Choosing to Be a Fool Over Being Cool

From Greg Gilbert's What Is the Gospel :

The message of the cross is going to sound like nonsense to the people around us. It's going to make us Christians sound like fools, and it most certainly is going to undermine our attempts to 'relate' to non-Christians and prove to them that we're just as cool and harmless as the next guy. Christians can always get the world to think they are cool--right up to the moment they start talking about being saved by a crucified man. And that's where coolness evaporates, no matter how carefully you've cultivated it.

Even so, Scripture makes it clear that the cross must remain at the center of the gospel. We cannot move it to the side, and we cannot replace it with any other truth as the heart, center, and fountainhead of the good news. To do so is to present the world with something that is not saving, and that is therefore not good news at all.

"I'm Really Concerned That He Isn't Boring"

That's a typical concern of Pastoral Search Committees that Chris Brauns addresses in his new book, When The Word Leads Your Pastoral Search: Biblical Principles & Practices to Guide Your Search. One reviewer of this book is right in commenting that there are other books/resources that Pastor Search Committees need to read in preparation for the task before them, but this is the first book they need to read. I couldn't agree more. As someone on the other side of the process, it's helped, challenged, and encouraged me greatly.

In addressing this concern of a "boring pastor" Brauns writes,

You cannot make it your central goal to call a pastor who will not bore you. The people in your community are drowning. They don't need someone to row out beside them and entertain them. They need the life preserver of God's Word. The people in your pews face great trials today and will in the days to come. Their most desperate need in life, even more important than whether or not they have a warm bed and food, is to hear from God. Whatever you do as a search committee, you must call a pastor who will preach the Word.

Redefining Extraordinary

Just finished reading Mike McKinley's excellent book Church Planting Is For Wimps: How God Uses Messed-Up People To Plant Ordinary Churches That Do Extraordinary Things.

Towards the end of the book, he gives a helpful new definition to "Extraordinary."

I want to redefine extraordinary. I don't think that it's wrong for church planters and church revitalizers to long for an extraordinary ministry. After all, we serve and extraordinary God who has procured an extraordinary salvation by extraordinary means. We should expect extraordinary things to happen when we serve Him. Yet we need to come to grips with the fact that the extraordinary things that God does may not be immediately and outwardly extraordinary in the eyes of other people.

What should we count as God's extraordinary work? It's not a stadium-sized building, a multi-million dollar budget, or satellite feeds to multiple venues. That's how the world measures and achieves extraordinary. Rather, it's extraordinary when God converts our neighbors, coworkers, children, friends, and family. It's extraordinary when proud, angry, selfish people have their hearts changed by the gospel. It's extraordinary when new churches selflessly invest their time, money, and prayers to establish and multiply even newer congregations. It's extraordinary when marriages are restored and cultural prejudices give way to unity in the gospel of Christ. It's extraordinary whenever God uses 'normal' pastors and church planters, faithful men with ordinary gifts and talents, to do all this work.

The Beautiful, But Hard Work of a Pastor

Brian Croft has an excellent post on the hard work of sermon preparation, but also how much of a blessing it is.

There is something special about the hard, time-sensitive labor that is preparing to preach God’s Word in a few days. It feeds and nourishes our own soul in a way that moves us to preach powerfully what we have found through intense study and prayer. I recently had a young man say to me, “I love to preach, but I hate to prepare.” This could have been his way of saying the labor to prepare is hard…because it is. Yet, there is a legitimate risk in the heart of every preacher to “love to preach, but hate to prepare.”

Dear brothers and fellow pastors, yes, the labor is hard. It is intense. It must be done in less than 6 days regardless what has happened to you in the week. Yet, we must see our preparation as a gift from God. It is the time where we study with an intensity that nothing else can produce. Through that study our hearts and mind are pricked, challenged, fed, broken, instructed, shepherded, and molded by God Himself through His Word to make us who God wants us to be when we stand before our people to preach His Word.

Truth in 'True Grit'

Holly and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary last week. It was a great day that was capped off by great movie, True Grit. Sometimes you see a movie that has great acting, which True Grit does, and you leave the movie deceived into thinking that what impressed you most about the movie was the caliber of acting. But in reality what impressed you most about the movie was the underlying truths that the movie displays which are accentuated by the great acting. This is the case with True Grit. I walked out of the movie thoroughly impressed with the actors, especially Jeff Bridges, but even more drawn to the movie itself and the truths it exposed.

Mike Cosper comments at The Gospel Coalition Blog on the themes of revenge and hope in the movie. (If you haven't seen the movie, the following quote will be a bit of a spoiler.)

Cosper writes,

Even as Mattie Ross faces down her nemesis and defeats him in True Grit, she’s knocked backward into a pit by her weapon’s recoil. Revenge brings a cold comfort, resulting in an immediate descent into a snake-filled darkness. Her righteousness doesn’t result in a neat and tidy ending; it leaves her scarred, poisoned, and broken. Revenge, even petty revenge, never ends in as happy a way as we’d like, with a neat and tidy moment of “I told you so” justice. Instead, Like Mattie, we end our journey scarred both by victimization and retribution.

Perhaps that’s because what we need is retribution so vast that it calls for wrath that would overwhelm us. If our hunger for revenge were fulfilled, the result would be a flood that would drown even us, and our petty attempts at substitutes will ultimately be dissatisfying. The “justice” we hunger for would bring about our destruction. Thanks be to God—there’s a better retribution and a better rescue from the pit; one that emerges from the fringes, carries out justice, and saves us from the wrath we deserve.

Stanley Fish gives this excellent review of the movie here.

Here are a few excerpts:

The words the book and films share are these: “You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.” These two sentences suggest a world in which everything comes around, if not sooner then later. The accounting is strict; nothing is free, except the grace of God. But free can bear two readings — distributed freely, just come and pick it up; or distributed in a way that exhibits no discernible pattern. In one reading grace is given to anyone and everyone; in the other it is given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious.

A third sentence, left out of the film but implied by its dramaturgy, tells us that the latter reading is the right one: “You cannot earn that [grace] or deserve it.” In short, there is no relationship between the bestowing or withholding of grace and the actions of those to whom it is either accorded or denied. You can’t add up a person’s deeds — so many good one and so many bad ones — and on the basis of the column totals put him on the grace-receiving side (you can’t earn it); and you can’t reason from what happens to someone to how he stands in God’s eyes (you can’t deserve it)...

they give us a better heroism in the person of Mattie, who maintains the confidence of her convictions even when the world continues to provide no support for them. In the end, when she is a spinster with one arm who arrives too late to see Rooster once more, she remains as judgmental, single-minded and resolute as ever. She goes forward not because she has faith in a better worldly future — her last words to us are “Time just gets away from us” — but because she has faith in the righteousness of her path, a path that is sure (because it is not hers) despite the absence of external guideposts. That is the message Iris Dement proclaims at the movie’s close when she sings “Leaning On the Everlasting Arms”: “Oh how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way / Leaning on the everlasting arms / Oh how bright the path goes from day to day / Leaning on the everlasting arms / What have I to dread what have I to fear / Leaning on the everlasting arms.”

The new “True Grit” is that rare thing — a truly religious movie. In the John Wayne version religiosity is just an occasional flourish not to be taken seriously. In this movie it is everything, not despite but because of its refusal to resolve or soften the dilemmas the narrative delivers up.

Bottom line, go see the movie.

Resting In the Shadowing Shelter of My Ever-Present Father

From Wrestling With An Angel, by Greg Lucas:

But perhaps the sweetest discovery of all was learning more and more about the character of my heavenly Father through the struggles of my disabled son. It is one thing to read about His faithfulness, to talk about His mercy, and to write about His grace. But to experience these things face to face requires a heavenly vision that can only be obtained by walking through the suffering of His providence and coming to the realization that the darkness I have experienced is actually the shadowing shelter of my ever-present Father.

It is in this shadow that I have wrestled with an angel until the breaking of today. And even though I now feel beaten and broken from battle, the limp that carries me away from this sacred place forever reminds me that I have been touched by the and of the Almighty. And by grace, I have prevailed.

Perspective In Trials

From Milton Vincent's A Gospel Primer for Christians:

More than anything else I could ever do, the gospel enables me to embrace my tribulations and thereby position myself to gain full benefit from them. For the gospel is the one great permanent circumstance in which I live and move; and every hardship in my life is allowed by God only because it serves His gospel purposes in me. When I view my circumstances in this light, I realize that the gospel is not just one piece of good news that fits into my life somewhere among all the bad. I realize that the gospel makes genuinely good news out of every other aspect of my life, including my severest trials. The good news about my trials is that God is forcing them to bow to His gospel purposes and do good unto me by improving my character and making me more conformed to the image of Christ.

Preaching the gospel to myself each day provides a lens through which I can view my trials in this way and see the true cause for rejoicing that exists in them. I can then embrace trials as friends and allow them to do God's good work in me.

The Welcomed Sound of a Baby's Cry

Our little boy, Asher, is growing up way too fast. He has recently moved from the Bed Babies room of the church nursery to the Crawlers room even though, thankfully he is not crawling yet. Typically on a Sunday morning I will take our girls to Children's Church at the end of the Worship time through music in the main sanctuary. Recently, inevitably, I will pass Asher in the hall either on my way to or from dropping the girls off at their rooms. Nine times out of ten he is doing just fine, perfectly content in whosever arms he is in that week.

That is, until he sees me or hears my voice. Then the grunting and squealing starts, followed by crying. I know not to take him from the nursery worker because that will only make it worse when I have to give him back and return to the sanctuary. So, I just keep walking and hearing him cry. Now, I don't ever really like to hear my children crying. But I must say that there is something welcomed in Asher's cry for his Daddy. That cry is an instinctive reaction of his that expresses that he wants his Daddy. It is his way of communicating that he desires to be with his Daddy in that moment. It is a cry of affection and dependency. And that is welcomed as his father. I want him to love me enough to cry to express his affection for me and desire to have me hold him. It is welcomed that he is dependent on me and that in some sense he sees great value in me.

In thinking about that scene of Asher crying for his Daddy, my mind and heart could not but help to think about the relationship we have with our Heavenly Father in and because of Christ. I am certain that in some sense it pains the heart of God to hear His children crying because of pain and suffering or just the regular struggles of life as imperfect sinners living in an imperfect world. However, there must also be something that is very welcomed in our cries to the Father. In our cries to the Father are we not, likewise, expressing our desire to be with Him? In our cries to the Father are we not, likewise, expressing our affection for him and dependency on Him? And in those cries are we not clearly showing that He is very valuable, even priceless? Does He not welcome our tearful cries?

And then I am reminded of the reality that I have no right to be called His son and to relate to Him as my Father. It is only through Christ's death and resurrection that I am made a son of God, a join heir with Christ Himself. It is only because of Christ that I can cry out the cry that He welcomes, "Abba, Father!"

Decline in Popularity of Gospel=Decline in Popularity of Hymns

From Jared Wilson:

The argument goes like this: The hymns are outdated. Nobody talks like that any more, nobody knows what these archaic words refer to, nobody sings melodies like that any more; therefore, the solution is to ditch the hymns and sing only contemporary songs.

But I don't think the reason hymns fell out of favor is because they became old. I think it's because our preaching got new.

The great hymn writers could tell the gospel story with gospel words in very solid ways. But preaching over time became moralistic stories with pop psychology words in wispy ways. We stopped giving the hymns context. We would sing "Oh how marvelous, Oh how wonderful is my Savior's love for me!" but our preacher had long stopped marveling and wondering about the cross, so the song didn't make emotional sense. And then it stopped resonating with us on a Spiritual level.

All good hymns declare the gospel and assume gospel context. I suspect the main reason hymns don't resonate with people much any more is because we don't preach the gospel.

Real Heroes

I loved this paragraph from Kevin DeYoung's post In Praise of Ordinary Pastors,

My definition of a hero is someone who does the right thing in the right way for a long time whether people notice or not. Thousands of unheralded, unknown pastors personify this definition. They marry and bury, preach and teach, hold hands and pat backs, attend open houses and attend meetings, pray like they believe it and sing like they mean it. Even if the coffee is bad, the pay low, and the church music so-so, these brothers keep loving and keep on proclaiming the same gospel. Some say insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. But that goes out the window when what you’re doing is the very thing God has called you do.

Faithful, humble, diligent, reliable, gentle, courageous, compassionate, teachable, imperfect ordinary pastors—of them the world is not worthy.

Got a good pastor? Then tell him you think so.

Praising God for the Pastorate

Justin Buzzard has a great post today on the fact that pastoral pressure either makes you a better or a worse man. Here's his conclusion:

Eventually, such a pastor discovers that he’s become a better man because of his work as a pastor. The pressure of the job has made him a man who more deeply believes and experiences the biblical truths he’s constantly talking about. He realizes that his own sanctification might be one of the main reasons God called him to be a pastor. He realizes that he would’ve turned out a worse man had he chosen a different career path. The unique pressure of the pastorate has made him a far better man than he would’ve been otherwise.

Pastors, join me in seeing our vocation as God’s perfectly pressured path for making us better men.

Pastors: "What Is the End of What You Are Doing?"

That's the question William Still asks in his excellent little book The Work of the Pastor :

To save the sheep from wild beasts and all other dangers is not to feed them; and if they are not fed, what matters whether they are safe or not? What is the good of being saved to starve? We must be saved in health and strength, unto maturity and power to reign with Christ in His Kingdom. And for that we must be fed. Every temptation to be sidetracked from the task of eternity which is the task of the hour--your hour--must be seen in relation to the finished product. What is the end of what you are doing? The God-appointed end?

'Ordinary' Pastors (Like Myself), Be Encouraged

Matt B. Redmond offers this encouragement to 'ordinary' pastors:

Be encouraged. Be encouraged in the midst of ministerial duties that are mind-numbingly mundane. Be encouraged in a world drunk on the sweet nectar of the spectacular. Be encouraged when you preach the gospel clearly. Be encouraged after years of faithfulness, even if you don’t have numbers that impress conference organizers. Be encouraged in the tedium. Be encouraged when you see the same faces week-in and week-out. Be encouraged as you marry and bury, counsel and speak at the local lodge’s spring pancake breakfast. Be encouraged.

Be encouraged when dreams of thousands have careened against the retaining wall of reality with hundreds. Or dozens, even. Be encouraged when no one has heard of you, your church, or your town. Be encouraged in the midst of decline. Be encouraged when you must stop preparing your sermon to clean the bathrooms. Be encouraged, because you stand before God redeemed and loved because of Christ’s righteousness credited to you. Be encouraged, for this right standing before God is not based on the success of your ministry, loved no less because it is ordinary. Be encouraged, ordinary pastor.

Be encouraged when growth is slow and measured by generations. Be encouraged when guilt, fear, and the specter of failure form an unholy alliance against you. Be encouraged when young men grown fat on the feast of podcasts question your every move. Be encouraged when no one knows your name; it is written in blood in the book of life. Ordinary pastor, be encouraged: Your faithful labor in the darkened forest of obscurity is heroic...

Really, the phrase “ordinary pastor” is a misnomer. For all who pastor by the power of the gospel do extraordinary work: preaching the Word, comforting the hurting, baptizing, and administering the Lord’s Supper. It is all extraordinary. After all, “we have this treasure in jars of clay.” This way, “the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor. 4:7). No wonder, then, the extraordinary is in the ordinary.

The Choice We Face Everyday

From Elyse Fitzpatrick's latest post, Is Faith Enough Today?

I know that you’re familiar with this story and that you know that its ultimate fulfillment is in the promised Messiah. But this morning this story spoke to my heart in this way: I could look at the weakness and barrenness of my life. Those were, indeed, true realities. In response, I could get out my list, my sticky-notes, and devise ways of feeling better about myself. To switch back to our patriarch’s story, I could go visit Hagar. Or I could give glory to God knowing that even though I am still so very weak, so very barren of true love for my neighbor, God had already promised me that I would be fruitful and that my life would somehow count. How? Only through faith in the righteousness of another. It was in this process of rehearsing God’s promises to me, of giving him glory for his wonderful mercy, grace, and kindness, that my heart was changed and I walked out into faith again.

Every morning . . . every moment of every day . . . I have a choice to make. I can trust in my heart’s default position: Work it out, work harder, prove I’m better, show that I do love my neighbor, engage with Hagar and my sticky-notes. Or, I can rest in his promise that even though I look at myself and realize that for me it’s been nearly 40 years since I first believed the promise, the One who is able to speak into existence things that don’t exist, has declared that I am righteous now and that this faith is enough now. It must be enough or I can’t breathe. That was the choice for me today and it’s the choice we all face every day.

Pastors: Feed the Sheep, Don't Entertain Goats

I just started reading William Still's The Work of the Pastor. Chapter 1 was arguably the best and most encouraging chapter I've read on pastoral ministry. I imagine I will be sharing more gems from this great little book. But here's a great quote on the focus of feeding the sheep as the primary work of the pastor, not entertaining goats.

It is to feed sheep on such truth that men are called to churches and congregations, whatever they may think they are called to do. If you think that you are called to keep a largely worldly organisation, miscalled a church, going, with infinitesimal doses of innocuous sub-Christian drugs or stimulants, then the only help I can give you is to advise you to give up the hope of the ministry and go and be a street scavenger; a far healthier and more godly job, keeping the streets tidy, than cluttering the church with a lot of worldly claptrap in the delusion that you are doing a job for God. The pastor is called to feed the sheep, even if the sheep do not want to be fed. He is certainly not to become an entertainer of goats. Let goats entertain goats, and let them do it out in goatland. You will certainly not turn goats into sheep by pandering to their goatishness. Do we really believe that the Word of God, by His Spirit, changes, as well as maddens men? If we do, to be evangelists and pastors, feeders of sheep, we must be men of the Word of God.