Walking Saints Home

The renewed call to gospel-centered discipleship in the last two decades has been extremely helpful in clarifying the purpose of ministry. It has helped center the church on Jesus and the commission he gave us to advance his kingdom. It has helped us return to our basic ministry to make disciples of all nations. Within this discussion, however, we often forget to emphasize important aspects of pastoral ministry: we miss the calling to walk with men and women to the end of their earthly lives.

Much of the writing and teaching on discipleship seems to focus on those who are younger and healthier. When this is the case, we overlook the great privilege of shepherding those who are almost home. When we enter into a church and seek to disciple those in our care, we must think about discipling every generation.

We put an emphasis on children’s ministry, on youth and young adults, and on multiplying disciples through small groups or other ministries. But we must not forget those who have helped build our churches.

REMEMBERING OUR ELDERS

In many established churches, there is a generation of men and women who have given their lives to show the love of Jesus. They have given generously to reach their community, they have been faithful throughout the years. They need pastors who will love them well and point them to their Savior. Our discipleship of older saints must reach into homes, hospital rooms, nursing facilities, and hospice care.

To be the church God has called us to be, we should not ignore the needs of older disciples in favor of making new disciples. Gospel-centered discipleship does both, and honors those who have made it possible for us to reach our community for Christ. There is a great need for pastors to disciple all who are in our care. We must disciple our people through every stage of their lives, and this includes the end.

How do we disciple men and women in their last days—or even moments—on earth? God gives pastors three specific ministries to help his people finish well.

PRESENCE: THE MINISTRY OF SHOWING UP

There is so much we cannot do for those who are suffering and dying, but we can be there. We can show up. This sounds simplistic, but it is essential to being the pastor God has called us to be and loving those he has entrusted to our care.

We represent the God of all comfort when we enter into the hospital or hospice room. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 1:4, tells us God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Simply being there in the room, holding their hand, sitting in silence and lament, and rejoicing in the hope of eternal life can be a great comfort for those who are near the end. Our wider culture wants to ignore and hide the dying, but the church cannot do this.

God has called us to shepherd his people in these last moments. Our presence reminds those we visit of God’s presence. It reminds them he is always there and will never leave nor forsake them.

God doesn’t call us to have all the answers. He calls us to be present. God doesn’t call us to have the right thing to say. He calls us to show up and to show his love.

PRAYER: OUR GREATEST HELP

The work of discipleship can never be separated from the work of prayer. There is no more important work we can undertake. Again, in 2 Corinthians 1, Paul says in verse 11, “You must also help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”

Prayer is the greatest help we can give. It is the beginning of the pastor’s work. Prayer is where we fight for and with our people. It is where we remember they belong to God. And it is where discipleship must begin and end.

As we pray with and for those walking through the valley of the shadow of death, we remind them of the presence and power of God.

Prayer centers hearts back on the will of God and the glory of God even in the midst of great suffering, despair, and confusion. Prayer reminds us of the sovereignty of God and the goodness of God to hear the cries of his people. Prayer can help the hearts of those we pastor remember the one who knows all of their days, and who will be with them through the end of their life here and into their new life forever in his presence.

Sometimes we act as if praying is something we do when we run out of every other option. The truth is, prayer is the most important thing we do to help those we pastor finish well.

PROCLAMATION: SHARING HOPE

It is not our responsibility as pastors to know every plan and purpose of God. It is not our job to know exactly why God allows men and women to suffer through their afflictions and trials. But it is our job to proclaim the hope of the Gospel.

As we pastor men and women towards the end of their lives, we must proclaim the hope of Jesus, the promises of God, and the good news of eternal redemption and restoration.

Read elderly and dying saints passages of Scripture like Psalm 23, Romans 8, John 10, 2 Corinthians 4, and Revelation 21. When you don’t have the words, read the Word.

Remind them of God’s faithfulness, care, and love. Remind them “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion” (Phil. 1:6).

Our people need more than our opinions. They need the strong foundation of gospel hope that sustains us until glory. Proclaim the hope of faith in Jesus. Proclaim the light of the gospel of God.

WALKING SAINTS INTO GLORY

It is a privilege to walk with saints to the end of their life. There has been no greater honor in my nine years as a pastor than to be present in these last moments, to pray with and for these precious men and women, and to proclaim the only hope that sustains and lasts through the end of their earthly life.

Discipleship is not just for those who are young. Our calling is not just for those who can physically come to church. We are called to shepherd and to disciple all God has entrusted to us.

Pastors, we must think more clearly and compassionately about how we will love those who are near the end, and how we can help disciple them up to the moment they see Jesus. There is so much outside of our control in those moments, but what we can do—what we must do—is be present, pray, and proclaim the hope of the Gospel.

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Zac Harrel is pastor of First Baptist Church in Gustine, TX. He is husband to Shandra and daddy to Evahlyn and Jameson. You can find him on Twitter @ZHarrel.

Unity in an Age of Division

Our church hosted a “Unity Forum” after the 2016 elections. I’ll never forget it. Pittsburgh is one city that often feels more like two. There’s Old Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh of the steel industry, I.C. Light, and voting Republican. Then, there’s New Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh of the technology and health industries, microbreweries, and voting Democrat.

At the forum, one side wanted to Make America Great Again, while the other side chose to stand With Her. People from both side, citizens of both the Old and the New Pittsburgh go to our church.

Instead of sitting on opposite sides of the aisle, we often share the same pew. Red and Blue are sprinkled throughout the congregation instead of neatly divided into separate sections. It’s not uncommon to see an outspoken Trump supporter squished into the same pew as someone who marched against Trump.

But on a Sunday during an election season, it can feel about as volatile as Thanksgiving dinner with your extended family. Conversations are cordial as long as no one asks who you voted for.

High Tensions

Tensions were particularly high after the 2016 elections. Social media posts from some of the people in our church were downright offensive. Congregants were wondering what we would say from the pulpit, if we said anything at all.

Our church felt more divided than ever, and we wanted to do something that could heal the disunity before the cement dried. We announced an upcoming “Unity Forum” and invited anyone with feelings—any feelings—to attend.

It seemed like a good idea.

We tried, really really tried, to lead people into face-to-face conversations with one another. We tried to help people seek to understand before they were understood. We tried to teach people how to make sure they could explain what the other person was feeling before they shared what they were feeling. We tried to create unity and, in the end, we only saw how deep the disunity ran.

We saw in our church a microcosm of our country, and we didn’t know what to do about it.

Israel’s Polarized Cultural Moment

We aren’t the first nation to live through a polarized cultural moment. God’s chosen people, the nation of Israel whom he had set free from slavery in Egypt, had their own experiences of disunity.

In 1 Kings 11-12, after King Solomon walked away from the Lord, God promised the kingdom would fall apart under the leadership of Solomon’s son—an act of judgment on Solomon’s worship of foreign gods. And, under the poor leadership of his son Rehoboam, the unified kingdom divided into two: Israel in the north, Judah in the South.

If they had cable news, the anchors would have been stoking the heated rhetoric. Some people would have had “Make Israel Great Again” bumper stickers on their chariots, while others would have been wearing “I’m with Rehoboam” t-shirts. There would have been long arguments on social media about which side was to blame for the division. Feast days would have been full of tension, not unlike our own.

Israel’s Moment of Peace

Only two generations before the division, though, the kingdom was in a far better place. King David was on the throne. The kingdom was mostly at peace with itself, even if it was at war with foreign nations. It was a peaceful, rather than a polarized, cultural moment—one in which the king had time to write poetry.

In Psalm 133, a poem which would be sung for generations to come, David muses,

Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes!

It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.

It’s one thing to sing this in a moment of unity, like what Israel experienced under David’s rule. It’s quite another to believe it when your kingdom is divided in two.

As one of the “Songs of Ascents,” a collection of psalms possibly intended to be sung on the way to Jerusalem, this psalm was part of a playlist that was listened to from generation to generation. It was sung when the nation was at peace and when relatives were ready to kill one another. It was sung when politics were cordial and when they were explosive. It was sung when unity was palpable and when disunity was the norm.

In a polarized cultural moment, how can we find the kind of unity David describes in this psalm? Is it even possible?

How Not to Create Unity

While most of us are not sure what oil dripping down Aaron’s head or dew on Mount Hermon feels like, both seem better than whatever we’re experiencing right now. We’re growing tired of the disunity all around us—in the church and outside of it. There’s a sense of malaise about our fragmented, polarized moment.

None of us, though, can seem to agree on what it might look like to pursue unity.

For some of us, unity means not talking about our differences. We can have unity as long as no one brings up politics at dinner or on Sunday morning. We can have unity as long we only stick to the accepted topics of conversation. It’s superficial, of course, and everyone knows it. But it’s better than losing friends over midterm elections.

For others, unity means agreeing on everything. Kyle J. Howard, in his recent article in Fathom Magazine, writes, “As a young Christian, I assumed that being ‘united’ had to also include uniformity.” Until we can agree on everything from politics to baptism, unity will always be just out of reach. In the end, we tend to just surround ourselves with people whose opinions make sense to us.

Then, there’s a third group of people who believe unity is impossible. We’re too divided and too polarized to even pursue unity. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’re never going to agree on everything, and superficial conversations with relatives aren’t worth it.

But is there another way?

Through and In Jesus Christ

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together, he opened with Psalm 133:1 as a way to set the stage for the entire book. In the opening chapter, he explains the secret to the unity David describes:

Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.[1]

Jesus is the one who makes true unity possible. In his death and resurrection, he created unity across racial and ethnic divides, gender divides, and political divides. It’s a unity even greater than the one David probably imagined when he wrote this psalm. The gospel creates the unity we can never create on our own.

In Ephesians 1:14-18, Paul describes the unity made possible by Jesus, writing,

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Unity is not primarily something we create; it’s something we discover.

What Unity Truly Depends On

In and through Jesus Christ, we have access to unity that goes deeper than surface-level conversations and the need to agree on everything. It’s here that God “has commanded the blessing, life forevermore” (Ps. 133:3).

When I left the “Unity Forum” back in 2016, it felt like a failure. It felt like we made things worse by trying to make things better. It felt like we were trying to do the impossible at our church by being a church where both sides of the political spectrum could worship the same God from the same pew. I thought people would leave the Unity Forum and never come back again.

In the end, though, people stayed in our church. People showed up the next Sunday and sat down in the same pews. They still talk to one another. They still have hard conversations. We still address political topics from the pulpit, and it tends to offend people on both the left and the right.

No one can create unity with a Unity Forum. If that’s what we’re trying to do, we will always leave feeling like failures.

The best we can do is point to the unbreakable unity we have in and through Jesus Christ—a unity that depends not on whether we can agree on everything or how well we can avoid hard conversations, but on what Jesus did on the cross thousands of years before any midterm election.

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Austin Gohn is a pastor at Bellevue Christian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a student at Trinity School for Ministry. He is the author of a forthcoming book from Gospel-Centered Discipleship on Augustine’s Confessions and young adulthood. You can follow him on Twitter.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: HarperOne, 1954), 21

God Uses Unhealthy Churches

“That church is going to die.” I’ve heard that prophecy spoken over churches countless times. Interestingly, this doomsday prediction has been pronounced by people from almost opposite extremes of the “healthy church” discussion, each time about a church that differed from their convictions or preferences.

An elderly pastor who is used to traditional ways of worship looks at a new church plant, with their worship band and blue-jeaned leaders, and pronounces with certainty that this trend won’t last. “The old ways of doing church and worship have lasted for hundreds of years, and will still be here when this fad is long gone.”

The stylishly bearded member of the ten-year-old megachurch looks at the steepled little building on the corner in his neighborhood—where a small congregation has been faithfully meeting for over five decades—and feels certain it will be boarded up or turned into a vintage coffee shop quicker than you can say, “What happened to hymnbooks?”

Sadly, there is some validity to the pessimism that each feels toward the other. But thankfully, it is also true that God is in the business—and always has been—of using flawed Christians in less-than-perfect churches to fulfill his kingdom-wide, generation-spanning purposes.

I was reminded of this marvelous reality even as I recently wrote a book on “how to grow a biblically beautiful church.” Jesus is not only glorified in the Excellent Wife, or the Competent to Counsel pastor, or Radical family outreach, or the impeccably Centered church. Jesus is glorified in Christians and in churches—all over the globe and in every generation—who struggle to parent well, pastor well, evangelize well, or organize well.

In other words, Jesus can be glorified in you and me, and in the pitifully inadequate, sometimes myopic, church we attend.

God Uses Unhealthy Christians

The Bible staunchly resists our consistent temptation to make superheroes out of any of its main characters—except, of course, Jesus. Abraham, the father of the faithful, lacked faith. David, the great king of Israel, was a crummy leader to some of his most loyal subjects. Peter, the bold apostle, caved to social pressure more than once.

Not surprisingly, then, we find similarly imperfect people among the prominent influencers of Christianity. The great theologian Augustine was a severe opponent to other Christian believers who did not agree with his ecclesiology. The famous reformer Martin Luther would compromise some of his own convictions for the sake of expediency. Arguably the best apologist of the 20^th century (and a personal favorite of mine), C.S. Lewis also argued for the extra-biblical concept of a Purgatory as part of the believer’s afterlife: “Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they?” This, in my view, is a significant error.

Think back over your own experience as a Christian. Of the people who have impacted your spiritual life the most—including perhaps your parents, various pastors, godly mentors, even radio or television preachers—haven’t you also noticed areas of weakness in their lives? Don’t they all have some obvious blind spots in their own understanding or behavior? (By the way, if you can’t think of any, that doesn’t mean the person is perfect—it means you know them imperfectly).

The fact is, God has always used flawed people to fulfill his perfect purposes. God uses weak people to show his own strength. God uses people who embrace some degree of doctrinal and practical error, or else he couldn’t use anyone at all.

God Uses Unhealthy Churches

When it comes to churches, just as with individuals, the Bible is strikingly short on perfect roll models. The churches of Galatia were tempted by legalism, the church at Ephesus lost their original passion, the Christians to whom Jude wrote were inundated with false teachers, and … where do we even begin with the church at Corinth?

I could not help but notice the omnipresence of imperfect churches as I researched my recent book about church health. The book is essentially an unpacking of Titus 2. And do you know what Paul is warning Titus about in the first chapter of this letter? You guessed it: false teachers, who are “empty talkers and deceivers.”

But that’s not all. The very fact that Paul gives such clear and helpful instruction to Titus in the second chapter of the letter clearly stems from the fact that in some of these areas Titus—and the church he was leading—were falling short of the ideal. Did Titus himself ever perfectly follow all the useful counsel Paul provides him in Titus 2? I’m guessing not.

Having been a pastor for over 15 years myself, and knowing something of human nature, I’m fairly confident that Titus’ church—even at its best—had some unhealthy Christians in it, and had a number of unhealthy areas where they still needed further teaching or prodding.

In our hypercritical era of sound bites and social media, I sometimes wonder if even a perfect person, or a very mature church, would meet our standards. Would we criticize Jesus because, even though he did reach out to paralytics and prostitutes in his own community, he did not do enough to battle the sex trafficking that was happening in his day in the Far East? Although Jesus himself had no word of rebuke for the church in Philadelphia (“I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name”), would we be satisfied that they had “merely” kept God’s Word and not denied his name? Or would we wonder why they weren’t more committed to picketing Caesar’s palace?

As glaring as the actual errors in the early churches are to our critical eyes today, it is equally plain that God used them. Paul did not give up on them; that’s why we have many of the letters that make up the New Testament. Jesus didn’t immediately reject them; instead he warns and offers correction to them, plainly desiring for them to continue flourishing for years to come.

In the mean time, these are the very congregations through which Jesus established his Church. Members of these churches would disciple the next (second ever!) generation of Christians. Martyrs from these churches would testify to the truth of the risen Savior. Missionaries from these churches would carry the Christian gospel to new continents. God uses churches who embrace some degree of doctrinal and practical error, or else he couldn’t use any of them.

Why Does It Matter If Your Church Is Healthy?

If God uses unhealthy churches, made up at least in part of unhealthy Christians, why then do we have a proliferation of books on church health these days? Does it really matter if you have the nine marks (or twelve marks, or five marks, depending on who you are reading) of a healthy church?

I suppose I can only answer with certainty for myself, since I am publishing a book on how to grow a biblically beautiful church. But I suspect that I speak for most of the other godly pastors and authors who have addressed this subject in recent years. My goal in unpacking Titus 2 for the church today is not to shame every Christian into feeling discouraged about how fall their particular congregation is falling short. Nor is it to spur church leaders to redouble their already exhausting labors in order to fend off every possible criticism that may be tweeted against them.

My hope is that pastors and church leaders, in particular, will receive this book in whatever way is appropriate to their specific situation—perhaps as an encouragement to their faithful labors in the church, or maybe as a helpful corrective if they see some areas where they have gone off-message from what Paul so helpfully describes for us.

By carefully studying and spiritually rooting ourselves in Titus 2 as a helpful model for the local church, my desire is for this book to provoke further conversations regarding how we as individual Christians can grow more like Christ, and how our particular churches can improve our intentionality regarding the Gospel. Although my book is aimed chiefly at pastors and church leaders (reflecting the tone of Titus 2), it is also accessible and relevant to every Christian because the local church is relevant to every Christian.

Why then write about church health? For the same reason Paul wrote his letter to Titus. Not to set up an impossible standard of flawless well-roundedness, but to encourage faithfulness in the essentials, thoughtful consideration of weaknesses, and joyful effort for the sake of Jesus. Recognizing all the while that every church, like every Christian, must ultimately look to Christ to find the perfection for which we long.

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Taken from Adorned: How to Grow a Biblically Beautiful Church by Justin Huffman, © 2018, DayOne Publications.

Justin Huffman has pastored in the States for over 15 years, authored the “Daily Devotion” app (iTunes/Android) which now has over half a million downloads, and recently published a book with Day One: Grow: the Command to Ever-Expanding Joy. He has also written articles for For the Church, Servants of Grace, and Fathom Magazine. He blogs at justinhuffman.org.

11 Practical Steps Toward Caring for Orphans

Along with crisp air and beautiful leaves, November also brings an awareness of broken families. It’s this month, more than any other, where our gaze is directed, perhaps uncomfortably, to the fatherless. That’s because November is National Adoption Month and November 11 is Orphan Sunday. Many people live their whole lives without giving any thought to the fatherless. Orphans remain comfortably out of sight and out of mind. The idea of neglected image-bearers stays beyond the boundaries of our carefully crafted bubbles.

Despite whatever unwillingness on our part to engage the global orphan crisis, our heavenly Father aggressively pursues these vulnerable people—and he clearly instructs us to do the same.

Ignorant?

God identifies himself as the “father of the fatherless” (Ps. 68:5). He teaches us that pure religion is to “visit orphans and widows in their affliction” (Jas. 1:27). He commands us to “seek justice, correct oppression, and bring justice to the fatherless” (Is. 1:17).

Despite our seeming reluctance, we are informed. We can’t say that we are unaware of the broken state of families. We’re aware that children in our zip codes and across all time zones are growing up abandoned due to death, poverty, illness, and sin.

We are not ignorant, we are merely indifferent. Brothers and sisters, this cannot be. Followers of Christ must not be known by our indifference but by our love.

Engaging orphans and vulnerable children can seem daunting, which is why many believers are reluctant to jump in. But if we want to side with the Father, we will act to bring justice to orphans.

Eleven Practical Steps Toward Caring for Orphans

So how do we begin to take steps of obedience towards caring for orphans? Consider the following steps.

Be informed. There are an estimated 140 million orphans worldwide. Only about ten percent of all orphans are “true” orphans, meaning they have lost both parents. About 125 million children considered to be orphans have at least one, if not two, living parents. In the United States, about 110,000 children are waiting to be adopted into families. Some 420,000 children are in foster care. Educate yourself on this growing number of fatherless children. Here are some resources to get you started:

• Follow Jason Johnson’s blog about foster care and adoption.
• Read Adopted for Life by Russell Moore.
• Learn more about the global orphan crisis from CAFO (Christian Alliance for Orphans).
• Read Orphanology by Tony Merida and Rick Morton.
• Subscribe to the Think Orphan podcast hosted by Phil Darke.

Use your voice for the voiceless. The voiceless aren’t voiceless because they have nothing to say; they’re voiceless because no one listens when they speak. But you have a voice. Scripture commands God’s people to speak up for the voiceless (Prov. 31:8). Use your voice to raise awareness of the plight of orphans within your relational networks. Tell people how they can join God in his work of caring for orphans. Be a voice for the voiceless.

Pray. We are not the savior of the fatherless but we can confidently approach the One who is. Cast yourself before God’s throne to plead for the salvation and care of the vulnerable. Our Father hears the cries of his children (1 Pet. 3:12). We can fight for orphans on our knees. We know their needs, both spiritual and physical, and we can go to our good Father and petition his help.

Become a foster or adoptive parent. This may be the first idea that comes to mind when you think of how to care for orphans, and rightly so! Adoption and foster care require sacrifice and a huge investment into the lives of orphans, but the church should be leading this movement as we are a people who have benefited from adoption into our heavenly father’s family. Take advantage of some of the resources mentioned under “Be informed” above to learn more.

Partner with parachurch organizations that care for orphans. Adoption is great but with over ninety percent of the world’s orphans ineligible for adoption, it’s not enough. We must find other ways to help. Partnering with organizations like 127 Worldwide who work with local leaders around the world caring for orphans is a wise solution. Invest in organizations that are committed to meeting the physical and spiritual needs of the fatherless.

Leverage your skills and networks for orphans. When orphans “age out” of group homes and institutions, they become vulnerable to gangs, criminal activities, prostitution, and trafficking. Invest in job training both locally and globally for these young adults to give them the means to provide for themselves and their families. Connect your networks with the vulnerable as they transition into adulthood. Invite them to your church. Help them find jobs.

Serve adoptive families. Adoption is very expensive. One way you can help adoptive families is to sacrificially give towards their adoptive costs and encourage others to do the same. Get creative: host fundraisers; have yard sales; make and sell t-shirts; donate services to be auctioned off to raise money; get certified to provide respite care for foster families; or bring meals to families as they welcome the fatherless into their homes. Serve families who are on the front lines of caring for orphans.

Extend your pro-life ethic beyond the womb. Support life from the womb to the tomb. When we encourage parents to choose life for the unborn, we must walk alongside and help them care for their children. We must welcome these children into our families if the birth parents are unwilling to raise them. Being pro-life is more than being anti-abortion. It means being pro-children and pro-adoption.

Meet orphans. Take time to invest in the lives of vulnerable children in your community. Go on short-term mission projects to visit orphans around the world and share the gospel with them while encouraging their caretakers. Befriend families with foster kids. Hear their stories and tell them the story of the heavenly Father who never abandons his children. Invite them into God’s redemptive story.

Support church planting in vulnerable communities. Invest in pastor training and church planting efforts around the world. Loving the fatherless means more than providing food, water, and education. It means giving them access to the gospel. It means investing in the eternal good of their cities and villages by planting gospel-proclaiming churches. Consider partnering with great organizations like Acts 29 to advance the church around the world.

Raise up future generations to embrace caring for orphans. Parents, if you want orphan care to be normal in your family, then expose your children to the global orphan crisis. Work together as a family to love the fatherless. Teach them God’s Word and pray for their obedience. Set the example of obedience and lead them to reflect God’s heart for the orphan.

Change Your Culture

God’s Word is clear on our role in caring for orphans. Our access to Scripture is unprecedented and unlimited. We have printed Bibles, podcasts, commentaries, Bible apps, teachers, pastors, and books. What we do not have is room for excuses. We know what the Bible says, but knowing is not enough. Doers of the Word step into obedience.

In his book, Radical, David Platt writes, “We learned that orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they’re not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.”

Change starts with you. It starts in your home, your church, your neighborhood, and your workplace. Change your culture by reflecting the Father’s heart for the fatherless in your speech, attitude, and actions. Inspire others to be obedient to God’s command to care for orphans.

It starts with one step. Then one step turns into two, and two steps become three. Before you know it, you’re walking in obedience.

Take that first step and follow Christ into the world for the good of the fatherless and for the sake of his glory. You don’t have to single-handedly solve the global orphan crisis. You can’t. But you can step out in faith. Christian, get your feet moving.

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Christy Britton is a wife and mom of four boys. She is an orphan advocate for 127 Worldwide and writes curriculum for Docent Research. Her family worships at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. She writes for several blogs, including her own, http://www.beneedywell.com/. You can follow her on Twitter.

Why God's People Rejoice in Gathering

Imagine approaching your childhood home. You see a familiar sign on the front porch that reads, “Home is where the heart is,” though the “H” is missing, a couple other letters are broken, and others are so caked with pollen and dust they’re almost indiscernible. You’ve arrived at the house which was so full of life when you were a child, but years of vacancy and neglect make for a cold welcome. Where is the warmth that once filled this house?

We all long for a welcoming, safe home.

ABANDONED HOMES

While we may appreciate the aesthetic of a well-crafted house, what makes a house a home is the life within it. The same is true of the house of the Lord.

We see this clearly in Psalm 122, as the author begins with the invitation:

I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”

Who is the "us" that invited him? It was the sojourners who would make their annual pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem. This psalm would become one of many they would recite as they made their ascent to the holy city.

What a shock to be a pilgrim who, upon arrival, finds the house of the Lord was empty. He makes the journey through “many dangers, toils, and snares,” only to learn the house is vacant—there isn’t a single light on in the whole building, not one person in sight.

Would the weary traveler still be glad about his invitation? Hardly.

The rejoicing hinges on the personal invitation. He is glad to make the journey because he makes it with others and plans to meet others there (v. 4). It's a family reunion of sorts, in which traveling disciples meet with other disciples. Their rendezvous is overdue, so they are eager to reconnect.

God makes a disciple by bringing a man or a woman to Christ. But that is only part of the work. God also saves them into a family, the church. Disciples are meant to rejoice and long to reconnect with their extended family each Sunday in worship and throughout the week. It's not the building that makes the church but the people gathered before the Word of God.

BROKEN HOMES

Abandoned houses serve as a memento of the life that once existed within their walls. They remind us that things are not as they should be.

This reminder is even more painful for those currently living in a broken home. Their house may be full of life, but not firing on all cylinders. Maybe a divorce or an untimely death is a constant reminder that the dinner table has one empty chair.

Part of God’s design for his covenant people is that the spiritual family can make up for the parts of the nuclear family that are demolished by death, disease, and depravity. God’s family should be united (v. 3), and those brothers and sisters and friends (v. 8) that comprise it should pray for its well-being (v. 6), peace, security (v. 7), and prosperity (v. 9).

Some of the most moving testimonies in the church involve mothers and fathers who stood in as parental figures for those who never had them or who live far away from moms and dads. Beautiful stories unfold when those have been abandoned by or have left behind their families find a new family created by the shed blood of Christ.

God makes disciples as they come into relationship with Jesus, but they are matured in the community of the Church.

CHAOTIC HOMES

Others may not come from a broken home or ever experience the emptiness of returning to an abandoned house. Yet what family has not experienced a season of chaos?

Perhaps your home is free from glaring and unrepentant sin and God has blessed you with a house that has been passed down for generations. But the reality is we will all face sins of varying kinds (Heb. 12:1) and seasons of busyness that border on chaos.

Some Sundays it may be hard for the modern pilgrim to drag himself to church because he worked a sixty-hour week. A mom of small children is likely putting in even more hours on the regular, and coming to worship on Sunday might seem impossibly difficult.

In Psalm 122, the pilgrim’s feet are standing within the gates of Jerusalem (v. 2). Those feet must have been tired, sore, and blistered, but to paraphrase Mother Pollard, “his feet were tired but his soul was rested.”^[1]

What is it that compels you to keep gathering with the saints?

Is it the chaos that seems to increase every time you get ready to head out the door to church on Sunday morning? Is it the weariness you feel after a long hard work week? Is it the spiritual apathy that creeps in?

Obstacles and temptations try to prevent us from gathering with God’s people, but push through and resolve to find nourishment for your soul. The body and its ailments will pass away, but God and his Word will last forever (Matt. 24:35).

The mature disciple begins to prioritize church, not just for her own needs, but because she recognizes she is called to multiply disciples and think beyond herself.

DWELLING PLACE OF THE LORD

To bring this all home (pun intended), a word has to be said about the relationship between the Old and New Covenants. It's commonplace to see preachers and theologians play fast and loose with the relationship between the Old Covenant temple and the New Covenant Church. To be sure, there are some commonalities. However, it is a mistake to draw a one-to-one comparison between the two.

The distinguishing mark of the Old Covenant temple was that it was indwelt by the presence of the Lord. The God of Israel himself inhabited their building of high worship.

The arrival of Jesus in the first century A.D. flipped this whole paradigm on its head. He was indwelt personally by the Spirit of God (Matt. 12:18) and referred to himself as the new and better temple (Jn. 2:19; Matt. 12:6). What’s more, he promised that when he departed he would send that same Spirit to indwell his followers.

The New Covenant equivalent of the Temple is the church, to be sure, but only when we correctly define the Church—the people of God, the living stones (1 Pet. 2:5) that are built up into a spiritual house.

REJOICE TO GO TO THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

Do you rejoice to go to the house of the Lord? I hope you do. But hopefully it’s not because the music is superior or the aesthetics are amazing. The right reason to rejoice in going up to the Lord’s house is that his presence is there.

The house of the Lord is found in the midst of his people. There, Jesus is present and glorified.

Otherwise, it’s like walking into an abandoned house.

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Sean Nolan (B.S. and M.A., Clarks Summit University) was born and raised in Upstate New York where he is now working to plant Engage Albany, a church in the heart of the capital. Prior to that, he served at churches in Troy and Maryland and taught hermeneutics. He and his wife, Hannah, are raising three kids: Knox, Hazel, and Ransom. You can read all of Sean’s articles here.

^[1] Quoted in The Montgomery Bus Boycott: A History and Reference Guide, Cheryl Phibbs, 2009.

How to Cultivate Communal Comfort in Your Suffering

Suffering powerfully highlights what has always been true—we were not created for independent living. Suffering reminds us that God’s grace doesn’t work to propel our independence but to deepen our vertical and horizontal dependence. The strong, independent, self-made person is a delusion. Everyone needs help and assistance. To fight community, to quest for self-sufficiency, is not only a denial of your spiritual need; it’s a denial of your humanity. Suffering is a messenger telling us that to be human is to be dependent.

My friend TobyMac so wonderfully captured with these words: “What does it look like to admit your need and open the door to God’s warehouse of provision?” Consider these seven steps.

1. Don’t Suffer in Heroic Isolation

There’s nothing noble about bearing down and suffering alone. In fact, it’s a recipe for disaster. Everyone has been designed by God for community. Healthy, godly living is deeply relational. Worshipfully submissive community with God and humble dependency on God’s people are vital to living well in the middle of the unplanned, the unwanted, and the unexpected.

The brothers and sisters around you have been placed in your life as instruments of grace, and as I’ve said before, they won’t be perfect instruments, they won’t always say and do the right things, but in the messiness of these relationships God delivers to us what only he can give.

In my own suffering I’ve had to fight with the temptation of self-imposed isolation. I know I need the presence and voices of others in my life who can say and do things for me that I could never do for myself, and I know that the relationship I have with these people is God’s gift of comfort, rescue, protection, and wisdom. Are you suffering in isolation?

2. Determine to Be Honest

The first step in seeking and celebrating the gift of the comfort of God’s people and experiencing how they can make the invisible grace of God visible in your life is to honestly communicate how you’re handling what you’re going through. Honest communication is not detailing the hardship you’re going through and letting all the people around you know how tough you have it. Complaining tends to drive people away and to attract you to other complainers, which is far from healthy and helpful. Rather, every sufferer needs to be humbly honest about the spiritual battle underneath the physical travail so that brothers and sisters around you can fight that spiritual battle with you.

And don’t worry about what people think of you. Remember, you don’t get your identity, peace, security, and rest of heart from them but from your Lord. No one in your life is capable of being your messiah; people are tools in the hands of your Messiah, Jesus. It would be impossible to fully communicate the depth of the comfort, strength, and counsel I have gotten at crucial moments of spiritual battle from the dear ones God has placed in my life. Are you humbly and honestly communicating to others about how you’re handling your hardship?

3. Let People Interrupt Your Private Conversation

You have incredible influence over you, because no one talks to you more than you do. The problem is that there are times when it’s very hard to say to ourselves what we need to hear. The travail of suffering is clearly one of those times. It’s hard then to give yourself the hope, comfort, confrontation, direction, wisdom, and God-awareness that every sufferer desperately needs.

So you need voices in your life besides your own. You need to invite wise and loving people to eavesdrop and interrupt your private conversation, providing in their words things you wouldn’t be able to say to yourself. And don’t take offense when they fail to agree with your assessments; you need these alternative voices. They’re not in your life to hurt your feelings but to give you what you won’t be able to give yourself, and that in itself is a sweet grace from the hand of God. Who have you invited to interrupt your private conversations?

4. Admit Your Weakness

Doing well in the middle of hardship is not about acting as if you’re strong. God’s reputation isn’t honored by our publicly faking what isn’t privately true. The grave danger to sufferers is not admission of weakness but delusions of strength. You see, if you tell yourself and others that you are strong, then you won’t seek and they won’t offer the enabling and strengthening grace that every sufferer needs. And remember, the most important form of weakness that we all face isn’t the physical weakness that accompanies so much of our suffering but the weakness of heart in the midst of it.

Determine to be honest about your weakness, and in so doing, invite others to be God’s tools of his empowering and transforming grace. When you suffer, you view weakness either as an enemy or as an opportunity to experience the new potential that is yours as God’s child. Is your habit to admit or deny weakness?

5. Confess Your Blindness

This side of eternity, since sin still lives inside us and blinds us, there are pockets of spiritual blindness in all of us. As you walk through your travail, there may be inaccuracies of belief, subtle but wrong desires, wrong attitudes, susceptibilities to temptation, wrong views of others, struggles with God, and evidences of hopelessness that you don’t see.

So in love, God has placed his children in your life to function as instruments of seeing. They offer to you insight that you wouldn’t have by yourself. Because they can see what you don’t, they can speak into issues in your life, and by so doing be not only instruments of seeing but also God’s agents of rescue and transformation.

It’s humbling but true of every sufferer that accuracy of personal insight is the result of community, because sin makes personal insight difficult. Since we all have areas where we fail to see what we need to see, we need to welcome those whom God has sent into our lives to correct and focus our vision. How open are you when those near you help you see things in yourself that you don’t see?

6. Seek Wise Counsel

It’s dangerous to make important life decisions in the midst of the tumultuous emotions and despondency of suffering. Often in the middle of hardship, it’s hard to see clearly, to think accurately, and to desire what’s best. The shock, grief, and dismay of suffering tend to rattle the heart and confuse the mind.

When you are suffering, you need to humbly invite wise and godly counselors into your life. I’m not talking here about professional help, although that’s good if necessary. I’m talking about identifying the wise and godly people already in your life who know you and your situation well, who can provide the clarity of advice, guidance, and direction that is very hard to provide for yourself.

Don’t be threatened by this; it’s something we all need, and wise sufferers welcome it and enjoy the harvest of good fruit that results. Have you invited wise and godly counselors into your life to help you decide what would be hard to decide on your own?

7. Remember That Your Suffering Doesn’t Belong to You

2 Corinthians 1:3–9 reminds us that our sufferings belong to the Lord. He will take hard and difficult things in your life and use them to produce good things in the lives of others. This is one of the unexpected miracles of his grace. When it seems that my life is anything but good, God picks it up and produces what’s very good in the life of another. Every sufferer needs to know that the comfort of community is a two-way street. Not only do you need the comfort of God’s people, but your suffering positions you to be a uniquely sympathetic and insightful tool of the same in the lives of others.

Your suffering has given you a toolbox of gospel skills that make you ready and equipped to answer God’s call to be an agent of his comfort in the lives of fellow sufferers. God calls you not to hoard your suffering but to offer it up to him to be used as needed in the lives of others. And there’s blessing in taking your eyes off yourself and placing them on others, because it really is more blessed to give than to receive. Have you hoarded your suffering, or seen it as a means for bringing to others the good things that you have received?

Yes, it’s true that the God of all comfort sends his ambassadors of comfort into your life. They’re sent to make God’s invisible presence, protection, strength, wisdom, love, and grace visible. So welcome his ambassadors. Be open to their insight and counsel. Confess your needs so that God’s helpers can minister to those needs. Live like you really do believe that your walk through hardship is a community project, and be ready for the good things God will do.

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Content taken from Suffering: Gospel Hope When Life Doesn't Make Sense by Paul David Tripp, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Paul David Tripp is the president of Paul Tripp Ministries, a nonprofit organization. He has been married for many years to Luella and they have four grown children. For more information and resources visit paultrippministries.org.

Leadership Lessons from Slaves

Their people’s pleas hung in the air as the cracking whips ripped open old wounds. Shiphrah and Puah could imagine the thick crimson streams rolling down their loved ones’ backs as they labored to build one of Pharaoh’s prized cities. Fear spread like a contagion through Israelite camps as the king of Egypt became increasingly agitated and ruthless toward God’s people.

The Israelites, as we find them in Exodus 1, are beaten down, anxious, and exhausted. Their future looked bleak, and the prospect of freedom was growing dimmer. Every day. Surely they wondered, Who will save us?

God often provides redemption and relief to his people through his people. While Moses would eventually lead God’s people out of Egypt, two unlikely leaders preceded him. Shiphrah and Puah, two female slaves, allowed the fear of the Lord to rule in their hearts over the fear of man. Their story holds leadership lessons for the church today.

The Fear of the Lord and the Fear of Our Flesh

The first lesson we can learn from Shiphrah and Puah is about fear. As a byproduct of the king’s own fear, Shiphrah and Puah are ordered to “observe them [the Hebrew women] as they deliver” (Exodus 1:16). The Hebrew girls were permitted to live, and the Hebrew boys were to be killed.

What enabled Shiphrah and Puah to defy the king of Egypt? Exodus 1:17 says they “feared the Lord.” That’s astonishing given how much there was to fear around them. The stakes for their civil disobedience were as high as it gets: disobeying Pharaoh was a capital offense.

They weren’t exempt from the common emotions that accompany tense life situations. It wasn’t that there was nothing to fear, but their fear of the Egyptian king paled in comparison to the fear of their true King.

Leaders inevitably face situations that cause a spike in blood pressure. Congregants grumble about change, a wayward child wanders from the faith, people complain about leadership style, budgets miss the mark. When we’re in the thicket of moments like these, the concerns are very real and sometimes overpowering.

The fear of our flesh woos us to focus our thoughts on what we fear. Our hearts tempt us to ruminate on what we can't control, and we begin to live in the “what ifs” of life. “What if my children never become Christians?” “What if all my congregants leave or stop giving?” “What if the men and women I lead don’t like me?”

Staying in this place too long can lead to sin. The king of Egypt’s fear that the Hebrews would continue to grow and threaten his power and kingdom led him to try to exterminate them (Exodus 1:8-10).

Ironically, he feared the wrong people and person. He would later see he should have feared the Lord and the two Hebrew midwives that God used to save his people. In attempting to control the Israelites by killing their sons, he overlooked the two female slaves who led to his fall.

Shiphrah and Puah turned from evil at great risk to their lives. Proverbs 16:6 says “one turns from evil by the fear of the Lord.”  The way one obeys God, especially when we are living in the “what ifs” of life, is by fearing the Lord. We need a greater fear.

The Fear of the Lord and the Command to “Fear Not”

The most frequent command in the Bible is to “fear not”, but what do we do as leaders when it seems like all we can do is fear? When we’re fixed on our problems, it produces fear and paranoia. It becomes hard to see beyond our circumstances and the stress that comes with leadership.

There’s another fear which produces wonder and awe in God. This fear leads to faith in God. When we see the command to “fear not,” it’s the command not to fear that which may be fearful. What could happen in our lives is scary, but there must be a refocusing and recalibrating of our fears.

We must be reminded to stand in awe of a God who is awesome in the correct sense of the word. This awe-inspiring fear leads to faith. Rightly-placed fear reminds us that God sees, hears, and acts for his people.

As Shiphrah and Puah spared the male children, they did so with the fear of the Lord in mind. While their fear of Yahweh was likely intermingled with fear of the Egyptian king who could kill them, their gaze was on the all-powerful King who can destroy both soul and body (Matthew 10:28).

In the command to fear not, there is a tender Father calling his children to come back to him in our fretting, but there is also an omnipotent King reminding us of who he is.

When we feel like we’ll be crushed beneath the waves of anxiety and we can’t stay afloat amidst the expectations of those we lead, we must remind ourselves to not fear that which is fearful, but to fear God. As God’s people, our hope does not lie in ourselves, our friends, or our government. Our hope—and our fear—are in the Lord. Fear not the world; fear God.

The Fear of the Lord and God’s Reward 

The fear of the Lord is powerful and leads us to do remarkable things. God rewards this obedience.

As a result of Shiphrah and Puah’s leadership and obedience, Exodus 1:20-21 says, “God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very numerous. Since the midwives feared God, He gave them families.”

God rewarded the Hebrew midwives with families. He gave them the very thing they were protecting, and the very thing Pharaoh sought to destroy. Shiphrah and Puah did not obey God to get a reward—they obeyed God because he was their ultimate reward. They obeyed God because they feared him, and they received a reward for their faith.

God’s reward for Shiphrah and Puah is also tied to God’s greater promise for his people. Exodus 1:20 says, “So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very numerous” (emphasis mine). Previously, God promised Abraham that his descendants would be numerous (Gen. 15:5). In Exodus 1:7, we see God’s fulfillment of this promise to his people as “the Israelites were fruitful, increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous.”

God Always Makes a Way

In Exodus 1:20-21, we’re reminded that God’s promises to his people will not and cannot be thwarted by the plans of man (Ps. 2:1-4; Prov. 19:21). God made a way for his people to multiply despite being enslaved, and he proves his faithfulness in Shiphrah and Puah’s reward and the continued multiplication of his people.

Through the leadership of two female slaves that feared the Lord more than man, we learn this leadership principle: the fear of the Lord allows spiritual leaders to remain faithful to God even when it is costly.

God’s promise to his people was fulfilled from the garden, to the Nile, to the cross. As we look to Jesus, we see the true leader that feared the Lord until the point of death on a cross.

As we lead God’s people, remember that God has kept his word throughout all time. He will continue in his faithfulness until he brings us safely home.

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SharDavia “Shar” Walker lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Paul. She serves on staff with Campus Outreach, an interdenominational college ministry, and enjoys sharing her faith and discipling college women to be Christian leaders. Shar is a writer and a speaker and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Christian Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The Big God Behind Your 'Small' Ministry

It was a big day in Jerusalem. The temple built by Solomon, but destroyed by the Babylonians, was being rebuilt. It was a day of great celebration for the Israelites. The Jews had suffered for decades because of their disobedience (see 1 Kings 9:6-9). They endured exile and captivity, besiegement and destruction. However, Ezra tells the story of a new day, when the people gathered together to celebrate the laying of the foundation on the second temple.

They celebrated the Lord’s mercy with trumpets and cymbals. They sang and thanked him. They shouted with great shouts to praise his name.

Though many shouted for joy, there were others who “wept with a loud voice” (Ezra 3:12). They wept because they were disappointed. These older saints wept because they remembered the former splendor of the first temple, and the meager foundation of the second was underwhelming.

WHEN YOUR DAYS SEEM SMALL

Haven’t we all been underwhelmed by the work of our own hands at some point? We have a vision of what our ministry or family or career should look like that is so much grander than the current view.

On this day when people were disappointed with the lack of splendor, the prophet, Zechariah said, “Whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice” (Zech. 4:10).

Most of us will spend our whole lives living in days of small things. How do we navigate this space between what we see and what we want to see? How can we cultivate hearts that don’t despise these days, but rejoice in them?

Consider the following ways to be encouraged when you’re unimpressed with what God has entrusted to you.

See the Tree In the Seed

We’re attracted to the spectacular. Our eyes are drawn to all things bigger, brighter, and better, so we limit our scope of success to these ideals.

When we do, we overlook the significance of small things. The thing is, small is valuable when God defines the terms.

When Jesus spoke to a crowd that needed food, he didn’t despise Andrew’s suggestion of a boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fish (John 6:9). He used something small to glorify himself in a big way.

God is not disappointed by small. He uses the small things to accomplish his purposes.

Do you feel what you have to work with is small? Listen to Jesus: “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” (Matt. 13:31-32).

In God’s economy, the tiniest seed becomes a tree. The smallest of things becomes significant because of its role in the kingdom. The final product is not determined by its beginning.

Richard Sibbes writes in The Bruised Reed, “See a flame in a spark, a tree in a seed. See great things in little beginnings.” God’s grand plan for our redemption began with a fragile newborn in a manger.

Do we see great things in little beginnings?

Find the Glory in the Mundane

We have great expectations, especially when it comes to our place in the world. It’s no surprise, then, that changing diapers and mowing the lawn and paying the taxes all just seems so . . . boring.

But we must strive to see God’s work like he does. We must value what he values.

We want to be sensational; God wants us to be faithful. The desire to have maximum impact in our culture is not a bad one. But devaluing ministry that has a smaller reach contradicts God’s values.

Consider Eunice and Lois (2 Timothy 1:5), the mother and grandmother of Timothy, apprentice to Paul and early church leader. These two women are not known for wowing crowds and signing books. We know them because they poured into a young Timothy. By worldly standards, their ministry was small. But we have the benefit of seeing the great value of their investment in one person.

We value productivity but are often underwhelmed with progress; God values productivity and progress. God’s salvific work in our lives is a miracle, and we should praise him for it. God’s sanctifying work of transforming us into his perfect image happens by degrees (see 2 Cor. 3:18) but is no less miraculous. Sanctification is often small, mundane, and untweetable. Nevertheless, it is a miracle, and we should praise the Lord for it.

What about you? Are you disappointed at the footprint of your kingdom work? Are you envious of someone else who seems to have more influence than you do? Remember, any impact you have on the advancement of his kingdom is a work of grace. Praise him for his work in big and small things.

Trust God in the Tension

The celebrity culture we’ve created adds to the pressure not only to succeed, but to succeed publicly and grandly. We have no tolerance for the unimpressive. We’ve given others the power to validate our success, but that validation was never ours to give away.

In the tension between our vision and our reality, we must trust God to accomplish all that he desires for his glory. We trust him to make his name great in our smallness.

The gap between our vision and our reality is not to be despised. God doesn’t look at small things disapprovingly. On a day when the rich were making it rain in the temple offering box, a poor widow gave two copper coins. Jesus told his disciples that she gave more than all the rich people gave that day, because she gave all she had to live on (Luke 21:1-3).

What seems humbling, meager, and unimpressive to us may look glorious to God. Oh, to see what he sees! We can’t judge his work by our standards. When the people were unimpressed with the splendor of the temple, Haggai encouraged them by telling them to be strong and to work, for God was with them (Hag. 2:4).

Underwhelmed saint, heed Haggai’s words and keep striving in your kingdom labors, for God is with you. Desire to be faithful, not sensational.

WHEN GOD HAS HIS SAY

“Perhaps you are frustrated by the gap that still remains between your vision and your accomplishment,” Os Guinness writes in The Call. “You have had your say. Others may have had their say. But make no judgments and draw no conclusions until the scaffolding of history is stripped away and you see what it means for God to have had his say.”

God will have the final say. And it will sound like this: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

As we long for this day, let’s rejoice in the day of small things.

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Christy Britton is a wife and homeschool mom of four biological sons. She is an orphan advocate for 127 Worldwide. She and her husband are covenant members at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, NC. She loves reading, discipleship, Cajun food, spending time in Africa, hospitality, and LSU football. She writes for several blogs, including her own, www.beneedywell.com.

Pastor, Here's How to Be Built to Last

Pastors are not quitters. Or at least, they don’t plan to be.

Yet about 250 pastors leave their pulpits a month. Most pastors don’t plan on quitting, but they also don’t plan not to.

Unless pastors are built to last, they might find themselves burned out and beleaguered long before they planned on stepping down.

THREE PICTURES OF PASTORAL ENDURANCE

An aging and soon-to-be executed Apostle Paul once wrote to Timothy, his young protégé, to paint a picture of a pastor that’s built to last:

Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. — 2 Tim. 2:3-6

Paul challenges the young pastor to endure for the sake of the gospel. Paul knew that Timothy was going to face great resistance to much of what he had been commissioned to do. He knew Timothy would suffer for proclaiming his faith and telling people that Jesus was the only way to heaven.

So Paul gives Timothy three illustrations to help flesh out the kind of endurance he’s talking about. Paul paints pastors using the analogies of the dedicated soldier, the disciplined athlete, and the hardworking farmer. Each of these illustrations tells us something about what it takes to be the kind of pastor that’s built to last.

A DEDICATED SOLDIER

In the first example of the dedicated soldier, Paul tells us that pastors are not simply participants in a religion, but soldiers in a battle. In his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul wrote, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).

To be a Christ-follower—and even more so a pastor—we must realize that we are engaged in a spiritual battle against very real forces with very real consequences. Realizing the nature of the battles we’re in forces us to focus on what matters most. This is what Paul means when he says, “No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him” (2 Tim. 2:4).

“We confuse doing good things for doing God things.”

Imagine being in one of those hellish foxholes during World War 1 that you’ve probably seen depicted in a movie. If you found yourself in that environment, you wouldn’t be wondering what’s for dinner that night; you wouldn’t be browsing Amazon for a new pair of shoes. No, all that would matter is winning the battle.

Too often we get distracted from what matters most. We confuse doing good things for doing God things.

Pastor, are you distracted from the mission? Do you think more about what you’ll eat, wear, or do than how you can live for Jesus and his church? Do you ever ask God what he thinks about major decisions like where you’ll live or work? Do you have so many activities scheduled that you can’t make time for serving the poor or investing in someone’s life?

If you want to finish well, remember that your aim is to please your Father.

A DISCIPLINED ATHLETE

Paul’s second illustration is a disciplined athlete. He said, “An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” We all know that, don’t we?

A golfer can’t move their ball wherever he or she wants and still win a tournament. Runners win by staying on the track.

If you want to win as an athlete, you have to play according to the rules. To do that takes discipline—and lots of it.

Michael Phelps didn’t win his gold medals by swimming a couple times a week. He trained for years and years, multiple times a day, to be the athlete he became. That takes an enormous amount of discipline.

And that’s Paul’s lesson for us here. If we’re going to become pastors who are built to last, we have to become people of discipline. We have to become disciplined to grow in godliness. As Paul told Timothy in his first letter (1 Tim. 4:7), we must train for godliness.

If you were to write out everything you do in a normal week to grow in godliness, would it reflect someone who is serious about following Jesus? This isn’t about a certain number of events that makes you become more like Jesus—that’s not how it works.

“Most of us are distracted from doing the things of God because we haven’t disciplined ourselves to do them.”

But at the same time, our schedule really does reflect our values and beliefs. Our schedule reveals what we think is most important.

Most of us are distracted from doing the things of God because we haven’t disciplined ourselves to do them. We miss reading the Bible in the morning because we stay up too late watching Netflix for another hour and we have to sleep in to get enough rest. We aren’t investing in the lives of others because we’ve involved ourselves and our children in so many activities that we don’t have any time to give to others.

There are, of course, life circumstances that are out of our control, but that’s not the case with everything. There are plenty of activities and events we give our time to that keep us from doing the work God has for us.

This is why the practices of following Jesus have traditionally been called “spiritual disciplines,” because it takes discipline to follow Christ.

A pastor that is built to last, trains himself in godliness. He disciplines his heart, mind, body, and soul for the work of building up the body of Christ.

A HARD-WORKING FARMER

Paul’s third illustration is of a hard-working farmer: “It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.” Farmers have to put their hands to the plow and do the hard work that’s demanded by their crops and allowed by the weather.

There is little or no glory in the hard work of plowing, planting, and patiently waiting. It doesn’t earn a man acclaim. It’s simply the hard, diligent work that’s required if he wants to enjoy the harvest.

If the farmer doesn’t plow, he doesn’t reap. If he doesn’t reap, he doesn’t survive.

So much of the work of ministry is like this. We spend time reading another chapter, preparing sermons, or going over a budget. We put in hard work and sometimes long hours to partner with God in the work he wants to do through us. And sometimes this work is tiring.

“Though the work is hard, we press on because of the promise that we will reap eternal life with Christ.”

That’s why Paul wrote to the Galatian church, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Gal. 6:9). Though the work is hard, we press on because of the promise that we will reap eternal life with Christ.

But we cannot go on like hard-working farmers without community or we will grow weary. We were made for community, and one of the primary reasons for that community is so that we can encourage one another to keep pressing on. As Hebrews 10:24 puts it, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.”

Put your hand to the plow and do the hard work of ministry. But don’t draw back from the people in your church. Share your life with them and draw strength and encouragement from them where it can be found.

GIVE YOURSELF UP TO CHRIST

Unless we are dedicated to Christ, disciplined in Christ, and hard-working for Christ, we will not be able to endure for the gospel; we will not be built to last.

John Newton, a pastor who was himself built to last, once wrote a letter encouraging other pastors to endure in the ministry. Newton wrote,

“In the school of Christ, you will have to learn some lessons which are not very pleasant to flesh and blood. You must learn to labor, to run, to fight, to wrestle—and many other hard exercises—some of which will try your strength, and others your patience.”

It’s often said that pastors must have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the skin of a rhinoceros. While there is certainly some truth to that statement, what pastors truly must have to endure in ministry is a profound understanding of grace. Grace sustains us through the ups-and-downs of ministry.

Newton writes,

“But do not be discouraged—you have a wonderful and a gracious Master, who does not only give instructions—but power and ability! He engages that His grace shall be sufficient, at all times and in all circumstances, for those who simply give themselves up to His teaching and His service.”

Pastor, if you want to be built to last—like an orderly soldier, tenacious athlete, or hard-working farmer—give yourself up to Christ and his teaching. Do the work of ministry and draw on the grace of Jesus.

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Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of four, and the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing, check out his website or follow him on Twitter.

Lessons from Building a Culture of Discipleship

Three years ago, I had just been let go from a worship leader position because of my spiritual immaturity. Just like the twenty-some years leading up to that point, I felt like I was missing something. I was going to church, serving every weekend, and trying my best to become like Jesus but it just wasn’t working. What was I doing wrong?

There has to be more to Christianity than this, I thought.

I was right.

Not long after I was laid off, a couple of guys I knew from church invited me to join what they were calling a discipleship group. They explained it as a time of accelerated spiritual growth for the purpose of replicating what you learn. There would be homework and memory verses, along with reading the Scriptures together and praying for each other.

After laying out these expectations, they looked at me and said, “We want you to go home and pray about this and see if it’s something you’re willing to commit to.”

“I’ve already prayed about it,” I said. “When do we start?”

DISCIPLESHIP CHANGES EVERYTHING

The next six months with that group transformed my life. Through discipleship, I found what had eluded me for so many years—a true sense of calling that superseded everything else and brought the kingdom of God right to me.

Discipleship changed my life. And it’s what I’ve given my life to ever since.

Now I’m the associate pastor at Hillcrest Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC, where I've have been tasked with overseeing discipleship. We’re on the second round of D-Groups—discipleship groups of three to five men or women that function like the one I was invited into.

We don’t have things fully figured out, not by a long shot. But I have learned some things along the way. If you’re serious about discipleship or trying to turn the culture of your church in that direction, I hope you can learn from some of these lessons the Lord is teaching me.

EVERY CHURCH IS UNIQUE

Early on, I was guilty of trying to apply the things I read in books or heard in conferences to my local church. There’s nothing wrong with learning and trying things, but I was attempting to take a model designed for a large church and apply it to a body of about 75 people.

Reading good books, asking questions, and learning from others who are doing discipleship well are all key parts of establishing a discipleship pathway. But when we just mimic an idea without considering our body of believers, we miss the point entirely.

While there are many amazing blueprints out there for discipleship, we must be careful to consider how a discipleship strategy will mesh with our particular church culture.

BE REALISTIC ABOUT THE SUCCESS RATE

Some of the discipleship studies I read and some of the teachers I sat under said that the majority of people participating in discipleship groups experienced a multiplication success rate of around fifty percent (meaning fifty percent of those who participated in a group went on to replicate the process with others afterward). That seemed low.

But here’s what I learned after helping start D-groups at my church. 2 Timothy 2:2 says, “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Notice that the instruction to pass on what has been learned isn’t for just anyone, but to those who were faithful.

I’ve been guilty of getting so pumped about D-Groups and what they’ve done for me that I forced the model on others who hadn’t yet proven themselves to be faithful. Too often we jump in front of the Spirit’s leading and throw people in discipleship contexts because we’re eager for them to experience transformation. But if they’re not hungry for the experience, our efforts fall on deaf ears.

Let me be clear: eagerness is not a bad thing; we just have to be sure the Spirit stays in front. Don’t assume that because someone doesn’t grasp the call to make disciples right away, or if someone doesn’t want to join a group right away, that you have failed or God has failed. God is in control of all things, and perhaps the year you spent with that person was the groundwork for what’s to come.

Our minds are finite but God’s is not. He doesn’t measure success the way we do. We have to keep this in mind or we will naturally put percentages and expectations on something that can't be measured on this side of eternity.

REDEFINE, UNLEARN, AND LEARN FOR THE FIRST TIME

Everything we’ve been doing at Hillcrest is redefining, unlearning, or learning for the first time. It takes most people a good bit of time and teaching to really grasp disciple-making and to unlearn what they think discipleship (and even church) is about. Some have never even heard of the concept of discipleship.

For several months, we taught on discipleship through the book of Luke. At the same time, our initial discipleship groups were up and running, and those in the groups were able to explain what it was like to others in the church.

It takes time for people to buy into discipleship because most churchgoers today were never personally discipled by someone. Be patient with people, be clear with your communication and language, and help people see the beauty of discipleship that involves all of their lives.

PEOPLE ARE DESPERATE TO BE DISCIPLED, BUT THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR

I have found that there are a lot of people who, deep down, really want a discipling relationship, but they don’t know what they’re looking for. Their souls are crying out to be taught and shown what it means to follow Jesus, but they are either fearful, don’t know how to ask for it, or didn’t know such a thing existed.

If you talk to those who have led discipleship groups they’ll tell you that the time spent with their groups is the most productive and rewarding time in their weeks. I believe it, because it was God’s plan for us. Disciple-makers are fulfilling that calling and are shown their true purpose for life. It changes the way they do business, the way they do home life, the way they structure their personal time, and, ultimately every aspect of their lives. They begin looking for opportunities to share the good news with people in their spheres of influence, not just verbally but through their actions as well.

If you want to see a bored Christian come to life, teach them to be a disciple-maker.

BE DOERS OF THE WORD

The most important thing I’ve learned about discipleship is that it has to be shown, not just explained. James says to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (Jas. 1:22). I can’t stress enough how important this is. I try my best to preach this to my own soul every day.

James goes on to say that faith without works is dead. I can’t think of more profound insight into Western Christianity as this one. We have a lot of talking and very little doing. But we can’t teach people to follow Jesus without actually showing them what it’s like at some point.

Imagine a young man who had a rough upbringing. God reaches out to him through a series of events in his life. He seeks out answers and eventually crosses the line of faith and baptism. He shows himself to be faithful by consistent involvement in the church community. Then he gets plugged into a D-Group and starts meeting weekly with other guys to memorize Scripture, confess their sins, and learn about God.

All good things!  But there’s no one showing him how to do the things he’s learning.

How much more effective would it be if you invited this young man into your life? How much more would he learn if he watched you spend time with God every day, and he was shown how to apply spiritual disciplines in a practical way. How quickly would he grow if you let him walk through life with you as you love your spouse, raise your child, pray, serve, fail, repent, and pursue holiness?

This is a kind of discipleship most of us have a hard time desiring. Perhaps we’re busy or preoccupied, so we don’t take the time to invite people into our lives. But what does that teach them? Or maybe we don’t invite people to imitate us because we’re not living a life worthy of imitation.

We have to ask ourselves tough questions about what’s keeping us from investing in men and women the way we’re called to. We have to ask ourselves if we're being doers of the Word.

SPEND YOUR LIFE CHANGING LIVES FOR CHRIST

Training others to be like Jesus is well worth our time. But we don't live what we don’t believe.

Nothing in my life was the same after I was discipled. I believed in Jesus but didn’t know what to do or how to do it until someone showed me.

If you’re already discipling people, keep going; keep teaching other faithful men or women to teach others. If you’re new to discipleship, jump in. You’ll find what you’ve been searching for, and your life will never be the same.

God's Presence > God's Provision

In the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9–13), Jesus helps us understand where our requests should begin. After establishing that God is our Father who is as compassionate as he is capable, Jesus reminds us that God’s power aims to advance his agenda, not ours. Jesus shows us that Christian prayer begins with longing for God’s presence before his provision. All of the requests at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer are godward. Take a look: Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:9–10).

This removes man from the center of the picture. It displaces our needs and desires, reminding us that the most important things about prayer are not what God gives us by way of his possessions, but what God gives by way of his presence. Throughout the Bible, the people who gain peace and security in this life are the people who long for God’s presence more than his possessions. Jesus teaches us this in his first three petitions.

First Petition: God’s Honor

“Hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9) could better be translated for our ears, “I pray that your name will be honored.” In the Old Testament, when people lived against God’s will and design, their wicked deeds were said to profane the name of God.

To pray “hallowed be your name” means being concerned more with the advancement of God’s reputation in the world than your own. It’s praying that God himself would protect his name from being defamed and obscured, so that people don’t accept a wrong picture of him or reject a distorted picture of him.

God’s name is holy. Nothing can change that reality. We’re simply asking him to work in the world so that his name would be treated as such.

The glory of God has come into the world in the person of Jesus. “Hallowed be your name” therefore means praying that everyone would respond appropriately to Jesus. The world we live in is as unimpressed with God as someone who stays seated when the bride walks down the aisle. This is because they’re blinded to the glory of God as revealed in Jesus (see 2 Cor. 4:3–6).

So we begin prayer by pleading that God’s glory would be seen and submitted to in the person of Christ. The beauty of this petition is that we’re asking God to do what he already wants to do.

This request sets the tone for the rest of the prayer. All that we ask of God must flow from this all-consuming desire.

Second Petition: God’s Kingdom Come

“Your kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10) is a prayer for the success of the gospel in the world. We know the gospel has changed us, so we plead for God’s kingdom to be extended through the gospel going out to the ends of the world.

We’re tired of the world we live in, and we long for something better. We want to experience the fullness of the Beatitudes. We long to be where God’s rule is recognized and adored. God has promised this will happen, and his promise stokes our longing.

When a dad promises his daughter that he will take her to Disneyland, the child knows this trip isn’t a matter of if, but when. In her eagerness to receive the fulfillment of her dad’s promise, she constantly asks, “When are we going? You promised!” This is what it’s like for us to pray “your kingdom come.”

We cannot serve two masters. Likewise, two kings—us and God—cannot coexist. Someone’s rule and ambitions have to die. As Christians, our agendas have in fact died, and it’s glorious because ours would have killed us (Gal. 2:20). Praying “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” unifies us because it helps us long for his kingdom. It keeps us from back-biting, from jockeying for position, from longing to establish little kingdoms of our own.

Third Petition: Your Will Be Done

“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10) further develops the second request for God’s kingdom to come. We long to see God reign here on earth in the same way he already reigns in heaven.

We don’t want people to submit reluctantly to God’s rule. We want them to joyfully submit because they’re convinced he is good. We pray for God’s will to be accomplished on earth however he determines, even if it means our suffering, sacrifice, and death.

Establishing God’s kingdom on earth means displacing lesser kingdoms, which is what churches do through their gospel work. Local churches, after all, are outposts of God’s kingdom. So praying that his will would be done means praying that God would continue to establish his gospel work through local churches.

This prayer for God’s presence to be seen and enjoyed is quite startling to a world that prefers for God to be an absentee Father that just sends a big child support check each month. Because we’re sinful, we would prefer God to give us our demands while demanding nothing in return. We love to set the agenda. But Jesus teaches us here that God’s presence precedes his provision. His agenda is far better than ours.

When our local churches pray and live in light of these first three petitions, it’s attractive to the watching world because we display a different picture of what God is like. It shows the world how ineffective its kingdoms are. It strengthens our witness.

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John Onwuchekwa (MA, Dallas Theological Seminary) serves as pastor of Cornerstone Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

Content taken from Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church by John Onwuchekwa, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187,www.crossway.org.

Don't Settle for the Spotlight

Light gets our attention. Our eyes are naturally drawn to it. The warm, illuminating effects of light beckon us to come closer. We become curious to see what the light frames for our eyes. Our interest in the light often involves our desire to become spotlighted. Many find it difficult to resist being the center of attention. Our capacity for self-exaltation is limitless. Spotlights get easier to procure every day. Social media is a prime outlet for building our platforms, brands, and personal kingdoms.

We throw our energy into shining brightly. We misapply God’s good command to let our light shine before men by projecting ourselves into the world. Often, we are oblivious to the fact that we’re drawing attention away from our father to ourselves. We deceive ourselves into believing we’re promoting him when our heart’s true desire is to live in the spotlight.

We seek the wrong light. We settle for the spotlight when we already know the Light. More than that, our father has given us his light. It’s ours to shine. We must shine his light into a dark world, so glory is given to him, not to us.

God is the Light

During his earthly ministry, Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). David said, “The Lord is my light” (Ps. 27:1). In Genesis 1:3 God creates light for the whole world. However, in Revelation 22:5 he says that heaven will have no need for such light because God himself will be our light.

We would happily live in darkness but for the grace of God. He exposes the darkness in us and opens our eyes to sin. He exposes our wickedness and illuminates his holiness. But he doesn’t leave us in our helpless state. In mercy, his illumination extends to our great rescue. His light guides us toward himself. He welcomes us into his family, making it possible to live as children of the light through Christ (Eph. 5:8).

His light is incomparable. When we attempt to stand in the spotlight, we desire to outshine our maker. The world is living in darkness. We once lived in darkness (Eph. 5:8). Charles Spurgeon said, “He who has been in the dark dungeon knows the way to the bread and the water.” We aren’t the light. We aren’t what people need. We point others to what they need.

We are Light-Bearers

2 Corinthians 4:6-7 teaches, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” We are the clay jars, not the treasure. We hold what we want others to behold. We hold the light.

When others look at me, and my eyes are on Christ, they will become curious to know what has my attention. They will shift their eyes from me to him. This is the goal—to make much of Christ. If people look my way for whatever reason, I want to leverage that opportunity to point them to the true light.

John the Baptist is a great example of a light bearer. He drew man’s attention to the light of Christ. “He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:8-9). He gladly watched his followers become followers of Christ.

Do we point all who follow us to Christ or to ourselves?

Shining the Light

As light bearers, we carry the light of Christ everywhere we go. He’s given us his light to shine into the darkness. Jesus commands, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). When God tells us to let our light shine, he doesn’t mean to shine the light on ourselves. He means to let the light that he sparked in our hearts shine. His light draws people to himself.

When we stand in the spotlight, people will be drawn to us. When we shine his light within us, people will be drawn to our father. When we shine rightly, he will get the glory, not us. When we shine rightly, our motivation and our joy will come from the advancement of his kingdom, not ours.

We must be careful, always examining our hearts to make sure that our good works are done for the glory of God and for the good of his church. The spotlight is tempting. But living in the spotlight will never satisfy us and will ultimately be disappointing to others. It is only when we shine God’s light inside of us that we will be truly satisfied.

True Light Transforms

God shines his light into our lives. This light within us is the light that we shine before others. When we stand in the spotlight, we settle for lesser glory. Worse, we tempt others to do the same. True and greater glory exists.

People may be attracted to a source of light, but they can only be changed when God gives them the light of life. He must open their eyes. He must illuminate their sinful rebellion of his rule and their necessary dependence on his grace for their redemption. He alone transforms former rebels into beloved sons and daughters. Spotlights may illuminate us, bringing us glory, but God’s light transforms us, bringing him glory.

Church, we must shine. We must radiate and reflect him and his glory. We must show others what is true. The world needs authenticity, not artificialness. We settle for a light on us when we have his light in us. The closer we get to the true light, the less we will settle for an imitation. No substitute will satisfy.

Be satisfied with his light. Be motivated to bring others to his light. Let them gaze into his glory and become transformed by it (2 Cor. 3:18). Shine for the good of the church. Shine for the sake of the lost. Shine for the glory of God. Shine on, church.

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Christy Britton is a wife and homeschool mom of four biological sons. She is an orphan advocate for 127 Worldwide. She and her husband are covenant members at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, NC. She loves reading, discipleship, Cajun food, spending time in Africa, hospitality, and LSU football. She writes for several blogs, including her own, www.beneedywell.com.

Fight for Unity

Sometimes the smallest things can make a big impact. Like a Coke bottle. You may remember the 1980 South African comedy classic, The Gods Must Be Crazy, which begins when a pilot, flying over the Kalahari, finishes a glass bottle of Coke and tosses it from the window of his small plane. A rural San sees this strange object fall from the sky and receives it as a useful gift from “the gods.” His people begin to use it as a beneficial tool for their various tasks.

But eventually, conflict enters their Edenic existence, disrupting the harmonious life of the tribe, and they begin to fight over this otherwise innocuous Coke bottle. At one point, the bottle becomes a weapon. Finally, Xi—the main character, and leader of the tribe—decides the gods must be crazy for sending this “gift,” and sets out to return it to them by carrying it to the end of the Earth and tossing it over the edge.

I think of that movie when I read through the Book of Acts and come across passages like this one:

“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common … There was not a needy person among them” (Acts 4:32, 34a).

However novel it might be, the film depicts this tribe living in a similar, idyllic way: a group of people living communally—in unity—with no basic sense of private property. When their unity becomes threatened by the intrusion of a foreign object from the “civilized world,” their leader decisively upholds the tribe’s unity as infinitely more valuable than this strange item. Their leader goes to great pains to remove the source of disunity and conflict, so there can once again be peace.

A Picture of Spirit-filled Unity

In the biblical story, this kind of unity is only possible because of the presence of the Holy Spirit among the first Christians: “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 4:31). Their profound unity is described as their being “of one heart and soul” (v. 32).

One wonders if this kind of unity reflects a rather simple and idealistic wish-dream, but knowing Jesus himself prayed for this kind of unity (John 17:21-24) speaks volumes of its viability. Paul commands his churches to protect unity as they live out the Gospel (Eph. 4:1-6), and explains the necessity of humility for such an enterprise:

“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:1-8).

To have “one mind” with one another is to have the “the same mind” as Christ. It’s another way of saying believers should be “of one heart and one soul.”

Unity Expressed Through Generosity

The unity of the church in Acts 4 is distinctly expressed through generosity, which takes shape in a physical way through a detachment from things:

“… And no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (4:32-35).

Unity has economic implications. As God pours grace on them (v. 33), they allow this grace to flow through them to others. This radical generosity was a key factor as both a cause and a result of the church’s unity.

The Opposite of Unity-Building Generosity

The narrative of Acts 4 continues by drawing attention to an example of this kind of unity-forming generosity: “Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (Acts 4:36-37).

Barnabas was not the only disciple showing this kind of generosity (see v. 34-35), but he became the poster-boy of what generosity-shaped unity looked like.

The story of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11), which comes immediately on the heels of Barnabas’ story, should be read in concert with it. This unfortunate couple, who attempt to copy the generous actions of others, make a fatal error through greed and deceit, undercutting the church’s unity.

Peter prophetically calls attention to the fundamental cause of this deceit—a collaboration between this couple and Satan: “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?” (Acts 5:3)

Satan’s Divisive Work

Our adversary, who exists to “steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10) despises the unity of the church—an object lesson of his own demise (Eph. 3:1-10). Wherever there is division, broken relationships, strife, bitterness, or discord, Satan is at work. If he can’t destroy the church from outside (through persecution), he’ll attempt it from the inside (through division). In this case, Satan knew the way to destroy unity was through greed.

When Ananias and Sapphira chose to sin, it didn’t just have an effect on them. It wasn’t a private affair. As much as they thought otherwise, they couldn’t keep their sin hidden. Their greed, deceit, envy, and pride—if left uncovered—would have acted like cancer in the body of Christ, destroying the unity Jesus died for and the Spirit was producing.

The Grace of Judgment

We have a picture of a community living in selfless, sacrificial, generous, loving unity. In the midst of this, Ananias and Sapphira conspire in a way that opposes and threatens this all-important unity. And Jesus will have none of it.

Judgment will be rendered on those who threaten the unity of Jesus’ church by pursuing their own ends, living the exact opposite of unity and humility. God hates it when his church is threatened. In his eyes, the unity of the church is a matter of life and death. Like a jealous, protective husband who will fight, defend, sacrifice, and even kill to protect his wife, Jesus has died for and will protect his own bride, the church.

Jesus loves his church too much to allow selfish people to ruin it and go unpunished. Let’s take this as a warning: creating and perpetuating disunity in the church has dire consequences. When we don’t believe the unity of the church is a big deal, we end up using it for our own ends: we go to be entertained; we refuse to commit and engage in relationship; we hold grudges; we gossip; we leave when something doesn’t meet our expectations or feed our preferences.

All these kinds of selfishness eat away at Christ’s church, and God will bring judgment on those who threaten its unity (see 1 Cor. 11:27-32).

Three Ways to Fight for Unity

1. Seek Christ’s mind of humility. Assess your own relationships in the church and discern whether you are part of the problem or part of the solution. Are you selfishly vying for your own way and your own preferences? Or are you learning to lay down your own agenda and your own desires, submitting them to Christ for the good of his body? The call for us is a call to unity—to oneness—that requires humility, patience, gentleness, bearing with one another, putting others’ needs above our own, and pursuing peace.
2. Move towards others, not away from them. Unity is the hard and difficult road because it necessitates moving into conflict when we don’t really want to. It’s easier to avoid people we disagree with, or who have hurt us. Sometimes it’s easier to leave a church than stay and seek peace. When Jesus foresaw conflict in the church, he offered a road of reconciliation that revolved around relationship, not isolation (Matt. 18:15-20). To fight for unity is to pursue reconciliation when we have wronged someone else, and to be impatient with things that cause disunity.
3. Be a peacemaker. Walk with others to make peace where conflict exists within the church. Instead of insulating or avoiding, take on the church’s problems and conflicts as our own. As children of God, we are to imitate our Father in peacemaking: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matt 5:9). Jesus was our example of this: who, for the sake of his church, went to the greatest lengths to fight for our unity. As our leader, he went beyond the ends of the Earth to get rid of the source of our conflict. He took our sin on himself and has eliminated it forever. This is the gospel we live by, and as such, is the gospel we are to lead with as “ambassadors of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:14-21) who fight for the unity of the church.

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Mike Phay serves as Lead Pastor at FBC Prineville (Oregon) and as a Staff Writer at Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He has been married to Keri for over 20 years, and they have five amazing kids. You can follow him on Twitter (@mikephay) or check out his blog.

Wrongly Handling the Word of Truth

I still remember my first hermeneutics class, where I learned how to interpret the Bible. We were required to take one through my university. I was not excited to spend a semester learning what I assumed I already knew. I recall being stunned as I learned that I was far from reading my Bible correctly! I quickly found that I knew nothing of the context from which any of the biblical stories came from, nor had I ever even taken the time to look for contextual clues through careful study. Questions like, “Where does this passage occur in the book?” or “Who is the author speaking to?” had never crossed my mind. But once I learned some basic Bible study tools, everything seemed new and no text felt off-limits or unapproachable.

Recently, Crossway released new research and infographics that revealed people’s bible study habits. As a Bible teacher, I was shocked to see how many books of the scriptures go completely unread because they're hard to understand.

With countless Bible studies are available for churchgoers, this shouldn’t be something we have to grapple with. Yet biblical illiteracy remains pervasive among us.

Perhaps that's because we teachers too often assume people understand the importance of Bible study. Why should people learn to study the Bible? After all, it's difficult to understand ancient cultures and multiple genres.

WHY WE SHOULD STUDY THE BIBLE

Why do we want our people to study the Bible? Because the Bible yields its treasure to those who dig for it. Too often we take a shallow approach to reading Scripture: we want the application without the work, the easy-to-grasp imperatives without the hearty parables, the cozy promises without the uncomfortable truths. Christians should study the Bible to know God deeply. It is a book filled with the glories that teach, reproof, correct, and train us (1 Tim. 3:16), but it is ultimately a book about God and what he is like (Luke 24:27).

As G. K. Beale’s popular work states, “We become what we behold, we become what we worship.” We are formed by the things we do, by the liturgies we participate in, and one of these things that can form us into disciples of his words is the careful study of Scripture. This is why love must be what drives us to the text. Then our study will formational instead of just educational. Disciples are, by definition, learners, and that learning should change transfer across creed and into conduct. Doctrine must motivate practice. Truth has to move from our head to our hearts and actions.

As we seek to live our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel (Phil. 1:27), our answer is to submit to be shaped by the author of life abundant. His words and his Spirit given to us are what guide us, as they point us consistently back to be like Christ.

A CALL TO BIBLICAL LITERACY

I shouldn’t have had to wait until a hermeneutics course to have at least some tools to study Scripture. Christian universities don’t bear the weight of training church members in biblical literacy—churches do. My local church should have equipped me with the basic tools for reading, understanding, and applying the foundational text of our faith.

Biblical literacy helps us more clearly recognize the gospel as it is reflected across all of Scripture. Even in portions of the Old Testament where it seems the difference between their culture and ours is too foreign and unfamiliar; Jesus, covenantal love and grace have abounded since the beginning. And that affects how we read scripture as a whole.

WRONGLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH

Many of us could tell horror stories of passages being skewed, and the marks the false interpretations leave on the lives they touched. Books like Finding the Love of Jesus from Genesis to Revelation by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin unpack the many ways we have tried and failed to read God’s Word. You will no doubt find your reading habits implicated in some way, just like mine were.

But we can’t press on in learning to study if we don’t first know what we’re doing wrong. If being told that your way of studying and understanding has been wrong causes you a twinge of pain, this may be because it has become an idol in your own way of making Jesus out to be who you’d prefer him to be, rather than who he actually is presented to be in Scripture.

Hold fast, friends. Don’t let this warning deter you from stepping foot into what he has to offer you in his Word.

So many resources are readily available to understand the context and background from where the words of Scripture were written as well as resources on how to see meaning and application from them. Books like the aforementioned Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin, Asking the Right Questions by Matthew Harmon, and One-to-One by David Helm all outline helpful ways to approach the text. Online resources like stepbible.org, blueletterbible.com, and luminabible.org aid with things like cross-references and comparing translations of the Bible. Websites like bibleodyssey.org and thebibleproject.com can give you a feel for the history of the people and the literary structures within the book you may be reading.

TAKE UP YOUR SWORD

Teaching your people that these resources are easily accessible to them is a comfort, and helping them to test and discern these resources is so fruitful. A Sunday morning understanding of the Bible is simply not enough for the battle that wages from Monday to Saturday. We need to be able to readily approach scripture each day of the week.

There are a lot of voices out in our world, and we desperately need a whole body fighting together—and that means each of us must know how to fight. You wouldn’t send soldiers into combat without them knowing how to use their weapons; likewise, we shouldn’t send believers into the world ill-equipped to wield the double-edged sword of the word they have been handed (Heb. 4:12). Together, rightly handling the truth, we can be church bodies filled with the true and good news of the gospel, as seen page after page in God’s Word, and this should make a difference not only within our churches but in the world around us.

When we know how to read and reflect on Scripture, the Bible studies we lead and the discussions we have gain greater depth. We begin to see how a devotional that shies away from hard texts limits and stifles our spiritual growth.  We see how shallow study gives a limited view of the magnificent depths of our great God!

Most importantly, though, Scripture provides us with hope. Scripture shows us the gospel. The Torah, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Epistles, Revelation all point to knowing and treasuring the triune God. To know that God has spoken to our hearts and minds through his inspired Word ought to be a comfort to us. Knowing how to approach passages in their context and apply them faithfully to our lives shows us how to really recognize the hope we have in Christ. The more clearly we can read and glean truth from God’s Word, the more hope can take root in our hearts.

Christian, learning to read the Bible is ultimately up to you since each one of us will one day give an account to God of how we spent our days. I implore you: learn to rightly handle the Word of truth. Learn to study the good book for yourself. Don’t give up when there are so many tools to help you learn. Don’t give up when there are pearls on every page.

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Alexiana Fry (M. Div.) is a wife and associate Women’s Director at Crossroads Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her passion and call are to see the church make whole disciples, pursuing the Gospel in the everyday mundane of life. She also finds herself to be highly caffeinated and blogging regularly at mygivingofthanks.com.

An Open Letter to Those Who Feel Unqualified to Offer Counsel

Dear believer, The body of Christ needs you. It needs your words and deeds. That is simply part of the deal when you follow Jesus. The apostle Paul wrote, “encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). You are already speaking encouraging words and building people up. Now keep doing it, more intentionally, more skillfully, more prayerfully—when a child scuffs her knee, when a friend is separated from a spouse, when depression strikes a person you know, or when someone has been diagnosed with cancer.

If you feel inadequate to help others in need, especially those with more complicated problems, that is a perfect qualification. The Lord specializes in using people who feel weak in themselves, and your sense of inadequacy will probably protect you from saying something unhelpful. We are usually unhelpful when we are confident that we know what another person needs to hear.

You already know the basics of help and encouragement. First, you have to move toward the other person, which is sometimes the hardest thing to do. You have to talk together and hear what is important to the person. Next, let the person know that you have them on your heart—you are with them and are moved by what they are going through. That might be enough for one day. You have built up the body of Christ.

If there are awkward silences or if you are inclined to go further, you can ask, “Could you suggest ways that I could pray for you?” If you are concerned that such a question could sound like a spiritual platitude, remember that it is only trite if you are not really interested or are not actually going to pray. If the person is on your heart and you are praying for them, you have given them a great gift.

Maybe the person will respond by talking more about his or her life. If so, listen, be affected by what the person has to say, and thank the person for being willing to talk. Then take what the person said and try to find some ways to pray. If you want to be bold and loving, pray then and there. Later, you will want to follow up.

Of course, there is more you can do. Ask your pastor about good books on suffering, and ask others what is most helpful to them when the problems of the day seem overwhelming. You can always grow in your love and words. Expertise is not what makes you an adequate helper; faith, love, and your desire to grow are sufficient.

Sincerely,

Ed

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This article is by Ed Welch, author of Caring for One Another: 8 Ways to Cultivate Meaningful Relationships. The post first appeared on Crossway.org; used with permission.

Edward T. Welch (PhD, University of Utah) is a counselor and faculty member at the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. He has been counseling for more than 35 years and has written extensively on the topics of depression, fear, and addictions. His books include When People Are Big and God Is Small, Crossroads: A Step-by-Step Guide Away From Addiction, Running Scared: Fear, Worry and the God of Rest, Shame Interrupted, and Side by Side. He blogs regularly at CCEF.org.

3 Principles for Passing on the Gospel

Their stricken faces said it all. The men and women of the U.S. Olympic 400-meter relay teams were disqualified and in disbelief. The U.S. had owned the 400 relay in years past. Now, in 2008, the teams hadn’t even qualified.

In just a thirty-minute span, both teams’ hopes were dashed at the fumbling of the third and final baton handoff. When you’re running a relay, the handoff is critical. Runners take extra care to ensure a smooth handoff because when they drop the baton, they don’t finish the race.

RELAY THE TRUTH

Christians have an even more important handoff to make: passing the gospel on to the next generation. Paul, arguably the most skilled believer aside from Christ to ever hand off the gospel, once instructed his young protégé Timothy in how to pass it on well, saying, “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2).

Paul is challenging Timothy to pass on what he has heard to faithful men and women who also are able to pass it on. What has Timothy heard from Paul? The gospel. The truth of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

By this time in their relationship, Timothy would have seen Paul testify to this gospel hundreds of times. He also would have seen Paul pass it on hundreds of times. Paul understood the gospel does the next generation no good if it never receives it. The gospel is like a relay race; we’re either fumbling the handoff or ensuring it’s passed on with care.

In 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul summarizes his most critical advice for passing on the gospel in three principles.

1. BE A PUBLIC WITNESS

Paul’s first principle for passing on the gospel is that a believer’s faith is not a private matter. Christians are called to be a public witness for the Christ they profess. We see this in Paul’s mention that Timothy has heard the gospel from him “in the presence of many witnesses.”

Paul was not known for being quiet about Jesus. His beatings, imprisonments, and ridicule all testify that Jesus invaded all of Paul’s life, not just his private time. Paul didn’t keep his faith to himself. If he had, he wouldn’t have been killed for it.

Surely Timothy noticed Paul’s public witness. He was the recipient of at least two letters from an imprisoned Paul (1 and 2 Timothy). While the consequences of Paul’s public professions surely made a mark on the young Timothy, Paul’s faithful example of announcing the good news to anyone who would listen would have also left a mark.

And this is true of followers of Christ today. If you intend to pass on your faith to your children, your friends, or your neighbors, you must learn to be a public witness to the gospel. If you compartmentalize your faith out of Monday through Saturday, so will those you teach. The gospel is not a personal issue, it’s an all-of-life issue.

Passionate believers are easy to spot no matter when you’re around them. Their love for Jesus is not a secret to their friends, family, and coworkers. Their gospel is not stuck between the pages of their Bible but overflows into their everyday lives. Like Paul, their faith is so explosive that they can easily point to examples of publicly sharing about who Jesus is and what he has done.

What we pass on is what will live on. Paul passed on the gospel he received, he encouraged others to do the same, and he led by example. Are you doing the same?

2. INVEST IN PEOPLE ON PURPOSE

Paul’s second principle for passing on the gospel is to make passing it on an intentional part of life. His relationship with Timothy wasn’t an accident. It was the result of having eyes to see and ears to hear those who were hungry for godliness.

Nor was their relationship the only mentoring relationship Paul was a part of. The letters to Titus and the various churches make that clear.

Paul intentionally identified and invested in future leaders. He set aside time and energy and resources to build into their lives and show them how to follow Jesus. He saw passing on the gospel as a critical part of his calling.

Are you taking seriously the call to pass on what you have learned? Do you learn and read with a pen in hand so you can pass it on to someone else, or do you receive information in one ear and lose it out the other? Have you identified a younger man or woman you can invest in? Are you showing them how to follow Jesus?

If not, it might be because you have no idea where to start. This brings us to Paul’s third principle.

3. INVEST IN THE RIGHT PEOPLE

His third principle for passing on the gospel is that we are to invest in the right people. We are to pass on the gospel to other faithful men or women who will be able to teach others.

When it comes to investing in someone, Paul tells us to identify a man or woman who has proven themselves to be faithful, and who will be able to teach others. Notice the tenses used.

When it comes to identifying someone who’s faithful, we are to look to their current resume for examples of their faithfulness to Jesus. We should be able to point to times where they’ve displayed faith, courage, wisdom, etc., in the name of and for the sake of Jesus. We should be looking for people who have been and are now faithful to Jesus.

Being able to teach others is a forward-looking goal. Paul said to entrust the gospel to other faithful men and women, “who will be able to teach others also.” That means they aren’t necessarily able to do so now.

Let’s simplify this. Paul is saying we should pass on the gospel by intentionally investing in other men and women who are faithful to Christ and who will be able to teach others to do the same one day. That means we invest in those who display a vibrant, active faith in Jesus, and we do the hard work of teaching them so they can turn around and teach others one day.

“The gospel came to you so that it could pass through you,” says pastor and author Robby Gallaty.

You received the gospel, yes, but part of the reason you received it is that it’s headed to someone else—and you’re the intended vehicle. If you’re not investing in people who will turn around and invest in someone else, your efforts to pass on the gospel will be stunted.

We can never truly know who will pass it on and who won’t, of course. But if you’ve invested in someone for any amount of time, it quickly becomes evident who is taking seriously the call to pass on the gospel and who isn’t. Give your time to those who are hungry for the gospel and who demonstrate faithfulness to live it out.

Each Christian is called to run a race of being faithful to Christ. That race is always a relay that requires a handoff. So be a public witness. Invest in people on purpose. And invest in the right people.

Don’t fumble the handoff. Ensure the gospel is passed on to the next generation and finish your race well.

Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of three, and the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing, check out his website or follow him on Twitter.

The Saints: Ordinary Means for Extraordinary Ends

I went to a funeral today. It was for the man who taught me the Lord’s prayer. Mr. Taylor graduated to heaven at the age of ninety-six. He spent more than thirty-five years—over one-third of his life—teaching Sunday School.

When I was nine years old, my mom started taking us to church. She would drop me off in the church basement for class with the other children. They all came from intact Dutch families. Mine was neither intact nor Dutch.

A sticker chart hung on the wall, just inside the classroom door. Mr. Taylor would greet me there with a hug every Sunday, turn to the sticker chart and say, “Well, Jennie, are you ready to tell me what you’ve learned?” And I would rehearse my progress in the Lord’s prayer from Matthew 6:9-13.

He listened with pride twinkling in his eyes. Each sticker earned was progress towards a Sunday School prize. After our Bible recitation, he taught us a Bible story. Mr. Taylor was the first to introduce me to Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the disciples, and Paul.

Every year, on my birthday, Mr. Taylor would call me. Upon answering, he did not say hello but dove right in, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Jennie, happy birthday to you!” Then, “Have a great day today. Goodbye!” He called all the kids—and many adults—in our church every year. He was the kind of person that made sure to call you on your birthday.

And that’s all I really knew of Mr. Taylor until his funeral.

Long Obedience over Coffee and Bagels

In the memorial service, I learned that Mr. Taylor didn’t become a Christian until his 40s or 50s. As a believer, he had coffee and a bagel with our pastor every week. And every week, they’d talk about the Bible. Mr. Taylor loved the Bible. He read it, memorized it, cherished it.

Not only did Mr. Taylor have a deep faith, but he was faithful. The pastor reminisced how he never missed a Sunday. Though his wife never accompanied him to church, he was always, always there. Though he was in poor health—even when I first met him thirty years ago—he never missed a week. Though his hearing failed, he had to walk with a cane, and his strength was clearly waning—he was faithful in his obedience to God.

I agree with the eulogy—Mr. Taylor heard, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” (Matt. 25:23) when he met Jesus. He is a striking example of a long obedience in the same direction. He never grew weary of doing good (Gal. 6:9).

Ordinary Faithfulness

What a normal guy, I thought throughout the service. He was a World War II veteran, a dad, a husband. He was simply faithful—to God and to his church—and the Lord ministered to others through him.

What if we—as ordinary Christ-followers—followed in his footsteps? What if we, who are normal and unexceptional, simply pursued faithfulness? Here are some ways we might apply the fruit of Mr. Taylor’s life to our own.

Your theology doesn’t need to be fully developed to serve the church

The pastor performing the memorial service chuckled that Mr. Taylor would often get fixated on a doctrinal issue and have a hard time conforming his ideas to the truth. Though he was late to the faith, he gave himself over to the body of Christ. Despite being a work in progress, he readily invested in kids. The pastor and elders allowed Mr. Taylor to serve the church in a capacity that he could steward well. He had a passion for teaching children and the church supplied the tools and curriculum for him to do that. Neither the church leadership nor Mr. Taylor insisted on him having everything figured out before he served the body. Theology matters, but it need not be perfected before you can serve.

Give yourself over to discipleship

Knowing he was indeed a work in progress, Mr. Taylor committed himself to be shaped by the Word of God, the people of God, and the Spirit of God. The pastor said he especially loved the Beatitudes and Psalm 23 and committed them to memory. He would wake up at night and read his Bible or pray for people in the church. He never skipped his weekly bagel and coffee with the pastor. Though he was old enough to be the pastor’s father, he submitted himself to his pastor’s spiritual leadership. He was ready and available to engage in discipleship, even with someone substantially younger than him. Giving yourself over to discipleship has no universal age or experience requirement.

Fix your eyes on Jesus

Mr. Taylor was a sweet example of a man who pressed on toward the goal to win the prize for which God had called him heavenward in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:14). The pastor’s eulogy implied that he had a regrettable past. And I saw with my own childhood eyes that though he had a wife whom he adored, she did not accompany him to church. His difficult past and present circumstances did not prevent him from pursuing Christ daily and worshiping with others weekly. Neither should we allow our past or present situations to rob our affections for Jesus.

Be a bridge for newcomers

As a child of divorce and a home where Christ was not honored in my early years, crossing the threshold of a church felt strange to me. I had a dad at home that questioned Christianity and mocked religion in general. Those repeating the Lord’s prayer with me in Sunday School had dads in suits and moms with Bibles under the arms. Yet Mr. Taylor always greeted me with a hug and eager anticipation to hear my progress in memorizing Scripture. I was different, but he didn’t treat me like I was different. A smile and a greeting to newcomers goes a lot farther than you might think.

Small acts of kindness leave a great impact

We all chuckled when the pastor reminisced about how Mr. Taylor called almost everyone in the church on our birthdays and serenaded us over the phone. He gave us each the same small gift—a phone call that showed he knew us, remembered us, and celebrated us. When I looked around the sanctuary and saw a hundred bobbing heads, it was clear that this small act shaped the culture of the entire church. Christ-like kindness may feel small but can have a sweeping effect.

Spiritually parent others

My Sunday School leader was the spiritual father of hundreds. I know many of those in Sunday School with me are now missionaries and ministers, teachers and police officers, engineers and salesmen, moms and dads. We each carry with us the memory and imprint of a man who didn’t rest until we each had Matthew 6:9-13 memorized. Mr. Taylor’s thirty-five-year investment in children’s Sunday School bear’s a rich legacy: there are hundreds of us who know the model prayer of our Savior because of the faithful plodding of our Sunday School teacher.

Ordinary Means for Extraordinary Ends

Our good and gracious God redeems, inhabits, and glorifies himself through normal people, just like Mr. Taylor. The Apostle Paul said, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (1 Cor. 4:7-9). Mr. Taylor’s kindness and habits and love of the Bible and the God who wrote it revealed Christ to me, the hope of glory (Col.1:27). The simple, unsophisticated ministry of this very normal man, led me to know and love Jesus.

Mr. Taylor didn’t have formal Biblical training or a Christian pedigree. He didn’t have a fancy church or a state-of-the-art kids’ ministry. He had a sticker chart, a flannel graph, a patient and persevering personality, and a warmth towards children. Mostly, he had a desire that we know the Lord! He was God’s very ordinary means for extraordinary ends: making us kids alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:5).

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Jen Oshman is a wife and mom to four daughters and has served as a missionary for 17 years on three continents. She currently resides in Colorado where she and her husband serve with Pioneers International, and she encourages her church-planting husband at Redemption Parker. Her passion is leading women to a deeper faith and fostering a biblical worldview. She writes at www.jenoshman.com.

What is Discipleship and How Do We Do It?

Discipleship. It’s a word we throw around in the church, and it’s a word that’s not explicitly used in the Bible. We do find the word “disciple” in Scripture—a noun that means learner, pupil, or follower. Jesus uses this word to describe his followers—those who learn from him, walk closely with him, and obey his teachings.

We also find the phrase “make disciples”—a verb phrase that is found in the Great Commission where Christ’s disciples (and all his followers from that moment on) were told to preach the gospel, baptize new believers, and teach them to observe the commands of God.

But what is discipleship?

INVITATION TO A PROCESS

Christ charges his followers to go and make disciples, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:16-20). This “teaching” includes the sharing of nuggets of wisdom with a believer that you may only encounter once.

But this command is also an invitation to more. It is an invitation to a lifelong process of teaching, also known as discipleship.

Discipleship, as we define it today, can look many different ways, but it must include this aspect of teaching one another to observe the commands of the Lord. This doesn’t have to happen in a coffee shop and it doesn’t have to involve a hard and fast structure or a deep curriculum. It doesn’t have to be conducted by a pastor or minister.

Rather, as believers, we are charged to teach and disciple one another by inviting one another into our lives, sharing what we know to be true about the Lord, and encouraging one another to walk in obedience to God’s commands.

Discipleship is not an activity reserved for the pastors and staff of your church. In fact, the primary way the church body will mature and multiply is through the commitment of every single church member to disciple those behind them.

BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING

Hebrews does an excellent job of summing up what discipleship is:

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” –Heb. 3:12-13

This word exhort literally means to call to one’s side, to comfort, to instruct, to encourage, to request help, to strengthen. The author of Hebrews hints at the ever-present temptation for believers to be “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Jeremiah teaches that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9).

As believers, we are all desperately in need of the strength and exhortation that other believers can provide. We are all desperately in need of discipleship.

Inherent in this instructing, teaching, and exhorting is a level of vulnerability and humility that is key to discipleship. In order to be encouraged and admonished, you must be known by someone at a level that allows them to call out your sin and challenge you to deeper obedience.

This is what we are called to as believers, as disciples, as “Christians engaging in discipleship.”

We are called to know one another in a way that we are able to instruct and strengthen one another.

No Christian is exempt from this and no Christian is unequipped for this.

The life of a believer is a life in community with the church. And if you have been redeemed by the Lord, if you have been brought from death to life, if you have any knowledge of the Lord, then you have a story that can encourage, exhort, and strengthen a fellow believer or nonbeliever.

Every Christian is capable of discipleship and called to discipleship.

THE STRUCTURE

Countless models, structures, books, and curricula have been created in order to lay out a process of how to “do discipleship.” There are seemingly infinite resources on what it looks like to mature a believer in the faith. This poses a benefit and a challenge to those seeking to engage in discipleship.

Oftentimes, a believer seeking to disciple another believer is overwhelmed simply by the sheer amount of material and opinions regarding this topic. They feel the pressure to pick the right curriculum, to have the right material to teach, or to understand a complicated discipleship structure and process.

While it is true that discipleship is an intense and important process, believers need to give themselves permission to step out from under this pressure because, believe it or not, discipleship can be simple.

While the method and structure of discipleship may vary, there are a few vital factors to consider: intimacy, commitment, vulnerability, and prayer.

From my experience, discipleship is most effective with a very small group (2-4 is ideal for fostering intimate connections) of same-sex believers, who are committed to meeting regularly and who desire to be vulnerable with the difficult and ugly parts of their lives. These groups must be bathed with prayer and members must be committed to relying on the Word of God, not their opinions or desires, to guide and direct them.

Books and discipleship structures can be helpful, but for those seeking a simple process, these four elements provide a great place to start.

THE CHALLENGE

One of the lines I hear most often from young men and women in the church is, “I would love to be discipled, I just don’t know anyone who would want to disciple me.”

Funny enough, I often hear wise and experienced men and women in the church say, “I would love to disciple someone, I just don’t know anyone who would want to be discipled by me.”

Church members, you’re looking for each other!

If you are a young believer who is seeking this type of relationship, I encourage you to ask a more spiritually mature man or woman in the church to begin meeting with you. I guarantee you that person will be honored and excited about the opportunity to pour into your life.

If you are an older man or woman who has wisdom and a life of experience walking with God, I encourage you to find a younger believer to meet with. I guarantee you they will be thankful for the opportunity to learn from you.

As believers, we must bravely pursue discipleship relationships if we desire to grow into mature followers of Jesus.

THE CAVEAT

While there are likely many incredible men and women in your church who can disciple you, be careful to never let the role of a spiritual mentor come before the Holy Spirit’s role of discipleship in your life.

It is the Spirit who gives life and indwells every believer. It is he who applies Christ’s benefits to us and it is by his power and instruction that we grow in our faith.

There will be a time where you are awake at 2:00 a.m. in a crisis of faith or a time of deep confusion (if this hasn’t happened to you yet, just wait, it will), and before you reach for your phone to call that wonderful spiritual mentor in your life for advice, I challenge you to first reach for your Bible and dig into the Word of God for the truth that is there. I challenge you to spend time in prayer and to seek guidance and comfort first from the Lord.

If you don’t have someone in your life right now who can pour wisdom into you, press into the truth that is found in the Bible and be encouraged by the living Word of God.

It is crucial that, as believers, we all learn how to feed ourselves from the Word and to go first to the Lord for wisdom and guidance and comfort. And then we can bravely seek exhortation and wisdom from the trustworthy disciples in our lives.

DISCIPLESHIP FOR THE GLORY OF GOD

So what is discipleship and how do we do it?

Discipleship is a lifelong process of growing in knowledge of and obedience to Jesus Christ.

As Christians engaging in discipleship, this means we humbly teach, strengthen, and exhort one another to know and follow Jesus more closely. This means we bravely pursue relationships centered on intimacy, commitment, vulnerability, and prayer, all the while relying on the power of the Spirit and the Word of God to mature and mold us.

We do all of this for the purpose of more deeply knowing God and magnifying his glory among all people.

Lauren Bowerman has been privileged to call many cities, states, countries, and continents home. Her transient life has cultivated in her a deep love for diverse cultures and people. As a writer and a pastor’s wife, she is passionate about encouraging God’s people through writing on her blog (www.lauren-bowerman.com) and through discipleship.

8 Things to Remember When Teaching Kids Theology

Theology, done well, must inevitably result in doxology, and we shouldn’t be satisfied with less just because we’re teaching children. As they grow in theological understanding, we should pray that the children around us are an example of what it means to thank, praise, and worship of the living God. Here are eight things to remember when teaching kids theology.

1. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS IS TEACHING SCRIPTURE

The charge to raise children in the knowledge and love of God is clearly given in the Bible (Deut. 6:6-7; Ps. 78:1-8), and teaching theology is one of the ways to fulfill that charge. The most pressing concern for those entrusted with the discipleship of children should be the faithful communication and application of God’s Word. The discipline of theology is simply the systematic correlation of biblical truths about God and all other things in relation to him. If children are learning these truths from infancy, it is able to make them wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:15). So teaching kids theology always means teaching them the Bible.

2. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS HELPS THEM READ THE BIBLE BETTER

When children read the Bible, they bring their thought systems, assumptions, presuppositions, and proclivities to the text; they read Scripture through the lens of whatever theology they’ve imbibed. By teaching kids theology, we are making those things explicit, subjecting them to scrutiny, and making sure that the system they bring to any biblical passage is biblically informed. Knowing theology helps kids read their Bibles better.

3. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS IS A LIFE-ORIENTING GIFT

From the moment children are born, they are seeking to make sense of the world around them. As they develop, they begin to create a matrix of meaning related to life, which eventually forms a framework through which they interact with and assess every experience. By teaching children theology from a young age, we nurture the formation of a biblical worldview and guide them towards living a life orientated to God and motivated by his salvific mission in the world.

4. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS REQUIRES HARD WORK AND DETERMINATION

There’s no doubt that it can be hard to teach theology well to children. The greatest resistance to teaching theology to children arises because the children complain that they find it dull and boring. This complaint relates entirely to the methodology used to teach the children rather than to the content–we must never lead children to believe that ‘the glorious deeds of the Lord’ are boring because of bad teaching.

Significant effort must be given to teaching theology in a way that makes it accessible and interesting to all children. It takes hard work and determination to communicate abstract biblical truths in a concrete way, but it can be done. It takes thoughtfulness and creativity to illustrate theological points in a way children will understand, but it can be done. The theology we teach arises out of the drama of the biblical narrative, which means that our theology is not just abstract formulations but is rather inseparable from the concrete story of God’s ways in the world.

5. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS MEANS THAT APPLICATION IS IMPORTANT

Children are always asking the question ‘so what?’ What does this mean for me, my life, or my family? The ‘so what’ factor is an important one to remember when teaching children theology. They long to know what difference all that they’ve learned makes to their lives, and so all theology must be applied well in order for children to assimilate biblical truth it into their worldview.

We want children to have a robust, functional theology, rather than an academic, heady theology. This requires some understanding of the lives of the children entrusted to the care of the family and church. Take time to learn their joys and their sorrows, their peers and their parents, their play and their rest. Figure out what they are listening to and what is informing their understanding, and consider how theology interacts with or challenges those voices. We must be able to answer the ‘so what’ question every time we teach theology to children.

6. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS HELPS THEM STAND FIRM IN LIFE

Children today are surrounded by a myriad of belief systems, and as they encounter and engage with these systems they often sadly incorporate unbiblical beliefs into their worldview. One of the ways to enable children to stand firm is to ground them in a rich theological understanding of the Christian faith. Paul longs to prevent people from being tossed to and fro by “every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph. 4:14). By raising children to be theologically robust, we are ensuring their future stability and are protecting them from being tossed about by false doctrines. We are also instilling in them a great confidence in the Christian faith, which will allow them to stand firm in the midst of a complex and confusing world.

7. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS IS FORMATIVE FOR THEIR CHARACTER AND FOUNDATIONAL FOR THEIR ACTIONS

Teaching kids theology from the earliest age shapes their character and will as they discover the nature of God and seek to develop godly characteristics. By understanding God’s purposes for his world, his method, and his mission, the will is orientated to serving God and living for his glory. As well as informing the character development of children, theology also informs how they live in the world. How kids live should directly correlate to what they believe, and so theology becomes foundational for their actions as well.

8. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS IS ABOUT THE HEART AS WELL AS THE HEAD

There is a danger that teaching kids theology can lead to an abundance of head knowledge related to Christian things but result in little heart change. Of course, it is always right to instruct children in the things of God, because by not doing so we allow them to be informed by something other than Scripture. However, we must strive to allow theology to warm and thrill children's hearts as well as inform their minds.

WIN A FREE COPY OF THE NEW CITY CATECHISM CURRICULUM

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This post is by Melanie Lacy, editor of The New City Catechism Curriculum. The following article first appeared on Crossway.org; used with permission.

Melanie Lacy (@lacymel) is the executive director of Growing Young Disciples and the director of theology for children's and youth ministry training at Oak Hill College, London.

4 Ways Every Member Can Strengthen Their Local Church

Every church member is like an individual Jenga block. Each block is vital to the stability of the structure. If just one block is out of place, the whole thing becomes unstable. But when each block is in its appropriate position, the structure is stable.

Individual church members need strengthening and encouragement in various seasons, and the church as a whole is no different. God has ordained that the local church's flourishing would not be left solely in the hands of the pastors, elders, and deacons. Her growth and strengthening happens through the godly leadership God has set into place and through the many members that make it up.

Here are four ways any church member can strengthen their local church.

1. BE GENEROUS

Members of a local church should be committed to making God’s people a priority in their lives. Acts 4:32-35 tells us that men and women in the early church gave their possessions to other Christians in need. This text is not justifying socialism, as some claim, but describing a principle of generosity: God has been generous in saving us through the sacrifice of Christ, so the church is generous in sacrificing all it has.

We are called to be generous with our wallets, but we are also called to be generous with our lives. We are all tempted to be stingy with something—our time, finances, emotional energy, resources, etc. The goal for every church’s generosity is given in Acts 4:34, which says that none of the believers in their midst was in need. The context of Acts 4:32-35 is monetary needs, but the principle of generosity expands beyond money and into people’s emotional, physical, and relational needs, among other things. Are everyone’s needs being met in your church right now?

We are not just called to be good but to do good, especially to those in the household of faith (Gal. 6:10). We can strengthen our local churches and do good by giving not just our stuff, but ourselves. We all have something we can give God’s people. Give what you have. Be a listening ear during times of grieving. Share wise words or advice in decision-making seasons, or tears during a tragedy. Sometimes the most generous gift you can give is your time. One way to be generous with our time is to share it with younger believers.

2. DISCIPLE SPIRITUALLY YOUNG CHRISTIANS

I work with college students. They want to be invited into older men’s and women’s lives so they can learn what it looks like to walk with the Lord in different seasons. But few of them are ever invited to an older person’s life. I say this not to condemn those who haven’t extended an invitation to a younger person, but to press the need for intentional, intergenerational discipleship in our local churches.

Paul describes how he and his companions lived among the church in Thessalonica by saying they shared with the church “not only the gospel of God but also own selves” (1 Thess. 2:8). Paul and his friends verbally taught them the truth of the gospel, but they also lived among the church and displayed these truths as they shared life with them. This took time, energy, and intentionality.

I am the woman I am today because of women who generously shared their lives with me throughout college and adulthood. They taught me Scripture. We studied God’s Word together and prayed. Other times, they shared their lives and I observed the daily ins and outs of what it looked like for a young mom and wife to love her family, share Christ with her neighbors, and know Jesus deeply.

Scripture makes it clear that we need one another. In the Garden of Eden, and still today, it has never been good for mankind to be alone (Gen. 2:18). Is there a young man or woman you can invite into your life? Is there an older man or woman you would love to learn from? Reach out to them today.

3. SERVE IN YOUR GIFTINGS

Christians are united in Christ and therefore to one another. We are under the same Spirit, the same Lord, and the same God that produces varying gifts in each of us (1 Cor. 12:4-6). The church is to be dependent on Christ, the head, and interdependent on one another, the body. The body should function with a sense of unity (togetherness among our distinct gifts) and not uniformity (complete homogeny in our gifts).

A manifestation of the Spirit is given to each person in the church to be used for the edification of God’s people (1 Cor. 12:7). This means every believer in the local church is necessary for her flourishing. A congregation cannot be made up of only teachers or only encouragers. We need men and women that are wise, exhorters, discerning, and helpers to shave healthy churches.

God has given you certain gifts of his Spirit so you can help strengthen your local church. It’s difficult to use your gifts if you don’t know what they are, though. If you don’t know your gifts, learn by serving widely in your church. Get involved in different ministries and opportunities and ask yourself: What do I enjoy? What have others affirmed I am good at? Where do I feel a burden to help or serve?

When you learn your gifts, be generous with them. As you serve God’s people you will see that Christ’s bride, like yourself, is in the process of being conformed to her Maker’s image.

4. BE PART OF THE CHANGE

The body of Christ is made up of imperfect individuals being renewed into the image of Jesus each day. It’s safe to assume your church has weaknesses, and it is all too easy to sit on the sidelines and point out everything wrong with our churches. Even if you’re right, you should be careful how you talk about Christ’s bride (and anyone’s bride for that matter).

You can strengthen your local church by being a part of the change and growth that needs to happen. If you see an aspect of your church that needs strengthening, assume you may be part of the solution.

As the early church grew rapidly, the widows were being overlooked in the daily bread distribution. The Apostles commissioned seven people to fulfill this ministry for the good of God’s people. As a result, Acts 6:7 says the Word of God continued to spread and more were added to their number. This is a beautiful example of church members fixing their own problems.

Just as every Jenga block is vital to the tower, every local church member is pivotal to the church’s growth. As members, we can seek to help strengthen our churches by generously using our gifts, discipling young Christians and being a part of the solution to problems we see.

The strengthening of the local church, and by extension the global church, happens through the members that make it up. We each play a role in helping to prepare Christ’s bride to meet her Maker. Let us do so with generous hearts and willing hands that seek to do good to those in the household of faith.

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SharDavia “Shar” Walker lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Paul. She serves on staff with Campus Outreach, an interdenominational college ministry, and enjoys sharing her faith and discipling college women to be Christian leaders. Shar is a writer and a speaker and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Christian Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.