Tim Clark’s Blog

There is a huge difference between a critical spirit and critical thinking.

A critical spirit will destroy you and others. It manifests in the kind of person who is petty, judgmental, and often bitter. It wants to tear other people down, regardless of their motivation. A person who is overly critical is frequently insecure, pessimistic and spiritually immature. They have a very hard time seeing the good in others, and think of themselves more highly than those they habitually criticize, which is the exact opposite of the attitude that God, in Scripture, calls us to have

Actually, people with a critical spirit are in partnership with the Devil, as he is called “the accuser of Christians” (Rev 12:10) and seeks to “kill, steal, and destroy” people (John 10:10). We are not to give the Devil any place in our lives; I think that goes for people who act as his agents.

On the other hand, I think engaging in critical thinking is really important. This is not in an effort to tear someone down; properly communicated critical thinking can have the opposite impact and actually build someone else up in love. Critical thinking is reflective regarding what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, what to do and not do. In it’s best sense, critical thinking is discernment, which is a mark of wisdom (Proverbs 10:13).

So can you be a critical thinker without having a critical spirit? Yes. But you have to be careful, because the more discerning you are about the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of a situation or action, the easier it can be to judge the person performing that action. What allows for critical judgement without a judgmental and critical spirit is love—if you love someone you want to help them grow and mature; if you don’t love them you want to tear them down (or tear down their reputation behind their backs). True love helps us to understand when and how correction is beneficial and when and how it is hurtful and destructive.

“You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother?…let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way.” Romans 14:10 & 13

“The Philistines had mustered for battle at Lehi, where there was a field full of lentils. Israel fled before the Philistines, but Shammah took his stand at the center of the field, successfully defended it, and routed the Philistines. Another great victory for God!” (2 Samuel 23:11-12 The Message)

I used to read this passage and think that Shammah, one of David’s 3 mighty men, was also a lentil farmer; that it was his field, and everyone else could run away but he wasn’t going to let the Philistines get his land. Sounds like the Great American Western to me.

But lately, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think this was Shammah’s field at all. In fact (if he was anything like me) he may not have even known the difference between a lentil and a lima-bean. All we know is that the enemy was on the attack and this beanfield is where he happened to be when it went down. And we know that everyone else ran away, but that Shammah didn’t budge.

I wonder if, when he was fighting the Philistines (quite possibly hundreds of them), Shammah thought to himself, “This certainly isn’t where I planned to go out in a blaze of glory…I’m not even sure who owns this field”. Maybe not, but whatever he did think, whatever questions he might have had about how he got there, he was prepared to go down fighting for the place he discovered himself when the action got underway.

Perhaps you have found yourself in a place that isn’t of your own choosing. You thought (hoped?) you were going to have your defining moment somewhere very different than where you happen to be. And instead of a fortified city with plenty of weapons and your buddies supporting you, you are standing ankle-deep in mud…with a rusty sword…all alone.

Of course, you always have a choice. You can run away. That is exactly what plenty of people did that day. It’s probably even the smart thing to do. Nobody is going to blame you for living to fight another day. After all, it’s just a beanfield, right?

Or you can stand your ground. Who cares if the conditions aren’t perfect? Who cares if it isn’t your beanfield? Who cares if it’s un-glamourous? You’ve found yourself in the middle of something that needs to be done—so do it.

Sometimes, making that choice is the difference between the mighty and everybody else!

One more question: Was Shammah already one of David’s mighty men when he took his stand, or did he become known because he faithfully defended a beanfield that nobody else cared about? I think it’s the latter.

You don’t do mighty things when you become a mighty person, you become known as a mighty person because you do mighty things.

Even mighty things that nobody else (but God) may notice or care about!

If you came to our church for very long, you would know we often say goodbye to people. One of the reasons we exist is to equip leaders for the Kingdom and then help them find places of service that are quite often not in our little family. And that means sending folks out.

Sending someone across country to pastor a church (like we did 3 weeks ago) can be a clear cause for a real celebration, but what about when someone is feeling led to transition across town to serve another congregation? I think if it is a healthy move, it should be celebrated just as passionately and often just as publicly.

One time we were doing this—publicly praying for and giving a gift to a faithful family that had felt called to transition to another church—and a guy who was new to our church pulled one of our elders aside. “I can’t believe what I just saw”, he said, “we just blessed that family that is going to a church down the street—I’ve never seen that before”.

Sometimes I’ve even wondered if we should throw a combined party every month for the new folks at the church as well as for the ones who are leaving. We could say hello and goodbye (that kind of reminds me of the Hebrew greeting Shalom…and the Hawaiian Aloha!)

I want to always remember that our local church does not exist to build OUR kingdom, but we live to operate in GOD’S Kingdom. It is the Holy Spirit’s job—not mine—to assign people to different parts of the Family. People may seek, and I will give, pastoral wisdom and advice as they consider why, and whether, to go, but in the end, I can’t hold on tightly but should celebrate what the Lord may be doing in them as they look towards a new season of service.

I think it helps our church culture that we rarely talk about people leaving our church; we say we are sending them to serve another congregation. When we talk about godly transition publicly we model what it can look like to go somewhere else for a good purpose, instead of sneaking out the back door for a bad reason. That helps us all keep proper perspective. And it models for others why and how healthy moves can take place.

“You will do well to send them on their way I a manner worthy of God…we ought to show hospitality to such men so that we may work together for the truth.” (3 John 6 & 8)

Last week I took my family to see the movie Toy Story 3. The kids (9, 7 and 3) loved it! My wife loved it, and it made her cry. I loved it and was grateful for the long credit sequence after the movie which gave me time to pull it together and wipe the tears away. In short, the Clark family gave the movie “two thumbs up”.

In the film one of the toy characters tells the other toys that they are nothing but a bunch of plastic and garbage destined to be thrown away. The toy believes this about the others because he believes it about himself. And he displays no value for anyone else, because, we discover, he feels totally valueless because of past pain and rejection.

Now switch gears with me: A few years ago the school I worked for was getting rid of an ugly, out-of-date, too-heavy furniture set that had regretfully been painted over with black lacker. It had been found abandoned in a basement of a downtown building that belongs to our denomination. Once it got to the College, it was evident that it wasn’t going to serve the purpose it was brought over for…so it was going to be tossed.

But it just so happened that I needed a desk. And my very handy, retired, and imaginative dad saw it and suggested it for my office. He said that he and my uncle (both amazing craftsmen) could work on it and make it look really nice. I was scared. I believed with everyone else that this thing was way beyond redemption, but I finally agreed to let Dad do it with the agreement that if it didn’t turn out, I didn’t have to use it (and an agreement with the College that if it did turn out, I could keep it after I left since it was going to be trashed anyways).

Three months later, my dad and uncle brought in one of the coolest and most gorgeous old-school, solid wood, leather top, desk, file cabinet and credenza I had ever seen. Now they are sitting in my study at home. Every day I’m blown away by the beauty and artistry of this stuff. And I intend to use it for the rest of my life as a reminder that what most people think is worthy only of discarding can be wonderfully used if the right artist gets their hands on it and restores it.

Now back to Toy Story 3. The toys were in peril because another toy was convinced none of them had value. We often treat others poorly because we ca’t see our own value. We look at ourselves and others and consider that our lives are unusable and fit only for the junkyard.

But that is not how the Savior sees us. He not only saves us from being delivered to destruction, but He painstakingly takes whatever time necessary to restore the true beauty that He created us with and knows is there. None of us is beyond redemption and restoration. That should influence the way we see ourselves and should impact the way we see others, too.

I led worship this week on Sunday morning for the first time in years. Though my technical skills are a little rusty, I really enjoyed it. Worshipping (and leading worship) is one of the things that tap into my passion.

While I was leading (and destroying) some of the songs, there was a sense of breakthrough in our congregation. One of the best worship leaders I know, my friend Caleb Quaye, was visiting this week and later, over coffee he confirmed that God was doing something very powerful.

But it wasn’t because of the quality of music (he confirmed that too) and it wasn’t because we sounded “like the CD”, or because we designed the set just right.

What I needed to remember was that our songs in worship are simply a vehicle to an encounter with the living God. Too often in our church culture we look at songs as if they are a destination: Get the ‘band’ to play them just right, nail the transitions, build to an emotionally satisfying crescendo, and end big and right on time, and we feel that we just had an amazing worship experience.

As good as that might feel, the target is more musical and emotional. What we need is a spiritual target. When I am told of the churches where the Holy Spirit was moving so powerfully in the 70′s I hear that they sang simple songs without great transitions and often with little more accompanying them than a Piano or Organ. But worship was powerful. People got saved and healed and baptized with the Holy Spirit every week. Folks walked into the room and said “God is truly among you”.

And it wasn’t because the music was amazing. The songs were decent and true, but they were simply a vehicle to real worship where God moved in and through the praises of His people. I fear that we now have become so enamored with the songs themselves that we worship the worship, and not the God that the worship is designed to get us to meet (for more about what God thinks of that kind of worship, read the Old Testament book of Joel).

Multi-campus churches seem to be the hot thing right now among exploding churches, and among churches that want to be exploding. I have no criticism about the strategic value of this practice—I’m sure it makes sense for some, and out of necessity we even embraced a second location during the school year—but something I read in the Bible the other day addressed the motivation for expanding ministry this way.

In 1 Kings 12 and 2 Chronicles 11 we read about a tale of two kings. Rehoboam was the son of Solomon and leader of the Southern Kingdom Judah, and Jeroboam was the newly installed monarch of the newly formed Northern Kingdom of Israel. Though each of them seems to be paying a pretty steep stupid tax (and I would suggest neither as any kind of model for leadership), they also both set up multiple “ministry venues”, but for radically different reasons. And I want to be clear—I’m considering the motivation here, not the model.

Jeroboam created two worship sites because he was worried about losing people. While there is an obvious serious problem with his idol-centered-theology, there is something else going on here: Multiple venues were all about keeping people in his kingdom.

Rehoboam installed commanders in various towns to distribute resources and protection among the people for whom he was responsible. Multiple venues were all about serving (ministering to) people who chose to be in his kingdom, and about providing a place for the next generation to exercise leadership.

Ministry strategies are as varied as the sand on the beach. But with every new tactic employed, we must ask, and honestly answer, “why we are doing what we do?” If we create new venues to simply extend our own ministry reach or build the kingdom of our church, we should repent.

On the other hand, if we multiply campuses so that we can serve our people better and develop the next generations of leaders who will be ready to pastor God’s people, we may be tapping into something positive.

Here is a great way to answer the motivation question: Are we ready to release our campuses to be full-fledged congregations as soon as the Lord impresses us to do so? Or, does our soul struggle with the thought because of all the money and energy and leadership that have been given to the endeavor?

One of my heroes, Ralph More, recently wrote “Healthy movements don’t own their church plants, they accept them as peers.” So, do we intend for a campus to “grow up” and become a self-sustaining autonomous congregation, or do we act like dysfunctional parents who make sure their kids always need them, not recognizing that healthy independence and intentional separation may be the best way to support generational Kingdom extension?

These are just some random things I’m thinking about this Monday morning. I honestly haven’t read a ton about multi-site, so this isn’t a critique of the practice, but just a challenge for the motivation. Maybe you can help support, correct, or refine my thoughts?

The other day I had an honest conversation with a dear friend of mine. It was good—I was challenged in just the right places to think through some of my assumptions. I left without taking any offence whatsoever; if anything, I was encouraged to grow to be a better leader.

A few hours later he sent me an email asking my forgiveness for pressing so hard. While I honestly felt that there was nothing to forgive, I thought his response to his conscience was fantastic. Too often we feel what might be the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and we blow it off. We do this for many reasons, but one of the chief ones is that we think people will think we are just being overly sensitive.

Our biblical friend David faced a situation in which his conscience-sensitivity did not match that of his friends. In 1 Samuel 24, when David fell into a perfect opportunity to kill Saul (who, by the way, was trying to kill David), his men egged him on to do it. Instead of killing him, David secretly cut off a corner of his robe.

It seemed that David had every right to preemptively defend himself against Saul, and that taking a little souvenir was harmless. But he was conscience-stricken for doing even that and he subsequently rebuked his men for their insensitivity… then he went on to essentially expose his life before Saul.

I’m not sure his men ever understood why he did that, but this episode was just one in a life long series of events where David displayed a sensitive and soft heart before God.

Usually our sensitivity isn’t to the Lord, however, it is to our pride and our flesh.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a young man who feels called to leadership and he was sharing how he had felt wounded by something a more mature pastor had told him. As we unpacked the cause of this pain, it turned out that a godly elder had delivered a very appropriate word of loving correction and rebuke. But the young man was offended and hurt. He was more focused on his pride and flesh than he was on the opportunity to be trained and developed. I told him that unless that changed in his life, there was no healthy pathway to leadership available to him.

My refrain to developing leaders is this: “learn to develop a soft heart and a tough skin”. A soft heart maintains sensitivity to respond to the correction of the Spirit and of others. A tough skin doesn’t allow every instance of criticism by others—whether appropriate, misguided, or, more usually, somewhere in between—to destroy you.

It may be embarrassing to admit fault or receive correction, but it’s even more damaging to become insensitive to the Lord. On the other hand, if we cultivate sensitivity to our own pride, that will eventually take us down.

So let’s remember to be sensitive to the right things.

The story found in the first few chapters of 1 Samuel both encourages me and makes me ill every time I read it.

I’m encouraged because what happens to young Samuel has many parallels to my hopes and prayers for my own kids:

I pray that my children would “grow up in the presence of the Lord” (2:21); that they would “continue to grow in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men” (2:26); that they would learn to clearly hear and respond to the Lord’s voice (3:1-14); that they would become individuals who are known by God’s presence—that He would “let none of [their] words fall to the ground” (3:19) and, that God would continue to reveal Himself to them through His Word (3:21).

This story also makes me sick, however, because of what I see in Eli:

Here is a Priest of Israel who is not raising his children well. His boys, who Eli has installed into ministry, have no regard for the Lord. They are stealing from the offerings and sleeping with the women who serve at the tabernacle.

We know that Eli is aware of the grievous sins in which his sons are engaging, and that he fails to restrain them. The sons, in fact, end up championing the worst religion has to offer—they are leaders who know how to run the religious machine but who are totally in it for themselves, and worse, who do not even know the Lord.

As a pastor who is raising three kids I want my children to look like Samuel, not like Hophni & Phinehas.

I understand if I want them to reflect Samuel I must teach them to be ready to hear the Lord speak to them and train them to obediently respond to the revelation that comes through God’s word.

But how do I keep them from acting like Eli’s sons?

I’m not really sure.

As I read the story this last time, however, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. It seems, like most parents, Eli cared about his kids (2:23-25 & 29), but I think He cared about the Ark of the Covenant even more.

It is telling that when both the Ark and his sons go off to battle that Eli sits at the side of the road worrying about the Ark…and the news that came regarding the death of his kids didn’t kill him, but the capture of the Ark did.

It turns out that the Ark would be OK (as we discover in chapters 5 and 6 God takes care of the Ark better than Eli could). But twice leading up to that event God castigates Eli for not raising his children right and for getting his priorities all mixed up.

It looks like he had religion (the Ark) first, his sons second, and God dead last.

In other words, he was enticed to sacrifice his family on the altar of ministry and leave God standing on the sidelines.

Why do I get the feeling that if Eli would have paid better attention to the Lord and taken responsibility to raise his kids, that the function he carried out as priest would have been much healthier, too?

I’m not suggesting that we can guarantee our kids will turn out righteous—each person makes their own choices in life. But I do think that putting ‘ministry’ (religion) above both God and family is always a disaster in the making, and that wrong priorities ultimately undercut the very thing that should be most important to us.

You are about to cross over and take possession of that good land. Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol… (Deuteronomy 4:22-23)

In much of Deuteronomy, Moses is telling the Israelites about their impending journey into the Promised Land. He’s reminding them of their deliverance from bondage, of God’s Covenant with them, and of the civil laws they must agree to live by. He won’t go with them, but he wants to set them up for success.

And in the middle of it all, Moses warns them about idols. These people who have seen the undeniable supernatural hand of God would be tempted to make and worship idols. This seems strange to us, but we quickly rationalize that it was a different culture, a long time ago, in a land far, far away.

But let’s not be quick to limit idolatry to little faux-avatars made of gold, wood or clay. We have idols, too; and not just cover girls, leading men, and fast cars. In ministry, our idols are much more subtle than those easily recognizable things.

I think we idolize methods of church growth. I’ve seen other churches and pastors made into idols. We idolize buildings, books, and broadcasts. Programs become idols, too.

It generally isn’t the fault of these things that they get made into idols. A few verses earlier, Moses was warning Israel not to make bird idols, sun and moon idols, men and women idols, even fish idols! Verse 19 says the Lord provided these things.

Big churches and impacting programs aren’t inherently bad, but when I secretly worship them I’ve allowed something else to take God’s place, and that isn’t good.

How do we worship those things? We put our hope of future effective ministry in them. We also give those tools the credit when ministry growth or fruit happens.

When God brings me into a place of promise and fruit, I am to give nobody else the credit. When you read Genesis through Joshua that is one of the great subtexts: These Hebrew people had nothing to do with God choosing them or God delivering them or God giving them the Promised Land. Every time they tried to take things into their own hands, they failed miserably. Their success wasn’t because they were good warriors or because they had the right strategy or because the Sun was on their side. They were wholly dependant on Yahweh for any success, and their part was always and only total obedience.

That’s our part, too. God speaks; we respond. Period. In ministry and in life there are many methods, tools, and strategies that can be good and God-given. I think we’re free to appreciate and use these gifts. But the minute we start giving them credit for what God is doing, we have crossed into idolatry—and God won’t share His glory with anyone, or anything, else!

About 10 years ago I was struggling with staying in a pattern of daily time with Jesus and, though I loved His Word, staying in it habitually had become a bit of a challenge for me. That’s when someone introduced me to the Life Journal. Pastor Wayne Corderio assembled a tool that kept me, and many of my friends, in the Scriptures every day. For me, it worked better than any plan in which I had ever engaged.

One of the greatest things about Life Journaling was that I could gather a group of folks to spend time digging into God’s Word together. Two or three times a week I would meet at Starbucks and pour over passages of the Bible with others, listening together for what the Holy Spirit was saying to us. It was good times. I still often practice that delightful discipline with people, and it is consistently one of my favorite times of the week.

However, there has been a dark side to this. Like I said, most of my daily reading and reflection was done at Starbucks and done with others. I got used to the company, the crowd, the noise, the smells, and of course, the coffee. All of that became an integral part of what my personal time with Jesus looked like every day.

But I started missing something: The time crying out on my face before the Lord, or singing at the top of my lungs while hacking away on my guitar, or sitting before God in a chair in the silence of my office. These things didn’t happen as much…until eventually they rarely happened at all.  I slowly but certainly became spiritually one-dimensional.

I shouldn’t be OK with limiting the bulk of my time with Jesus to Starbucks or Life Journaling any more than I would be content to restrict my relationship with my wife primarily to the breakfast table. The reality of any deep relationship requires dynamics: Intimate moments, fun excursions, gatherings with many friends as well as quiet one-on-one connections.

Furthermore, I think we miss out on some important spiritual needs when we get so one-dimensional. Intercession, meditation, reflection, personal worship, spiritual warfare—these are all things that can be challenging to practice in a coffee shop.

So over the last season I’ve been rebuilding my relational dynamics with God. I haven’t given up my Life Journal, my gathering and digging in with others, and definitely not my Starbucks. But I am remembering to add back the truly private time…time where my knees and face find the floor and where my voice finds it’s full strength.

For while devotions in a café and prayer in a church service are great, all of us still need time with the Father behind closed doors where nobody else is around (Matthew 6:6).

Psalm 13—For the director of music: A Psalm of David

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me, and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.

2009 was a bit of a tough year for me personally; and no, it wasn’t because I turned 40 (I was OK with that, really). It was just one of those seasons when everything sort-of went sideways. Perhaps you’ve had one of those years before: Maybe someone that you deeply love gets pretty sick; a job in which you are invested comes to an abrupt end; a dream that is long-held gets crushed; a relationship with a person you love is destroyed; some doors that seem wide open are slammed right before you walk through them; people who used to express a high opinion of you stop returning your emails and calls so quickly, or at all. I’m not saying those all reflect my life (though some certainly do), but it was the kind of year where surprises—and not the fun kind—met me around every corner. 

So often when you have a year like that you are thrilled to leave it behind and jump into the next one. January 1 comes and you hope for redemption; you can just smell it just around the corner. But when you hit mid-February and everything keeps rolling along like the New Year never happened, and you start getting even more tough news, discouragement can set in. I think a person can put up with just about anything for a year, but when year 2 or 3 kicks in, so can despair.

In Psalm 13 we find David, experiencing these kinds of emotions. Nobody knows exactly where he was when he wrote this lament, but I imagine he was on the run from Saul, leading a motley group of warriors who were tired of living in the desert, and who were just itching to take matters into their own hands. This David who had a great assignment as a general in Israel’s army, family position by virtue of marriage to the king’s daughter, and a bright future as the secretly anointed monarch, was now persona-non-grata among anyone who mattered during that time.

I like the way the Message paraphrases David’s opening thoughts: “Long enough, God—You’ve ignored me long enough.” Have you ever felt this way? You are not quite ready to identify with Job, but you can cry out with David, “Long enough, O LORD, will you forget me forever?” It’s when your prayers aren’t much more than utterances of questions, confusion and pain that you can understand what David must have been feeling here.

But I love the way he ends his Psalm: There’s hope! This isn’t empty hope either, but a rock-solid-trust in who he knows the Lord is. Though his emotions and circumstances tell him he’s been abandoned by God (and everyone else), David knows better. His God is the God of unfailing love and salvation. The LORD has been good to David, and He’s been good to us, too. Worship, and yes, even rejoicing, is a great, and appropriate response to a world that’s been rocked, because only He knows how it’s all going to turn out in the end.

“…And so Moses finished the Work. Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” (Exodus 40:33-35)

When I read this I get hungry for the manifest presence of the Lord in my life. There is something in me that wants to encounter the Lord in such a tangible way that I have a hard time entering the room.  It’s what I’d like to see in our congregation, too. Though I fully embrace the understanding that we don’t need to ask the Lord “show up” when we gather, because He is already there, I can’t deny my longing for this kind of undeniable powerful encounter that would indelibly mark our community.

But this awesome and transformative event didn’t happen in a vacuum. As I pay attention to the text leading up to this beautiful moment in Exodus 39-40, I see sixteen times that explicitly say Israel did everything exactly “as the Lord had commanded Moses”.

Let’s be honest: Many of the things that God had commanded Moses to do seem a bit overly specific, maybe even, can I say, pedantic? Things like: Fastening a blue cord to a turban; putting bread on a table on the north side of the tabernacle outside of the curtain; ensuring that Aaron and his son’s were dressed just right, with the correct amount of ringing bells and cloth pomegranates alternating around the hem of their robes.

I’ve sat through classes that go on for weeks explaining how each of these details is somehow related to the bigger picture of salvation history. While I have no doubt that God had very specific reasons for this level of precision (many of which DO have to do with prophetic foreshadowing of Salvation issues), I also believe that a lot of the reasons are completely lost on us. We can analyze the actions commanded all day long and never figure out exactly why they were required.

And I think that’s part of the point. Moses and the Israelites didn’t know why they needed to do these things, but they did know that God required them. Because they knew this, a group of refugees stuck in the middle of the desert obediently complied; right down to the last detail. And when the job was completed, as soon as “Moses finished the work”, the palpable glory of God manifested.

Maybe it’s possible that we have issues in our lives that we know are not being handled exactly as the Lord has commanded, or that have been started but not finished. Perhaps we have been given important work to do and we’ve put it aside because it doesn’t make sense to us, or it’s just too difficult to engage. I’m not proposing a works-based theology—God loves us and saves us and is with us regardless of our effort—but there is blessing that springs from radical and exact obedience.

I want to take an opportunity this week to examine my life and discern where I may not be doing things exactly as the Lord has asked me to. As I walk in humble and precise submission to the Word of God, I provide an open door for the Holy Spirit mark me as a person wholly surrendered and submitted to Him; and that kind of life, I believe, is where God’s authentic Glory will manifest !

As a pastor I’ve always loved Exodus 18 and Acts 6 because of the wise and practical action that the leaders took to distribute the work of the ministry. I just think it makes good organizational and strategic sense to do this, and I’ve regularly revisited these passages to rethink how I could put those principles into practice.

This year, as I was meditating through Exodus in my devotional reading, I had a new thought. God told Moses at the time of his calling (Exodus 3) that He would use Moses to lead His people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, and that the first important stop along the way was to be the mountain of God.

What happens at the mountain? This was where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, as well as where Moses stayed 40 days to receive the instructions for Worship. It’s where a motley but massive group of Jacob-descendants became transformed into the nation of Israel. If you had to pinpoint an important moment in the formation of over 4,000 years of Jewish History, or recognize an epochal event that would lead to the coming of the One who would fulfill the Law, I imagine that Moses’ time on Mt. Sinai would rank way up there at the top.

And here, the timeline is very important: Moses doesn’t get to go to the mountain (chapter 19) before he figures out how to give away ministry (chapter 18).

While he was busy being burdened “from morning till evening” sitting and having people come to him to make life and ministry decisions, he was never going to get to Sinai. Jethro’s advice to his son-in-law to distribute the leadership was not just a practical pastoral principle, but was an absolute mandate if God’s people were ever going to make it to their land of promise. Yes, the people had been delivered from bondage and formed as a community, but the Divine journey towards their ultimate destiny would not be reached if Moses continued to act as the hero-martyr and fill his days with things others could and should be handling.

Similarly, in Acts 6, the Apostles were not ‘above’ waiting on tables and serving widows, but they realized that if they were busy hoarding ministry from morning till evening, the things (prayer, preaching and distribution of ministry) that would move the infant church into its glorious promise would never happen.

How many congregations do we know that are right on the edge of amazing momentum into God’s design for them, but they will never get there because only the primary leaders are fully released to do ministry and make decisions? How many of those primary leaders can spend significant time listening to the Lord and responding in obedience while they are overwhelmed in the day-to-day needs of their people that others are competent to meet?

The life of the Kingdom was not ever meant to flow through only one person (in Exodus) or a small group of people (in Acts), and leadership bottlenecks often occur because of the pride of those who think they have to have their thumb on every decision. True, releasing ministry might make for mistakes and messiness (some of which will never even be seen or cleaned up), but if the alternative is a well-oiled machine that never gets a church to its call and promise, I’ll take the mess every time!

When I was in 4^th grade a group of friends and I were talking about our vision; we had just gotten our eyes tested. One member of the group had thick glasses and shared that he had 20/100 vision.  That meant what he could see clearly at not more than 20 feet away, the rest of us could see well from 100 feet. Thus the coke-bottle spectacles!

However, most of us fell somewhere closer to 20/20; that is the visual acuity required of a fighter pilot: Perfect sight—or so we thought. One of our friends finally piped up, bragging, “That’s not perfect sight…I have 20/10 vision”.

We didn’t believe him! None of us had ever heard of 20/10 vision. We had to go ask the school nurse if it was true, and we found out that it could be (I had to check ‘visual acuity’ on Wikipedia to make sure I remembered this fact accurately).

A person with 20/10 vision can see clearly from 20 feet away what the rest of us can only see from 10 feet. Though 20/20 is considered ‘perfect’ vision for most needs, it is possible for people to have better than perfect vision, though it is more rare.

I lost my 20/20 physical vision years ago, but I want to be a person who strives for 20/10 spiritual vision. What everyone else is content to see clearly at 10 feet, I want to contend to see from 20. I want to “fix my eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17)

Is it possible that we can train ourselves to be that discerning and to change the condition of our sight? I have not known my physical sight to improve, though there are those who claim that you can make your eyesight better through vision exercises. I’m not sure what I think about that, but I do wholly believe that our spiritual vision can improve with constant conditioning. By being attentive to the Word of God and by responding to the reality of the spiritual world around us, the unseen but most important dimension is more and more engaged; it becomes clearer.

I want my vision for this period leading to the year 2020 to be based on clear 20/10 spiritual sight. That way I will see more quickly and distinctly what the Lord is leading me towards in this decade. Things like: What kind of man I am to be in 2020, how I will have loved and developed my kids as they are getting through their teenage years (10 years from now), how I will have grown in the Lord, stayed healthy, built a solid marriage, been effective in my assignment, etc… And when I am able to view those year 2020 issues accurately from far away—both from the year 2010 and with 20/10 vision— I can better prepare to follow Jesus towards those goals.

Continued from part 2…

If God is a creative God and humans were created to reflect that image, then all-God/all-man Jesus paints a picture of what a fully creative human being might look like. In the first chapters of Mark, we discover a few things about creative, out of the box ministry from the life of Jesus:

1. Creative ministry is fueled by prayer. Mark 1:35ff “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

There are congregations that want to be on the cutting edge of creative ministry but they don’t want to put in the time to listen to the Lord. If a church is known as creative but is not deeply driven by prayer, it may be hip and relevant to someone, but it won’t be truly prophetic to the world or relevant to God. 

2. Creative ministry does things in ways they have never been done before. Mark 2:12 “we’ve never seen anything like this.”

Jesus certainly did this; David did, too. David took on the giant with a method that would drive the “experts” crazy. He had confidence that he could do the job, in God’s power, by using stones and sling. NOBODY had ever seen a battle won that way before, but young David was anointed by God; connected to God; and his questionable but creative and obedient actions immediately turned the waning momentum in Israel around.

3. Creative ministry is not just about novelty, but carries spiritual authority. Mark 1:27 “What is this? A new teaching —and with authority?”

Doing something in a new way is only good if it is done with anointing and authority. Many churches are caught up in looking for what is new, what has never been done before, what can set them apart from all the other churches, but their ministries lack real authority. I’ve learned that something can’t just be a “new teaching” (or program or style, etc,) it must also come “with authority.” It must spiritually and practically impact people at their core.

4. Creative ministry elicits a response. Mark 1:17 “come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Creativity is winsome. Creativity in ministry draws people into a conversation in which they are asking themselves questions about how they are going to respond with their lives. French writer Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Both are important, of course, but the latter (an unquenchable desire to cross the ocean) will fuel the former (inspiring people to build a ship).

The goal of creative, prophetic communication is never to simply give information, but it must often result in powerful transformation.

Finally, a quote from Mosaic Pastor, Erwin McManus (who I think does an outstanding job of cultivating creativity for Kingdom purposes through the church he leads): “We risk too little; we dream too small. Each church has enough creative capacity in it to make a huge debt on the problems of humanity.”

If only we’d follow Jesus out of our boxes!