Wednesday 18 January 2012

What Does it Mean to Please God?

Rick Thomas writes an insightful piece entitled “The Danger of Trying to Please God.” The counselor in this story sounds way too much like the way many of us preachers preach:

          Sandra has struggled all her life with people pleasing. She said she could not remember a time when she was free from thinking about what others thought about her. The way she dresses, the car she drives, the technology she carries, and the house she owns are all controlled to some degree by what others think of her.
                                           A Peek Into Her Life
          She is fanatical about working out because of her keen awareness of what a “nice looking body” should look like. On a few occasions she has caught herself stretching the truth. She says she spins her stories because the real story doesn’t seem as interesting. She is fearful of bringing a bag lunch to the office because everyone else goes out to a local restaurant to eat. She’d rather go into debt than feeling like the odd man out. She has a low-grade anger toward her boyfriend because he pressured her to have sex with him. She believed he would leave her if she didn’t have sex. She needs to be loved by someone. Having a boyfriend is one of her ways of feeling significant.
          Her biblical counselor quickly discerned that her problem was fear of man (Proverbs 29:25). The counselor told her she needed to be more concerned with pleasing God rather than others.
From there, the counselor laid out a plan of prayer, Bible study, and service oriented activities in order for her to practice a lifestyle of pleasing God. The mistake the counselor made was not carefully unpacking what pleasing God meant to an idolator like Sandra. Sandra is an idolator who has been living a performance-driven, people pleasing lifestyle. When she was told that she needed to be more willing to please God than man, it was not a difficult thing for her to do. People pleasing was what she knew best. Unfortunately, she was not told what pleases God so she did what she has always done–she ratcheted up her obedience.
                                          Who Can Please God?
And a voice came from heaven, You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased. – Mark 1:11 (ESV)
          Christ pleases God. Anything the Son does pleases the Father. Jesus came to do the will of the Father and He completed that task perfectly. The Father received the finished work of the Son and now a way has been made for us to please the Father by accepting the Son’s work.
Without faith it is impossible to please him. – Hebrews 11:6 (ESV)
          A Christian, who is living by faith in the works of the Son, is pleasing God. Pleasing God is not about what we do, but about believing in the only One who could authentically please the Father. Even on our best day, with our best works, we would not be acceptable to God.
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. – Isaiah 64:6 (ESV)
          Sandra is a Christian. However, she is not seeking to please God by trusting (faith) in Him. She is still performing, but this time she is performing for the Father, hoping to get a good grade. Rather than accepting what is pleasing to God–the works of the Son–she tries to please Him by her obedience. For example, she says she feels more spiritual by going to church. She believes her activity for God gives her more of God. She feels more spiritual when she is doing. She also says that if she misses her prayer time, Bible reading, or a church meeting she feels less spiritual. She will read her 4 chapters each day, even while brushing her teeth so she can check it off.
          Sandra is convinced that if she has her morning prayer time and things go well for her during the day, then she will partially contribute God’s favor on her based on her prayer-time-obedience. As you might imagine, if she does not have her prayer time and things do not go well for her during the day, she feels as though her lack of prayer (disobedience) caused her day to go bad. Sometimes her friends affirm her theology of legalism when they observe her bad day and say, “You must not be prayed-up today.”
As you can see, when her biblical counselor gave her a list of things to do in order to please God,          
          Sandra initially was excited about the list. Any people pleasing, self-reliant, performance-driven person would be.
However, as time went by, she could not juggle her list of spiritual disciplines with the rest of her life. Eventually discouragement and depression set in–she could not keep up. From her perspective, God was not pleased with her–basing this on her poor performance. According to Sandra’s functional theology she could control God’s pleasure by what she did rather than what the Son did. Her understanding of Christ’s work was limited. She believed the Gospel was for her salvation, while her obedience was the primary thing needed for her sanctification. Obedience is obviously hugely important to any Christian. However, the key is to make sure that your obedience is not an effort to please God, but a response to your faith in God.

Thursday 12 January 2012

Twelve in 2012: Trends in Healthy Churches. Part II

          This is the second part of Tom Rainer's article on trends of healthy churches. These last 6 are excellent but will likely raise more questions than the first 6. Imagine a church that actually considered doing less? Cutting ministry or ministries so that better focus and accountability would be the result of what or how it functioned.          
          I love the fact that a healthy church is also one that wants to not only make disciples but mature disciples. Too many churches are content to pursue quantity and not quality. We are so superficial looking on the outside not even considering the inside of a person. Yet, Christ was unapologetic in His demand for heart purity and holiness, not exterior business or flash...So, give this a read, pray over what you read and allow the Holy Spirit to move you in the direction He wants to make your church a healthy, vibrant church in 2012!
  1. These healthy churches have pastors who love the members. That love is obvious in their words, their actions, and their pastoral concern. It does not mean that a pastor is present for every need of a member of a church member; that is physically impossible. It does mean that the church has a ministry in place that cares for all the members. Above all, though, you can sense intuitively when you walk into these churches that the pastor deeply loves the members, even those who may often oppose him.
  2. The churches allow their pastors to spend time in sermon preparation. Our research has confirmed over the years that pastors in healthier churches spend more time in sermon preparation than those in other churches. For that to take place, the congregation must understand the primacy of preaching, and they must be willing for their pastor to forego some areas of activity and ministry so he can spend many hours in the Word.
  3. There is clarity of the process of disciple making. Such was the theme of the book, Simple Church, written by Eric Geiger and me. For the healthy churches, the ministries and activities are not just busy work; instead they have a clear purpose toward moving the members to greater levels of commitment toward Christ.
  4. These churches do less better. They realize that they can't be all things to all people; and they shouldn’t have such a flurry of activities that they hurt rather than help families. So the leaders of these congregations focus on doing fewer ministries, but doing those few better than they could with an overabundance of activities.
  5. The process of discipleship moves members into ongoing small groups. A member is almost guaranteed to leave the church or become inactive in the church if he or she does not get involved in an ongoing small group. These groups have a variety of names: Sunday school; small groups; home groups; life groups; cell groups; and others. The name is not the issue. The issue is getting members connected to ongoing groups.
  6. Corporate prayer is intentional and prioritized.Prayer is not incidental in these churches. The leadership regularly emphasizes the importance and priority of prayer. The congregation is led regularly in times of corporate prayer.

Friday 6 January 2012

Twelve in 2012: Trends in Healthy Churches.

          With the beginning of another year and for us here at Grace Baptist Church looking for new Pastors I found this article by Tom Rainer and wanted to share it with you my blog readers. Tom gives some trends that are to be found in healthy churches. I whole-heartedly agree that if we submitting to the power of the Holy Spirit strive for these things we will not only have a God exalting year but one that will transform our lives forever as well.
          May we work together to see these things define us at Grace for God's Glory and our refinement!

          The beginning of a new year inevitably brings a plethora of predictions, resolutions, and trends. I see no need to alter that course in this article. My assignment is simple; but my conclusions are debatable. I am providing twelve trends for 2012 in the healthiest churches we have observed.
          A few caveats are necessary.
          First, the trends are for healthy churches. They are not inclusive of all 400,000 American churches, much less the millions of churches around the world.
          Second, the trends are based on both detailed empirical research and anecdotal observations. In other words, I can point to some outstanding research projects for my conclusions in some cases. In other cases, I am simply expressing what I hope is an informed opinion.
          Third, the trends are not ranked in order of any priority.

Today I will share with you the first six of the trends. The final six will be in my article tomorrow.
  1. The churches have a high view of Scripture. A number of research projects over the past four decades point to this trend. Healthy churches have leaders and members who believe the totality of the Bible, often expressed as a view called inerrancy.
  2. A large number of church members read the Bible daily. The simplicity of this trend often surprises church leaders. But we can no longer assume that all of the congregants read their Bibles every day. That is a practice that must be encouraged and monitored. In our research on spiritual health of Christian, we found that the highest correlative factor in practicing other healthy spiritual discipline was reading the Bible every day.
  3. The churches have a priority and focus on the nations. This priority is manifest in short-term mission trips, in care and adoption of the orphaned, in giving to mission causes, and in the number of congregants who commit their lives to reaching the nations with the gospel.
  4. The churches have a missional community presence. The leadership and members do not look at their community as a pool for prospects. Rather, they love their community. They serve their community. The live in their community. They have deep relationships in their community.
  5. The congregations have membership that matters. These healthy churches are high expectation churches. Membership is much more than completing a card or walking an aisle. These churches have entry point classes that set the expectations of membership. Church members are expected to serve, to give, to be in small groups, and to be accountable to others. Church discipline is practiced in most of these congregations. Because membership is meaningful, the assimilation rate in these churches is very high.
  6. The members are evangelistically intentional. The gospel is central in these healthy churches. As a consequence, the sharing of the good news is natural and consequential. But leaders in these churches do not simply assume that evangelism is taking place. There are constant reminders of the priority of evangelism. There is inherent in many of these churches some type of accountability for ongoing evangelism in a number of contexts.
          There is a lot of bad news in the world today. Indeed there is a lot of bad news in many of our churches today. I am not the metaphorical ostrich with my head in the sand. But I am convinced that there are many reasons to be encouraged about God’s work in our churches.

Thursday 5 January 2012

Why are teens leaving our Church?

          Found this great article today...the title really says it all, "Desperate Time, Desperate Measures: Lets Try the Gospel"
          It is well worth the read and the application right here in our lives in our church in our school today. Give it a read and please tell me what you think. Steve
          It's THE mysterious question. Everyone in church culture is talking about it: "Why are the kids leaving?"
          And then the follow-up questions, "Should we start new programs?" "Maybe we should have even awesome-r music?" "Maybe we should rename our church something cool?" "Should our pastor try the half-tuck?"
          Actually, if this researcher's right, and I suspect strongly she is, it has nothing to do with any of that.
          Kara Powell works with Fuller Youth Institute, and talks with Relevant Magazine about their extensive research:
The students involved in our research definitely tended to view the Gospel as a list of dos and do-nots, a list of behaviors. We asked our students when they were college juniors, “How would you define what it really means to be a Christian?” and one out of three—and these were all youth group students—didn’t mention Jesus Christ in their answer; they mentioned behaviors. So it seems like [young adults] have really picked up a behavioralist view of the Gospel. That’s problematic for a lot of reasons, but one of which is that when students fail to live up to those behaviors, then they end up running from God and the Church when they need both the most.
          So youth group kids got the impression that the Gospel was about what we do, not what Jesus already did. They went to church, and got the t-shirts, but they don't understand the Gospel. We can blame THEM, of course - we love doing that, when people don't go for our programs - or we can wonder, did they ever really understand it?
          Did they understand that because of what Jesus already did, God's approval of them is NOT based on their behavior? Did they understand that Jesus knows that we cannot fulfill the law ourselves, and therefore fulfilled it for us? Did they understand why He said, "It is finished!" and the temple veil was torn in two, once and for all? Did they understand they are - truly, seriously, literally - no longer under the law?
          Let's be honest: Probably not. Because when people actually hear the scandalous Gospel, they don't tend to forget it. They can't. If they "got it", they wouldn't, then, define what it means to be a Christian with behaviors.
          And, as a former youth minister, I can guess why they probably didn't hear it: Because of the well-meaning hey-let's-not-get-too-crazy-with-the-grace folks, who think the radical message of grace needs "balanced", lest people, you know, go nuts and start having sex and killing people simply because their Sunday School teacher convinced them of how good God is.
          Thing is, that grace, through the Holy Spirit, actually CHANGES people. Once they grasp how wonderful it is, how - truly! - amazing grace really is, they don't tend to start sport-hunting humans. They are changed, with a faith that lasts, yes, even through four years of glorious brokenness and learning at State Tech.
          We want to control people. But, there's a problem: We can't control people. You can make a slave out of someone, sure - but even then, you can't control his heart. Perhaps his heart could be won by the shocking love of God, the one that sets him free of religous tyranny, once and for all?
          So I say we go all in. Let's tell them. Let's go ahead and give people the Gospel, the whole, stunning, wonderful thing, and take our chance that God wins their hearts. The risk of telling them the truth, of course, about how GOOD the "Good News" is, is that they'll go morally crazy, which, as we noted, when people "get" grace, doesn't tend to happen. (I realize my parents love me unconditionally. This makes me want to please them.)
          If we tell them the Gospel, which is anti-moralistic, they will not confuse Jesus with moralism. Good thing, too, because moralism is boring. And it doesn't work. And it's a lie. There's that, too.
The risk of NOT telling them is this: They grow up thinking Jesus is just another religion, and they suspect they are moral failures, and go through life missing out on the romance they were made for with their Creator. They'll feel like their beating their heads against a wall, constantly playing a morals game, with the sneaking suspicion they're not really winning. They'll either become Pharisees, or, worse... they'll just walk away. (Wait, is that worse...?)
          And, by the way, that last scenario...? It's happening all the time. So let's go ahead and try the Good News.
          Oh - one more reason to go ahead and tell them the whole, scandalous, amazing truth about the Gospel:
It's true.

Tuesday 3 January 2012

Jesus+Nothing=Everything! Even our resolutions...

          It is already January 3rd and how many of us I wonder have tanked our resolutions? I know there are at least two that I have failed to keep so far...but is that a bad thing? Tullian Tchividjian has some excellent thoughts on this very issue that I want to share with you.
          We need to be a people who try, who strive, who resolve and who commit, but we must never find our acceptance from God wrapped in our successes and failures, but ONLY in Jesus accomplished work of Salvation. Let 2012 be a year where you work harder than ever to be like Christ, but let it also be a year in which you rest in Jesus work for you more than ever as well.

          "Today is the very first day of a brand new year. And for many that means a fresh start.
This is the year. It all starts now. We resolve to turn over a new leaf–and this time we’re serious. This time we’re really going to try, we’re not going to quit. We promise ourselves that we’re going to quit bad habits and start good ones. We’re going to get in shape, eat better, lust less, waste less time, be more content, more disciplined, more intentional. We’re going to be better husbands, wives, fathers, mothers. We’re going to pray more, serve more, plan more, give more, read more, and memorize more Bible verses. We’re going to finally be all that we can be. No more messing around.
          Well…I say try. Seriously, try. You might make some great strides this year. I’m hoping to. There are a lot of improvements I’m hoping to make over the next 12 months. But don’t be surprised a year from now when you realize that you’ve fallen short…again.
          For those who try and try, year after year, again and again, to get better and better, with seemingly less and less success…I have good news for you: you’re in good company!
          My friend Jean Larroux sent me this powerful illustration that he got from Jack Miller.
Miller recounts the valiant efforts of Samuel Johnson (a literary giant of the 18th century) to fight sloth and to get up early in the morning to pray. Taken from Johnson’s diary and prayer journal, Jack gives us a record–through the years–of Johnson’s life-long resolutions, failures, and frustrations:
1738: He wrote, “Oh Lord, enable me to redeem the time which I have spent in sloth.”
1757: (19 years later) “Oh mighty God, enable me to shake off sloth and redeem the time misspent in idleness and sin by diligent application of the days yet remaining.”
1759: (2 years later) “Enable me to shake off idleness and sloth.”
1761: “I have resolved until I have resolved that I am afraid to resolve again.”
1764: “My indolence since my last reception of the sacrament has sunk into grossest sluggishness. My purpose is from this time to avoid idleness and to rise early.”
1764: (5 months later) He resolves to rise early, “not later than 6 if I can.”
1765: “I purpose to rise at 8 because, though, I shall not rise early it will be much earlier than I now rise for I often lie until 2.”
1769: “I am not yet in a state to form any resolutions. I purpose and hope to rise early in the morning, by 8, and by degrees, at 6.”
1775: “When I look back upon resolution of improvement and amendments which have, year after year, been made and broken, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal.” He resolves again to rise at 8.
1781: (3 years before his death) “I will not despair, help me, help me, oh my God.” He resolves to rise at 8 or sooner to avoid idleness.
          I love the never-quit effort of Johnson. What he chronicles sounds so much like me over the years. Try and fail. Fail then try. Try and succeed. Succeed then fail. Two steps forward. One step back. One step forward. Three steps back.
          What I’m most deeply grateful for (as was Johnson) is that God’s love for me, approval of me, and commitment to me is not dependent on my success and resolve, but on Christ’s success and resolve for me. The gospel is the good news announcing Christ’s infallible devotion to us in spite of our lack of devotion to him. The gospel is not a command to hang onto Jesus. Rather, it’s a promise that no matter how weak and unsuccessful your faith and efforts may be, God is always holding on to you.
          It’s ironically comforting to me as this new year gets under way that I am weak and He is strong–that while my love for Jesus will continue to fall short, Jesus’ love for me will never fall short. For, as Mark Twain said, “Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, your dog would get in and you would stay out.”
Thank God!
Happy New Year!