Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 52

Discover Greatness, Don’t Manufacture It

Good word for aspiring writers from birthday boy John Updike. I think it may have good application for pastors too. Be diligent in smallness and don’t get too big for your britches.

Genuine Repentance

I have sinned against you. I have apologized. But how do you know if I mean it?

How do you know when someone is repentant? In his helpful little book Church Discipline, Jonathan Leeman offers some guidance:

A few verses before Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 18 about church discipline, he provides us with help for determining whether an individual is characteristically repentant: would the person be willing to cut off a hand or tear out an eye rather than repeat the sin (Matt. 18:8-9)? That is to say, is he or she willing to do whatever it takes to fight against the sin? Repenting people, typically, are zealous about casting off their sin. That’s what God’s Spirit does inside of them. When this happens, one can expect to see a willingness to accept outside counsel. A willingness to inconvenience their schedules. A willingness to confess embarrassing things. A willingness to make financial sacrifices or lose friends or end relationships. (p. 72)

These are good indicators, and I believe we can add a few more.

Here are 12 signs we have a genuinely repentant heart:

1. We name our sin as sin and do not spin it or excuse it, and further, we demonstrate “godly sorrow,” which is to say, a grief chiefly about the sin itself, not just a grief about being caught or having to deal with the consequences of sin.

2. We actually confessed before we were caught or the circumstantial consequences of our sin caught up with us.

3. If found out, we confess immediately or very soon after and “come clean,” rather than having to have the full truth pulled from us. Real repentance is typically accompanied by transparency.

4. We have a willingness and eagerness to make amends. We will do whatever it takes to make things right and to demonstrate we have changed.

5. We are patient with those we’ve hurt or victimized, spending as much time as is required listening to them without jumping to defend ourselves.

6. We are patient with those we’ve hurt or victimized as they process their hurt, and we don’t pressure them or “guilt” them into forgiving us.

7. We are willing to confess our sin even in the face of serious consequences (including undergoing church discipline, having to go to jail, or having a spouse leave us).

8. We may grieve the consequences of our sin but we do not bristle under them or resent them. We understand that sometimes our sin causes great damage to others that is not healed in the short term (or perhaps ever).

9. If our sin involves addiction or a pattern of behavior, we do not neglect to seek help with a counselor, a solid twelve-step program, or even a rehabilitation center.

10. We don’t resent accountability, pastoral rebuke, or church discipline.

11. We seek our comfort in the grace of God in Jesus Christ, not simply in being free of the consequences of our sin.

12. We are humble and teachable.

As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.

– 2 Corinthians 7:9-11

Your Best Links Now – 3/18/14

An Infographic of All the NT “One Another”s

Background and more at the link above. Infographic displayed at bottom of this post.

The Church for Boneless Chickens by Wendy Alsup

An oldie but a goodie. “I think the key to finding a healthy church is finding one who doesn’t advertise their health—instead they have a sober awareness of their failings and are a humble people who understand their daily need of gospel grace. And godly leadership, if we think someone like the Apostle Paul qualifies, is leadership that recognizes that they are the chief of sinners. Godly leadership is humble leadership that values accountability.”

A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysian Airlines Jet at Wired.com

This experienced pilot fits all the relevant pieces together into his intelligent hunch about an electrical or mechanical fire and a brave pilot’s evasive maneuvers. The truth of course remains to be seen — because the plane remains to be seen — but his theory is at least as good as any others.

On that note:

Nine Baffling Aviation Mysteries at CNN

“[T]he puzzling disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 is not the first time a plane has vanished without a trace. Here are nine cases of mysterious plane disappearances and disasters. Some remain unsolved, decades later.” Amelia Earhart’s flight is easily the most famous. But 1945′s Flight 19 is the most eerie.

On Writing and Pastoring

TGC’s Josh Blount interviews yours truly, continuing a series begun with Tim Keller and Tony Carter, on the pastoral art of writing books.

A Little Irish in Your Crip Walk

Now, this is really getting ‘jig’gy with it.

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I Wrote This Blog Post on Church Time

So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

– 1 Thessalonians 2:8

Well, I’m starting this post at 4:57 P.M. ET. I don’t know what time it will be when I turn the final corner toward “Publish,” but I suspect it’ll be 5:15 or so. I don’t know if that means to you that I started 3 minutes too early, if 5 P.M. seems like standard quittin’ time for so many office jockeys like pastors. But I’ll be here for at least another four hours, maybe more, depending on what is needed after our men’s discipleship group meets.

One sentiment I see a lot in the discussion about pastors who publish (and travel to speak) is the disappointment about pastors writing books on “church time.” Setting aside the obvious reality that some authors with the title “pastor” are lazy or absentee shepherds — in the biblical parlance, “hired hands” — and spend more of their time pursuing public platforms than caring for their flocks, I confess I have to chuckle whenever I hear someone use the phrase “church time.” And so does my wife.

We wonder if someone might help us understand when exactly “church time” takes place. Is it 8-5 on weekdays? Sunday through Thursday? It would be good to know when to clock in and clock out.

Actually, it wouldn’t. Because “clocker-outer” isn’t really listed in the normative pastoral qualification. I once had a guy attending our church plant in Nashville send me an angry message that included the lines: “You call yourself a pastor? Is that on the clock or off?” I was very hurt. Especially since I was leading the church for free and wanted to know, “What clock? If I clock in, will you help me pay my bills?” (He was mad that I wouldn’t lead a singalong around a bonfire, by the way.)

The reality for most pastors is that there is no such thing as “church time.” It’s all church time. When a benevolence call comes in on what is normally your day off, is that church time or personal time? When accusatory emails roll in while you’re on vacation, is that church time or personal time? When there’s weddings and funerals on Saturdays, phone calls in the middle of the night, hospital visits after hours, counseling sessions scheduled to accommodate those who “really work” for a living — is that church time or personal time? When the pastor can’t turn off his heart and brain at night about all that’s going on and he’s losing sleep, should he clock in? Pastoral ministry, when done faithfully, isn’t the kind of thing you can “turn off.” You can set up appropriate boundaries, take days off and vacations, take naps and breaks and Internet browsing mini-sabbaticals, but you never, ever clock out.

Add to this the constant internal struggle to know, “Am I doing this work as a pastor or as a Christian?” Meaning, am I doing this “extra hours” act of service because it’s my job or because as a follower of Christ, I owe my brothers and my neighbors my sacrificial kindness? Why do I get paid for work on Sundays when everybody else, especially volunteers who serve on Sundays, have to come for free? I give up dinner with my family every Monday night for meetings at the church building, but so do some of the others in these meetings. They’re not worried about clocking in.

I don’t know how to sort that out. Maybe you do, and you can help me. I know I feel guilty a lot. I question my own motivations a lot. I constantly feel incompetent, inadequate, incapable. I also know I have a good, gracious community that has not shrunk back from sharpening me in the past. There are a few in the church for whom I can do no wrong, of course, just like there are probably a few for whom I can do no right. But I have lots of honest brothers and sisters. My life is theirs. My heart is theirs. Somewhere in there is accountability, watchfulness, discipline. They are not watching my clock, but they are watching me. I try to honor that. I limit my Sundays away each year, for instance. I ask permission for certain writing projects, for another. No church money is ever used for anything related to that stuff.

And I’ve made the commitment to them that if the public ministry stuff begins to compromise my ability to shepherd them well, it is the public stuff that will see curtailment. I am a pastor first. Thankfully, thus far, with affectionate grace they have seen fit to regard my public ministry as an extension of their own. They are stewarding me, and I’ve been grateful for their generosity.

In any event, the un-professionalizing of the pastorate runs both ways. One cannot expect a pastor to reasonably meet the high bar set by the Scriptures while trying to separate out “church time.” You probably don’t really want the pastor who’s always thinking about what’s on church time and what isn’t. So we might be working on a sermon at 3 A.M. Sunday morning, or working on a book at 9 A.M. on Wednesday. Or finishing a blog post at 5:39 P.M. on a Monday. (A little longer than I expected, but I plead the mercy of the court on account of the pop-in visit from a lady who needed her Samaritan Ministries claim form signed-off on by the pastor, which naturally involves conversation not pertaining to the business at hand. Because we’re human beings.)

The real question is, Are we all — sheep and shepherds (who are sheep) — being faithful to our calling?

Your Best Links Now – 3/17/14

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, named so after New York Knicks great Patrick Ewing who used to wear green socks during March games.

Sorry for the lack of posting last week. I was out traveling and did not have time for blogging, but I’ve been saving up lots of tasting links for your insatiable surfing appetites.

Obsessed with Sex? by Peter Leithart

Are Christians obsessed with sex? I would ask, “Compared to whom?” Peter Leithart argues, “Faced with these charges, we get defensive and protest that we are equally concerned with other things – with economic evils, with militaristic violence, with the degradation of the environment. We shouldn’t be defensive. We should say that we’re concerned about sexual behavior and norms precisely because of the effect they have on the poor, the way sexual immorality is linked with violence. We should say that we guard God’s commandments regarding sex because violation of those commandments will produce social chaos. Sexual behavior and sexual norms are a key barometer of social health. If things are disordered in our bedrooms, they will be disordered in boardrooms and cabinet offices.”

The First Convert from the Tribe That Martyred Jim Elliot and Nate Saint Has Died

“Dayuma, the indigenous Auca woman who helped Jim Elliot and Nate Saint begin their short-lived but legendary missionary work in Ecuador and later traveled the United States speaking on evangelism and reconciliation, died March 1.”

How Did Idyllic Vermont Become America’s Heroin Capital? by Gina Tron at Politio

“Last month, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin devoted his entire annual address to the state’s heroin crisis. Two million dollars worth of heroin is pumped into Vermont each week, he said, and 80 percent of the state’s inmates are in prison for drug crimes. The highways running into Vermont from cities like Boston, New York, Holyoke and Springfield have become heroin pipelines. As Shumlin noted, heroin-related deaths nearly doubled in the last year alone, and the number of people treated for heroin addiction has increased an eye-popping 770 percent since 2000.”

Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney by Ron Suskind

This is long but fascinating and exquisitely written. Suskind writes, “[W]e are at Walt Disney World. Walt grabs Owen’s hand, and off they go down Main Street, U.S.A. There are attractions in Fantasyland — the Mad Tea Party, Snow White’s Scary Adventures, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride — that echo movies they both love. The boys sit in the flying galleon on Peter Pan’s Flight as it swirls and dips over landscapes and figures from Never Land, the Lost Boys frolicking in their lair, Wendy walking the plank, Peter Pan crossing swords with Captain Hook. They look like any other pair of brothers, and in the trick of this light, they are . . . Owen seems at home here, as though his identity, or however much of it has formed, is somehow tied to this place.”

St. Patrick: Reclaiming the Great Missionary by Mike Pettengill

“[T]he factual accounts of Patrick, missionary to Ireland, are even more compelling than the folklore. Telling the true story of Patrick provides an inspiring lesson in God’s grace and mercy.”

Rare Footage of Helen Keller Speaking with Help from Anne Sullivan

Blessed Are the Vanished

An Egpytian Muslim by birth, [Sharaf] el-Din converted to Christianity in 1983 after both he and his wife had visions of Jesus (a surprisingly frequent occurrence in Muslim countries). They left Egypt for Kenya in 1988 to search for employment and to avoid the increasing religious persecution they faced at home. Desperate for a job, Mr. el-Din legally returned to Egypt in 1994. But upon his return, his family did not hear from him for five months because he was immediately “detained.” A hearing was eventually held in which no charges were raised, yet he continued to be detained. After getting legal permission, his lawyer attempted to visit him in the prisons, but he couldn’t find him. The only reason given for his incarceration, informally, was that he converted to Christianity. He was suffering for his faith.

– Mark Dever, “1 Peter: When Things Get Tough,” in The Message of the New Testament (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2005), 445.

In a footnote, Dever writes, “At date of publication, no further information on Mr. el-Din could be found.”

The man simply vanished into the disappearing torture cabinet of martyrdom.

And yet, he did not. He is united with Christ, seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Eph. 2:6), hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). Some day we will learn truly that obscurity, lack of recognition, being swallowed up into thin air and forgotten by all earthly powers, whether by persecution or simply by the circumstances of life, is but a light momentary affliction compared to the eternal weight of glory that is every believer’s in Christ Jesus. And I suspect the most glorious of us in the age to come will be those we’d never heard of in the age that is.

Life on Mission Conference

Friday – Saturday, March 21-22, 2014

Join Bland Mason and me this spring for the first annual Life on Mission Conference at Westgate Church in Weston, MA. The call to make disciples of all nations is not just for those who go overseas. We want to see every member live as a missionary, for whom every sphere of life is their mission field.

The theme for our inaugural conference is Gospel-Centered Mission. Our prayer is that God would fuel our passion for the gospel and equip us to make disciples for Christ in our towns and neighborhood.

This is a FREE Conference, but registration is required. Details here.

Gospel Wine Needs Missional Wineskins

Brought by faithful sowers to the far places and the low, the gospel of Jesus conducts heavenly business, spreading heavenly happiness. Couched in heaven’s invasion of earth and heaven’s vindication of earth, how could it not? As Lesslie Newbigin writes, “Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy.” The juggernauty growth of the gospel (Col. 1:6) requires newness all around. It is bursting through our lives and structures. It is utterly transformative. This is what we see in the breakneck pace with which Mark records the Gospel where we find these seed parables. He wants us to see (1) the absolute depths of joy and (2) the extraordinary wideness of transformation this joy has. The sheer authority of Jesus’s teaching results in deliverance, healing, restoration, and resurrection. How come?

“Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins’.” (Mark 2:18-22)

How is this talk of cloths and wineskins connected to the question about fasts? I think it goes something like this:

The Mosaic law really required only one regular fast. The others that occupied the Jewish calendar grew up around traditions—not bad things in and of themselves. It is possible that John’s disciples were fasting because he had already been either imprisoned or executed. They likely fasted out of mourning. The disciples of the Pharisees likely fasted out of tradition, which became an idol for many of them (see Luke 18:12). One kind of fasting (grief, expectation) was legitimate, the other not. But Jesus’s disciples weren’t going with the flow of the traditions, mainly because they had nothing to grieve (yet) and no merit to glory in. They had Messiah, and having Messiah means having fullness of joy (John 15:11).

Jesus goes on to connect the man-made traditions and ceremonies to outdated structures not suitable for the new wine of the gospel. This joy is growing, going forth into the world and bearing fruit. It cannot be grafted onto brittle, inflexible institutions. The gospel is not just for Jews but for Greeks as well. It is for the unclean, the ungodly, and the outcasts. (It’s for the losers!) All that came before is fulfilled now in Christ. The light by nature cannot be confined to the shadows. It must spill out, shine forth.

There is a time to fast (cf. Ecclesiastes 3), but those united to Christ are to be typified not by grief but by joy, even in hardship (Hab. 3:17-18; Rom. 12:12; Phil. 4:4; 1 Thess. 5:16; 1 Pet. 4:13). This means that joy must run deep. And if joy runs deep, it will overflow and run wide.

When we have this deep joy, we navigate seasons of suffering and brokenness with both the firmness of faith and the flexibility of it. We are able to confidently say, “This day”—with all its troubles—”is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24). Because we know that the joy is so deep, it will buoy our souls for all eternity.

The ferment of the gospel needs the wineskin of the church, which shall be made up of all peoples. The Jewish ceremonial laws and temple system are no longer sufficient for the purposes of God’s glory covering the whole earth as the waters cover the sea.

The ferment of the gospel needs the wineskin of missional adaptability. Our traditions and structures must serve the joy of Christ and his kingdom, not the other way around.

The ferment of gospel joy needs the wineskin of new hearts (Ps. 119:32; Ezek. 36:26; 2 Cor. 6:13). We must be born again to be a new creation.

As we look to however many more days God will grant us, for ourselves as Christians and for our churches, let us commit to proclamation of the gospel, that it would settle deep into our bones, soaking into the marrow, enlarging our hearts that we might run in spreading the news that Christ is King, casting aside all that hinders us, including even religious, churchy things.

And when the gospel changes our attitude to depths of joy, it will change the latitude of our missional boundaries to widespread transformation. This is the joy inexpressible and full of glory (1 Pet. 1:8).

This is the world into which the parables are windows. We see in these little stories that God’s big biblical story of redemption—the joyful restoration of the cosmos, the joyful expansion of the sovereignty of King Jesus, and the joyful redemption of sinful exiles—is coming true. It is coming true through and in and by Jesus.

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

– an excerpt from The Storytelling God: Seeing the Glory of Jesus in His Parables (Crossway, 2014), pp. 172-174, bold added.

Your Best Links Now – 3/7/14

Do You Want to Make a Million Bucks as a Christian Writer? Consider Writing Your Own Religion. by Paul Louis Metzger

“All too often I hear that Paul recreated the Christian faith. Certainly, Paul talks about his gospel — ‘my gospel’ . . . Paul owned the gospel, but he did not control it. Rather, it controlled him.”

Was McConaughey’s Oscar Speech “All Right, All Right, All Right” for Christians? by Aaron Earls

“[M]y questions aren’t directed toward the actor and his faith (though I would hope he would avoid movies like Magic Mike in the future). My concern is more about us and our wisdom in embracing any and every famous person that claims Christ or even uses the word ‘God’ in a positive light. This seems to be yet another example of Christians adopting our culture’s celebrity obsession . . .”

40 Must-See Photos from the Past

Some are amusing. Some are quite haunting.

17 Shocking Food Facts That Will Make You Question Everything

The double-dipping debunking scientists must be the same as those global warming guys. And wait– every Fruit Loop tastes the same? (Link is to Buzzfeed, so mind the sidebars.)

Finding Your Sweet Spot by Darrin Patrick

“Contentment is neutered for the complacent man. To pursue real contentment, a man must push beyond his natural limits, tapping into supernatural strength to do more than he thought possible. Complacent men coast along in life without compulsion to do anything great. They passively engage the world, only exerting themselves to make sure it stays small and within their control. Contentment is reduced to stress avoidance. Here are 4 ways to find true contentment . . .”

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! A Capella

This guy’s got a lot of time on his hands.

It’s Grace All the Way Down

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

- Romans 11:6

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

– Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

What is the ratio of grace to works in the salvation equation? 1 to 0. Not one speck, not one microgram, not one atom of works there. It is all grace or no grace. Wring and wrestle all you want, but it is grace all the way down.