Pastor's Ponderings

Living On Mission

3/9/2012 1:41:00 PM

How are we living our lives? As “disciples” of Jesus, do we live our life as the church only on Sunday, Wednesday evening, and during our personal time with God? Or do we live our life as the church each moment of the every day?

Too often in the church we have decided it is alright to go to that church building once a week, and then go on about life as if none of that “God-stuff” has an impact on the rest of our lives. Of course most who call themselves Christian would not even recognize this disconnect in their own life - apart from the convicting and convincing of the Holy Spirit.

The challenge for us now is to begin to live as if we are continually on this mission that Jesus has given us: “while you are going about life, make disciples…” (paraphrase). What does our life look like if we are living on mission? It is loving God with all of our everything and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Paul said that we are “ambassadors of Christ.” If this is true, when we live on mission we actually live as if we are the very ambassadors of Jesus in our sphere of influence. We speak the words he would speak. We do what he would do. We live as he would live. We do all this from an attitude of surrender to Jesus in order that someone else might see him in us and come to know him. We no longer live with the attitude that life is all about us.

How do you live your life? Do you live on mission?

Messy Church

10/19/2011 5:38:00 AM

The church can be really messy! I do not mean a mess like that on my desk right now with papers here and books stacked over there, Bible opened up on my left and a guest card on the right that I followed up on a week or so ago, or even my son's book laying here, or the bills that need to go to the treasurer. I am not even speaking of the church building, of course that can get messy as well and for the most part it is easy to clean and have spick and span for the next service or event.

No lately, I have become more and more convinced that we, the people of God are actually the church. I have a friend who says that we pastors have preached for years that we are the church not our facilities, and then as soon as the sermon is over we turn around and say, "Don't forget next Saturday is workday here at the church." I thought it was kind of humorous when he said it, but that it didn't really apply it to me. Then I realized I have said it for years but only recently have I really begun to live as if this is true. Not totally certain what made the shift in my own actions and attitudes, but over the past few months I find that is it harder and harder for me to call the building we meet in on Sunday mornings “the church”.

I suppose this thinking has been highly influenced over the past few months as we have been focusing more and more on being disciples of Christ who love God with all our everything and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. You see it is those who follow Him, i.e. His disciples, who form the church, not the tangible buildings we construct. If being His disciples is about the building we tend to at least start out loving God and loving people, but we end up acting like we are just disciples for our own benefit and of course so we can get to heaven. However, the commission that Jesus gave was for the church to go and make disciples, who make disciples, who make disciples and so on and so on.

It appears that in making this paradigm shift from building to people we find the true messiness of the church. I call it “messy” because in paradigm one – we recognize that discipleship is about relationship – with God, with each other and with the world around us. And let's face it relationships are messy and can become very painful. In paradigm two – we find that we like the way we have always done church hold on to the “old way”, at least the last few hundred years’ way, of doing church. I guess it can be summarized as being the church vs. doing church.

As a pastor I find that I will invest in people up to the level that I think/feel they are comfortable with my building relationship with them. Trust me, for me and my personality this type of investment can be difficult, and some times I have misinterpreted and not gone as deep as some have been ready for or I have pushed others deep too fast. Still learning how to do this; probably will be the rest of my life. My learning curve does not eliminate the marching orders that Jesus gave to all His disciples to go and make disciples. So I will continue to step outside my comfort zone investing in people, because life is not about me it is about Him.

However, the reality is that it gets messy when we pastors invest in relationships in order to see the true church/the kingdom grow, and then those we give of ourselves to refuse to follow where we believe God is leading. It is messy when the investment is taken and crushed. It is messy when in our humanness we pastors fail to communicate to our people that all of us together, God’s people, are the church and not the building where we gather. When it gets messy it gets painful. And yet it is never about me, for I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

So in the midst of the paradigm shift, the mess, and the pain let us “rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

I can have my desk cleaned off within a few minutes, but this messy church will always be here, at least as long as we are truly the church and the building across the parking lot is not. Hope you like messy - its here to stay!

Love ... God with all your "everything"

8/16/2011 1:02:00 PM

I asked the question this past Sunday, “What would our church look like if we began to live according to the Great Commandment?” For those who are not familiar with that phrase, it refers to a time when the religious leaders were trying to test Jesus and trip him up. They asked him what the greatest commandment was and he said, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with our you strength.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your everything!” (my paraphrase). What truly do our lives begin to look like if we are captured by this command? What would the Church truly look like if as a corporate body we are so captured by loving God with all of our everything?

I asked this question as we begin as a church to examine who we are, why we are here and what God wants to do through Trinity Church. I start here because Jesus was addressing religious leaders who already had all the rules down and had “church” figured out, and were attempting to get the people to follow their religious traditions and ways to God. My thinking is that if Jesus goes to this command as the greatest and even says that all the Old Testament hangs on these two great commands, that maybe as the religious people of our day we need to make sure that we go back to the basics of what it is truly all about as we begin to restart a “church”, local congregation.

So let me ask what would life look like if each one of us were to be captivated by such a love for our God? If we were to become aware of God’s continual presence and drawing of us to himself – not because he is looking for an opportunity to dump a whole truck of condemnation on us, but because he loves us and wants us to walk in an everyday, every moment, every breath kind of relationship with him – would we begin to live our lives for him? Loving him with every breath, every attitude, every thought, every action, every decision, with all of our everything? How would that impact our world, our nation, our city, our homes, our work places, our personal lives, even our local churches?

You shall love the Lord your God with all your EVERYTHING! How are we doing with that?

Babies and growing the church

7/5/2011 12:51:00 PM

I just took my 10 day old daughter out of my office so I could get some work completed. She is absolutely beautiful and when I look at her I see God's incredible handy work. My wife is acting as her "resturant" right now, so I don't get to do a lot of the feeding stuff. It is amazing how this little baby causes my wife's body to respond in just the right way to produce just the right amount of food for our little girl.

You know though as she grows she will need food beyond what my wife can provide. She will move beyond liquids to semi-liquids to semi- solids to solids. Being a pastor this got me thinking about spiritual matters. How often do we believers end up falling in love with the milk and don't really want to go on to solids? I think too many times it is simply easier to consume the milk placed in our mouths and not do the work that spiritually solid food requires. Guess what though we are just following the example of our spiritual ancestors.

In 1 Corinthians 3, the Apostle Paul tells the Corinthians that he gave them milk when they first came to believe in Christ and they are still sucking down the milk, even though they should have been eating solid spiritual food by that time. He is most likely writing this letter to them a few years after they first came to know Christ and yet they are trapped in their comfortableness of drinking milk. The weak spiritual lives they had must have had a lot to do still drinking only milk.

[Just an aside that came to mind ---- Never thought about it before but maybe the whole tongues issue - insisting that everyone who was really a Christian would be speaking in tongues - arose out of looking for and trying to find some pyhsical expression of their faith because they didn't have the depth of faith that simple flows out into our everyday activities and life. If they could just have some tangible experience to point to they didn't need to worry about going deeper and maturing in Christ. Just a thought - maybe worth thinking about for a while.]

(Now back to the topic at hand) If there is some relation between being satisfied with spiritual milk and growing, which Paul certainly believes there is - then what happens in the church today when we become satisfied with the status quo and only want milk? What happens when we believers become consumers who constantly come in searching to be fed, but never go and feed, never go and make disciples? What happens when we simply soak in all the stuff they makes us feel better, but never even consider that some of the challenges that are presented, may actually be for us? What happens when we just come when the teaching/music/preaching appeals to us and meets what we want, and we leave to go else where "when my needs aren't being meet"?

Our bodies mature - though in a limited way - because we get chronologically older, but we fail to truly mature in a life sustaining manner. If we ever settle for / demand only / require only what we want, then we will one day wake up and find that we are spiritually dead. You see just as we as parents want to see our babies grow, become strong healthy kids then teens and eventually adults who reproduce, our Heavenly Father longs for us to mature and grow to be strong healthy spiritual kids then teens and eventually adults who are reproducing.

Well, those are a few of my thoughts today.

God's blessing

6/6/2011 10:42:00 AM

As we get this blog "stuff" started I am still defining what it is going to look like and what it's content will be. I love to ask questions, even ones that I don't yet have answers to, so I know I will be posting some of those. You will have the opportunity to read about some of what takes place in our bible study times as I write about discussions, topics and maybe even a joke now and then. I also want to be sure to share with anyone who is interested how God is blessing in the life of his church here at Trinity.

This last sentence is what ultimately brings me to the blog today. Yesterday we had a combined service with Centro Cristiano Jireh (the Spanish Church who shares our facilities) and heard the testimonies and thoughts of a Youth In Mission team who is headed to southern Mexico this summer.

Ross reminded us of how easy it is to go through the motions of church and still live a life of hypocrisy, powerful testimony - especially when you stop and consider this was from a college student.

Heejung shared how God has helped her to move from a life that was self consumed - an attitude that said everybody look at me, to a life that is focused on serving Christ - an attitude that says everybody look at him.

Nelson, who is not going to be in Mexico all summer but spending most of his time at Trinity doing an internship as our worship leader, shared with us how God knows what is best for us and that we really don't need to have all the control but can trust him.

Please be praying for these three students as they walk with Jesus on this journey of life, serving him and seeking his guidance and direction. Yesterday we commited to pray for them this summer as they live on mission. Won't you join us?

Any thoughts our even prayer request are welcomed, so feel free to comment. May the Lord bless you and keep you, may he make his face to shine up on you and give you peace.

No Matter the Cost...Really?

6/2/2011 6:16:00 AM

Last night as we sat in a bible study, the question was asked, "Are you willing to do whatever the Lord would ask you to do, no matter the cost?" Of course, the first answer of everyone was, "YES!" Then as we discussed it further - using the story of Abraham, Isaac and the lack of a sacrifice; the insistance of Peter that he would die for Jesus; and Jesus willingness to remain on the cross because his life was not about his will but the Father's will.

One person mentioned that they were certainly willing to die for Jesus, but not give up their child like Abraham was willing to do, or they just could not give up some other important things in their lives. That got me thinking - Are we really willing to surrender to the Lord everything no matter the cost? Then I read this morning, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and tak up their cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).

It sounds like that if we are truly going to be Christ followers then we must set aside our self centered desires, passions, wants and even dreams, in other words surrender everything and follow him - even to the point of taking up our cross. Am I willing to let go of it all - no matter the cost?

Can we even claim to be following him if we initially hold something/someone back for our selves? Can we be disciples (Christ followers/Christians) if we are not willing to to whatever the Lord would ask of us, no matter the cost?

Well some thoughts and initial questions as we begin this whole blogging experience here on Trinity's website. Any thoughts you would like to share about this post or anything else would be welcomed. Have a great day!