Quarantined!

Well, here we are. My lovely bride has been diagnosed with COVID-19. I’m pretty sure that my son had it, but it wasn’t caught by the docs because he didn’t have all the symptoms. Then I caught it. Felt like a dog toy which had been run over in the driveway. But still no respiratory problems, other than a cough (which I thought was related to the high pollen count). Then my wife caught the same stuff. Only this time, she had shortness of breath to go with the fever and cough. They tested her on Monday. Results came on Tuesday. Negative. Thank God! Then they called right back and said, “So sorry, we misread it! You’ve got Coronavirus. ” Ugh.
So now I’m literally working from home. Can’t even open the door for well-wishers.
Me- “Leave the package there. Back away from the doorsteps. We will pick it up when you have driven away.”
[Compliant well-wisher working hand sanitizer furiously as they scamper toward their car…]
Wife- “You can’t open the door for people!”
Me: “I’m not, already! They are a block away…”
Now I’m thinking back to all the people with whom I may have come in contact before I was aware of COVID-19 in my home. Not many, thankfully. And I haven’t shaken hands in weeks.
Then my mind wanders to whoever gave this to us. I don’t even know anyone who is sick! Maybe one of the golfers at the country club where my son works. After all, he was the first one ill. Then I’m aggravated that I took the boy to the doctor and he was not tested for Corona. Of course, it didn’t seem to be indicated.
I’m sure everyone who knows me is now fitfully sterilizing anything I may have touched. If anyone in my town gets it, The Facebook universe will do their extrapolations and I am sure the whole epidemic will be traced back to us. But that’s unreasonable, considering Vanessa is case number 249 in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Which brings me back to those guys who contaminated the golf carts where my son works. I must be vindicated!
But I’m in quarantine…
Hey! The care package had Clorox wipes. Score!

The COVID-19 Scare Raises Bigger Issues

I pastor a small church in Shreveport, Louisiana. Like myriad pastors across the United States our whole community has been disrupted by the measures taken to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus. Our children are all out of school, probably for the rest of the school year. I have been laid off from my day job, many businesses are closed, and all the churches have been ordered closed.

We are doing online services, like everyone else. And we have been pleasantly surprised that we have had more viewers than we usually have in attendance. However, I am a little concerned about all the ministers who feel that we will be alright for a while with only virtual fellowship. I am doubtful that there can be such a thing as online koinonia. Certainly, it’s a community of sorts, but it is not the ecclessia, the called out ones. the Church.

Why does this matter during this crisis? Not much today. After all, I believe that this is a temporary suppression of our rights. But what if this is dress rehearsal for persecution? I do not believe that there is any conspiracy against the church afoot. I am sure that the authorities are trying to deal with this virus. But, having let the genie out of the bottle, I have to wonder how often this will be repeated in the future. After all, we have more deadly outbreaks than this coronavirus on a regular basis. What if a future government asks for our freedoms for less than benign reasons?  There are even now enemies of religious freedom who must certainly see how easily the churches of God have been shuttered.

Secondly, the Church is more than a Sunday assembly. If we are not coming together during the week in small groups, extended families, and close friendships then are we truly a faith community? We must be mentoring, bearing one another’s burdens, confessing our weakness, lifting up the arms that hang down, exhorting, rebuking, encouraging one another in a tapestry of relationships. In my congregation, our people are gathering in their homes right now. Extended families, neighbors. In the midst of upheaval, we are discovering that where two or more are gathered, Christ is in the midst of them. This crisis has shown how weak our disciple-making has been, but also how strong the ties that bind us together in Him.

Another fact has become clear to me: relying on the internet to maintain community is tenuous. A pastor friend remarked online that his Sunday message was not approved because it “violated community standards” of his social media platform. Probably a glitch. Again, no conspiracy theories here. But it reminds us that our content can be wiped away with the click of a mouse. We need a much more organic network.

Two thousand years of Church history should tell us that these pockets of peace and social acceptance are the exception, not the rule. Persecution will come again in the Western World. It is routine in many nations as I write this. I believe that this sudden change in our routine can serve as a fire drill, or a wellness test. What if we had no available technology and no access to facilities? No buildings, no websites? This changes everything about the modern church, but nothing about the New Testament church. It’s time to rediscover the seed of viral expansion that is latent in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Where we have His Word, His Spirit, and two or more gathered in His Name, the Church is fully viable. We should use every privilege and resource that we have, but we must guard against becoming dependent upon any of them. This could be a sign of future failure, or, as I believe, a call to that native faith that is so simply expressed in the New Testament. Let our hearts awake to the possibilities!

 

 

You Can Only Start From Where You Are Right Now.

via You Can Only Start From Where You Are Right Now.

Good Soil

The sower sows the word.

That’s the seed of the Kingdom, the germination of God’s plan in our lives, our churches, our world.

Jesus was preaching about farming to farmers, but few understood that he was actually talking about, well, everything.

Listen! Watch this. A farmer went out to sow and, as he sowed, some seed happened to fall on the walking path. The birds sprang on it at once and devoured it. Some seed fell on the rocky ground where the topsoil was thin and sparse. That seed sprouted soon enough, but it’s roots never dug deep, so it burned up in the summer sun. Some seed fell in the brambles and thistles. It grew up among them but never produced a crop. But some seed fell on the good soil, and that seed produced a crop thirty, sixty, even a hundred times greater than itself. (Mark 4:4-8 paraphrased)

The disciples were trying to make sense of this story, too simplistic to even be called a sermon. They came to Jesus for an explanation.

“Do you not understand this parable?” Jesus asked. “How then will you understand all the parables?”

The Parable of The Sower is really the Story of The Seed. This little word picture is the Rosetta Stone of the Kingdom. By it we can decipher all the other mysteries of God’s work among humankind. If we fail to grasp it’s lesson, we fail to understand all the other lessons in the course.

Jesus was always checking soil. He was never worried to offend anyone. His instruction to the disciples as He sent them out in the tenth chapter of Luke is almost the opposite of our modern mindset.

Find a ‘son of peace’, a receptive person. (pronounced /gûd sôil/ ) Then stay put. Mission accomplished. But if a city does not receive you, wipe the dust off your feet, tell them that the Kingdom of God has come near, and head down the road.

My tendency has been to leave the receptive, low-hanging fruit and try to pad the numbers by winning more and more converts. And when the going gets tough, that’s when I really get going. Reject me? I’m resilient to keep on coming. I have spent a lot of time chasing folks who don’t want to be caught, throwing Gospel seed at the complacent, the resistant, and the almost-persuaded.
Yes, everyone in our community and our world needs to hear the Gospel. We need to go to every highway and byway and compel them to come in. But the problem is not evangelism. The problem is that, as ministers, we spend a LOT of time trying to persuade the church to be the church. Most of those who attend our churches are, honestly, bad soil. How did we get here? By catering to bad soil! We make it all as easy and convenient as we possibly can. We do not challenge the sheep because “people just won’t make those kinds of commitments nowadays”. Actually, a lot of people come into the Kingdom willing to make a real commitment. But after years of mediocrity, they settle into the inertia of the complacent.
Here’s the big problem: The seed can only bring a harvest when it’s planted in good soil. The hardened, the easy-come easy-go believer, the unfruitful worldly Christian, these never produce a crop. Yet I’m so challenged to prove my ministerial abilities by dragging them across the finish line. Our churches are geared for them…maybe even contributing to the problem. We spend all the resources we have on bad soil.

Our fundamental assumption is flawed. We are not here to win souls. We are here to make disciples. I can hear you asking, “How can we make disciples if we don’t win souls?’. Of course we must win souls, but it isn’t the POINT, it’s a step in the PROCESS. When we found out that we were expecting a baby, my wife and I made every preparation in our power for the birth of our little gift from Heaven. Birth is a big deal. But what if, after a healthy delivery, we went home without the baby? Guess what? That baby is a teenager now. The first time I held him was a dream come true. But it was the first step in a long, exhausting, joyful process. We are pouring into him with the expectation that he will bring more little blessings from Heaven for us to hold. Whatever he becomes and multiplies is our legacy.

So what do we do? I’ll tell you what’s working for me. I’m praying and looking every day for the good soil people in my church and community. I’m gearing the best of my efforts for the hungriest among us. The people that usually get taken for granted are being poured into with special effort. I’ve found a couple of gems in the process. Some of the least committed, nominal adherents of our church are actually sons and daughters of peace, just waiting for someone to call them to follow Jesus in discipleship. As they catch fire, it is igniting pockets of revival in our small, older congregation. They have begun to challenge their friends and family to commit to Jesus!
Here’s the crazy thing. The Church will win more souls Jesus’ way. The discipled, good-ground son of peace will produce a family tree thirty, sixty, even one hundred times over. Only when we disciple a new believer are they capable of discipling the next generation. A convert is changed. A disciple is an agent of change.

So feel free to pour your gospel ministry into a much smaller patch of good soil and shake off the dust of ministry to the uncommitted. Good seed in good soil is the key to everything Jesus does.

Still Writing

I’ve been studying a lot for my book project, Sorry I have not been presssing the blog. I did want to tell everybody that I have begun work on the actual manuscript now. I’m so not qualified to do this, but I feel that I must. I will try to update soon. Thanks!

The Slow Grind of Faith

The Mission Church has a home now. No paint on the walls, but functional. Our thirty-seven-hundred square-feet of Main Street storefront is now, officially, occupied! At least a few rooms are. This renovation project has been a test of faith and willpower. We are hopelessly over deadline, but just in the nick of time.

Having spent more time praying and seeking God concerning this church plant than any other endeavor in my life, I am just now learning to walk by faith. The leap of faith? No problem. Been there, done that. It’s just been the slow, grinding, walk of faith that has been my weak spot. This crazy, over-the-top project has been God’s instrument to teach me enduring faith. I will have to write another blog post just to tell the long list of answered prayers and that-had-to-be-God moments. Trust and obey. Easier said than done! But when you learn it, it’s a one-two punch that can whip the world.

Now, I’ve gone from pushing too hard to get it done to having people think I should be more worried about finishing. I have gone from being driven by fear of failure to the slow burn of manifest destiny. Oh, it will come. No need to worry. It will be here when we need it.

Now we have moved into the first half of the building and we are about to outgrow it! But we have just what we need, just when we need it. Keep your faith switch turned on, and put one foot in front of the other. We are picking up steam and there is joy in the journey!

Resistance Training

 

“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” – First Peter 1:6-7

In this you rejoice? Being grieved by various trials sounds like a load of fun. Rejoice! Why? Because we love to suffer? Rejoice that your faith is being tested. Even tested by fire.

I love the added “if necessary”. Is it really necessary that Christians should suffer? I thought that God delivered us from all suffering, that He was our Heavenly Grandpa/Santa Claus figure…But, hey! It ain’t necessary unless it’s necessary. And sometimes, it’s necessary.

What grief and pain are we discussing here? It’s the aching void between what ought to be and what is. More accurately, between what is in the spirit realm and what we taste, touch, and see in the physical world around us. It’s the difference between what you know God has spoken in your life and what you face when you wake up Monday morning. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. It is not dreamy or ephemeral. It is solid, substantial…it can be jumped on. Faith  can hold us. And faith, when it brings forth it’s expected end, frames our world.  The seen was made by the unseen. It is only those who are bound by what their eyes can see who are living in a fantasy world. The temporal is illusionary, fabricated. The Eternal is unchanging. When these two collide, the result is always the fiery trial of our faith.

Suffering by itself will not produce spiritual growth. The areas of the world that are in the greatest spiritual darkness are often the places we find the most suffering. It’s the pain of seeing, believing, receiving a promised hope while the world around us seems to rip it from our grasp. The test says “cancer”, the Word says “healed”.  Modernist fatalism tells us that we have no hope of seeing the world changed by the Gospel. The Savior says,” All authority has been given to Me in both Heaven and Earth, so get up! Go make disciples of the nations! And I am with you to the ends of the Earth.”

This world will end. Not only am I sure of it, I am relieved to know it. Everything about our earthly existence screams for a “re-do”. Actually, a redemption. And it is our faith that is the fulcrum in the balance between the despair of every day living and the victory of the risen Christ. Faith leverages the spiritual world into the physical. The pressure point, the tipping point, is the trying of our faith. But when our faith works in spite of all opposition, it always brings glory to God.

So when we pray,”Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven”, be ready for an immediate push-back from the forces of this world. But rejoice in the opportunity to flex your faith muscles. It’s only by doing the heavy lifting that we are going to become the warriors of faith that we are called to be. Even in the exercising of our faith: no pain, no gain.

Yes, I’m Writing A Book

There is a discipline required to blog. I am remembering that, as I re-start the ole blogographic habit. Getting my chops back, toning up for the big run. Yes, my friends, it is time for me to start working on a book. Non-fiction, of course. I am determined to get it done before I am forty. Which gives me about eighteen months. So the blog, though (hopefully) helpful, is just the priming of the intellectual pump. The flipping of the switch. Wind sprints before the big race…

I used to want to write all the time, even planned on becoming a writer. I laid it down to devote myself to fulfilling God’s calling on my life to bring lost souls to the Savior and building them into strong believers. And since both tasks are humanly impossible, that has taken a lot of my focus.

Now, when I have no time whatsoever to write, I am wrestling with the conviction, growing stonger by the year, that I am called to write. Like Moses, freshly called to do what he originally tried to do on his own, I’m sure I have nothing to say. But, here we go…

Unity Of The Faith

“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…”

Here the minister finds his raison d’être.  God’s vision for his leaders. And a seemingly impossible mission: To bring the Church to the “unity of the faith”.  A quick glance at the spectrum of denominations and doctrines across Christendom can dislodge any hope of a unified faith. But I believe that we may be closer than we think.  

So what is this unifying doctrine? Where is this overarching orthodoxy? Sorry, I do not think we will ever find it. But I’m not sure that these things are necessary to see the unity of the faith. Paul’s statement was “the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God…” For the record, I doubt that we will ever agree in the area of “knowledge” either. Not in the rigid dogmatic sense of the word, anyway. There is the letter of the Law, and then there is the spirit. Weighing this verse against the whole of the New Testament, I am convinced that the Apostle is referring to knowing the Christ, not knowledge about Christ. Likewise, we are not talking about unity in all matters of faith, as in personal convictions, but, rather, the unity if the faith. We are unified not by a doctrine, but by a Person. Not by deduction and exegesis, but by experiencing a living Savior. This is the tie that binds.

I am not saying that we should disregard study and wholly embrace every teaching and experience. Obviously, Paul goes on to refute these things in the very passage we are discussing. But what I am saying is this: I met Christ, and know Him more intimately than I will ever know flesh and blood. I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. If you have been redeemed by the same Jesus, have walked this pilgrim way with the same gentle Shepherd, you and I have much more that connects us than separates us. Though we may fall on differing sides of a doctrinal debate, we will love and laugh and reminisce at the same family reunion. And since we share this same living hope, I would be glad to walk with you a ways on that road to Zion, as often as our paths may cross. We share the Unity of The Faith.

Pharisees, Lawyers, and John The Baptist

“What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?” Jesus faced the crowd on a windy hillside. ” What did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Indeed! Those who are gorgeously appareled and live in luxury are in kings’ courts. But what did you go out to see?” His words dangled over the silence before dropping into the breeze. “A prophet? Yes! I say to you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written: ‘Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare Your way before You.’ For I say to you, among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist…”

To this scene, Luke, the gospel writer, adds another detail: But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him. Wow. Rejected the will of God for themselves. These were the vocational ministers and Bible scholars of their day. When it came to the will of God, they were voted “Most Likely To Succeed.” How could this happen?

Easily. Actually, it was quite predictable. And still is. John The Baptist was not in the academic community. Had no published papers, no expensive sheepskin, no nuanced and measured statements. And only one message: Repent! Prepare the way of The Lord! Any Pharisee, then or now, would respond the same way. There is no debt like reputation.

Every revival movement in the Church has started the same way. Some simple, uncouth preacher from the backside of nowhere shows up with the fire of God and iron conviction. And the keepers of the faith smirk at his simplicity, making back-handed remarks among themselves about historical context and textual criticism. Of what do they have to repent? Their whole lives are dedicated to the Word of God and His Church and The Truth and keeping up the appearances thereof. And they miss the will of God for themselves.

For themselves, but not for their people. The simple, needy sheep of the flock simply leave the dusty fields of the professionalized shepherd to drink from the clear streams of Divine encounter. They taste and see that The Lord is good, and a new movement is born.

Of course, each new generation sees the need to curb excess by developing a professional clergy, who are above reproach and above repenting. And when the ivory tower is built, they have a wonderful platform from which to view, with scorn, the sheep setting out to greener pastures. Having professed to be wise, they become fools.

I am sobered by the prospect, the real possibility, of this catharsis of the soul in my own life. Maybe, one day, someone much less experienced and qualified than myself will appear out of some wilderness, or some inner-city ghetto, and have a word from God for me. I pray that I have the humility to go down to the water and receive that baptism.