To My Church Family

To my Church Family,

Most of us have only ever entered into two covenant relationships, marriage and church membership.  The emotions we will experience as we process our pastor’s resignation is akin to the trauma of divorce, and we will be hurting deeply for some time to come because of it.  But the same bond that makes this separation hurt so much, is also, by the grace of God, what can help us to overcome.  These pivotal circumstances have the potential to strengthen our faith, or to crush it, and I pray that we will come through this with a greater determination to live the lives Christ died for us to live.

As we travel this road, we will experience a wide range of emotion.  Some will feel relieved, some confused, others hurt, some will no doubt be angry, some of us will want to try to fix it, some of us will just withdraw, preferring not to deal with it, and some of us will try to pretend like it doesn't much matter...  As the stages of grief unfold, we may find ourselves frustrated with others whose responses to this difficulty are dramatically different than our own.  We must be careful to let every conversation we have be “full of grace, and seasoned with salt”.  In other words, we must make every effort to love each other through this, and to make sure that we focus on building each other up, not tearing each other down.

As we navigate these waters, let us remember the fundamental things that make faith grow:

• Practical Teaching:  We are losing a great teacher, and we will all need to find ways to fill the void.  Practical teaching don’t have to come from a stage on a Sunday Morning, grab a good book by Francis Chan, Andy Stanley, David Platt or some other Christian author who gives you practical advice on how to live the truth of the scripture and read, read, read.
• Private Disciplines: Faith grows when we commit ourselves to reading the word, to prayer, and to giving sacrificially.  This may be a good time to try fasting, even just skipping a meal to pray a few times a week, could have an amazing impact on your life and the life of our church.
• Personal Ministry:  The loss of a pastor means that there are big shoes to fill!  Many of us turn to him for advice, for counseling, and rely on his comfort when we are sick.  As a body we will have to fill the void by each of us digging deep and doing what we can to love and support each other. Remember that the normal means of communication may be down for a while, so when you have a need, find someone you trust and ask for help.
• Providential Relationships: The scripture is clear that the body grows as each part does its work, and it tells us that we need each other.  Now more than ever, invite people into your home, change your schedule to make time for fellowship, and let us encourage one another daily.  Use social media to check up on people, to ask how they are doing, and share the things from good books or scripture that are encouraging you.
• Pivotal Circumstances are the 5th thing on Andy Stanley’s list of what makes faith grow.  And this one is a double edged sword.  Pivotal circumstances and cripple our faith or make it stronger.  The key is how we deal with them. Deal with them by focusing on the things that make faith grow rather than on the the things that hurt or the things that divide.

Find just one or two people to meet with each week.  Commit to reading the same scripture, to praying for each other, to confessing sin to each other and to praying for people you love, who have not yet confessed Jesus as Lord. Keep the group extremely small, so that you don’t have to juggle schedules or worry about what someone will think.

The church is not a place we gather on Sundays. Biblically, we don’t find the concept that Christians “go to church”, instead we find as we read the Word that, “we are the church”.  We are not a body because we sing the same songs and hear the same sermons. We are a body only when we share the same mission, and the same strategy for carrying out that mission.  We don’t meet together to get a good encouraging feeling that will help us through the week, we meet together to spur each other on toward love and good deeds.  The good feelings will be different for a while, maybe even absent, but we can still spur each other on to run the race as if to win the prize.  

Thoughts on Spiritual Growth

I was recently asked, what steps I think lead to spiritual maturity.  I sent that response as an e-mail to the friend who asked, and figured it might make a good blog post.  After all I use this blog for things that I want to get feedback on and for things that I want to continually "rethink".  So please help me "re-think" any of this that needs to be refined.

As I see it, all spiritual growth results from one of the following: (please note that this list is not original it comes from Andy Stanley's book "Deep and Wide")  Practical Teaching, Private Disciplines, Personal Ministry, Providential Relationships, Pivotal Circumstances.

Practical Teaching:  Not just teaching, but teaching with "next steps".  A sermon that leaves you, not just more enlightened, but one that gives you practical ideas for how to be different because of what you've just heard. This kind of teaching can come from a stage, be heard over the radio (or Internet), or be found in the pages of a book.  It can be heard live with hundreds of people, or projected onto a video screen in a small group, or consumed privately.

 Private Disciplines: Reading the scripture, prayer, fasting, and giving.  All of these have the potential to grow our faith.

Personal Ministry:  Our bodies cannot be healthy simply by eating the right food, we have to pair diet with exercise for optimal health.  So it is with our spirit.  We have to be engaged in the unique ministry, the "good works" that Ephesians 2 says God prepared beforehand that we would walk in them.

Providential Relationships: This is where the body comes in.  We all need people in our lives that we can learn from, who can mentor us, who we can mentor.  There will be people in our lives that inspire us, and people who are negative examples.  We need people to spur us on toward love and good deeds, and to sharpen us, as iron sharpens iron.

Pivotal Circumstances: This is not one that the church can create, as much as it can shape our response.  I love the way Roger (our pastor) takes current events and give us a Christian/Biblical filter for them.  We will all have pivotal circumstances in our lives, death, divorce, injury, illness, financial troubles, and the like.  How we respond to these circumstances can impact our faith. Do we see tragic circumstances and decide that a loving God could not let such a thing happen, or do we see the evidence of God working all things for good?

These ideas are extremely well articulated in Andy Stanley's book "Deep and Wide", and while I've taken the "P's" (words in bold) from his book, these are ideas that I have been working to refine and articulate for years, which is why they resonate with me so deeply. 

I know you wanted my personal opinion, so the following ideas are strictly mine.  I think that as we look through scripture we can see the following pattern emerge for how God works in a life: He Planned for us, He created us, He pursued us, He makes us new, He equips us, He inspires us, He Works through us.  This pattern is similar to what we see in Romans 8:29-30.  As we try to do for others as Jesus did for us, I think we, as individuals or as a church, can follow the same pattern.

Plan: God foreknew us, before he did anything else.  We should take time to get to know who we want a ministry, or our entire church, to reach.  If a church wants to start a ministry that is going to help feed hungry people, shouldn't we get to know some hungry people and find out what they need?  Shouldn't we read everything we can about hunger and poverty, and shouldn't we study what is working to combat those needs?  Just an example... 

Create: God had his plan for salvation in place before he created us.  After his plan was in place, he set about putting into action.  This is of course a vital second step.  It is not enough to simply read, and study how to minister to a particular group, we must actually take action, and be doer's of what we have learned.

Pursue: Even God wasn't content to sit in heaven and let His creation speak for itself, He walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden, He took on flesh and became human, he whispered to Elijah, he made a covenant with Abraham, he met Paul on the road to Damascus.  Likewise, if we want to minister to people, we need to walk in their shoes, and become available to life life beside them, rather than simply program for them/to them/at them.  When children's ministry worked well in our church, it was because the volunteers were passionate about the kids and were not content to simply meet with them once a week, they followed up with home visits, and invited them into their own homes, took them out for ice cream, remembered their birthdays, and made their lives, (not just small slivers of their schedules) available.

Made New:  Okay, only God can do this, but we need to remember that all of the relationships and programs in the world don't matter if the person never sees past us to Jesus.  Keeping this on the list of our necessary steps, keeps us focused on the goal of making as certain as possibe that the person were are ministering too experiences the life transformation that Paul spoke of in 2nd Corinthians 5:17.  This is the midpoint in the timeline, the cornerstone, of all of any ministry. we long for that moment when someone will be made knew in Christ.

Equip: This is where I observe most churches having the most difficulty.  What do we do after someone is made knew in Christ?  It is as if we had a clear plan for how to get them into the kingdom, but don't know what do with them once they are in.  Really that's kinda backwards.  Being in the kingdom we should know what kingdom life looks like, but we seem confused...  I think this is because we tend look at salvation as the end goal, when in reality it is only the beginning.  We have this "okay God I got them this far, now they have the Holy Spirit, so you can take it from here..." attitude.  I also think that strategically equipping a whole church full of people is difficult because this is where our ministries tend to begin to overlap.  Instead of just being involved in the one thing or with the one person that moved them toward Christ, the new believer is now expected to be a part of the general church body, and the transition from the kiddie pool to the deep end is often overlooked.  This is makes strategy and unity between departments so critical.  This is why I love Andy Stanley's 5 P's from earlier. They are the steps that transform us from newborn faith to mature faith, a faith that will survive the scorching sun and the choking weeds.  We are equipped through Practical Teaching, Private disciplines, Personal Ministry, Providential Relationships, and Pivotal Circumstances. 

Inspire: As we experience different avenues of personal ministry, we have opportunities to see what work in the kingdom makes us come alive, and to move closer and closer to discovering out what those unique good works are that God created just us to do.  I fully believe that God has a specific, unique purpose for each of us, and that we have the privilege of finding out what it is.  The more faithful we are with the "5P's" listed above, the more He entrusts to us. Like the word says, "you have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things".  The goal is to have each Christian reach a place where as Paul said, "I am compelled to preach, woe to me if I do not preach the gospel" they can say "I am compelled to ____________, woe to me if I do not __________."

Use: Thus transformed, equipped and inspired, we can produce a crop yielding 30, 60 or 100 times what was sown.  This is the part where we are "God's fellow workers" and "Christ's Ambassadors". This is my definition of maturity.  Someone who knows what they are called to do, is passionate about doing it, and is always striving to do it better for the Glory of God.

Remember this was an e-mail to a friend, so I understand if the context is hazy for someone just joining the conversation.  Don't hesitate to ask lots of questions.