Daniel Darling's Blog, page 57

Pastors Who Press On

Discouragement: it maybe the leading cause of failure in pastoral ministry. How do pastors keep from growing weary in their work? I had the chance to talk to an experienced ministry practitioner, Travis Collins. Travis has held a variety of ministry roles and is the author of a new book: For Ministers About to Start or About to Give Up. The first question I asked him was:

You’ve served in various roles in ministry positions, from pastoring to coaching to consulting. In your view, what is the single greatest challenge facing contemporary pastors?

The greatest challenge I find among vocational ministers is disappointment with the church. So many ministers envisioned far more that what they are experiencing.

They are disappointed by the way people have treated them (and no hurt church likes church hurt). They are disappointed that they have to do so much busy work merely to keep the machine running. They are disappointed that so much of their work seems so futile (at least on the surface).

That deep disappointment is a big reason for the epidemic of burnout, and perhaps is somehow behind some of the bad behavior exhibited by so many pastors.

Read more here:

The Way Home – Episode 1 featuring Karen Swallow Prior and Matt Chandler

Listen to This Week’s Episode of The Way Home

Welcome to the first episode of my brand-new podcast: The Way Home. My hope with this podcast is twofold: to give you some compelling conversations with pastors, church leaders, authors, and influencers. This first episode features my friend, Karen Swallow Prior, a fantastic voice. She’s an English professor at Liberty University and her work appears in places like The Atlantic, Hermeneutics, and others places. She’s also an ERLC Research Fellow.

Matt Chandler needs no introduction. He’s the pastor of Village Church in the Dallas Fort Worth area and a popular conference speaker. His sermon podcast is one of the most downloaded on iTunes. Most of all, he is a faithful preacher of the Bible and a man who loves Jesus.

You can listen by clicking on the link above and can subscribe by clicking on the RSS link above. We’re still working on iTunes and Stitcher approval. For now you can click on the RSS link (from your iPhone or Mac or iPad) and it will engage iTunes and allow you to subscribe. Or you can copy the RSS link into your favorite podcast app.

Show Notes:

Karen Swallow Prior segment starts at 4:33

Book: Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More – Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist
Twitter: @lovelifelitgod
Website: works.bepress.com/karen_swallow_prior

Matt Chandler segment starts at 27:03

Book: The Mingling of Souls: God’s Design for Love, Marriage, Sex, and Redemption
Twitter: @mattchandler74
Website: thevillagechurch.net

To learn more about the 2015 ERLC Leadership Summit on “The Gospel and Racial Reconciliation,” go to erlc.com/summit2015. When registering use coupon code: WAYHOME. This event will be held in Nashville on March 26-27, 2015.

Alzheimer’s and the Imago Dei

Alzheimer’s may be the most feared disease of any in our culture because of the slow and painful way it sucks the life of out of people we love and the burden it places on caregivers. How should Christians think about this disease in a way that’s unique from the rest of the culture? How does the Christian concept of imago dei force us to consider the dignity of those held by the grip of Alzheimers? This is a question I posed to Dr. Benjamin Mast, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and an Associate Clinical Professor in Geriatric Medicine at the University of Louisville. He’s the author of a brand new book, Second Forgetting, Remembering the Power of the Gospel in Alzheimer’s. 

What is unique about the biblical ethic of the imago dei that changes that way we think about Alzheimer’s patients?

We live in a hyper cognitive society where our personhood and value are often closely tied to intellectual ability and achievement, and in this context people with Alzheimer’s are often seen and treated as less than full persons. If we are only the sum of our cognitive capacities then Alzheimer’s would indeed take away our personhood. The Biblical understanding of the person was never tied to intelligence or even to our ability to contribute something to society. Our identity is deeply rooted in our status as image bearers of God. Even in our broken cognitive state, we are nonetheless fully redeemed, fully known and fully loved by God. Not even Alzheimer’s can separate us from the love of God or remove us from his sustaining care.

The biblical view of personhood gives us hope. Even when Alzheimer’s robs a person of the ability to speak and we can no longer know their thoughts or heart, God knows them and intercedes with prayers on their behalf. Even the most severely impaired people matter to God and they should matter to us. They deserve honor, respect, and loving care, even when they cannot respond with spoken gratitude. We love our neighbor with Alzheimer’s because God loves us, not because they love us back.

Read the rest of the interview here:

How NOT to Read the News

We live in a time where we are exposed to more news headlines than at any time in human history. In the ancient days of news, anchors checked the AP newswire for stories and reported on them and people in their homes watched or people in their cars listened to radio. Today, everyone, is essentially checking the wire, all day, through social media. We also live in a time when it’s has never been easier to publicly express an opinion. Before the Internet, if something happened, you might have picked up the phone to call someone or perhaps you might discuss it at work, around the water cooler. But today we are all pundits, all with commentary on what is happening right now.

Quite often this new reality is leveraged for good. If a disaster strikes, more people can be informed than in previous generations. Social networks can be good conduits for raising money for important charity, for networking and communicating with wider groups of people. In many ways, the new paradigm has flattened leadership, forcing organizations to be more transparent and less hierarchical. All this is good.

Still, followers of Christ need to think through how they process the news, particularly how we react to the headlines that come across our screens every day. Here are three tips I think that might help:

1) Don’t react to headlines, get the full story. I think James 1:19 is instructive here. If I could paraphrase, I’d say we should be “swift to hear, slow to tweet, slow to outrage.” We often get it backwards. Two things work against us slowing down and getting the story right: confirmation bias and our need to be the first and most clever to speak. First, because we can tailor our news intake (more on that below) to our specific point of view and bias, we tend to gravitate to news headlines that confirm what we already want to believe about people and personalities we might not favor. Secondly, there is a human instinct to want to be the first to comment and to have the most clever reaction (measured in retweets). There is an inherent danger in being so reactive to headlines. If you have not read the full story and, perhaps, ready other stories about the topic, a quick reaction can make you appear foolish. It also works to divide the body of Christ. There is nothing wrong with principled, sharp engagement with news stories. Christians need thoughtful commentary on cultural events, but we need it to be critiquing things that actually happened, not caricatures of things that happened. There’s a difference here. Before you start a brushfire online, before you email your allies with damning information about someone with whom you disagree, before you forward and post negative things, make sure you are actually getting the full story.

2) Don’t consume news from only one point of view. It’s a good habit to follow, on Twitter and in our other consumption of news, people from other “tribes” (though I hate that word now) and from other ideological perspectives. It’s good to have a mix of people in your twitter feed: advocates, opponents, and straight-up journalists. This gives you a much more nuanced view of what is actually going on. It also keeps you from tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists that seem to dominate on all sides of various issues. You should also have an operating principle of not reacting to a story unless you’ve read two or three versions of it from diverse news outlets. In other words, don’t just take the news story that best confirms what you already believe about something or someone. Get the full picture here. I can think of one story in particular that I thought was newsworthy, even worth commissioning an article for ERLC. But then I asked a few folks, read a few more articles, and realized there was more to it.

3) Try to see the human side of the news. This is especially important when news stories involve personalities, whether politicians or preachers. There’s a lot of tabloid journalism out there, both in the larger culture and in the church world (unfortunately). Remember that the person you are about to destroy online with a clever hashtag probably has a family who can google their name. Do you want to be the one who caused their daughter pain? Followers of Christ should operate by different principles. This should have two effects on our public witness: First, when expressing public disagreement, we are to consider every person, even those with whom we viscerally disagree, as people created in God’s image and worthy of respect (James 3:9; 1 Peter 2:17). We’re also supposed to be especially charitable to fellow Christians (Galatians 6:10). Secondly, to knowingly spread false witness about someone by not getting the facts right says to the world that we don’t value some humans like we value others. It’s also sin. All of us are wise to consider our platforms and how we are influencing those who follow us.

They hear you when you’re speaking

Right before I got married, a wise man, married for many years, gave me a piece of advice. He said, “Dan, always talk favorably about your wife when she is not around. She can hear what you say about her even when she is not around.” This is a maxim I have tried to follow in my marriage. We’ve all been around folks who dis their spouses with regularity. It’s cringe-inducing for those of us who have to hear it and it only makes us wonder how good that marriage can be. I also believe, strongly, that spouses can sense when we don’t have their back, when we’re kind of smiling when we are in their presence, but cutting them down when they are gone. Real love doesn’t do this.

I also think this is an important principle when it comes to our children. It’s  easy to criticize our kids when they are not present, especially when parents get together and kind of share “war stories” of whose kid is more difficult. There’s nothing wrong with retelling funny or difficult moments from parenting with trusted friends. But I think we do harm to our kids when we disparage them to other parents. Even when they aren’t physically present, they can hear us. Kids  instinctively sense when their parents are disappointed in them, when their parents don’t believe in them. And yet it’s so easy to fall into a trap of kind of always lamenting our kids. My kid is so stubborn. My kid is not really smart. My kid is always doing this or doing that. When we do this, it sets a tone, a tone that no matter what our kids do, they will never measure up to our standards, standards we probably couldn’t reach ourselves. Every kid needs their parent to be proud of them. I’m not talking about over-the-top flattery, but I’m talking the kind of approval every child longs for and needs from their parents. Jesus received this at his baptism, when the Father called down from Heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17).” Dads, your kids especially need this from you. Don’t be stingy with encouragement and praise.

I think we often forget that our children are not just our offspring, but they are our neighbors as well. Do we love them well? And if our children are Christians, they are also brothers and sisters in the Lord. Do we treat them appropriately this way? This doesn’t diminish our roles as fathers and mothers. This doesn’t lessen the need for love and discipline. But we’d do well to remember our kids, like us, also deserve grace. They were created in the image of God and deserve our respect and they are sinners who deserve our forgiveness when they fall short.

Parenting can be exasperating, tiring, and sometimes lonely. Venting, at the end of the along day, is sometimes therapeutic. But let’s make sure we don’t damage our kids by talking about them behind their backs. Because despite what we think, our kids can hear us when we are speaking. Even if they are miles away.

On Halloween, Don’t Be That Parent

So it’s Halloween and parents everywhere are finalizing their plans for next week. Candy is purchased and placed in the requisite pumpkin bucket near the front door. Costumes are selected and purchased. And evangelical car trunks stand ready to be decorated for the church parking lot. It’s go time.

But before you venture out at the end of this week, make sure you are ready, as a parent, for the holiday. To get you ready I’m here with some important things not to do.

1) Don’t Be That Parent Who Judges What the Other Parents Do. 

Regardless of your parenting posture on Halloween (and if you need help, here’s a helpful guide from Russell Moore), don’t be the parent who either self-righteously talks about how you shield your kids from the devil’s holiday or how you are so much more enlightened than the parents who shield their kids from the devil’s holiday. Follow 1 Corinthians 8.

2) Don’t Be a Candy Killjoy

There are several ways to be a candy killjoy. Maybe you are the healthy parent (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who will only accept gluten-free, free-range, grass-fed, no-hormone candy. I’m exempting here parents who have kids with allergies. Those are serious and we should do whatever we can to make those kids get candy they can enjoy that doesn’t make them sick. But with that caveat out of the way, don’t be the parent who lectures on “all the chemicals in the candy” and “how kids are so obese these days.” Those are important discussions, but can we let the kids have some fun and save those discussion for another day? And, for the sake of all that is good and holy, don’t put carrot sticks in some poor kid’s candy bag. Just don’t do it.

The other way to be a Halloween candy killjoy is to not allow your kids to indulge the candy on the first night. Our rule of thumb is that we allow them to go a little bit crazy the night of collection, then my wife Angela rations the candy like the food rationing during World War II. This allows them to enjoy candy in moderation the rest of the year.

3) Don’t Be a Gospel Killjoy

When we grew up, we didn’t trick or treat–that was my parent’s conviction–but we did give candy to the kids who did. We also handed out gospel tracts. I think gospel tracts are great evangelism tools during this season. I know of several people who came to faith in Christ after receiving a gospel tract. However, don’t make the really big evangelistic fail of handing out tracts without candy. Don’t do this. First of all it’s cruel and unusual punishment for kids who are coming to the door for candy and not pamphlets. Secondly, it says all kinds of unintentional things about the God whose love you are trying to communicate.

Another way to be a gospel killjoy is to work a “light and darkness” Bible reference into every other sentence when you are trick or treating with your kids or discussing Halloween with friends. Yes, this is a great moment to talk about spiritual warfare, light and darkness. Yes, yes. We do this with our kids every year at this time. But don’t be obnoxious. Don’t be a killjoy. Have fun and let your kids have fun.

4) Don’t let your daughters wear sexy costumes 

Somewhere along the line Halloween grew from a holiday where kids dress up and go get candy from neighbors to a holiday where adults dress up in increasingly inappropriate and creepy costumes. I’m amazed when I look at the sales fliers at how these sexy costumes are increasingly being marketed to young girls. I have three young girls and this disturbs me on many levels. As parents, we need to resist the culture and make sure we practice modesty give our kids a young and wholesome time on Halloween. As a father I feel a weighty responsibility to protect my kids’ innocence.

5) Don’t be too cool for your church’s events. 

I’ve noticed a kind of elitism when it comes to church’s attempts to do outreach on Halloween. Ok, Judgement Houses are a colossally bad idea. But don’t be too cool for your church’s Trunk or Treat or Harvest Fest. Yes, you are missional and will do trick or treating to meet your neighbors for gospel conversations, but you can also do your church’s events as well. Participate, encourage the body of Christ and, if you are smart, set up two nights of candy for your kid’s consumption.

6) Don’t be too churchy to not use Halloween to build relationships in your community. 

On the flipside, I think Halloween presents a wonderful opportunity to get to know your neighbors. It’s hard to reach people with the gospel if you don’t actually know them. And you should attempt to get to know them in a long-term friendship kind of way, not in a “I’m being nice to you so I can get you to my church” kind of way. Be genuine. Be friendly. Be human. Your unchurched neighbor probably doesn’t really need to hear about the supposed Satanic origins of Halloween the first time you meet him.

7) Don’t forget the 10% Daddy tax

I saved my best tip for last. A universal rule of parenting is the 10% Daddy tax. In exchange for your wandering around dark streets with plastic pumpkin buckets with your kids, you have the right to skim at least 10% of the candy they collect. The best time to do this is after they are in bed and will not notice a few missing 100 Grand bars or Kit Kats. You shouldn’t feel bad about this. This is how the world works. Your parents took 10% of the candy you collected when you were a kid and now this is you completing the cycle. Plus, they really aren’t old enough to appreciate the rich chocolate and caramel of a Rolo.

Multigenerational churches and offering plates

I’ve been writing recently about the shape of worship in our churches.

First, a piece for Christianity.com about the importance of multi-generational churches:

I recently said goodbye to one of my dearest friends, who taught me more about ministry than anyone else I knew. He recently succumbed to cancer in his early eighties. Until this quick-moving disease ushered Him home, Bill was a font of wisdom about how to do ministry. It was timeless wisdom good for dealing with every generation.

Another of my close friends is a Boomer. I can’t tell you how many lengthy phone conversations I’ve had with Rich over the years, gleaning precious insights on family and church life.

I’ve seen this dynamic played out in church life if the leaders are willing to embrace a multi-generational approach. Churches that worship at the altar of relevance, who are constantly chasing the next trend might be tempted to so vigorously divide ministry into age-graded demographics that they create little churches within their church. However, churches who balance generational needs with a multi-generational dynamic foster a rich, other-worldly kind of body life.

Read the entire article here.

Secondly, I write a piece for Faithstreet about offering plates and why I still like them, even in a digital world:

Ever since I’ve been a child, I’ve enjoyed the passing of the plate in church. Maybe it’s because I had a father who never failed to put money in the plate, in good financial seasons and in bad. Maybe it’s because I’ve been tithing ever since I earned my first allowance. Or maybe it’s because I still feel the joy and the grace of that moment in the service when we stop and say, “We will follow Jesus” Sermons compel us to devotion. Music reflects our devotion. But the offering plate is the moment in the week when we stand up and say, “I’m in. Not just with my words, but with that thing that is so precious to my existence.”

Read the entire article here.

 

Why I’m Thankful for Christian Music

This headline seems a bit redundant. After all, I’m a Christian and, of course, I’d love Christian music. But this is not always the case. In fact if you listen to a lot of the conversations young Christians are having today, you’d find that Christian music is a kind of punching bag. It’s fashionable for us to take a sledgehammer and bash, with great glee, the art that our brothers and sisters are creating.

To be sure, there are songs for the Christian that are worth rejecting. Songs that have little or no theological teeth and songs that create a kind of Christian subculture, yada, yada, yada. But I think we’re often really, really unfair to Christian music artists. Peter Chin’s recent article at Christianity Today is a good place to start. Sometimes our critiques are legitimate. Other times, I suspect, we’re out to prove how sophisticated we are or how “unlike those other kinds of Christians” we are.

Christian music has had a powerful effect on my own heart. I’ll give a couple of examples.

Several years ago I endured perhaps the most significant trial of my life. I was in the midst of my pastorate in the Chicago suburbs. I had been unfairly and unjustly attacked by people I loved and respected. Not only did they betray me, they publically slandered me, threatened my ministry, and attacked my character. To make matters worse, my wife was out of town with our kids, helping a friend whose husband had just died from cancer. I have never felt so low in my life.

After a meeting in which things went really badly, I retreated to my office at the church, stunned, angry, and unsure of what to do. The first thing I did was turn on a Pandora channel on my laptop. The first song that played was Chris Rice’s song, “Come to Jesus.” I don’t know if you like this song or not. I don’t know if you think it’s shallow or brilliant or whatever. But this song, in that moment, ministered to my heart in a way that I will never forget. I will never forget the tears that ran down my face and the reassurance the Holy Spirit gave me in that moment, reminding me that this wasn’t Jesus attacking me, this was Christians. So I ran to Jesus and found life, away from the hurt caused by people I loved.

I don’t know what was going through Chris Rice’s mind when he sat down to pen those lyrics. I don’t know what his motivation was. But I do know that his application of his heart and mind to music was a gift to me at that time.

To write music, to produce any kind of art, is difficult. The artist is vulnerable in that moment, when he puts pen to paper and exposes his thoughts to the world. He can be subject to endless critiques and mockery. But he also has the potential to be used by the Spirit of God to minister to people he will never meet. We should be grateful for artists who write songs for the Church.

Another example, this time a hymn. One of the things I love about growing up in a more traditional church was the singing of hymns. They come back to me, time and time again, in my adulthood. One in particular is “Jesus Paid it All.” This is my father’s favorite hymn. My dad is a pretty stoic, hard-working, blue collar guy. I’ve rarely seen him cry. But every time he described the words in Jesus Paid it All, he cried. That hymn makes me think of my father. In 1865, Elvina M. Hall sat down and wrote this hymn, not knowing the impact it would have on people she never met. I’m grateful she did.

Finally, one more. This week in church we closed with the simple revival chorus, “I have decided to follow Jesus.” It was the appropriate ending for a sermon that focused on what it means to follow Jesus. I needed this sermon this week. When we stood to sing, I was overcome with emotion. “I have decided” brings me back to wooden benches at camp meetings in my youth and the decision to walk forward and commit my life to Christ. It brings me back to campfires and key moments of discipleship. According to this story, this simple chorus has a remarkable story behind it that I’m not sure is verified. Regardless, for me, this song has powerful meaning.

I could go on. I could talk about how “Amazing Grace” and “There is a Fountain” and “A Mighty Fortress” stir up thoughts of worship and praise. I could talk about singing “The Power of the Cross” by the Gettys with thousands of people in a room and feeling like I was in Heaven. I could muse about Michael W. Smith’s recent “Sovereign Over Us” and a song our church sings during communion whose title escapes me.

The point is that I’m grateful for artists who continue to put pen to paper, who compose the notes and give us a way to sing about the God we love.

Why Leaders Fail

Recently I had a discussion with some friends about some public leadership fails in the news. I could name them, but you likely already know who they are. Our conversation turned to a general topic of leadership and things we’ve observed. What struck us was how these things evolve from little, seemingly insignificant decisions that form the culture out of which unhealthy leadership grows. In other words, nobody wakes up one day and says to himself, “I’m going to strive to be an authoritarian leader who wreaks havoc on the people I serve.” It just doesn’t happen that way. Leaders start with good intentions. They start as “normal” people. So how do leaders fail? I think there are five basic mistakes leaders make:

1) Leaders Fail to Build Healthy Accountability Structures for Themselves Early On

So nobody wakes up one day and says, “I’d like to be a jerk who doesn’t listen to anyone.” Instead, it begins slowly, early on, when leaders fail to intentionally build honest voices into their lives. By “honest voices” I mean friends, mentors, family who are given permission to tell us when we are out of line. We always think this needs to happen when we “make it big” but that’s a mistake. We should do this when nobody knows who we are. And it begins by receiving healthy criticism from people we love instead of adopting a “haters gonna hate” mentality. It’s important to do this early on because once we “make it big” (whatever that means), we’ll be less resistant to criticism. Leaders who surround themselves with sycophants who fawn at their every move–this builds the culture that breeds authoritarian leadership. So, it’s important for us to have one or two people in our organizations, in our circle of friends, in our families who can tell us, at times, “Dude, you were a jerk to that person” or “Hey, I don’t think this is a good move.” David had Nathan. Who is your Nathan? I think we should not only do this intentionally, but organizations should be structured with this kind of accountability. This is why ecclesiology (church governance and structure) matters. This is why organizational structure matters. The “I’m a CEO/King and nobody tells me what to do” model breeds leaders who fail.

2) Leaders Fail to Move Beyond Personal Grudges and Hurts 

I’m a fan of reading biographies, particularly biographies of political leaders. These are the books I bring to the beach (I know, it’s pathetic). In my reading across a wide variety of leaders, I’ve found a singular trait that characterizes leaders who could best be described as “tyrants.” This is the inability to forgive. Look closely at dictators who have ravaged countries and continents. Almost every one of them was operating off a hurt early in their lives that they never got over. I’ve seen this with presidents, CEOS, and pastors. If part of the motivation for assuming leadership is the opportunity to “prove everyone wrong” or “strike back at those who hurt me”, this is a recipe for an authoritarian leader. Leaders who forgive are leaders are able to use their past as a catalyst for serving others and helping them through their hurt and pain. I think of Joseph, who rose to leadership in Egypt and instead of using his power to get vengeance on his betraying brothers, left justice in the hands of God and instead offered forgiveness (Genesis 50:20).

3) Leaders Stop Serving the Mission and Start Serving Themselves

This one is closely related to the first point. Unhealthy leaders begins when organizations allow or foster a kind of “leadership bubble” where the goals of the organization are simply to advance to the leader’s personal interests. This can get complicated, because a good leader will have a reputation and a brand, so to speak, that will bring attention and honor to the organization he serves. But good leaders build a deep and wide organization and are unafraid to let others in the organization get attention if need be. Unhealthy leaders constantly monitor what is being said about them and wake up every day worried more about themselves than about serving the organizations they’ve been entrusted with. Good leaders are humble, confident, winsome in their approach. And they are motivated not by building their own platform but by serving those God has called them to serve.

4) Leaders Stop Growing and Listening

Most people think this is a function of age, that older leaders stop thinking they need to grow and change and learn. But I have not found this to be true. I’ve met young leaders who think they are the experts in everything and I’ve met older leaders who surprise me by their desire to grow. This is more of an ego/pride thing. Success is a difficult thing to handle, more so than failure. And without the patient work of the Holy Spirit sanctifying us we all tend to drift toward lethargy and pride. Good leaders constantly seek out new opportunities, new relationships, new coalitions that will help them grow as a leader and as a person. Bad leaders refuse to listen, grow jealous of other’s expertise, and guard their reputation so strongly that they can’t ever admit they don’t know everything. I’m reminded of the maxim in Scripture that God “resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

5) Leaders Think That “This Couldn’t Happen to Me.” 

What strikes me most in our conversations about failed leadership is that almost none of us think it could happen to us. I think this is dangerous. It’s very possible that someone tweeting/blogging/talking about some famous and terrible leadership crisis today could be the subject of a similar crisis in five years. The more we cringe and feign disgust at the examples we keep reading about, the more likely it is that we’ll repeat the same mistakes. This is because the instinct that says, “How could this guy do this to his church. I would never do that” is the very instinct that leads to our downfall. We should all treat others’ mistakes like Paul treated the failures of Israel in the Old Testament. We should “take heed, lest we fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). I’m amazed at the pride we all have when someone falls and falls big, at the celebration of their demise and the virtual chest-beating we do on social media. This shows that we’re just as susceptible to making the same mistakes. Instead, like Paul, we should treat every sad story of leadership failure as a cautionary tale.

Victoria Osteen and Our Conservative Prosperity Gospel

Last night, Christian Twitter was alive with the ridiculous and sad clip of Victoria Osteen’s blatant prosperity gospel declaration. “We go to church, not for God, but for us.” I especially liked the enterprising blogger who affixed Bill Cosby’s “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard” to the end of the clip. Well done.

But before we conservatives get too cocky in our outrage, we’d we wise to admit to our own version of the prosperity gospel, a kind of false message that creeps into our gospel proclamation.

None of us are offering people paradise like the Osteens, especially those of us who have travelled to third-world countries and have seen first-hand the crippling poverty experienced by people with faith much greater than our own. Nor would we dare to tell our persecuted brothers and sisters in the Middle East that with just a bit more faith they might be able to outrun their ISIS persecutors. To do that would not just make us modern-day friends of Job, it would make us false prophets.

What we might be tempted to do, those of us with our airtight theology, is offer a subtler version of the prosperity message in the way we talk about sanctification in this life.

I grew up hearing that what the troubled and broken world really needs is Jesus. I still believe this, even more so now than I did as a child. But what I heard then and what I hear now about our need for Jesus is markedly different.

My ears heard then, “If only the drunkard would walk forward and trust Christ, he’d find relief for his addiction” or “If only the depressed or mentally ill (we didn’t use that word, actually) would know Jesus, they’d find happiness.”

But what I hear now from the gospel is different. I hear now: “Come to Jesus and he’ll begin the process of making who you whole, but the full work of restoration won’t happen until He consummates His kingdom.”

There’s a big difference between the two. One says that upon salvation, all of the Fall’s crush upon your soul will be unraveled. Everything will be made new—now. But is this true? We know this doesn’t happen, even from our own lives. Many years after salvation, we still struggle with sins that “so easily beset us” (Hebrews 12:1). As a pastor, I saw first-hand the pervasive effects of the Fall, how the curse so gnarled up human lives. Some of those knots will be unwound in this life. Most will have to wait until Heaven to see full restoration.

Is this not what Paul was saying when he talks in 2 Corinthians 4 about “treasure in earthen vessels” that is “crushed, perplexed, and persecuted.” The treasure is Jesus, but the vessel—body, mind, soul—is fragile and broken. Christ is doing an ongoing work in us, but it’s a work that is far from finished. Our “outer self is wasting away” but our “inner self is being renewed day by day.” Sanctification—not a one-time event that happens when we walk the aisle—is an ongoing work within. There is, Paul says, “an eternal weight of glory” that awaits us. Our full, final, and complete restoration.

At first glance, recognizing and accepting that we’ll not be perfected in this life might seem cause for despair. Having to get up every single day and “run, with patience, the race set before us” (Hebrews 12:1) might cause us to lose heart.

But instead it should move us to joy, because we look not at the “things that are seen” but the “things that are unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:18). In other words, we don’t despair at the continual struggle with sin, the pervasive physical and mental effects of the fall, or the problems that never seem to unwind in our lives and in the lives of those we love. Instead, we rejoice and look to Jesus, the “author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1), who has already secured our full final restoration. This struggle will soon be over and Christ will finish his work in us.

Understanding sanctification guards us, then, against over-selling immediate, tangible gospel effects. Yes, genuine salvation does result in life change, but these fruits may often be small in this life, faint glimmers of the glory we’ll see in the New Jerusalem. Understanding sanctification also gives us a mechanism to help others who struggle with sin, with mental illness, with sickness and pain. Rather than offering hyperbolic promises of “victory” and “spiritual success” we might enter into in their pain and walk with them in their despair, pointing them to comfort in the eschatological hope of a full, final renewal that awaits them in glory. Understanding sanctification allows us to mend the broken without expecting people to be perfectly whole in this life.

Rejecting our subtle prosperity gospels moves us from people-fixing to burden-bearing.

We should still say to the seeking, the hurt, and the lost, “You need Jesus,” because they do. But let’s not give them the false Jesus of quick spiritual fixes, but the real Jesus who guides us through the storms and walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death and leads us ultimately to Himself.