Grace & Gratitude; Competition, NOT Comparison

            I’ll be taking a 4-month sabbatical from my daily and weekly ministry activities in 2017.  I am excited and a bit apprehensive.  It’s like I am just taking a break and releasing control of my church (as if I have control now).  My associate pastor has repeatedly told me this sabbatical is part of my vocation.  While I am not preaching sermons, leading meetings, counseling members, and casting a vision for our church, I am still within my calling while on sabbatical.  And the church is what it has always been: God’s not mine.

            In order to prepare to adjust my daily rhythms from work to rest, I have begun seeing a spiritual adviser and she has me praying the prayer of examen.  In this approach to daily prayer, the one praying begins in silence building awareness of and attentiveness to the presence of God.  I do the best I can to silence all other outside noise (actual audible noise and the noise in my head).  I just get quiet and focus on the present God.  This is usually 2-5 minutes, though I would like to work up to longer periods.

I have done this before, but the examen has been particularly beautiful for me with what comes next.  The second step is to express gratitude.   I usually do the examen when I first arrive at my office, about 7:30AM.  In my mind, I go back through the previous 24 hours and note all the moments of thankfulness, all the things of life for which I am thankful.  This has been amazing! 

Before this discipline, I rarely paused to reflect on the past (in this case the most immediate past – just 24 hours).  I was not aware at how much my life is just charge ahead. I live directionally – forward!  My life question seems to be “What’s next?”  It has been a refreshing blessing to stop, look back, and thank God.  I have always known how important it is to live in gratitude.  Prior to examen I had a thanksgiving practice, one done with my wife.  Before going to sleep each night, she and I list three things each that we’re thankful for.  This exercise centers us, forces us to go to bed in gratitude and not some other emotion (anger, bitterness, etc.).  Sometimes we have to force it, but it is worth it to keep up the habit. 

The examen prayer of gratitude has taken my discipline of living thankfully to another dimension.  My wife and I still do our thanks, but now, I am starting the day aware that I have much to thank God for.  I am a blessed guy.  I am a graced guy.  When I miss the examen on busy, rushed mornings, I feel like I have missed something very important.  I have skipped a part of my morning that normally pours life into me. 

Another effect examen has had on me is a tendency to recall why I am thankful throughout the day.  When I want to get frustrated, a voice in my head (the Holy Spirit?) reminds me to be thankful because so much grace has been poured on me and into me.  Because of the examen and my nightly ritual of gratitude (with my wife), saying thanks to God is slowly becoming a default response for me. 

A couple of ways of seeing life emerge from living with an eye toward gratitude.  First, I know my life is a result of grace.  I am because of God’s grace.  I have blessings because of God’s grace.  I serve as pastor in a wonderful church because of God’s grace.  Saying this does not negate my own hard work and accomplishment.  I put forth a lot of effort and stretching outside my comfort zone to earn a doctorate of ministry.  That degree (with a focus in counseling) equipped me as a pastor and made my resume more attractive.  I have labored for over 2o years in 4 different churches in pastoral work.  It has been a joy and at times an arduous journey. 

But, I can’t fall into a trap of taking credit for anything.  I work hard and commit myself fully to ministry because that is an appropriate response to the grace God has given.  Also, let me not exaggerate my own work ethic.  I have lazy days.  I mess up.  Whether by my good or in spite of my failure, I acknowledge that I appreciate where I am and I thank God for my life.  I pray that if extremely hard times hit, I will have the spiritual wherewithal to continue giving God glory.  I don’t know that I could do that in the face of unspeakable personal loss.  I pray that I could.

Acknowledging that my life is graced and basking in God’s grace is a first way of seeing life that comes out of living in gratitude.  A second way of seeing might seem more surprising.  My gratitude compels me to be competitive.  That’s right!  I think Christians and pastors should compete hard, the way a Michigan running back leans toward the end zone or the way my beloved Detroit Lions race to be the first to clean out their lockers after yet another season without the playoffs.

Here’s what I mean by competition.  When I attend a conference and hear about what other pastors are doing, or I talk with pastors in our area and find out churches and ministries that doing great works of compassion or Kingdom pronouncement, it should inspire me to strive for greatness in our ministry at HillSong.  We should try to help people with such effectiveness that people in our community say, “Oh, you know that HillSong, they help people.”  Our ministry should equip believers in such a way that when people in the community meet our folks out and about and marvel at how loving they are and how grace-filled and compassionate they are and then discover they are HillSong people, they say, “Of course!  That’s the type of person that comes out of HillSong.  That’s what we expect from HillSong.”

We should compete to be outstanding ministers of the gospels, disciples of the Master, and proclaimers of the word.  We live missionally and as disciples for the sake of dying to self and rising in Christ.  We become so filled with grace and with the Spirit that the Gospel pours out of us in a torrent.

However, competition should not breed comparison.  If the church up the road preaches a robust gospel and doubles its membership and begins ministries that actually reduce hunger in our community, we must not compare ourselves to that church.  We should rejoice in what’s happening there.  I must not compare myself to that pastor.  The comparison will eat me up.  In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus did not critique the one who had 4 talents (v.22-23).  Jesus praised that one.  He did not say, “Why didn’t you reproduce as much as the one who had 10?”  Jesus commended him for growing from the grace he had been given.  And Jesus said to him, “Enter the joy of your master.” 

We must not become jealous if the church up the road outpaces us in membership.  I cannot be down on myself because I don’t lead a ministry that is as “big” as the one led by the pastor on the magazine cover.  There are many ways a ministry can be big, and God can do big things while working through small groups.  God has lead me to my role as disciple, husband, father, pastor, and friend.  I appreciate the grace God has given me and I compete to make my 2 talents become 4, and then the 4 to become 8.  When I think of myself, it is not a downplaying of what I have done.  Come on Rob!  Why aren’t you as “successful” as that pastor 10 years younger than you who leads a 1000-member church?  No, it cannot be that.  Such a posture of jealousy would mock the grace God has blessed me to receive. 

I want to live in constant gratitude, aware that my life is full of grace.  And aware of that, I want to compete hard in all the roles I fill, so that my 1 talent becomes 2, and then 2 becomes 4, and so on.  For me this approach to discipleship is challenging, satisfying, and joy-producing.  Moreover, it lands me in the middle of God’s work in the world.

Two-Part Diagnosis (1 Thessalonians 3:1-13)

Sunday, September 6, 2015

          Have you ever noticed how much an issue changes when it involves a personal relationship?  This hit me quite drastically many years ago.  I felt pretty confident about my views on immigration.  Then I discovered that one of my closest friends in the world was at that time in the United States illegally.  He entered with a visa and then stayed for years after it expired.  All of a sudden this was no longer a question of undocumented workers or illegal aliens.  This was my brother, Juan[i].  When I discovered his status, did I drop him as a friend?  Was he no longer Juan? 

          More recently, this sense of perspective-shifting has come again in the debates swirling around same sex marriage.  I have good friends who are gay and in relationships.  No matter how one feels about the issue, I still love my friends.  I love Morton.[ii]  No one outside my family has been my friend longer than him.  When he decided to come out of the closet, he called me.  We lived in different states at the time, and he felt he had to tell me.  It was awkward, no doubt.  But, he shared it with me.

I love Morton.  I love Juan.  At a certain level, an important level, it is not about homosexuality or immigration.  It is about my friends.  It is about Morton and Juan, people I love.

          This is because God made us to be relational. Theologians contemplate the 3-in-1 nature of God, the trinity.  Many have come to the conclusion that God is inherently relational.  Father-Son-Holy Spirit exist in an eternal relationship of perfect love and mutuality.  This certainly defies our understanding because we read the New Testament and see each person of the Trinity to be distinct.  Yet we see each is God and not three separate gods, but each is fully God – the one and only God.  Fully understanding this is beyond the capacity of the human mind. 

But even in our limited understanding it is important to recognize that God is relational.  This is as crucial a trait of God any we could name.  We say it is crucial to say God is transcendent and all-knowing and all-powerful.  I think it is just as necessary to say God is relational.  Genesis 1 says God made human beings in God’s own image.  Thus, we are relational.  It doesn’t matter if someone is shy and appreciate solitary time or someone is social butterfly with loads of friends.  We are all made for intimate relationships. 

I am going to do something when I finish today that I have never had a physician.  We are in the middle of a series in which we talk about a prescription for living life in Christ; this prescription works for both individuals and churches.  As I conclude today, I will step out of the metaphor and do something doctors are not expected to do, but pastors are.

I know many doctors are Christians and have done this, but in my years of visiting people in hospitals and in my own doctor’s appointments, I have never had a doctor end his or her time with me by suggesting we pray together.  This morning we will see in 1^st Thessalonians chapter 3 the importance of relationship.  That’s the first diagnosis.  We are made for relationship.  Then we will look as the second part of the diagnosis.  It is a caution.  We need to heed this warning.  After the two diagnoses, I’ll pray. 

Relationships: simply hear the words of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 3.

When I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith; I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor had been in vain.

Timothy has just now come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love. He has told us also that you always remember us kindly and long to see us—just as we long to see you.

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? ¹⁰ Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.

Paul’s deep love for the people who make up the churches he has planted is expressed in vivid color in the letters he writes.  This is especially evident in 1^st Thessalonians.  Chapter 3 begin with Paul making the decision to part with Timothy.  Paul would remain, alone, in Athens.  He felt orphaned by the loneliness but he did it because he wanted Timothy to travel to Thessalonica so he could find out about how the church was doing.  When Timothy came back to Athens with a good report, Paul was thrilled. 

He says in verse 6 that Timothy delivered good news.  The word he uses is derived from the same root as the word Gospel.  Gospel means good news.  When Paul heard that the Thessalonians were doing well in the faith and were concerned about him, he felt that was Gospel truth: good news!  More than anything, the relationships were what mattered to Paul.

Church is meant to be a place of relationships.  I often to refer to us as brothers and sisters in Christ.  In some churches they actually call each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’  I have never developed that habit.  It just feels weird to me to speak that way.  But even though I have not adopted the lingo, that is how I feel.  We are family – an eternal family linked by love. 

I know that in church someone will do something you don’t like.  He may do many things you don’t like.  Her personality may grate on you.  You see her walk in the room and you cringe and inch toward the door.  What I am proposing here is that in spite the imperfections and it has plenty, and in spite of the flawed people who make up the church and we are all flawed, we are each called to fully invest our hearts in the family.  I don’t see any New Testament model of someone attending church in a casual, non-committed kind of way.  There are no nominal Christians.  And Christianity is not a solitary venture. 

Paul felt the deepest of connections with the Thessalonian church.  We are called to enter this church family in the same way.  And if this is your first time among us or you have been visiting recently, I want you to know what we’re all about.  You don’t have to conform to some image or expectation to be among us.  We invite you in as you are with the hope that you will join your heart with ours.  We will worship God together.  We will confess our sins together.  We will celebrate one another’s baptisms together.  We will grieve together.  We will eat the bread and the take cup together.  The only way we know how to do church is with God as a Father and us as one another’s brothers and sisters. 

This deep feeling of connection is why Paul was nearly paralyzed with worry for the Thessalonians and with grief at being separated from them.  Simply put, he loved them.  So when he heard from Timothy that they were thriving as disciples, nothing could make him happier.  That’s how much we belong to each other.

The second part of the diagnosis this morning comes in the form of a warning.  We’ve been told that God is relational and for us to live as God intended we must see relationships as our top priority.  Our church must be built on the relationships that are fueled by self-giving, agape love.  There is a threat and Paul names it in verse 5.  “I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor had been in vain.” 

In the previous chapter Paul said Satan was who prevented him from coming to the Thessalonians (2:18).  We know that it was a combination of political and religious opposition.  We could point to human causes.  But we also know from Paul’s letters, especially Ephesians 6, that underneath any human opposition to the success of the Gospel, Paul saw the workings of demons and the fallen angel, the evil who opposes God at every turn.  In 1^st Thessalonians 2 he is Satan.  In chapter 3, this enemy is called the tempter.  In 2^nd Thessalonians 2, he is the power that drives the “Lawless One.”

Paul fears that the Tempter would uses human forces to undermine the worship and community in the Thessalonian church to the point that the church would dissolve.  For Paul, no death would hurt any more than this.  Nothing could be worse.  Upon hearing Timothy’s good report, he says in verse 8, ‘we now live, if you continue to stand firm in the Lord.’

Seventeen years ago, I was in church that was renting space to another congregation.  That congregation was made of Roma Christians – gypsies.  There was a bit of a conflict that the Gypsies were having with other Gypsies in the area.  Threats of violence were made.  The leaders in the English congregation, the group that owned the building and thus had the power felt it would be prudent to avoid getting in the middle of this.  They wanted to avoid any trouble for themselves.  So they told the Gypsies who were worshipping in their building they had to leave.

It felt like a death.  As the pastor, I had to tell the Gypsy pastor they had to go.  I felt like the knife was in my hands and dripping red.  The look on his face – I can still see it and still feel convicted by it.  Why was it so easy for those Christians in the English-speaking church so easily shove another community of believers out the door and into the street?  They could do it because they didn’t feel any sense of relationship.  It was all about the security of the building for them.  The Gypsies were ‘that church,’ not ‘our church.’  The people were ‘them,’ not ‘us.’ 

As I reflect this event that has haunted me all these years, I think my reading of 1^st Thessalonians 3 puts it in fresh light.  The English-speaking Christians, people I still deeply love, did not connect relationally with the Gypsies, people I also love.  That sense of belonging to one another so evident in Paul’s words in Thessalonians was not there. 

The tempter stepped into that relationship void.  The devil used fear – a perceived threat, not even a real one.  That fear was enough to get the Gypsies kicked out.  For their part, the Gypsies had up to that point found it very hard to find a church that would welcome them.  In their discouragement, the people of the church went their separate ways.  The devil used fear with one congregation and discouragement with another to kill one church and neuter the other.  It never could have happened if the two congregations joined with one another the heart level.  If they felt that they belonged to one another, they would have stood together in faith and faced any threat that came along. 

When Paul says he’s afraid the tempter would render his work to be done vain and would do so by killing the church, he means it.  I have witnessed first-hand this happen in real life.

So then is the moral of the story that we all need to love one another with great intensity and invest our hearts fully here at HillSong?  Yes!  That’s it.

But then, if you have been here any length of time, you know we are already doing that.  In the past 12 months, the work of the Lord in this place has expanded greatly as now on Sunday afternoons a Spanish-speaking church meets under Pastor Lucio’s leadership.  Also on Sunday afternoons, a Karen-speaking church meets in here under Pastor Kerpaw Htee’s leadership.  And we each belong to each other. 

In a sense, what I am doing in holding us up alongside the Thessalonian church and Paul’s letter to them is I am urging us to continue as we are.  Continue being a community of love and welcome that takes full family ownership of each other’s hearts.  Grow in love as an expression of the Gospel and as a guard against the enemy’s evil designs.  Keep on as you are.  And you who are new among us, find out what this community is all about.

With that in mind, I close with that prayer I mentioned earlier. 

May our God and Father himself and our Lord help us increase and abound in love for one another and for all.

May the Lord so strengthen our hearts in holiness that we may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

AMEN

---

[i] Name changed. 

[ii] Name changed,

Big Churches? Small Churches? HEALTHY CHURCH!

I sent the following to the leaders in my church:

Elders, Deacons, Ministers, and Pastors,

I read an article that I thought might inform us as we lead HillSong Church in attempting to be a community of Christ followers who welcome the weary, prod the inert, encourage the melancholy, and cheer and equip the motivated.  

Our work is to announce that Jesus is Lord and King and in him, the Kingdom of God has come.  

Our work is to equip people with knowledge, skills, and a team as they grow as disciples.

As we do our work, are we a "small church," or a "mid-sized church."  We are not large by any measurement.

I have never thought of us as small.  We have many ministries.  We support multiple works locally and internationally.  We are usually busy.  In fact, mid July - late August is our only sleepy time, and even now, our youth group is quite active.  

However on Karl Vaters' webtsite, one of the markers (of big/small) is the "200 barrier." HillSong never has 200 on a Sunday morning so by his definition, we'd be small.

I honestly don't care and don't think of us as small.  We have big ideas and God-sized dreams and our elders and deacons are energetic supporters of the ideas suggested by the vision-minded pastors.  I see us not as big or small but as healthy and purposeful.   I love being part of what we do.  I am grateful and I think God has a lot in store for us.

Would I like us to be bigger?  I don't really think about it that way, not seriously anyway.  I would not resist growth.  I certainly want out people to be more evangelistic and more pro-active in inviting their unchurched friends.  But, I think our biggest evangelism/outreach strategy should be training and encouraging all our members to be more evangelistic and inviting.   If growth happens that way, by our folks inviting people, then I would be all for growth.  If our folks became so inviting we grew to 200, 500, whatever, then I'd be all for it.

But I would oppose program changes designed explicitly to get people in the door.  I want people to come because they are led here by the Spirit.  I want people to come because they are invited by HillSong folks.  I am OK with some advertising (bumper stickers, yard signs, etc).  I am pro-growth.  I want our efforts to be true to who God is creating us to be (a safe place where people are made new and sent out in Jesus' name).

So I send you Vaters' article and invite you to peruse his site.  And I commend and thank you for your part in making HillSong a community of Christ-followers who love each other welcome new folks in.

- Rob

http://newsmallchurch.com/better-questions-about-church-size/#more-14177