Daniel Rose: The Pastor Next Door

That Time They Fought

Psalm 102:12-28; 2 Kings 8:1-6; Acts 15:36-41

What do you do when conflict arises? This little passage in Acts 15 is always fascinating to me because it gives us a snapshot of the less than perfect leaders in the early church. It turns out that they were as human and normal as we are. They had disagreements and tempers and personalities. (Side note, I’m thankful that the Bible preserves the imperfections because it helps us know and understand these people were just like us.)

Paul and Barnabas disagreed on taking young Mark along on the journey. So, they parted ways. Their disagreement on this man lead them to breaking off their partnership. This doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that the writer of two thirds of the New Testament should do, does it? This was a guy who had visions of the risen Christ. He was a guy who would go on to write, possibly, the greatest passage on love in human history. Yet, here he is unable to continue in relationship with someone who was his mentor and friend over a disagreement.

There’s no moral judgment in the passage about the argument. There’s just a statement of the facts of the matter.

I think one of the things that comes out of this brief story is that it’s OK to agree to disagree. Some times we come to a place where we simply have to say, “We aren’t going to see eye to eye and for the greater good we ought to part ways.”

It also brings to mind a conversation that I’ve a number of times about the nature of forgiveness. I think that when we talk about forgiveness we need to distinguish between forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. Forgiveness is a one way street. It’s what the offended person does so as to not develop bitterness in their own soul. Reconciliation is a two way street when the two people can be present with one another. This is a two way street where the offender acknowledges their hurtful action and the offended is willing to remain in relationship. Restoration is when the hurt has been moved past and the relationship has been returned to a previous or deeper state.

I imagine that Paul and Barnabas forgave one another. Perhaps in their separating there was even reconciliation in that they were not estranged from one another. We see later in the book of Acts a restoration when Mark joins Paul on the journey.

When we enter into conflict the minimum outcome we hope for is forgiveness from our own point of view. When it comes to reconciliation and restoration, that is something that requires two people to move towards one another. We don’t really control the reconciliation and restoration aspect. And sometimes, those are not healthy outcomes (particularly in cases of abuse, restoration is not something that we need to pursue).

This morning I am processing whom I may need to forgive or whom I need to ask forgiveness of.

Gotta say, I’m really enjoying Lincoln Lawyer.

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It’s Monday, the beginning of a new week. What are you looking forward to this week you Sharkigans?

We take a look at what Jesus has to say about the Law and Prophets…

Happy Saturday hooligans! Hope y’all had a good one!

…why do I always forget how pretty Sharkey’s interface is?

So PWA notifications work in Sharkey. How about that?

Introduction

For a long time I was enthralled with “leadership.” I read everything I could on leadership. It was one of those intellectual itches that needed to be scratched. During this season of my life I was leading a team of people with a large parachurch organization and I found much of it to be helpful.

In the midst of that time I was also a member of a church where the pastor, who would become my mentor, was decidedly not pursuing the kinds of leadership stuff that I was. There was a cognitive dissonance that created deep frustration. Didn't he know that if would leverage the leadership strategies that I was learning about that he could grow the church faster and more efficiently?

When I became a pastor in a local church I participated in the research for another pastor who was doing his doctoral work in leadership. As we worked through the calls and discussions I grew more and more frustrated as it became clearer to me that the kind of leadership that we were seeing more in the church was rooted in the gospel.

What was going on?

Pastor as CEO

The consumerism of the American church necessitated that the pastor become a CEO concerned only with building their own platform so as to grow the numbers of people in the church.

There was a line in a leadership book that still haunts me. I'm paraphrasing but it went something like this: It said that the pastor was God's man leading the congregation toward the vision that God had instilled. Once the pastor knew God's vision then it was the pastor's responsibility to shepherd the sheep. Any sheep that disagreed with the pastor's vision was really a wolf. And you know what shepherds do to wolves? They shoot them.

We have bought into the idea that the church is a business. And yes, I'm using the word “bought” intentionally. We have turned what is to be the gathering of the family of God into big business. The main success criteria for most churches is bucks, butts, and buildings. The three “Bs”.

In a large number of churches around the country the conversations amongst leadership teams boil down to those three success criteria. How do we get more people to get more money to make a better building to get more people... and so the cycle goes.

Do we as pastors religiously coat everything? Absolutely. I don't think there's a single pastor that would say that they are focused on the 3Bs. We would all say that what matters to us is people hearing and responding to the gospel of Jesus. Every single one of us would say that we want people to grow in their faith.

Sadly, in practice for many of us we have lost the plot.

When the leadership of the church goes corporate and the focus becomes “growing the church (by the 3Bs)” then you end up with the same kinds of things that happen in the corporate world. Pastors become insulated from the congregation. They get placed on a pedestal. Issues within the church get covered up, handled, and swept away because you can't have anything hurt the “momentum.”

Power becomes the currency of the leaders. Spiritual abuse begins to run rampant. Members of the church are nothing more than customers. Political games get played. People get used for the sake of the “vision.”

We have bought so deeply into the “leadership” cult of the secular business world that in many of our fastest growing churches you could strip away the Jesus aspects most wouldn't even notice.

Conclusion

Is it any surprise that when people see behind the curtain of the leadership of many churches that they walk away from the faith? I don't think so. These men and women that they thought were pursuing God are merely pursuing their own power and glory. The people that they thought were humble servants are actually power hungry control freaks. No, we shouldn't be surprised.

We must disentangle the faith from this corporatism.

What if we pastors instead of being CEOs simply sought to love well, being servants of those entrusted to us, and were simply present? What if we were actually open and authentic with those in our care? What if instead of seeking deep relationships outside the congregation we pursued them inside? What if we were simply content with caring for those in our immediate neighborhood not worrying about “growing the church (3Bs)”? What if we simply sought to model Jesus self-sacrificial love?

What if?

Discuss...

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Introduction

It was the summer of 1998 and I was raising support at the beginning of my time on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. I was in the car on my way to a church gathering with a potential donor. He was going to be connecting me with a number of people from his church at this gathering. During our hour drive across Metro Detroit he shared with me his take on the future of the church in America. It went something like this...

The future of the church is the mega-church. The small neighborhood churches are just not going to be able to compete. Mega churches have the means by which to give the people what they want. We have plans at our church to offer so many different things that people will be able to hang out at the church all the time. We are planning a recreation complex, a coffee shop, even a restaurant! Everything we do is to meet the wants of folks from our community. Small churches just don't have the resources. They are going to lose and eventually, every town will have one or two mega churches. Our resources will allow us to have dynamic worship experiences and we will be able to bring in the most dynamic speakers. Our band is planning on publishing and selling CD soon too. The production value that we put into our worship services is second to none. Truly, if someone can't find what they are looking for here it's because they aren't really trying.

The conversation lasted an hour or so, but this was the basic gist. (Let me be very clear, the issues of consumerism and the critiques following are as prevalent in small churches as they are in mega-churches.)

When I was on staff with Cru at Illinois State I remember a student from Chicago who attended a famous mega-church in the suburbs came to one of our weekly meetings. I was excited to talk with him because he was a committed Christian and I thought that it would be great to have him involved so he could grow in his faith. He informed that he would not be coming back. Why? The production value of the weekly meeting isn't good enough. I just didn't compare to church back home. None of the campus ministries did and none of the churches in this podunk town had good ones either.

Conversations with so many people over the years about a church didn't “feed me” or didn't offer a particular program that I wanted or how the coffee was sub par. These things and so many lead to “church shopping.”

The American Christian church has become driven by consumerism.

How do we become bigger and bigger? How do we get more people? What do we need to do grow faster and faster? What will it take to attract more people?

Conversely those being shaped by this kind of church ask a different set of questions. What does this church offer me? Does this church meet my needs and wants? Does this church agree with me? Does this church feed me?

Consumerism

Consumerism is defined as, “the protection or promotion of the interests of consumers.”

When we think about the post World War 2 American experience it seems to me that consumerism is part and parcel of that experience.

I was watching 1923, the prequel to the show Yellowstone, the other night. The Dutton family had gone into the town of Bozeman, Montana. While they were walking around downtown they happened upon a salesman for electronic appliances. He was selling washing machines and a variety of other electronic conveniences. There was a great line in that scene that really struck me, “Sir, if we buy this stuff from you we begin working for you and not ourselvs.”

What a succinct illustration of the problem of consumerism.

Our whole society has been touched by it.

I am not sure that there are very many places that we go where we aren't consumers.

Consuming, that is something we are good at. Consider the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday. It is a day when America consumes. We buy all the things, whether we need them or not.

When I consume food do you know what happens? My plate is empty. It's gone. Eventually, I will again get hungry. I won't be able to eat that same food. It's gone. I need new food. So I buy more. Food is of course a necessity. But it simply illustrates the point.

When Consumerism Comes to Church

The Church ought to be a place where we do not consume. When we read our Scriptures we see that worship is offered, it is given, it is not about “me.” At the very least once a week we should have this counter-cultural moment where our attnetion is focused on something other than the self.

By and large, that's not the case.

Now, we church shop like we are buying a house or some shoes.

Church is all about “me.”

When consumerism comes to church we lose the gospel.

This is part of the reason so many people are becoming fed up with American Christianity. They are rightly seeing it as an empty sham that is nothing more than candy. A Christianity that is consumer driven offers us nothing in the face of the pain and heartache that is life. A Consumeristic Christianity is one rife with hypocrisy lead by power hungry pastors looking to build their own platforms and kingdoms.

As the ancient Scriptures tell us, eventually all will be brought to light.

Consumer driven Christianity would have felt at home with the crowds who at the bread and fish and then chased Jesus around the lake. He chastised them saying that what they wanted was their bellies filled, they didn't want him.

Conclusion

I think in large part this shift began with Charles Finney in the Second Great Awakening. He tweaked the gospel message to be about personal salvation. Billy Graham in the 1950s and beyond made it even more pronounced. The various parachurch ministries also jumped on the personal salvation band wagon.

All of a sudden the gospel was a sales pitch to get individuals saved.

The gospel is not a decision point. It is a proclamation of the work that God has done through Christ in the crucifixion and resurrection. It is a call to follow the narrow way of self-sacrificial love that we demonstrated by Jesus and taught by the earliest followers of the Way in the Scriptures. The gospel is a summons to die to self so as to live free to express faith in love.

The gospel is not something to consume.

No, it is upside down from our American culture.

We have to disentangle our faith from consumerism. Following Jesus for what he can give me will always end up in failure and frustration. Following Jesus because living the way he did with compassion, mercy, and self-sacrificial love will open me up to something beyond myself. When we live this way we discover that there is no us vs them, there is simply “we-all”. If we can pursue this way of Christ contrary to the consumerism of our culture then we will become givers and in our giving we discover that we are cared for.

Discuss...

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We kick off our new series, “ordinary jesus,” with a look at the Beatitudes

Introduction

Every December when it comes time to put up the Christmas decorations I have one job that is harder than the rest. This job makes me feel frustrated and a bit annoyed. The job of disentangling the outdoor lights is no easy task. It requires an engineering degree, patience, and a keen spatial sense. None of which I have. Yet, I persevere and press on toward the goal of disentangling the lights.

When I do, the results are magic! That moment when they come on and the house glows with the warm soft light from the twinkle lights just looks like Christmas. It makes me smile. But, to get to the beauty I had to go through the pain of disentangling.

In the United States of America the Christian faith has become entangled with a myriad of things. When Christian bookstores were everywhere you could go in and see the entanglement with your own two eyes. From Testamints to Christian self-help books to t-shirts to leadership books to Bibles in every flavor imaginable. Yes, this radical faith that subverted the Roman Empire and changed the world has become entangled with an American culture that demands uniformity, convenience, and ease.

More insidious than the entanglement with consumerism is that it has become entangled into a quest for power.

The power to dominate its enemies. The power to control culture. The power to control the government. The power to control religious communities.

For many, the Christian faith in America has become so entangled with one political party that they are almost interchangeable terms.

In recent years many of us have begun to see the ramifications of such an entanglement and have begun the process of disentangling our faith from American-ism. As you pull on the string that seems to be dangling for each of us at different places you begin to see how deep the entanglement goes.

It's like the Christmas lights. Just when you think you have it disentangled, there is a little bit more. One more knot. One more tangle. You have to keep going until the job is finished.

When we begin this process of disentangling our faith there is a temptation to say that there's no right place to end up. That's just not true. The right place to end up is that place that Jesus talked about with the Samaritan woman at the well. The goal is to worship God in spirit and truth. It's not about figuring out which mountain is “right.” No, it's about getting to know this God for whom God is, apart from all that entangles.

As we begin the journey of disentangling what will inevitably happen is that those for whom the entanglement has become their identity will get very angry. Whether their identity is in being “Evangelical,” “Progressive,” “Republican,” “Democrat,” “Pro-life,” “Pro-Choice,” “American,” or any other adjective you can think of, when you begin to disentangle from these secondary identities those for whom they matter more than knowing Christ will feel threatened and may become very upset. This can lead to broken relationships and significant heartache.

Disentangling our faith from secondary identities is not easy, it's not a fad, and it's not new. The story of the Christian faith is the story of disentangling from secondary identities to living in the way of Christ. The story repeats itself over and over and over again. As each new secondary identity raises up, the story starts anew.

This is going to be the first in a series of posts about disentangling our faith from secondary identities in the hopes of moving towards a clearer understanding of what it means to follow in the way of Christ.

My organizing principle can be summarized in Philippians 3:10-11 where Paul of Tarsus wrote, “I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.”

I hope you will come along with me. Over the last twelve years or so, I have seen the good that comes through the painful process of disentangling my faith from “that inferior stuff.” It has opened me up to a deeper love of God and others than I ever thought possible. The pain, the discomfort, the frustration, has all been worth it.

I resonate deeply with what Paul who wrote right after our organizing principle:

“I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.

So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision—you’ll see it yet! Now that we’re on the right track, let’s stay on it.”

Discuss...

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We explore the prophecy of Jeremiah in Matthew 2:13-23.