Rethinking spiritual growth

Tullian Tchividian writes about spiritual growth and does so with great insight....http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tullian/2011/04/13/rethinking-progress/

Marketing vs Mission

On Thursday I blogged about attractional vs incarnational ministry today I want to talk about marketting vs mission.

Many churches try and brand themselves into a niche.They're good at kids ministry or they have great worship or they have some particular aspect of ministry they are good at and they attract people because of that ministry. That is not always a bad thing, but if you win them with music and then your music begins to change or is not quite as sharp as it was, then you lose people. Or if the church down the road offers 'better' worship then the people will move there. Marketing becomes the name of the game.


Think of it like restaurants. We find one that has great burgers and we go there, until a better burger is offered somewhere else. We're fickle and we move to where we get the best deal. But if we know the restaurant owner we stay because the food is good, but also because he offers us things other restaurants can't: that personal relationship, the shared joke, the special corner table and care that cannot be matched.


Our aim is to offer Jesus because Jesus is always the best thing out there, and simply nothing on this earth matches a relationship with him!


I'd encourage you and those you lead to take seriously the call to take Jesus into the world. We ALL are ALWAYS on mission for him. 2 Corinthians 5:20 reminds us "...we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." and the faithful Apostle Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 1:23 "we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles"   


This is true for all Christians, and especially so for us as leaders.


Our God-given calling is not to offer anything else other than Jesus and him crucified. If you miss that, you will miss everything.


KidsChurch is there to offer our children Jesus and nothing more. Whilst we might use other things to help with lessons, create drama or excitement, we don't lose the big picture - its always, only about Jesus and his eternal grace that saves us from death.


In HomeGroups it is great to have debate about election and the end times or whatever other contentious issue is at hand. But if we don't point people to Jesus through the scriptures we've missed the point entirely. You might as well become a cheese and wine club instead of the disciple making team you're called to be.


In our Worship Teams we can sing song about our longing for God, or our devotion to him, but the lyrics that make the biggest impact are the ones that remind us of Jesus eternal love, his unfathomable grace, his perfect justice and his awe-inspiring glory!


Let's never loose the mission focus that the church has had since the very beginning. Our great treasure is Jesus as it is our honour to take Jesus and nothing but Jesus into the world so that knees would bow, tongues confess and hearts believe so that Jesus would be glorified!

Religion vs. The Gospel

Tim Keller is a pastor whom I greatly admire. He is deeply rooted in Jesus, full of Gospel truth and the church he serves in Manhattan, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, are doing some amazing things. Here are a few lines from him that are immensly helpful and need to flavour everything we are and everything we do, this is worth printing out and sticking up somewhere to remind ourselves of the depth of God's love given through Christ:

RELIGION: I obey-therefore I’m accepted.
THE GOSPEL: I’m accepted-therefore I obey.

RELIGION: Motivation is based on fear and insecurity.
THE GOSPEL: Motivation is based on grateful joy.

RELIGION: I obey God in order to get things from God.
THE GOSPEL: I obey God to get to God-to delight and resemble Him.

RELIGION: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or my self, since I believe, like Job’s friends that anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life.
THE GOSPEL: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I struggle but I know all my punishment fell on Jesus and that while he may allow this for my training, he will exercise his Fatherly love within my trial.

RELIGION: When I am criticized I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person’. Threats to that self-image must be destroyed at all costs.
THE GOSPEL: When I am criticized I struggle, but it is not critical for me to think of myself as a ‘good person.’ My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on God’s love for me in Christ. I can take criticism.

RELIGION: My prayer life consists largely of petition and it only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of the environment.
THE GOSPEL: My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration. My main purpose is fellowship with Him.

RELIGION: My self-view swings between two poles. If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel insecure and inadequate. I’m not confident. I feel like a failure.
THE GOSPEL: My self-view is not based on a view of my self as a moral achiever. In Christ I am “simul iustus et peccator”—simultaneously sinful and yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad he had to die for me and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time. Neither swaggering nor sniveling.

RELIGION: My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work. Or how moral I am, and so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral. I disdain and feel superior to ‘the other.’
THE GOSPEL: My identity and self-worth are centered on the one who died for His enemies, who was excluded from the city for me. I am saved by sheer grace. So I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me. Only by grace I am what I am. I’ve no inner need to win arguments.

RELIGION: Since I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols. It may be my talents, my moral record, my personal discipline, my social status, etc. I absolutely have to have them so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, whatever I may say I believe about God.
THE GOSPEL: I have many good things in my life—family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc. But none of these good things are ultimate things to me. None of them are things I absolutely have to have, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness, and despondency they can inflict on me when they are threatened and lost.

- Tim Keller

Attractional vs Incarnational

There are many models to doing ministry and there are many that are very helpful in different contexts. But there are some particular models that are not helpful for long term deep growth in faith in Jesus in his church.

In the movie "Field of Dreams" the lead character Ray hears a voice that says "if you build it they will come" Many ministries are built on that kind of thinking. If we build good programs people will come, if we have flashy worship people will come, we can have coffee shops and all sorts of other distractions and people will come. 

But I believe that the church needs something deeper and more powerful and more world-changing that than that, something more Jesus-full. This Jesus who simply walked amongst the masses and said in Luke 17:21 "...behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” we need to step out of the box of Sunday and take Jesus to every place we might go on our weekly business.

After the 21st of May rapture no show

The Bible is clear that no-one knows when Jesus will come again and the call is always to be ready. But what gets me is how one ignorant person can get so much publicitiy and make the rest of us faithful, scripture reading Christians look foolish.

This poster says it all!

Who sung this?

I found these lyrics the other day:

I was blinded by the devil
Born already ruined
Stone-cold dead
As I stepped out of the womb

By His grace I have been touched
By His word I have been healed
By His hand I have been delivered
By His spirit I Have been sealed.

I've been saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
Saved
And I'm so glad
Yes, I'm so glad
I'm so glad
So glad
I want to thank you, Lord
I just want to thank You Lord
Thank You, Lord.

By his truth I can be upright
By his strength I do endure
By His power I've been lifted
In His love I am secure
He bought me with a price
Freed me from the pit
Full of emptiness and wrath
And the fire that burns in it.

I've been saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
Saved
And I'm so glad
Yes, I'm so glad
I'm so glad
So glad
I want to thank you, Lord
I just want to thank You Lord
Thank You, Lord.
Nobody to rescue me
Nobody would dare
I was going down for the last time
But by His Mercy I've been spared
Not by works
But by faith in Him who called
For so long I've been hindered
For so long I've been stalled.

I've been saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved
Saved
And I'm so glad
Yes, I'm so glad
I'm so glad
So glad
I want to thank you, Lord
I just want to thank You Lord
Thank You, Lord.

What is really fascinating about them is that they were written by Bob Dylan, who turned 70 today, way back when I was just 5 years old. I recall seeing Dylan as a teenager at some music awards for the first time. His singing that night sounded like a Russian 2 stroke motorbike and he seemed to have had something that made him a little less than sober! 

But he is a gifted song writer and based on the lyrics of the song seems to have had a very real encounter with Jesus. What is important is not a 1978 encounter with Jesus, but a constant encounter with Jesus and I pray that Bob Dylan still has the faith he proclaimed way back then.

James reminds us: "The one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing."

May we not be hearers only but doers of God's Word and may we persevere to the end.

Living for God's glory

After Sunday's sermon on worship, here is a really helpful article on Glorifying God from Mars Hill Seattle.

Hell: We can't afford to get it wrong.

Francis Chan makes a great case for taking Hell seriously, especially in light of some of the banter about Rob Bells universalism in his most recent book "Love Wins". Bell claims hell is not a literal place and this undermines much of the Biblical witness and negates Jesus dying on the cross.

Part of Chan's reasoning is our arrogance of making presumptions about how God thinks about these things. It's worth taking a look:

People at Work - Presentation 1 | The Lausanne Global Conversation

During Sunday's sermon I made some comments about how we all can worship Jesus in our work. Regardless of whether we pastor a church or deal with investments or bring up kids. Everything in our lives can be done, and SHOULD be done, for God's glory. The problem is we have a deep divide in our minds between things that are sacred and those that are secular, and the Bible does not paint that kinds of a picture. Jesus needs Christians worshiping in the workplace. Not a bunch of religious, bible bashing weirdos, but a team of committed disciples who will "work as unto the Lord" People who will begin to transform the workplace for Jesus.

At the 2010 Lausanne Conference in Cape Town Michael Greene author of Thank God it's Monday spoke on people at work and it's really worth listening to. Those leading home groups please get this out to your teams!

People at Work - Presentation 1 | The Lausanne Global Conversation

Where Would You Turn? (A Gospel Scenario)

This is a short but pretty helpful article that may equip you to answer a question that we often get asked: what does the Bibile say a Christian is?

Where Would You Turn? (A Gospel Scenario)

And then here is the second part of the post
Where Would You Turn? A Gospel Scenario (Part 2)

It's probably NOT the worship style...

Our denomination us taking strain at points. Many congregations are struggling and many are in decline. Questions are being asked but answered are hard to come by...here is a worthwhile read:
It’s Probably Not the Worship Style

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In a recent article on Churches and preaching John Ortberg quoted a biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who opposed the Nazi regime during WWII and ultimately died in the Flossenberg concentration camp for his faith in Jesus.

Many of his books and letters are still widely read today and of particular note are "The cost of Discipleship" and "Life together"

Bonhoeffer was not interested in creating weird sects of Christ followers that operated on the periphery of society, but rather a church of disciples who really lived as Jesus called us to live.

I thought it was worth re-quoting Ortberg's words for you:

Eric Metaxas's riveting biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is especially challenging in this regard. I found myself wondering, as I read through it—are our churches today producing people like Bonhoeffer? Am I becoming such a person? Am I being co-opted by the temptations of survival and success rather than sacrifice?

Bonhoeffer himself said that what was missing from the church in Nazi Germany was "the day to day reality of dying to self, of following Christ with every ounce of being in every moment, in every part of one's life."

He found that the groups which stressed a call to devotion and commitment tended to be fundamentalist/pietist groups that had pushed away from the best of education and culture in ways that left them in little ghetto-ized sectarian enclaves. But the mainline state church had been co-opted by a larger cultural captivity.

"The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together to do this."

He devoted his life, then eventually sacrificed it, to help the church be the church. Do we ever lead people to a similar sacrifice?

This guy is brilliant

People Do Not Drift Toward Holiness

discussing with some of the people I am training to preach God's word last night we spoke about how we need to preach grace but also living by grace. We need to encourage God's people not to depend on their actions to save them but to act because they are saved. Here is a post by Josh Etter that I found helpful:

"Hard work is not the opposite of grace, it is the result of experiencing grace.

D. A. Carson explains:

People do not drift toward Holiness.

Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
(For the Love of God, Volume 2, paragraphing mine)"

original article is on Desiring God website here:
People Do Not Drift Toward Holiness

Dallas Willard: the Gospel and grace

This is really worth listening to: Dallas Willard makes such clear points!
Here he is on how we often get the gospel wrong:


And here he is on grace:

Church growth and development

I've been in Pretoria all day for a conference on Church growth and development with our denomination. I am part of the committee that is helping the denomination face up to some of the challenges that we face in this day and age with changing cultures, contexts that we've never had to face before and a church culture that is not well equipped to witness to 21st century South Africa.

I've been really excited to hear some of my Zambian colleagues talk about what is happening there. There are gospel centric ministers who are training up people to plant churches. Currently they have 35 evangelists planting churches in Zambia. Another five are almost finished training and by end of next year another 15 will be in circulation, spreading the good news of Jesus. This is in an under resourced country and yet they are miles ahead of many wealthy countries. Wow! Bit by bit they are heading towards having churches in many un churched and underchurched communities that need to have the gospel proclaimed. Lets keep these guys in our prayers.

I was really impressed by these guys love for Jesus, their passion for church planting and the well run systems that they have put in place to make all of this a reality. I pray that our local churches would have this same kind of passion for the gospel of Jesus to be taken into all the world.

And I hope that the average Christian in the average church would learn to have that kind of devotion to Jesus too

Christ and Culture

A discussion last night with our homegroup leaders got me thinking so I thought I might put some of it down in writing, bear with me, I think it might be helpful!

Missiologists are people that study mission and how to make the gospel relevant in the wide variety of cultures and contexts in the world. the look at how to take the gospel into a new culture and how to keep the gospel relevant and yet true to it's biblical heritage.

H Richard Niehbur wrote a book called "Christ and Culture" and as he looked at culture in relation to Jesus he saw 5 models:

Transformation vs Transition

Funny. Two colleagues who operate in different spheres of the church and have (as far as I know) very little contact with each other have both made a point that is really helpful. Over the last month they have both spoken about something so relevant for our congregation that I had not been able to as clearly articulated as both of them did.

When organizations desire change there are two ways to go about it: transition and transformation.

Transition is when we change the systems hoping that it will produce the desired results. So organizations might implement new leadership structures or put in place new processes but that does not change the organization in any really fundamental way. You might say it's a little like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Not really helpful!

Transformation is a deeper change that is apart from the structures (although those changes may be part of it) that is tougher to do but produces genuine long term change in an organization. This would be like convincing the crew of the Titanic that the ship is not actually unsinkable and that perhaps slowing down might be a wise option. Much more helpful, but it takes a lot more effort!

So, how does this apply to the church?