When Bubba Watson won the Masters golf tournament, he made Bubbaugusta history. Commentators gushed about how an ordinary guy, a person who never took a golf lesson, a professional who didn’t have a cadre of coaches around him, proved that an ordinary man can win a major. His improvised hook shot off the pine needles was lauded as Bubba creativity. What carefully trained, meticulously coached, PGA groomed, institutionally produced golfer could even think of such a shot, let alone pull it off?
It’s a new era of ordinary winners. Or, maybe it’s an era of remembering that golf is meant to be played by ordinary people.
Might the same be true of mission?
We’ve come through a generation and a half of carefully trained, meticulously coached, church-system groomed, institutionally produced ecclesiastical professionals. What’s happened to the church? The culture is losing faith in it. The professionals are falling to the wayside in scandals--ala Tiger Woods. The institutional prototype is turning people off. People are leaving the church.
But there are some Bubba’s out there. Ordinary women and men, people both young and old, are getting creative with the Gospel. They’re meeting people where they live. They’re personifying Jesus in their communities. They’re inviting people into making Christ’s difference. They’re looking outward and giving the genuine love and care of Jesus to people around them. They’re meeting in homes, apartments, and coffee shops. They’re sacrificing, starting non-profits, and traveling both near and far because they believe Jesus is the most important person for everyone to know.
And people are coming to faith in Him. Around the world, the actions of ordinary people--of Bubba’s--are making Christianity the fastest growing faith movement on the planet.
Could your life use some Bubba mission? Could your church?
Go for it, Bubba!
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
C & E No More
My daughter commented on Easter that it looked like even the Christmas and Easter attenders weren’t showing up for worship. I looked around and agreed.
Times have changed. I asked a young acquaintance of mine what she was doing for Easter. Church was not in the plan. Their families don’t attend church. It isn’t a part of their lives.
The same is true of a good number of people in our culture, both young and old. The church habit is slipping away.
The big question this presents believers with is: How will people hear about the hope we have in the risen Savior, Jesus?
If Christmas and Easter attenders are dwindling, if overall church attendance is declining, if the attractional, institutional church is losing its appeal, how will the Gospel invade the lives of the hopeless?
This is the question each believer and every church must wrestle with. My thoughts? Here they are:
1. The risen Christ isn’t boring or routine. Christians need to be reminded about this in creative and compelling ways.
2. If the risen Christ is the source of true hope, Christians need to be ready to offer this hope in caring and appropriate ways within everyday relationships and encounters. The church must exert new energy for the formation of every believer as a disciple in the trenches.
3. If the institutional church is no longer the center of the culture’s spiritual quest, the church must deploy to venues that allow believers to speak into the god conversation of the culture. This will require great patience, strategic thinking, courageous action, and some radical retooling of budgets.
4. The church must trust that God really desires all to be saved. As the paradigm of outreach shifts, Christians need to remember that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Lord’s Church. Times and methods may change, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever!
Times have changed. I asked a young acquaintance of mine what she was doing for Easter. Church was not in the plan. Their families don’t attend church. It isn’t a part of their lives.
The same is true of a good number of people in our culture, both young and old. The church habit is slipping away.
The big question this presents believers with is: How will people hear about the hope we have in the risen Savior, Jesus?
If Christmas and Easter attenders are dwindling, if overall church attendance is declining, if the attractional, institutional church is losing its appeal, how will the Gospel invade the lives of the hopeless?
This is the question each believer and every church must wrestle with. My thoughts? Here they are:
1. The risen Christ isn’t boring or routine. Christians need to be reminded about this in creative and compelling ways.
2. If the risen Christ is the source of true hope, Christians need to be ready to offer this hope in caring and appropriate ways within everyday relationships and encounters. The church must exert new energy for the formation of every believer as a disciple in the trenches.
3. If the institutional church is no longer the center of the culture’s spiritual quest, the church must deploy to venues that allow believers to speak into the god conversation of the culture. This will require great patience, strategic thinking, courageous action, and some radical retooling of budgets.
4. The church must trust that God really desires all to be saved. As the paradigm of outreach shifts, Christians need to remember that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Lord’s Church. Times and methods may change, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever!
Monday, February 27, 2012
Ready, Set, Fail!
I was watching an episode of Survivor recently. It’s the reality show that “strands” people on an island and observes them as they survive both physically and socially. At the end of the episode, a young contestant was in tears because she failed during one of the challenges.
Jeff Probst, the host, asked her, “Haven’t you ever failed before?”
She responded, “I never allowed myself to be in a position to fail.”
That statement hit me like a cultural smack upside the head. This is a day and age in which we value the appearance of success. Everyone gets a trophy in pee-wee football. Hardly anyone gets a “C” in school and many students earn over 100% on tests and quizzes. Loads of students are in talented and gifted programs. Failure is not really an option.
With our hyper-consciousness of feeling successful and good, we can become risk-averse. We’re supposed to be good at everything immediately, earn A’s all the time, and show ourselves to be prodigies from the get-go. If something threatens that--like real-world challenges and questions, we may back off from the challenge rather than risk failure.
This anemic, risk-nothing spirit may even infiltrate our service for Christ and His Church. What’s the last ministry failure you’ve had? When is the last time you tried something for Kingdom expansion, but it just didn’t work?
I’m not talking about thoughtlessly lapsing into moral failure or carelessly setting aside sound planning and wasting God’s resources of people, time, and money. I’m talking about taking chances for the Kingdom personally and as a church. Will you risk having someone you care about say “no” over and over again as you invite them to experience Christ? Will you risk trying something new to engage an unreached group in your community? Will you risk changing something to ratchet up your mission impact? Will you put yourself in the position to fail?
The Bible is filled with failure. Even Jesus’ handpicked disciples failed. But with every risk, God was glorified and He worked good in all things for those who loved Him and were called according to His purpose. Let’s not bury the talent God entrusts to us. Let’s put it all on the line and risk failure for the One Who risked it all for us.
Jeff Probst, the host, asked her, “Haven’t you ever failed before?”
She responded, “I never allowed myself to be in a position to fail.”
That statement hit me like a cultural smack upside the head. This is a day and age in which we value the appearance of success. Everyone gets a trophy in pee-wee football. Hardly anyone gets a “C” in school and many students earn over 100% on tests and quizzes. Loads of students are in talented and gifted programs. Failure is not really an option.
With our hyper-consciousness of feeling successful and good, we can become risk-averse. We’re supposed to be good at everything immediately, earn A’s all the time, and show ourselves to be prodigies from the get-go. If something threatens that--like real-world challenges and questions, we may back off from the challenge rather than risk failure.
This anemic, risk-nothing spirit may even infiltrate our service for Christ and His Church. What’s the last ministry failure you’ve had? When is the last time you tried something for Kingdom expansion, but it just didn’t work?
I’m not talking about thoughtlessly lapsing into moral failure or carelessly setting aside sound planning and wasting God’s resources of people, time, and money. I’m talking about taking chances for the Kingdom personally and as a church. Will you risk having someone you care about say “no” over and over again as you invite them to experience Christ? Will you risk trying something new to engage an unreached group in your community? Will you risk changing something to ratchet up your mission impact? Will you put yourself in the position to fail?
The Bible is filled with failure. Even Jesus’ handpicked disciples failed. But with every risk, God was glorified and He worked good in all things for those who loved Him and were called according to His purpose. Let’s not bury the talent God entrusts to us. Let’s put it all on the line and risk failure for the One Who risked it all for us.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
How to Get Into a Relationship
During a recent visit to a seminary, a student raised his hand with a question as we discussed the relational focus of ethnic culture and ministry. He asked, “How do you get into a relationship?”
I suspect that many people of our generation are asking the same question. Somehow, as life has become overloaded, techno-laden, material-focused, and self-centered, we’ve become relationally challenged. We know about things and we know about knowledge, but we have no clue about people--and what it is to be one.
How do you get into a relationship?
1. Be present. Instead of always doing, be aware and available where you’re at.
2. Watch and listen. You’ll be surprised how many people need to be heard and need someone to value them.
3. Learn how you can bless others. Instead of being all about you, find out how you can bless the people you encounter.
4. Take time. A relationship means you’re committing to the long haul. Don’t give up on the people God places in your life. Time is grace--it is always on God’s side.
What if Christians and churches focused on lasting relationships instead of the latest fad programs? What if Christians and churches were patient in the Word, in prayer, and with people to see how God might effect Kingdom growth?
I suspect that many people of our generation are asking the same question. Somehow, as life has become overloaded, techno-laden, material-focused, and self-centered, we’ve become relationally challenged. We know about things and we know about knowledge, but we have no clue about people--and what it is to be one.
How do you get into a relationship?
1. Be present. Instead of always doing, be aware and available where you’re at.
2. Watch and listen. You’ll be surprised how many people need to be heard and need someone to value them.
3. Learn how you can bless others. Instead of being all about you, find out how you can bless the people you encounter.
4. Take time. A relationship means you’re committing to the long haul. Don’t give up on the people God places in your life. Time is grace--it is always on God’s side.
What if Christians and churches focused on lasting relationships instead of the latest fad programs? What if Christians and churches were patient in the Word, in prayer, and with people to see how God might effect Kingdom growth?
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Fad Resistance
My daughter was telling me the other day how she was sick of Tim Tebow. It wasn’t him, so much, but the constant media blitz about him. For a while he was counter-cultural, the hope of the grass roots and the outsider. Now he was mainstream, overplayed, imitated, the spokesperson for companies trying to make a profit.
This is what happens when something becomes too common, too hyped, too much a part of the established cultural flow. People start to resist. New and alternative movements cause a buzz of excitement. A mainstream fad causes resistance.
The tendency to bash the church is moving into fad territory. I watched the popular YouTube video “Jesus>Religion.” While it reflects today’s prevalent anti-institutionalism and this generation’s movement toward deconstruction of established systems, its slick and commercial appearance, along with a its faux alternative tone, show that church/religion-bashing has gone mainstream. In other words, the church is trying to lure people in by bashing itself. This has become a fad. And people see through fads. They don’t like them. They resist them.
So, as the church resists itself so people who really resist it will be attracted, the resistors of the church will resist the resisting. Got that?
What’s the answer? Ephesians 3:10 says that God’s intent was that “now, through the church, [His] manifold wisdom should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.” The answer is for the church to be the church. Not to resist itself or bash itself or destroy itself, but to BE itself. That, because of the very nature of the church, IS alternative. The answer is to go back to the Savior Jesus who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, but shakes every generation from sin and complacency with His counter-cultural Word.
A church that has strayed from being the church need not jump on the bandwagon of bashing the church. There is no need to try to find self-righteousness in self-flagellation. On the other hand, a church that has strayed from being the church can’t sit tight in complacent inaction. Self-righteousness through self-satisfaction is off the mark, too. The church needs only to hear His call back to its first love, back to the Savior, back to being Christ’s church. The church is the always-new movement created by God to transform the world. It never was and never will be a fad.
This is what happens when something becomes too common, too hyped, too much a part of the established cultural flow. People start to resist. New and alternative movements cause a buzz of excitement. A mainstream fad causes resistance.
The tendency to bash the church is moving into fad territory. I watched the popular YouTube video “Jesus>Religion.” While it reflects today’s prevalent anti-institutionalism and this generation’s movement toward deconstruction of established systems, its slick and commercial appearance, along with a its faux alternative tone, show that church/religion-bashing has gone mainstream. In other words, the church is trying to lure people in by bashing itself. This has become a fad. And people see through fads. They don’t like them. They resist them.
So, as the church resists itself so people who really resist it will be attracted, the resistors of the church will resist the resisting. Got that?
What’s the answer? Ephesians 3:10 says that God’s intent was that “now, through the church, [His] manifold wisdom should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.” The answer is for the church to be the church. Not to resist itself or bash itself or destroy itself, but to BE itself. That, because of the very nature of the church, IS alternative. The answer is to go back to the Savior Jesus who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, but shakes every generation from sin and complacency with His counter-cultural Word.
A church that has strayed from being the church need not jump on the bandwagon of bashing the church. There is no need to try to find self-righteousness in self-flagellation. On the other hand, a church that has strayed from being the church can’t sit tight in complacent inaction. Self-righteousness through self-satisfaction is off the mark, too. The church needs only to hear His call back to its first love, back to the Savior, back to being Christ’s church. The church is the always-new movement created by God to transform the world. It never was and never will be a fad.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Grace and Diapers
Yes, I’m back in the diaper realm. Very deeply into the diaper realm.
My daughter has given my wife and I a precious granddaughter. She’s almost nine-months-old and is the most beautiful and precious granddaughter in the world (unbiased opinion based on a random sampling of neutral grandchild observers, of course).
Well, to get a little personal, she switched formulas and her gastrointestinal system did not agree well with the change. Things got--how shall I say it--clogged up. This was not a pleasant situation. It caused a good deal of angst for grandma and grandpa and even more angst for granddaughter. I can say with confidence that this has been the low point in her entire life so far.
She’s flowing much better now after much prayer, a formula readjustment, and a few helpings of pears, blueberries, and oatmeal, thank you very much. But the whole episode got me thinking (dangerous territory!): Our existence is hanging in a very delicate balance. One tweak in the digestive area and agony results. It’s amazing that so many of us are humming along with all systems go. We truly live by grace--all the way down to the, uh, downward parts. We live by grace.
So many who are suffering understand this. Rainfall is a few inches off and nations can starve. Cells split too aggressively and cancer can attack the body. Be found in the wrong place at the wrong time and a violent person can bring life to an end. It’s the tragic groaning of a broken world. It’s the tragedy and pain of sin. It’s God’s creation out of balance.
What a blessing that at the right time, God sent His Son. What a blessing that Jesus hung on the cross to counterbalance the crushing power of death. What a blessing that Jesus sends you into this broken world to bring the balance of hope and life to a culture clogged with hopelessness and despair.
Yes, all of this from diapers. Actually, all of this from a sweet little girl who is beginning to understand the blessing of God’s grace.
And I didn’t even mention the word “poop” in the entire article!
My daughter has given my wife and I a precious granddaughter. She’s almost nine-months-old and is the most beautiful and precious granddaughter in the world (unbiased opinion based on a random sampling of neutral grandchild observers, of course).
Well, to get a little personal, she switched formulas and her gastrointestinal system did not agree well with the change. Things got--how shall I say it--clogged up. This was not a pleasant situation. It caused a good deal of angst for grandma and grandpa and even more angst for granddaughter. I can say with confidence that this has been the low point in her entire life so far.
She’s flowing much better now after much prayer, a formula readjustment, and a few helpings of pears, blueberries, and oatmeal, thank you very much. But the whole episode got me thinking (dangerous territory!): Our existence is hanging in a very delicate balance. One tweak in the digestive area and agony results. It’s amazing that so many of us are humming along with all systems go. We truly live by grace--all the way down to the, uh, downward parts. We live by grace.
So many who are suffering understand this. Rainfall is a few inches off and nations can starve. Cells split too aggressively and cancer can attack the body. Be found in the wrong place at the wrong time and a violent person can bring life to an end. It’s the tragic groaning of a broken world. It’s the tragedy and pain of sin. It’s God’s creation out of balance.
What a blessing that at the right time, God sent His Son. What a blessing that Jesus hung on the cross to counterbalance the crushing power of death. What a blessing that Jesus sends you into this broken world to bring the balance of hope and life to a culture clogged with hopelessness and despair.
Yes, all of this from diapers. Actually, all of this from a sweet little girl who is beginning to understand the blessing of God’s grace.
And I didn’t even mention the word “poop” in the entire article!
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
You Do Make A Difference
On the Friday night before Thanksgiving week, a friend of mine, his wife, and his mother were killed in a fiery crash when a semi tractor and trailer plowed into their car on the interstate. They were traveling home from his daughter’s wedding. He just walked her down the aisle and whispered “I love you” in her ear. The highway patrol had to find where the young couple was honeymooning in a mountain cabin to break the tragic news to the new bride and groom at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday.
These are the kinds of events that take your breath away and cause you to look up to the heavens and ask God, “What are you doing?” and “Where are you?”
My friend’s brother suddenly went from planning Thanksgiving dinner for the family to helping to plan three funerals. After I sent him a message of sympathy in which I could barely find the words to express my sorrow to him, he replied with steady words of faith and hope. He said:
“On Friday night, God said ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.’ Jesus sacrificed everything so that we could have the promise of eternal life with our Heavenly Father. I KNOW that my redeemer lives!”
Then he went on to say that the main reason his faith is so strong is because of the pastor he had throughout his childhood and young adult years. He said that his pastor never wavered in his faith. This faithful pastor was a rock for him as he grew up. Through some of the toughest times, this pastor helped him. In fact, he said that he asks himself even today: “What would pastor think of this?” Besides his parents, his pastor continues to be one of the most influential people in his life--even though his pastor retired years ago and lives far away.
What does all this mean? Pastors, servants of Jesus, you who invest yourselves in the lives of others for the sake of Jesus Christ: YOU DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. During this season of reflection, don’t give up. Keep going. Trust the Lord of the church. You do make a difference!
These are the kinds of events that take your breath away and cause you to look up to the heavens and ask God, “What are you doing?” and “Where are you?”
My friend’s brother suddenly went from planning Thanksgiving dinner for the family to helping to plan three funerals. After I sent him a message of sympathy in which I could barely find the words to express my sorrow to him, he replied with steady words of faith and hope. He said:
“On Friday night, God said ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.’ Jesus sacrificed everything so that we could have the promise of eternal life with our Heavenly Father. I KNOW that my redeemer lives!”
Then he went on to say that the main reason his faith is so strong is because of the pastor he had throughout his childhood and young adult years. He said that his pastor never wavered in his faith. This faithful pastor was a rock for him as he grew up. Through some of the toughest times, this pastor helped him. In fact, he said that he asks himself even today: “What would pastor think of this?” Besides his parents, his pastor continues to be one of the most influential people in his life--even though his pastor retired years ago and lives far away.
What does all this mean? Pastors, servants of Jesus, you who invest yourselves in the lives of others for the sake of Jesus Christ: YOU DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. During this season of reflection, don’t give up. Keep going. Trust the Lord of the church. You do make a difference!
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