It’s Closing In On Me

Spring time in most of the world is accompanied by a tremendous amount of growth, both literal and symbolic.  Trees grow rampant.  People suffering from seasonal depression begin to see light at the end of the tunnel with more and more sunshine.  Families spend more time outside, basking in the much needed Vitamin D and a new tan.  For the most part, people welcome the spring.

I have a hard time welcoming this season.  The growth, for me, particularly in the South, is too much.  The trees bloom overnight and create an umbrella-like canopy.  The bushes close in on my windows.  The grass in the fields grow taller and taller, leaving all too much room for my imagination to fill in what lies lurking beneath.

I feel claustrophobic during the spring.  Literally and symbolically.

A few weeks ago I learned that I “score” high on the Spiritual Discipline of Simplicity.  I’m a minimalist.  I don’t like a lot of stuff, I don’t like having to manage material good, I don’t like the time and energy wasted on keeping my things in any sort of order.  I know many people who like to put something in every corner of their home.  They make a bare room into a home.  But for those of you that have been to my house, you’ll see how, for me, a bare room represents clarity of mind.

For many, the life of simplicity isn’t given much thought.  Some limit their spending on possessions because of issues of justice, and all the more for those who have been to an impoverished country.  But I’m finding more and more that the less clutter I allow into my life, I am able to draw closer to the mind and Spirit of Christ.  I’m intentional about wanting less.  The desire for more is crippling (1 Tim. 6:6-10).

Throughout the ages, there have been groups of people who take this to the extreme and vow to live a life of poverty, or solitude so as to be single minded.  It is true, simplicity is a virtue.  But I don’t necessarily think that having possessions is bad, or that one can’t draw closer to the mind of Christ while having possessions.

I see the benefit to having an abundance of trees and vegitation around us.  I mean, they sustain the eco system and particularly provide oxygen to all land animals (humans included).  But I guess I still prefer places like the deserts out west or the mile high city where not much grows.  I like being able to see long distances.  Being able to see what’s in front of me.  Being able to know whats around the corner.  And, especially, not having to manage the problem of “too much.”

The Cost of Discipleship… with a new twist!

From time to time, I seem to be hit with a subject from several different angles.  Often it takes a few weeks for me to recognize how they all fit together, but undoubtedly, in this instance, I need help sorting through it all.

My good friend, and pastor, Alan gives out daily devotionals every Christmas as an encouragement to constantly be challenged in our lives.  It always works.  This past year, we were given a book of compilation writings of Aiden Tozer (1897), the “twentieth-century prophet.”  Tozer’s entry for March 23rd reads like this –

Before the judgment seat of Christ my service will be judged not by how much I have done but by how much I could have done.  In God’s sight my giving is measured not by how much I have given but by how much I could have given and how much I had left after I made my gift.  The needs of the world and my total ability to minister to those needs decided the worth of my service.

At the heart of Tozer’s entry is that it really doesn’t matter how much we give, we’ll be judged on how much we could have given and we didn’t.  Or that we’ll be judged at how much we give to things that don’t need to be given to.  Is it possible that we can give so much (time, energy, prayer, creativity, and money) and have it be for all the wrong things, all in the name of Jesus?

This brings me to my next challenging read.  I have to give a preemptive apology to this quote because this article has not been published yet, and therefore I don’t want to spill the beans on its entirety and give the title nor the author’s name away.  You may disagree with my logic, but just note that this quote wasn’t written by me but it is still very reputable in it’s facts.  “WCT” is a very thorough examination of the state of the Church and its annual, worldwide distribution of $270 billion to Christian Causes.  WCT is a book of almost a thousand pages called “World Christian Trends: Interpreting the Annual Christian Mega Census.”  This quote is from an article based on the thousand page WCT book, not from the book itself.

The WCT research reveals that 97% of all worldwide Christian resources (i.e., money earmarked for Christian causes) are used to minister to those who are both wealthy and/or already Christian. In fact, only one third of one percent (three cents of every ten dollars) of the annual $270 billion raised worldwide for all Christian causes goes to reach those who have never heard of Jesus Christ. Many of these are among the more than one billion people who live on less than a dollar a day, who follow false religions such as Islam and Hinduism.   They are the world’s least educated and most malnourished, with the world’s highest infant mortality rate. And yet research shows that they are the most receptive to the Gospel of Jesus Christ—as much as 700 times more receptive than people in some of the world’s wealthiest and most developed nations…  WCT’s research shows that it costs 700 times less in resources to reach this group for Christ, or $2,000 to $3,000 per decision in developing/third world nations–meaning not just a raised hand, but a public profession of faith by baptism. Compare this to the $1.5 million each in the West, $2 million each in Europe up to $3 million it costs to reach each person in Japan.

When I read this, my thoughts were probably similar to that of yours right about now.  On average, it costs $1.5 million to win one single individual to Christ in America!  Now, keep in mind, it’s not that we literally spend $1.5 million on an individual and then suddenly they become a Jesus follower, but when you break down the amount of money that America raises and spends on ministry and you divide that by the number of new confessions/conversions in a year in America, the figures show we spend about $1.5 million to bring that person to faith.  We are spending an overwhelming majority of our money on people who are 1) already Christian and 2) have a whole lot of money already and 3) live in an over Christian-saturated world.

So, bring this back to the Tozer quote.  Is it possible that we as a Church and as individuals are doing a commendable thing by giving as much as we do… but that we are spending it all on stuff that doesn’t make a huge difference in the world?  Is it not that we are going to be held accountable for what we give to, but that we will be held accountable for what we didn’t give to?

At what point are things like multi-million dollar buildings and several thousands of dollars in lights and sound equipment and decoration a problem?  We spend the majority of our money brought in to minister to those who already know Jesus and who don’t need more money poured into them, all in the name of “making disciples”.  This would all be great if the disciple were in turn pouring into other people who are not already believers.

Now, please hear me out.  I know I’m missing something in my logic.  I just need help figuring it out.  I understand that there are needs for a place to congregate – and that takes money.  I understand that it takes money to pour into ministering.  I understand that all the money brought in isn’t for “no purpose at all.”  But I need help sorting through the question, “How much money does it take to raise up a disciple.”

The Dangers of Easter

I came across this article and I found it really interesting.  There are dangers that church’s fall into when it comes to the build up for Easter.  But there’s also a growing reality that these tactics don’t work.  I’m actually quite happy with how we are handling this in challenging the church to build relationships to influence people and not trying to be “showy” and trying to woo the Easter church-gower into coming to our circus.

What are your thoughts…?

This article was written by Bob Hyatt and published here.

As we journey through Lent toward Easter, I want to be mindful of the dangers that surround this season and threaten the soul of a community and the soul of a pastor.

What danger? The temptation to bait and switch.

Every year I need to remind myself that Easter is not a marketing opportunity. The resurrection of the Son of God is not an opportunity to market our programs or build “my” church, even under the guise of concern for lost.

And as I feel the pressure to create a winning, life-changing sermon for those who may only come this one time a year, I especially have to remember: It’s not about me. (Please wait a minute while I repeat that to myself a few times.) Why? Because heaven forbid we should ever do community in such a way that communicates that our main avenue for people coming to Christ is hearing the Gospel preached from the mouth of one person, rather than hearing it preached from the mouths (and lives) of the whole community. If, in your community, more people are becoming Christians on Sunday than during the rest of the week, I think you may have a problem.

Times like Easter and Christmas are dangerous for us because we begin to see them as something different from what they really are for the life of a community. This is where a more robust engagement with the Christian calendar really helps. It focuses our communal life on the events of the life of Christ all year around, and keeps us from seeing “two big outreach event Sundays!” every year in Christmas and Easter.

Yes, a lot of people come to a Sunday service once or twice a year, and they are more likely to come on Easter than just about any other time. And yes, the Holy Spirit is amazing, drawing people to Himself even through our goofy Easter pageants and songs (or our smoke machines and laser shows, if that’s your thing).

The danger in giving in to the impulse to do something radically different, humongously big and special at these times is what we communicate both to our community and those we are inviting to become a part of our community. What we subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) communicate to our people is that their job is to invite people who are not in our churches to come on Easter Sunday morning so that the pastor and the drama team and the worship guy and (possibly) the Holy Spirit can take a whack at them.

I know that’s overstating, but believe me—I’ve been there. And that’s what “event evangelism” and “big” Sundays communicate, I think. Regardless of what we teach about reaching out to others, what we say through our Sunday Show actions communicates that it’s not the job of the average person to introduce people to Jesus. Leave it to the pros with the degrees and the training and the gifts.

In other words, “You get ‘em to church, we’ll get ‘em to Jesus!” How empowering is that for people?

I would much prefer we both explicitly and implicitly communicate a model that includes befriending people; enfolding them into the rhythms of our lives; sharing the highs and lows (and how our faith informs those) with them; and integrating them into home groups, dinner times, and the big and small events of our lives. How natural would it be after all that love and enfolding that they become a part of our community, even before they believe? And when they believe, they believe because they’ve seen and tested the reality of a life of faith, as opposed to simply watching a special Sunday morning service where the band rocks extra hard and the pastor has a few more funny stories than normal.

Easter is dangerous because it’s here that the attractional model reaches its zenith—or maybe its nadir—every year, as thousands of churches try to do “something special” in the hopes that their people will invite others to come and be bait-n-switched into a relationship with Jesus. And we all see what other communities do and are tempted to compete in the misguided effort to keep up.

Yes, I said “bait-n-switch,” because that’s what it is. If we’re not careful, we could end up really disappointing some people. How? By “offering” them less on subsequent visits. Less pizzazz, less oomph. I’d be pretty disappointed if I got Cirque Du Soleil the first time I went to your church and the next week I got Phil and Ted’s Bargain Circus.

I was super impressed to see another church planter dial it down a couple of years ago after hearing about the disappointment of some people who came to Easter services one year and came back the next week to a completely different (and less exciting) show.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying we shouldn’t take advantage of increased visitor attendance and preach the Gospel and hope that God does something amazing in people’s lives. I’m just saying that if your strategy is to wait for someone to wander within range of your homiletical canon and then fire on them in hopes of scoring a hit, or worse yet, doing some cool things in the hopes that they might be lured within range, then I think there’s a better way. Less defined, less able to be controlled by the pastors, less likely to be bragged about at pastor’s conferences or to be written about in a book, but better—people loving people into your community and into relationship with Jesus.

It doesn’t take mailers, banners, lightshows, and lasers every week; just a bunch of loving, welcoming Christ followers. People who genuinely care. People who are seeking relationships with other people and sharing life with them. A competent all-community gathering where things work well, so as not to be a distraction from what God wants to do that morning, sure. But less of a focus on Sunday mornings as the center of community and more of a focus on the spiritually-forming life of the community that revolves around Jesus Himself.

And all of this is vital for us to think through at Easter because I remain convinced that what we win people with, we win them to.