ECIPLESHIP for Passionate Christ-Followers

Joshua was an audacious leader because he had audacious expectations of those who followed him.

As the new generation of Israelites stood on the Eastern bank of the Jordan, eager to follow their leader, Joshua addressed two and a half tribes with a specific challenge:

Then Joshua called together the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. He told them…”Your wives, children, and livestock may remain here…on the east side of the Jordan River. But your strong warriors, fully armed, must lead the other tribes across the Jordan to help them conquer their territory. Stay with them until the LORD gives them rest, as he has given you rest, and until they, too, possess the land the LORD your God is giving them. Only then may you return and settle here on the east side of the Jordan River in the land that Moses, the servant of the LORD, assigned to you.”  Joshua 1:12-15

Joshua was telling these God-followers that they needed to look way beyond themselves to live for the sake of their brothers and sisters. This was not an easy call.

• It required danger and sacrifice.
• It meant they could not relax and enjoy the good life while their fellow followers were still unsettled.
• It demanded sacrifice, not only the warriors, but also from the families that needed to let them go.
• It did cost some of them their very lives.

In the New Testament, we see liberal generosity and cutting edge sacrifice demonstrated by the first church as “they sold whatever they had and distributed to any who had need.” In the Old Testament, we have the new generation of Israelites who are called to audacious action on behalf of their fellow God-followers.

How often we overlook the higher calling of God. How natural it is to settle in when we have what we want. How normal the Christian life can be when we have a me-orientation. But the audacious Joshua called his followers to audacious action. It cost the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh a lot…and honored God tremendously.

Audacious followers live for the wellfare of their brothers and sisters in Christ.

It would be natural for us to assume that only others are living by a half gospel, but not us. (See yesterday’s blog.) The danger of spiritual waywardness, however, is that an evangelical, religious or respected person doesn’t usually see how far from truth they might be. In fact, we usually don’t want to look at our distance from God, nor our departure from truth, when we’re not being fruitful for God. Instead, one tends to become more adamant about the things they have correct while reasoning away the things they are missing.

We all have blind sides.

Here’s my gut feeling: A majority of Christians in our churches every week have a form of Christianity but are missing the real thing.

What would some of the warning signs be for such people?

• A lack of passion about living daily for Christ
• An unwillingness to give God a first portion of their income
• An absence of committed service to others in the name of Jesus
• An infatuation with one’s own needs, wants and agendas
• Failing to be salt and light for others who need to know Jesus

A friend of mine wrote the following:

There are certain things the Word tells us about what a true Christ-follower looks like. It’s much more than being good, having said the prayer, attending church, or doing what nice 21st century church-goers do. It’s being a radical, passionate, sold-out disciple of Jesus.

It’s being a truth seeker, world-changer and kingdom builder.

So many Christians are living by a half-gospel. Here’s what I mean by that. We teach that all of humanity is fallen through sin and that we can be redeemed through Christ. Without a doubt, that is true. But this is where many Christians and a host of evangelical churches leave it. This is only a half gospel.

God has a calling for each of our lives. It’s easy to miss and costly to follow.

Abram was living in The City of ancient history — Ur of the Chaldeans. Without a doubt, he had life figured out there. His routine, much like ours, provided a sense of security, rhythm, and predictability to his life. But God told him to leave all of this in order to go into the land of Canaan.

When we hear God’s call–when our spiritual ears are open enough to sense God’s true desire for our life–it almost always requires us to leave something.

• Security
• Material possessions
• Personal dreams and agendas
• Life as we know it
• Our comfort zone
• What we have built up to this point

So Abram uprooted and left everything he knew because he heard God’s clear directive for his life.

“Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

God’s call on our life may take us out of our lazy boy and across the street to a lost neighbor. It may require us to pack our bags and go far away–for a season or the rest of your life. It may beckon you to step out of your comfortable routine and risk a relationship–or give up some free-time to intersect your life with someone who needs you. God’s call does require action. Difficult, costly, decisive action.

Always, when God calls, He has a better plan for our life. Always. It often includes greater influence, Kingdom significance, and being a blessing to others in deeply meaningful ways. It also costs us something — everything. We need to abandon whatever it is that may hold us back from recklessly following. It’s a risk. It requires crazy faith. This is what it means to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

God has a calling for each of our lives. It’s easy to miss and costly to follow.

Hollywood’s best writers and producers cannot outdo the stories of the Bible. The story of Judah and Tamar is just one example, but a good one. Bottom line, Judah was quick and eager to cast the death sentence on his daughter-in-law for being pregnant “as a harlot” until he found out that HE was the father. Tamar, and the twins in her womb, were spared, Judah was humbled, and key figures in the line of Christ became a reality. Their names were Perez and Zerah–children born our of wedlock by Tamar’s father-in-law. Sordid.

As I was reading this account, however, I was reminded of God’s hand, even in the most unusual of situations and degraded human activities. Somehow, in majesty of God’s wisdom and the abundance of His grace, He makes something stunningly good out of our worst ugliness and failures. He redeems our sin actions whenever He wants. The irony is that often our sin is the very thing He turns into a precious gem for adorning His Kingdom. That’s grace. Only God would even think of such maneuvers.

When I reflect on my life, I realize that my ungliest moments were turning points in my spiritual journey–key steps that God used to shape me into who I am today. It makes me grateful for a God who can do such things. It makes me hopeful that God will still take my stupidity and make something Kingdom worthy out of them. It humbles me to know that God can salvage something beautiful out of my ugliness.

So, what do you need to offer to God today? In what do you need to be humbled–to face the truth of something that you actually did. Maybe it’s time to be a like Judah, the man who ate humble pie after quickly casting judgement on another even while overlooking his own (and maybe bigger) issue.

God loves to redeem our human weakness into Kingdom strengths.

Cool.

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.

In my last week as pastor of Edinbrook, I am reflecting on my journey as your leader. I’m sharing a “Truth Learned” each day this week–-insights I have gleaned through my 16 years as pastor of this WONDERFUL church.

My next Truth Learned created some of the most painful interactions of all with people. But when I committed myself to leading our church in this direction, it made such a profound God-honoring difference that I still can hardly believe it.

#4 Truth Learned: Aim Young.

Believe me–I know this can be controversial, argued adamantly on both sides, and can even seem like a slight to the older crowd. But hang in here with me, because there are some REALLY GOOD reasons for taking this approach–and whether everyone likes it or not, when embraced, everyone wins!

The easiest thing for a pastor to do is appeal to the long-timers. The middle-aged and upward are the givers, the ones in positions of leadership, those most vocal, and the ones that often find change the most difficult. They have usually perfected their arguments quite well, too. SO–deciding to “shape” the ministry to reach a younger audience is very risky and extremely difficult. I’m convinced, however, that when done carefully and with intentionality, it can produce spiritual health and vitality in the church that would be missed any other way.

Here are a few reasons why aiming young is so important:

1. We are able to create a love of church in young people that carries into the rest of their lives. If we lose our youth because church is “boring” or fails to connect with them, we lose so much of what they can offer the church TODAY as well as preparing for a strong vibrant church in the future.
2. Those who are to be more mature have the privilege of sacrificing for those who are not. When the church sacrifices for one another, everyone wins! We become stronger, blessed by God, less selfish, more other oriented. A church comes alive when this is the motif of Body-life together.
3. We stay on the fresh edge of ministry techniques, song-writing, communication techniques (that also connect with our culture at large), and relevant to our community. The church is famous for being 10 or 15 years behind the times. When we aim young, we force ourselves to in touch with current trends. If we don’t, we will lose our youth. This is healthy on SO MANY LEVELS!
4. We don’t make our children stumble. When the “older crowd” demands certain styles or traditions that are totally irrelevant to the next generations, we are creating a distaste for church for our children. I know this can be argued from many perspectives, but he bottom line is that this is reality. Ask almost anyone under 25. Jesus made it clear that, “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble,” Luke 17:2. This strong statement was made about doing whatever was necessary to bring the young ones into the fold.
5. We sing new songs. I find it fascinating that Scriptures never tell us to sing old songs, but 9 times it tells us to “sing a new song!” When our worship becomes rote, when it’s more routine than heartfelt, we fail to engage our will, emotions, and soul into the experience. (See my blog post, IMAGINATION AND MEMORY, November 21, 2010). It’s like praying old routine prayers that no-longer engage the mind. In fact, if we primarily have old songs, we live in the past rather than the present. We reflect on how a song impacted us way back then, but often fail to connect with God in the now. Aiming young forces us to receive and consider the new songs God is giving us for today. And He gave us many through our amazingly gifted artists and song-writers at Edinbrook these past few years.

There was a season at Edinbrook about six years ago when I had godly committed youth coming to me in mass numbers and saying something like this: “Pastor, I love your teaching, but I cannot sit through another worship service where I find it almost impossible to worship.” After much agonizing prayer and consultation with people I deeply respect, I knew a change needed to take place. Hands down, it was one of THE most important decision I made in my years at Edinbrook. It was also the most controversial and frustrating for so many people.

When this re-aiming took place, however, a new vibrancy entered our church. We have become a worshiping church as result with lives being changed and transformed every Sunday. We have young people growing up and loving church. We have youth, from little children, to teens, to 2o-somethings who are whole-heartedly engaged. We have a vigorous health that we never had before nor would be able to have any other way. It’s purified our Body, forced us to be selfless, compelled us to be in touch with our changing world, and provided us with freshness that makes our worship of God REAL.

Aim young. I would do it all over again because EVERYBODY WINS!

In my last week as pastor of Edinbrook, I am reflecting on my journey as your leader. I’m sharing a “Truth Learned” each day this week–-insights I have gleaned through my 16 years as pastor of this WONDERFUL church.

It took me a while to fully embrace this third truth, but when I did, God totally unleashed a wild and wonderful transformation in our church…and in me.

#3 Truth Learned: Teach for Change, Not for Learning

One of my primary spiritual pathways is learning. I find and experience God by discovering new things about Him and His ways. As wonderful as this is for me, I had to get past this in order to preach and teach for change, not just for learning. When I came to Edinbrook, I had messages filled with information, details, and fresh insights. Through the years, long before I came to Edinbrook, people thanked me for all they learned through my teaching. This was intoxicating. But as wonderful as this sounds, it’s not what’s most important for the church at large. We need to catch a few really important things and live them out with complete obedience to Christ. We need to be changed!

The struggle to get to this at Edinbrook was one of my most exhilarating and painful experiences of my pastorate. Most evangelical church-goers rate the quality of the sermon by how much you learn. Erroneously, learning has been equated with spiritual growth. So when I began to teach less content and admonish our people to act upon several recurring themes, I was regularly assaulted for my liberal and ungodly leadership–for being soft on the Word and allowing the “sheep” to suffer malnutrition. At one point, an undercurrent was begun by a few vocal disgruntled folk that disillusioned many of our people. “I wasn’t being biblical,” was the objection. I was trying to become like the world way too much.

It was in this season of time that I found myself unsure of anything I preached. There were people literally taking notes in order to condemn me for various words or phrases I used in each message. It became so difficult that I was afraid to even get up front of our congregation for a while. I began to preach with a tense and angry edge. I was unconsciously trying to prove my convictions while preaching and teaching to the church at large. It was extremely painful for me…and absolutely essential. It forced me to seek the Lord with my whole heart–to see what He wanted me to do–and to live for His affirmation and no-one else’s. This was powerfully transforming for me and for Edinbrook. When I got this figured out, I saw our church change dramatically. God’s Holy Spirit was giddy with the opportunity to do His work in our lives. Every week.

Right after this breakthrough is when I developed and preached my best sermons — Quake, Morph, Lionhearted, and Setting the Captives Free. I was teaching and preaching for change, not just to get information into people’s heads.

James 4:16-17 state, “But as it is, you boast in your arrogance (all of the stuff you know); all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.”

This passage, as well as many others in Scripture, implore us to LIVE the gospel, not just know it. Evangelicals at large have unwittingly adopted an intellectual faith rather than a radical, sacrificial, life-transforming, action-oriented faith. Only the latter motif honors God and accomplished what Jesus told us to DO while He is away. The intellectual motif, on the other hand, sides closely with the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. It may look good by those withing “the system”, but it has little if any positive impact on the world around us.

When I began to teach for change rather than for learning, we began to become an Acts 2-type of church. Lives have been transformed weekly, lost people have found Jesus by the hundreds, and God has a great big smile on His face.

In my last week as pastor of Edinbrook, I am reflecting on my journey as your leader. I will be sharing a “Truth Learned” each day this week–insights I have gleaned through my 16 years as pastor of this WONDERFUL church.

#1 Truth Learned: Being obedient to God can be especially hard as a pastor.

When I came to Edinbrook Church 16 years ago, I stepped into a congregation filled with wonderful people and bright hopes for the future. With about 150 people engaged, there were already huge risks taken and much sacrifice given to keep this church alive. I’ll never forget the first day I stepped into the office with three part-time employees present. They looked at me with eager expectation and said, “Pastor, lead us. We’re ready to go. Just tell us what to do.” I have to tell you, it was a little intimidating.

Many years later, I now look at what God has done and stand in awe. We have changed so much…and every bit of it was difficult and painful. Change is just that way. And change is what God is all about, both personally and corporately. If we’re personally the same five years from now as we are today, we have failed to let God do His work. It’s the same in the church–we MUST change. It’s part of the faith-journey that God has for us. But very few church-folk really want to change.

I enjoy having people like me, but I soon realized that, if I was to do my God-given task as a pastor, there would inevitably be a LOT of people who would NOT like me at all.

• God has not called the church to be comfortable, but to live by faith.
• We cannot just be nice, we must be effective.
• We cannot do what’s comfortable, but what’s necessary.
• We cannot do what’s always been done, but what it takes to reach a world and culture changing at a stunning pace.
• We cannot only do what makes those inside of the church happy, but what it takes to make lost people holy.

BUT–there is a HUGE misperception by Christians at large that assumes the church is here for us. In other words, “It should give me what I want.” As a result, we have churches all across our nation that are nice and good churches filled with nice and happy people who are making little to no impact in actually growing the Kingdom of God.

I decided early on that this would not be us. I committed to doing whatever it took to be an Acts 2-type church. Through the years, many people were very angry, disillusioned, accusatory, judgmental, and self-righteous. I have had more anonymous letters than I’d ever like to remember. I have had people call me the anti-Christ, worldly, liberal, unbiblical, and shallow (many times). Many left our church thinking they would go find a church that would give them what they need. The problem is that so many Christians get cultural Christianity and biblical Christianity confused. Cultural Christianity is what we grew up with–what our current Christian culture elevates as the acceptable form of religion and church life. It is often quite far from what’s actually biblical.

I realized that being obedient to God as a pastor is a very painful thing.

But I would do it again. When I see what God has done, the lives that have been transformed, the lost who have been found, and the compelling future this church has before it, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for God’s faithfulness. We never lose by doing what is right, even if you need to hurt some of the people you love in the process.

I had this strange feeling come over me today when I realized that I will be the Lead Pastor of Edinbrook Church for only 9 more days. As I think about the big things that have happened through the years, there are so many things to celebrate:

• Morphing from cultural Christianity (that which is generally accepted by fellow believers, but fails to live up to the biblical standards) to biblical Christianity (living like an Acts 2 church).
• We’ve committed to being relevant to our culture and not just comfortable with our evangelical culture.
• We’ve taken consistent action to become a highly valued presence in our community.
• The leadership and ministry gifts of both genders has been activated freely.
• We’ve become a worshiping church where lives are transformed and people are empowered every week.
• Our youth have become highly valued participants in the life of our church.
• Missions, home and abroad, have become central to who we are.
• We have learned to embrace compassion for those less fortunate than us — both here and around the world.
• Making disciples has become our consuming passion. That is, helping people come to personally know Christ and then grow in relationship with Him.

It has been a privilege and joy to see God work in and through us. He is only beginning the work He wants to do at Edinbrook Church. I’m so honored to have been a part of these nearly 16 years.

Press on, church!