I Hate My Church

  People desire to leave their local church for a variety of reasons. Some are frustrated with their pastor’s preaching or someone in their community group. More often, people simply want to do ministry differently than what their church is currently doing. This frequently leads to frustration and even resentment.

For example, in training leaders around the globe, I often find that many people believe in the idea that gospel communities on mission should be a primary organizing structure for the local church. It excites them. They read the Book of Acts and believe that it describes these types of communities as God's desire for us as his people.

They go through trainings, they listen to resources online, they read articles, and they often come up to me after I teach and say, “I’m ready, but my church just doesn’t seem to get it. I think I am ready to leave and start something new. What do you think I should do?”

First, this is a big deal. This isn’t something that I, a mere human, can truly answer for anyone. But, instead of just staring at someone and making it awkward, I feel like something should be said. Plus, it seems that there is a mass exodus from local church families around the country. Instead of serving a local church, people are leaving to start stuff on their own, living life as a silo without the family of God at all. Some are leaving the faith altogether. (Check out this article on church attendance. I know this doesn’t speak to the issue exactly, but if people are giving up attending a gathering altogether, these numbers do speak into it in a general sense.)

I want to give you some quick insight if you are frustrated with the ministry approach of your local church.

Church Family Is Not an Option

When one wants to give up on the local church altogether and do it on their own, they’ll have to look back to the Scriptures and start asking some questions. At the very least, they must see how God has always formed his people, and for what reason.

We see from the beginning that Adam and Eve were in community with God, and that one of their main purposes was to be fruitful and multiply more image-bearers of God’s glory. Not only that, but God was the one who informed/formed Adam and Eve of their image (stating that they were "very good" before they did anything good or bad). He was their Lord.

When people became what they were not what God intended to be, he sent a flood to destroy mankind. You'll notice what he told Noah and his family afterwards:

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” (Genesis 9:1)

God then called Abram out of his land, to be a great nation and to create a large family. Then, God made Israel a nation. In both instances, God’s intent was the furthering of the image of what he was like (not because they were great or large in number as Deuteronomy 7 points out).

God then takes this same understanding into the New Testament. Jesus calls us his Church, his flock, his body, his new family to show off who God is and what he is like. Then we actually see this life lived out in the culture and context of the church in Acts.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47)

I love this passage because it speaks to what God intended for his people to be all along. Not only so, but it comes right after the Spirit comes upon his church at Pentecost. As we continue to read through Acts, and then the various other letters in the New Testament, we see this church life lived out among God’s people, empowered and guided by the Holy Spirit.

This understanding of being in community, empowered by God for the sake of the mission of God is all throughout God's story. And these are just a few examples.

Who is God and what is he like? One of the aspects of God is that he is triune in nature, meaning, he lives in community. One God in three persons. So, when we live in community, we are pointers to who God is and what he is like.

So, if you plan on leaving the church altogether, you have some serious questions to answer based on the Scriptures given to us by God.

My Church Doesn’t Get It

I started living out missional community life back in 2007 as a youth pastor. I didn’t know what it was called then, but the way I formed the group with our leaders and youth, it’s exactly what we were doing. We had the entire families involved, and the group was growing with believers and unbelievers. It was amazing. We did this for about a year and half, but then I was told by the Senior Pastor that the church didn’t support it because it wasn’t the traditional youth group he was used to. So, not only did they ask us to stop, but they asked me to step down. I was totally cool with it, because I told him I didn’t want to get in the way of the church’s overall vision for how God had called them to.

At that point, he asked me to head up our community groups to see how might be able to implement some of the aspects of what I was doing in the youth group for the church as a whole. I started to implement, but it just got out of hand. I started to get angry and I reacted in ways I wish I could take back. I was purposely preaching, teaching, and leading in ways that I knew was against the local elders’ views. Instead of taking them my thoughts and asking for their wisdom, I just acted. Even though I think the ways I was leading were more biblical, it was doing it in a way that was rebellious.

I’ve learned a lot from that experience. I’ve also learned a lot from others that have done a much better job than I have in submitting to their elders, as they desire to live as a gospel community on mission.

Here is what I’ve learned for those who desire to do ministry differently than their local church:

1. Go to your elders/leaders, tell them some of the things that you are learning, and ask them for wisdom. Most likely, the elders/leaders at your church love Jesus and his mission. They have a lot of wisdom for you to learn from. Seek it and take it to the Spirit. Do not go into any meetings with your elders/pastors as a know-it-all, but as a learner.

2. Ask them if you can start living in this way, under their leadership. Ensure them you do not desire to leave, or take people with you. You want to live in this way to see if God might use it to be a beacon of light to the church, rather than against the church. See how you can be a submissive servant to the church, instead of seen as a grumpy dissenter.

What if I Need to Leave?

There are times where you will need to leave the church to either start something new, or to go and join a new one. Even though I highly recommend going to be part of another church where elders are established, I know this isn’t the reality for many. But, if I may, and if you are still reading, allow me to give you some further insight on this process:

1. Do not dump a list of “why you suck” on the elders when telling them it’s time to part ways. I’ve seen many a people who keep everything to themselves for years, then dump the last 10/20/30 years of things that they hate on the elders, and then leave. That’s just not loving. That’s like your child coming to you at the age of 18 and laying out all the ways you’ve disappointed them and then walking out of your house. Be open and honest with your leaders, but give them time to take it in and time to change. Maybe they’ll give you insight on the ins and outs of why certain things are the way that they are.

Have you ever been around a child that walks all over their parents, are totally misbehaved and you can’t believe it? Then you find out that they have a major behavioral disorder? Sometimes context and insight help us understand. So, I’d tell you that if you plan on leaving, don’t make the decision alone, but take it to the leaders ahead of time and tell them your concerns. Be sure to give them time and space to speak into what you are thinking and seeing. What if God used you as a catalyst for change? What if God used the elders/leaders as a catalyst for change for you and your maturity?

2. If you leave, don’t speak against your church. Think of the apostle Paul in this. When he dealt with the Corinthian church that was seriously jacked up, probably far more so than your church, he had a ton to say about how much he saw the grace of God in them. Look at this:

I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge— God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:4-9)

Only after all this does he enter into correction. But, know this: People saw Paul as filled with grace for those he walked with. Most that leave their church are just the opposite. They have nothing good to say and sound bitter, spew slander, and are outright hateful against the church.

Think of this, who does this describe more? God or Satan? Who are you pointing to when you take this stance against your former church? You are not helping the cause of Christ by calling them out and being bitter, but you are aiding the work of Satan in showing that we are just a bunch of embittered divisive haters, instead of a family of missionary servants who understand we all have flaws and are in need of a Savior. Speak of your former church as you’d speak of the very bride of Christ. See the best in them. I am not asking you to lie about them, but every church family must seek to give the same grace that has been shown to them in Christ. Point to that, not the reasons why you think that they are the very sons of Satan. Think through, “How can I further the mission of Jesus in the way that I speak about my former church to others?”

God-Honoring Departure

Listen, I know this is far easier to write than live out. But, we are here to make disciples of Jesus, not further aid the work of Satan to destroy the work of the Church. When we decide to make hasty decisions to leave the local church, or to speak against her, we do just that – we are aids for Satan’s work. This doesn’t mean that we don’t leave the church, but the way we leave can show how we can have healthy disagreements, part ways, and still love each other and hold Jesus high in our lives and words.

The decision is not an easy one when speaking of leaving. But, if you could ask yourself this:

How would I want my son or daughter leave my house when they get older? How would I want them to handle themselves? How would I want them to speak of us, their parents to their friends? What would I want the process to look like?

Start answering these questions, and you’ll be well on your way of leaving, if it’s a must, in a healthy, God-honoring way.

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Seth McBee is the adopted son of God, husband of one wife, and father of three. He’s a graduate of Seattle Pacific University with a finance degree. By trade. Seth is an investment portfolio manager, serving as President of McBee Advisors, Inc. He is also a MC leader/trainer/coach and executive team member of the GCM Collective. Seth currently lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Stacy and their three children: Caleb, Coleman, and Madelynn. He is also the artist and co-author of the wildly popular (and free!) eBook, Be The Church: Discipleship & Mission Made Simple. Twitter: @sdmcbee.

5 Ways to Landscape Your Heart

  Over the last few weekends, I've been putting some muscle and sweat into the front yard of our home. The north portion of our front lawn has been a dust bowl and weed-breading ground over the last two summers, and the time came to put down a real lawn that will not be despised by myself and all our neighbors. According to the experts, fall is the perfect time to seed your lawn and get it ready for next spring. It's been a big task.

While seeding my lawn, I was inspired by how it relates to the work on the soil of my heart. In fact, there is an immediate parable or correlation between yard work and heart work. Here are five ways that we can landscape our heart.

1. Kill Off the Old

The work of replanting the lawn begins with the killing off of the old yard. My lawn was fertile place for every sort of dandelion, crabgrass, thorny vine, thistle, and bare patch known to man. Weeds, rocks, old grass, and all sorts of craziness had embedded itself in my front yard. To begin the process of a lawn redo, I had to kill off all the old growth. So I spent an entire day spraying the lawn with some pretty potent Round Up. Everything had to be dead and ready for removal.

In doing heart work, the starting place is the same. Killing off the old, deathly weeds of the heart. Paul spoke of this work as a putting to death what is earthly in you (Colossians 3:5). It is a matter of seeing that which is contrary to the Law of God, being repulsed by it and going to work in confessing, rejecting, and forsaking these sins. The Law of God is a helpful "Round Up" for us because it shows us that we are sinners. God's good and helpful Law exposes the sin in our hearts and make us realize just how far we are from him. Yet killing off isn't just acknowledgement that there is sin in our lives, it is rejecting and forsaking it as well. It must be removed.

Do we desire the roots of bitterness to grow in our hearts? Do we long for lust and sensuality to overcome our hearts so that we cannot perceive others with the dignity and worth that God gives them? Are we eager for the love of money so much so that we cannot rightly give and sacrifice for the advancement of a greater Kingdom and King? Unless we are repulsed by the sin of our hearts, we won't go to work in killing it off. We must hold our hearts up to the Law of God to see our sin, loathe it, and by repentance put it to death.

2. Make the Soil Ready

Killing off sin isn't the only step we must take, although it is a necessary step. Even though my front yard had become a brown and crisp deathbed of weeds and grass, it still wasn't at a place where new growth and life could emerge. I had to put some muscle into the yard and remove all the old growth. As I removed what was dead and decaying, I also had to till and break up the soil. It had to be ready to receive the new and better seed. I don't necessarily symbolize what many would consider a strong man, so spending an entire weekend raking and digging up the dead grass and weeds was a difficult task. Thankfully, I had a few friends come and help me dig up and remove what was unnecessary or harmful in the area we were landscaping.

For many of us, preparation of the soil is best done in community. Not just in landscaping, but in heart work as well. I needed the manpower of my friends (and the truck power) to remove stumps, thorny bushes, and all sorts of vines and weeds to accomplish the task in a reasonable amount of time.

The heart work of dealing with our sin requires a good tilling, as well. Not only are we removing what is dead, but we must prepare the soil of our hearts for what is life-giving. In heart work this is often found in a few ways. First, we must create space for the gospel to be received. It may seem obvious, but if there is no dedicated room for our hearts to receive the good seed of God's word, we won't grow. A helpful practice is to set aside both time and place for heart work. If it has been some time since you've done serious heart work, taking a day out to cultivate the soil of your heart will be helpful. If nothing else, take a specific time daily to cultivate your heart.

Secondly, do this in community. Many prefer to do this sort of heart work alone and "get away" like a medieval monk for introspection and silence. That may be helpful to a degree, but I believe that the job is done even better with friends. Just as I needed my friends to make the soil work more accessible, so I need faithful friends to help do the work of cultivating my heart for the sake of Jesus. Sometimes we don't know where the sinful areas of our heart lie. We aren't aware of the imbedded stumps of pride and bitterness. We can't see (or feel) the thorns of distention and division in our lives. We can't pick out why that certain destructive vine of greed will kill everything. But our gospel-minded friends see it, and they can help expose and remove it. We need their community and fellowship to remove the sin of our hearts and prepare the soil of for the life-giving nourishment of the gospel.

We should set aside time to cultivate our hearts by engaging in gospel communities. Such people will lovingly hold up the Law and call us to repentance, helping ready the soil of our hearts for the planting of new and better seed.

3. Scatter the Seed

Killing and tilling is a good start in dealing with the restoration of a suburban lawn, but we can't stop there. Left to itself, the lawn would return to the pathetic weedy, thorn-and-thistle-producing lawn it had always been. If I want my lawn to produce a nice, lush space of grass, I have to actually put grass seed down. Contrary to my childhood beliefs, grass doesn't grow up from the center of the earth. So obviously I had to get the seed and distribute it on my patch of ground that at this point was merely a barren space of dirt. Even finding the right seed is important. Everyone who has experience doing this told me to get the "99.9% weed-free" fescue, otherwise I'd be back at steps one and two next year.

The process here was fairly simple. Put the seed in the spreader and go for a walk all over my future lawn. Distribute the seed everywhere and abundantly. Honestly this was my favorite part of the whole job.

Heart work requires the same sort of distribution and application. Lest we stick in the morbid work of mortification and exposure under the Law, we will become discouraged and despairing. We need a thorough and frequent application of the gospel to our hearts. Let me be clear here, the seed that we need is the gospel word found in the Scriptures. The "99.9% weed-free" application is the 100% infallible Word of God. We must apply the Word frequently and thoroughly.

Make it your aim to be in the Scriptures often, looking to Jesus and letting the life of the gospel cover your heart. Walk in every space of your heart and look to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for your life! Listen to the laments of the Psalms, the warning of the Prophets, the exhortations of the Epistles, the wisdom of the Proverbs, which will all point to the good news of Jesus over and over and over in your heart. Let his life-giving Word cover every area of your life and heart. Scatter the seed of the gospel-word everywhere. Pray and say, "I believe, help my unbelief!"

4. Supplement with Life-giving Nutrients

The ground has been prepared and the seed laid, and now we can anticipate a great yard coming in the spring. At least, that is the expectation. Most lawn-care experts, however, will tell you to supplement what's already been done. My plot of earth has some exceptional topsoil and I am sure that the grass seed will do fine. But I need to water and fertilize the seed that has been planted. So, I have my sprinkler system dialed in to deliver a fresh covering of water twice a day. After laying the seed I walked around the yard one more time with a starter fertilizer to help nourish the soil, move out any remaining weeds, and give some supplement to the seed that had been laid.

Some might have their religious radar going on red-alert at this point because of my potential heresy. I'm not saying that the Word of God needs any addition or supplement to make it better. Nor am I saying that the life-seed of the gospel is deficient and in need of a boost or it won't flourish. What I am pointing out is that these supplemental practices are helpful for maximum growth. The fescue seed in my yard is sufficient in and of itself to produce a nice, healthy lawn. But its growth is aided by the resourcing of water and fertilizer to strengthen the good that is already laid.

Our hearts will benefit from the supplementation of life-supporting resources to aid in our growth. Engaging in community with others is similar to watering the seed of the gospel. Not only does our community help us expose the sins of our hearts, but they also nourish and engage the gospel-Word in our life to help it grow. Community that only exposes sin and calls for repentance forgets the goodness of the gospel and is a terror to be a part of (consider why so many "accountability groups" are really liars clubs of self-righteousness). We need to engage a community of grace to remind and "fertilize" that grace within us. Gathering with others who will hold up the Law and then the gospel will cause the seed of that good news to flourish in our hearts. Paul shared exactly what this looks like by saying, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God" (Colossians 3:16).

Supplemental reading outside of the Scripture from faithful Christians is also a way to build on and benefit from the implanted Word in your heart. Books, both old and new, that reveal the glory of Christ, the depth of the gospel, and the nature of God will help us grow in the gospel. Sites such as this one are helpful places to consider gospel-centered life and discipleship. Reading through and reflecting from these sources are helpful ways to support and engage the growth of the gospel in our hearts. Be reminded, however, that these are not the life-giving gospel growth that we desire to see. They are merely the water and fertilizer to help the gospel grow. The gospel must be planted first.

5. Be Patient

My son has been an observer and somewhat causal worker with me in this whole process. After I finished fertilizing and watering the lawn yesterday, he asked me where the grass was. The next morning, he was still disappointed to see that no grass had come up in the spots we had planted. Where he longs to see immediate and verifiable results in my work on the lawn, I know it will be a few weeks before anything shows.

So it can be with heart work. We will long to see immediate growth and depth come from our labors of mortification and gospel planting. Certainly, we can expect to see some difference immediately. My lawn today looks nothing like it did a month ago. In some ways it might look worse. However, the growth of the seed will happen. And in the same way the growth of the gospel will occur, too. As we are faithful to work diligently by faith in exposing, killing, implanting, and watering the gospel into our hearts, so the Holy Spirit is faithful to bring the growth we long to see. In some cases it might be immediate, like a heart-change from an addiction or besetting sin. In some cases it might be a long obedience that takes time.

I encourage you to be patient. Continue to do the work of cultivating the heart in the gospel, and ask for the Lord to give evidences of growth and grace. Seek Christ as the source of your life and look for the growth of the gospel patiently. By cultivating the gospel in your heart the person you will be in three years will be different than the person you are today. And like the grass that is (hopefully) growing now in my front yard, the progress will be incremental, almost invisible, but it will be there. Lay hold of the fruit of the Spirit in patience and look for a harvest of gospel-life as you seek Christ.

Landscaping As Heart-scaping

It's no wonder to me that Jesus used agricultural metaphors and parables in teaching about heart work. There is much similarity in the process of death, removal, preparation, planting, and watering. As a pastor I don't often do lawn work, in fact I'd rather do just about anything else. Yet, by looking to best practices for the growth of natural things, we can discern some steps for cultivating the gospel within our hearts for growth. It seems that the "organic" growth of grass within the ground really points to the supernatural growth of Christ within our hearts. By faith, with the empowerment of the Spirit may we move forward into doing the work of heart-scaping so that the gospel may grow and flourish and be an abundant and glorious display of God's grace in our lives.

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Jeremy Writebol(@jwritebol) has been training leaders in the church for over thirteen years. He is the author of everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present (GCD Books, 2014) and writes at jwritebol.net. He lives and works in Plymouth, MI as the Campus Pastor of Woodside Bible Church.

Top 5 Articles of September

1. Why I'm Tired of Church Planting - Seth McBee

Seth asks how we might change our views of church planting and the ways that it often manifests itself.

2. 6 Lessons I Learned as a Rookie Pastor - R.D. McClenagan

R.D. talks about his struggles as a rookie pastor and offers advice on how to avoid the pitfalls.

3. Living Like a Narnian - Joe Rigney

I talk with Joe about C.S. Lewis, Narnia, and discipleship.

4. 4 Anchors of Repentance - Jake Ledet

In this article, Jake outlines four foundational aspects of biblical repentance: biblical repentance is from God, centered on God, produces life-giving joy, and should be sought in community.

5. Why Teach the Bible's Storyline? - Trevin Wax

Trevin argues that the storyline of the Bible is important because it helps us think as Christians formed by the great Story that tells the truth about our world.

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Brandon Smith is Director of GCD, Associate Editor of The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, and Director of Communications at Criswell College. He is the proud husband of Christa and daddy of Harper Grace. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonSmith85.

What Sparks a Movement?

  On a cold Halloween night long ago, a lone figure walked along the path near the Elbe River in what is now called Germany. As he neared the door of the Castle Church, parchment in hand, he knew his action in the coming moments would cause a stir. But he certainly could not have imagined the impact of the movement he was about to advance. Weary of the institutionalism and failed theological views of the established church of his day, this young monk had seen enough. He had written what became the manifesto of the movement soon to be called the Protestant Reformation.

The young monk’s name? Martin Luther. His document? The 95 theses. And his movement literally changed the world.

It Takes Clarity

Many besides Luther had problems with the Catholic church of his day. But his Theses proved to be the match the set ablaze a movement for the gospel of Jesus Christ, a movement that would go through various phases, to John Calvin in Geneva, the Anabaptists and the Radical Reformation, and Zwingli, to name a few.

It is one thing to sense the need for change. It is another to be able to state what and how change should come. For a movement to captivate others who will join in spreading its message, clarity is essential.

It is one thing to see the need for a movement. It is another to clarify a vision to accomplish the movement. Luther could do both. And today we need both again—a gospel-centered movement led by those who can teach others how to advance that movement today.

For a movement to succeed someone has to articulate an idea in a way that is winsome and easily communicated.

Today that is much easier because of the internet and tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

It Takes a Tribe

But for movements to spread, it takes others. It takes, in the words of Seth Godin, a tribe. “A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.”

And such tribes need to be led for a movement to matter: “Tribes need leadership. Sometimes one person leads, sometimes more. People want connection and growth and something new. They want change."

You have already made decisions about what you value. These decisions are reflected in how you spend your time and money, and how you raise your children. The importance of the gospel is seen in what you value. The “tribes” you associate with, and the level of passion with which you associate, grow out of your values.

Jim Elliot as a college student uttered these immortal words: “He is no fool who gives that he cannot keep in order to keep that he cannot lose.” Elliot understood the things of this life were not to be compared with the glories of the life beyond. That is why he could stand with his friends years later on the shores of a river in South America and be speared to death by those he came there to reach for Christ. The gospel mattered more than anything to Elliot and his friends.

If someone asked you the meaning of life, how would you answer them? If someone wanted you to tell them what mattered more than anything else, could you articulate for them how the gospel makes sense of everything?

Many movements have come and gone, some of which had clear statements of belief. Marx and Engel penned a Communist Manifesto, and the communist movement influenced much of the world. Today, however, no matter how well articulated communism may be, the only places where it is accepted are where totalitarian leaders rule with an iron fist. If the core values of a movement ultimately are shown to be wrong, the movement will ultimately fail.

But if the movement clearly speaks truth and gives a vision for living in light of that truth, it becomes an unstoppable force. When the gospel has been at the center of the faith of believers, Christianity has been such a force.

Godin grasps well the power of a movement clearly articulated and the possibilities afforded us through the internet today: “A movement is thrilling. It’s the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better. The newly leveraged tools of the Net make it easier than ever to create a movement, to make things happen, to get things done.”

We stand on the gospel—the unchanging good news of Jesus Christ and the life that He provides. Sometimes our problem lies less with the assault from the outside than institutionalism from within which turns our attention from a risk taking, sacrificial mission to maintaining what we have.

It Takes the Master

We must take care to remember that the focus of our lives should not be on a movement, but on the Master of that movement. In Matthew 4:19, Jesus said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” He did not say follow a movement. Many have been led astray by zeal to follow a movement whose leader took them down a path of harm, from Islamic terrorism to the White Supremacist movement. We must consistently, clearly articulate what our movement is about and what it is not about.

It is about Christ. It is not about our preferences.

It is about worshiping God. It is not about a style of music.

It is about telling others the gospel. It is not about our political or other views.

Certainly the movement of the gospel will speak to preferences, style, and politics. But we too quickly lose sight of Jesus in our haste to issues of secondary importance. We would do well to heed the words of Paul, a notable advancer of God’s movement: “I press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:14)

“Jesus was the first missionary,” Addison reminds us. “What Jesus did was to found a missionary movement that would one day span the globe.” When we become followers of Christ, we become a part of that global movement. When Jesus walked the earth He did not go after the cultural elites of His time. He called the outcasts and the ordinary. Folks like you and I are the kind of people He uses to articulate the movement He calls us to advance.
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Alvin L. Reid is husband to Michelle and father to Josh and Hannah. He is a professor of evangelism and student ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as a popular speaker and author. He has written numerous books on student ministry, evangelism, missional Christianity, and spiritual awakenings.  Follow him on Twitter: @AlvinReid.

[This is an excerpt from Dr. Reid's forthcoming book by GCD Books, Gospel Advance.]

When Being Cool Isn't Enough

  Is it appropriate to communicate the gospel message in a way that's shaped by culture? This question reveals a certain naiveté about culture. The minute we open our mouths we shape the gospel with the cultural, linguistic forms, sounds, and meanings--language. Even the Bible contextualizes. The Bible is written in cultural language, reflects cultural forms of literature (Hittite treaties, Babylonian law codes, and Greek epistles). Everyday Christians swim in cultural forms: wearing pants, speaking in English, singing Amazing Grace (the original version, or Chris Tomlin’s recent offering). As my friend Dr. Alvin Reid likes to say, the very existence of four Gospels, written by four separate voices, to four distinct audiences, nuanced by the audiences who are receiving each message, shouts to us that God values the concept of contextualization. The question isn't whether to contextualize but how to contextualize?

The how of popular contextualization is often code for, "We want to be cool and relevant," a twist from its actual, missiological meaning. Ironically, the loudest proponents of contextualization often get it wrong. I am afraid that too often we seem to think  contextualization is really an effort to make us and our churches into the coolest version we can create. The more I dig into God’s word, the more I am convinced that biblical contextualization is not a planned effort to maximize “cool,” but is a concerted effort to live out the gospel by “dying to ourselves” in order to reach those around us. No text seems to drive this point home more clearly than Paul’s words to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 9.

Great Freedom

Paul begins the chapter by pointing out that he is a man of great freedoms. He understands the gospel rightly that his adoption as a child of God is not dependent on his behavior. As a result, he is free to take a wife, enjoy the comforts of food and drink, and even receive financial gain for his labors. These (and many others) are among the freedoms that are now enjoyed by every Christ follower. However, in spite of his freedoms, Paul advocates for the voluntary restriction of those freedoms for the sake of gospel advance. This passage is a strong reminder that there can be areas in our lives, which are not sin, but which can, at some point, be detrimental to gospel advancement. In order to make this voluntary decision, however, we ultimately must value God and his gospel more than we value our personal freedoms. Verses 14 and 15 expand upon this as Paul offers an explanation for why he gives up his income in his pursuit of the gospel.

Paul explains that his justification for this kind of voluntary restriction is because he has been given a stewardship of the gospel. Faithful contextualization is necessary as we grasp the weighty responsibility of the gospel that is entrusted to us.

Slaves to God

Paul points out that those who love God and love the gospel are slaves to God, and so we preach, as slaves, in an effort to see others respond in faith to Jesus. Verse 19, in particular, is helpful to this end. Paul specifically uses slave language to refer to his relationship with those who do not yet know Christ. We are often comfortable using slave language in respect to God (i.e. a slave to God) or even righteousness (i.e. a slave to righteousness), but the idea of using it in respect to those apart from God is a bit foreign to most of our vocabulary.  Yet, this is exactly what Paul does. “I have made myself a servant to all,” Paul says, in a statement that is speaking specifically of the larger group of humanity who still do not know God. Paul’s efforts to contextualize the gospel rests under this presupposition that he is a slave to God and man as he endeavors to advance the gospel.

Paul points out (v. 20-22) that his efforts at contextualization come out of an understanding that he is voluntarily restricting his freedoms. By doing so he is a living example of the gospel on display. Luke 9:23 says, “And he said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.'”

Biblical contextualization is an effort to live out the gospel call in the ministry setting that God has placed us.

Beyond Comfort

Finally, Paul notes that this effort to contextualize the gospel is not easy. Notice his language in verses 24-27 concerning his efforts. Paul exercises “self-control,” he “disciplines” himself. He keeps himself “under control.” Often we use this verse in an effort to inform our attempts at discipleship, but by doing so, we miss the point. These are Paul’s attempts to describe the process of dying to self that is implicit in biblical contextualization. The act of contextualizing the gospel is an act of self-sacrifice as we die to our own identity and speak faithfully the gospel in a manner that is most easily understood by our surrounding context.

Biblical contextualization is absolutely necessary, but anyone who understands it as an effort to see how far we can push the boundaries with the gospel  is engaging in a theological exercise of  missing the point. Contextualization should be an exercise in living out the gospel, allowing your comfortable identity to die as you find your identity in Christ. This may not result in a church full of indie rocker wannabes, but rather a multi-cultural church. Instead of a hip, cool leader that stands on cutting edge of fashion and music, a faithful contextual leader may look like a bass fishing, pearl snap wearing, southern gospel listening, country boy. They might even be a guy who wears a lemon yellow sweater vest, drives a Vespa or a Prius, and listens to Genesis or James Taylor.

The point, ultimately, is that who we are, and even who we want to be, should not really matter. What matters is that we are walking with Christ, loving those around us and dying daily, as we live out the gospel. We must speak the truth in a manner which may be uncomfortable to us personally, but which communicates powerfully to those around us.

Know your audience, know the gospel, and die to yourself as you preach the gospel faithfully to those around you.

_

Micah Fries is the Vice President of LifeWay Research. He has served as a Senior Pastor in Missouri and a missionary in West Africa, prior to coming to LifeWay. Connect with Micah on Twitter.

The Pastor's Justification

We're excited to have Jared at GCD today to discuss his newest book, The Pastor's Justification, which deals with the struggles that pastors regularly face.

_ BRANDON SMITH: It seems like you've written or contributed to a few books a year over the past few years. What does the writing process look like for you?

JARED WILSON: I am a sadly undisciplined writer but not because I don't write. I find myself not having to schedule writing time week to week, mainly because I can't not write. It just comes out, and always has since I was a kid, actually. My book and article projects are largely deadline driven, so I ramp up my focus time on particular projects the closer I am to something being due. But week to week, most of my project writing is done on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wednesdays is also when I write the bulk of my Sunday sermon.

B: After so many books centered on believers and their relationship to Jesus and the gospel, what led you to writing a book specifically for pastors?

J: The calling and office is so peculiar. Pastors certainly don't need a different gospel or a "bigger" gospel than the laity. The same gospel works for all of us, and is eternal enough for any person. But I think many pastors get so preoccupied in giving advice, counsel, ministry, etc., they neglect to feed themselves. The statistics of pastoral burnout and depression are sobering and revealing. I wanted to take a shepherding approach to shepherds with this book, helping my brothers apply the security and confidence and humility that comes in Christ's finished work to their specific calling and tasks. We lack for lots of resources in that department. Many books for pastors are for the ministerial toolkit. I wanted to write one for the ministerial heart.

B: The description for the book begins with: "Ministry can be brutal. Discouragement, frustration, and exhaustion are common experiences for all church leaders, often resulting in a lack of joy and a loss of focus." What are some major themes that you try to capture in the book?

J: The first part of the book is a general exposition of 1 Peter 5, addressing aspects of the pastor's character and calling. The second part of the book is a general exposition of the 5 Solas of the Reformation tradition, applying these hallmark truths to the pastor's vocation. The biggest themes addressed in every chapter and both sections are the pastor's sense of confidence and security, which is the result of his trust for fulfillment and satisfaction. Those big themes impact all the little matters, from a pastor's daily devotions to how much time he spends with his family or how he spends his money, each of which (and more) is discussed in the book.

B: As a pastor yourself, what part of the book did you need to hear the most?

J: Every iteration of seeking the approval of God, not men. This is tough for pastors of every kind of church, small to big and every point in between, and I've been on both ends of the shrinking and growing church spectrum, but speaking personally, it becomes more difficult to seek God's approval rather than man's as I have led a growing church and as I've begun navigating a public ministry of writing and speaking.

B: What is the greatest encouragement you can give to struggling pastors?

J: God sees, God knows, and God will vindicate you. You are totally loved, totally approved, and totally justified in Christ. _

Jared C. Wilson (@jaredcwilson) is Becky’s husband and Macy and Grace’s daddy, and also the pastor of Middletown Springs Community Church in Middletown Springs, Vermont and the author of the books Gospel Wakefulness, Your Jesus is Too Safe, Abide, Seven Daily Sins, and Gospel Deeps. He blogs almost daily at The Gospel-Driven Church.

[You can order The Pastor's Justification on Amazon.]

How to Offer and Receive Criticism

Richard Sibbes once said that  “men love not to be judged and censured.” Personally, I have yet to meet the person who enjoys criticism. Whether it's criticism about your work, life, faith or criticism from an unknown critic online or a loving family member. All criticism is hard to swallow.

My mom and I have a great relationship. I look back at my formative years and she provided a foundation for the love of God that hasn’t left me. I recall the words of Paul to Timothy, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you” (2 Tim. 1:5).

However, I wish I was wiser when hearing her criticism. Her words of encouragement and admonition were coming from a heart of love. Because of my own struggles with hearing criticism, I would often refuse to heed her concerns, only accepting the truth of her words after I'd made a mess of the situation. Hearing criticism is and has been one of the hardest lessons learned in my life, especially if I’ve received criticism from those whose motives were not in my best interest.

But the gospel should transform the way we give and receive criticism. In today's, age social networks and blogs have only made it easier to criticize without accountability or real community. It’s much easier to make that snarky comment about someone when you don’t have to look them in the face to do so.

So, how do we take a gospel-centered approach toward criticism?

The Gospel and Criticism

The gospel transforms the way we receive criticism in four ways. First, it tells us we are created in the image of God. We have value because we are his handiwork, “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14). What we do has value because we imitate his creativity in creation. None of us is left without a touch of this creativity.

Second, the gospel tells us we are sinful. Charles Spurgeon once said, “If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him; for you are worse than he thinks you to be.” Often criticism stings because there may be a teaspoon of truth within the cup of criticism (or maybe a cup of truth within the teaspoon). We know we are sinful. But we almost always give ourselves the benefit of the doubt as we speak, act, and write. It’s hard to hear the perspective of someone who may not give us this benefit of the doubt.

Third, the gospel tells us are adopted by God. We have been declared righteous and joined his family and are now being transformed into the image of the Son of God. We are now much more than the sum total of our sins. Criticism can't touch that.

Finally, the gospel tells us that we will be vindicated on the last day. George Whitefield once said, “I am content to wait till the judgement day for the clearing up of my reputation.” We should learn to be content now with the righteousness of Christ waiting for our final vindication. For some of us, that might mean allowing our reputation to be tarnished for now.

Scripture actually has much to say about criticism. The following practical suggestions for receiving and giving criticism will hopefully help you build upon these truths.

Receiving Criticism

1. Hear the criticism.

The writer of Proverbs admonishes us, “Whoever heeds instructions is on the path of life, but he who rejects reproof leads others astray” (Prov. 10:17), “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is foolish” (12:1), and “Whoever heeds reproof is prudent” (15:5). These Scriptures only touch the surface. Read through Proverbs for yourself and study what the Solomon teaches about receiving reproof. When criticism is offered, you should hear it, consider it, pray about it, and seek counsel about it. You should also be willing to sift through the criticism for the grain of truth. I have rarely found a criticism where there may not a single grain.

2. Rejoice in the criticism.

Jesus starts one of the greatest sermons ever preached, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in Heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:11-12).

In this sermon, Jesus addresses criticism that ends up being slanderous lies. Yet he says we are blessed and we should rejoice. How can this be? We are baptized into the body of Christ. We are participants in his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus was persecuted, lied about, and slandered. And the writer of Hebrews says, “[Jesus] who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1). This passage connects our joy, suffering, and final vindication by God. Jesus sits at the right hand of God vindicated against the criticism that he made himself to be God (Matt. 26:62-68). We too will stand before God vindicated one day.

3. Compare the criticism with Scripture.

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). The truest criticism we will receive comes from Scripture. It speaks honestly about the condition of fallen humanity. Bring the criticism you receive to Scripture and ask the Spirit to uncover truth that might relate to it. Don’t miss the full story of the gospel.

4. Don’t respond with umbrage.

The worst thing you can do is respond quickly with your own criticism or accusation. But also don’t let a “root of bitterness” (Heb. 12:15) take hold in your heart. Resentment will impact you most and the others you love. This last point is especially true when the person clearly doesn’t have your best interest in mind and the bulk of their criticism is slander. It’s easy to set the record straight about that person, but in my experience that is either almost completely useless because it’s peppered with anger or slander in its own right.

Offering Criticism

1. Be wary of making accusations against brothers in Christ. 

All those who profess Christ are one with Christ. We have been baptized into one body and Spirit (Eph. 4). Christ isn’t divided. We should be very careful when criticizing that we aren’t accusing another Man’s servant (Rom. 14). That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take part in polemics, dialogues, debates, and defending the faith. Helpful criticism takes wisdom rooted in Scripture and a robust understanding of how the gospel changes everything.

2. Be prayerful about your criticism.

Before you ever utter the criticism pray about it. Ask God for wisdom in using the right words and also that it would be received from a heart of love. Express your dependance on God in sharing this concern with the person. Examine your heart in giving the criticism. If you cannot offer the criticism in good faith (Rom. 14:23) then don’t.

3. Seek peace and mutual upbuilding.

Paul says, “So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Rom. 14:19). I see two connections to the gospel story when see the word “peace.” First, peace connects with the Old Testament concept of shalom. It’s a state of rest for all of life. In the Old Testament, the shadow was the promised land and in the New Testament the fulfillment is the rest we have in Christ. Also, peace is often connected with the blood of Christ and our justification. All of the conflict, rebellion, and sin found in the story of humanity and Israel is resolved when God makes a covenant of peace with Christ (Eph. 2:13-16, 6:14-15; Rom. 5:1-2, and Col, 1:19-20) declaring all those in him as justified and now “fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:16-17, also see Luke 2:8-14). The purpose should be to build the hearer up; it shouldn’t tear him down. There’s correlation with Jesus’s instructions for church discipline, the goal of which is restoration.

4. Watch your own life and doctrine.

Paul admonishes the Galatians, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgressions, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 5:1-2). These instructions are meant to encourage patience, gentleness, and humility. A professor in college who taught counseling would frequently say, “Admonish others as you might expect them to admonish you later.” The idea was “today it’s me admonishing you; tomorrow it may be you admonishing me.” Paul also makes an important point about “bear[ing] one another’s burdens.” Step in their shoes and understand their struggles. Don’t be merciless to those who doubt (Jude 1:22). God doesn’t bruise the reed and neither should we. Fan the flame of God’s grace in their life.

5. Stop continually criticizing.

Paul commands Titus, “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him” (Tit. 3:10). The original context was the local church but there’s good application for our personal relationships and online interactions. Depending on the severity of the issue, you may just need to stop criticizing and “have nothing more to do with him.” I cannot tell you how tiring it is hearing the same criticism over and over again by the same people about the same person. It takes wisdom to understand at what point you are casting your pearls before the swine (Matt. 7:6).

It’s important to search Scripture when understanding how to receive and give criticism. The Internet has made it easy to register our criticisms and provides a platform for those with grudges. These interactions are front and center for the world to see. We must learn to interact in a way which glorifies God. “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters to pertaining to this life!” (1 Cor. 6:3).

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Mathew B. Sims is the Editor-in-Chief at Exercise.com and has authored, edited, and contributed to several books including A Household Gospel, We Believe: Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms for Worship, A Guide for Advent, Make, Mature, Multiply, and A Guide for Holy Week. Mathew, LeAnn (his wife), and his daughters Claire, Maddy, and Adele live in Taylors, SC at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains with their Airdale Terrier. They attend Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA). Visit MathewBryanSims.com!

Facing Our Identity Issues

I sat in my office sulking. My day had been so demanding. My week tiresome. My month an all out marathon, minus the fans. Pastoring eternal souls, preaching week after week, leading leaders, and living an outwardly focused life is demanding enough, but occasionally the demands pile higher. As a pastor, I am a sinner that counsels sinners. This means that, despite our common hope in the gospel, there are times that I fail to apply my own counsel to my own soul. It means that I'm not enough for any disciple much less a whole church.

The past couple of weeks had been one of those "pile up" weeks. More counseling, more speaking, more demands. Add to the stack a particular situation that was, shall we say, extreme? The inbox had hate mail and church slander waiting for me. In tandem, I had to watch self-destructive behavior dismantle a person, whom I had poured a lot of life into.

Exhausted, I thought: "No one understands what it's like to be a pastor." "I deserve better treatment than this, after all I've done. Why can't I have better circumstances." I was emotionally drained.

In hope, I turned to Chuck Palahniuk for help, author of Choke, Snuff, and Fight Club.

Split Identity

Chuck Palahniuk writes sketchy fiction that challenges the prevailing norms for identity in our culture. His book Fight Club exposes misplaced identity through the central characters: The Narrator (played by Edward Norton in the movie version) and Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt). Durden starts underground fighting clubs where men show up after hours to fight bare-chested and barefoot.

In the now famous scene from Fight Club, the movie, Durden gives a speech that clarifies just what kind of war we should be fighting:

We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised by television to believe that one day we'll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars — but we won't.

Our great war is a spiritual war. But what kind of spiritual war?

The spiritual war, according to Chuck, is to ground your identity in reality not in the American Dream. This is precisely what Edward Norton struggles to do. It was what I was struggling to do. Norton wants to be sexier and cooler than he actually is. He wants to be Brad Pitt, and he wants it so badly that he creates an alter ego called Tyler Durden, who starts Fight Clubs and lives like a rock god. He believes the lie that ubermasculinity and rock star living will give his life meaning, a greater sense of identity. So he creates Tyler Durden in his mind. You might say he has "identity issues," but he's not the only one.

Identity-of-the-Moment

We all have identity issues. Many of us have created an alter ego. It's more subtle than Norton's, but it's an alter ego nonetheless.

This alternate personality contends for our identity. It pulls at your heart, your longings. It tells you that if you were just a little more like this or that, then you'd be somebody. If you were better looking, if you were more successful, if you were married, if you were more spiritual, if you had more of a following on Twitter or Facebook, then you'd be somebody.

How do you detect your alter ego? Where do your thoughts drift when you have down time? What do you daydream about? Follow your thoughts, your dreams, your calendar and you will find your alter ego. In an interview with Paste Magazine, Chuck Palahniuk shares where part of his vision for Fight Club came from. He notes that the fighting in Fight Club was more about:

... people need(ing) a consensual forum in which to express themselves and to exhaust their pent up anxiety, and also to test themselves and kind of destroy their identity-of-the-moment, so that they can move on to a better, stronger identity ...

His book really is about identity — destroying the unwanted identity-of-the-moment (alter ego) and finding a better, stronger identity. This is what's at stake in our discipleship, every, single, day. A better identity.

Recovering Identity in Christ

What if we became adept at identifying our identity of the moment, the egos and images we slip into for meaning and worth? What if we were quick to confess those to friends and community? Just think what could happen if you consistently saw through your sin to your "identity-of-the-moment," and turned to Christ for true identity. It could be life-changing! Here are a few tips that have helped me recover identity in Christ in my insane moments:

• Reflect on Identity-of-the-Moment. I look for the sinful patterns in my life and trace them to "identity of the moment." For instance, my sin was sulking and my false identity was victim. I try to ask myself the hard questions, but often I need others to do that for me. Our self-image is as accurate as a carnival mirror, says Paul Tripp. We need good questions to straighten out our self-perception. We need to ask questions "What are you longing for most right now?" "Why are your emotions so extreme?" Check out David Powlison's helpful "X-ray Questions."
• My symptom was sulking. Sulkers are sour because they focus on how they've been mistreated. They see themselves as victims, their identity-of-the-moment. Complaining is a sure sign my victim identity is creeping in. "Can you believe they did that?" "There's no way I deserve that." Complaining can quickly turn to ripping on people. If we're not careful, best friends and spouses will end up colluding with us for other's verbal demise. "Venting" is an extreme expression of victim identity. We need a better identity in that moment.
• Reject Alter Identity. Once I detect my sin/identity issue, I try to reject it. Confession to God is the first step. "Lord, I am finding my worth in my wallowing, in being pitied, and not trusting your providence. I don't believe these circumstances are a kindness appointed to lure me deeper into you. I confess and I receive--forgiveness and cleansing" (see: 1 John 1:9). When we confess our sin, we reject our false identity. It's the first step toward gospel sanity, shaking off the delusions of sin, and returning to the grandeur of grace.
• Return to Christ. Returning to Jesus for gospel identity instead of an identity-of-the-moment is the most difficult and important part of being a disciple. Robert Murray McCheyene said: "For every look at sin, look ten times at Christ." How does Christ offer you a better identity than the false identity? My sin was sulking and my identity was victim. In 2 Peter 1:3, I'm reminded that my identity is godly; I'm a partaker of the divine nature. I was sulking in ungodliness because I thought I deserved better circumstances. I felt weak. This time I turned Peter the Apostle, not Chuck Palahniuk.

Peter reminded me that we have "divine power granted to us for life and godliness." This scripture reminded me of my identity — godly — but it does not stop there. It also offers a Savior to trust, a counter-promise of divine power necessary to live a godly life, not a sulking life. What a relief! Our identity is godly, and our promise is divine power for godliness.

Identity-in-Community

Interestingly, some of the material for Palahniuk's book came from his experience in hospice patient therapy. During one Christmas, he picked a paper ornament off of a church Christmas tree, the kind that obligates you to a good deed like buying a gift for an underprivileged child. His ornament called him to give hospice patients a ride to their therapy sessions. As he sat through some of these sessions he reported that:

I started to recognize that, in a way, 12-step groups, recovery groups, support groups were becoming the new kind of church of our time — a place where people will go and confess their very worst aspects of their lives and seek redemption and community with other people in the way that people used to go to church and sort of present their worst selves in confession and then celebrate communion and then go home for another week.

This is what got Chuck going with some of Fight Club — the need for redemption and community. It's time the church took those things back. It's time we became a community that confesses the worst part of our lives to one another, but doesn't stop there. We need more than confession, more than identity-of-the-moment exposure. We need sanity, to return to our true selves in Christ, in community. We need people who will point us to the redemption that is in Jesus. People that won't let us sulk for too long, people who will reminds us that our identity isn't victim. It is son or daughter of the Living God, "partakers of the divine nature," godly ones. I've traced out one way we can do this in Gospel-centered Discipleship, a community-based, gospel-centered approach to following Jesus. However you do it, make a habit of exposing false identities and re-grounding true identity in Christ.

_

Jonathan K. Dodson (M.Div, Th.M) is happy husband to Robie, and proud father to Owen, Ellie & Rosamund. He is also the lead pastor of City Life church and a leader in The GCM Collective, PlantR, and Gospel Centered Discipleship.com. Jonathan is also author of Gospel-Centered Discipleship, Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection (Feb, 2014). He enjoys listening to M. Ward, watching sci-fi, and following Jesus. Blogs at jonathandodson.org

Living Like a Narnian

  At the upcoming C.S. Lewis-themed Desiring God National Conference, Joe Rigney (@joe_rigney), Assistant Professor of Theology and Christian Worldview at Bethlehem College & Seminary, will deliver a message titled, "Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in the C.S. Lewis Chronicles." Birthed out of this passion and message is a new book, written by Joe, with the same name: Live Like a Narnian. We invited Joe to GCD today to talk about his new book and the motif of discipleship in Lewis's works.

Brandon: What led you to write Live Like a Narnian?

Joe: Three things. The immediate cause was being invited to speak at the Desiring God National Conference on the topic next week. The idea for the book had been banging around in my head since I taught a class on Narnia a few years back. The conference invitation gave me an excuse to get it on paper.

Second, I've been noticing over the last few years how often I use quotations and scenes from Narnia when shepherding and mentoring college students. For whatever reason, they often come to mind whenever I have a student with a particular problem sitting in my office, and so that set me to thinking about whether it's a good thing to use Narnia in this way.

And finally, the result of that last question was my own recognition that the Narnian stories have been a deep means of grace for me in my own spiritual growth. As I say in the book, I have met the living God in my reading of Narnia, and my affections for Jesus have been stoked and increased by my time there. I've received the same sort of grace and encouragement through them that I have received through sermons, small group accountability, devotional books, and theological tomes. Lewis's stories certainly aren't the equivalent of Scripture, but they have been used by God to allow the truths of Scripture to appear to me in their true potency (which is exactly what Lewis intended).

B: What does it mean to live like a Narnian?

J: "Live like a Narnian" is a riff on a phrase used by Puddleglum in The Silver Chair. It's essentially my way of summarizing all of the good, true, and beautiful qualities that are expressed by the kings, queens, fauns, good dwarfs, centaurs, badgers, mice, and moles of Narnia. Whether it be bravery, courage, sacrifice, honesty, repentance, tactfulness, glad-heartedness, or humility, the Narnian stories have given lively and concrete pictures of these qualities, and I've found them becoming a part of me as I've breathed Narnian air.

To put it in more traditional terms, to live like a Narnian is to faithfully follow Jesus Christ. It's to be a disciple of the High King above all kings, and to emulate and embody his ways in the world in which we live.

B: In the book, you talk a lot about character, actions, and obedience. What does Narnia teach us about these things?

J: Let me mention two basic lessons (which I unpack in much more detail in the book). First, Lewis vividly shows that our trajectory really matters. Our direction determines our destination. When it comes to the grand voyage of life, we are embarked, and we are heading somewhere. Sooner or later, we're bound to end up there. Lewis shows us (through characters like Edmund) that we might not like the destination at the end of our road. This ought to move us to examine where we are making small compromises, where we are sowing small seeds of sin that will grow into big trees that will bear bitter fruit. As Paul reminds us, God is not mocked; we will reap what we've sown (Galatians 6:7).

Second, Lewis demonstrates the truthfulness of a statement by one of his heroes, George MacDonald: "Obedience is the opener of eyes." Oftentimes, we want to negotiate with God, withholding our obedience until he gives us a fuller understanding of the circumstances that we find ourselves in. But this is not the biblical way. We come to see more clearly through our obedience. Or, to put it the way Jesus did in John 7:17, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God." This sort of truth has massive implications for how we respond to seasons of doubt and depression. It's easy to use our own spiritual dryness as an excuse to commit sin. But sinking deeper in the mire is the surest way to stay there. In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis reminds us that the cause of Devil is never more in danger than when we Christians look around upon a universe from which every trace of God's presence seems to have vanished, and we ask why we've been forsaken, and then we obey anyway.

B: You have an interesting chapter dealing with "the peculiar majesty of women." Could you explain this phrase a little?

J: Lewis loved the fact that men were men and women were women. He gloried in the distinctions between the sexes, the way that our Wise God has made us to be different but complementary. The chapter on Narnian queens is my attempt to celebrate this 'peculiar majesty.' As the son of a mother, the husband of a wife, and the friend of numerous women, I find the bright glory of femininity to be almost ineffable, and it leaves me feeling a bit shy, like Adam must have felt when he woke and saw Eve for the first time. It's a strange sensation, and one that I expect most husbands understand at an intuitive level. Lewis, I think, does a wonderful job of depicting (though only as an outsider) the gracefulness and grandeur of women: their intuition, their feminine courage and loyalty, and the beauty of glad-hearted submission and strength. These are not popular virtues in our day, and Lewis recognized that appealing to our imaginations by showing us what womanhood (and manhood) look like has a particular potency.

B: How can C.S. Lewis teach us about discipleship?

J: I regularly have students come into my office who are struggling through a time of spiritual dryness. Often they've recently had a period of tremendous growth, or the Lord has done a great work and set them to fighting their sin in new and fresh ways. Inevitably, they hit that spiritual wall and the temptation is to think that something is going badly, that the pain and difficulty shows that they're doing something wrong.

Well, Lewis has a great scene in The Horse and His Boy in which Shasta, the main character, has been racing across a barren desert with little sleep and no food in order to warn the king that an army is approaching his castle in order to mount a surprise attack. In the midst of this, he and his friends (a girl and two horses) are chased by lions, and the girl is wounded. They make it to a hermit's house who welcomes them in as the horses collapse. The hermit then turns to Shasta and tells the exhausted boy that he must run, run, run in order to warn the king. Shasta is dismayed, but turns and obeys. The narrator makes this extremely wise and perceptive comment, which encourages me (and usually) my students: "Shasta had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one." In other words, when things get hard after a season of growth, this is a sign that we've been promoted, that God is giving us his "Well done, good and faithful servant" speech, that having been faithful in little, God is putting us over a little bit more.

B: What do you hope readers take away from this book?

J: In the end, I hope that people come away from the book with an eagerness to live life to the fullest, to follow Jesus with gratitude and humility in their hearts. I hope that they are awake to the wonder of the world, to the enchantment that hangs over every nook and cranny of God's creation. I hope that biblical truths like humility and sacrifice and grace and forgiveness and light have are more vivid and concrete, and that their souls are enlarged, their minds expanded, and their hearts are filled with love for Christ because they seem him more clearly in and through Narnia and the great Lion at the center of those stories.

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Brandon Smith (@BrandonSmith85) is Director of GCD, Associate Editor of The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, and Director of Communications at Criswell College. He is proud to be Christa's husband and Harper's daddy.

4 Anchors of Repentance

  Repentance is a big deal. You’ve probably heard that. It’s a motif in Scripture that you absolutely cannot avoid. We often create terminology, systems, or routines that help to motivate and remind us to regularly repent because we see its importance. This surely isn’t bad. However, complicated theological definitions and white-knuckled systems often lead to a dry, mechanical, lifeless interaction with God. This, of course, is bad.

The most common definition of repentance that I have heard is to turn from your sin and to Jesus. This is a helpful definition, but if we let a definition drive our repentance, it isn’t really repentance. So, what drives repentance? What type of repentance is truly biblical? The scope of this question is deep and wide, but there are four foundational aspects of biblical repentance: biblical repentance is from God, centered on God, produces life-giving joy, and should be sought in community.

1. Biblical Repentance Is from God

If we look at Psalm 130, we see the Psalmist waiting, seeking, and needing God. It seems as if, without God, there is no hope. Biblical repentance starts with God. The Psalmist later cries out in the midst of repentance saying, “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11). David knows that there is no hope for repentance outside of the Holy Spirit’s leading. He is petitioning God to grant him forgiveness. We also witness Paul encourage Timothy to correct his opponents with gentleness, so that “God may perhaps grant them repentance” (2 Tim. 2:25).

Biblical repentance is initiated by God. How is this helpful? If God grants repentance, then we have no need to fake it. That doesn’t mean we give ourselves over to sin while we wait for God to grant repentance. Surely if your heart heads in that direction, there is cause for concern. But, the truth that God grants repentance should drive us to seek him earnestly. Instead of settling for going through some routine, we ask the God of the universe to brake our hearts over our sin. Scripture also encourages us to “draw near to the throne of grace with confidence” (Heb. 4:16). God is willing and able not only to respond, but to give generously.

Why does appealing to God often feel difficult? Perhaps it’s because we want God to zap us from a distance rather than seek him in the midst of disobedience. Our mechanical, humdrum repentance is dry because we don’t want to be intimate with God. We have blown it, perhaps for the thousandth time, and facing the most offended Person is unbelievably humbling. But in this, we have forgotten another aspect of biblical repentance. We are told that not only should we approach God with confidence, but that “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance” (Rom 2:4).

We don’t seek God for repentance because we are good, but because he is good. David’s opening cry in Psalm 51 rings with desperation, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgression.” David bases his plea on God’s mercy.

Jesus’s words remind us ever-so-clearly that we need God’s mercy. Consider the parable to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous while treating others with contempt:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

We tend resemble the tax collector at times when things go badly. But does the rhythm of our lives consistently communicate the same need for mercy? Do you more often resemble the Pharisee, bartering with God based on your own deeds? You go to church, tithe, read Christian blogs, and even share the gospel at times. Those these things are right and good, they do not necessarily mirror a heart seeking after the God who grants forgiveness.

Entitlement to grace creeps into our life subtly. It's an insidious disease. One way entitlement manifests in our lives is blaming God for our sin. Have you ever said, “God I do all of this stuff for you, why have you not saved me from ______ sin.” Maybe we don’t say it in those words, but we know that God has the power to help overcome any sin, and yet he hasn’t. Entitlement rears its ugly head.

We must remember that our repentance will be maturing until we go on to glory. Holy Spirit led, God-centered, life-giving, joyful repentance is a gift you continue to discover for the rest of your life. And the good news is that God wants to give it to you.

2. Biblical Repentance Is God-Centered

In Psalm 51, David also laments, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment” (Ps. 51:4).

At times, our repentance can be centered on everything but God. If we were to think of repentance as a play, then God is the main character while sin, ourselves, and others play supporting roles. However, we are often grieved over our sin because we are tired of being the guy that struggles with porn or the mom that blows up at her kids. Sometimes we don’t like when relationships are off or that our workplace or church has issues. Our response is to try and make everything right again, but this will get us nowhere.

In these situations, we should join in with David, recalling that our sin can only be called sin because God himself declares what is holy and what is not. People are affected, no doubt, but God is always the most offended. In repentance, we have the obligation to going before the most offended party and acknowledging our guilt without excuse. If repentance isn’t God-centered, we can give him a token apology while avoiding facing the depth of our sin. Unfortunately, this causes us to miss enjoying the most abundant, heavenly pardon ever offered: our sin for the Son’s perfect righteousness. Jesus righteousness feels most undeserved when we are aware of our sin, and our heart rejoices most deeply when God is at the center of our repentance. Our joy in repentance is intimately intertwined with God’s work to crush sin for the glory of his name. He reminds us in Isaiah:

“For my name's sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” (Is. 48:9-11)

3. Biblical Repentance Leads to Life-Giving Joy

Repentance should lead to joy, as Scripture often reminds us. For example:

“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Cor. 7:10).

“Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice” (Ps. 51:8).

“Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (Ps. 51:12).

Taking our sin seriously and experiencing the joy of repentance can and should come in many forms. Surely we have had times where our brokenness over sin has led to genuine godly grief and tears have flowed. But there are often times genuine repentance takes place in the midst of ordinary life.

Here is a brief personal vignette:

I have some friends that raise chickens. One night, they were telling us about the death of a chicken and my buddy mentioned that chickens will often pluck the eyes out of their dead counterparts. He even said as a joke that if you lied down out there, they would pluck your eyes out. My young son, Wyatt, loves the chickens.

I was at work remembering the conversation with my friend and realizing my son was over at their house. I had the ridiculous picture of my son lying down near the chickens and getting his eyes plucked out. I realize this sounds quite silly, but it caused real anxiety in me. I called my wife and couldn’t get in touch with her. I was going to have her check on Wyatt’s eyes. Then the Lord brought to mind a struggle of mine.

I have realized more and more that I struggle to trust God with my kids. I often feel the need to over-control situations because, frankly, I don’t trust God. I happen to be dwelling on Psalm 130 that week, and I remembered the Psalmist exhortation at the end: “O Israel, hope in the Lord!” I then began tell myself, “Jake, hope in the Lord!” A sweet joy came over my heart as I ventured from lies to truth, sinful disobedience to Spirit-led obedience.

This is a picture of repentance in the everyday rhythm of life. If we are to be more consistent and genuine in our repentance, we must realize God grants this gift in many different forms, although the substance is the same. Whether at church, at home, at work, or anywhere else, joy can be had if we simply focus on the One who offers it to us.

4. Biblical Repentance Is Sought in Community

It’s important to note that these three aspects of repentance should not be sought alone. There is great joy in seeing a sister who has been asking God to mold her into the image of his Son come to the place of repentance. Joy abounds. It’s beautiful to be a part of a community where people don’t just talk about some abstract theology of repentance, but who actually point each other to the God who grants repentance. As with most things, it is hard to be a pointer if you aren’t a practitioner. But as you swim in the abundant grace available for you in repentance, your spirit will be renewed.

As we walk through the highs and lows of life with others, we shouldn’t feel a heavy burden to “fix” them our make sure they “get it.” We continually walk humbly with them, trusting them to the only One who is able to save. The Psalms are very helpful in this regard. We see men experiencing and interacting with God. We don’t merely want people to see their sin; we want them to see their sin in relationship to a holy, forgiving God.

Repentance is not simply an individual affair. Repentance experienced in community allows us to share in each other’s joy and marvel at God’s good grace. So take heart, and seek him for the gift of repentance. May the Spirit blow a fresh wind into your soul. And may you have the courage to share it with others.

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Jake Ledet is Pastor of Discipleship at CityView Church. He lives in Texas with his wife and two kids. Connect with him on Twitter: @JakeLedet.

Church Planter's Wife: Are You Willing?

  Unpacking in our new home in a new state far from our families, I opened a box marked Fragile in big black letters. Inside, buried under bubble wrap, I found my framed wedding vows. While I searched the master bedroom for the perfect spot where the frame could hang, I read what I had committed to Kyle on our wedding day. Just as it had when I had first written the words, my heart stopped on one line.

I vow to support the ministry that God gives you.

An Overarching Willingness

When I wrote those vows in the weeks leading up to our wedding, I read them several times, each time imagining myself speaking them on our wedding day and, each time, hesitating at the promise to support Kyle’s calling into ministry. Although they were weighty, the other lines about faithfulness and commitment felt right to me; I could confidently make those promises to Kyle. I considered scratching the ministry line because it seemed out of place for wedding vows, but my heart felt unsettled at that prospect, too. I couldn’t pinpoint the difficulty surrounding this one vow. Kyle had a clear call to ministry, of which I was fully supportive. In fact, although I had rarely voiced it, I had felt a similar call on my life from the time I was in high school. I suspected I would marry someone with the same calling. When Kyle told me what he wanted to do with his life, I thought, Well, of course! as if it were silly to consider anything else. We rarely discussed the calling—it was a given, a natural next step for both of us, something we were willing to give our lives for. The hesitation, then, to put my support in writing surprised me. Possibly for the first time, in the middle of writing my wedding vows, I considered what ministry might mean for my life.

As I measured the future with a moment of God-given clarity, I saw what a lifetime of ministry might entail: shouldering heavy responsibilities, giving ourselves away to others, living far away from family, or possibly enduring criticism or defeat for the sake of Christ. Because Kyle had surrendered control of his future to God, my vow of support meant stepping into his shadow and following him where God led. Was I willing? Was my conviction so firm that I would speak those words to Kyle and to God in front of our friends and family?

A Specific Willingness

Eight years after our wedding day, I stood in our new home, holding those vows in my hands. We had just moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, to start a church from scratch. I recalled hearing the term church planter in seminary, but had not known what it meant, certainly not imagining the term would ever describe us. Yet there I stood, dusting off a frame of my wedding vows in a home and a city where we didn’t know anyone. Although much had changed since the day we wrote our promises down on scratch paper—we had three little boys and Kyle’s experience of serving on staff at a church in Texas— the same questions arose in my heart, urging for a silent renewal of the vow I had made to my husband. When I’d first said those words, they had been a general affirmation of the calling on my husband’s life. Now we faced the difficult work of church planting. My support and affirmation of my husband’s ministry would be crucial.

Was I willing?

I said yes on my wedding day, and I said yes to church planting. And—this is very much the key to being a minister’s wife—I have said yes every day since, most of the time with joy, sometimes with reluctance and selfish resentment, but nonetheless a yes.

I vowed a commitment to my husband, but I’ve discovered the commitment, the yes, that sustains is my submission to God. My yes is to Him and will naturally align itself as support of what my husband does as a minister of the gospel.

An Ongoing Willingness

Three years after the day I laid my head down on my pillow in our new home in a new state far from our families, wondering if something could be made out of nothing, God has done it. He has used His people, so broken and weak, to bring light to a spiritually dark place.

Every so often, I stand in front of my wedding vows, hanging framed on the wall. Just as when I wrote the words, my heart stops on one line.

I vow to support the ministry that God gives you.

Clearly, my support and affirmation of my husband’s ministry has been vital. And, clearly, God has moved powerfully around and among us.

But the work is far from complete. The Lord is still calling on me to move forward in faith—loving, serving, discipling, and leading. Church planting—and all of ministry—is a faith marathon, not a sprint. Daily He asks for my heart, that He might cultivate it, so as to produce fruit in and around me.

Am I willing?

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Christine Hoover is the author of The Church Planting Wife: Help and Hope for Her Heart (Moody, 2013). She is a church planting wife and the mom of three boys. She also encourages ministry-minded women to live and lead from grace on her blog, Grace Covers Me.

[This article is an excerpt from Christine's book, mentioned above. Used with permission from the author.]

Why I'm Tired of Church Planting

  It seems that there are often no churches in our cities worth joining. I say this because I see many people planting new churches rather than coming alongside churches that are already established. It seems to be happening everywhere. I actually come from a smaller town in the Seattle area where it seemed impossible to find a church that I would have called family. So, I do get it. Finding a church that feels like family is hard.

Nonetheless, I'm tired of church planting. Now, notice that I didn’t say, “Why I am tired of church planters.” I love my church planting friends, and I want this to be an encouragement to them. This article isn’t going to be some polemic to rid ourselves of church planting, but I want to ask how we might change our views of church planting and the ways that it often manifests itself. I also want to look at the systems and measurables that we currently use.

I am not a church planter in the ways in which someone would traditionally see a church planter. I look to make disciples in the every day. I am a business owner and a neighborhood missionary. I’ve never been to seminary, I’ve never been to any church planting meetings, trainings, been assessed as a planter, or anything else of the sort. So, actually, I am pretty clueless on what it would take to try and plant a church in that sense. So, I write this a bit from an outsider perspective. I’m not saying it’s unbiblical to plant a service as it were, I just believe that we might be thinking about church planting backwards.

Here is a picture of how effective church planting could happen, and it seems to be in line with Paul’s thinking in 1 Cor. 3:6-9 when he says:

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

For the most part, I enjoy my time with church planters. They are great people who desire to see the cities they are sent to changed for the sake of Christ. This isn’t to call out church planters to say that they are evil, or doing things completely wrong; it is written from an outsider who desires planters to see what I am seeing from the sidelines. I might be totally wrong, but lately, when I see someone is planting a church, I don’t get excited. I finally started to wonder why.

Clarifying the Terms

When I say “church planting,” I want you to know what I mean. What I see around the world as I train and coach is this: a church planter is someone who moves into an area and gathers other Christians in order to start a church service. From there, they seek how they then can impact their community in a myriad of ways, but the main push will come on Sunday morning which will be the “front door” for the church.

Most church planters I see are very courageous. They take some serious risks to try and make this type church planting work. I admire them for their desire go on the frontlines and take this risk. But, what I keep seeing is that many church plants fail and struggle to keep all the balls they juggle in the air. This leads to a ton of stress, burdens, and burnout.

Church planters, consider this: what if we changed how we planted churches and how we measured them?

Please, remember that I will be painting with broad strokes in this article, and I don’t mean to say that all church planters will fit into the troubles that I mention here. But, many do. And I want to serve them.

Here are some things for us all to consider when we think of church planting.

Cart Before the Horse?

I feel as though many church planters are putting the cart before the horse. They quit their jobs, raise funds, gather other Christians, have a preview service, and then shortly start a Sunday gathering. That’s a lot of stress. But does it have to be this way?

What if you did things differently? What if instead of quitting your "day job," you decided to keep it in order to make disciples in your workplace and neighborhood? Instead of gathering Christians to work hard at starting a church service, we gathered Christians for the sake of sending them out to make disciples. This way, as we live life with those in our neighborhood we could ask ourselves, “Do they actually need another church service in this city?” The answer might be yes. But rather than assuming that right from the start and experiencing all the stress of putting together a church service (which requires ample amounts of time and money), you can live a normal life of making disciples where you are.

As the disciple-making happens in an area, maybe the people will decide that they could use you to equip them. They might even offer to compensate you for the training and the time it takes to equip others. All of a sudden, the church is deciding what they need from a needs-based analysis. They can see that they need someone to have more time to devote to disciple-making, rather than immediately assuming that they have to raise a bunch of money to make disciples in their city.

It seems to me that this might be more freeing than the first scenario. This will put you in a place to be a learner, like the disciples in the New Testament. A learner would be part of the city first, for a long time, before he decided what the city needed. A learner would learn the stories of the people and of the city to which he is sent. One would hear where the city and people needed redemption, and then apply the good news in both oral and tangible ways. Maybe one of the tangible ways would actually be a church building and a church service, but how would you know unless you’ve lived among the people first?

Unity

There are cities everywhere that desperately need a gospel-centered church that faithfully proclaims the good news. What I am hoping to see in church planters is that they truly inquire about the other churches in the area they feel called to before they assume that a new one is needed. When we plant another church service, it tells the community, whether we like it or not, that we are not unified. In some ways we aren’t, which is fine. We just want to be careful as followers of Jesus not to make the churches in our city an “us vs. them” mentality. I recently talked to a friend who doesn’t belong to a church and wouldn’t call himself a Christian or follower of Jesus. I asked him why he hates the church, one of his responses was this:

People that represent the church seem to lead with religion, not love. "What church do you go to?" "Are you a Christian?" Instead of just being good.

Another friend of mine responded with this answer:

Christ wasn't about growing an individual group; his concern was for all of humanity. Spread the word, yes, but they don't have to sit in the same building as you at the same hours on the same days of the week for it to count and matter.

We need to be about the Church instead of merely our version of a church. So, in what ways can we show the unity of the Church to our city as we desire to make disciples of Jesus? Moving into a city and starting a church service right away might not be the best flag to raise in some cities. If this is the case, how can we instead come alongside the other churches to see how we can humbly help and lead as servants?

Disciple-Making as Our Measure of Success

There are church planting networks that state that you are not officially a church in their network until you have a certain amount of adults at your Sunday service, or who’d be considered members of the church. Other groups or denominations might look to how many people has a church baptized, how many were at Sunday school, how many families gave money, etc. Many of us know the parameters of success – the three B’s: butts, budgets, and buildings.

If you measure the success of the church based on the fruit that only can be provided by the Spirit you will kill your church planters. What do I mean? I think we should measure what we can actually control, standing amazed at the greatness of our God and the indwelling Spirit when we are blessed with witnessing the fruit that God allows us to see with our own eyes.

What if we measured the success of our churches by asking this question:

How many people’s stories in your neighborhood do you know so intimately that you know exactly where they need the good news?

The reason that this is such a good measurement tool is that this gives everyone a fighting chance. This kind of measurement would require the planter (and all of us) to be doing the work we’ve been called to do: to shepherd people to the only hope we have. It requires the church planter to be involved in his people and neighborhood. It requires him to invest deeply into a few people deeply instead of to many on a surface level. It requires him to train up new people to “go and make” because the planter will not have the time to invest this type of life into thousands. In the end, if we have this as our measurement tool, we can see people being discipled instead of merely “making a decision” or just showing up to a church service.

We might see them actively bringing all areas of their (and others’) lives under the lordship of Jesus by the power of the Spirit through the good news. This is discipleship! This is what we’ve been called to do. Why not make this our measurement tool? It seems as though this was our mission given to us by Jesus. “Go and make disciples…” (Matt. 28:18-20). After this, you baptize. After that, you teach them everything that Jesus has commanded, but not before they have entered into a deep discipleship relationship with you.

The planter could feel freed to do the ministry to which he’s been called if we didn’t measure success through programs, conversions, attendance, and baptisms. These might all come, and we should be thrilled when they do; but statistics are not what they, and we, are primarily called to do. We are called to make disciples.

Discipling Like Jesus

How did Jesus do this? He spent three years with a dozen men, showing them who he was. He intimately knew their stories, and they were aware of his interest. When he called them, he said, “Follow me.” He lived life with them for awhile before ever asking them, “Who do you say that I am?” He didn’t have programs, he didn’t have buildings, he didn’t have any measurement tool besides the very fact that he knew their stories. He knew who he was discipling and for what purpose. Jesus couldn’t be a church planter in most networks today, and he would be a sorry excuse for a planter based on the measurements to which we so often cling.

So, why am I tired of church planting? Because it seems as though we have it all backwards. We are more concerned with seeing the fruit that only God can give (drawing, conversions, etc.), instead of being concerned with the very thing he has empowered us to do: to make disciples.

What if instead of starting a church service, raising funds, having preview services, and sending out flyers in the mail about the next sermon series, we decided to be disciples? I’m not vilifying inviting people to your church gatherings, but this cannot be primary.

We must decide to be learners. We learn from the other churches in the area, we learn from those in our community, we learn by walking in the ways of Jesus in the community. Then, we ask the Spirit what to do next, and actually listen to him. He might tell you to never start a service, but he also might tell you to start a service. Who knows? But, it seems to walk in line more with Jesus’s mission he gave us to focus primarily on making disciples.

Jesus said that he will never leave us alone when we are seeking his will. We’ll see external fruit, but this should not be our sole measurement of success. Our church planters should not be under such pressure to “perform” and to do things that aren’t under their control. I meet too many guys who are burnt out, their families are falling apart, they’re stressed out, and they are quite literally killing themselves because of failure. I don’t care if this is hard to quantify; we need to start dealing with the fact that we can’t always quantify what the Spirit is doing. Again, why don’t we equip our church planters how to disciple instead of how to start a church service?

Jesus created a movement and a new Kingdom where he could tell us:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Is our “kingdom of church planting” creating this type of living, or the one that rewrites Jesus’s words to say:

Come to me all you who are well rested and I will make you weary and burdened. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am merciless and prideful in heart, and you will find work for your souls. For my yoke is hard and my burden is heavy.

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Seth McBee is the adopted son of God, husband of one wife, and father of three. He’s a graduate of Seattle Pacific University with a finance degree. By trade. Seth is an investment portfolio manager, serving as President of McBee Advisors, Inc. He is also a MC leader/trainer/coach and executive team member of the GCM Collective. Seth currently lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Stacy and their three children: Caleb, Coleman, and Madelynn. He is also the artist and co-author of the wildly popular (and free!) eBook, Be The Church: Discipleship & Mission Made Simple. Twitter: @sdmcbee.

The Ministry Mistress

  "Working for the Church while your family dies You take what they give you and you keep it inside Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home Hear the solider groan, "We'll go at it alone""

Arcade Fire’s song “Intervention” paints the church as a militant institution, driven by discipline and an over-bearing work ethic. The central character sacrifices his family on the altar of “church” or ministry. This is often true. Churches all too often have more in common with Wall Street than they do Scripture. They enforce a merciless work ethic in the name of “mercy” or “gospel” ministry. All work no play.

There’s a Mistress in the House

My first year of church planting I started a new, full-time job, a new city, a new daughter, and a new church. Guess which one got the least attention? Family. As all these new things filled our lives, they began to crowd conversation with my wife. What was once natural—inquiring about my wife’s hopes, fears, and joys—became unnatural, even absent from our conversation. She patiently continued to ask how I was doing, but I was “working for the church while my family died.”

As my wife began to wither without the invigorating love of her husband, she revealed the affair. I’ll never forget her crushing comment: “I feel like there’s a mistress in the house.” I was alarmed and frustrated. How dare she make such a comparison! After all, I made a point of being home by 5:30 and on weekends. I made sure we had good family rhythms—breakfast and devotions, dinner and downtime. How could she say there was a “mistress” in our home? Then it dawned on me—you can be home without being home. I was present but absent. My thoughts, emotions, and concerns were with another Bride while I was home, not with my bride.

I had felt the gradual distance growing between us, but chalked it up to two kids under two and the important demands of church. I was wrong and Arcade Fire was right. The spark of love cannot live without a home. A house isn’t sufficient. Being present doesn’t cut it. What our relationships need is a home, a place where families can laugh, play, cry, and talk deeply together.

Recovering Your First Love

What was once natural became a discipline. I began to discipline myself to turn conversations away from church, work, and ministry and toward my wife and our children. I began to love her by asking about her hopes, dreams, fears, to encourage her hobbies and friendships. I relearned how to empathize and suffer, rejoice and laugh with her. Slowly the spark of love began to kindle. The warmth of friendship began to return in our resurrected home. My thought was that discipline could give way to desire. But discipline wasn’t enough.

What my wife wants, what every wife wants, is not a disciplined, duty-driven husband, but a loving, desire-driven husband. A husband whom, when thanked for a weekend get-away without the kids, says to his wife: “It’s my pleasure” not “It’s my duty”! Our wives want to be desired, cherished, valued. In fact, all people want to be cherished, but until we clear the shelf of our hearts of subtle idolatries, discipline will not give way to desire. We must put away our “mistresses.”

Repentance is Good News

In order to put away our sinful lovers, we need a power outside of ourselves. We need the power of repentance and faith. In Revelation 2-3, Jesus calls the seven churches to repentance. For example, he writes to the church at Laodicea: “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.” In love, Jesus calls us to zealously repent.

I repented from loving the worth I received from my work, the significance I gained from serving my church. To repent is to turn. When we turn, we turn away from one direction toward another. The proof of repentance is not in our confession or resolve but in turning from our lovers and turning to our Savior. Where do we get the power of repentance? How do we conquer these lesser loves? By Spirit-empowered faith in the promises of God.

Jesus continues: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. ​If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, ​I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (3:19). The call to repentance is followed by the promise of satisfaction in Christ. Leave your lovers and turn to your one, true Love. Open the door and Christ will come to you, not only that, he will dine with you. Repentance is a call away from the famine of idolatry to the feast of table fellowship with Christ. Repentance is always good news.

All who over-work and under-love need to repent. We need to confess the idolatries of worth-by-work, of significance-by-service, and turn to face the loving, all-accepting, never-ending significance offered to us in the arms of our Savior’s embrace. Through Spirit-empowered trust in the promises of God, we can draw near to Christ and receive his perfect love, acceptance, and grace. It is from this position alone that we can truly love our wives and families. When we are satisfied in Christ, we can satisfy our wives. When we cherished by Christ, we can freely cherish others.

We don’t have to work for the church, the corporation, or the business while our families die. Every spark of friendship and love does not have to die. We can build a home that is filled with love, if Christ takes center place. When we embrace the practice of repentance and faith in Jesus, the idolatries of work can be cleared away with Christ at the center of our affections. Then and only then are we free to truly love others. When we do this, we will adorn the gospel of Christ and restore the reputation of the Church, revealing the glories of the gospel in the gift of marriage.

*A form of this article first appeared at Christianity Today in the Faith & Work section. Be sure to check out The High Calling for other helpful articles on vocation.

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Jonathan K. Dodson (MDiv; ThM) serves as a pastor of City Life Church in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Gospel-Centered Discipleship and Unbelievable Gospel. He has discipled men and women abroad and at home for almost two decades, taking great delight in communicating the gospel and seeing Christ formed in others.

Why Teach the Bible's Storyline?

Some of you may be wondering why so many people are talking about the Bible’s storyline lately. What’s the big deal? Why is it so important for Christians to be able to connect the dots of the Bible’s grand narrative? Here are four reasons.

1. To Gain a Biblical Worldview

The first reason we need to keep the biblical storyline in mind is because the narrative of the Bible is the narrative of the world. The Bible doesn’t just give us commands and prohibitions. It gives us an entire worldview.

We all live according to a worldview. A worldview is the lens through which we see the world and make decisions. It’s like wearing a pair of glasses. You don’t think about looking at your glasses when you have them on. You look through them to see the world around you. Everyone has a worldview, even people who are not Christians.

Unfortunately, there are many Christians who do not have a Christian worldview. They may display some of the religious trappings of Christianity, but they demonstrate by their choices that they are living by another worldview.

The storyline of the Bible is important because it helps us think as Christians formed by the great Story that tells the truth about our world. It is vitally important that people know the overarching storyline of the Bible that leads from creation, to our fall into sin, to redemption through Jesus Christ, and final restoration in the fullness of time. If we are to live as Christians in a fallen world, we must be shaped by the grand narrative of the Scriptures, the worldview we find in the Bible.

2. To Recognize and Reject False Worldviews

A few years ago, two sociologists studying the religious views of young people in North America coined the phrase “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Those are three big words that sum up the following five beliefs of many in our society today:

1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.” (That’s the “Deism” part. God created the world, watches things, but doesn’t do much in the way of intervening in human affairs.)
2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.” (That’s the Moralistic part. The goal of religion is to be a nice, moral person.)
3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.” (That’s the Therapeutic part. The most important thing in life is to be happy and well-balanced.)
4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.” (Now, we see the Deistic view of God combine with God’s therapeutic purpose. He exists to make us happy.)
5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.” (Salvation is accomplished through morality.)

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. “Moralism,” for short. Our society is awash in this worldview. Even longtime church members are not immune to it.

So, if we are going to be effective witnesses to the gospel in our day and age, we must put forth a biblical view of the world that counters rival worldviews. Just think, if you were called to be a missionary to India, wouldn’t you first study Hinduism to see how it affects the culture and the people’s view of God there? Wouldn’t part of your strategy be to show how Christianity counters the Hindu worldview? Likewise, if you were called to be a missionary to Iran, would you not study the worldview of Muslims and see where Christianity and Islam diverge? A good missionary knows what Christianity teaches as opposed to what the dominant worldview of the culture says, even if that worldview is the moralistic therapeutic deism of the United States.

3. To Rightly Understand the Gospel

Another reason we need to know the story line of the Bible is because the gospel can quickly become distorted without it. The story of the Bible gives context to the gospel message about Jesus.

Too many times, we think of the gospel as a story that jumps from the Garden of Eden (we’ve all sinned) right to the cross (but Jesus fixes everything). On its own, that works fine in communicating the systematic points of our need for salvation and God’s provision in Christ, but from a biblical theological perspective, it doesn’t do justice to what’s actually in the text. Once a person becomes a Christian and cracks the Bible, they’re going to wonder what the big deal is about Israel and the covenant, since that storyline takes up roughly 75% of the Bible. Getting people into that story is important. As D.A. Carson says, the announcement is incoherent without it.

I once spent significant time witnessing to a coworker, one of those “all religions lead to God-consciousness sort of guy.” He and I went back and forth on the gospel. Eventually, he admitted that he believed Jesus had been raised from the dead bodily. Yet his explanation of the resurrection was this: God raised Jesus from the dead because He’d been unjustly condemned, and His purpose in rising was to demonstrate His God-consciousness so He could beckon us to learn from Him. In other words, Jesus was still just Master Teacher and not Savior and Lord. My coworker got the bare facts of the announcement right, and yet the story he was working from was wrong. The story line affected the announcement to the point where he really didn’t believe the gospel at all.

We need the biblical story line in order to understand the gospel of Jesus. Otherwise, sharing the gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection is like coming into a movie theater at the most climactic moment but without any knowledge of the story thus far. You will be able to discern bits and pieces of the story, but you won’t understand the full significance of what is happening unless you know the backstory.

4. To Keep Our Focus on Christ

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about making the gospel announcement of Jesus Christ front and center in our preaching and teaching. As our society becomes increasingly post-Christian, it is critical for us to not assume lost people know who God is, what He is like, and what He has done for us. We need to be clear in what we teach, with a laser-like focus on Jesus Christ our Savior. The biblical storyline helps us do this.

Every story has a main character. The Bible does too. It’s God. Specifically, it’s God as He reveals Himself to us in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Here’s what happens if we learn individual Bible stories and never connect them to the big Story. We put ourselves in the scene as if we are the main character. We take the moral examples of the Old and New Testament as if they were there to help us along in the life we’ve chosen for ourselves.

But the more we read the Bible, the more we see that God is the main character, not us. We are not the heroes learning to overcome all obstacles, persist in our faith, and call down fire from heaven. We’re the ones who need rescue, who need a Savior who will deliver us from Satan, sin, and death. It’s only in bowing before the real Hero of the story that we are in the right posture to take our place in the unfolding drama. Bearing in mind the big story of Scripture helps us keep our focus on Jesus, and off ourselves.

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Trevin Wax is managing editor of The Gospel Project at LifeWay Christian Resources, a pastor, contributor to Christianity Today, and the author of Counterfeit Gospels, Holy Subversion, and Clear Winter Nights. Trevin lives with his wife and children in Nashville.

[This is an excerpt from Trevin's new book, Gospel-Centered Teaching. Used with permission from the author.]

6 Lessons I Learned as a Rookie Pastor

  “What do you think of me as a human being?”

A few weeks into full-time pastoral ministry, this question was posed to me from a man in the middle of a counseling session. His eyes were full of tears and his face was facing the floor; he was looking to me for any type of help. I wasn’t prepared for the rawness of his question, but there he sat, waiting for me to answer his cry.

My first year of pastoral ministry was like being dropped into a battlefield that I’d only read about. Yet, there I was, in the midst of the destruction of sin and the brutality of a world following the enemy, trying to discern what it actually looked like to be in the trenches, pastoring the people of God. It was terrifying. After a year in the battle, here are six lessons that I learned as a rookie pastor.

1. Soak Yourself in Scripture

In seminary, I'd heard stories of how ministry can become all about the job and not about loving Jesus. Not me, I thought. I was prepared, I was ready, I was confident. But when I became a real pastor with real responsibilities, all of a sudden my personal devotion had screeched to a halt. I became too busy to meditate on Scripture, and I became more anxious, irritable, and impatient with everyone around me. I had become a pastor consumed with the work of ministry and not with Jesus Christ, and I was suffering for it.

Finally, the Lord opened my heart and exposed my lack of devotion to him. Psalm 1:1-3 proclaims:

“Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever he does prospers.”

The busyness of ministry will make you say, “I will get my personal time in tomorrow.” But that will never happen. You must make it happen today. You cannot do the work of pastoral ministry without the nearness of Jesus and the more time you spend in God’s Word, the nearer he is.

If you are reading Scripture but not asking the Spirit of God to press it deep into your heart, you will not be truly delighting in the law of the Lord. The Spirit is the switch that once turned on, can illuminate the majesty and beauty of God’s Word to your heart and mind (1 Cor. 2:9-16). The Spirit brings vitality and freshness to the meditating on God’s Word. Jesus says that “the Spirit gives life” (John 6:33). The life-giving Word of God is what we need in the wars of ministry.

2. Jesus Is a Better Justifier

I feel justified by how many complimentary emails that I receive after a sermon. I feel justified by how many students show up to youth group on Wednesday nights. I feel justified by how many people want to meet with me for counseling. I feel justified by how much input I get to give into senior leadership decisions. I feel justified by... the list can go on. This is the performance-driven treadmill, and it dominated my thinking for a good chunk of my first year.

The first year of ministry showed me how innately destructive the desire to please people can be. I am learning that Jesus is better justifier than anything else in this world; in fact, he is the only justifier. Justification through grace alone is a glorious truth. It penetrates the heart that is driven by justification by works, and this is where the gospel begins to convict and comfort in beautiful ways.

The truth is, the treadmill of performance demands that you keep outdoing your previous effort. The next sermon has to be more profound, the next youth gathering has to be more exciting, and so on. This is absolutely exhausting. I am learning that it is God’s promise, not my performance, which sustains our relationship, and it is the cross of Jesus which justifies me, not the number of “likes” my sermons get on Facebook.

3. Point People to the True Savior

I think many pastors want to be everybody’s hero. I am wired that way. The motivation can be a good one. We long to see people freed from their struggles. However, it’s easy to glorify ourselves rather than Jesus. It’s exciting to hear people compliment our ministerial strengths. In those moments, the pastor-savior complex appears, complete with a sweet cape that we can put on, ready for the next situation to fly in to rescue.

Pastors can also go to the opposite extreme and ignore the gifts that God has given them in order to truly help people. Even a well-intentioned compliment can be turned into a theological disposition. We say, “It was actually the Trinitarian Godhead working in this situation; I had nothing to do with it.” To be sure, it is God who is transforming all people into the image of his Son, but he has called us as pastors to be on the stage of his great theater, with an important role to play in the lives of the people we serve. We are called to point them to the true Savior, while at the same time meeting them in the middle of their mess and doing all that we can to love and serve them in the ways of Jesus.

Entering the mess of people’s lives is where we experience the limit of our ability and the limitlessness of Christ’s ability. It is certainly easier to put bandages on people’s struggles, trying to sew up all that sin has done in their life in a one hour meeting, and then believing you have solved it all with a few words of wisdom. There can be a fine line between shepherding people’s lives under the authority of the true Shepherd, and trying to be the true Shepherd yourself. We must not become fatalistic about what we can do, believing that there is really nothing we can truly do to help people, but we must also guard against a sense of triumphalism and heralding ourselves as the true deliverers of people from their storms. Over and over again, I have seen that one meeting with someone was only a very small part of what the Lord was doing to heal them. My role was to bring the gospel to bear on their situation, to pray with them, and to encourage them to seek help in a variety of other places in addition to me. If we truly believe that sanctification is a God-driven but community-necessary process, then we must not let our counseling with people terminate on time with one pastor. So, I encourage people that meet with me to speak with another pastor if possible, or to join a community group where they can get in the fight with others. It’s also helpful for them to meet with a biblical counselor who can engage them more deeply.

I do want to shepherd people for the glory of God and not my own glory, and it is only in learning my role in the greater theater of God’s redeeming work that I can point people to what they desperately need – the true Savior and Shepherd of their souls.

4. Honor Other Pastors

There is something hardwired into youth which makes us want to change institutions wholesale, ignoring the opinions of those who have spent more time in the field than we have been alive. I am fortunate to serve on a church staff with several pastors who have been in ministry for decades, and I have found myself seeking out their advice and opinions on a variety of ministry and personal fronts. Sure, the context for ministry and the methods for ministry are different. The context may have been different when older pastors were cutting their teeth, but the pastoral wisdom available to you is waiting to be tapped. And it may shock you.

There are few things as important in ministry is a healthy staff culture, and if you are the guy who is continually questioning other staff members’ motives, gossiping about the “direction of the church,” believing in your heart that your sermon would have been better than his, you are helping to create an unhealthy culture that will bleed over into the church itself. Don’t be that guy. That guy can kill your church.

Do I always agree with other pastors on staff? No. But do I respect the motives and opinions of other staff members and honor those men who have a love for Christ and his Church by gladly submitting to their leadership, learning from their experience, and recognizing their collective wisdom and character that is often trying to help me? Yes.

5. Your Wife Is Your First Bride

I work for Christ’s bride and it is easy for her to receive the majority of my affections. But as a married man and a pastor, I am called to love my bride more than the bride of Christ (1 Tim. 3:5). I went through seasons in my first year where I was loving and serving my wife well, and I went through seasons where I wasn’t doing it well. This will always be a battle. Yet, I don’t want to write the book one day with a chapter lamenting about how the first ten years of our marriage were awful because of my obsession with the church. I want to honor my wife by letting her know that she is more important to me than anything else apart from Christ himself.

The health of your marriage will also dictate the health of your pastoral ministry. If you are loving and serving your wife, you will be in a much better position spiritually and emotionally to love and serve your church. Keeping several nights of my week completely free, saying no to people, and sharing about the highs and lows of ministry with my wife are a few things I am learning as I focus on putting my wife first.

As many people will attest, it is through marriage that the Lord shows how deep our need is for the gospel and for the Spirit. It is through sacrificially loving my wife that I honor the Lord with my covenant vows. And it is through loving my wife that I learn how deep the Savior’s love for his bride, the Church (Eph. 5:25).

6. Love Your People

Do you really love the church you serve? Do you love the people to whom God has sent you? I find myself loving the work of pastoral ministry more than I love the people to whom the Lord has sent me. It can be easy to dream up vision for where you want your church to be and forget the actual people who make up your local church. I find myself talking about “the church” as if it is an institution devoid of people; I speak as though it’s nothing more than a means by which I accomplish things “for the Lord.”

But the church is the people of God, called out and commissioned for his great work in the world (Matt. 28:18-20). It is to this end that we labor as pastors. We should desire to see people grow into the fullness of Jesus. It is easy to use people for “the good” of the church, but not truly love them for who they are as human beings. If you are using people rather than loving them, you’ve missed the heart of Jesus.

Look to Christ

If you allow it, pastoral ministry will demand everything from you. Yet, it's in the finished work of Jesus Christ where pastoral ministry finds its flourishing. The gospel of Jesus is the anchor we plunge down deep into our souls, and the treasure that we lay hold of with all our might.

Our flesh seeks to use pastoral ministry as that identity which justifies us. To the degree that our churches are growing, or people are being baptized, or money is being offered, or sermons are being liked – this is the degree to which our identity is secure. But if people start leaving or the money starts drying up, then our identity can begin to crumble. If our self-worth as pastors is built on what we do for God, then we will become tremendously easy prey for Satan. He will continually lie to us about what makes us acceptable in God’s sight.

Preaching the gospel of Jesus to ourselves helps us fight Satan’s lies. Our self-worth is not built on what we do for God, but is built on what he has done for us. Titus 3:5 says that “he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” This verse has been manna to me over my first year of pastoral ministry, and it is this truth that you must bury down deep within your soul. It is through the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ that brings us into God’s presence. It is the very character of God – his loving kindness, his faithfulness, his mercy, his strength, his patience – that we must meditate upon. It is his character which gives purpose and peace to your circumstances. Rest in that glorious truth.

May the cross of Jesus Christ, the promise of God’s saving love through his Son, sustain your relationship with the Father rather than your own performance. May the Spirit of God propel you into a fresh season of gospel-centered worship that stirs your heart and captivates your mind. And, to paraphrase Eugene Peterson, may your life be marked by a long gaze in the same direction.

“One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Psalm 27:4

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R.D. McClenagan is a pastor at Door Creek Church in Madison, WI where he lives with his wife, Emily. Follow him on Twitter: @rdmcclenagan.

When Suffering Sets Us Free

  In the summer of 2008, my father stole my identity.

He racked up thousands of dollars on a couple of credit cards. A week later, I learned that a house my wife and I purchased was going into foreclosure because my father, the mortgage broker on the sale and the current property manager, was keeping the rent checks for himself instead of paying the bank.

I thought that this was the worst it could get. Then I ended up in a jail cell, on the receiving end of a federal investigation.

My dad, on the pretenses of what we thought was helping me and my wife out while in seminary, came up with an idea to buy a house. He was a mortgage broker, and my dad, so we trusted him. However, he used us to lie and defraud money out of lending companies and apparently, he did this with many other people. He was the ring leader of a massive fraud scheme, and the total amount of money he stole was in the millions.

The FBI eventually was able to catch up with him. Wanting to get a better deal from the government, he claimed that I was his accomplice. The more guilt he cast on others, the more lenient the prosecution would be in their recommendation of his sentencing, so it was in his best interest to lie and tell the authorities that I was just as guilty. The FBI eventually charged me and arrested me. My own father would be their star witness against me.

Without Hope

We lived in this horror for about a year and a half. We often didn’t have hope. We wanted to give up. I was in deep, dark depression.

While in jail, I wondered, how do I live a normal life when you don’t know if the next four years (the prison term, if found guilty) will be in separation from my wife? How do I provide for her and love her then? If I was found guilty of this crime that I was absolutely innocent of, what does that mean for me, being a pastor with a felony?

I often wondered, “Is God good? Does he love me?”

Eighteen months later, my case finally came to trial. If you have never been in a trial on the federal level, there is one word to describe it: intimidating. Okay, maybe two words: intimidating and exhausting. After a week that felt more like a year, the prosecution rested their case. The judge dismissed the case, saying that no evidence was brought against me to warrant me being there. I was free!

The judge looked me in the eye and said, “Son, you are free to go.”

What Was God Doing?

The betrayal I experienced was off the charts. The depression I experienced was immense. My wife and I had no category to process any of this; we were living life in a state of shock. If we could have ignored it, covered it up or forgotten about it, we would have. But we couldn’t. It was always there, festering in the back of our minds and haunting us.

It often felt like God didn’t know what he was doing. It felt like he didn’t have a purpose in our pain. Yet, a passage that helped us make sense of this was 2 Corinthians 1:3-7:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who 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. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.”

According to Paul in this passage, God’s mission in suffering is to comfort us, to comfort others, and to draw us near.

1. God Comforts Us

This passage talks much of comfort, but it is scary. It’s scary because the context of comfort is found in affliction. That means we are going to experience suffering. Sometimes we think that certain aspects of suffering are self-deserved or out of God’s limits, but this passage promises comfort in “all our affliction” because God is the God of “all comfort.” It is universal in scope. So even when there doesn’t seem to be a way out, when you are not in control, or even if your suffering is the product of your own sin, our good Father still promises comfort for his children.

And let’s get comfort right. Sometimes when we think about comfort we think about some form of a supernatural Snuggie, offering a mere reprieve from the troubles of this world. But this word 'comfort' comes with a sense of exhortation, of encouragement and the call to action.

This is no opiate of the masses; it is strength for the broken. God's comfort strengthens weak knees and sustains sagging shoulders so that one faces the troubles of life with unbending resolve and unending assurance.

My wife and I experienced many lows when going through my trial, but God gave us moments of supernatural comfort; comfort that allowed us to survive for that day.

Some of this might be seen as backward. Why would God allow suffering? After all, if he’s God, couldn’t he just cut out the middle man and give us comfort without the suffering? Instead of placing the problem with God, maybe the problem is with us. Franz Kafka has a great quote about books that applies even more to suffering: “A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.”

Suffering must be that ice-axe. Sometimes parts of us are so frozen and arctic that we need an axe to break us. At this point, it’s an axe of mercy, though the initial strike does hurt.

2. God Comforts Others

Though the comfort we receive from God is to see his glory extend over the whole earth to all types and kinds of people in all places. At first glance, suffering seems to be the opposite of this mission. But Paul teaches us that the comfort we get is for a purpose. We are objects of grace “so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.” Our comfort is not just for us! When you receive comfort in suffering it isn’t just for you, it’s for others. Paul makes it personal saying that if he and Timothy run into trouble it’s for the sake of the church at Corinth. And if they get comfort in their trouble, it’s for the sake of the church at Corinth. There is an astonishing level of Christian solidarity being played out in Paul’s life.

How can Paul say this? How can I say this? Is it merely mustering up enough strength and making it happen? Paul tells us this is how it works: “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”

The foundation of this sharing comes in our unity in Christ. All believers share in Christ’s sufferings and comfort, and overwhelmingly so. It is because we are united to Christ that we can offer others the overflow of comfort. Not because we’re great at offering comfort, but because Christ is perfect at offering us comfort. Our work rests on him alone.

There is a great cost to withholding comfort from others. During the trial, if the people in our lives didn’t come around us and love us when we couldn’t go on, we’d be done for. We’ve been on the receiving end of comfort from others and we praise God for his people being faithful to extend that to us. And now that we’ve received this measure of grace, we are enabled to share it with others. We are more empathic. We are more patient. We are more loving to people in their distress. We are more able to come alongside those who are in situations that seem to offer no hope.

3. God Draws Us Near

God’s mission in suffering is also to draw us near to himself. Our comfort in suffering is an apologetic to ourselves; it existentially proves the gospel true. Verse 6 talks about enduring suffering. Endurance, unlike the main character in your typical Hollywood blockbuster, is something not dependent on yourself. Biblical endurance is an expectant waiting or intense desire directed towards God. If Christians endure, it’s because God enables it, not because they are extraordinarily heroic. The means that he ordains to this end is often His people, as in the previous point. God does not ordinarily draw us to Himself outside of the context of others. A sign of nearness to God is nearness to others.

If you’re feeling disobedient or not up to the task, take heart. The Corinthians were not known for being particularly obedient, yet Paul never loses confidence in them. Why is that? He tells us in verse 7 that this is because his hope centers on what God has done and will do in them.

After going through our trial, there is a hope we have been given that, I believe, could only be forged during our suffering. We saw God come through in amazing ways and have many stories of redemption. He has drawn us near to himself in a new and different way, one that stokes our imagination for the gospel to be worked into our lives and the lives of others around us.

Maybe you’re not feeling particularly comforted by God or by his people right now. Your temptation will be to pull away, but why pull away from the only option of hope?

Bring yourself to God, he’s your Father, run to him. And when he still appears silent, know that he is there. Psalm 9:12 teaches us that “he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.” Cry out to him, that’s what we’re made to do. That’s how our very bodies are constructed.

Free to Go

This is the worst thing my wife and I have ever been through, but it’s also been one of the best. I would never wish this upon anyone or want to go through anything like it again, but God did use these hard circumstances for our good. Only a few weeks after my trial, close friends of ours lost their baby girl. Though I have not experienced that particular pain, I had a better idea of what deep hopelessness feels like, and I was able to be with them in their pain that day. Recently, another friend of mine was in some legal trouble, accused of charges of which he was absolutely innocent. Naturally, my heart went out to him, and was able to talk and pray with him in ways I wouldn’t have before. Since God has shown me that there is purpose in pain, I know that it's true for others.

Being a pastor, you hear stories of loss similar to this every week. People carry so much with them. But I know that when Christ said, “My burden is light” he meant it. This has radically redefined what suffering really is for us. And it has radically refined who we are, bringing to light our idols in stark contrast.

Being in darkness, I’ve become more compassionate. My heart is moved more for those who don’t have this God to run to. My trial was hard enough to live through with God walking with me, what about those who don’t have him? I may have suffered, but I found myself in Christ’s sufferings. He went through utter darkness for me, that I might know who he is. And though I was innocent of the charges brought against me by the United States of America, I stood guilty of many more heinous crimes against a holy and transcendent God. Christ considered me worthy of his pursuit, though it cost him his life. If I am found in Christ and am formed by his story, I am compelled to leave my comfort that others may find theirs in him.

I would love to say that I’ve completely forgiven my father and other family members. But that’s just not true. Forgiveness is a daily repenting-and-believing process. It’s not easy and often I don’t want to do it. But the God who forgave me of my sins now lives in me, enabling me to live in radical forgiveness. Relying on the Spirit is the only path to this kind of freedom.

When clearing me of all charges, the judge declared me “free to go.” He declared me free. But not just free for freedom’s sake: “free to go.” In my declaration of innocence comes another command: go. It would have been crazy to say, “No thanks, judge, I’m good. I’ll stay here, please continue the trial;” but that’s exactly what we do when we don’t accept the comfort from God and when we refuse to give it to others. If you are free, you go.

In suffering, we join God’s mission of drawing all people everywhere to himself. Surely, this plan is “to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9).

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Greg Willson is the Church Planting Resident at Riverside Community Church. He likes creating music, and writes about art and the church at gregwillson.com. Follow him on Twitter: @gregoriousdubs.

Top 5 Articles of August

1. 7 Ways to Keep Your Missional Community from Multiplying - Seth McBee

Seth, a seasoned missional community practitioner, contends that MC's are meant to multiply. He tells us why, and offers ways to stunt the multiplication of your MC.

2. How to Tell the Better Story - Logan Gentry

Evangelism might be the most discussed, most intimidating, and least discussed practice in the American church. Logan explains how Jesus evangelized through flipping the world's norms upside down, and challenges us to follow his lead in our everyday lives.

3. Why Women Should Go Beyond Titus 2 - Luma Simms

Titus 2 is perhaps the most-used passage in relation to discipling women. There is nothing wrong with this, but Luma warns us against ignoring the rest of the Bible.

4. Singing as Spiritual Warfare - J.A. Medders

J.A. exhorts, "War isn’t quiet. No soldier mumbles on the battlefield—and especially not at the victory party. Belt the glory of Christ. And know that our Champion sings loudly over us." Singing worship songs that are rich with the gospel are a powerful weapon against Satan and his devices.

5. Food, Weight, and the Gospel - Josh Reich

Part 3 of a 3-part series, Josh talks about how the gospel changes the way we look at weight, body image, and food. Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

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Brandon Smith is Director of GCD, Associate Editor of The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, and Director of Communications at Criswell College. He lives in Grapevine, Texas with his wife, Christa, and daughter, Harper. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonSmith85.

How to Turn a Conversation

  Max wanted to meet with me about his new blog. He needed help in fleshing out his concept and practical perspective on reaching his audience. Max is a student from the youth ministry that I had pastored for four years.

We met at a café and went to work on his blog. I pointed out some practical components he needed in his right sidebar and explained the importance of leveraging social media. We talked about networking with people along his niche. I encouraged him to buy Michael Hyatt’s book Platform.

Then the conversation took a subtle turn to discipleship. “Max, how are you going to introduce the gospel into your blog?”

This took him by surprise. I reminded him that as he builds a platform, he extends God’s platform. Every post about music is an opportunity to let the gospel shine. As Tim Keller points out, there are diverse ways to let the gospel shine in your work or writing. We don't have to tag every post with Jesus.

From here the conversation sprang into "burn out" on church. We discussed how to respond to someone who’s been “hurt” by the church. We talked about the book Embracing Obscurity and how he ought to read it in tandem with Platform. I shared about the impetus behind my blog and writing ministry. All through our discussion, I interlaced gospel threads.

These conversations happen with Christians and non-Christians alike. When this occurs, we must always remember that there is a dance between what we can do and what the Holy Spirit does in people’s hearts. We need to first rely on the Holy Spirit and look for his prompting to take a gospel turn in our conversations. In an instant, a person's heart and mind can unexpectedly open to hear the gospel story. But how do we prepare ourselves to take these gospel turns? What are natural segues into gospel conversations? What do we do if someone is reluctant to take the turn with us?

Preparing to Take the Gospel Turn in a Conversation

Be prepared to share. In 2 Timothy 4:2, Paul says, “Preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season.” This does not mean that we have to have mastered the Bible before we can be used by God to take a gospel turn. Rather it means to always be ready to teach in every situation. It helps to be able to share about what God has taught you personally. But don’t discourage yourself from taking the gospel turn because you aren’t a Bible scholar. God can use you where you are. It is advantageous to be well-studied in the Word as you engage in gospel conversations, but it is equally true that the gospel is simple truth that even a child can understand.

Spend time with people. A lot of us could easily eat lunch alone at our desk every day at work. Instead, invite others to join you for lunch. Look for ways to connect with others over table fellowship. Eating a meal together is one of the best settings to take the turn towards a gospel conversation because it is a common, relaxed environment that all people share. Maybe your friend at work is having trouble parenting a child. You can invite them to have lunch and you can share how you have experienced the same challenge. As trust builds, he might be open to hear how the gospel influences his situation.

Capitalize on your skills. Maybe you have a friend who needs help with something simple, like in my situation with Max. Max knew I had a skill and wanted to learn from that skill. When someone recognizes a talent or skill that you possess, use it to bring him or her to the gospel. Remember Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” Share how you apply your skill or talent for God’s glory.

Have resources handy. I have resources ready at hand. I keep both the "Story" and "2WaysToLive" apps on my phone and iPad. I also love sharing with people about New City Catechism. I share about how we lead our children through New City Catechism and how it is perfect for adults, too. I often have a book with me. Sometimes I simply share a quote that I underlined or recently highlighted. It’s surprising how many times normal conversation connects to what I’ve been reading recently. Though many of these resources are a tad out of vogue these days, they can be a helpful teaching tool for the person and a useful guide for the discipler.

Natural Segues

There are a number of ways to segue these moments into a gospel conversation. Here are a couple of tips.

Use questions. As you’re discussing with your friend, try asking, “Have you ever thought about how God would want you to…?” Or, “How are you going to introduce the gospel into…?” You could also try, “How do you think God expects us to…?” All of these are great segues to lead into a gospel conversation. Using questions invites people to share, which is far better than you just teaching at someone. People who haven’t invited your gospel input may be hesitant to take the turn into a gospel conversation. This leads to the second segue.

Ask for permission. When I was growing up, one of the ways I got into the most trouble was not asking permission. My mom would nail me because I didn’t get her permission to do something first. However, when I asked my mom permission, she almost always said, “Yes.” This principle applies to friendships as well. When we ask for permission, people are usually accommodating. So ask permission to apply the gospel to your friend’s life. They might be willing to permit you to transition your conversation to gospel matters.

Handling Reluctance

Of course, people might be reluctant to talk about gospel matters. Even Christians will be this way. They may say something like, “Look at you, over-gospelizing everything.” Or maybe they’ll make a light-hearted joke or be skeptical. Initially, Max raised objections about how his blog was meant for the “mainstream.” Of course, the non-Christian will often be hesitant to talk about gospel matters. In both cases, how do we respond when people object or are reluctant?

Walk the tight-rope between persistence and pressure. You don’t want people to feel uncomfortable or pressured. You want to be respectful. However, there is a difference between pressuring and persistence. Maybe you need to let it go and then return to the concept later. Perhaps you haven’t asked permission. Perhaps the person found your conversation to be too pushy.

When a pilot knows he is not coming in for a sound landing, what does he do? If possible, he circles around and tries a new approach. He waits for calm weather or better winds. Persistence is when you circle around and try a new approach or waiting for a fitting time to return to discussing gospel matters. However, persistence can often be seen as pressure, so be mindful of their response. This leads to the other tip.

Read their feelings. Some people may feel threatened by you bringing up gospel matters. Others will feel insecure. Still others will be fearful. Max wasn’t unwilling to discuss the gospel. His hesitancy rested in his fear. He needed someone to infuse him with courage. I did so by showing him how Relevant Magazine navigates the mainstream and yet introduces the gospel into their interviews and posts all the time. This gave him courage to follow suit. I persisted with Max because I knew his gospel perspective. I had clocked in plenty of time with him to know what drove his objections.

There are going to be those situations where a friend adamantly refuses to discuss gospel matters. When someone feels provoked or enraged by you introducing gospel matters, it means that there is some hardening of heart. Trust that God knows what he is doing with this person. Look for ways to be persistent but not pressuring. And if the person outright rejects speaking with you about the gospel, pray often for him. If it is God’s will, he will soften that person’s heart. He may even use you. Extending mercy, grace, and acceptance could bring about a beautiful, gospel-rich conversation.

Give Them Jesus

Taking a gospel turn in a conversation is a delicate process where we lean in to hear the Holy Spirit’s prompting. Galatians 5:25 says, “If we live by the Spirit let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” This means to not abide in our flesh. We will want to force or coerce a gospel conversation. Remember, they are only gospel conversations because the Holy Spirit led them to occur. When they do occur, gospel conversations are a powerful experience. Encounters with the gospel are like running into a dear friend at a café. The unplanned fellowship is sweet and often surprising.

Still, taking the gospel turn in a conversation is not only a Spirit-led endeavor, but a way of life.. We need to practice and be intentional about taking the gospel turn in a conversation. I admit that Max and my “unplanned" fellowship came unexpected only to Max. As I have feasted on the gospel by preaching it to myself daily, I’ve practiced the discipline of introducing the gospel into everyday conversation. Why?

Milton Vincent writes:

By preaching the gospel to myself each day, I nurture the bond that unites me with my brothers and sisters for whom Christ died, and I also keep myself well-versed in the raw materials with which I may actively love them in Christ.

Being well-versed in the raw materials of the gospel will make conversations more natural and compelling. We will be more prone to share a Christ we love, than a doctrine we defend. We love others best when we love them with the gospel. When we introduce the cross and the resurrection into conversation, we practice a worthy discipline of centering fellowship and discipleship upon the gospel. We give that person what they need the most: Jesus.

I walked away from meeting with Max seeing a young man refreshed by the gospel and growing in knowledge and wonder of how the gospel applies in every facet of life. This is what we should all hope to accomplish by taking the gospel turn in conversations.

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Joey Cochran served as the high school pastor at Fellowship Bible Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for four years before transitioning to serve as Resource Pastor at Cross Community Chicago. Joey is a graduate of Dallas Seminary and blogs regularly at JTCochran.com. Follow him on Twitter: @joeycochran.

How Faith Affects Our Work

  I’ve had some busy people pick up Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, look at the subtitle, and ask: “OK, so, in a nutshell, how does God’s work connect to our work?” Always a good exercise for an author, to be asked to explain your book in just a few minutes! Here are four ways Christian faith influences and shapes our work.

1. Faith Gives Us a Moral Compass

First, the Christian faith gives us a moral compass, an inner GPS giving us ethical guidance that takes us beyond merely the legal aspects or requirements in any situation. A Christian on the board of a major financial institution—recently publicly embarrassed by revelations of corruption—told me about a closed door meeting there between top executives. Someone said, “We have to restore moral values.” Immediately someone asked, “Whose values? Who gets to define what is moral?” And there’s our problem.

There once was a habitus of broadly felt moral intuitions that governed much behavior in our society. It went well beyond the legal. Much of the ruthlessness, the lack of transparency, and lack of integrity that characterizes the marketplace and many other professions today come because consensus on those moral intuitions has collapsed. But Christians working in those worlds do have solid ethical guidance and could address through personal example the values-vacuum that has now been recognized by so many.

2. Faith Gives Us a New Spiritual Power

Second, your Christian faith gives you a new spiritual power, an inner gyroscope, that keeps you from being overthrown by either success, failure, or boredom. Regarding success and failure, the gospel helps Christians find their deepest identity not in our accomplishments but who we are in Christ. This keeps our egos from inflating too much during seasons of prosperity, and it prevents bitterness and despondency during times of adversity.

But while some jobs seduce us into over-work and anxiety, others tempt us to surrender to drudgery, only “working for the weekend,” doing just what is necessary to get by when someone is watching. Paul calls that “eye-service” (Colossians 3:22–24) and charges us to think of every job as working for God, who sees everything and loves us. That makes high-pressure jobs bearable and even the most modest work meaningful.

3. Faith Gives Us a New Conception of Work

Third, the Christian faith gives us a new conception of work as the means by which God loves and cares for his world through us. Look at the places in the Bible that say that God gives every person their food. How does God do that? It is through human work—from the simplest farm girl milking the cows to the truck driver bringing produce to market to the local grocer. God could feed us directly but he chooses to do it through work. There are three important implications of this.

First, it means all work, even the most menial tasks, has great dignity. In our work we are God’s hands and fingers, sustaining and caring for his world. Secondly, it means one of the main ways to please God in our work is simply to do work well. Some have called this “the ministry of competence.” What passengers need first from an airline pilot is not that she speaks to them about Jesus but that she is a great, skillful pilot. Third, this means that Christians can and must have deep appreciation for the work of those who work skillfully but do not share our beliefs.

4. Faith Gives Us a New World-and-Life View

Fourth, the Christian faith gives us a new world-and-life view that shapes the character of our work. All well-done work that serves the good of human beings pleases God. But what exactly is “the common good”? There are many work tasks that do not require us to reflect too much on that question.

All human beings need to eat, and so raising and providing food serves people well. But what if you are an elementary school teacher, or a playwright? What is good education (i.e. what should you be teaching children)? What kinds of plays should you write (i.e. what kinds of stories do people need)? The answers to these questions will depend largely on how you answer more fundamental questions—what is the purpose of human life? What is life about? What does a good human life look like?  It is unavoidable that many jobs will be shaped by our conscious or semi-conscious beliefs about those issues.  So, finally, a Christian must think out how his or her faith will distinctly shape their work.

How wonderful that the gospel works on every aspect of us—mind, will, and feelings—and enables us to both deeply appreciate the work of non-believers and yet aspire to work in unique ways as believers.  Putting all of these four aspects together, we see that being a Christian leads us to see our work not as merely a way to earn money, nor as primarily a means of personal advancement, but a truly a calling—to serve God and love our neighbor.

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Timothy Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, which he started in 1989 with his wife, Kathy, and three young sons. Dr. Keller’s books, including the New York Times bestselling The Reason for God and The Prodigal God, have sold over 1 million copies and been translated into 15 languages. Follow him on Twitter: @timkellernyc.

[This was originally posted at Redeemer City to City and is used here with permission from the author.]

Avoiding Snapshots in a Picasso World

A businessman embarks on a journey in the first-class cabin of a train in Spain. To his delight, he finds that he’s sitting next to the famous artist Pablo Picasso. Gathering up his courage, he turns to the master and says, “Señor Picasso, you are a great artist, but why is all your art, all modern art, so screwed up? Why don’t you paint reality instead of these distortions?” Picasso hesitates for a moment and asks, “So what do you think reality looks like?”

The man grabs his wallet and pulls out a picture of his wife. “Here, like this. It’s my wife.”

Picasso takes the photograph, looks at it, and grins. “Really? She’s very small. And flat, too.”(1)

Defining Reality

Leadership means defining reality, and reality means more than a simple two-dimensional snapshot of the world, even though the snapshot may be true. We have too often reduced the wonder and majesty of the gospel of Jesus Christ to a simple snapshot from a wallet while trying to present him to a world that sees reality more like Picasso. While a true representation as far as it goes, it so reduces the gospel that it easily misses its greatness.

Here is the fundamental challenge as we make disciples: the gospel, this most amazing idea and truth in history, is not only for unsaved people to begin a life with Christ. No, salvation opens the door to go deeper. I once thought of Christianity as a descent up to the mountain of sanctification, a climb based far on my ability than God’s grace through Christ; the harder I worked to I scale the peak, the more I would improve at cussing less and lusting less and while gaining ground at witnessing, giving more, and so on. But now I see that the way to growth comes from plunging into the ocean of gospel truth found throughout the pages of the Bible. The more we grasp the power of this creating God, see the evil of our own depravity, and grasp the wonder of his grace, resulting in a greater understanding of his glory, the more we will help equip students to live well.

In Luke 24, the risen Lord explained the central idea of Scripture in his conversation with the disciples on the road to Emmaus in verses 44-48. In this passage, he told them everything in Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, meaning all the Scripture they had, must be fulfilled. And then he told them what these Scriptures say: that the Christ must suffer and rise from the dead, and that repentance and the forgiveness of sins will be preached to the nations. Jesus makes crystal clear the redeeming mission of God through all of Scripture. Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul related Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection to all the Scriptures.

The Mission of God

The mission of God is central to all of Scripture, all of creation, all of history, and therefore, all of life. Jesus and his work on the cross speaks to everything from attitude (see Philippians 2) to forgiveness (see Ephesians 4), from how we understand finances (see 2 Corinthians 8) to how we deal with sexual temptation (see 1 Corinthians 6), or from how we deal with disciple-making (see 2 Timothy 2:1-2) to how we understand marriage (see Ephesians 5:25). Our encouragement in facing persecution for Christ is the gospel (see Acts 4:23-31), and our instruction in how to live all of life (see 2 Corinthians 10:9-21) is found in the gospel. Give disciples the message of God so they can spend their lives living out the mission of God.

A few years ago, I took a different approach to looking at Scripture and sharing the good news with others. I shifted from trying to spit out the most basic propositions in as brief a summary as I could, to telling them the great, epic Story of the gospel seen in Scripture. I realized most people I talked with had no clear idea of what the Bible’s message is, but saw it as a reference book for problems or a guide for morality. Where does the gospel start? With a virgin birth? At the cross? According to Luke 24:44-48, Jesus said all Scripture from Moses forward points to his work on the cross. Unlike Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, which separates the Bible into individual stories for moral training, for Jesus there is one message in Scripture, all of Scripture, and that message is the gospel.

When viewing the gospel from the perspective of all of Scripture, we see four parts to the plotline: creation, fall, rescue, and restoration. We have tended to share somewhat about the Fall and focused specifically on the rescue, or redemption. And indeed, this is part of the heart and soul of the Gospel Story. But in a post-Christian world, we must see the gospel in its fullness. In his book The Next Christians, Gabe Lyons observes that we too often see a truncated gospel that faithfully offers the fall and redemption parts of the Story, but largely ignores the aspects of creation and restoration.

Communicating the Story

The challenge we face today is a challenge of theology, not ability. We have not failed to communicate, but we have communicated too often and too well a superficial faith that contradicts the heart of the gospel, which calls us not to a minimal standard but to the surrender of all of life. “We are doing an exceedingly good job of teaching youth what we really believe,” Kenda Creasy Dean has astutely observed regarding student ministry: “Namely, that Christianity is not a big deal, that God requires little, and the church is a helpful social institution filled with nice people focused primarily on ‘folks like us’—which, of course, begs the question of whether we are really the church at all.”(2) She goes on to note how most students in our churches today cannot articulate clearly the fundamentals of our faith. While we obsess with lengthy series on dating or other topics, have we failed to give them a foundation in the glorious Gospel Story?

The opposite of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is gospel-centered theism. We must help believers see that they are not the center of the universe and that God does not exist to please them. We have to help them get a grasp of the sovereign God who does not exist to make them happy and otherwise leave them alone. We have to move from a snapshot to help believers and unbelievers see the great drama of redemption.

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(1)  Adapted from Seth Godin, Linchpin (New York: Penguin, 2010), 2.

(2)  Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 12.

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Alvin L. Reid is husband to Michelle and father to Josh and Hannah. He is a professor of evangelism and student ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as a popular speaker and author. He has written numerous books on student ministry, evangelism, missional Christianity, and spiritual awakenings.  Follow him on Twitter: @AlvinReid.

[This was adapted from As You Go: Creating a Missional Culture of Gospel-Centered Students by Alvin L. Reid, published by NavPress. Used with permission from the author.]