. The wayward Israelites are so desperate to get what they want (or not get what they deserve) that they take THE risk they convinced everyone not to take only days before. And risk they did. This was a bold, daring, audacious and stupid risk. God was not with them in it. They were chased down and destroyed within the Promised Land. In this, they greatly dishonored God–again.

The Promised Land only holds blessing when we take God with us.

Only brokenness, submission, and authentic worship lived by costly obedience will ever enable us to honor God with our lives.

Now that I’m listening more on Sundays rather than preaching all the time, I’m seeing some very regular patterns that bother me. In fact, there are two fallacies I see speakers commit over and over.

• FALLACY #1 — People want to hear what I have to say.
• FALLACY #2 — Longer is better.

Consider fallacy #1.

If a speaker assumes people want to hear what they have to say, there is no drive to be captivating, relevant, or creative. This assumption leads a presenter to simply present material without much attention given to capturing and holding the listener’s attention throughout the presentation.

God gave me a gift–and it wasn’t public speaking. The gift God gave me was the gripping assumption that people don’t really want to hear what I have to say. Right or wrong, this has shaped my public speaking for 35 years. I am always amazed that people will give me their attention for 25 or 30 minutes (at least most people). What my “people-don’t-want-to-listen” assumption does for me, however, is that it drives me to continually capture the interest of the audience, constantly connect my teaching to real life, and make sure everyone has a little enjoyment in the process (because a little pleasure with teaching has been proven by psychologists to be the one ingredient that will make it stick).

When a preacher/teacher assumes people want to hear what I have to say, the message becomes more about me than them–or the important topic at hand. The person at the podium becomes the reason people are sitting there. “They want to hear me!” Wrong. Fallacy #1 can makes us boring–really boring and terribly ineffective.

Consider fallacy #2.

Longer may be better on very rare occasions–like if you have so much profound content that it absolutely cannot be presented in the current attention span we are allotted. Trust me, this is rarely the case. Almost never. Instead, 95% of the time, a longer presentation means that the message is less potent and not fully prepared. [And don't assume you're in the 5% that can preach long.] We are rarely as good as we think we are.

In my years as a pastor, as I prepared week after week to teach the Word, I always forced myself to take a 45 minute message and widdle it down to less than 30 minutes. It was a rare Sunday that I went over that time limit. The discipline of forcing myself to be brief did several things to my sermons:

• It forced me to be sure I stay after the big idea
• It was necessary for me to cut out “the fat”
• It kept the message clearly moving somewhere all the time
• It eliminated my natural tendency to “camp out” on my favorite element for too long
• It shortened my stories and illustrations down to be really effective instead of letting me be a wordy storyteller
• It kept my audience engaged
• It made me prepare really well (an unprepared message is a long message)

Fallacy #2 — longer is better — is just not true. We can falsely assume that we get deeper. This is rarely the case. Instead, we are usually less effective. Regularly engaging in this false assumption will hamper people’s enthusiasm for the teaching time and may even drive people away.

So if you’re a pastor, preacher, teacher, or public speaker, take note and act accordingly. Rarely will your audience tell you the truth about these things…and usually, we preachers don’t like to hear it anyway.

Numbers 14:36-37a,  “And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land—the men who brought up a bad report of the land— died by plague before the Lord.” ESV

This is not the warm fuzzy verse to start your day. It’s an important one, however.

Of the 12 spies sent into Canaan, ten returned with a very negative, overly emotional report that turned the entire nation againt God. The statement above gives us a quick synopsis of what happed to those ten. First, however, understand what they did:

• They “made all the congregation to grumble” against the Lord. The word “grumble” in Hebrew means to stop, stay permanently, to be obstinate. The verbal expression of that condition is to complain. This is important to know because the people were not just afraid or lacking some faith. They had an agressive position of stubborness. Their sinful state had positioned them to never enter Canaan. They had no intention at all of ever following hard after God.
• They brought a “bad report about the land.” The Hebrew used here literally means to slander. It reveals that what was spoken by the spies was not a logical assessment of what they had found. This was an emotional, determined negative report trying to make the land look really bad. In fact, the idea is that, as they were giving this report, they were undermining God’s plan for their nation. “Slander” is an agressive sinful assault on a person’s character. This was an intentional report meant to bring dishonor to God.

As I consider this, I can’t help but think that the Israelites failed to care for their souls. Could it be that bitterness, anger, and rage had captured them so deeply that they were incapable of following God no matter how obvious He proved His love for them? Could it be that their distrust of God had grown so deep over the years and through the generations that they were unwilling to change their view of God?

What a powerful reminder that no matter what it takes, we must do the deep honest cleansing work that God wants and needs to work in us. We can never go where God is leading if we are not healthy in our soul.

Let me conclude with a few thoughts from this sobering passage:

1. The stakes are high for leaders. The plague that wiped out the 10 negative spies came quickly and decisively.
2. Negativity is more than just a view, but rather, a dangerous sin often rooted in unresolved issues that have infected the soul.
3. Leading others away from God’s best plan is a dangerous exercise.

Infecting others with disbelief is a losing proposition.

So we tend to “fudge” on this concept of the sabbath rest. We figure that real commitment presents itself in earnest unrelenting activity toward a godly goal. The sabbath is undoubtedly an Old Testament concept. As a result, we have a habit of denying its value for our lives in this current era. “Does it still really matter?” we may ask.

In reading my Bible this morning, I came across these intriguing verses from Leviticus 25:20, “But you might ask, ‘What will we eat during the seventh year, since we are not allowed to plant or harvest crops that year?’ 21 Be assured that I will send my blessing for you in the sixth year, so the land will produce a crop large enough for three years.”

Of course, the context here is the admonition to plant crops for six years, but the seventh is a year of rest for the land. It was absolutely required and, when observed, guaranteed God’s blessing in large enough measure to more than make up the difference. How cool is that?!

Let’s move to some New Testament teaching on this. Jesus said that “the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” In other words, this “day off” is not for God’s benefit, not just another rule to obey, but is actually provided for OUR BENEFIT! We get to take a day of rest out of every seven! Guilt free! In fact, the more we observe it, the more obedient and “spiritual” we are! I love this gift from God.

Now–don’t you think that if God makes up the difference for that sabbath in the dirt that He will certainly make up the difference in our lives and work? Absolutely! Obeying the sabbath rest is actually a matter of faith. Will God come through to make up the difference for the day I rest? Without a doubt.

Here’s what I’ve personally observed in my life. When I take a day of rest every week, I get more done at a much higher level of excellence. When I miss my day of rest, I become stressed, ineffective, and produce things of much lower quality.God has a great plan! Why not trust Him in it?

I just finished two intense weeks of ministry networking, planning, and learning. Let me give you a few highlights…

• Spent two days in Palm Springs, CA reviewing annual ministry plans by all of our missionaries. Overall, I’m thrilled at the initiatives I saw and the impact they will make.
• Experienced a little “team-building” by golfing the nicest course I’ve ever been on. Great memories and loads of fun!
• Spent the weekend at Whittier Area Community Church. Preached three times on Sunday and then spent “fun time” with two great Estonial leaders, Helari Puu and Toivo Pilii, at the home of Bill and Arlie Ankerberg. Sweet fellowship…
• Engaged in a networking forum with 30 Converge mission leaders pretty much all last week. There were many take-aways. The most encouraging for me?–the drastic change in attitude of the group from last January to this one. There was a total sense of unity, comradery, and positivity.
• Spent time with top-notch leaders shaping a pathway for all Converge churches to more effectively and collaboratively engage in Haiti ministry. This could make a BIG difference in outcomes there and also provide a template for future initiatives in other places around the world. Thanks, team!
• Spent a good part of Saturday at the US Center for World Missions meeting with their Executive Director, Christopher Lucey and our own diaspora expert, John Baxter. We are working on some really exciting diaspora initiatives both in the US and around the world. As we follow through on these initial plans, tens of thousands of global south Christians could be catalyzed for evangelism to reach millions of people in the 10-40 Window with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• I had a Super Bowl party with my wife in our hotel…and that was really fun!

Upon quick reflection of the past two weeks of ministry, I am humbled to be in this place, honored to serve Jesus, and grateful for the opportunities to impact the world as I walk in faithfulness to Christ.

I’M REPOSTING A BLOG FROM ONE YEAR AGO. IT WAS THEN THAT I BEGAN MY NEW MINISTRY ROLE OF LEADING OUR CONVERGE WORLDWIDE MISSIONS. AS I REFLECTED ON IT TODAY, I REALIZE THAT I FEEL EXACTLY THE SAME ABOUT IT AS I DID ONE YEAR AGO. I’M HUMBLED, GRATEFUL, DEPENDENT…

FROM JANUARY 4, 2012:

I’m on a new adventure! Yesterday was my first day “on the job” as Executive Director of International Ministries for Converge Worldwide (Baptist General Conference). It was awesome!

I am humbled and grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord in this capacity. I feel God’s blessing and pleasure in so many ways. I am eager to serve Him in a way that honors Him every day.

As I think about this amazing opportunity before me, I’m reminded of Ephesians 3:7-8:

“By God’s grace and mighty power, I have been given the privilege of serving him by spreading this Good News. Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ.”

With this passage in mind, allow me to share a few parallel thoughts:

• By God’s grace (unconditional kindness extended to me) and power, He has chosen and “moved” me into this role. The list of God-things that took place to see this happen is incredible. I did not seek this office—God moved me here by His “grace and mighty power.”
• It is a privilege. What a rare opportunity I have to serve a lost world, our missionaries around the world, and our Converge Churches across the world. I GET to do this…
• It’s all about “spreading this Good News” to those who need to hear and be transformed. It will be fun to strategize, plan, partner, and engage in ongoing, new, and creative initiatives to be as effective as possible to see this happen. We certainly don’t want to sow sparingly.
• I feel like the “least deserving” of this privilege. I am humbled and grateful that God has placed me for such a time as this.

The adventure is on! I have a feeling it’s going to be wild, crazy, and terribly exhilarating.

2012 has been a year of growth, challenge, and blessing for me.

• Growth because God placed me in a role that requires me to completely depend upon Him.
• Challenge because missions, especially denominational missions, is in the throws of seizmic change. We must learn how to do missions differently or we fade away.
• Blessing because only God could take the tremendous losses we sustained and lavish us with amazing and overwhelming opportunitites for global impact. He has expanded my borders–significantly.

The nation of Israel freed from slavery has been a focus of some study in this past year. I’ve realized a few major truths through this:

• Only obedience based upon trust in the person and character of God enables us to step into the best God has for us.
• Achieving great things with God is only possible if it is truly all about God’s glory.
• It takes as much courage and faith to take the land as it does to enter the land.

On that last point, I find some affinity with Israel. It took active faith and courage for Susan and me to change our entire lives just because God told us to. It will take at least as much for us to bring great glory to God in this role. And with that in mind, I will apply bullets one and two of truths learned above.

To God be the glory!

“In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well… If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously,” Romans 12:6-8.

I’m concerned that there is a misunderstanding about leadership among Christians these days.

• Maybe our cut-throat business culture has tainted the beauty and necessity of leadership in Christ’s church.
• Maybe we’ve mustered up our humility quotient so high that leadership looks carnal.
• Maybe we’ve drifted so far from actually being biblical leaders that we don’t like to face the facts.

Whatever the case, where the leader goes, the church goes, the mission goes, the ministry goes. Almost everything falls on leadership.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m writing — discipleship and servanthood are essential, but biblical leadership only enhances discipleship and servanthood. I have seen this every time, in my experiences. The problem I see so often is that those God has called into roles of leadership fail to develop their leadership potential. By the way, this is what pastors, missionaries, leaders of ministry divisions and Christian organizations must do — lead a movement, an effort, a project. There are many gifted musicians, for instance, that are not playing music because they’ve never decided to become really good at it. So it often is with leadership. I believe that if God has called people to lead, they must lead well (Romans 12:8). That takes focus, intentionality, hard work.

Servanthood and discipleship become listless without leadership. Jesus is a great example. All Christians know about servanthood and discipleship (even though they may not all practice it very well), but very few really “get” leadership.

I am committed to being a growing leader because as the leader goes, so goes the ministry. Investment, intentionality, and hard work in this discipline are required.

“Take the responsibility seriously,” Romans 12:8

There’s a story in the Old Testament that is easily overlooked. It’s never told in childhood Sunday School classes nor taught in seminary lecture halls. In fact, I’ve read the Bible through at least dozen times and it never stuck with me until today. But it’s truths are essential–it’s message sobering.

Jeremiah 28 tells the story of Hananiah. This psuedo prophet proclaims a “word from the Lord” that isn’t really from God at all. In front of a large assembly, He states,  “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘I will remove the yoke of the king of Babylon from your necks. Within two years I will bring back all the Temple treasures that King Nebuchadnezzar carried off to Babylon. And I will bring back Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the other captives that were taken to Babylon. I will surely break the yoke that the king of Babylon has put on your necks. I, the Lord, have spoken!’” (verses 2-4).

Jeremiah, being a true prophet and one who was in touch with the Lord, immediately recognized that this statement was highly suspect. Right in the assembly, Jeremiah stood up and said, “I sure hope you’re right, because if you’re not, you’re in deep doo-doo! (my paraphrase).

The story goes on with Hananiah taking the yoke on Jeremiah’s shoulders (which God had Jeremiah put there to demonstrate the yoke of captivity in their future) and breaking in dramatic fashion, affirming stronger than ever that their captivity would only be two years. Everybody was happy! Here was a nice prophet who preached hope and happiness! Here was a “man of God” who brought news of God’s love and restoration for His people — this in contrast to Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, who almost always predicted judgement and doom.

But there’s one little problem. The nice words were false words.

That’s why, in that very setting, Jeremiah was the next to boldly proclaim a prophecy: “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord has not sent you, but the people believe your lies. Therefore, this is what the Lord says: ‘You must die. Your life will end this very year because you have rebelled against the Lord,’” verses 15-16.

Hananiah died two months later.

This reminds me of a recent story from one of our Converge Worldwide mission fields. One man, who was a leader partnering in the ministry, was pilphering some money and speaking badly of the leaders. In fact, this person and another were leading an undercurrent of discontent intended to run our missionaries off of the field. The things that were going on were blantantly ungodly, but done in the name of Christ. Our missionaries prayed against them asking God to free them from this man–to cast judgement on him so that the good work they were doing would not be hindered. It was only a short time later that this false servant was brutally killed in a violent one-car crash. God is not mocked.

Consider a few nuances from this story and what they might mean for us:

1. It states in the first verse that Hananiah was the son of a prophet. Have you ever felt pressured to be who your father was–to live up to expectations that others place on you? I’m guessing there was a little of this going on. Whatever the details, Hananiah was trying to be the prestigious godly man that his father was. Obviously, however, Hananiah was either not called or was taking short-cuts to being the man God wanted him to be. The word that comes to mind here is INTEGRITY. This means to be the real deal through and through. God looks for these people–for those “whose heart is completely His.” No facade, no short-cuts, no nice sounding, but empty rhetoric. We need to be who God has called us to be and walk in the blessing of the Lord in the specific calling on our lives…whatever that may be.
2. Nice words spoken that are untrue are deeply dishonoring to God. This is true not only of prophets, but of every one of us. Have you ever said, “I’ll pray for you,” and then never did…nor maybe never intended to. But in the moment it seemed like a nice way to express care–and may I say, like Hananiah, to gain favor with others. This may be one of those common sins among Christians. These idle words about prayed slip off the tongue, but they are lies. How easy it is to speak good things but not live what we say. Just last evening, Susan and I promised to pray for someone every day for the next few months as they go through a challenging season in their life. We talked about making sure these would not be idle words, but a vow we would keep every single day. This is walking the talk.
3. Jeremiah was willing and ready to say whatever needed to be said for the glory of God and the good of the people. He was not popular, but He was blessed by God. My wife, Susan, amazes me with her commitment to truth. With tenderness and boldness, she will tell people what they need to hear, not stay silent to be popular. By the way, she has done this to me all through our 29 years of marriage and before that — and it has served me well. This truth-telling is the spirit of Jeremiah. God holds these people in high esteem, even if men and women discard them or avoid them because of their truth-telling.

2 Timothy 4:3 states, “For  the time will come when they will not endure  sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.”

So the questions are simply this: Who do you want to be–a Hananiah or a Jeremiah? Who do you want in your life — a Hananiah or a Jeremiah?

‘A leader is someone who gets someone else to do what they don’t want to do…and like it.” This was President Franklin Roosevelt’s description of leadership. It’s pretty good, really.

I have found that leadership is the catalyst to almost everything that God wants to do through His church. Romans 12:8 actually mentions the gift of leadership in the church and urges those who have it “to lead well”.

Jesus, of course, was the greatest leader to ever walk on planet earth. He taught us so much about what a leader is, how we lead, who we lead, why we lead, and the cost of leadership.

I was reminded this morning of the great team of leaders I get to lead. As missionary candidates converged from across the country and around the world, our team began the vital 3-day process of assessing their readiness. What a high calling we have in sending. What a great team we have to get that done. I’ve done almost nothing to see this assessment happen because we have leaders that do their thing so well.

I think leadership is often as simple as having followers. As John Maxwell has said, “He who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk.”

A good leader is only one step ahead of those behind. Not too far ahead, but just ahead enough to show his/her followers where to go.

For those who have the gift of leadership — lead well.