Tim Clark’s Blog

Dear Friends,

In my fifth year serving as the Dean of Students at LIFE Pacific College, I can honestly say that being a part of the College has been great. While there I have been able to fulfill a long held dream to inspire Christ-focused students by serving in a college that equips them for ministry. It gave me great joy to partner alongside the wonderful staff and faculty at LPC. Giving my energy towards furthering God’s purposes in LPC students will, I think, turn out to be one of the defining assignments of my life.

However, as I spent the last season attempting to split my life between being an effective Dean of Students and faithfully serving as a lead pastor, the Lord began to draw my heart back towards giving my undivided focus to ministry in the local Church. Though I was convinced that was where the Lord would eventually lead me, I was prepared to continue serving at LPC until at least the end of this academic year (June 2010). In the face of current organizational circumstances, though, I was compelled to address my future with a greater sense of urgency.

LPC has recently been working through a positive but challenging strategic redesign that, coupled with current enrollment realities, created a significant and immediate impact on our budget. The executive team I serve on is making some very difficult decisions about what that will mean for the programs and personnel at the College. Because I knew my calling was to return to fully-focused local church leadership, it seemed right for me to consider stepping out of my role here now in order to open up options for strategic and structural change. This determination was voluntary, based on my own calling and what I thought was best for the College. Though President Flores and the executive team were initially surprised by my suggestion, they ultimately confirmed and supported this transition. So, with a little sadness, but with great faith that the Holy Spirit had already been leading me towards my next season of fruitful Kingdom service, I offered my resignation from LPC, effective October 23.

You might wonder, “What is the plan for Tim and Deborah Clark?” Well, we are quite excited about the prospect of being able to pour all our energy back into leading a local church. As many of you know, we currently serve as the lead pastors at Lifehouse, the growing Foursquare church that meets on the LPC campus. I’m looking forward to supporting the College from my role as a local pastor.

We also think it is wise during any transition to remain sensitive and listen carefully for whatever the Lord may be saying about a new season. Though we are almost certain that we are called to continue to serve as Foursquare lead pastors, we are also keenly aware that our lives are not our own, and that God may chose to surprise us at any time by assigning us to any purpose that He might have in mind for us—We always and only serve at His pleasure.

John 3 records Jesus as saying “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” Deborah and I really believe that this change we are engaging is motivated by the Spirit, and so, though we don’t know exactly where this wind will eventually lead us, we can’t wait to find out!

Grace,

Tim (and Deborah) Clark
Dean of Students/Campus Pastor
LIFE Pacific College

Lead Pastors
Lifehouse, a Foursquare Church

Luke 4 reflects the amazing journey that Jesus took from baptism to anointed ministry. I’ve read verse 32 often and thought “I want to minister with authority like Jesus did”—and that’s a healthy desire, because He calls us to serve with that same grace (John 14:12).

But how do we get there? There is a progression that I discover as I read this chapter:

1. Jesus was baptized. In each of the four gospels, Jesus’ baptism comes before his public ministry. There was an obedience and example happening here; Jesus didn’t need to repent like we do, but he set the pattern for all His followers to engage this practice as a starting point to a baptized life, identifying with Christ and preparing to walk in ministry anointing.
2. Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit”. Though the Spirit is clearly given to us at Salvation, there is a baptism of the Spirit and fullness to overflowing that repeatedly happens as we open our lives to be continually filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18, Acts 4:31, etc.).
3. Jesus was “led by the Spirit”. He knew how to listen to the Spirit’s guidance. Even though the Spirit led Him into the wilderness, He didn’t detour. Sensitive to the Spirit’s voice, He would go anywhere and do anything He heard.
4. Jesus was “tempted of the Devil”. This is where the Spirit led Him. These were not ‘easy’ temptations (if it’s easy, it’s not really a temptation), but the enemy was throwing things at Jesus that were actually temptations for Him. The way Jesus did not fall was by deeply knowing and properly handling the written Word of God.
5. “Jesus returned…in the power of the Spirit”. Over and over in chapter 4 you see it—“they were amazed at His words…they were amazed at His teaching…What is this teaching with authority?…” The impact and authority did not come only because of the fullness of the Spirit or the following of the Spirit, but this authority was fully manifest after withstanding temptation.

I think there are a lot of baptized, Spirit-filled, and Spirit-led believers who are not ministering in the authority provided for them. They get stuck at temptation, keep falling, and then never quite walk in all that God has designed them for. I’ve talked with many christians who struggle with effectively serving in their churches, communities or families because of their continued falling into temptation. It’s like the enemy keeps the upper hand on them, even though they are redeemed, empowered, and directed children of God.

If you are struggling with temptation, and don’t know how to get beyond it so you can feel free to serve with full authority, do what Jesus did: The Word of God provides a way through whatever the Devil or our flesh wants to throw at us. Let your life be steeped in and transformed by the Word, and get alone daily to fill back up and be ready for whatever ministry opportunity or personal temptation you might face (vs 42).

In 2009, the church seems to be more and more concerned about being relevant. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. Like missionaries, we want to understand our culture and communicate the message of the cross in a language they can understand. But what does being relevant really look like?

Two years ago I was reading a chapter in a book about church relevancy, and the author, Alex McManus, said that a relevant church is first relevant to Jesus, which was a very easy statement to agree with.

Then he said something that gripped me: “The second thing we must ask is, “Is church relevant to outsiders? Many of the contemporary churches (a.k.a. the classic baby boomer churches of the ‘80’s) are still relevant [today], specifically for baby boomers. Many of the newer emerging churches are relevant for today’s twenty-something Christians who don’t like contemporary churches. But what about the person who isn’t reacting against traditional or contemporary churches?

What about the person who isn’t shopping for the church that is right for them? What about the person who is looking for more than just an enhanced experience? What about the person who…wonders if God can find them? Is church relevant to them?”

If people are looking for a ‘cool’ church, they might easily find it in 2009, but what if they are looking for the presence of God? Is much of what we consider church relevancy really simply a way to please ourselves with structures and styles and music that we, and we hope others, happen to like? Maybe a church shouldn’t try so hard to be either traditional, contemporary, or on the edge—maybe that completely misses the point. Maybe we ought to be looking to encounter God together and stand in awe as He reveals Himself to us so that through us He can engage those around us who have lost—or who never had—any sense of God.

I’m not at all against fresh styles—on the contrary, I am quite eager for them; in each genuine move of God over the last century one of the results, but not one of the causes, was that a new generation, and in fact a whole culture, was enfranchised as well as transformed in ways that nobody would have thought of before the outpouring began. I am really hungry to see that kind of genuine supernatural outpouring that transforms the whole culture and that has a new, fresh, and creative style. But in the case of the church, style must always follow substance!

So, perhaps the church shouldn’t care as much that we are being something “new”, but should care primarily that we are being something prophetic. That word—prophetic—doesn’t have to carry baggage; it simply means that we are people who communicate God’s words, God’s heart, and God’s life to others.

And when that happens, when people are not just filled with information or moved through inspiration, but when they encounter true revelation that leads to transformation, that’s when something is going to shake loose.

Oh, and when that happens, we’d better get ready to be uncomfortable. Because church will no longer be about what we get out of it, it is going to be about what God wants to do. And then people won’t come to church because we have great coffee (though I hope we still do) or because our sermons tell them how to be nice, but they will walk through the doors and fall on their faces “and worship God, and declare that God is really among you” (1 Cor 14:25).

People define the local church in many ways. Even in the New Testament, though there are some ecclesiological imperatives, there also seems to be much room for unique structures and creative styles from city to city, and from church to church. Here are a few pictures that help express how as a pastor I see the local church functioning when it is at its best…

A body, not a building or a business: It’s not that we don’t gather in buildings (most of us do) or that we don’t provide good stewardship over the resources that we share (not doing so would lack integrity), but a building is only clothing for the body, and we don’t share the same ultimate goals (profit, year-to-year growth, etc.) as a business.

Organic, not synthetic: Synthetic plants can look good and are a lot less mess, but there is no life in them. Real ministry will be messy because it is real and not fake. If a local church is always polished, smooth, and “perfect” with no sign anywhere of messy people or processes, you’d better look to see if there is any real life happening.

A family, not a factory: I’ve heard it said that a church should create systems that take the inputs (new people) and put them through a discipleship process until they are outputs (sent people) who are equipped to do Kingdom stuff. I agree with the equipping part (Eph 4) but we are much more like a family; we all move at our own pace and nobody gets ‘voted off the island’ even if they are not growing very quickly; or growing at all! Factory language dehumanizes and despiritualizes us—we are not cogs or widgets, we are children of a loving and unfathomably creative God who cares for us in as many unique ways as there are individuals in our congregation.

A movie, not a monologue: I love watching the credits at the end of movies. Good films can’t be made by a single producer, actor or director, as talented as each of those people may be; It takes hundreds of capable people to make it happen. The local church should be like this—everyone is needed! It takes more than the “sage on the stage” or those who are perceived as leaders, but a whole team of uniquely gifted individuals each adds their life to make up this beautiful community called the local church.

Prophetic, not professional: “Professional” ministry requires people who have had specialized schooling or extensive training. Education and training can be valuable, but we know that the professional religious leaders in the time of Acts stood in stark opposition to the disciples who “were uneducated, ordinary men who had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). The difference is the disciples carried the heart and words of the Lord (the definition of prophetic) and the religious professionals didn’t.

A doorway, not a destination: The local church is not all about attracting people to a destination every week, but it is to be a portal through which people can be propelled into the world. We come together SO THAT we can be sent out. Church gatherings should never be the goal of ministry, but only the starting line.

About big people, not big churches: The size of a local church is largely irrelevant when it comes to health. Micro-church is valid; so is mega-church. The measure of health can never be discovered simply in attendance numbers or income, but in multiplied life, equipped individuals, impact on a neighborhood or in a city, healed people, submitted disciples, sent leaders, and countless other indicators that often defy our attempts at quantifiable assessment.