Does Your Garden Need Tending?

As with every creative work, gardens don’t just happen.  They are started with intentionality and insight as to how they will look when fully grown and well tended.  There is a point where the creator lays out the rows and beds and plantings all with an eye for how they will look next to each other, complimenting each other, causing the splendor of the whole creation to be multiplied by the placement of each individual part.  The garden which I write about today is no different, for it was a creation of a master gardener who took great care to plant species of trees, flowers, shoots, and vines that would work well with the flow of the land, the river that ran through the garden, and the geographical limits of the area itself.  This garden was a marvelous sight to behold, each part working well with its surroundings and a pure delight for all those who ventured by to see.

As with every creation, there is a time when it reaches the pinnacle of its growth.  A time when everything is going so well that the creation itself deems the creator unnecessary.  Before long- and quite subtly- all types of invasive things started to grow, and it went unnoticed by the creation that the master gardener had not been to visit and tend it for quite some time.  Thistle, burr, and thorn alike made their way inside the garden, and even some of the garden’s original plantings outgrew their beds and started to take over parts of the garden where they had not been planted, seeking out the soil and resources of the surrounding beds. The once great garden became no more that a remnant of its former self.

Where there once was a great division between tended and wild, there was now but a blurred and very faint distinction.  As thistles, thorns, and burrs do, they choked out the growth of the plantings by dominating the space and the resources.  There was still beauty in what once had been a marvelous creation, but the wild had snuffed the majesty right out of it.  Until one day when the master gardener came to visit.  He had not been absent but merely watching from afar because, as with every creator, he longed to give his creation some space and freedom to grow.  But at just the right time, before all was lost, he entered the scene.  His heart ached for the pain of the plantings, seeing those which had been lost and those still entangled and entrenched by thorn and burr. He of course had the capacity to correct what had gone wrong.  After all, he was the master gardener.  In fact, he could have prevented all that had happened from taking place but, like a father teaching his child to walk, he had to allow the child to fall or the child would never learn how to get back up.  But now seeing the state of his creation, he reassured each plant and flower and vine that he would intervene if only they would but ask him.  Many did, and he immediately began the tedious job of pruning the garden back toward its original state.  The process wasn’t easy, and it was not without cost and pain to the plantings, for they were torn, punctured, and bleeding, but the gardener continued his work until the wild was removed and the garden was once again marvelous.  The gardener was spending his time not only walking the paths of his garden but also making new paths into the wild, removing all manner of invasive growth from any planting that would ask.  For it was now obvious that there was more than just this garden but a whole network of plantings beds of every type which the master gardener had been tending, each in its own state of disarray, each needing his loving and consistent hand to come in, restore, and connect them to his garden until one day, when all would be covered in the gardener’s creative plantings and marvelous landscapes.    

In my experience, much of the church in western Christianity is like that garden- invaded by all sorts of maladies.  The church has allowed doctrinal divisions, power struggles, suffocating debt, overbearing leadership, stylistic preferences, ungodly divisions between clergy and laity and much more to fracture it in ways that make the majesty of the early church a thing not often seen.  But Jesus, the head of the church, is within earshot, waiting for his creation to call for help so He can do the work of helping it return to its earlier productive splendor.  He’s not looking for us to return to the good old days of thirty of forty years back, but he is looking for us, His church, to stand up and be what we can be:  a true community of Christ-minded people looking to love him deeply and to love others in the same manner we love ourselves.  God has always used reformation to nudge His church back toward the purpose for which it was created, and He is marvelously at work doing the same thing now in a divinely splendid manner and in a variety of ways.  This work comes at a cost, for removing the wild often involves shrinkage, chaos, and short term loss.  But reevaluating priorities and realigning people with God’s plan for His church is well worth the cost.  I hope and pray that 2015 will be a year of returning to the Master Gardener for the western church.   

The Lost Teachings of Jesus

You might think this post is about the discovery of some lost manuscripts from two thousand years ago.  Manuscripts containing teachings of Christ, long lost to antiquity- teachings which, if applied to our modern culture, would transform our world.  Well, if that’s what you thought, then at least part of your assumptions are correct.  The teachings I'm writing about are the ones that could transform our culture and our world, but they were not recently discovered, although I might have thought so, due to the lack of their presence in the hundreds if not thousands of sermons and teachings which I have heard  in my over 40 years of Christian tradition.  The teachings I’m writing about are often overlooked in exchange for teachings on what Christians ought not to do or teachings on how Christians can become more politically active by signing the most recent petition showing the world just what lifestyles and activities we are against.

A hard lesson for all of us is that the message of Christ is not one meant to be digested piecemeal, keeping what you like while leaving out the rest.  It’s a message that, when wholly applied, will bring about revolutionary personal and cultural change- change that, at its core, is not political but relational.

A book I recently read suggested something that I have believed for a long time.  It suggested that Jesus came to show us how to be truly human.  He lived His life the way we would if we were not corrupted by our flesh and the influence of evil in our world.  Our challenge is to live our lives more like He lived His.  His admonitions were not political or religious but personal and relational.  His teachings, like learning to turn the other cheek and going the extra mile, have the capacity to transform our culture by transforming the people who embrace them and the people whom they relate to.  YOU SEE, I BELIEVE THAT WHEN THE SCRIPTURE TELLS US THAT WE ARE TO IMITATE CHRIST, IT’S NOT TALKING ABOUT LIVING A SINLESS LIFE, but living a life not centered on oneself.  Certainly Jesus didn't come to give us the freedom to sin, but he did come to give us the freedom to stop worrying about our negative behaviors so we could adopt some positive ones- behaviors that will positively impact others and inevitably our culture as well.  Behaviors like those described in the following:

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.  God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this. ... Keep open house; be generous with your lives.  By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven."    Matthew 5

WHAT IF, INSTEAD OF LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE, WE START LOOKING OUT FOR OTHERS WITH THE MOTIVE OF LOVING THEM CLOSER TO GOD?  If we did so, everybody would win.  We would reap what we have sown (love and generosity).  Others would experience God as He is meant to be experienced, through active, non-condemning love.  And God's reputation as the loving creator who wants to live relationally with His people would be restored.  If we would do this, a unique thing would happen in the process.  Our tendency toward "sin" would diminish; when we focus on simply loving others like Jesus loves us rather than focusing on avoiding sin, maybe we’ll notice our struggle with sin lessening.  Just a suggestion at what could happen if we start implementing all the teachings of Christ in our daily lives instead of just the ones that are often emphasized.

Let me challenge us as we begin to wrap up this year to keep our focus on Him and on helping those He brings across our paths to move closer to Him through how we treat them and how we conduct ourselves in our world in general.

Playing It Safe

You may have heard the phrase “err on the side of caution”.  This phrase basically sums up a philosophy which suggests that we should “act in the least risky manner in a situation in which we are uncertain about the result.”  In a nutshell, it means, “Better safe than sorry.”  While there certainly is some safety in embracing this concept, embracing it in every area of life will safely lead to one thing for sure: a boring life.  I read it somewhere once that situational uncertainty goes by another name- ADVENTURE.  I would suggest to everyone reading this that to act in the least risky manner in a situation in which we are uncertain of the outcome requires little to no faith.  In my life, faith seems to be the activator of adventure.  While many will play it safe and hope for God to come through, I tend to rush on in where angels fear to tread.  While I do my best to pray about my decisions and look for the Lord’s direction in my life, I have noted over the years that His direction seems to be more and more vague in many of the decisions that I have to make.  I used to interpret that as a sign that God was wanting me to hold back and play it safe- that is, until my children started to get a bit older and more mature. 

It occurred to me that I would not be a very good parent if I continued to make every decision for my children as they grow older.  When children are little, we tend to dress them in the clothes we want them to wear, plan their schedules, plan their diets, and just generally micromanage their time.  But think about how unhealthy that would be if we treated them the same way when they were twenty-six.  Not only would it be unhealthy, but they would certainly grow to resent our involvement in their lives or, at the very least, be stunted in their development in a way that would paralyze them with inaction when we weren’t around to choose for them.  Enter our relationship with our heavenly father.  As new followers of Christ, it is common for us to run to Jesus with every choice to determine what we should do.  For me, it was pretty awesome to see how God would lead me to the answers to my questions regarding the decisions I had to make, but as time moved on and my relationship with Him deepened, the opportunities for me to choose on my own seemed to keep presenting themselves.  Don’t get me wrong; there are certainly principles of right and wrong that guide our decision making process, there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors, and there certainly are times when the Lord himself intervenes in my decision making process with a red flag or a stop sign, but like the parent of a child who is growing and maturing, I have found that in my life God steps back and waits for me to make the decision on my own.  What should we do in these situations? Well we could allow fear, doubt, and worry to be our guide and just err on the side of caution and play it safe, OR we could err on the side of action, step up to the plate of our lives, and swing for the fences.  I believe that God honors action because action requires faith.  All throughout scripture, we see God honoring people’s faith-filled action.  Why should it be any different for us?  Time and time again I have seen it myself and heard the testimony of others, that when they acted in faith, God acted in response with a blessing that would not have been seen without their action first.  I wonder how much we have missed out on by “playing it safe”.  I wonder how different our world would look if we changed our way of thinking and decided to act in faith.  Test God on this principle and see if what I am saying holds true.  I believe that God loves us so much that he honors our honest attempts even when we miss His plan for a given situation.  That’s when the father catches us with the safety net of his love and grace and sets us back up to try again.  Just like the parent of a toddler helping their child learn to walk, we give our children chances to fall down again and again, right?  No, we give our children not only the chance to learn to walk but the chance to learn to run.  I dare you to run today, and when you do, I bet God smiles.      

To be or not to be. Is that the question?

I just finished reading an article on innovative church movements in North America.  Unfortunately from almost the first sentence it was apparent that I was in different place than the author.  As with anything I read, I eat the meat and spit out the bones, and this article certainly had plenty of meat, but it just surprised me how even the most cutting edge of innovators in the church world still often miss some of the most basic of innovations .  It may have been simply semantics, but the article started out by saying “in our postmodern culture finding innovative ways to do church is essential” While I agree with the point being made, I think it reflects a bit of skewed doctrine regarding the church, for If we are “doing” church, it will inevitably end up just being one of the things on our ever increasing list of things “to do”.  I understand this now more than ever, for I have just ended a 40 year run at doing church.  It involved membership in and association with nine different organizations of people that were all doing church. At each location whether I was an “attender, member, or pastor” each organization had its membership rules and expectations, its organizational structures, and systems.  In the best of scenarios these things were set in place to move people through the system in the most efficient way so that the people could accomplish the purpose of the organization.    In the worst of scenarios they reflected the shortcomings and weaknesses of the leader who put them in place, often a leader who has been gone for some time, but whose influence still permeates the organization because change is the most resisted thing in the lives of virtually everyone I know.  

One of the primary things that I am trying to keep at the forefront of the work that I oversee is that we don’t do church we are The Church.  Things we do are temporary.  They have a starting point and ending point.  Whether events, services, or ministries, we do them for a period of time (Sundays, or Wednesdays) and then go back to the rest of our lives.  But we as Christians are the Church not merely members of a church but the composition of The Church itself.  We, who have come to Christ, are a house made up of living stones being built by the Lord as we grow in maturity and in our numbers.   The “modern” church for the most part has shed the false doctrine of the building being the church, so we no longer go “to the church”, but we have adopted an almost as problematic doctrine of “doing church” which will have to be shed in order for us to truly accomplish what the Lord had in mind for us in the beginning.  As I mentioned before it may just be semantics, people may just be used to using certain terms, and the structures of their organizations may well reflect the living communal nature of the church, but I have always been a proponent of the concept that you can tell what we believe by what we say, not what we say we believe but by what we say,  so take a few minutes as you read this to ask the Lord, The Head of the church if your actions reflect a life of doing church, or being the church.  As the head of the Church, He will be faithful to answer and to guide you to the take steps to assume your true identity as The Church.   

Fancy, Broken Things

Silently across the nation, as Christianity becomes increasingly irrelevant to the average non-believing American, the church as a whole is shrinking and a treasure of memories, traditions, and heritage are being forgotten.  One would think that Christian leaders would take note and get to the core of what is going wrong, but instead all too often we just make a subtle shift in style, do a quick remodeling of the sanctuary, borrow ourselves into oblivion, and hope for the best. 

In an effort to avoid the decline in attendance, we have lost the heart of what the church was supposed to be all about- making disciples.  We can’t run from the fact that attendance in weekly church activities is substantially down across all denominations and even non-denominations as well.  Instead of facing this fact head on and asking the tough questions, many Christian leaders have sprinted to compete for what Sunday morning saints do exist.  Like a group of people running from a bear in the woods, we have sought to just be one of the fastest runners so that the bear will devour the others first.  All of our changes only prolong the inevitable:  Christianity in America is becoming more and more irrelevant to our culture.  Nothing could be more ironic, for America was founded largely by Christians looking to express their faith without oppression, and it was America who spawned the missionary efforts of the past century that are currently changing the destinies of people across South America, Africa, and Asia.  But in our quest to reach others abroad, we have failed to reach our neighbors next door.

This competition for the Sunday morning saints has caused, or at least fed into, an equally challenging condition in American church culture, a condition called Christian consumerism.  In our effort to get what attenders do exist to come to our events and facilities, we have sought to have the best and brightest staffs, the nicest and newest facilities, and the most cutting edge worship bands.  All of which are noble pursuits on the surface, but when sought after with the wrong motives can cause us to be just a fancier, fresher version of our old, irrelevant selves.  The net effect of our updates is that attenders are just shopping.  When we ask for their support or involvement in the mission, we often get the “no thanks, I’m just looking” response.  Simultaneously, many of us have lost sight of the goal:  taking Jesus into our culture.  We have settled for an attraction model of doing Church where we try to get the world to come see how great our stuff is instead of taking the love of Christ into our culture through our daily lives.  How many of our non-Christian contacts know that we love them and that we care?  This is important to ask because without love, all of our fancy things, biblical knowledge, and our stunning spiritual gifts are just like a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  They are just noise to our world.

Discipleship is messy.  I grant you that, but Jesus didn’t call us to make converts.  He didn’t call us to market the kingdom through slick presentations, multimedia campaigns, and the latest church growth strategies.  He told us to GO and make disciples.  A disciple by nature is someone with whom we spend our lives.  Most of the Lord’s initial disciples took some time after they were invited to follow Him around the country before they understood the message and actually believed.  In the same way, we need to incorporate people who are not yet in relationship with Christ into our schedules and our homes so that they will know we are loved.  Christian disciple making is a process, not an event.  It’s not something that the church organization’s evangelism or outreach department is responsible for.  It’s something all followers of Jesus are responsible for.  The Apostle Paul’s invitation to follow me as I follow Christ gives us a great insight into discipleship.  Each of us is on a spiritual journey, either moving closer to God or further away from Him.  The enemy and the world are attempting to drag each of us away from God, but it’s God’s plan that Christians be loving people closer to Him.  At some point in the process of moving closer to God, each of us passes from death to life when we believe and trust in Christ as our savior, but this a process not an event.  While some of us who have made such a decision can point to a time and place where we recognized that we believed and a decision was made, that decision was preceded by many God encounters wherein He used people and circumstances to love us closer to Him.  We as Christians today need to recognize our responsibility to love and relate to people apart from Christ, for it is our loving relationship with them that paves their way into the kingdom.  Disciple making is by nature all about relationship, so secluding ourselves from the world and criticizing their actions while simultaneously begging them to come to our outreach events, hoping for a conversion is not a plan to succeed.  

Loving God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength requires loving your neighbor as yourself, and loving your neighbor as yourself requires us to know our neighbors.  Being God’s ambassadors requires us to be relevant to and engaged with the people we are trying to reach, and God has given each of us the privilege of being surrounded by plenty of opportunities to relate to people who are His future friends.  It’s time for us to reach out in love instead of doing outreaches in our church.  It’s time for us to love lavishly His most treasured creations.  I’m confident and optimistic that we can succeed because it’s God’s plan and, after all, He never plans to fail.