The Value of a Person

You astute Christians: I know what you’re probably thinking. I’m guessing you think I’m going to talk about how we find our value only in Christ. You are partially correct. But have you thought about how that value is made evident to us?

It’s true that we can discern the truth of it in careful study of the Bible. It’s also true that we can be told about it by faithful teachers of the Bible who have done the study. But have you noticed that people don’t simply obey the Bible just because they have studied it? The teachings powerful for persuasion are given with testimonies by people who have experienced it in some practical way in their lives or who, in the process of discipling someone; lead them to put the teachings into practice themselves.

Among other things that Yancey Arrington wishes he had known about discipleship, one is that “it’s found in a network of relationships.” Discipleship gives the disciple a sense of value in the Church. Truly, God doesn’t need any one of us. He created the universe without our help. In fact, not only does God not need us, we need him. We have negative value as members of a fallen world. All of us deserve not only death, but eternal torture as punishment for our insolent sin. The only man who doesn’t deserve that kind of punishment is God himself who took on flesh and dwelled among us as the man, Jesus Christ. By the death of his body on the cross, he paid the price we deserve to pay. In that way, we were given value worthy of eternal life with God.

But we don’t apprehend that value by claiming ourselves worthy of it. We apprehend that value by understanding that we are not worthy of it. This seems contradictory and is often difficult for young believers, as well as many older ones, to balance.

Dave Miller at SBC Voices illustrates this in his recent article about Busy Pastors. Pastors often find some value in the amount of work they do. So even mature Christians can struggle with the contradistinction between lack of value in our sinfulness and value given by God outside of our actions.

God calls us to serve him. Our value is not in serving him, but in being served by Christ in salvation. Nevertheless, we give honor to people according to what they do in the Kingdom. That gives the illusion that we gain value by doing good things. Rather, we demonstrate God’s value when we do good things. But when we disciple each other in accordance with the Great Commission, we must often temporarily play to people’s need to feel valued.

Kate Mulvey is no Christian. She is a self-centered self-valued woman who has determined that men hate her for being smarter than them. So at age 50, Kate is still single. Kate’s problem is not that she is too smart. Her problem is that she hasn’t found a man that’s valuable to her. She is self-sufficient and there’s nothing a man can do to add positively to her identity. It’s the same reason why Hollywood movie stars jump from spouse to spouse and why many people in this culture anymore have trouble with commitment.

People will go where they are valued.

It’s the same thing in churches. People hop from church to church when they are looking for a sense of being valued. So churches try hard to be nice to new people. But there is a difference between being nice to each other and living in true Christian fellowship. Being nice to each other feels like you are valued for a short period of time. But true Christian fellowship is a lasting relationship between believers that gives each the sense of being valued. That sense might come from the relationship, but it’s lasting because it’s rooted in ongoing discipleship. So the value comes from Christ.

Do you want people to stick around? See their value in Christ and treat them accordingly. Don’t just be nice. Give your fellowship in good times and bad. Let people know how you need them, not just in general but in specific ways. This is how the gospel works through the Great Commission in the discipleship in the Church to hold churches together.

Is Love Powerful?

In watching a video of Ken Meyers delivering a keynote address at Hope College, he quotes literary and social critic, Marion Montgomery, as saying, “The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is power.” (HT: Justin Taylor)

Quotes like this in their brevity require a bit of interpretation. On the surface, this idea seems curious. What did Marion Montgomery mean by this? I’m not very familiar with Marion Montgomery. Is he a Christian? A quick glance at Wikipedia indicates that he was perhaps Roman Catholic. How faithful he was to that is anyone’s guess. I suspect that most people who would read this don’t have a clue.

So we first contemplate the most reasonable possible meaning of this statement by asking the question: In what ways is power antithetical to love? Perhaps Montgomery was thinking about the tendency of people to seek power over other people in the ordering of lives for the sake of enhancing the quality of their own life at the expense of the quality of another’s life. Given the Montgomery was a social critic, this makes sense. Perhaps one could draw some distinction between this kind of power-seeking and hatred, although the two overlap in some ways.

Does this make sense theologically? Jesus told the disciples in Mark 10:42ff that rulers of the Gentiles lord it over people, but that it should not be so among them. The idea of power-hunger is in some significant way not the way leadership should be carried out among Christians. This seems reasonable.

Now there are Christians who think this way fundamentally. If we love God, we should submit to him. That is, our love for God is to give up power over ourselves. But they apply the same thinking to God. Since god loves us, he’s a “gentleman”. That is, he doesn’t try to control us. If the opposite of love is power, then God cannot be both loving and all-powerful.

The problem is that this is not what the Bible teaches. Not only is God loving and all-powerful, he is love and power.

Now the observation that people who are hungry for power are sinfully hateful in doing so does not negate that power used righteously is loving. Think of a person who lacks the ability to care for himself. It is loving for someone who is able to exert power over that person in order to seek the best interest of the one who is incapable.

This concept plays into the debate over Reformed theology. Those who oppose it say that man is capable of choosing Christ on his own. Therefore, it is not loving for God to exhibit power over men. Those who are Reformed in their thinking say that man in incapable of choosing Christ on his own. Therefore, it is loving for God to use his power to give him the ability to make that choice.

There are more refined nuances that I won’t go into regarding different strains of Reformed thinking. However, I will note that if Montgomery were steeped in Catholic thinking, this would comport with the idea that power is the opposite of love.

We all have some power over other people. Just by saying hello or ignoring someone on the street has some effect on the people we encounter. Actions that are truly loving in nature are powerful. My fellow Christians, let us conduct ourselves in such a way as to convey the love of Christ that people will be warmed to his message. That we can give the gift of the Holy Spirit who raised Christ from the dead and can resurrect the souls of those we meet.

That’s the power of love.

God’s Calling To Ministry

Dr. Al Mohler has reposted an article online regarding discerning a call to ministry. His focus is geared particularly to preaching. However, he opens up the call at the end of the article to other servants.

My first response is always that my heart leaps at this kind of message. On some deep level I personally would love to be a pastor. I never turn down an opportunity to preach if I’m available to do so.

My second response is content resignation that I’m not called to be pastor. I recognize a deficiency in my gifting at present that would make me a substandard pastor. If called upon to serve, I would probably prayerfully accept. However, I would be utterly dependent on God for carrying me through the task of ministering to the spiritual condition of a body of believers. Dr. Mohler indicates an outward call. It’s likely that my weaknesses are evident enough that there is little confirmation from others that this is something I’m called to.

I’m not bad as a preacher. On the other hand, I’m not that great either. I need a lot more practice. I have a heart for teaching, but preaching, while relying on a good part of teaching, is geared toward a supernatural persuasiveness that reconciles people with God, sanctifies believers and unifies them under a common ideology and purpose that we know as the gospel and the great commission. I’ve experienced the moving of the Holy Spirit in the pulpit to accomplish what I cannot on my own, particularly at times on the mission field. What most strikes me at the times when I have entered the pulpit is a chilling sense of imminent danger for the people before me. No matter what expectations they have, they must encounter the living God and I am responsible if I succumb to some temptation to teach what isn’t true. It is incumbent on whoever stands before the Body of Christ and presumes to preach to faithfully convey what has been given to us to know from the Bible and nothing else. Lives hang in the balance and there is a spiritual battle for them.

Although I’m not called at present to be a pastor, I am nonetheless a Christian. If you truly trust the work of Christ on the cross, you are a Christian also. As part of the Body of Christ we are all charged with ministry. The Pastor is only one of many kinds of workers in the Kingdom of God. While I think Dr. Mohler is primarily focused on the call to full-time ministry, all of us are ministers. The call to be a pastor seems rather clear and I envy those who have such a clear call. For most of us, I think we don’t have a call to a particular function with such clarity. It can be frustrating to want to minister to people so badly it hurts and simply don’t know what to do. Nevertheless, we must diligently seek to apply what gifts we have.

Does Going to Church Make You a Christian?

There’s a common adage among evangelicals that states, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.” A thoughtful article written by a Lutheran addresses the subtle mistake in this:

It it true that your action of going to church does not turn you into a Christian.  No work of ours gives us our identity as Christians.

But it is precisely in going to church that one is made a Christian.  First at the font.  Then in the assembly.  Later at the table.  God does his work of making and keeping us Christians in his Church.  It is why the phrase “I believe in the Holy Spirit” is followed quickly by talk of the Holy Christian Church in the Creed.  As Luther says, “the Holy Spirit calls us by the Gospel, enlightens us with His gifts,sanctifies and keeps us in the true faith.  We are only made Christians by the Gospel and Gifts of God.  And those are given out in the church.  So in this sense, it is precisely by going to church that you are made a Christian and remain one.

As a Baptist who was once a Lutheran and still ministers among Lutherans on a regular basis, I’m going to temper the ecclesiology that Baptists disagree with in my analysis. Namely, Baptists do not believe that Baptism does anything particular for the believer aside from serve as an expression of the faith he or she already possesses. Baptists also do not agree that the presence of Christ is somehow mystically in the elements of the Lord ’s Table.

However, we Baptists do hold to the priesthood of all believers. We do believe that the gospel must be preached and that the normal way for people to come to faith is because Christians as members of all believers reach out to them with gospel ministry in one form or fashion.

There are a few Lutherans who believe that being baptized actually saves someone. However, most Lutheran’s who I have discussed this with acknowledge that just because someone is baptized as an infant doesn’t mean that they are automatically going to heaven. Likewise, partaking of the Eucharist doesn’t save anyone. Someone can grow up in church being baptized and attending every Sunday, being confirmed, etc. and still possess the wrong motives thereby losing all at the final judgement. So I appreciate the opening statements in my quote from the article.

But rarely is anyone saved outside of the actions of the church. There are exceptions we hear of from countries that are closed to the gospel where Christ has appeared to individuals or groups of people and called them to faith in similar manner as he did with Paul on the road to Damascus.

However, people make a good point when they ask about the native in deepest Africa who has never heard the gospel. It’s why we do missions. Our goal is to proclaim the gospel so all people hear it and have the opportunity to respond in faith. It doesn’t happen unless the church goes. Perhaps, therefore, it is better stated that “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian, but it sure helps when the Church goes to you.”

Christians, go and proclaim.

No Reason to Fear What’s Truly Important

Doug Hibbard, a regular contributor on SBC Voices, discusses the possibility that the government could remove the tax-exempt status for churches in his article, A Post of Personal Paranoia. For churches who struggle to pay the bills, such a proposition is a source of fear for them. Given that many church members don’t tithe and that many contributions are in part motivated by tax deduction for donating to charitable organizations. So not only would churches have to pay taxes, but it’s reasonable to expect donations to decline. That’s the fear.

Commenter Christiane wrote this:

Our Lord left us with His Peace.
Why do we worry ?

I responded:

Christiane,
I think what you say here is at the heart of the matter, not just for our churchly organizations, but for how we feel about the things we’ve been given to steward in other areas of our lives. Part of the problem is that we shouldn’t even draw such sharp distinctions between family and church, family budget and tithe, etc. But when we center our focus on the Church, we stop being the Church. We can only be the Church when we center our focus on Christ. I think God gives us the gift of hard times so that we can remember that buildings and budgets come and go, but Jesus is ours forever.

Commenter cb scott further added:

“Buildings and budgets” and a lot of other things, I reckon.

I think you are right, Jim Pemberton. The realization that you are right about the “gifts of hard times” does not always bring me immediate comfort. However, looking back, it has been during the hardest of times that God has directed my journey in the straightest path.

It's Christmas 2012 DVD

Each year my church, Western Avenue Baptist Church, puts on a Christmas program called "It's Christmas". Until we get a professional group who can produce it with certain quality in a short period of time, I'm happy to edit an amateur video of our program. I finished the editing last night and uploaded a promo for the DVD to my YouTube account. I will eventually upload all of the program as I have done in the past (2007, 2009, 2011). The DVD will contain bonus material that I will not upload. Here is the promo:






Our program usually contains some fun pieces for the whole family to enjoy. But we tell the story of the incarnation of Christ and our need for him through music and narration. The gospel is always presented and we always end with a time of worship through music.

Stages of a Dying Church

Matthew Boyd has a blog worth reading called From The Outside Looking In. He wrote a post recently asking what seems to be a simple question about church involvement in missions entitled Does The Progress of Your Mission Efforts Depend on Money Within An Organization? 

I started out with a simple comment:

 A church that is active in building and sending its own missionaries, in the local community, region, and around the world, is a healthy and Biblical church. Without this aspect of a church's ministry the church would turn its God-given resources in on itself and implode. The mechanism for doing this is the idea that the goal of evangelism is to get people to join, or even just to come to, the church. The mentality is that the church is there to meet their felt needs with the hopes that they will pay their dues. The struggle at this point is between those who think the church should change everything to draw more people and those who think the church should do things the way it has done for hundreds of years. The changers what new people to come to church to be ministered to. The non-changers want the people already paying their fair share of the dues to be catered to with services as they have always been. The point that is missed is that the struggle needs to be to make the current members understand that having accepted the gospel and being God's children means that we need to take the gospel out where people have never heard and disciple them with it whether they end up joining your church or not.

I ended up with something longer than I could post as a single comment. So I'm posting the rest of it here. I talk about the stages of a dying church...

Churches in the cycle of self-consumption go through progressively painful steps toward their own destruction as we are observing today:

1. The Social Club stage. People come and pay their dues and enjoy the company of other people as they are ministered to by charismatic people who have to be in control. These people often feed off the clubby nature of the church because their desire to control is aided by the desire of members to not have to do too much. These ore most often not the pastors of the church, but the deacons or church council members. Pastors who don't see this stage won't teach against it and may cater to the controllers because they fear their influence in the church, or because they tithe from a healthy portfolio. If a pastor can't turn things around in this stage, the church will go through major upheavals in later stages. But a certain amount of tact and wisdom is required to pull it off lest he inadvertently throw the church into stage 2:

2. Non-powerful members of the church realize their duty to serve God instead of just paying for others in the church to serve them. When they ask for help from the church, financially or otherwise, they are met with obstacles*. These obstacles are placed in their way by the ones in control who like the clubby nature of the church as I have described. The ones in control become upset because the Christians who desire to serve God biblically require vested leadership. This threatens the power base of the ones in control and they fear losing the status quo of their clubby church. The longer this goes on, the stronger the obstacles become and they often become codified. This is where the church enters into phase 3.

3. The people who want to minister begin to find the obstacles insurmountable and they begin to leave the church in favor of other congregations open to their ministering. I have often found in many of these churches where the ones in power will actually counsel those who want to minister that they should leave the church. Churches in this stage will dwindle in size and struggle painfully sometimes for a long time with being able to pay the bills, much less a pastor. I'm not talking about very small churches who have this struggle naturally, but by churches once built to accommodate a much larger congregation who are no longer able to maintain the physical plant. Most often, I've seen the church dissolve. The property goes up for sale to a new or growing church or is renovated for some other purpose.

Can a church come back after having slipped from stage 1? Possibly, but I've never observed it. Once a church denies the gospel to the rest of the world, it denies it to its own members. If any church life grows back, it's not a biblical church (e.g. the prosperity gospel).

I've seen this happen too often in the states and I'm familiar with this pattern. I don't have anyone to credit by my own observations. Someone may be able to refine them. But the material in Matthew's article is inextricably linked to the health of a church, I believe as according to what I have observed, and I think God allows this pattern to lessen the impact of sinful churches and increase the effectiveness of healthy churches.

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*These obstacles can be unnecessary procedural difficulties (red tape), de-funding from the budget, the decay of orthodox doctrines, etc.

Open Letter to Strong-Willed Christians

I don’t need to tell you all the good things about yourselves because you have already made the case, at least in your own minds. But let me iterate the qualities about yourselves that make you valuable people so that you know that I respect you for that as well as for letting other people who read this know.

You possess the drive to accomplish great things. You have integrity to your own ideals. You are capable of garnering the support and cooperation of other people. All of these things can be used to do great and mighty things in the Kingdom of God. I believe Peter was strong-willed. I believe Paul was strong-willed. So you have great examples in the Apostles for the work that God has for you.

But qualities like this can also be your spiritual downfall and many great Christian leaders have succumbed to their ability to overcoming obstacles to fulfill their sinful desires.

You see, you possess qualities that make you a great leader. But these qualities do not guarantee that your leadership will be good. Let me share a couple of principles to consider as you seek to implement your leadership in the Kingdom of God.

First, the strong must cater to the needs of the weak. This is a biblical principle from 1 Corinthians 8-10. These three chapters involve Paul spelling out how those who have strong faith must surrender their rights for the sake of not being a stumbling block to their brothers and sisters in the faith who are weaker in their faith. The Corinthians were threatened with disunity because people who thought they were strong were opposing people who they thought were weak. Now, I’m sure it seems logical that they strong should dominate the weak so that the weak are brought up to speed. However, weak people don’t grow the same as strong people.

This follows after Paul’s instruction earlier in his letter to the Corinthians that they shouldn’t think too highly of themselves. He says it that way to the Romans who had a similar problem, but goes into much detail to the Corinthians. It also follows after Jesus’ teaching in Mark 10:42-45. Jesus himself demonstrated this by washing their feet at the last supper. Sadly, we don’t often think this way when we think of leadership in the church. We think of people who dominate other people and lead with strength.

I work in manufacturing. We have machine operators who need to program their machines based on drawings of the parts that come from our engineering department. Most of the time the drawings as simple enough and the operators can add or subtract the dimensions quickly given in order to come up with coordinates that fit in the Cartesian coordinate system that the machines use. But sometimes drawings are too complex for the machine operators to deal with quickly. Dimensions are specified on the drawings that include relative positions based on angles. In order for the operators to calculate the coordinates they need to key into the machines, they need to use trigonometry. Most of them don’t know trigonometry and those who do would spend too long trying to set up the formula and key it into a calculator. Even then, the probability they will make a mistake is too high. So they usually have to leave their workstation and come to see me. I can open the drawing electronically and measure the coordinates they need easily and quickly and without error.

The idea in my example is that it is incumbent on the engineers to generate drawings that the floor can use efficiently. The people on the floor don’t have the education or the tools to be able to use the drawings effectively. They are in a position of weakness where the engineers are in a position of strength. The people in the position of strength must cater to those in the position of weakness in order to accomplish what they need accomplished.

How does this relate to strong-willed people? Especially with raising strong-willed children, I can find dozens of resources counseling the parents how to cater to their strong-willed children’s needs. I can also find resources on how to lead strong-willed people or deal with them in general. But I also have found many resources instructing people that if they are not strong-willed then they are weak. You see, you require others to cater to you, but demand that you be seen as the strong ones. As I have already pointed out, this is contrary to biblical teaching. In order to be most effective in Kingdom work, you must learn to cater to those you see as weak. Paul did as he pointed out in 1 Cor 9. He is your example in this.

One way that you often fail to do this is through your natural competitiveness. You are driven to win. But you end up competing against people who are geared to cooperate in Christian mission, not contend. So you force them to contend, not for the faith, but against you. That’s wrong. You might claim something like you are pushing them to do their best, but you have to understand that they aren’t motivated the same way you are. If you think that they are the weak ones, then don’t expect them to change to cater to your leadership. You must change to fit their followership so as to motivate them according to their temperament.

This leads me to my second principle: The qualities that God gives us to serve him are the same qualities we use to sin against him. This realization should provide two things:

The first one I have pointed out is how the great qualities you have as a strong-willed person can also be your downfall. If you heed this principle, you should be humbled enough to submit to the authority of God in your life. Many strong-willed people I know go off strong, yet poorly informed. You push hard with only some of the facts you need. The key is understanding that you will never have all of the facts. That means that you need to lead with the care that you might be wrong about something. If that doesn’t lead you to submit to God’s authority in all humility then you need to step down from Christian leadership.

The second is that all the wonderful qualities of the people you lead can also be their undoing as well as the undoing of the team. If you can’t submit to God’s authority in all humility, you can’t lead them to do the same. If you don’t understand the magnitude of responsibility you have been given and the glory that God deserves for it, you will forage ahead half-cocked and do more damage than good for the Kingdom. And any good that does happen is in spite of you, not because of you.

Do not take the strength of will you have been given for granted or assume glory for using it. Learn to serve others before you use your strong will to lead others lest you lead them to destruction. You have been given a trust by God in your strengths.