Apostles

Back in 2004, I was in Vegas for my brother's wedding. There was a lull in the activities, so while John napped, I did some research.

I had taken some grief from someone in my church about saying that Jesus is the only way to salvation. So I sat down to read the Gospels and see what it said, with an eye towards understanding Jesus's self-understanding as the only way to salvation.

Short version: it's everywhere, and if you take it away, Jesus doesn't have much to say. Jesus just is-- whether we like it or not, seems nice to us or not-- the only way to salvation.

Well, in our Future Traveler's meeting last week in Tacoma, Alan Hirsch was talking about the apostolic gift in the church. He said something like you can find out what an apostle is by what they say about themselves, or is said about them. You have to go there because there is not really a definition of apostle given in one place.




So, today I took a cursory look at what Acts and the epistles say about apostles. Too cursory to say much, except that it is a terrible job description. You'd never take it if you knew what it meant going in. The key verse sticking out at the moment is 2 Corinthians 2:16: “who is equal to such a task?”

I will be working on this off and on for a while I bet, and I will try to keep you updated.

Some of where this is going is that Ephesians 4:11 lays out 5 gifts for the church, Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, Teacher. But churches ordain pastors. And pastors do some teaching. We don't really know what to do with the evangelistic function, so we wish they'd shut up. We have reduced prophets to people who speak out about political/cultural issues, and we only like them if they are in our party. And apostles, well...these guys have the task of guarding the doctrine and “sentness” of the Church, and they just won't let us do whatever we want to do.

There is a lot of inertia to overcome... 1700 years of the church looking for pastors and teachers. In some sick way, we have done ok functioning on 40% of the gifting the Spirit has for us!

Funerals

It's been a long week. A good week, but a long one. And I say a good week, even though there were two funerals. A funeral is an excellent time for a kind of evangelism, “apologetics.” As we become more and more secular, death is seen as some kind of anomaly. The secular mind tends to fear death, to disbelieve it. It happens only to old people who are carefully secluded away so it won't scare children... or adults. And even then, death is seen as an injustice, evidence that God does not exist or does not care. So, on that level, if people thinking that way come to a funeral (and sometimes they do, to honor the person being memorialized), there is a chance to present the claims of the Gospel, the reason for the hope the deceased had in Christ. It's not an easy thing for the unbeliever-- they are alternately attracted and repulsed. From the vantage point of a preacher, you see indifference, surprise, comfort, hostility. But the point is to acknowledge death as the consequence of sin and death and to acknowledge eternal life as the reward of faith in Jesus Christ.

And the deep mourning of the family is also something that a strong, Christ-centered funeral addresses. I remember a funeral that Howard Willen took me to. He was the pastor at First Methodist in Lexington, who helped me immensely, not the least way was helping me discern a call into ministry. Because I was going into ministry, he took me along to things like meetings, hospital calls, nursing home visits... and funerals. So at the first one...

It was interesting. I knew I was going to have to get used to funeral homes. Caskets. Mourning. Death. And constant reminders of death. What a weird job pastors have, I remember thinking. Most people would actively try to avoid going to a funeral home. And yet, we go, and will be with the people as they are dying, perhaps when they die. I won't lie, it's tough. But you get to go with Jesus, and occasionally you see some signs and wonders.

Well, Howard and I were headed into Kerr Bros. funeral home, the one downtown. It was a cold day, maybe winter. Howard had said he would call me if there were a funeral so that I could see how they were done. As we went in-- I will never forget this-- he said, “Let's kick the devil around.”

How? Death is his turf. Mourning and hopelessness is his game. But the Gospel is preached in the face of death. And the death of the believer's physical body is the first step to resurrection to eternal life.

So I am always ready to roll at a funeral. I've got Good News. How good it is to be able to offer the consolation of the Lord!

I wrote some of this in the middle of the night. Nadia had a nightmare, I got her and brought her into bed with Jessie and me. And then Nadia ran me out. Three episodes of Burn Notice later and I was still wide awake.

Now it is Saturday evening, a bit of snow coming down. I had a great Sabbath. Slow morning to go over the sermon. Great lunch with our DS Terry Reffett—we chewed some of the same dirt in Clark County. Good, slow day with the family. Right now a fire in the fireplace. Going to read a few more chapters of My Side of the Mountain with the boys. Thinking back to how Dr. Willen scooped me up out of the gutter, and how good the Methodists have been to me and my family.

What's The Scorecard?

A few years back, I was visiting with some parishioners in Lexington.  The wife was a Methodist pastor's daughter.  She said something that has really stuck with me.  She remembers her dad coming home one day (I think this was the 50s).  He had been at some kind of denominational meeting. She said he sat down at the kitchen table and was weeping.

The powers-that-be had decided to strike a statistic from the reports pastors make: "evangelistic contacts."  He said it would mean terrible things for the church because we no longer valued the important work of reaching out to people who did not know Jesus, and getting out of the church office.

I have heard about this statistic.  But I have never been asked about it in my ministry.  We are asked about money and property and insurance.  And, indeed, we report on worship attendance, professions of faith.  But at some point I can't help but think my parishioner's weeping father was right.

The simple fact is that what you celebrate gets repeated, what you measure is worked towards.  As Methodists, the two things we should value most: people coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ (Justification), and their continued growth in grace (Sanctification).  Put another away, Evangelism and Discipleship.  From my perspective we seem to think you can make unconverted disciples-- never talk about Jesus, just do good things and be a nice guy.  That's works righteousness, and no one has ever seen God that way.

Long Nights

One of my best friends has about 15 years of sobriety in. He told me something about Christmas that really struck a chord in me. Christmas was on a Wednesday, a day he usually chairs an AA meeting. He mentioned that he was still going to chair the evening meeting, even though it was Christmas, because someone may be coming in needing help. It's a bad time of year he says.

I can agree to that. I have found that Christmas-New Year's Eve is a good time to do evangelism. The Christmas-New Year's season reminds people about the past year and the New Year. And for folks who have had a hard year, remembrance is a bad thing. And if there is no hope that the New Year will be any better... I remember a terribly sad evening, visiting a young man in jail. As I was coming out, I noticed that his mother was there, but she was being booked... she had come to visit him, but she had come in drunk. I could not imagine the sadness in that moment.

We have so many opportunities to speak to people. Some times if we speak to them, it is a word in season, something that can bring hope and joy. I wonder if we can think of ourselves the same way my friend thinks of AA, being ready with the word of peace in Jesus' name.

Christmas Caroling

Wednesday evening, groups went out caroling.  One group went to the nursing home and another group sang to some of the shut-ins right around the church. It was a very moving time.  I am not sure what made it different from last year?  Maybe the intersection of our lives now, after three Christmas seasons here? Maybe that we had a huge group of youth and children?

For me, one house in particular meant so much.  We stopped at a widow's house; I had her husband's funeral this summer.  As we sang "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," there was both joy and grief as we came to the verse, "Mild He lays His glory by, born that we no more may die, born to raise us from the earth, born to give us second birth."

One of the adults with us was a fellow who has been investigating the faith.  He was greatly moved by the tears and responses of some of the people we visited.  He said, "We should do this more often..."

Indeed. It could be a great way to give people an invitation to church if you went throughout a neighborhood.  Sometimes in evangelism, people will say when they felt a need to come to church, they felt "invited" because someone stopped by, even if it was years before.
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In this Christmas season, I was struck hard by something Alex Absalom wrote: "it is easy for the poor to sacrifice, but hard for them to be generous.  It is easy for the rich to be generous, but hard for them to sacrifice." This rings true in my life, as one who is very rich.  I can easily be self-satisfied with my off-hand generosity.  And as much as I am blessed to tithe, I cannot say that I have sacrificed much. 

And what seems important in all this is how much the Lord blesses and works through sacrificial giving.  Mary and Joseph gave us Jesus.  The Father gave us the Son. Christ gave his very life.  I can never repay that, and the Gospel of Grace means that we do not even try.  We take it as a gift and bathe in the love of the Giver.  The question is, what is the overflow of our hearts?

Priming the Pump

Jessie is working with Tracy Tackett (the fellow helping us get our website moving) to put some downloadable (is that a word?) evangelism tools on the website. In advance of them bieng up there, let me tell you a little bit about what we're trying. We will have some of them available in church on Sunday.

One of the things that I find very quick and easy in faith-sharing is to have some cards with information about the church-- worship times, address, basic info like that. Then, you can easily leave that with your tip at a restaurant (don't tell me it doesn't work—Mary Philips has helped three servers find the Lord this way!), or pass it to someone in line at the grocery store. Or you can give it to a friend who doesn't already have a church home. Or... you get the picture.

What we are hoping, then, is to have a download on the website where you can print off your own cards and have them ready to hand out.

One of the cards is a favorite of mine, a card inviting families to our Children's Ministry. Jessie made a compact little card. When I am out and see a family, or a dad having a special lunch with his kids at McDonald's, I just walk up and briefly say something like, “it's great to see you having so much fun as a family.” Then, as I give them the card, “I'd like to invite you to our church and the great children's ministry we have going on there.” That's pretty much all you have to do. Sometimes there is a conversation that happens. Sometimes not. But it's ok. You get the word out.

I will let you know when we get the downloads up. But in the meantime, pray and prepare your hearts to be more open about your faith. To be ready to just simply cross the space in the store or at work to give a simple invitation to church. And then after praying, you will be ready!

A Dose of the Ghost

It's a sweet day in our household. We have been running hard all week long and we had to just sit and stop because tomorrow it gets real again for another week. John is outside playing with his dog, Joseph is playing basketball, and Jessie and Nadia are napping. But not before Jessie made a banana nut bread castle. I have gone out a few times, working through my sermon and each time I am touched by the sight of our warm house. I know that when we come in from the cold, the fire will be going and I can sit down with a nice cup of tea and the pile of books that are on my plate to read in preparation for shepherding the people of God.

Wednesday night, we got a dose of the Ghost at our Wednesday Bible study. We have been spending time on discipleship, following Robert Coleman's The Master Plan of Evangelism and A.B. Bruce's The Training of the Twelve to lay a groundwork for what we will be doing.

There is in this an element of danger, that discipleship, like so much in the Church, can become an onject of study, a time for transferral of information, not transformation. So I like to inject calls to the practical. But I got more than I bargained for!

Alex Absalom sums up the apostolic plan of discipleship when he says that instead of reading lots of books and setting up an elaborate plan for making disciples, you just need to ask, “What is Jesus saying?” And “What are you going to do about it?

When I asked how do we know what Jesus is saying, well, everyone pretty well intuited the content of Foster's Celebration of Discipline and Dallas Willard's Divine Conspiracy. It's simple... anyone can do it.

But then, the obedience question... what are you going to do about it?

In many different ways we admitted, with a simple comment from Tim Miller, that we like to talk about things more than we like to do things. At the risk of sounding like we did a lot of talking... we stayed for 45 minutes past our allotted time.

Johnny Fryman kind of blew it open when he said...”I come from a rural background. We could not pay our preachers much, so we did most of the work ourselves.”

Oh boy. This is what I have been saying for a while. Clergy have been too willing to be the bosses. To be at the head of everything. What if the members did almost everything? What if the pastor preached, visited the sick, evangelized, started new churches (and taught the members to do those things as well!)?

I put forward my idea that maybe we need to go back to 2-year appointments for pastors? The Methodist Church was exploding when that was the pattern. Could it be that made the laity stronger? Jay Barrett said that as it is, a new pastor comes and the church stops to wait and see what the new guy will do.

Shouldn't it be that the church is already doing all kinds of stuff and it doesn't matter who the pastor is?

Joyce Saxon wins the prize for pithiest comment. “Isn't that kind of moving hard on the pastor's family?” I said that moving is not as hard as it seems. I went to 5 elementary schools and on average lived in one place for 20 months until I left home. She said, “That's why you're so warped!”

At the risk of sounding like we talked a lot... yes, but the energy coming out of there. Wes Holland came up to me afterwards and said, “Plant the seed and let us run with it.” Yes. We have been working on that. We are on the verge of some things just letting loose. It's the kind of discipleship and church growth stuff that hopefully has nothing to do with who the pastor is.

I shared that I am discontent and restless. I feel like a chump saying it. 17 new believers this year. Baptisms. 34 new members. But it's linear growth. I want to see multiplication growth. I can't wait for when each new believer wins another new believer! And that keeps rolling. What about if each current member won a new person to the faith? Joyce Saxon said-- leave it to the math teacher-- “that would be exponential growth!”

Ah, exponential!

You know what I think the biggest barrier is? We think we have to be successful. We are afraid it won't work. We are afraid someone will say no to our invitation. I wonder if we can just have joy in asking someone to come to church? Joy in telling someone how much peace we had in prayer!