James MacDonald's Blog, page 15

Prosperity, Popularity, and Other Problem Gospels

God commands boldness because it’s the only manner of speaking about Jesus that comes from the overflow of our love for Him. “Now when [the rulers and elders] saw the boldness of Peter and John, … they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). A bold witness speaks out of personal experience, so it is unafraid. Unafraid of how others will view me. Unafraid if people reject me. Unafraid of all but God, whom I hear saying, “Don’t peddle My Son. He’s not damaged goods, and you’re just My mouthpiece. You don’t have to cheapen the message with your cleverness. It’s free and eternal but not for everyone. Just give it out boldly; I will decide who responds.” That’s why Paul called such peddling “disgraceful, underhanded ways,” challenging us to put horizontal methods aside: “we have renounced” them (2 Corinthians 2:17). Don’t peddle the gospel! Don’t sneak up on people. Don’t be subtle, clever, or even strategic. Just be plain, and simple, direct, sincere, open, and bold. Are we possibly blind to ways we might be peddling the gospel? Am I? Are you?

1: Relational Gospel—Receive Christ because we are friends.

Popularized in the 1970s by the book Friendship Evangelism, this method has been so broadly circulated in the Western world that it is considered to be irrefutably effective. Make friends. Take them to baseball games. Wait for them to drop their guard and count you a confidant. Then somewhere down the road, a week, a month, a year, a decade from now, you will earn the right to share Christ and maybe they will be saved, but either way you won’t lose the relationship. In the thousands of baptisms we have witnessed, I cannot recall hearing the “friendship evangelism” story. Oh sure, “somebody invited me to church,” or, “a friend reached out in my time of need and shared the gospel,” I have heard countless versions of those. But the “Jesus guy sees stranger, befriends him or her for the purpose of sharing Christ, earns the right through extended servanthood and exemplary love over long period of time, so that stranger, facing no personal crisis of any kind, jumps off the ship of selfishness and chooses Jesus just because of the compelling example of Jesus guy”—that one I haven’t heard. I am not saying it’s never happened. I am saying it’s not typical, it’s not biblical, it’s not bold, and it’s not working very well in the western church. The power of the gospel is not in the relational capacity of the witness but in the message itself. Friendship evangelism, lifestyle evangelism, relational evangelism—all of it flows from our desire to avoid what cannot be avoided. I will say it again, if you are not willing to be the aroma of death to those who are perishing, you can’t be the aroma of life to those who are being saved. The idea of having conversations with a person for months or years to “earn the right” to talk to him or her about Jesus betrays an elevation of the role of human persuasion in evangelism that just doesn’t square with the Gospels or the book of Acts. Now, I’m not talking about enemy evangelism. Of course we should be kind and live a life of integrity and be sensitive to the Spirit about when to speak up boldly, but bottom line, it’s not about you.

2: Renown Gospel—receive Christ because impressive people do.

In this method a person, or more likely, a public figure whose fame has been lagging of late, will profess faith in Christ and experience a surge in popularity as churches seek to capitalize on the person’s fame and boost attendance by having him or her speak. Sadly, the sudden rise to Christian celebrity status takes the novice convert to places where he or she is vulnerable to disillusionment, and departure from the “Christian phase” comes too often and too quickly. The worst part of this is not the immature believers who feel validated in, say, Bob Dylan’s love for Jesus; they seem to recover fine when he says, “That’s my religion. I don’t adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists. I’ve learned more from the songs than I’ve learned from any of this kind of entity.” The worst part is when the people “reached” start “following” Jesus in hopes of picking up some celebrity magic and drop Christ without really knowing Him when the celebrity moves on to another phase.

I remember in youth ministry, a weightlifting team that came to town. They got a few Christian bodybuilders up on stage, bending metal bars in half or breaking ice with their foreheads, and the kids would sit in the audience spellbound. At the end of the show, the guy would say, “And I love Jesus Christ.” So a kid thinks to himself, I’d love to have muscles like that. I’d love to be able to break stuff with my head. Maybe if I had Jesus, I could do that.

We can’t “impress” people into salvation. That is peddling God’s Word. It is surely well-intentioned, but it ends up being manipulative and hurtful to kids struggling with sin and all that Jesus came to save us from. Those kids need a bold Holy Spirit appeal to their conscience, not a bait-and-switch “I’m strong and I love Jesus,” which implies maybe you could be strong too if you loved Jesus. A faithful witness to the gospel elevates Christ, not His representatives. Jesus doesn’t need PR; He needs proclamation. Vertical Church is not about God sitting by and watching us convince people they need Jesus to better their horizontal world. God is the seeker, and when we proclaim Jesus boldly, it provokes Him to show up in saving power and conquer the horizontal idols that hold human hearts.

3: Reasonable Gospel—receive Christ because it makes sense or it’s easy.

Here we confuse simplicity and ease. The message of salvation through faith in Christ is so simple a six-year-old can understand, but it is not easy. Formulaic gospels that oversimplify or intellectualize the gospel can leave the “new convert” in the same old situation, because the darkened heart has never truly been penetrated. When we replace boldness with blandness, we get light on repentance and too quick in delivery. Getting saved isn’t a drive-through or a drive-by experience, and Four Spiritual Laws, the Romans Road, Steps to Peace with God that seek to make the gospel accessible run the risk of being superficial. Jesus never hid the cost of following Him, and it is great sin when we do. It’s like the personal trainer who says, “Don’t run, just walk, not sixty minutes, just thirty, not every day, just two to three times per week.” If the workout gets stripped to the place everyone wants in, it has lost its power to make a person truly fit. We must hold to the simplicity of the gospel without hurrying the decision or hiding the cost. The gospel costs a person everything. Jesus is the celebrated guest at the greatest banquet of all time. Jesus is the treasure hidden in the field. Jesus is the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:44-46, 22:1-14).

     You give up everything for Him.

     You give up your sin for a Savior.

     You give up yourself for a Master.

     You give up your hopes and dreams for His eternal purposes.

Choosing to follow Jesus means resigning as chairman of the board of your life and asking Christ to sit at the head of the table. That is not an easy decision and it is not arrived at by rational means alone. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). When you see yourself as convincing people to trust Christ, you tend toward leaving out the parts that might hinder your goal, but when you see Jesus as the true messenger and yourself as just a mouthpiece, you are freed up to share the gospel with boldness. “My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom… [Why, Paul?], that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:4-5).

4: Resource Gospel—receive Christ because your life will improve immensely.

“Don’t you want to be healthy? Don’t you want to be wealthy? Don’t you want to have some piece of paradise here on earth? Jesus Christ is the best investment you will ever make. Put the Son of God in your portfolio, and your life will take off like a rocket.” We have all seen the commercials on television inducing us to buy a vegetable slicer by adding other worthless items: “And even that’s not all. If you order your Vege-omatic in the next twenty minutes, you will also get this handy-dandy paring knife absolutely free.” Nothing cheapens the message of eternal salvation in Christ more than telling people it comes with a new car. We should be deeply offended by anyone who claims to be a minister of the gospel promising people things God doesn’t promise them. Even where “health wealth” has not invaded the church, we can slip into a more subtle version of this error. Jesus Christ promises us a cross to carry, a sword in place of peace, and an exacting accountability for those who claim Him as Lord. Any assuring people of benefits Jesus doesn’t promise or hiding the cost of following Him is a total break with the kind of gospel work revealed in the Gospels themselves.

Each of these erroneous gospel iterations seem to have incubated in the environment of a sincere desire to see people saved, but when we want decisions more than we want disciples, we get tares instead of true converts and Ichabod, departed glory for the church.

Excerpted from Vertical Church.

Is Worship More Than Singing?

I often read or hear a servant of Christ insist that worship is “more than singing.” We are frequently told that making a meal for your family or cleaning your car or helping your neighbor are all acts of worship. When these acts are the outgrowth of our love for God and are done to demonstrate that love, I would agree that they are “worshipful,” but technically they are not worship. I’m not seeking to parse meaning with undue rigor, but we need to be precise in our definitions if we want to accurately embrace the very purpose for our existence. Worship is the actual act of ascribing worth directly to God. Worshipful actions may do this indirectly, but when the Bible commands and commends worship as our highest expression, it is not talking about anything other than direct, intentional, Vertical outpouring of adoration. While that does not have to be put to music, it does have to be direct and not indirect to rise above the “worshipful” and actually ascribe worth to God. First Chronicles 16, Psalm 29, and Psalm 96 define worship with surgical precision: “Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name” (Psalm 29:1–2). Worship is mind, emotions, and will engaged in whole-person ascription of worth.

 

Nothing brings glory down in church as quickly and as powerfully as when God’s people unashamedly adore God’s great Son, Jesus Christ. Not just a few enthusiasts in the front row when the service starts but a room packed to the walls with fired-up Christians. Not testimony to personal benefit resulting from gospel belief, but ascription of worth to the God of the gospel. When that happens, an unbeliever coming in will “worship God and declare that God is really among you” (1 Corinthians 14:25). A whole body of believers worshipping with their whole beings can expect to get the only thing we have to offer this world: “Is it not in [God’s] going with us … that we are distinct … from every other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:16). All church activities that dilute, diminish, or detract from worship destroy Verticality, deny the priority of doxology, and forfeit what Vertical Church is all about—glory. …

 

How often have we sat in church and heard the platform misnomer that a song will be sung to “prepare our hearts for the message”? Yes, ascribing worth to God elevates Him to His place and lowers us to ours, readying souls for God’s instruction, but the phrase can seem to imply a pecking order that should not be intended and is not true. We don’t worship so that preaching will be more impactful for us; we preach so that worship will be more impactful for God. “Bless the Lord, O my soul” (Psalm 103:1–2, 22) is a summoning of the inner person to achieve his or her highest calling. While God is not enhanced or increased by our worship, He is apparently blessed and that in itself should stoke the fire of our adoration. Reading Scripture, it appears that all preachers will be out of work in heaven, for then all believers will “know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Where knowledge is complete, worship will be total and the reason for preaching will be gone. We preach so that people will be better worshippers, so that the nature and story of God proclaimed will result in an amplification of what provokes glory to come down. A church’s ministry extends of course beyond the weekend worship service, but if we fail there, nothing else can succeed. That single service in a Vertical Church is like the wood-burning stove in a factory or warehouse. The stove is not the work, but when the fire goes out in the stove, the work stops. What percentage of the relational strife currently plaguing local churches is endemic to the frigid majority trying to warm themselves because the fire that should stoke selfless interaction went out long ago? How much of horizontal church is an attempt to produce Vertical results with horizontal methods instead of getting to the bottom of why we cannot confidently expect God to do what He says He willingly does? Instead of finding ways to make church palatable because it ceased somewhere in the past to be powerful, why not drill past surface solutions that entertain instead of impact and get back to church as a place where God actually moves. White-hot, unrestrained, whole-congregation, adoration is the first step in that direction, and pursuing that kind of worship is the unceasing center of Vertical Church.

Excerpted from Vertical Church.

What Only God Can Do

You can’t fake glory. You can’t manufacture it, or manipulate it, or manifest it at will. Only God Himself can bring glory into a church, and when He does, communities get shaken and lives get changed, and the fame of Jesus Christ curls continuously upon the shore of human hearts like a Hawaii 5-0 wave. Church is supposed to be a tsunami of glory every Sunday, and that is what we gather for. Push out of your mind your concepts of church as community, church as mission, church as evangelistic tool, or church as instruction in Scripture. Church can be all of those things with great power if God is in the house. Vertical Church points to a new day where God is the seeker and we are the ones found. In Vertical Church God shows up, and that changes everything.

 

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

 

This is a significant week in the life our church and our fellowship of churches, with the release of the book, Vertical Church. It’s the story of our twenty-five-year try-fail-try again pursuit of the single goal of experiencing God’s glory—and one that I fervently pray will be used in churches around the world to ignite a renewed hunger and passion for His manifest presence.

 

In addition, the first worship CD from our Vertical Church Band releases today…and I cannot adequately express how fired up I am about these songs of ascription to our Savior.

 

And, in a colossal effort to bring the message of Vertical Church to as many people as possible, we’re preparing to head out on a 40-city Vertical Tour across North America next week.

 

Let God be remembered in the midst of His church, let Jesus Christ be proclaimed and petitioned and adored in the center and as the center of His church. Let the Holy Spirit move in power, drawing every person gathered deeper into the life-giving presence of Jesus in His church.

 

Let God Himself be the main attraction at church again, and let us be tireless in our insistence that church is for God, about God, through God, and to the glory of His great Son.

The Glory of Staying Put

When Kathy and I were in seminary in the late eighties, we began to pray, “God, we will go anywhere you want us to go, but if You would allow it, we would like to pastor one church for our ministry.” I had already been a youth pastor at a church of two hundred and a singles pastor at a church of two thousand. And I had studied enough churches with significant fruitfulness to know that long-tenured senior pastorates were a key ingredient in abundant fruitfulness. I never dreamed of a church with ten thousand people; there was no such thing at the time, and my heart was much less for a big place and much more for a God place, a glory place. We prayed and prayed for God to lead us somewhere away from Chicago and hopefully back to our home country of Canada. When seminary and our two-year commitment to the church we were in came to an end, we were fervently praying for God open a door somewhere, never dreaming we were already there.

Nobody expressed an interest in our ministry from the channels we pursued, so we decided to remain in our current assignment and put some money down on a house in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. No sooner had we emptied our little nest egg into escrow than we heard from sixteen different churches around North America and even candidated at one in Winnipeg. Still, it seemed God would not lead us to abandon our house deposit. Just then, the phone rang in our little apartment behind the bookstore at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School less than a month after graduation. It was a group of eighteen people from five different churches who wanted us to lead them in planting a new church in the northwest suburbs. As I hung up the phone, I laughed out loud, and it was one of the few times the Lord spoke clearly into my spirit, “Don’t laugh.” A heaviness came over me and Kathy, and we wept tears of submission as we knelt by the couch and told the Lord we would stay if this was the place He wanted us to remain. I really didn’t want to plant a church, as any church planter I had ever known spent the bulk of his time storing speakers in his garage or meeting around a card table with ten people. That scared me a lot, but as we met with the eighteen, they seemed very excited about a Vertical work, and the “pillars” I will share later. So after several meetings, we agreed to put our roots down and give our lives to Christ in this place with these people.

Looking back, they were taking the bigger risk, and while not all of the original eighteen remain or even lasted too long (three are in heaven, and I preached two of the funerals), four remain very involved in the life of our church. Probably fifty of those who came the first year are still with us, including my personal assistant (great is her reward) and our assistant senior pastor. We were the first three staff members. I had no idea what I was asking when I prayed to stay in one place. Why would any family want one pastor for their whole lives, least of all me, and why would I want to face into every failing from the early days and live it down right in front of those who saw me struggle? Why not become a college president (lol) or head a mission board? Or at the very least move to an exciting church on the other side of the country where we could begin afresh in the strength of the lessons learned, away from the gaze of those predicting our demise? By now you can guess the single word answer—glory. It’s the only word that dictates every decision in a Vertical Church. What brings more glory to Jesus Christ, persevering in relationships or starting over? What brings more glory to Christ, running from your failures or staying put and facing up to them in God’s strength? What better reflects the glory of Jesus—enduring relationships characterized by forgiveness or temporary ones fashioned in the shifting sand of “what you can you do for me?” Church is the place of God’s glory and to pastor one church this long and for as long as God will allow, I have had to reinvent myself several times:

The church of 100 needed a caregiver who was approachable and available to all.
The church of 1,000 needed a leader who could rally the troops to get into a church home.
The church of 2,500 needed a manager to assure the quality of ministry through other staff.
The church of 5,000 needed a delegator letting go of much to focus on a few critical duties.
The church of 10,000 needs a multiplier, systematizing our philosophy and giving it away.

Those five reinventions of myself were way easier to type than to live. Each came with a fresh realization of how my weaknesses were negatively impacting our church at the time. The only thing that has gotten me up to dust myself off and keep going is my bedrock commitment to staying and growing for the glory of Jesus Christ.

I am not judging you if you have moved; some churches require it, and for most of us, it is all we ever knew. But I challenge you to consider staying and asking only this: What would bring the most glory to Jesus? Has trusting again after getting hurt been hard for you? Has forgiveness come in a crisis alone with the Lord, only to be swept away on a bad day of remembering what someone said to you or, worse, to someone in your family? Are you feeling today the pain of your failures, force-fed by a former friend who demands something from you that they are not doing? In a recent message to pastors, I told the story of hearing myself on the radio (not a habit, I promise) and noticing in my voice a hoarseness that I knew was not sickness. It reminded me of a critical day in the midst of the trials described above that I will never forget. Dark clouds of bankruptcy and cancer and family crisis were looming on the horizon all at once and moving in quickly as the winds picked up force. Driving in to our main campus in Elgin, I wept as I watched the windshield wipers, and everything in my flesh wanted to call someone and tell them to “take this job and …,” but God in His mercy met me powerfully in my car and first through me crying and then with my voice and finally at the top of my lungs I cried out in prayer to the Lord, “I’m not gonna quit, I’m not gonna quit! I’M NOT GONNA QUIT—I’M NOT GONNA QUIT!” I didn’t and I haven’t and I won’t and I don’t want you to either! The Holy Spirit stirring afresh your own passion to see the glory of Jesus revealed in that church where you serve is the only thing I know to keep you going.

Excerpted from Vertical Church.

An Epic Failure: Ichabod

It was Jack Nicholson who famously bellowed to Tom Cruise while playing Colonel Nathan R. Jessup in the courtroom scene of A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth.” I wonder if the screenwriter knew how succinctly he had summarized our culture. Individual capacity to bear the weight of truth has been mortally wounded in a world that idolizes tolerance and despises anyone who threatens our addiction to autonomy. If this were only true in society at large that would be one thing, but as Christian philosopher extraordinaire Francis Schaeffer rightly observed, “The spirit of the age becomes the spirit of the church.” For that reason I confess to wondering about the capacity of most, including many church leaders, even pastors to rightly evaluate and benefit from the content of this chapter. “Can’t you just focus on the positives of Vertical Church without exposing its absence?” Though I might prefer to avoid the refutation of error, the New Testament commands it. Yet why does it seem that most who are willing to do that work tend to call all doctrinal variance false teaching and anyone with a different view a heretic? Why isn’t failure to love and work for unity as Christ modeled considered the greatest kind of false teaching? Where rebuke comes from elders in the body of Christ it should be directed against confirmed, substantive error, not disagreement over method or minor variation in doctrine, and it should come from those qualified to give it. Even ESPN realizes that veteran NFL players are in the best position to critique those currently on the field. Spiritual gifts are dangerous when expressed in isolation and not governed by the complimentary gifts found in a healthy local church. Churches were never intended to have a single focus like Jiffy Lube or Dairy Queen but to be fully biblical in all priorities. To be Vertical and powerful in God’s strength, we must labor to be all that God commands and not crouch in any corner of mutual congratulation about an isolated biblical emphasis.

I fear that challenging the church in North America about its true condition spiritually is gonna be like getting Charlie Sheen to show up for an intervention; however, I have no choice biblically but to try. “Why can’t we just live and let live and leave the focus on the positive?”

Because Paul and Peter and John and Jesus didn’t and taught us not to.
Because adopting a lowest-common-denominator gospel weakens His church.
Because no shepherd, faithful to his calling, can be silent when sheep are not well fed.
Because the gospel fails when we hide it in a museum to admire, and don’t get it out.
Because the glory of Jesus is at stake, and we cannot be passive if He is denied.

Everybody Get a Mirror

Second Corinthians 5:10 declares, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.”

On that day, I don’t expect Jesus Christ will refer casually to anything “it is written.” I doubt seriously He will affirm good motives for wrong behavior or congratulate indifference to the poor or far from God. I don’t hear Him saying, “Yeah well, it’s okay you cut the corners off My message because your heart was excited about reaching the lost,” nor do I expect Him to say, “I accept your bareness in the name of faithfulness” or “You helped the needy; that’s all I was really after.” The church’s power is not in one emphasis to the exclusion of others. We fall into that trap because fully orbed biblical ministry, fulfilling all mandates, can only be a by-product of God’s active participation. We must stop assuming God’s involvement and start inviting it.

Regardless of the kind of church we serve in, we should all be willing to evaluate our churches in a dry run through of the great accountability up ahead for each of us. Status at a denominational convention or success on the “church speaking circuit” should not insulate us from the fear of standing before Jesus Christ someday soon and accounting for our fidelity to “all in” biblical ministry. Each of us settles too easily into our extremes, of aggressive outreach that starves sheep, or passionate expression that motivates and inspires but doesn’t truly edify, or Bible explanation by itself which produces puffed-up heads and shriveled hearts. Vertical Church is about faithfulness and fruitfulness; it’s about passionate worship, biblical proclamation, fervent prayer, and effective outreach that flows into every avenue of compassion for those in need. It’s about getting out of the various horizontal extremes that excel at part of what church must be but fail at the remaining priorities.

Nobody Has It All Right, Not Me!

I was raised then educated at the college level in what would have to be termed old school fundamentalism. There were exceptions, but most were angry toward others and frustrated with themselves. The unspoken training was to doubt everyone, even our friends, and keep putting bricks in the barricade of needless separation. Hair checks in chapel, demerit point system for student-body discipline, and a list of rules as long as a legalist’s private sins. All of this was incredibly detrimental to true discipleship, but I could not see it at the time. “‘I see,’ said the blind man” is a play on the obvious reality that none of us sees our own blind spots, I did not then and surely do not now; can you admit the same? This chapter is a scary attempt to uncover what each of us may have become blind to and invite us all to move away from the destructive extremes of hyper-attractional or faithfully unfruitful or inspirational fluff, or missionally malnourished into the glorious center of the manifest presence of God. I am reaching out to those in chari$mania, or in a mainline, “We believe some of the Bible” church, and inviting you to share with us in the glory of Vertical Church. If you are trapped in my former world of rules without reasons, come with us toward a new gospel center that is uncompromisingly biblical in all the Scriptures assert but not worked up about things the Bible doesn’t mention. Let’s go together to the more joyful, the more fruitful place of not looking in any horizontal direction, but looking straight up!

Excerpted from Vertical Church.

You—Shut Your Mouth

“A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.” (Proverbs 29:11)

 

A complex issue for ministry leaders is how to process the incredible amount of feedback that comes from so many sources, both in and outside the church. It falls into some basic levels, regardless of the source:

General input (random and one time)
Persistent input (continuous on many topics, not always negative)
Irreconcilable disagreement without sin (Paul and Barnabas)
Constructive criticism (always negative, but goal is helping)
Destructive criticism (always negative, with goal to wound)
Harsh unjust criticism (intended to tear down)
Personal attack and character assassination (intended to destroy)

The further what you’re facing is down that list, the more this article is intended to guide you. Part of the puzzle in processing feedback requires evaluation of the person who brings it (let’s save that for another post). A.W. Tozer and many other men of God have had, throughout their ministries, a policy of ‘no attack, no defense’ when the opposition involved unjust or untrue statements from those outside of their own churches. Instead they chose silence, and I believe we should do the same.

1: When Answering Would Cause You To Sin

Every question does not need an answer. For those outside the information flow, the interrogative can be more appealing than the prerogative of love, as the former expands the ego while the latter deconstructs it. Knowing the whole story is a burden that leaders must bear in plurality, so the company or the congregation or the country does not have to carry the weight of full disclosure. In a culture where journalists dictate the information flow, we start to think getting the full scoop is the ultimate good. But seeing firsthand the failings of others without becoming disillusioned is what leaders are called to carry for the sake of all. To keep serving and loving and giving while knowing every detail of every disappointment with yourself and others is a deterrent to sanctification, not an accelerant. Parents, pastors, and all in authority learn that those they lead are better at asking questions than they are at living with the answers they often demand. If the questions are misplaced, badly motivated or beyond the petitioner’s need to know, the wisest thing to do is remain silent. If the answers requested require betrayal or gossip or casting pearls or dignifying someone’s disdain, it’s better to bite your tongue.

“[Herod] plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer.” (Luke 23:9)

2: When Refusal Turns to Reviling

When the answers don’t come in the right amount at the right time to those who demand explanation, they will sometimes become caustic. Your child will attack your withholding of explanation, your employee will question your loyalty, your friend at church will question your fidelity. Can you continue to keep your mouth shut when your heart wants so badly to set the record straight? Can you wait on God for vindication when you have the information that would silence the scoffers in a second? Can you remain quiet when the incensed strike you in anger for your silence? Can you bear the reproach rather than return fire to injure those whose words are wounding you? Jesus did.

“And while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats…” (1 Peter 2:23)

3: When the Weight Seems Too Heavy

As you wait for God’s vindication you may begin to fear that you will be crushed by this burden. Is that so bad? Maybe crushing is just what the Lord has in mind for the pride that insulates our souls from greater grace. God’s sovereignty is so awesome and all-encompassing that He can capture what others meant for evil and use it for your good (Genesis 50:20). God can utilize the misplaced zeal of the ignorant and the well-intentioned crusade of the uninformed as the crushing that increases your Christlikeness. Often what we think is the worst season to endure will become the best season of our lives, if we handle it God’s way.

“Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him…” (Isaiah 53:10)

4: But Jesus Was Silent and Innocent

The obvious difference is that Jesus was silent while 100% without guilt, and we never are. Jesus could give it over to the Father, knowing that His complete innocence would eventually come to light. However, only by self-deception can we view ourselves as innocent. It’s so tempting to run to the part someone else is getting wrong, or camp on the corner of a third party’s misperception—but is all the opposition without merit? Isn’t it better to find the truth that exists in almost all criticism and embrace your own responsibility? Don’t make the mistake of hiding behind the parts of the problem that flow from the faults of others. Get a mirror and focus, with the help of those you trust, upon the portion of the reviling that is legitimate. Covenant with God and those around you that collective regrets will turn out for better service to God and others in the future. A continued focus on learning what you can from your own mistakes will help suppress your desire to retaliate and keep you focused on the one person you can change, yourself.

“Do not be wise in your own eyes.” Proverbs 3:7

5: But My Silence is Making Matters Worse

Can you sit quietly even when you see people you care about get picked off in the crossfire? Shouldn’t you stand up for the innocent who get drawn into the campaign to criticize by telling the ‘whole story’? Don’t allow yourself the rationalization that you are breaking your silence so the sheep don’t get scattered. Yes, any leader should be grieved deeply to see a formerly supportive participant become disgruntled or disillusioned. As hard as it may be, though, we must look to a purpose beyond helping those who know better than to listen to self-appointed arbiters of orthodoxy, who do little more than guess and gossip. Your choice to be silent when reviled is not about the 10 that are caustic or the 100 that are curious—it’s about the 1000 that are calling out for a space and time example of how to handle injustice. Scan the horizon of our world and see how seldom those that are falsely accused hold their tongues. Hear the hurting pleas of the men in loveless marriages or the women who keep serving in humility when affection and appreciation are not forthcoming. See the overlooked, underappreciated and often maligned all around us who truly want to handle injustice as God has commanded. Those who think silence means there isn’t a good answer are naïve. Maybe something much bigger is at stake. Maybe it’s not about you or your detractors at all—maybe it is about those who are watching.

“Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to what is honorable in the sight of all.” (Romans 12:17)

6: Give it Some Time

The most important partner you have in a season of injustice is time. The season will end, the false criticism will be eclipsed by your growth in grace, the loyalty of those with all the facts and the love of those that know you best. The problem with most of us is that we want the issue settled, handled, inventoried with all blame assigned and everything back in the place it belongs for our own peace of mind. Yet Scripture exhorts, “Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God” (1 Corinthians 4:5). And while you await your appointment before God’s throne, be sure you are preparing for shock at the things you were wrong about, with a vigor at least equal to your anticipation of vindication. Sit back, listen to those closest, keep silent, and wait for the Lord.

“Avoid foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.” (2 Timothy 2:23)

7: Can I Ever Say Anything?

I have written a post about when to answer a fool and when not to, but the key is to answer only once and then remain silent. Silence may enrage the foolish, but it will model something important for those you are called to lead. If a fuller defense becomes essential, as in Paul’s ministry at Corinth, let others do as much of that talking as possible—you are not Paul, none of us are apostles. Beyond that, your silence helps you turn down the volume on fixing others and focus in on what God is trying to teach you. When I have gotten this wrong I have deeply regretted it, and purposed afresh to keep my focus on what God is teaching me. I am in the midst of a month largely without email or twitter or much of the internet at all. I am following no one and keeping up with nothing, except my relationship with Jesus, my family, and the wonderful leaders of our church. It has been incredibly refreshing to my soul, and the silence has given me a much clearer picture of what God is growing in me.

“The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” (Lamentations 3:25-26)

Transcendence

 

Transcendence is the best single word I have found to describe the attributes of God that are only found in Him and what is missing too often from our churches. We are facilitators of transcendence. Our main job is to usher in the Almighty—God forgive us when we have settled for less. When transcendence is welcomed and unveiled, no one even notices the program, the preacher, or other people. Anything resembling performance seems out of place. Because all that is visible is eclipsed by what is not: God Himself moving through the church in power and meeting with His people in manifest ways.

When did we decide that relevant need-meeting was superior to awesome God-meeting? We have settled for the horizontal and become comfortable leading and attending churches that God does not. Sailing is only delightful when the wind blows, and church without the transcendent leaves us dead in the water. Does your heart hunger for the miraculous in church where God’s power is manifested in measureable ways?

May I ask some honest questions? Whether you attend a megachurch, a large church, a medium or small or microchurch—when was the last time God took you to the mat and pinned you with a fresh awareness of His size compared to yours? How have we come to be content with so little of God’s obvious presence? I believe there are reasons why good, dedicated people serving the Lord settle for so much less than what church was created to be. Often it’s because a rational antisupernaturalism is all we have ever known. …

In a society where rationality has ruled so long, the church frequently fails to see that in forsaking the weekly pursuit of the transcendent, we have given up the only ground that was uniquely ours in this world. In attempting to make the church something that can attract and add value to secular mind-sets, we have turned our backs on our one true value proposition—transcendence.

The entity God created to traffic His transcendence has fallen far from its mission when it chooses instead to traffic what can be found on any street corner or at the local mall. You may ask, “But how has the church done that?”

By offering secularists what they find mildly interesting and calling it church.
By submitting to self-help sermons where encounter with God is not even on the agenda.
By letting the horizontal excellence of the show stand in for Vertical impact.
By substituting the surprise or shock of superficial entertainment for the supernatural.

Church was designed to deliver what we were created to long for. Church must again be about a Vertical encounter that interrupts and alters everything. If it isn’t Vertical, is it really church at all? What do we really have to offer this horizontal world so burdened with its own happiness this moment? When we settle for a festival of felt needs at church, we fail to offer what God has charged us exclusively to give; we fail to facilitate what God has created people to need, and that is eternity—transcendence—the rare air of something totally beyond ourselves. Vertical is what God made us to long for and what the church is designed to facilitate.

Excerpted from Vertical Church.

The One Thing That Changes Everything

A real encounter with the living God changes everything. First it magnifies the Lord, and then it puts me and my ego and my sin and my burdens, that moments ago seemed so big, all in their rightful place.

That is what church is supposed to do and be. Not an encounter with the glory of God in creation, but an encounter with God in a different, even more awesome way, that only church can provide. In fact church, as a weekly experience with the manifest glory of God is the greatest lack in our day. The lost are not found because God’s glory is not revealed in church. Children wander because church is pathetically predictable or shamefully entertaining but hardly ever authentically God. Marriages flounder because arrogance grows unchecked in our hearts and is not weekly cut down by the pride-withering presence of almighty God. Church was never intended to be a place we serve God to the exclusion of meeting with Him. What I felt that morning at the edge of the Hawaiian volcano is what we need to experience in church every week. We cannot survive spiritually without that corporate connection in heart, soul, mind and strength with the One who made us. That’s what I mean by Vertical.

People Are Desperate

Twice in the past 3 weeks I have stood in a home with heart sick families shrieking in despair at the discovery of a loved one who had ended their life. A young man crumpled in his basement, gun strewn nearby as his body fell lifeless in his final second on earth. An old man blue and bloated hanging in the garage of the home he shared with no one, freed in that act of finality from the fears and loneliness that cornered and conquered his rational thought. I was in these situations and many others because a while back I decided to become a chaplain with a local police department. My ministry had become too isolated from the people we are trying to reach and disciple.

Christians have a way of crouching in their own culture instead of penetrating the one they live in with the gospel. We find issues to debate internally, and the cause we champion is too often our set of preferences substituted for the glorious gospel. Even our evangelism becomes winning people to our doctrinal persuasion or our denominational loyalty instead of reaching the people next door and on our street who have no direct access to what we know they need. I purposely chose to add this chaplaincy duty so I could stand frequently among those who are without God and without hope in this world. Looking into their eyes and seeing their blank-faced, numb despair is a reality check every church leader would benefit from. Our job is to get people to Jesus Christ and to get them back to Him in profound life-altering ways every week. People need God desperately and not in drive-through window doses, or disposable diaper convenience. We need to be taken and shaken by the God who made us and forced to look up into the eternity racing upon us this moment. Deep within we long for the Father of all galaxies to fall on us weekly and take us to the mat with His full weight. Is that happening in your church? When was the last time you were gripped by the greatness of God?

Excerpted from Vertical Church.

What Every Heart Longs For. What Every Church Can Be.

Church was never meant to be safe.

Or comfortable. Or predictable.

God isn’t any of those things.

Church is supposed to arrest our pride.

Church is meant to crush our selfishness.

Church was created to carry our heartache and comfort our affliction.

Church is where we find community, express compassion and engage in mission.

But church without God does none of that.

Make the change that changes everything and learn how to go Vertical at church.

Discover the things God has designed and given us to welcome His glory and provoke His manifest presence.

When church stops being about us, it can be about God again.

And when God comes back to church…it’s time to order more chairs.

 

From August to October, I’m bringing the message of Vertical Church to 40 cities across North America. Check out the trailer below.

 

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

 

Preaching the Word & a Vertical Response

The New Testament knows nothing of an unbaptized convert. Jesus asked us to do two specific things—to remember His sacrifice with the bread and the cup, and to be baptized.

I’ve been preaching verse-by-verse through the book of John in a study called Authentic Jesus. A few weeks ago the entire message was dedicated to John 3:16—the greatest verse in the Bible. Expositing that verse word-for-word led to an incredible movement of the Spirit in our church, with more than 70 first-time confessions of faith in Christ.

The next weekend we finished chapter 3, and the call to obedience through baptism leaped straight out of the text through the clear proclamation of the Word: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36).

Here is the Vertical response that followed…

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)