Category Archives: Leadership – Change for the Kingdom of God!

Five Love Languages of Pastors

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Shel – Thom has a funny and true one here.

 

Five Love Languages of Pastors  from thomrainer.com by Thom Rainer

With apologies to Gary Chapman for playing on his well-known “Five Love Languages” theme, I asked 24 pastors how a church member might speak to each pastor in his own love language. And though 24 persons do not constitute a massive survey, I was amazed at the consistency of the responses.

To fit the theme of five, I determined at the onset that I would only report the top five responses. To my surprise, there was an obvious break between the fifth and sixth most frequent responses. The five love languages thus were a natural fit.

So how can you speak a love language to your pastor? Here are the pastors’ top five responses in order of frequency. I offer a representative response from one of the pastors for each of the five.

  1. Books. “I have a limited family budget, so I can’t just go out and buy a bunch of books. But I sure do love books. One year a deacon gave me a $200 gift card to a Christian bookstore. I was ecstatic! Now the church gives me a $300 book allowance each year. I know it’s not much for the type of books I get, but I sure am grateful.”
  2. Encouraging notes. “I treasure every word of affirmation I get. It helps to soothe the pain of the criticisms. I keep all of my notes of encouragement in a box, and I sometimes read many of them at one time just to remind myself how blessed I am. I particularly appreciate handwritten notes. I know the church member took some time to write that to me.”
  3. Time guardians. “My most encouraging church members are those that try to help me protect my time. They do everything they can to make sure I have enough time to prepare sermons and to spend time with my family. They are able to speak to other members about my time constraints in a way that I’m not able to.”
  4. Compliments about children. “There are times that I really feel sorry for my three kids. They are really good kids, but they aren’t perfect. They live in a glass house, and any wrong move they make usually gets the attention of a church member. But I have a few church members who go out of their way to tell me the good about my children. One sincere compliment about one of my three kids will make my day.”
  5. Defenders. “You know, I deal with critics, and I realize that in any leadership position, you will have critics. My greatest hurt takes place when my supporters remain silent in the face of intense criticism toward me. They are more afraid of rocking the boat than speaking the truth. But I have one guy in the church who will always speak a defending word for me unless he thinks I’m wrong. Then he speaks to me privately. I could use a dozen church members like that.”

Pastors, are these five your love languages as well? What would you add to the list? Church members, do you speak love languages to your pastor? Tell us your stories.

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What Would Jesus Make of “Passion” (Conferences)? Guest Blog by Austin Fischer

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A repost from Roger’s Blog January 9, 2013: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/01/what-would-jesus-make-of-passion-conferences-guest-blog-by-austin-fischer

What Would Jesus Make of Passion? by Austin Fischer (Teaching Pastor, The Vista Community Church, Belton/Temple, Texas)

 Hooray Excellence!

 At the moment I’m writing this, there are 60,000 college students gathered inside the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. They are singing worship songs, listening to sermons, and gathering what will no doubt be a massive offering that will go towards combating human trafficking. It’s pretty unbelievable stuff, but the Passion conferences specialize in the unbelievable.

Cutting edge media, excellent musicians, famous speakers. If we’re going to be candid, it’s refreshing to see something “Christian” also be something of such exceptional quality. You could invite an agnostic friend to it and not blush at the prospects of asking him to pay a couple hundred bucks to attend something that feels like a home-school prom. I like excellence, you like excellence, we all like excellence, and I think Jesus does too. Hooray excellence!

That said, as I was reading the tweets of a number of my students who are at Passion, a question kept bouncing around inside my head. Maybe I was asking it of God or maybe God was asking it of me—I often can’t tell the difference. But either way, the question was, “What would Jesus make of Passion?”

Now I know, I know. The question is both loaded and brutally anachronistic, but it just kept asking itself to me. Spoiler alert: I have no idea what Jesus would make of Passion. But here’s some stuff I threw up against the wall. Maybe some of it sticks.

Thought #1…Temple = Georgia Dome

I remember the first time I went to a Passion conference. I was a senior in high school and together with my youth pastor and a few friends, we made the trek to Sherman, Texas. And from the beginning, the trip had a certain vibe to it, a vibe I’ve since learned is the anticipation of pilgrimage.

Religious pilgrimages—as far as I can tell—stretch back to the beginning of human history. There’s something primeval and elemental about the act of going on a journey to a place where we believe we will encounter something transcendent. In the Hebrew Bible, we see God commanding the Jews to make yearly pilgrimages to “appear before the Lord God” (Exodus 34:18-23). Once the Temple was built, these pilgrimages would culminate there, the place where heaven and earth came together. Indeed for a Jew, the Temple was the holiest place in the whole universe. They traveled there because God was uniquely there.

And by way of crude parallelism, it would appear that what the Temple was for an ancient Jew, the Georgia Dome is now for many young-adult, American evangelicals. They take a yearly pilgrimage to the Dome because they feel it is a place where God is uniquely present.

“Cleansing” the Temple?

So what do we make of this? The first thing that came to my mind was Matthew 21 and Jesus’ “cleansing” of the Temple. I put cleansing in quotations because contra popular belief, NT scholars point out that Jesus is not cleansing the Temple so much as he is shutting it down. Flipping over the tables of the money-changers and seats of the dove-sellers (21:12)—these are not acts of purification but condemnation. The exchanging of pagan coins for Jewish coins and the selling of animals for sacrifice were both essential for Temple worship. The Temple didn’t need rehabilitation. It needed to die.

But not because God hates buildings; rather, the Temple needed to die because Jesus was replacing it. Jesus was a one-man, walking Temple; the place where heaven and earth came together and God was uniquely present to his people. As N.T. Wright says, “What the gospels offer us is a God who is in the midst [of us] in and as Jesus the Messiah…Jesus himself is the new Temple at the heart of the new creation…And so this Temple, like the wilderness tabernacle, is a temple on the move, as Jesus’ people go out, in the energy of the Spirit, to be the dwelling of God…”[1]

Now from one angle it’s tempting to connect these dots. Jesus shut down the Temple because he was replacing it. The Georgia Dome has become a new Temple. Jesus would walk into the Georgia Dome and flip over the merch tables and slam Chris Tomlin’s guitar, Garth Brooks style. And while that sort of simplistic reasoning certainly won’t do, I do think it raises some interesting questions regarding the pilgrimage/Temple mentality that so clearly permeates the Passion ethos. So here go a few thoughts…

(c)hurch

Jesus didn’t shut down the Temple because it was evil. He shut it down because it was obsolete and no longer needed. God was doing a new thing, was making himself present to his world and his people in a new way, and the Temple didn’t have a place in this new creation. God was now present to his people through the Spirit and was present to the whole world through his Spirit-filled community = the church. And I put church in lower case on purpose. Local churches made up of normal people doing normal things…this is the God-appointed medium of God’s presence and grace to the world. Not a Temple. Not a yearly pilgrimage. And dare I say, not a trip to the Georgia Dome.

To be sure, many Passion attendees love their local church and their pilgrimage to the Dome is a noble period of spiritual refreshment. But I don’t mind going out on a limb and suggesting that for a great many attendees—perhaps the majority—Passion is the most spiritual moment of the year. It is the standard by which all other spiritual moments will be judged. They’ll have to wait a year to feel this close to God again because it’ll be a year before they’re back here, singing the resounding chorus to an awesome song, having just listened to a sermon from their favorite celebrity pastor, all while their eyes are dazzled by the glitz and glamour of it all. It will be a chore to wade through the ordinariness of actual church life for another year.

As I once told a college student, if Passion is the most spiritual moment of your year, a.) I feel bad for you…b.) you’re not going to be able to love and serve your actual church.

And that’s because your actual church actually has to be the church. It has to deal with crying babies, botched song transitions, average sermons by not-famous people, and a budget for the year that is half that for 4 days of Passion. It’ll never measure up and so you’ll probably bail and look for a church that will feed your Passion addiction (if only Passion could be a church…or wait…it is ;) or you’ll stay and complain and never put down any real roots.

I inhabit and am thus aware of a rather small sliver of reality that I know as my life, and speaking from here, this is not hypothetical. I work with college students, I watch it happen, and I deal with the aforementioned phenomena. For the longest time, I didn’t quite know what to call it and I still don’t. But I know it involves a skewed understanding of the spiritual life in which a streamlined, hyper-spiritualized gathering has replaced the gritty reality of incarnation, of learning to be a human, among other humans, through whom God is reconciling the world to himself. It invigorates the spiritual life to be sure, but it does so by immersing them in something that just doesn’t seem to bear much resemblance to the real world.

And so as ironic as it may sound, maybe what Passion is doing is not progressive or ground-breaking so much as it is, well, antiquated. That’s hyperbolic to be sure but maybe, just maybe, Passion needs to make sure it doesn’t build something that Jesus already tore down. And I really hope it doesn’t build it on top of the church.

Thought #2…Going Vegan in a Steakhouse

Maybe you don’t buy the “Passion or church” thought above. Maybe you think you can have your cake and eat it too. I’m not so convinced most people can, but moving on, thought #2 is something I hope we can all agree on, even though it is uncomfortable.

So I’m told that at the beginning of this year’s Passion conference, Louie Giglio got up, surveyed the energy and buzz of 60,000 students packed into the Dome and said, “Is this not incredible?” He went on to talk about how Passion has become a global movement, impacting millions of lives and followed that up by telling the story of a student who had been addicted to drugs, but as a result of last year’s conference is a year clean. Louie then said, “The testimony of these days in the Dome will be, ‘I know that He is the Lord,’ and ‘I know He can do immeasurably more because He did it in my life,’ and ‘I don’t need an event, I don’t need a Dome, I need Jesus’.”

“I don’t need an event. I don’t need a Dome. I need Jesus.” Amen! See, Louie and company know it’s about Jesus and not an event. But let’s allow ourselves to sit with the irony for a moment. Louie stands before a crowd of 60,000 people, in the Georgia Dome, talking about how this is a global movement, telling a story about how this event helped a guy be sober for a year…and he says, “I don’t need an event, I don’t need a Dome…” But Louie, you’re in the Dome, at an event, hyping the event. We hear you saying something about not needing a Dome, but it’s hard for us to take you seriously when your face is being projected on that 5-story tall LED screen suspended in the middle of the Dome.

Perhaps it’s something like taking a group of people to the best steakhouse in town, providing them with a buffet of the finest cuts available, all the while telling them that eating meat is wrong and we should all go vegan. You can talk to people about the virtues of going vegan all day long, but as long as you’re feeding them steak, I doubt they’re really listening to you. And perhaps even more importantly, I question whether you really want them to listen to you.

Means = Message

There is a more technical way to say all of this: your means is your message. When delivering a message, our words are not the only things that communicate. Everything communicates, and in particular, the “way you do things” communicates, perhaps the loudest. I’ll borrow an example from an excellent book.

Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken were the pastors at one of those suburban, fast-growing, soon to be mega-churches. Fearing they were bordering on becoming a “seeker-sensitive” church, they started really emphasizing discipleship from the pulpit. But they noticed it wasn’t changing the culture of their church. It was still trending towards consumerism and impotent discipleship. What was the problem? In their own words, “We couldn’t merely change the words we used to communicate the gospel because there were too many other messages ingrained in the Oak Hills culture that would contradict our words.”[2]

In other words, you want to make sure you’re creating disciples and not voyeuristic consumers? Then you’re going to need more than words spoken in a context that contradicts everything you’re saying. It’s naïve to think we can hook people with a massive, consumer experience, and then not expect them to act like consumers. As Carlson and Lueken say, “Our attractional methods are not neutral. We are training people as we attract them.”[3]

Some Conclusions

So what would Jesus make of Passion? I don’t know. I think he’d enjoy hearing 60,000 people singing to him. I think he’d love a massive offering taken up to combat human trafficking. I think he’d rejoice in the refreshment and repentance taking place. And as mentioned earlier, I think he’d enjoy the excellence of it all. These are—in and of themselves—indisputably good things. But I’m not sure what he would think about the new Temple we’ve constructed, the celeb-pastor cults, or the Passion fever. But deconstruction is easy, so how about a little reconstruction.

I suggest this: Do some massive downsizing for Passion next year. Minimal media, no celeb-pastors or musicians. Get people who are good, just not famous…they’ll cost less. Maybe just leave the regular lights on. Maybe you could charge $50 instead of $200. By my calculations, that’s somewhere around $10 million dollars you’ll save the attendees. Then, challenge everyone who attends to put that $150 they saved at Passion towards their local church’s budget. Or if they really hate their local church and don’t believe in it enough to give $150, then give it to Compassion, International Justice Mission, etc. And then maybe Louie could stand up in the Dome in front of 60,000 people and say, “I don’t need a dome, I don’t need an event, I just need Jesus”, and we’d actually be able to hear him.

And one more thing. We Christians do have an unfortunate tendency to be cynical towards things that are doing well—especially when it’s not “our” thing. Whatever the psychology behind it, it’s all too easy to be swept away by some latent notion that if it’s Christian and successful/excellent than there must be something wrong with it. The success and excellence of Passion should be something we rejoice in. But success and excellence—from a truly kingdom perspective—are things only achieved through ruthless self-evaluation and continual repentance. Like most things, I don’t think the Passion conferences are all black or all white. Like most of us, they do some good things and bad things. So here’s to exposing the hype and nourishing the good.

 

 

[1] N.T. Wright, How God Became King, 239.

[2] Carlson and Lueken, Renovation of the Church, 57.

[3] Ibid., 67.

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When leadership decisions aren’t easy… you really only have three options

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When leadership decisions aren’t easy… you really only have three options

 from MMI Weblog by Todd Rhoades

Carey Nieuwhof shares some valuable advice when decisions are really hard to make?

Ever been there?

Well… it turns out you only have three real possibilities when it comes to your decision… this should help you get a good start.  Carey writes:

Option 1.  Make no decision.

Sadly, this is what many leaders do. Faced with competing voices and competing visions, they refuse to choose one over another because it would mean wading into the inevitable conflict that would follow if they made a choice. They just retreat.

When you fail to make a decision, organizational drift and paralysis follow. The whole group gets stuck, and leaders (who are waiting for you to lead) drift away in search of someone who will lead them. Everyone loses.

Option 2. Try to please everyone. 

This is only a slight variation of option 1. Leaders who try to please everyone will bend their vision until it isn’t a vision anymore, only a compromise. Of course you realize what you end up doing: pleasing no one. But that doesn’t matter. Because people pleasers always choose the short term gain that results in long term pain.

Option 3. Separate the competing visions, and choose one. 

Essentially, when you have several ‘good visions’ the problem you face is not choosing between the ‘good’ one and the ‘bad’ one. The bad visions were eliminated or disappeared long ago. The reason choosing between good visions is so difficult is that most leaders don’t have the courage to simply pick one and run with it. So you resort to options 1 and 2.

The best thing you can do is prayerfully consult with wise counsel and pick a vision.

Just decide. And then move on.

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Leading Change – Thom Rainer

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When Leaders Lead Change Too Quickly  from thomrainer.com

Ron Johnson is not off to a good beginning. The former Apple retail leader is now CEO of J. C. Penney. The most recent quarterly results are not encouraging. After making wide, sweeping changes, same store sales have dropped 26 percent and stock prices are at a three-year low.

Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, is attempting a turnaround at Hewlett-Packard. The challenge is daunting. Though she has a long-term strategy in place, many people believe she is moving too slowly.

A pastor of a large church recently resigned after leading the congregation in several major changes. Attendance at the church dropped precipitously as many members voted against the changes with their feet.

At another large church just twenty miles away, the pastor is moving so slowly that people are also moving out. They are waiting on this leader to provide visionary leadership, but he is simply too reticent to move forward.

Volumes have been written on change, the pace of change, and the consequences of change. In simplest terms, leaders move at a perfect pace, too slowly, or too rapidly. In this brief article, I address what fast-paced leaders should consider. I offer five basic issues these leaders should grasp.

Understand the Change Tolerance of Those Directly Impacted

Some fast-paced leaders look at the organization only from their perspective. They fail to put themselves in others’ shoes to consider what this change might feel like to those directly impacted. These aggressive leaders need to ask more questions and listen more carefully. They may be surprised to hear how those directly impacted will respond to the proposed changes.

Understand That Change Tolerance Is Contextually Driven

I have seen too many leaders move to a new area and assume that change tolerance would be very close to their previous place of leadership. If they came from an organization that dealt well with change, they might assume that the same leadership pace would work at the new organization. Unfortunately, many leaders have been burned when they discover their assumptions to be wrong. Many contextual factors affect the tolerance level of change. Again, it is incumbent upon leaders to know their contexts and how to lead in those contexts. Listening to the stories of those in the organization is vital to this process.

Understand That Most Change Resistance Is Emotional, Not Rational

Such is the reason that well-thought, calmly-presented, rationally-explained reasons for change might not be well received. The leader must understand the hearts of those impacted, not only the heads. Why are they so emotionally attached to the status quo? What stories can the leader share that would address the hearts of those feeling the changes?

Understand That Leaders Must Have Sufficient Tenure to Deal with the Change

Too many leaders initiate change but fail to see the obstacles before them. As a consequence, they often leave before the changes are fully implemented. The organization is thus left with frustrated people and a void of leadership. If a leader is seeking to lead change, he or she must be willing to stay at the organization a sufficient time to see the change accomplished, and to deal with any aftermath caused by the change.

Understand That Leaders Must Understand Themselves in Leading Change

Self-awareness is vital here. If you are a slow-change leader in a fast-paced organization, you will likely encounter frustration and impatience. If you are a fast-paced leader in a slowly-moving organization, you will likely encounter resistance and resentment. A good simple exercise is to rank yourself on your comfort with the pace of change on a scale of one to ten. Then do the same for the organization you lead. If you have a gap greater than two, you have major work to do before you even begin to lead change. Sometimes the work must be done on yourself. At other times, there is greater work to do in the organization. The gap must be closed or the leader will find himself in a position of frustration and, ultimately, failed leadership.

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Tom Rainer: Listening to Negative People Will Make You Dumb

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shel boese – enjoy…

Tom Rainer: Listening to Negative People Will Make You Dumb

 We all know those “energy drainers.” They are the people that seem to have a perpetual cloud hanging over their heads. They have the keen ability to turn good news into bad news. Yes, they are the kind of people you avoid asking “How are you?” for fear they will give you an answer. Some are critics. Some are simply just negative people.

Brain Studies and Negative People

Minda Zatlin reports in Inc. magazine that new research in neuroscience demonstrates how negative and critical people affect us. She notes that “being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity – including viewing such material on TV – actually peels away neurons in the brain’s hippocampus. That’s the part of your brain you need for problem solving.”

So what is the result of exposure to negative and critical people? “Basically it turns your brain to mush,” the article notes. It has the same effect even if you are passively listening to them.

What’s a Leader to Do?

Those in leadership positions are in a dilemma it would seem. Every position of leadership will always be exposed to negative and critical people. It goes with the responsibility.

Though leaders cannot avoid negative people entirely, we can incorporate some tactics that will help us deal with the matter more effectively.

  • Discern the difference between the negative critic and the constructive critic. You really want to hear the latter person. You want to avoid the former if at all possible.
  • Avoid negative media. Many leaders are drawn to negative television, radio, print media, and blogs like an onlooker is drawn to a car wreck. We just want to look. Before you begin reading or listening to the negativity next time, just remember that you will walk away dumber.
  • Have a spirit of rejoicing. The Apostle Paul writes this imperative in Scripture: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4). The mandate is not only to rejoice, but to rejoice at all times. If we are allowing thoughts of rejoicing into our minds, we don’t allow the words of negative persons and critics to enter.
  • Choose your friends wisely. Avoid friends who are negative and embrace those who are not. You are likely to spend a lot of time with your friends. Make certain the time is well spent.
  • Be a positive person. You will attract other positive people. And you may dissuade the negative person from being so negative.

Leadership Requires Focus

One of the greatest dangers a leader faces is to lose his or her focus. Much is expected of leaders. Indeed much is demanded of leaders. A constant barrage of negativity can prove to be extremely harmful to the leader and to the organization he or she leads.

And now we have medical and scientific evidence that shows the detrimental effects of negativity on the brain. It’s not a pretty picture.

So next time you are confronted with a negative or critical person, consider practicing some of the tactics noted above. You might come away a happier person. You might come away a better leader. And you might even come away a bit smarter or, at the very least, not any dumber.

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Perry Noble: NINE THINGS THAT EVERY LEADER STRUGGLES WITH & HOW TO OVERCOME THEM (PART TWO)

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Perry Noble: NINE THINGS THAT EVERY LEADER STRUGGLES WITH & HOW TO OVERCOME THEM (PART TWO)

  • Thursday, August 16, 2012
Yesterday we began talking about the top nine things that leaders struggle with (we compiled this list as a result of an informal survey I did via twitter last week.)  We covered the first five already…today we will dive into the last four…

BUT…before we go there we must be reminded that…

GOD’S WORD > HOW I FEEL

#6 – Confronting People When Necessary – If you LOVE confrontation then most likely you are a rear end that nobody likes!!!  Confrontation is not fun…but is completely necessary if a church is going to maximize it’s potential and reach as many people as possible.  Reality is that if you are at a leadership table and you disagree with something mentally then you have an obligation to disagree verbally–PERIOD!  Not in a mean spirited or unkind way…but, with a humble and sincere approach.

The Apostle Paul had a pretty tough confrontation at one point…but we see in Galatians 2:11-14 that he did it.  If you see something wrong with the church or with someone else and you do not confront them then you do not love them.

#7 – Insecurity – Every leader I know has dealt with insecurity at some point.  One of the key verses that I’ve had to rely on during my most insecure moments is Philippians 1:6, that IF HE BROUGHT ME TO IT THEN HE WILL LEAD ME THROUGH IT!!!  Insecure moments should not cause us to feel less secure about who we are but rather more secure in who God is!!!  If He is with us (Isaiah 41:10) then we should lead and live like it.

#8 – Failure – There isn’t a leader on the planet that rolled out of bed this morning and said, “Dear Lord, I would love to just blow it today, would you please allow me to make a mistake SO HUGE that I never want to show my face again, amen!”  No one wants to make a mistake, but, we do…two things to keep in mind regarding this…

  • If you are going to fail, fail forward (John Maxwell wrote an EXCELLENT book on this, if you have not read it I highly recommend it!)  Proverbs 24:16 says that one of the distinguishing marks of a righteous person is that when they fall they get back up!!!  In leadership it’s not whether or not we are going to fail…but whether or not we are going to fail forward!
  • ALSO…fear of failure is what holds most people back from taking a step of faith!!!  But…Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God!!  I believe what holds most churches back is a leaders lack of faith, we fear looking back more than we desire for the church to move forward…and so we hold back.  Most of the time the failure comes NOT as a result of trying and not succeeding…but rather not trying at all!

#9 – Confidence - All of us, every single one of us struggle with confidence in our leadership.  Two things here…

The same God who was IN THE BIBLE performing miracles and overcoming obstacles IS WITH US TODAY!!!  (Hebrews 13:8!)  So many times we get so focused on who God was and what He will be like in heaven that we lose sight of the fact that HE IS AWESOME RIGHT NOW!!!

When it comes to preaching and leading…when we “do it by the book” then it will ALWAYS bring back a harvest (Isaiah 55:8-13).

If you want to dive into these things a little deeper then you can go to itunes and download the August edition of the Perry Noble leadership podcast for free…we took a look at all nine of these and broke them down in more detail.

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Seven Questions to Help Leaders Avoid Committing Sins of Omission

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Seven Questions to Help Leaders Avoid Committing Sins of Omission by Thom Rainer

 I confess. I shouldn’t have this nagging fear, but I do. I am sometimes haunted by the possibility that I failed to make a critical decision as a leader, and I missed the opportunity to make a difference in this world.

It’s easy sometimes not to make a decision, to let the perceived status quo become our daily agenda. Instead of becoming a leader who is a change agent, we become managers who carry out routine tasks.

Frankly, I don’t want to live my life in the world of “what if?” I don’t want to look back on this brief time God has given us, and realize that I failed to act or to make key decisions. I don’t want to be guilty of one of the most damaging types of sins, the sins of omission.

So how can we leaders make certain we are not seeking the comfort of sameness and committing sins of omission? What checks can we have to remind us that we must ever be vigilant lest we fail as a leader who acts and takes risks? I suggest we constantly ask ourselves these seven questions.

  1. Do I take initiative or do I wait for an assignment to be given to me? Leaders who rarely want to make their own decisions or take actions on their own are not leaders at all. It is a comfortable place to be where you are not responsible for any of your own initiatives. But comfort is the place where most sins of omission take place.
  2. Am I constantly seeking ways to break out of the status quo? It is cliché to say that this world and culture is changing rapidly, but it is true. Those who attempt to hold onto to the way we’ve always done it will be left behind. The irony is that the status quo is no longer a reality, and those who attempt to hold it tightly are holding on to an illusion.
  3. Is my approach to leadership only incrementalism, or do I at least on occasion seek to lead major changes? Leading by incremental change is okay for most seasons, but there are times when leaders must take major risks. I love the oft-told story of Thomas J. Watson, Jr., and the introduction of the IBM 360. On April 7, 1964 IBM introduced the 360, the first large family of computers to use interchangeable software and peripheral equipment. It was a bold and courageous departure from the monolithic, one-size-fits-all mainframe. Fortune magazine dubbed it “IBM’s $5 billion gamble.” But the gamble paid off, and the world was changed by that decision.
  4. Am I willing to make a decision even if I don’t have all the facts? No one would suggest a leader make a major decision without good information. But many decisions must be made with some level of uncertainty and without all the desired facts. Ultra-conservative leaders who keep waiting for all the facts to come in usually have a good rear view of other leaders who have passed them by,
  5. Am I willing to accept criticism? You can play it safe and avoid criticism. In fact, you can join the legion of Monday-morning quarterbacks who take great delight in pointing out where risk-taking leaders failed. But those second-guessers have stopped leading when they make decisions to minimize the criticisms.
  6. Am I willing to fail? You can choose not to act, not to take initiative, and not to take risks. In doing so, you will not fail at a particular task because you have attempted nothing. But you will ultimately fail as a leader. Every true and seasoned leader can attest to some failure in his or her life. That is the price we pay when we lead and take risks.
  7. Do I really want to make a difference? If the answer is yes, there is a price to pay. I have briefly enumerated some of them. We can’t merely declare that we want to make a difference. We must be wiling to accept the pain that often comes with bold and courageous leadership. For the true leader, it is price worth paying.

We have such a brief time to make a difference in this life. If God has given you a place of leadership, consider that opportunity a sacred trust. Don’t live this life wondering “what if.” Don’t look back on key life points and realize you failed to act, that you committed sins of omission.

May the words God gave Joshua become His words for our lives today: “Haven’t I commanded you: be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9, HCSB).

What are some of the common sins of omission you observe in some leaders? What are some other checks we can have to avoid committing these sins?

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Perry Noble Repost:10 THINGS FEAR CAUSES

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10 Things Fear Causes January 18, 2012 By Perry Noble

One of the most frequent commands in the Bible is “do not fear.”  (Once again…it is a command, NOT a suggestion!)

And yet every leader I know (including the guy I shaved with this morning) deals with fear.  As I’ve traced my own journey through fear in leadership I wanted to share 10 things fear causes in our lives.

(When I speak of fear in this post I am speaking of fear of man – see Proverbs 29:25– and irrational fear.)

#1 – Fear causes us to reduce the size of God and elevate the size and opinion of man.

#2 – Fear causes us to lead people in the wrong direction.  (Remember when the Israelites wanted to GO BACK TO EGYPT and being slaves because they feared going into the land that God had promised them?)

#3 – Fear causes us to stay quiet when we should clearly speak up.  (Mostly because many times we are OBSESSED with what others think about us, see Galatians 1:10)

#4 – Fear causes us to be passive about an issue that the Lord has clearly brought to our attention.  (As Edmund Burke once said:  ”The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.”)

#5 – Fear causes us to seek consensus rather than really seeking the voice of the Lord.

#6 – Fear causes us to not engage the broken, the hurting, the misfits and the neglected because if we include them in our lives and actually invite them into our homes then it could get messy.  (I’m so glad Jesus didn’t have that attitude…if He would have then I would have been screwed!)

#7 – Fear causes us to refuse to embrace change because we care way more about being comfortable than being conformed into the image of Christ.

#8 – Fear causes us to control things and take matters into our own hands rather than trusting the Lord and trusting others.  (People who are control freaks really do fear when things don’t go their way!  BUT…remember, control is the biggest illusion in the world, I wrote about that here.)

#9 – Fear causes us to conceal sin and shame in our lives when God’s Word is so clear that we should ask others for help – James 5:16

#10 – Fear causes us to seek the easy decision rather than seeking the right one.

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The Subtle Art of Sabotaging A Pastor

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The Subtle Art of Sabotaging A Pastor from Desiring God Blog by Jared Wilson

OriginalDearest Grubnat, my poppet, my pigsnie,

The reports of your progress warm my blackened heart. When you were assigned to one of the Enemy’s ministers ten years ago, his infernal Majesty and I knew you’d have a rough go of it. The zeal of one new to the pastorate can be a daunting challenge to even the most cunning of our comrades, but we also believed that time breeds all wounds and that your task would become easier the longer your patient remained. You now prosper from that sweet spot of pastoral fatigue and assimilation. The shine of newness is gone. And up pop the cracks in the ministerial armor.

There are many temptations common among the Enemy’s undershepherds but one universal temptation of them arises from their flesh and it is this: they want people to be pleased with them. Wanting to be liked is not a sin, really — to use the Enemy’s terminology — but it can be quickly turned to one at the hands of a spiritual disintegrator as shrewd as yourself. Some tacks you might consider:

Suggest to your client that he works for the people, not the Enemy. This will not be a hard sell as they are faces he sees every day. Remind him who pays his salary. The quicker you can get your patient to see himself as a professional, as an employee, the better.

Strike up with your fellow workers to send in to his office, voicemail, and email inbox parishioner after parishioner with demands, requests, and philosophical banners to wave. Through them propose hill after hill to die on, all save Golgotha.

Keep his head spinning. Even so-called “innocent” concerns can be proper distractions from Who your patient is ultimately beholden to if they offer plausible substitutes for the “first importance” of the Bad News. The slip into people-pleasing mode can be masked as subtly as a serpent slithering in the tall grass (no offense intended to his Majesty).

Help your patient to see all that he lacks. Stroke his discontent. The less satisfied your patient is with what the Enemy has done for him and all the Enemy has given him, the more alluring the validation, approval, and praise of others will be. Empty him of his confidence by highlighting his failures so that therefore his head will be far more easily swelled with adulations and self-confidences. Then pop those like a pin to a balloon and start again. It is easy for a pastor to move to pride—it is his default setting—so this should not be too difficult for you.

Turning your patient into a man-pleaser may require employment of what we have come to call the “rope-a-dope” technique, outlined as follows: First, make things very comfortable in the church for your patient. When he is very much pleased with himself and neither sober nor watchful, but drunk on ease and set to pastoral autopilot, then it is time to strike.

Bring in reinforcements to stoke division and dissension in his flock. Put him on the defensive. Demoralize him. Make him feel as though he has more to prove, more to be. Prod him to strive to enter the unrest. Make arrangements to see that he comes to shepherd under compulsion, not willingly, much less eagerly, and suggest that he view the sheep of his flock as problems to be fixed or resources to be used.

If you can steer him into a position of prideful domineering, that would be most excellent, but the key in all congregational unrest is not just to divorce the people of a church from each other or from their leaders but to divorce the leader from faith in the Enemy. Hype his understanding, if you must, so he will lean on it. Or deconstruct it, if you must, so he will fall back into man-pleasing. Whisper, “Yea to you when all men speak well of you.”

Convince him that difficulty is something strange, undeserved. Convince him that allegiance to himself is a suitable substitute for allegiance to the Enemy. Convince him to seek peace at all costs, especially at the expense of the truth of the Bad News. Your patient is a needy, insecure little man. Ply him with the tenuous, vaporous security of being liked as if it is the end all, be all.

And these are but the rudiments of but one temptation. There is always more to do and much to learn. More to come, if the Enemy delays.

Indefinitely yours,

Wormwood

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Christ-less Preaching Repost from Internet Monk

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Shel Boese/ Shelby Boese – this garners a great big Amen! from me – EXCEPT the neo-reformed gushing towards the end.  Some of the neo-reformed movement are simply dressed up fundamentalists or even “Gnostic-Jesus gospel” types – I am much less optimistic that Jesus of the NT and rooted in Hebraic thought is being reclaimed by that crowd in whole.

However in our community this Christ-less preaching does indeed concern me.  OT narrative preaching for political purposes/civil religion Jesus is also an issue.

God help us all to run to Your son Jesus, bridge people to Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

iMonk Classic: On Christ-less Preaching 22 OCTby 

Is this a joke?

I’ve just heard yet another sermon that never mentioned Jesus anywhere or in any way. No, no, it’s not an oddity or anywhere close to the first time. I’ll estimate that in the last five years I’ve heard at least fifty sermons that totally omitted any mention of Jesus, and many more where there was no real reason for Jesus to be included. Sermons that could have been preached by Jews, Mormons, even Muslims in some cases, without any real changes. Sermons preached by ordained, and often, educated, Baptist ministers.

What’s up with this? Is this another “Internet Monk Straw Man Award”, or is this really happening, right in front of us?

At first, I thought it was the occasional oversight. Anyone can have a bad sermon. I’ve had volumes of them. Then I wrote it off to a focus on the Older Testament. Some preachers love the Old Testament and can easily, in their enthusiasm for the text, neglect connecting their message to the new covenant. Lately, I’ve considered the possibility there was a method to the madness. Maybe the idea was to NOT talk about Jesus, and then pull him out for the big answer to all the questions you’ve raised. Or something like that. All these theories, were, ultimately, wrong.

Now I’ve concluded that Jesus just didn’t make the cut. It wasn’t an accident or a mistake or trying to be sly with all those pesky post-moderns. It was worse than I thought:  Jesus wasn’t needed, so he didn’t make an appearance. It was Christless preaching on purpose.

What is going on? And why is it happening? Let’s start with observing the kinds of sermons I’m discussing, and how Jesus is a no-show.

 

Sermons based entirely on Old Testament stories. The Christian Bible is the whole Bible, Old and New. All those Old Testament stories are our stories, too. Paul uses Abraham as the great example of Christian faith, not one of the apostles. We want our children to know these stories, and to know the truth in every story from Adam, to Elijah to Esther.

But can we preach these Old Testament stories Christianly without any mention of Jesus? If we do, we are preaching truth, but we aren’t preaching Gospel truth. Our preaching may be practical, full of lessons and wisdom, but it will be absent the Gospel.

Many of the sermons I am hearing are Old Testament lessons, told well and used as examples of truths that are repeated in the New Testament. But without the context of the Gospel, such sermons send an alarming message about the value of those lessons, and an even more distressing message about the point of the Christian life.

For example, Jonah’s decision to obey God is a true story with evident value, but how do resolutions to stop running and begin obeying fit into the Gospel? It’s not generic obedience or generic repentance that matter, but the obedience of Jesus and repentance from any way of thinking and living that ignores Jesus as the Final Word and the treasure. I need to be saved, not just see the better way.

Sermons that teach lessons and principles. There has been an increasing trend in evangelical Christianity to preach practically; to teach “life principles.” This kind of “coaching” from the pulpit is extremely popular, and many Christians value such practical teaching as “something I can use on Monday.” The megachurch movement in evangelicalism relies heavily on this approach to the sermon. Often it’s called “Powerpoint” preaching, because the inumeration of principles and lessons fits well into the visual technology used in those churches.

Such practical teaching fills churches and bookstores. It is obviously helpful to many people, and appeals in some cases where traditional preaching doesn’t. It also produces a good bit of the Christless preaching that I am describing. It is possible to preach on many things in the Bible, drawing out “life principles,” without bringing Jesus anywhere into the picture or the message.

Scholars have long recognized the difference between “kerygma” and “didache” (proclamation and teaching) in the New Testament, but they also recognized that Jesus was essential to both. The Gospel message–everywhere it occurs–is a proclamation/application of who Jesus is and a proclamation/application of what he did for us. Didache and kerygma are both the application of the Lordship of Jesus to the Christian, the church, family and society.

In contemporary evangelicalism, however, “life principles” are increasingly disconnected from Jesus, either falling into the category of “proverbial wisdom” or the Christian application of secular wisdom, particularly from fields such as education, psychology or commerce. These sermons aren’t kerygma or didache, and they never bring the hearer to Christ or the gospel.

Sermons dominated by personal narratives. Evangelicalism loves a personal testimony. It loves anecdotal writing and preaching. Scripture contains personal narratives and illustrations, and preaching that entirely omits these things becomes a dry recitation.

But many of the Christless sermons I’ve heard have been dominated by personal narratives. The primary “revealer” of truth is the preacher himself. The more of a “celebrity” the preacher happens to be, the more likely that he will tell stories from his own life as revealing authoritative truth for us.

The fact is that personal narratives and anecdotes–no matter how entertaining or moving–have no authority whatsoever. If we argue that we aren’t listening to a sermon, but a personal testimony, we’re entitled to ask what is the authority of a personal testimony, and how does Jesus relate to such a story?

Of even more concern is the loss of the Biblical story in much preaching. Jesus is the key person and event in God’s story that is revealed throughout scripture. For more and more evangelicals, Jesus is simply a token of personal salvation, completely isolated from the Biblical worldview. I frequently meet Christians who know nothing more of Christianity than that they “accepted Christ” at one time.

Is this sort of Christian profession intelligible or meaningful? Or does it create a new, miniature, moldable Jesus who is more at home in American individualism than in scripture?

Sermons about moral and cultural problems. We live in a time of continuing moral breakdown. There is no doubt that the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our culture are being eroded. Traditional values are under attack. The role of religion in society is disputed in almost every niche of the public square.

The church feels particularly sensitive to this breakdown. There is a sense of moral and prophetic outrage. Some Christians see the demise of cultural morality as proof Jesus will soon return. Others see moral breakdown as a threat to our children and our political freedoms.

For these reasons, many evangelical sermons deal with the moral and cultural crisis. This sort of preaching has a long history in evangelicalism, so we ought to know the dangers of preaching against saloons and movie theaters. But it seems we haven’t learned our lesson.

A generous segment of today’s social and cultural preaching is increasingly Christless. Instead of Jesus, the message is either personal moral fortitude or collective political action. Because this sort of preaching appeals to the fears and emotions of evangelicals, it is commonplace. Thanks to people like James Dobson, Jesus has become the patron saint of any conservative’s social and political agenda. While many of these crusaders are doubtless correct on the Biblical worldview, they are also usually too busy getting us to the polls to get us to Christ.

The Bible is certainly not oblivious to moral issues. The prophetic voices in scripture testify to God’s holy concern with how we treat one another, and how justice is exhibited in society. But the key to scripture is always Jesus, not moral or social reform. In some of his most shocking words, Jesus says that there is a comparison that can be made between religion that helps the poor and the Gospel that commands all men everywhere to repent and believe.

Evangelicals are emotionally–and politically–engaged with cultural battles like homosexual marriage and abortion. They have demonstrated substantial growth in their support of ministries of mercy. But some of this political and moral involvement has been at the cost of Christ-centered preaching. “The Crisis”–whatever it might be–is never the point of our discipleship. We are always followers of Jesus.

Sermons that talk about a vague and undefined “God.” One of the characteristics of Bible belt preaching is an assumption that the audience–even the unchurched audience–understands the basic assortment of Christian teachings. This makes it easy to speak about “a relationship with God” and not explain how Jesus creates and sustains such a relationship. Is this vague relationship what the Bible means by “faith” or “covenant?” Few evangelicals are asking that question. For a faith where Jesus is the substance of everything we have in a relationship with God, it’s a catastrophic omission.

Some of the most Christless sermons I’ve heard simply avoided the name of Jesus and the fact of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but spoke constantly about “the Lord” and “God.” These weren’t sermons with an animosity toward Jesus or the Gospel. They were simply lazy sermons, with shorthand replacing exposition and explanation.

Am I being overly theological? (See the coming IM piece on “I Hate Theology.”) Is there really something wrong in speaking of God without centering that proclamation on Christ himself? Yes. If we believe that Jesus makes all the difference between the idolatries of our own opinions and the self-revelation of God in scripture and preaching, then we have to be concerned about preaching and teaching that allows the hearer to decide what Jesus is all about or if Jesus matters at all.

In fact, it is ironic that so much preaching is about a generic “God” when Acts 17 records Paul saying that Christian revelation fills in the “unknown God” with the specifics of Jesus. Have evangelicals themselves become a kind of Mars Hill crowd, surrounded by all sorts of individualistic ideas about what God is like, but more and more omitting Jesus himself? Isn’t the point of the resurrection that God approved of Jesus, and we ought to pay attention to him as a result? Much of what evangelicals say–or don’t say–seems to assume the resurrection was just something God did because it was a cool ending to the story.

I know what these preachers are talking about when they say “the Lord,” and when you fill in the generic God with Jesus some of these messages are quite appropriate. But I’m not the typical congregation member or secular listener. Assuming that we’re all able to fill in the truth about Jesus is a naive assumption, and the Bible belt is increasingly full of “Christians” who know next to nothing of Christ. They went to The Passion and came out saying “I never knew that before!”

Sermons in which Jesus is a minor character. It would be wrong to say that all Christless sermons are without any kind of reference to Jesus. Many of them contain what I call a “guest appearance” by Jesus. Jesus isn’t the point, or the key or the Final Word. But he is a good example, or an authority to be heeded.

These sermons don’t need Jesus to make sense. Leaving Jesus out wouldn’t change the sermon at all. He could easily be replaced. (This is particularly common in the “grocery story method” of using the Bible, where the importance of the method is in accumulating verses about the topic under study.)

So, for example, imagine a sermon on God’s promise to provide guidance. Such a sermon could utilize many different verses and examples from the Bible or personal experiences. Some of Jesus’ sayings on the guidance of the Holy Spirit might be included, and examples of Jesus’ own reliance on the Holy Spirit would be appropriate.

But the sermon could go forward in many settings with little or no mention of Jesus. As a minor character in a topical sermon, Jesus isn’t the focus of the message. Nothing essential is communicated about Jesus, and the principles of guidance apply to life without any particular reference to Jesus. A perfectly good sermon on guidance can be produced just talking about a Biblical character or a list of Biblical principles without taking the trouble to bring Jesus into the essential focus of the subject. (This is why topical preaching is the most dangerous kind of preaching, because it can easily exempt itself from winding up with Jesus and the Gospel.)

So it is with many “how to” messages. Jesus may make an appearance as an example or a coach, but he isn’t the Final Word. He may have a privileged place in a hierarchy or examples or authority, but what’s the real point of Jesus in the message? Ultimately, he’s just one more character, and often a minor one at that.

Why is this happening?

It’s happening for reasons that aren’t hard to discover.

There’s a remarkable amount of overall Biblical ignorance among the evangelical clergy. Some of this is because many clergy are completely uneducated, and their churches don’t care. Revivalistic evangelicals made peace with this a century ago, and I don’t know what can be said at this point. If you are comfortable with having an utterly uneducated man preaching through the difficulties of Romans 9-11 or telling your children what the Bible says, I won’t argue with you. But when Jesus doesn’t appear in the message, don’t whine. If it appears that your pastor’s messages are drawn entirely from last night’s T.D. Jakes performance, don’t complain about that either.

(I am NOT insinuating that education equals good preaching. My childhood pastor had one semester of college. He was self-taught, but formally uneducated. He did a marvelous job presenting–and living–the Gospel week after week, but he certainly knew he needed to study. Still, he perpetuated remarkable ignorance about the Bible, including once denouncing “the Greek and other translations.” He never encouraged me to go to school, and made sure my mind was fully stocked with Scofield and Clarence Larkin. But he did preach Christ and salvation by faith, and at least he knew he needed to read and study.)

The trend toward Christless preaching is also happening because even educated preachers are not students of scripture, or even students at all. I’ve met several seminary graduates who bragged that they hadn’t read a book since seminary, and never intended to correct that. Christian bookstores are a good measurement of the intellectual muscle of the average pastor. Research tells us that the average younger American is now watching a hundred movies for every book he or she reads. That includes a lot of preachers. This is perpetuating remarkable ignorance, and it is taking away the ability to preach Christ.

This loss of a scholarly mind is resulting in sloppy theology, ignorance of the original languages, and dependence on technology like the internet. Notice how quickly modern preachers have embraced the use of film clips in preaching. The replacement of literate references in communication is part of the culture, but it is also an admission that the clergy themselves are not reading, but watching.

Ever sat there while your preacher told jokes you’ve been forwarded by e-mail, or repeated internet mythology like the Mel Gibson “scarred face” story? Did you get the sinking feeling that something bad was happening? You were right.

Does this mean these non-scholars can’t be effective communicators? Of course not, but it does mean we shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus is lost or misplaced in the messages we hear. The transformation from a literate to a visual culture presents Christians with a remarkable challenge: the challenge to continue being loyal to God’s revelation of Jesus in all of scripture, and the greater challenge to study and understand the Bible.

Scripture can’t be replaced, and it must be understood, and the ministry has the responsibility to lead the way. In other words, don’t let your pastor become an idiot.

The most distressing reason for the disappearing Jesus is the pragmatism of the current church growth culture. If the church growth gurus were telling their flocks of ministerial admirers that the way to grow a megachurch was to preach Jesus and to focus sermons on Christ, it would be happening. In large measure, it’s not happening because the church growth experts don’t believe it works. It isn’t seeker sensitive. This is why some preachers are purposely avoiding Jesus, and instead talking about life issues like “success” and parenting. They are hoping to “hook ‘em” with the church program before they “cook ‘em” in the frying pan of commitment to Jesus. This bass ackwards approach is remarkably successful, and it apparently a hard habit to break. Jesus increasingly isn’t showing up except at the Easter and Christmas pageants.

What works is life principles, low content and plenty of entertaining anecdotes. Preaching Christ, God’s primary ordained means of growing a church and developing disciples, is held in suspicion among the seeker-sensitive crowd. When Jesus makes it to the big show it’s going to be either as a “life coach” or because a cultural discussion of The Passion of the Christmakes it acceptable to preach about Jesus. I read with amazement Rick Warren’s enthusiasm for using the Gibson movie as a suddenly ripe opportunity to talk about Jesus. Does anyone else find that notion bizarre? What else are we supposed to be talking about in the church?

The preachers who prompted my thoughts in this essay are of two sorts. They are younger men who are virtually disconnected from any roots in Christian faith other than contemporary evangelicalism. They are much more impressed with the lyrics to a recent CCM tune than they are most of the Bible. They are experience oriented and generally shallow theologically. They major on personality, relevance, and in many cases, the slick use of technology, to communicate. They are rapidly approaching the unblinking acceptance of anything that appears to be “a relationship” with God as real Christianity. They scare me.

The second category of preachers is represented by a man I recently listened to preach three completely Jesus-less sermons in a row during a series of “revival” services. He is experienced, college and Bible school educated, conservative and earnest. He is also deeply impressed by what he is hearing from the church growth camp. His preaching, which I once noted as effective and Christ-centered, has become anecdotal and highly “life principle” oriented. He believes, I’m sure, that Rick Warren and company are preaching the scriptures.

Neither is antagonistic to Jesus, but both have moved to a place where they are under no compulsion to preach the Gospel of Christ. This is not a good place to be.

Some Shreds of Hope

Despite this trend, I am hopeful on several fronts.

For starters, I believe there are signs of a mighty reaction to the current pragmatic church growth establishment. Especially among the younger generation of evangelicals, there is a strong current of simply wanting MORE than the shallow, culturally accommodating religion of the megachurches. Whoever you people are, God bless you. Stir things up.

This can translate into a new loyalty to scripture, and a demand to hear Christ preached and worshiped in his church. Increasingly, younger evangelicals are understanding that the spirituality of white, suburban, corporately niched megachurches is neither deep enough to inspire an authentic life nor Christ-centered enough to transform a culture. I pray that these younger evangelicals in their emerging churches will return to Christ-centered preaching and worship as the very Bread of the Christian life.

I am also hopeful that younger evangelical preachers will begin to appropriate a greater appreciation of creativity than their baby boomer parents, and that this creativity will result in more Christ-centered proclamation.

The great beauty of the Bible is that its message about Jesus is given to us in a banquet of images that inspire creative presentation. The themes, pictures, stories and symbolism of scripture can inspire art, music, poetry and, yes, preaching. The Bible’s rich tapestry of communicative images are there for us to use. Why don’t we?

Evangelical preaching is boring. Even much good evangelical preaching. Our Reformation heritage damaged our theology of creativity. But there is finally appearing, among younger evangelicals, a hopeful resurgence in creativity that promises to eventually make a difference in the mindset of preachers themselves.

Evidence of this can be found in a book like Charlie Peacock’s A New Way To Be Human, where very traditional reformed theology is communicated in a way that appeals to creative aspirations as well as spiritual questions.

In other words, part of the recovery of Christ-centered preaching is simply to work harder at the business of communication. Much of evangelicalism has spent the last 30 years finding ways to sell out to the culture. We need preachers, artists, poets, actors and writers to make worship a Christ-centered event again. Not tangentially by appropriating the culture–which isn’t exactly useless, but close–but through transforming both Biblical content and cultural forms into expressions of the Gospel.

An excellent example is the Indelible Grace hymn project, where Christ-centered, Christ-exalting hymn lyrics are being reinterpreted through new tunes and instruments. This is miles from the church worship band expressing the bland “God is my girlfriend” sentiments of recent CCM or attempting to sound like the pop bands on the radio. These hymns have serious Biblical content. They takes us to the Bible. And the overall presentation is creatively attractive. Yes, younger reformed evangelicals are singing hymns, while their baby boomer parents are quickly concretizing the own Muzak worship bands and blathering lyrics into a tradition they’ll fight to protect.

Lastly, I am hopeful because someone gave away 1.4 million books by John Piper. Someone is still buying Spurgeon. Someone is filling up those emergent churches that preach hour-long Biblical expositions. Someone is reading Internet Monk and writing me encouragements every day. Someone is going to Ligonier conferences, joining Reformed Baptist Churches and making RUF worship CDs. In other words, someone wants Christ to be the center, the all in all of Christian life and worship.

If your pastor preaches a Christless sermon, or a sermon with only a guest appearance by Jesus, don’t get mad at him. Make an appointment. Take him a cup of coffee or a book. Sit down and tell him what you heard, and why it concerns you. Don’t villainize him, because he is probably as much of a victim than a villain. If he loves Jesus, he won’t resent your concern. If you are labeled the enemy, and Christless preaching is defended, then you learned something important.

Let’s pray for the day when no one stands before God’s people without knowing that the point of everything, before it’s all over, will once again be Jesus.

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