Here’s what our members have shared:

I Am Enough

Eph 2:10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

I take comfort in and am inspired by the fact that God made me just as I am and that when he made me, God had in mind what he created me to do. Therefore, regardless of how I feel about myself and my capabilities, I am enough to do what God has called me to and my service to God is important to him.

Jesus Prays for Me

Rom 8:34b Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

It is always encouraging to know that someone is praying for you, but Paul says that Jesus Christ, who is standing right beside the Father, is interceding for you too. We can’t ask for better prayer support than that! Knowing Jesus prays for me boosts my confidence and ability to persevere.

God Trusts Me

1 Sam 10:6-7 The Spirit of the Lord will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person. Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you.

I am so encouraged by the words “do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you.” All of us working in Christian ministry today have the Spirit within us and have discerned God’s call to ministry one way or another. While I am open to special direction from the Spirit, I am also released by God to use my common sense, my education, and my training and just do whatever I believe is required, knowing that God is with me and trusts me to make good decisions. I can be confident if I am being faithful to my call and to the Lord.

God Is with Me

Heb 13:5 “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

This is my “go to” verse whenever I begin feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, or defeated and it always strengthens my resolve to continue to fulfil my call to ministry. It is a promise given several times in Scripture. Knowing that God is always with me and will not abandon me is the rock of certainty that I stand on. This promise never fails to turn me to God in prayer as I seek his help.

God Is My Partner

Phil 1:6 [Be] confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Like you, God called me to serve him through my work in Christian ministry. His call began the good work he is doing in me and through me, and this verse is a promise that he will not abandon me midway through my call. He will carry me through to the end. My heart is full of joy knowing that I am not on my own; I have God as my partner in fulfilling my call.

Don’t Give Up

Galatians 6:9 So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.

This is the verse that keeps me going when the going gets tough with the ministries I am involved in. No matter what is thrown at us – keep doing good!

Be Strong and Courageous

1 Chron 28:20 Be strong and of good courage, and do it; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God—my God—will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you, until you have finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord.

Encouragement from a 100-Year-Old Pastor

At age 95, Pastor John Richardson told CCCC conference attendees to “Never die until you are dead!” He spoke about perseverance.

For his 100^th birthday, he preached a sermon at Waterloo Pentecostal Assembly on Isaiah 40:30-31 about gaining new strength and not growing weary. Let his inspiring words encourage you to “keep on keeping on.”

At the same service, he also sang a song every one of us would love to be able to sing at the end of our lives, “I Don’t Regret a Mile.” He joined Jesus in heaven not too long after this service.

I knew Pastor John for thirty-one years, co-taught Sunday School with him, and was always inspired by him. Let John inspire you.

The post Encouragement for Leaders appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

It falls to the role of the pastor to bring the congregation back to the main thing: Jesus Christ and his mission for the church. In this post from January 6, 2021, I suggest some ways you can restore peace to your church.

The post The Main Thing appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

There are times in the life of any ministry when the work is just plain hard. Sometimes much harder than anyone ever thought it would be. Ministry can be difficult and wearying. And yet, as the ministry leader it is up to you to rally the troops and lead them forward. What to do? How do you keep your own spirits up so you can inspire everyone else? A previous post has ideas for staying inspired when you have a long uphill road ahead of you to fulfill your mission. Those ideas are good in any scenario. This post, however, has ideas specifically for when the work is very hard and you are getting discouraged.

In Hard Times, Rely on Established Practices

This first strategy for dealing with hard times is to go back to basics. Hopefully, you have already established regular routines and practices that keep you grounded in your faith, vibrant in your relationship with the Lord, and well connected to other people. When you are thrown into a crisis or a prolonged time of tough slogging, these routines and practices are there to support you.

Too often, we try to be the hero and forge through difficult times relying on our own strength. But it is through working with other people that our combined skills, gifts, experiences, and education provide the breakthroughs. You are not designed to do ministry (or life) on your own. This is why God gives people different gifts and roles.

One of the striking things about how Dietrich Bonhoeffer coped with being thrown into a Nazi jail was how his regular observance of the Church year continued in his small cell, giving him a sense of connection with his family and friends on the outside who also observed the Church year. While he was indeed alone in his cell, he knew he was not suffering alone. Even when they could not physically be with him, it comforted and strengthened him to know they were engaged in the same Christian practices at the same time as he was. If just the idea of solidarity had such a powerful effect on Bonhoeffer, how much more of a powerful effect should we experience when people are physically with us and able to help us?

The Practices

Make four practices part of your regular routine so they are available when you especially need them in hard times. If these four aren’t yet part of your routine and you are already in the midst of a very hard time, it’s not too late to turn to them.

1. Pray and discern how God is leading you.
   1. Psalms 13 (when you feel forgotten by God), 69 (when you are in great distress), and 34 (encouragement for when you hope for rescue) are great examples of David’s prayers in hard times. You can pray emotional prayers just like David did. Be real when speaking with God. He’s big enough to hear the raw you and he wants you to be honest in your prayers.
   2. Read my post A Leader’s Intimacy with God for some ideas on building your relationship with God. The most important point of that post in the context of hard times is to remember that the ministry you lead is Christ’s ministry, not yours. Let Jesus carry the ultimate responsibility for your ministry.
   3. I have some posts to help you with discerning God’s voice, a skill that is absolutely essential to successful ministry leadership.
2. Ask for help. Often leaders mistakenly think it’s lonely at the top and they have to bear their troubles and trials on their own. That is absolutely not true! It is only lonely at the top only if you want it to be lonely at the top. There are people who want to help you, but they may not know you want help. They may be too intimidated to offer help. There is no shame in asking for help: it is the wise thing to do and wise people will respect you for asking. Asking for help acknowledges that you are only human. And it shows people you respect them and believe they have what you need. Asking for help lets other parts of the body of Christ contribute what they can to overcome the obstacle. Don’t let pride prevent you from asking for help.
   
   Years ago, I pushed my infant daughter in her stroller on a long and steep walk up out of a deep ravine. Near the end, I suddenly felt I was being pushed ahead and the load became easier. You can see why in the above picture. When my family got behind me to push me up the last part of the hill, what was hard became a lot easier.
3. Connect authentically with peers and others. When you meet, put aside the usual success-focused chatter and get real. People are generally afraid to be the first one to get real, so be the one to take the risk. It’s highly likely that the response will be encouragement and support. I take this risk when I meet ministry leaders and almost every time the conversation suddenly turns to something far deeper than where the conversation started as they open up in response.
4. Remember God’s support. God promises to give wisdom when we ask for it and we know he also equips us for our tasks. But God can also work in people and circumstances around us in ways that only he can do. Ask God to support you. Even though he supports you anyway (he did call you, after all), explicitly asking makes you more aware that God is with you.

Overcome Feelings of Inadequacy

Wondering if you are the right person to lead when faced with a severe challenge is normal. Didn’t we all feel a sudden pang of inadequacy when the COVID-19 pandemic was first declared and we learned how disruptive it would be? I know I did. But thankfully, the Lord God likes to work through people who feel inadequate. God used Moses, Gideon, Esther, and others who felt they didn’t have what it would take to fulfill their missions. After the first pang of inadequacy, I felt God’s comfort and strength as I followed the advice I’m giving in this post.

What should we remember when we feel weak and inadequate? Well, when Paul had a weakness and asked God to take it away, the Lord said to him:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”

2 Corinthians 12:9a

Awareness of a weakness or perceived inadequacy should simply drive you to turn to God for greater awareness of his grace. Remember that God equips everyone he calls with what they need to fulfill their call. Part of that equipping might be the people God placed around you. They share a call to the same mission, but they have different equipping than you have. This is what God did by providing Moses with Aaron. The group of you can then work together on your shared mission and by doing that, the group helps you fulfill your call.

Fight Imposter Syndrome

There is a thought pattern arising from feelings of inadequacy called Imposter Syndrome. You have it when you doubt your skills, talents, or accomplishments and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud.”¹ It can really debilitate you. If you suffer from this, challenge it with this thought: you were called by God who knows you inside out; he knows your weaknesses and yet he still called you. You are not an imposter. You are exactly the person God wanted for what you are doing. Success with your call does not depend on perfection or on you alone. It depends on your obedience to God.

There are also things that only God can do through his Spirit. So don’t try to do his work. Do everything you can and pray for God to do the rest.

Deal with Weariness and Despair

Over time we can become weary and even despair when we look at the enormity of the problems we address through our ministries. I wrote a post that addresses this exact issue. I reread it as I wrote this paragraph and, at least for me, I find it tremendously encouraging.

Contemporary Circumstances

There are two issues that are really challenging right now related to the pandemic and social conditions.

COVID-19 Pandemic Issues

The pandemic has been especially hard on pastors. They have had to deal not only with all the changes to how their churches worship and conduct their programs, but they have done this while enduring the many opposing opinions held by members of their congregations. Their concern is: how will pastors be able to lead their congregations forward in unity once the pandemic is over?

Before going further, I and every other Christian must say a huge "Thank you!" to the pastors who have guided us and helped us stay steady in our faith and Christian life throughout the pandemic. To every one of you I say, "Thank you! Well done."

If this is an issue you are troubled by, please see my post Making Peace in Your Church. Now is the time to provide leadership like never before to help your congregation navigate through and out of the pandemic. Show them how it is done in God’s kingdom.

Something else to think about is just how far we’ve come since March 2020. Who would have thought churches everywhere would be streaming their services? That virtually everyone would get comfortable with video meetings? This past year, you have likely led with more strength than you ever have because you have guided your congregation through all the tumult and disruption. Congratulations! Celebrate what you and your team did. It’s beginning to look like the end of the pandemic is in sight, at least as I write this in the first days of July 2021.

Social Issues

Another issue is troubling, especially for older leaders who have seen the whole world they once knew turned upside down and the pace of upheaval accelerate rapidly in recent years. Like waters rushing through rapids, postmodern thinking has swept us up and carried us swirling down the river into a strange new world without objective truth, the antithesis to everything Christians believe based on God’s own revelation in Scripture. In these tumultuous times, some leaders wonder if they are the ones to take their ministries into a future that looks so contrary to God’s way for humanity.

If this is your concern, it may be helpful to remember that the Church has twice before had to adapt to a complete change in how the world works. The first time was due to the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the second was the decline of feudalism. Both times, the Church ultimately figured out how to adapt and through bursts of creativity recovered from the losses it had suffered in the transitions.

Remember, the Spirit Will Guide Us

We can be confident about our future because Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit precisely to guide us² so we can handle issues like we face today. Take heart that the Holy Spirit continues to breathe new life into the Church each and every day. The end of the Roman Empire resulted in the birth of religious orders that led to renewal in the Church. Today we have multiple movements within the Christian church creatively testing ways forward. It may take time to assess these new ways of being the Church, but the Spirit will help us discern what to do. Be confident. Be patient. Keep giving God your best.

In the End

Just because God called you to ministry does not mean your ministry will be easy. Ministry can be very hard and there is no denying that. But even in the midst of hard times, God provides the people and the equipping you need. And whatever is not provided is what God has left for himself to do.

Let’s not become discouraged in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not become weary. Galatians 6:9

CCCC’s members can discuss this post in The Green.

Key Thought: Knowing God’s perspective changes everything.

The post When Ministry Becomes Hard: Help Is at Hand appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

“A constraint should be regarded as a stimulus for positive change — we can choose to use it as an impetus to explore something new and arrive at a breakthrough.”

If you believe that “God causes all things to work together for good,”¹ then you must be wondering what God is going to do to redeem the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Disruption’s Opportunity

Whatever our thoughts, stances, and opinions are in relation to the pandemic, one thing is clear: it has disrupted all of us. Disruptions are jarring because they are unplanned and usually happen very quickly. Typically, when disruptions affect us, our reaction is to think of them as problems. But their positive side—and yes, they have one—is that they force our attention on to a new reality and create an urgency to do something so that we survive the disruption with good prospects for the future. 

Now is an opportune time to reimagine ministry to meet the challenges of new conditions and take advantage of the opportunities they provide. I believe those opportunities are a gift from God to the church. While the pandemic is a terrible scourge, it is not beyond God’s power to redeem it by bringing some good out of it. We need to open this gift of opportunity and use it! How will you participate with God in drawing out that good to bless others? CCCC members can discuss this post in The Green.

Surviving a disruption requires a mindset that goes beyond incremental changes to how we think about and do our work. There may be some very helpful tweaks to make, and those should be done, but more importantly when in a disruption, we need bold, creative ideas for completely new initiatives that make the most of the possibilities inherent in the disruption. 

Some questions to start a discussion with your team about innovation in your ministry include:

• What new needs have been created by the disruption?
• What other ways to pursue our mission does the disruption make possible that weren’t possible or desirable before?
• How can we make sure we are open to the expansiveness of God’s possibility and will for our ministry in this moment and going forward?

Whether we like it or not, both we and our society will be changed by the disruption of COVID-19. But there is good news in that if we take the initiative and act proactively we can achieve greater mission success because of those changes. 

The choices we make might even bring about changes that are much needed and overdue.

Without minimizing the terribleness of the pandemic, this time of disruption holds an opportunity for churches and Christian ministries to further develop and expand how they work on their missions.

Making the Most of the Opportunity

The current disruption is already benefiting the church in that it has:

• Highlighted more than ever the difference between the church and its buildings,
• Forced us to find new ways to be the church without relying on buildings or large gathered groups, and
• Upset regular routines and practices, making people more open to change than usual.

What we learn from our experience during the pandemic can continue to be used when large gatherings resume. Our new skills and practices can go forward and augment (and in some cases replace) the traditional ways of doing ministry. 

To make the most of the disruption, churches and ministries need to think innovatively about their activities with respect to two time frames: what they can do during the pandemic and what they need to do to prepare for ministry after the pandemic.

During the Pandemic

“Saddleback has never been closed during these past eleven weeks,” Warren says. “On the contrary, we’ve been doing more in our communities than ever before. Our buildings have been closed, but the church is not a building. We are a living, breathing body …we are a people, not a place.”

Rick Warren

A number of churches and ministry leaders have shared how they are creatively responding to the pandemic. Follow the links to be inspired by their stories and then see what ideas your own team can come up with.

• The quote above comes from Rick Warren’s interview about how Saddleback Church is making the most of the pandemic not only to serve but also to evangelize through its members rather than its programs.
• This church transformed an existing program that was no longer needed as it was into a high value program meeting specific pandemic-related community needs. 
• Some churches are thinking about the new possibilities of being a church without walls.  
• Fresh Expressions helps churches build new forms of churches alongside themselves to attract non-church people. Their post discusses how distributed leadership makes possible a distributed church that can minister during the pandemic. It also covers integrating your church into the digital era and listening, loving, and serving your neighbourhood.
• Here are a number of suggestions for engaging and re-engaging people with your church while reaching out to new people with new programs.
• Christ’s Church of the Valley in Phoenix, AZ developed a new mental health program based on text messaging, their website, and telephone and is providing financial assistance to individuals for their first ten counselling sessions.
• A ministry leader offers ten creative ideas to continue effective ministry.
• Here’s a church that turned to the ministries it supports to find ways to help them with their missions. The church is also supporting its local Social Services office.

But don’t just look at what other churches or ministries are doing. For real game-changing ideas, look to see what other industry sectors are doing. We are all in the same boat, having to innovate during the pandemic. Secular charities could have great ideas and so could the retail, manufacturing, hi-tech and other sectors of our economy. Hospitals, for example, improved their patient management system by examining automotive factories. Look for transferable ideas from sectors that are very different from our own. 

For guidance and ideas in developing creativity, please see my post on imagination. 

Preparing for after the Pandemic

During this time of disruption, churches and all other ministries should re-explore their missions and take a deep dive with a fresh perspective into what the words of their mission mean, what success of their mission looks like, and how their mission can be fulfilled. A process for how to do this will be the topic of my next post.

Conclusion

If the church makes the most of God’s gift of opportunity in disruption, it will emerge from this pandemic fresh, reinvigorated, and highly relevant to whatever the new normal turns out to be. 

The post Finding God’s Gift in Disruption appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

I’m sharing selected points of interest from the courses. I look forward to having time to reflect on both the readings and the classes to draw some conclusions, which I will then work into future blog posts.

The Church Always Needs Reform

This course was taught by Father Henry Wansbrough, a Benedictine monk and impressive scholar who has served on papal commissions and was the general editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. He is a great example of a humble man. With his intellect and experience (he worked at Vatican II), his answers to challenging questions were always restrained and reasonable. He also surprised me with opinions that were not what I expected. For instance, he agreed with many of Luther’s critiques. He also modelled receptive ecumenism quite well, which I’ll explain right away.

Receptive Ecumenism

Receptive ecumenism is the willingness to listen to others to see what you might have missed, to correct where needed, to learn from others, and to enrich your faith.

We may not agree with everything the other person asserts, but we should be humble and accept the possibility that we ourselves may not have everything right either. Shouldn’t we want to be as true to Christ as possible? If we can be better Christ-followers by picking the good out of someone else’s ideas, shouldn’t we? For instance, we may be so focussed on one part of our faith that we’ve missed out on another.

Original Sin

The Eastern church has a much more optimistic view of humanity than the Western church. We both see humanity as made in the image of God, but in the East the Fall was more of a stumble than a fall. When toddlers stumble while learning to stand and walk, we know that the stumbling is a natural part of growing up, and we encourage them to try again. We don’t punish them for stumbling. In the same way, the East sees the Fall as humanity’s natural stumble. As another professor once said, Eastern Christians believe the image of God in us is still whole, but is covered in mud. It has been marred, not broken. They have no concept of original sin because Augustine was not read in the East. The Orthodox believe we are still fundamentally good people beneath the dirt. Christ cleans off the mud and restores our goodness.

The Western church has a much more pessimistic view of humanity. The image of God has been broken by the Fall and needs to be made whole again. The Fall was a willful rebellion, not a stumble. Now we are fundamentally bad, born in sin, and under condemnation. Christ rescues us from our badness and makes us new and whole again through his atonement for our sins.

Papal Infallibility

Papal Infallibility was confirmed in 1870 at Vatican I. It has only been invoked twice, but both times it related to doctrines of Mary and both uses had the effect of making rapproachement with the Protestant church more difficult. The two doctrines are:

1. The Immaculate Conception of Mary – 1854, before Vatican I, but the concept of papal infallibility had been around for a long time: This doctrine states that Mary herself was born without sin.
2. The Assumption of Mary – 1950: The doctrine that when Mary died, her physical body was taken to heaven.

To speak infallibly, the pope must explicitly state that he is speaking ex cathedra. Otherwise, he speaks with an authority that should be given both weight and deference. However, and this was surprising, there is no requirement for Roman Catholics to obey him. He can be disobeyed if conscience demands it, but Father Henry says anyone doing so should feel uneasy about it. Disobedience should not be lightly done.

Vatican II

Vatican I was all about power, specifically the pope’s power. Vatican II was quite different. It was all about service. Some of the new thinking that came out of Vatican II includes:

• Bishops are vicars and legates of Christ, not of the pope. The pope has no control over the bishops, and those bishops no longer rule their dioceses; they serve them.
• The church is a Messianic, holy people, a priestly community; not an ecclesial organization.
• Infallibility is no longer at the centre of the papacy; leadership is. So popes since Vatican II have taken more of a global leadership role based on moral suasion. They have travelled extensively and promoted world peace. Pope Francis is focused on pastoral sensitivity and mercy over justice.

Historical Accuracy of the Bible

When Abraham bought the land for a tomb, it says in verse 17 that the purchase included the trees that were on the land. This has apparently puzzled scholars for a long time. Why would the trees be mentioned? Surely they were included with the land!

The reference to trees was considered an unexplainable peculiarity. But then, fairly recently, other land purchase agreements were discovered from that time period and area, and all of them mention that trees are included in the transaction. A small detail shows that the Bible is right!

Evening Lecture by Diarmaid MacCulloch

We had a special evening lecture on the Reformation. Diarmaid MacCulloch was introduced as the world’s foremost Reformation scholar. He said that Medieval Europe (500 to 1500 AD) was an oddity in the history of the world. There was one religion, one leader, one basic political unit, which made for one culture on the continent. This has never happened before or since, anywhere in the world. The Reformation, which created divisions and ultimately a plurality of Protestant streams, simply returned Western Europe to a normal state.

The difference between those who stayed with the Catholic church (now the Roman Catholic church) and those who became Protestant comes down to which aspect of Augustine’s work they put priority on:

1. Those who stayed Catholic followed Augustine’s thought on the church, with an emphasis on obedience.
2. Those who became Protestant followed Augustine’s thought on grace

On ecumenism, MacCulloch said it is good to work together and eliminate hostility between Christians, but it is a waste of time trying to merge organizations.

The demographics for the future of the church are worrisome, but there are many surprising stories throughout Christian history of incredible advances when the future looked bleak. I’ve read elsewhere that in Medieval times the church had been reduced to a rump in Western Europe and seemed doomed, and then it exploded with rapid growth. MacCulloch referenced South Korea and India as modern day examples of explosive growth of Christianity in unexpected territories. Christianity is the religion of the oppressed and has much to offer today’s world.

No faith in religion?

The content of this course doesn’t lend itself to summary reporting. We discussed some very heady topics like ontology, epistemology, and a process to help congregations figure out what their strategies should be. There was also an excellent Bible study on Jesus’ last words and how they reflect the agendas of the Gospel writers. Each of these is way too big to fit into a summary post like this. However, a few points and quips are worth repeating and do stand on their own.

• Whatever the church teaches, the teaching should be reflected in how the church manages the institutions of the church.
• God loves you as you are, and loves you too much to leave you as you are! I’m sure I’ve heard this before, but it is so good and worth repeating.
• An interesting connection between a prayer and a promise. The books of the Hebrew Bible appear in a different order than in ours, and the Hebrew Bible ends with 2 Chronicles. So the Hebrew Bible’s last words are a prayer for the faithful person going into exile: “May the Lord his God be with him.” The last words of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, which was written for a Jewish audience, are “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” The prayer has been answered with a promise!
• We go to church for the sake of the God who is present and the people who aren’t.

This course was about distinguishing faith, which is powerful and liberating, from religion, which is the institutional expression of the church. The conclusion is that religion, how the institutional church operates, needs reform to become more empowering. It must help Christians engage in lay ministry and serve their communities. The church hierarchy should be servants to the laity, in the same way as Vatican II changed the focus of bishops from ruling to serving.

Next Week

I’ll be taking two courses on Christian Faith and Modern Thought, and C S Lewis and the Christian Imagination. I’ll post as I can.

The post Update #3 from Oxford University appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Here are some highlights from today for the two courses.

The Church Always Needs Reform

In the morning class, we covered the Council of Trent, which was the Roman Catholic response to the Reformers. I’ll share two points that are relevant to the relationship between church and society in our time.

We Need Theologians!

The Council recognized that people did not know the Bible because the priests were not trained to preach the Bible. Many did not know Latin and could not even understand the words they recited of the Mass. Because the people were not allowed to read the Bible, they got their theology from the gnostic gospels and other non-canonical books and tracts. These had lurid details of Purgatory that made people eager to pay for Indulgences and Masses for the dead. The lesson for us is that if parishioners are not getting their biblical-theological knowledge from their church, they will get it from somewhere, and the quality of what they get could be anything from very good to terrible!

The Council responded by creating many seminaries to train the clergy. It recognized that the job of theologians is to make the Bible intelligible to the church.

There are lots of passages even in the Bible that could be misunderstood from a simplistic reading. For example, when Jesus says to cut off your hand, should you? How do people know how to properly read and apply the Bible? How do we help Christians move from their first experience of faith in Christ to a mature, nuanced, understanding of what Christian faith is all about? How can we help them get an accurate picture of who God is? This is a task that theologians can help us with.

A good example of a theologian working to improve biblical and theological literacy among the laity is the “For everyone” series of books put out by theologian Tom Wright (a.k.a. N.T. Wright). Advent for Everyone and Matthew for Everyone are just two of the many books in this series. Few will read his Paul and the Faithfulness of God at 1,700 pages, but anyone can read the accessible books in the Paul for Everyone series, which are about 175 pages each. Small group studies are very helpful too.

Don’t Drag Your Heels!

Cardinal Cajetan extended an olive branch early on to the Reformers with three proposals:

1. The Communion cup would be given to the laity, not just the priest;
2. Clergy would be allowed to marry; and
3. Reformers could informally accept church doctrine—in other words, they would not have to say they were wrong, just that they believed as the church believed.

Unfortunately, the Council rejected the Communion cup proposal because it would mean admitting that the church had made a mistake in the past, and they rejected married clergy because it was “inopportune at this time.” The olive branch died on the vine!

I would hope that if the Evangelical church were in a similar position, we would not be afraid of admitting a mistake but would do the right thing without delay.

No Faith in Religion?

In the afternoon class we explored faith and religion.

Blaming Religion for Evil

When secular people blame everyone in a religion for any evil acts carried out in the name of that religion, we usually say that our faith was hijacked by insincere people with ulterior motives such as politics or greed. Sincere Christians of real faith would not do those bad things.

This may be true, but secular people don’t distinguish between religion and faith. And that defense doesn’t account for times when whole populations of Christians get carried away, for example, with a political agenda, and become vulnerable to being hijacked by someone running for office.

Responsible Christian leaders must ask the really hard question, which is, Why is religion so vulnerable to hijacking? Every pastor should take on the job of ‘street-proofing’ their church members. They should be biblically and theologically literate enough that they can assess for themselves whether this or that appeal for their loyalty truly represents authentic Christian faith.

Faith and Religion Defined

Faith is the disposition of the mind and will to entrust oneself and one’s interests to the reality, reliability, and benevolence of the Living God.

Religion is the formalization of faith with doctrine, discipline, creeds, organizational structures, sacred sites and symbols, etc.

The professor noted that the freedom which is inherent in faith is not typically experienced in religion. However, some structure (religion) is required if we are to express our faith in community. So one is not good and the other bad, we just want the right mixture—lots of faith, and just enough religion to hold our communities together.

A Great Story

We heard the story of Thomas Cooper, an Englishman born in 1805. He left the Christian church for all the same reasons that Richard Dawkins outlines in his book The God Delusion. It appears Dawkins has nothing new to say against Christianity but is merely repeating arguments from a century before!

Anyhow, Cooper became a leading speaker and author promoting atheism. He hooked up with about twenty other leading atheists and they formed the Organized Society of Atheists, which had members both in England and in America.

But that’s not the end of the story. The best part is that not only Cooper, but every other member of the Society, eventually reconverted to Christianity!! Cooper became a Baptist minister and pastored a church in Lincoln, England. In the late 1880s, the church honoured Cooper by changing its name to Thomas Cooper Memorial Baptist Church, known as tcm today.

Why did every atheist in the group return to Christian faith? Timothy Larson, in his book Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England says there were five main reasons:

1. They experienced skepticism as entirely negative. It had nothing positive to offer them. They found it shallow and unfulfilling.
2. Morally, they were running on the fumes of the morality they had acquired from their previous Christian faith. On its own, they saw that skepticism provided no moral direction.
3. They became skeptics because of their commitment to reason as the sole source of knowledge, as opposed to revelation. But they came to realize that humanity has other sources of knowledge beyond reason, including instinct, feelings, experience, etc. and this opened up the possibility of a world beyond the physical realm.
4. They discovered that skeptics had a far too simplistic view of Scripture and read it too literally and without nuance. When they gave it serious study, they discovered the Bible wasn’t as bad as they thought it was.
5. Throughout their skepticism, they had retained great respect for the man, Jesus, and ended up returning to him in his fullness as Jesus Christ.

While they were skeptics, everyone said how intelligent, wise, and educated they were. When they returned to Christianity, those same people couldn’t now claim that they were ignorant, foolish, and unthinking, the usual charges thrown at Christians!

Perhaps these same five reasons could appeal to skeptics today. I have not studied them enough to know, but I suspect they would still be helpful arguments. How could you make use of this knowledge in preaching to or relating with those who do not yet know Christ?

The post At Christ Church: I Heard a Great Story Today! appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

This Week

• The Church Always Needs Reform
• No Faith in Religion?

Next Week

• Christian Faith and Modern Thought: Are they incompatible?
• C.S. Lewis and the Christian Imagination.

Reformations

Since this is the 500th anniversary of Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door, the beginning of THE Reformation, the Summer School theme is Reformation: Reform and Renewal in Christian Life and Experience. There have been many reformations in the church over the millennia, and the question is, Are we in need of another reformation?

This is a timely question, and the opportunity to study up on how the church has historically dealt with upheavals of various types might be instructive for us today. How has the church decided what to hold fast to, and what is cultural and can change or adapt?

Monday was the first day of classes and I’ll just give some key ideas and impressions. Of course, these are provisional ideas because they will all be developed over the next four days.

The Church Always Needs Reform

Today we concentrated on the first three years of the Reformation: 1517-1520. All of the major issues that the Reformers had with the Catholic church were on the table by the end of this short period. Here are some interesting points from the lecture:

• Pope Francis said in a 2016 homily that there were two good things that came out of the Reformation:¹
  1. “With gratitude we acknowledge that the Reformation helped give greater centrality to sacred scripture in the (Catholic) Church’s life.”
  2. “With the concept “by grace alone”, he [Luther] reminds us that God always takes the initiative, prior to any human response.”
• The Catholic Church’s response to Luther was way too long-delayed to have any hope of healing the relationship with the Reformers. They waited 28 years before holding a council to address the issues, and then the Council of Trent took another 18 years to decide what the response should be! Forty-six years is a long time to formulate a response to a crisis! By then the horse was out of the barn and there was no returning. This made me think of the need for the church today to respond quickly to the issues of our times. If we don’t respond in good time, then the world will just pass us by. And when we do finally respond, it will be too late.
• The Roman Catholic church did make a surprising number of the corrections Luther had called for.
• Incidentally, it was from the time of the Reformation that the Catholic church became known as the Roman Catholic church, a far more accurate description of what it really is than just Catholic alone.

No Faith in Religion?

This course is promoting faith while critically assessing religion (the institutional structures of the church). It was heavily philosophical today, and I’ve never taken a philosophy course, so this is all heady stuff for me.

The whole lecture boiled down to a couple of key points:

1. Plato and his student Aristotle disagree with one another. The dichotomies between them have never been resolved, leaving everyone frustrated. Dominicans, such as Thomas Aquinas, follow one, and Augustinians, such as Martin Luther, follow the other. And that’s why Luther disagrees with Aquinas. The question is, Can we live with the tension between different philosophies without having to synthesize them?
2. I wondered why philosophy would be an issue at all when discussing theology. So I asked, “Given that the Bible is God’s self-revelation and that philosophy is humanity’s own thinking, why should questions about God and his nature be subject to the approval of human philosophy?” Some theologians reject Biblical-theological insights to God because they don’t fit within human philosophical concepts. The answer was that there are two ways that the Bible and philosophy interact, and to me these are extremely important because I think they explain the difference between Mainline (liberal) and  Evangelical (conservative) Protestants:
   • Philosophical Theology starts with theological reflection and then uses philosophical concepts as a servant to theology to help explain it. In essence, Biblical theology rules.
   • Theological philosophy does the opposite. Biblical theology is tested against philosophy and when the two are incompatible, philosophy rules.
   • As I read the four textbooks for this course, I had a major “Aha!” Conservative Protestants use Philosophical theology while liberal Protestants use Theological philosophy.
   • A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I wonder what a real philosopher would make of my little, but for me anyways, significant insight!
3. René Descartes messed everything up with his “Cogito, ergo sum” idea. Everything we experience in society today can be traced back to these three words. What “I think, therefore I am” means is that the only truth there is, is inside us. There is no objective truth ‘out there’. You can have your truth, and I’ll have mine, and they’re both equally valid even if they cannot both be objectively true! To me, Descartes’ thinking can have bizarre implications. Here’s an example: In the class, there was a projector on the table, and eighteen people in the classroom. How many projectors are there? This is not a joke! Descartes would say there are eighteen projectors because we all see the projector differently, each from our own perspective. The ‘imp’ in me thought, “Okay then, I’ll just get up and take my projector out of the room and leave the other seventeen projectors for them to use! Then we’ll see how many projectors there really are!” Fortunately, the wiser person in me did not say any of that out loud! But back to serious business. Subjectivism and individualism are the natural consequences of Descartes’ philosophy. The professor stated that we need to transcend Descartes, but that no thinker has yet toppled him. There needs to be a better way to think, he says, that draws us back into community. However, there is no quick fix to the way society thinks today. If Descartes is ever overcome, it will be a long time before society is transformed once again.

So there’s some food for thought for you. Hope you enjoy ruminating on it.

The post Monday at Christ Church, University of Oxford appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

A denominational leader was on the road promoting the denomination’s recipe for flourishing churches. Although I do not pastor a church, when I heard about his presentations I took the opportunity to sit in on one. He was quite passionate about what needed to happen and he observed that while some pastors were really doing it and their churches were flourishing, there were others who didn’t get it and their churches just existed.

During his presentation he said he wished he had enough money to be able to say to some of the pastors, “Look, if you’re not going to do anything with your church, please retire early and I’ll make up the difference between your pension income and your salary until you reach retirement age. Just give us back your church so we can do something with it!“

The church needs courageous leaders. By courageous, I mean leaders who are willing to risk their jobs by saying what really needs to be said to their own communities. We need leaders who understand the times, discern God’s direction, and then who are willing to stand up to any resistance to change in order to make the church or agency what God really wants it to be.

Change Demands Courage

We need courageous leaders now because our times demand courageous leaders!

• Our context has changed.
• We are a minority in our society.
• We differ from society over the relative priority of various values.

The church today is gradually waking up to the fact that “That was then, and this is now.” The world around us has changed, and the church must learn how to be the church in a different set of circumstances. That requires change.

The problem is that people tend to grow comfortable with the way things are and not want anything different. Resistance to change makes a ministry’s default future a continuation of the status quo. It will slowly fossilize. And someday, if nothing changes, that ministry will be no more.

Unfortunately, the group that wants no change is usually quite vocal and powerful. Typically they are the people who created and financed the current status quo. They may still be among your major donors and on your board. They are people who leaders tiptoe around. But of course leaders, for the sake of the mission and future of the ministry, must challenge resistance to change wherever they find it. Courageous leaders know that leadership is all about guiding people through change.

It takes courage to unsettle people. It takes courage to disrupt the routine. It takes courage to stop doing something that is successful now, in order to start doing something that is more vital for future success. It takes courage to do what’s right even when it is not popular.

Three helpful books for leading people through change are:

1. Leading Change
2. The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World.
3. Who Stole My Church?

Becoming a Courageous Leader

A number of leadership models will help people become courageous leaders.

The Servant Leader

If leaders are reluctant to challenge people who are stuck to grow and become all that God wants them to be, then the servant leadership model reminds us that “a servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong.”¹

This may mean that sometimes leaders see what people truly need for their own good even when they don’t see it themselves. John F. Kennedy wrote about this from a politician’s perspective:

The voters selected us, in short, because they had confidence in our judgement and our ability to exercise that judgement from a position where we could determine what were their own best interests, as part of the nation’s interests. This may mean that we must on occasion lead, inform, correct, and sometimes even ignore constituent opinion, if we are to exercise fully that judgment for which we were elected.²

Leading like this means that there will be times when you have to go through “short-term pain for long-term gain.” That takes courage!

The Steward Leader

Stewardship is often thought as preserving the past so it can be passed on. This is stewardship of the past. Christian stewardship of the past means that we steward our faith.

We are also stewards of the present. This stewardship is about accountability for what we are doing right now, for how we are currently using the resources and opportunities which God has already provided for us. This is stewardship of our organizations.

And then there is stewardship of the future. This is about investing today so our ministries can thrive tomorrow. It is about networking, exploring, and searching, looking out for new, creative, fresh ways of pursuing our mission over the next several years. It is about equipping our organizations and people for greater service in the future. It is about building healthy organizations that will be sustainable and effective for another generation after our time in leadership has passed. This is stewardship of our mission.

There is one thing that faithful stewards cannot steward. Ministry leaders cannot steward a certain way of doing things. That would be to steward the means. And if you believe you are to steward the means, then you have lost sight of the ends. As I wrote in my book, The Church At Work,

Luke says his gospel concerns only what Jesus “began to do and teach,” and yet his gospel and its sequel, Acts, show that Jesus’ time on earth came to an end shortly after the close of the gospel when he ascended into heaven. So how does Jesus continue to do and teach? Luke makes it clear that Jesus continues to work through the Holy Spirit….The Hebrew and Greek words for the Holy Spirit mean “invisibility, movement, power and life” and convey the idea of God in action. We live in an ever-changing world, so when we know that the creative and dynamic Spirit of God is actively guiding the church to meet new challenges, we should expect change and development to be the result.

Change may be as uncomfortable for the leader as it is for the group. It may take you out of your comfort zone to do something you haven’t done before. But because the world continues to change, you must steward the faith, the ministry, and the mission if you want to fulfill your call to ministry. It takes courage to really steward a ministry!

The Prophetic Leader

Prophetic leadership is both corrective and visionary. Its focus is on discerning God’s perspective and conveying it to the people you lead.

If anyone really wants to be a prophet, they should first read Abraham Heschel’s masterpiece, The Prophets. This outstanding analysis of Israel’s prophets shows just how painful it can be to be used by God as a prophet. It meant a life of suffering, of danger, of always being counter-cultural in some way. It was a lonely life to be a prophet and it was hard for them to be so misunderstood by those in power.

Being called as a prophet is one of the most difficult challenges God can call us to. And yet he does, because he must, because we so often get off track from where he wants us to be. This is why I wrote up above that the church needs “leaders who are willing to risk their jobs by saying what really needs to be said to their own communities.” This is the hard part of being the leader!

When churches stop challenging their members to lean in to God and grow in Christ and simply provide comfortable cocooning for them, a prophet needs to speak correction. When any ministry becomes more about ‘me’ than about others or about God, God will send a prophet to bring them back to his purpose for the ministry.

Ministry leaders, don’t wait for others to be sent by God to bring correction and realignment. Allow God to use you as a prophet and speak correction to your own community.

In addition to correction, God sends prophets to stir up vision. Prophetic leaders interpret the times and help Christians know how to think about them. The instinct in response to the many changes in society we’ve experienced is fight or flight—attack or retreat. Neither are options! We are called to engage the world and to advance the church’s mission, so we go forward. But we don’t need to go forward into battle. Rather, we go forward in service and engagement. Leaders need to show their people how to do this. This will take courage because they will be sending their people out to be up close with the messiness of the world that God so loves, and they will likely be very uncomfortable—at least at first. But for the sake of the mission, you must do that.

Courageous leaders can find help interpreting the times by reading Christian thought-leaders.

Leading Courageously

To lead courageously, you must be very sure of what God wants you to do (discernment). You must lead with confidence (faith). And you must lead with inner strength in order to persevere (reliance on God’s power). Let’s take a quick look at those three requirements.

Discernment

As Christian leaders, we are not left to our own devices to figure out what is needed. We have God’s mind to help us discern the way forward. Therefore:

1. We need to develop our ability to confidently use Christian spiritual discernment practices.
2. We can test and leverage our individual discernment of God’s direction by practising communal discernment with others in the body of Christ.
3. We can be willing to take risks and bear the consequences knowing that if we have done our best with the previous two steps, God will see us through if we have been faithful to him.

A great example is Paul’s decision to enter Europe. As I wrote in my book The Church At Work, Paul started his second missionary trip intending to revisit the churches from his first missionary trip, but Paul discerns that the Holy Spirit is frustrating that purpose (step 1). One night, Paul has a vision and he tests it with the rest of his team (step 2). They agree, and off they go to Europe (step 3).

Faith

The kind of faith that Christian ministry  leaders need has these aspects:

1. They know that they were called by God to do what they are doing. Therefore they have faith that God is with them through all the challenges (and the easy times too!).
2. They know that the ministry is God’s ministry, not theirs. So they have faith that God will care for his ministry and provide them with everything they need to lead it to accomplish his purpose for it.
3. They know that God is still actively at work, and so they have faith that if they ask God, he will answer.

Therefore, with bold confidence, knowing that we have done everything we can to be in God’s will and in submission to his leadership, we can lead through all sorts of challenges.

Rely on God’s Strength

Ministry leaders must learn to rely on God’s strength. The day that I think I can lead CCCC in my own strength is the day my effectiveness here will be over. I did nothing to get this job because it was entirely God’s doing (that’s another story), and it was God who provided the wonderful people on the board and staff who are helping me fulfill my call and CCCC’s mission.

Every day I start by acknowledging that I need God’s strength and wisdom to get through another day of leadership. God will provide. As I write this, just yesterday something almost miraculous happened in a meeting with another ministry and I was left in wonder at what God can accomplish when we simply make ourselves available to him!

Rely on God’s strength, not yours.

Conclusion

If you are not willing to be a courageous leader, then when you are done, your tenure in leadership will be marked as one of missed opportunity, of complacency, and of short-sightedness. It will be known as a time of management, but not leadership. A comfortable time, but not a visionary time.

Search the Bible for the word courage, and be encouraged as you read God’s repeated instruction to not be afraid, but to have courage. This is God’s word to his leaders throughout history: Be strong and courageous!

Key thought: Be strong and courageous; be a good steward and lead prophetically!

The post Leadership Courage appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Ulterior Motives?

The most important question though, is: What did Peter recruit these people for? Did he have another, unstated, goal for why he needed to recruit them? Did he have hopes of winning enough people to take over the government some day? Did he want to use the people to change Israel’s culture? No!

Peter preached, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.”¹

Peter’s only concern was for the people themselves. His one goal was to help them live the way God designed them to live, to be in relationship with God and to live with compassion, generosity, commitment to one another, friendship, and community spirit. Peter doesn’t say all this in the recorded part of his sermon, but we know this is what he preached because the immediate response of the people was that they did all these things.² It lines up with how the Ten Commandments tell us to live and it lines up with the entire Old Testament and all its lessons about living God’s way.

And the result of Peter bringing people to Christ is that non-believers looked at the new Christians and found the Christian way of life very appealing, so much so that “the Lord added daily to their numbers those who were being saved.”³

Attractive Actions

Moving forward a few years, we see the church developing its prophetic voice so that it could speak to people about God’s ultimate vision for humanity. They preached about how society could be, but they ‘spoke’ first through their deeds. They committed themselves to social action and cared for Christians and non-Christians alike. My favourite quote from this time period is Emperor Julian’s complaint:

“For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. Teach those of the Hellenic faith to contribute to public service of this sort.”

The church developed a powerful prophetic voice that could not be ignored because individual believers demonstrated, at their own cost, what a better society looks like, giving credibility to the church’s suggestions.

Our One Motive

The key thought for the church to remember today is that Jesus gave the Great Commission to the church, but God gave all of humanity the Creation Mandate, so the church is to help humanity do its job, not do its job for it. Our fundamental role is that of a helper, a servant, an advisor, not a ruler or a judge. We shouldn’t think of ourselves as over anyone else. A holier-than-thou attitude is not appropriate for Christians because we must always remember that “There but for the grace of God go I” We have received God’s unmerited love, and having found a good thing for ourselves, our attitude should not be one of superiority but of letting others share the great gift just as we have. We are co-labourers with the rest of humanity in stewarding this world. We need to help them steward it well.

We can be guided in how to help humanity by looking to Jesus and seeing how he helped us. Jesus came into our world and took on a lowly, humble form to serve humanity from within.

What We Can’t Do

For the church to move forward with God’s blessing, we need to get rid of any lingering spirit of triumphalism, hunger for power, desire to have status, or anything else that takes us away from a spirit of service. Any hurts we have suffered that cause us to want retribution, any harshness in our tone, has to go.

I don’t think these problems are widespread in the church at the organizational level, but I do think the problem is something we have to deal with more frequently at the personal level. I know how much I struggle when I’m with secular people who disparage Christianity. If you regularly step outside our Christian sub-sector, especially if you have contact with the social elites, you know firsthand the negative comments people make about Christians, and particularly evangelicals. My natural tendency would be to respond in an unhelpful way that would make me feel good but do nothing for my Christian witness, and it is only by consciously thinking about the points I’m making in this post that I choose to restrain myself.

We can’t let our own human failings get in the way of presenting others with the Gospel and the Christian way of life. We must present an authentic witness to the Gospel’s power and application in our own lives. We can’t give those who disparage us any excuse to see behaviour that confirms their opinion. Instead, when they encounter us, everything about us should jar them enough to challenge their stereotypes and prejudices.

Christian Service

We can be of service individually acting on our own, or as a group acting through specialized ministries or church programs. But whatever we do, we need to be attractive through our words and our deeds to those who do not yet know Jesus or God’s love.

There are times when confrontation is necessary, and Jesus had those times too, but our signature impression on the public should be one of love and service, showing a better way of life in which everyone can flourish and be all that God intended them to be.

Building Community

This beautiful window at Trinity United Church in Kitchener Ontario depicts Jesus during his ministry, and is a powerful reminder of the place of the church in society. Jesus is by the well, an important central part of community life, welcoming into his presence men, women, and children. He is not aloof, waiting for people to find him and come to him, but he has come to where they are, and is among them, touching a boy and looking directly at a woman and her child, inviting them to come closer. The people are the focus of his attention, and he is the focus of theirs. All eyes are on him, and everyone is drawn to him.

The Challenge

This is the exactly how Christ’s church should be seen today: people in our communities should find us out and about in the community, in the midst of their lives. They should see from what we do, how much we love them and care for them. And when they need help, they should know they can get it from us.

Key idea: The church is a servant to humanity, joyfully and lovingly serving all people

The post What Is Our Goal, Really? appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Evangelicalism reinforced the growing sense of the sovereign power of the individual….Evangelical conversion did not break the will of sinners, but energized and redirected it, giving them a powerful sense of control in their lives. People came out of conversion not with a sense of the incapacity of the human will, but as Christian activists imbued with a strong sense of the power of their own individual will.
Donald Scott in “Evangelicalism as a Social Movement.”

Pastors of evangelical churches, this post is primarily for you (although it has good thoughts for us all). Evangelicals currently have a pretty negative reputation in secular society. It would help our cause if every evangelical engaged with and made positive contributions to society as an openly evangelical Christian so that the public can see the good that we do (Mat 5:16). Do we stand confidently in the public sphere with a strong sense of our own God-given individual power? In the current polarized environment, I wonder.

Are your parishioners looking out church windows anticipating what they’ll do out there? Or are they looking out in relief that they are comfortably ensconced in a safe haven? Have they got the ‘fire in the belly’ that the ancient church had? A great question to consider is: How might we recapture the spirit of the ancient church?

My prayer is that every member of your church will feel strong, bold, powerful, and purposeful and that they will go out and fully engage with their world as evangelical individuals.

What Keeps Us Disengaged from the World

The problem is that many evangelicals do not feel strong, bold, powerful and purposeful. Many of us huddle in our churches and Christian enclaves. If we look out the window at all, it is only to more greatly appreciate the cozy room we have made for ourselves inside or to worry and despair about how great the darkness has become.

Various sources show significant problems in the whole church, and the evangelical wing is not immune. Even where reports show we are doing better than other branches of Christianity, the results are still nowhere near where they should be. Let’s look at several issues and see what pastors can do.

Indicators of Mission Success Are Declining

The biggest issue is the declining engagement by evangelicals with their own faith! The 2013 Canadian Bible Engagement Study found that between 1996 and 2013:

• those who read the Bible daily fell from 9% of the Canadian population to 5%
• those who read it monthly fell from 28% to 14%
• at the same time, weekly church attendance fell from 27% to 16%
• those who strongly believe the Bible is the word of God fell from 35% to 18%¹ and
• although evangelicals read more frequently than other traditions, the percentage of evangelical daily readers dropped by one-third since 1996!²

The Canadian Bible Engagement survey shows that those who identify as Christians fell from 83% to 67% of the population between 1996 and 2013, while another source reports that those who identified as No Religion increased from 12% in 1991 to 24% in 2013.³

We have to admit that we can’t go on as we have. The world is changing ‘out there’  and ‘in here’. If you disconnect from the primary means by which God reveals himself to the world (the Bible) and from the meetings designed to build up your faith (church attendance), your spiritual and missional life can only cool and eventually die.

The Canadian Bible Engagement Study finds that reading the Bible regularly is connected with:

• confidence that the Bible is indeed God’s word to us
  • so preach and teach about its reliability
• conversation about what the Bible says and how it affects the readers’ lives
  • so preach application for today’s world,
  • promote small group discussions (they should read the Bible and talk about what they’re reading, and not just watch videos about the Bible – direct engagement with the Bible is the way to really “own it”),
  • encourage people to share from the Bible as opportunity arises in their personal circles
• community that supports Christian faith.
  • This is a by-product of the first two points, but it highlights that church attendance and reading the Bible are very closely interrelated.
  • Christians should build their own communities of workmates, family, and friends in which they are a spiritual support as needed. One of the ironies of the always on, social media world is that people feel more alone than ever. Someone willing to be a real friend, and not just a virtual friend or casual acquaintance, may be just what they need.

Here’s the report every pastor should read:

Salvation: More than a Ticket to Heaven

Another issue is that some people understand salvation as nothing more than forgiveness of sins and an admission ticket to heaven. Once saved, they’re just putting in time until they die. These Christians squander a lifetime of productive activity that God has in mind for them to do (Eph 2:10) because they bracket out everything between their salvation and death/resurrection.

They do this to themselves because they’ve already done the same with Jesus’ life, jumping directly from Christmas to Easter. They’re the ones who say Jesus was born to die for our sins, which is true enough, but they forget that Jesus was also born to invite people into a newly defined community of God’s people, and to demonstrate how his Father wants us to live in the present time. Their Bible might as well contain only Genesis, Romans, and Revelation!

Remember, a tombstone with two dates separated by a dash tells you nothing about the person’s life. Their life was in the dash. So’s yours, and that dash is very important to God.

When evangelicals treat Jesus’ life and ministry as a dash, we are left with nothing to say or contribute to society aside from the salvation message. Evangelism is our primary mission, yet surely a Christian perspective on the human condition should produce many ideas for improving our world – ideas that secular people could accept as good ideas on their own merit and that would make life a little more like what God intended.

Pastors, be sure to tell the rest of the story. People know what they have been saved from, but do they know what have they been saved for? It’s not just heaven! Help people make the most of their dash. Preach that they have been saved for a purpose here on earth. Fulfilling the Great Commission must lead to fulfilling the Creation Mandate.

It’s Too Hard to Think about All the World’s Problems!

Another reason for not engaging the world is that it’s just a lot easier to ignore it. Reality requires hard work. It’s tempting to say, “I’d rather be thinking about what a nice life I will have in heaven than face the ugly truth that there are abused, starving, victimized people, and also abusive, oppressive, victimizing people, and even people who just don’t care about anyone else. Besides, isn’t God going to blow everything up and start fresh anyway?”

Well, on the latter point, there is significant theological debate about the “end of world” imagery used in Scripture. Regardless, surely no one would argue that we shouldn’t care for our world and alleviate suffering as best we can!

It seems human nature avoids hard thinking. For example, most people avoid thinking about their own death. Who wants to think about their Will, their burial, and life that goes on for others but without them? Well, the fact is, we die. That’s life!

In the same way, it’s hard to think about the world’s problems and how to bring God’s love into situations of misery and suffering. Life is much less complicated when you avoid the issues or blame them on the system, especially when the Bible says this is the way it is (eg., Mat 26:11). But we simply must address them because God has called us to be his people and live for the sake of the world. Avoidance never made anything go away!

Pastors, God saved us so that we could be his agents. Preach about the hard issues and give your congregation a biblical-theological perspective that will help them deal with:

• broken families
• war and terror
• poverty
• addictions
• practices that dehumanize people
• social justice
• harm to the environment
• commerce and the economy
• conflict resolution that avoids power plays

The list of sermon topics is as endless as the issues your parishioners face every day and as the issues reported in the news.

We Can Do Better

Pastors, I’ve laid out what you can do. May God guide you as you work through the suggestions.

Christian agencies, you have an important role because with your specialized knowledge, you can provide resources and thought leadership to our pastors.

And denominations, you can encourage your churches to see a new way of being the church. You can encourage creativity and risk-taking. You can share knowledge and provide thought leadership.

To all ministry leaders, do everything you can so that all believers think of themselves “as Christian activists imbued with a strong sense of the power of their own individual will.

Key Point: The church exists for the sake of the world, so it must address the problems of the world.

The post There’s a Big World Out There! appeared first on CCCC Blogs.