Tim Clark’s Blog

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).

One of my favorite writers on organizational dynamics is Patrick Lencioni, author of such business fables as The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. He’s a sharp, engaging thinker and writer. He’s also a fellow Christ-follower, and many of his principles are Biblically based.

His brand new book, Getting Naked, is NOT about taking your clothes off; it’s about vulnerability in the corporate sector. It’s a good, quick (2 hours) read, and worth the cover price. While the book specifically deals with the consulting profession, I found it oddly applicable to pastoral work.

Here are the three main points of this book, along with one take-away from each topic. Through the story of a strategic consultant’s awakening, Lencioni tells us…

1. Don’t be afraid of losing the business: Too many pastors live in fear that if they make the wrong decision they will lose the church, or at least will lose someone important to the church. While leaders must steward responsibility well, we should always remember that is it not our church.  An unreasonable fear of losing the church can lead to some pastoral sins, including treating big givers with more respect than small givers (Luke 21:1-4), being overly conservative with investing Kingdom resources (Luke 19:11-26), worrying too much about what people will think (Luke 7:33-35) and not telling people truth that might challenge them too much (John 6:25-71).

Take away #1—Tell the kind truth: If I am afraid of loosing the ministry, I’m not going to be honest with people who need me to be honest with them. My goal must always be their growth, rather than my church’s attendance or financial position.

2. Don’t be afraid of being embarrassed: Fear of embarrassment is a major hindrance to ministry. If I am more concerned with making myself look good than I am with really helping someone out, I’ve lost any authority I have to minister into his or her life.

Take away #2—Ask Dumb Questions: We can’t be afraid to reveal that we don’t know it all. In fact, instead of trying hard to create an appearance of having it all together, we probably should work to intentionally reveal when we don’t have it figured out. Lencioni says that one way to do this is to ask questions to which everyone else seems to know the answer when you don’t. Often others don’t know the answer either, and by asking the question you have just articulated what is in their heart and helped them to not be embarrassed. And then you can figure out the answer together. That’s more helpful than acting like you know it all.

3. Don’t be afraid of feeling inferior: There is no room for a bloated ego in ministry. Pride is at the root of sin, yet pastors can be some of the worst offenders in this. Fear of inferiority will often lead people to be pushy and arrogant, and that rarely allows for true servanthood (Mark 9:35/John 13).

Take away #3—Do the dirty work: This is all about being a servant. Though I passionately believe in distributed ministry, and releasing tasks to others so they can do their part, this never lets leaders off the hook from doing the actual “dirty work” at times. You may be released to spend time in prayer and the ministry of the Word (Acts 6), but sometimes you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and wait tables (or clean toilets, or set up chairs, etc,) to support the value of the task and the greater value of the people who are doing it.

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.

My friend Charles Lee is starting a sermon series on the Book of Acts at the church he pastors. As a part of his presentation, he included the following video that briefly explains the Missional Church. I saw it tonight and I like it. Though I’m not certain whether it can come across as too black and white (I DO think that a church with a good preacher, good music and, yes, even occasional big events, can have at its core a Missional passion), the last 30 seconds simply but effectively represent my understanding of the Lord’s strategy and call for the church I pastor.

With appreciation to Charles…enjoy, and reflect!

“…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 !