Taking some time...

Our family is at the beach, enjoying beautiful cool weather, and watching my son play in a baseball tournament. Blogging will resume later in the week.

Enjoy God's grace today!

The coolness factor

Ed Young is the senior pastor of Fellowship Church in Dallas - a non-denominational mega-church considered one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Recently, Ed spoke at a pastor's conference and shared his opinion about how pastors should act and, specifically, the dangers and irresponsibility of using profanity.

At the conference, Ed made it very clear that many words should never be uttered by pastors. These includes the biggies (I would give examples here but don't want to offend you) and some not-so biggies - at least in my opinion. Ed doesn't use the words, "crap", "screwed", "hell", "damn", or "sucks". I'm not sure if he's ok with the popular replacement cuss words like "heck", "dang", or "fudge". He thinks the reason some pastors use naughty words is that they are "chasing cool". For example, when I say, "crap", Ed thinks that I'm just trying to maintain my relevancy in today's culture. Ed says that's a cop-out. He's certainly entitled to his opinion but my problem and the problem with some pastors at the conference is that Ed created his own benchmark and said pastors weren't cutting it.

Irony of all ironies...Ed is the poster boy for cool. He wears the coolest clothes, has the coolest hair, and doesn't the coolest things from the church platform. In fact, Ed became ultra-cool when he preached a message on sex and challenged married couples in his congregation to have sex every day for 7 days - whether one of the partners wanted to or not. Now that's cool and for everyone who agreed to participate, they became cool, too.

Here's what a Dallas blogger and frequent attendee at Fellowship said:

The fact is, one person's cool is another person's relevant. One person's relevant is another person's reality. One person's reality is another person's damnation. [With regards to profanity] I think it's more likely that younger pastors are using what Ed considers profanity because for their younger generation it's no longer considered profanity. That's my two cents.

I think we need to be very careful when we (me included) start telling other pastors how to be a pastor. Here are some nuggets of wisdom that I've picked up along the way:

"You are really supposed to do it this way."
"You really shouldn't drink."
"You really shouldn't go to "R" rated movies (unless it's The Passion of the Christ)."
"You are supposed to read your Bible every day."
"You're doing something wrong if your kids are out of control."

In Acts, we learn about a rabbi named Gamaliel who drew criticism by many Christ-followers about how and what he taught. Paul was quick to silence Gamaliel's critics, defending the rabbi's passion to teach. He said that God would judge Gamaliel - it wasn't their job.

Ed Young may think "sucks" is a swear word and be offended I use it but my grandmother would be offended by a seven-day sex challenge. Taking offense at another Christian's actions doesn't automatically mean they're in the wrong. It also doesn't mean everything is admissible (this isn't relativism 101).

Let's get worked up over the big stuff like sharing the Message with people who don't know about Christ, teaching them about grace, and showing them that's there's room at God's table for everyone.

Endorsement

Tim Keller has written a great book, The Prodigal God. I give it an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Here's the story from The Message Bible:

Luke 15:11-32

11-12Then he said, "There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, 'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.'

12-16"So the father divided the property between them. It wasn't long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.

17-20"That brought him to his senses. He said, 'All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I'm going back to my father. I'll say to him, Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.' He got right up and went home to his father.

20-21"When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: 'Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son ever again.'

22-24"But the father wasn't listening. He was calling to the servants, 'Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We're going to feast! We're going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!' And they began to have a wonderful time.

25-27"All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day's work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, 'Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.'

28-30"The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen. The son said, 'Look how many years I've stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!'

31-32"His father said, 'Son, you don't understand. You're with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he's alive! He was lost, and he's found!'"

The story of the prodigal son was part of a "parable trifecta" that Jesus used to explain the passion God has to find and offer grace to the lost. Since then, preachers have told and re-told the story thousands of times but Keller throws a new spin on the old story. He says that the story is about a father and two sons – not one. He also points out that the meaning of the word “prodigal” applies to the father as well as to the younger son's actions. The father exhibits this “lavish” characteristic in his generosity more than the younger son did in his disobedient living.

The story was targeted at the Pharisees as Jesus went to the core of their self-righteousness, motives and attitudes. Since we tend to fall on wrong side of grace, we are more like the older brother in the parable. We see the sins of those around us and judge others so easily, but we can’t see our own self-sufficiency, hypocrisy and lack of mercy and love. Major truth: The father extends love, mercy, and forgiveness to both sons. They both learned life lessons that day and now, when I re-read the story, I learn what they learned. My heart needs to respond to God not for what He can do or give to me, but because I just want Him for who he is. He’s not asking for a performance based relationship, and there is nothing I can do to merit the relationship he invites me into.

Good enough?

Sometimes, I engage in conversation with people who think they need to "clean up" before they begin a journey with God. Typically, these are people who have a genuine desire to grow closer to Him but somewhere along the way, their thinking was tainted by a performance-driven paradigm that convinced them that they weren't "good enough" to earn God's grace. The irony is that we are never good enough however God's grace isn't based on what we've done. Instead, His grace is offered freely to people looking for hope and asking for help. If you’re waiting to get your act together before you start following Him and passing that love on to others, you’ll wait forever.

Don’t think for a moment that God uses people who have worked out their spirituality to the place where they’re in a different league than you. The truth is they are more like you than you may want to know, but you need to know it because, by knowing that there are no super saints, you may be more likely to believe that God can use you to advance the cause of His grace in this world and, even more difficult than that these days, in His church.

In Hebrews 11 (called the "faith chapter"), some big Bible characters are listed along with various sins they committed. One important thing to remember, however, is that the sinful things they did were, for the most part, after they had been called by God and began to follow Him. Just like them, we didn't stop sinning when we decided to follow Christ. We may have cut back but our sinning didn't stop.

Feeling unqualified to be in the family of God because of your past? Trust me - He knows your track record and still pursues you with love, grace, and mercy.

Second chances

There are numerous stories in the Old Testament of men and women who received second chances. People like Moses and Abraham would receive clear instructions from God but, for a myriad of reasons, would make decisions that ran counter to God's commands. It was a common pattern but God would prove over and over again that He specialized in second chances.

Over the last few weeks in church, I've been walking through the life of Jonah. Here's a guy who experienced a second chance. Jonah heard God, processed what the mission would look like, and made a decision to avoid the stress of a visit to Nineveh - a place populated with evil people. His decision to run the other way resulted in stormy waters on a cruise ship, walking the plank, and a visit in the whale's belly. After all that, God offered him a second chance to visit Nineveh. He got back on the path.

I wonder if Jonah spent some time in the valley of guilt and shame. Did he go to sleep every night wishing that he had never said "no" to God? I do that on a regular basis and I would guess that you do the same depending on your "sin factor". Those of us who carry a Ph.D in sin usually have the tendency to feel guilty more often than others who don't sin as often (or don't think that they sin as often). I'm glad my sin wasn't chronicled in the best-selling book of all time. That would really stink. That would really pile on the guilt and shame for me. Bummer for Jonah.

Fortunately for us, Jesus showed up on the scene hundreds of years later and dealt a death blow to sin. Many prophets in the Old Testament predicted that a Messiah would come who would deal with sin, once and for all. Daniel spoke about Him and said that Christ would “make an end of sin” (Daniel 9:24). Warning: seminary information ahead...If you look that phrase up in a Hebrew lexicon (that tells the meaning of the original words), you will discover that it means “to destroy or finish.” Jesus didn’t just come to forgive your sins. He came to obliterate them. On the Jordon River, John the Baptist identified Jesus as the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. When He died on the cross, Jesus said, "It is finished", referring to His power over your sins and mine. Today, we can live in the knowledge of His forgiveness for everything we've done and everything that will happen in the future.

Have you tripped along the journey? Sure. All of us have scraped our knees but Christ promises the healing power of forgiveness. Second chances are part of His plan and it's available to all of us.

YES!

Funny Friday

SELMA — An elderly man in Alabama spent a decade copying out the Bible by hand, then concluded that it was a colossal waste of time.
The effort was meant to be a meaningful act of devotion, but halfway through the book of Revelation, Sam Burbel decided that despite all his effort, nothing would be gained in the end. He finished the project so he could at least have a sense of finality.
"I don't know what I was thinking," Sam said. "I rue the day I got the idea to do this."
The idea first occurred to him ten years ago while he sat in church. He'd just retired from his job in a Honda Motors factory and was looking for a way to "have significance" in his twilight years. He dutifully copied the King James Bible by hand for four hours a day, battling repetitive motion stress and bouts of fatigue.
"He kept at it even on holidays," says son Curt. "We tried to talk sense into him, but this was his thing."
The local newspaper ran a story on Sam, and he was pictured in the Reader's Digest Spanish edition. But copying out the Bible by hand, it turns out, wasn't the path to meaning he'd hoped.
"I'd encourage young people not to make the same mistake I did by wasting ten good years on a foolish endeavor," Sam said. "Go learn a skill or something. I hope God forgives me for wasting so much time."

Thoughts about stuff

From a college friend of mine, now pastoring a church in Kentucky. He gets it.

Truth be told, I am fairly low maintenance and simplistic. I like my electronic gadgets (cell phone, laptop, Zune...), but nothing over the top. No flat screen TVs. No ESPN. No iWhatevers.

I enjoy an air mattress when I camp, but no RV. No boat. No 4-wheeler (a misdemeanor in Kentucky!). I can travel reasonably light. No problem re-using jeans, shirts, and yes...even those.

However, homelessness took things to a HNL ('hole 'nother level...for the non-Ed Young Jr. fans in the crowd). I mean, living out of a plastic Kroger sack. Nothing to my name but what I was wearing and that little bag of...well, more nothing. Though I quickly discovered that when you are homeless...the list of essentials quickly dissipates. Partly based on lack of need and partly based on the fact that the definition of “need” changes when you actually have to carry it with you all the time. (How much would you need that 56” plasma if you were toting it with you all the time?)

So here comes some flat out crazy information. The self-storage business in America is now grossing in excess of 20 billion dollars. One out of every ten households utilizes a self-storage unit. Yes, that means that one out of every ten households in America has more stuff than they can even fit in every nook and cranny of every closet and garage of their home, which is already in grand excess beyond the average home size across the globe. One recent estimate indicates there are approximately 23 million…23 million!!!...self-storage units in the good ol’ U.S. of A. 23 million units of “stuff” that people needed so badly that they have locked it away in an off-site facility to rarely, if ever, utilize.

As I sat on the street corner with my trustee Kroger bag beside me, I got to wondering, “What if we had a giant yard sale?” I am talking gigantic! And we sold everything in these units. Then took the proceeds, and turned these units into low (or “No”) cost housing for the poor and the needy, would that impact the homeless crisis in our nation?

Then my mind truly raced into no-man’s land. It is possible, maybe even probable, that there are people in need of something that someone else has just rotting away in a storage facility. Or…and you might want to sit down for this one because the thought actually made me a little nauseous…take a modern day mega-church of 10,000 people. Is it possible that there is someone sitting in that church who has something in storage desperately needed by someone three rows up and two seats over? Could the Body of Christ actually be forking untold millions into that 20+ billion dollar industry to store things that other people in the same Body desperately need?

It seems that many church concepts from the book of Acts have floated by the wayside. Can you imagine a pastor and board member actually going to a parishioner’s house today, knocking on the door, and saying, “Hey…according to our records, you aren’t tithing 10% of all your income.” Let alone the whole dragging them out of the door dead part!

But what about the concept of everyone having everything in common? Is it just too old school? Too radical? Something to think about as you open that monthly invoice for that storage facility full of…what exactly was in there?

Jesus money

I read a great blog this morning from a very funny guy in Georgia.. For those of us who were raised in churches that placed a high value on marketing materials, you may laugh out loud.

A few weeks ago, while walking in the parking lot at Wal-Mart, my daughters and I found two five dollar bills on the ground. My first thought was, "Nice, free money!" My second thought was, "Wait a second, this might be a Christian trick."

That's a weird thing to think when you find money on the ground, but before I picked it up, I tried to see from a distance if the money was real or not. My fear was that I would get my hopes up, grab it and then realize it was a salvation tract disguised as money.

That happened to me once and even as a Christian, I found it kind of traumatizing. And it's not that I hate tracts. I think tracts can be a good thing. I don't like that sometimes people, myself included, beat them up like some sort of Christian piñata, making fun of the people that hand them out. I think for some people, handing out tracts is an honest expression of worship. The truth is that there are probably people reading this site today that could easily say, "Someone giving me a tract on the street really meant a lot to me."

But is there anyone that picks up what appears to be a ten dollar bill, flips it over, finds out it's actually a message about the Bible and says, "Phew, I thought this was free money for a second. Let's see what this John 3:16 is all about instead?"

I doubt it. The first reaction is probably anger. Followed by embarrassment for falling for a trick. Followed by throwing the tract away or bringing it home to show all your friends and family members how mean Christians are.

There are really only two ways to fix this problem. We can either stop creating tracts that are disguised as money or we can create an even worse tract so that when people do get the fake money tract they can at least say, "Wow, I don't like this fake money but at least it's not as bad as that other tract I hear is going around."

I would like to pretend that this blog is powerful enough to make number one happen but let's be honest, it isn't. So instead, I think we should lean into option number two as hard as we can.

What would be worse than fake money? I thought long and hard about this because there's already a fake parking ticket tract going around. Abraham Piper wrote about that a few months ago. After much consideration and a desire to be topical and relevant, I decided that the worse tract we could create right now is a fake pink slip. With as many layoffs happening and as many people finding their jobs "eliminated" or my favorite new term, "sunsetted," I think a little tract that looks like you're getting fired would be most horrible.

Imagine you come back from lunch and there's a note on your keyboard. It's pink, it's official looking and across the top in a font that looks all serious it says, "Please pack your things and leave the keys to your desk in one of the drawers." You open it up and inside it says …..I'm not sure.

That's the challenge with writing a bad tract, you have to make a wild segue from "you're fired" to "here's Jesus." Here are a few headlines I think we could use on our fake pink slip tract:

1. "You might not have been fired, but speaking of fire, imagine how hot hell might be."

2. "You might still have a job, but did you know your real job is to worship the Lord?"

3. "Your job wasn't eliminated, but you know that fear in your heart that you just felt when you thought it was? God wants to eliminate that."

4. "Want a job you can never lose? Become a follower of Christ."

5. "Who knows when you’ll get fired, but today you could be hired … for the Lord’s army that is."

6. "Want to work for a Jewish carpenter?"

Those are horrible, but unfortunately not far off from what happens sometimes. Let's stop trying to trick people into Jesus. I would love everyone that reads this blog to become a Christian and know the insane life transforming joy that I sincerely believe a relationship with Christ offers, but I have to trust that God is big and beautiful and powerful enough not to need me to help Him out by tricking people into His arms.

Grace confusion

Too much grace-based teaching rubs many people the wrong way. The most common criticism comes from those who think not enough emphasis is put on "right" living and how to avoid "bad" living. Also, there is a fear that too much "grace teaching" actually encourages people to sin because God's grace is always bigger than the bad choices people make. Paul faced the same criticism. Romans 3:8 says, "And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some claim that we say), 'Let us do evil that good may come'?" Paul's problem is that people thought he was going overboard with grace. There's no doubt about it - he did. He jumped off the boat of legalism and into the ocean of grace with a smile on his face.

I read this quote by Martyn Lloyd Jones last week:

The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel.

Good stuff.

Here are some "grace" qualifications that may help clear up some confusion...

Our behavior does matter. However, our behavior should not flow out of legalism. Instead, it should flow out of God's love for us and our response to his love. It's not the activity that defines its value; it's the source of that activity that makes all the difference.

The term "antinomianism" has been kicked around on this blog. The term is best defined (in my opinion) as "against the law" or "lawlessness", allowing people to act any way they want because God's grace trumps everything we do. I'm not in that camp. I don't think the Bible teaches lawlessness or that the law is bad. The Old Convenant, however, is obsolete. Here is how it's described in Hebrews 8:13, "When God said, 'A new covenant,' He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear".

Being soft on sin isn't the goal. Sin is our decision to tell God, "no" and that's never a good thing. I don't think we should be soft on sin but I know that we are to be soft of sinners. We are called to be compassionate to people - not critical. It's not that we shouldn't confront people about their sin but how we do it is so important. We should be loving, not patronizing. We should show grace, not condemnation. If we aren't careful, we will always think that someone else's sin is bigger that our own. What a dangerous road.

Let us be more like Christ in everything we do.
Let us sling grace.
Let us love.
Let us give grace.
Let us show mercy.

Tough times

A church in Las Vegas is walking through a new teaching series called Torn. The main idea is that our spiritual journey will be marked with tough times. The story of Job is one of the most familiar examples in scripture. Job (and so many other Bible characters) show us that pain and suffering are part of the Christian journey. The truth is that disappointment, frustration, and low points are things that all of us will go through.

Here is a video that they produced for the series...

Disappointed (With God) from David Tate on Vimeo.

From Henry Nouwen...

My friend and fellow Crossroads pastor Joel Hedlund posted this quote on his blog yesterday (www.ellev8.com).

For those of you who are not familiar with Nouwen, here is his bio from Wikipedia...

Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen (Nouen), (Nijkerk, January 24, 1932 - Hilversum, September 21, 1996) was a Dutch-born Catholic priest and writer who authored 40 books on the spiritual life.

Nouwen's books are widely read today by Protestants and Catholics alike. The Wounded Healer, In the Name of Jesus, Clowning in Rome, The Life of the Beloved and The Way of the Heart are just a few of the more widely recognized titles. After nearly two decades of teaching at the Menninger Foundation Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, and at the University of Notre Dame, Yale University and Harvard University, he went to share his life with mentally handicapped people at the L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada. After a long period of declining energy, which he chronicled in his final book, Sabbatical Journey, he died in September 1996 from a sudden heart attack.

Here's the quote...

“To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him into a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. … Although it is important and even indispensable for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone, prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts —beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful —can be thought in the presence of God. … Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centered monologue to a God-centered dialogue.”

This is great stuff about learning to experience life through the lens of God - not because we are required to do so but because living in the knowledge of His grace and love creates life transformation.

Church discipline

I don't think we've had a Sunday at our church where the word "grace" hasn't been mentioned. Every message we deliver is clothed in the message of God's grace, forgiveness, and mercy - even in those stories where God's wrath causes devastation. Some are uncomfortable and critical about our single-minded focus especially as it relates to "some" people in our church who participate in socially unacceptable sins including homosexuality, adultery, etc. Then, there are those sins that we tend to consider "lesser" sins like divorce and re-marriage, tattoos, gluttony, pride, etc. Scripture instructs church leaders to indentify, address, and - if neccessary - discipline those who choose to attend church despite their decision to live in sin.

When it comes to sin in church, there is a crowd that is very focused on the importance of church discipline. When someone sins, the accused becomes susceptible to excommunication (as instructed by the Apostle Paul). Unfortunately, I think that too much emphasis is placed on what church leaders are supposed to do and who they are supposed to target. The process has a predictable pattern...

Collect information.
Find scriptural basis to form the basis for church discipline.
Have a meeting with the sinner and determine how things can be made right.
Over time, determine if they've changed and if they haven't, show them the door.

I believe that the Bible is clear about church discipline but I also think the Bible is clear about what relationships are supposed to look like.

My problem isn't the "what" or "who".
My problem is the "how".

Too many leaders are anxious to hammer sinners but fail to spend time teaching people about their identity in Christ. When people understand how they are viewed by God, they are transformed and in so many cases, I've seen lives change for the better. Does sinning stop? Not completely. However, as people change, they learn more about offering themselves as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1).

I don't propose to have this issue figured out. These are just some thoughts in the journey...

* I think we need to look inward and address the "why" question. What drives our desire to confront? Is it because of our love for people and want to share God's Message of grace in the face of sin? Or, is it because we think we have the market cornered on right and wrong and we want people to change based on our understanding of scripture?

* Are we going to talk to them about their behavior in terms of right and wrong or in a way that we will lovingly help them see that their bad behavior is really just a misguided way to get perceived needs met apart from Christ? In other words, define the goal - to cause them to change how they act or to help them see Jesus as the answer and to come to the place where they trust Him as their life source?

* Are we addressing people in a judgmental tone or with an attitude of grace and love?

* Are we willing to engage people in conversation about their view of sin. I have found that as people begin the journey, they want to "dance" - not debate. Tone and attitude are so important when it comes to having conversations with people about their personal lives. If we use the Bible as a hammer, people run and don't come back.

* What sins are we willing to confront? Do we only address the "big" ones (as defined by today's evangelical community) or all of the sins listed in scripture?

* Have we earned the right to discuss sensitive issues or are we just on a mission of "seek and destroy"?

* What about us? Do we easily see the sins in other people's lives and stand ready to confront those while either being blind to our own sins? Do we minimize our sin? Are we willing to let someone confront us?

Discipline can be done in grace but so often, it's carried out in a penal environment. As in the life of Jesus, we can blanket everything in grace - especially in sensitive situations where people can feel like they're being pressed into a corner. Our Savior wasn't that type of teacher and leader.