Don't believe the lie

 Truth has taken a beating in recent years. For the past few years we've heard more about fake news than any of us would want to hear. We've seen both political parties attack each other with outlandish claims. Postmodernism has denied the existence of absolute truth. We now call good evil and evil good because we can no longer tell the difference. However, these outward lies are not the focus of this post. Today, I am more interested in the lies we tell ourselves.

Many of us, including Christians, have a very low opinion of ourselves. We feel we don't measure up, that we are not good enough. I grew up in a time when we had a lot of choose-up baseball games. Two people would be named captain, and they would pick the players for their teams. The same kids were usually chosen last. I doubt that did anything for their self-esteem. For some, it might begin in high school as we doubt that anyone will go to the prom with us. Perhaps we begin to question our worth and our abilities when we see and hear how talented our brothers and sisters are and people start to question if we are really from the same gene pool.

Our thought life will determine the direction our lives will take. If we regularly struggle with negative thoughts about ourselves it will be hard to live a life of abundance and victory. It's hard to believe that God has a purpose for our lives when we see little value in ourselves. A healthy self-esteem is essential if we want to fulfill our purpose in life.

Satan knows this, and this is why he will work hard to fill our minds with negative thoughts. He wants us to doubt our worth and value to God. He wants us to question our abilities so as to limit what we attempt to do. The Bible is clear that his purpose is to "steal, kill and destroy," and he will use every weapon in his arsenal to achieve that. One of his most effective weapons is to control our minds and the thoughts we have about ourselves.

Some of us need to spend time reading the Scriptures to learn what God thinks about us. His Word says we are "fearfully and wonderfully made." It tells us that we are "heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ." The Scriptures remind us that even before we were formed in the womb that God had a purpose for our lives. It tells us that we "more than overcomers" and "have the mind of Christ." I could go on and on, but this should be enough to get you started thinking more positive thoughts about yourself.

I want you to see yourself as God sees you, not as the devil wants you to see yourself. You are so valuable that God sent His Son to the cross to die for your sins. God desires to adopt you into His family so you can spend all eternity with Him in heaven. You are not a loser, a mistake, an accident, a misfit. Stop giving the devil access into your mind and reject every attempt he makes to fill your mind with poisonous lies. Accept what God says about you and believe it. Doing so will change your life.

Staying true to biblical teaching

The church faces many challenges in the coming years, but I believe one of the biggest challenge will be to stay true to biblical teaching. In our PC dominated world today anything that doesn't fit with the beliefs and values of the majority are challenged and often resisted. We regularly see conservative speakers uninvited to speaking engagements because a vocal minority rise up in protest. Business owners who do not toe the PC line are threatened with boycotts and worse. GOYA is only the latest to feel the wrath of liberal politicians, celebrities and other left-wing radicals who want to destroy this Hispanic-owned food company.

Some denominations and churches abandoned biblical teaching years ago in an effort to appease the PC crowd. Those who continue to hold to biblical authority can expect pressure to conform its teachings and values to that of the unchurched community. We must resist that pressure even though there may be a price to pay in doing so.

The Bible is the Word of God. It is authoritative in everything it says. No church, no denomination, no individual has the right to change its message. Rather than changing the message to match the lifestyle, we need to change our lifestyles to match the Scriptures.

One of the reasons we see the chaos and difficulties in our nation today is that we have drifted far away from those biblical teachings. Without absolute truth and absolute morality everyone is free to do whatever they please, and as we have seen in recent months that can only lead to chaos, division and lawlessness.

Our pulpits must be faithful to preach the truth of God's Word without apology. Not everyone will like that, and that may include some of our strongest leaders in our churches. For me, if I am given the choice of offending God or the chairman of the deacons with my preaching, I'm going to offend that deacon. The worst he can do to me is cause me to be fired, but I would rather experience that than have to stand before God and explain why I failed to stay faithful to His Word. We must love people enough to teach them the truths contained in the Scriptures.

The church stands in a unique circumstance right now. Many churches who began to broadcast their worship services during the pandemic reported that their viewership exceeded their normal worship attendance. That tells me that our current situation has caused some people to seek answers to their questions about what is happening in our world. These are individuals who hunger for truth and want something solid upon which they can base their lives. The Gospel provides that firm foundation, but they will only know that if we are faithful to proclaim it to them. If all we can offer is spiritual mush that comes from some denominational office or a concoction that contains a lot of humanistic philosophy and personal opinion that is hooked to a Bible verse to give it credibility, they will not hear what they need most.

Pastors, commit yourself to boldly preaching the infallible Word of God. Lay leaders, encourage your pastors to do so even if it makes you uncomfortable at times. The Word of God has been silent too long in too many churches. It's time to change that.

Are we seeing the book of Revelation being fulfilled?

There are a lot of posts on social media claiming that the problems we are having in 2020 are God's warning that the book of Revelation is about to be fulfilled. I won't debate those making that claim because I can't say they are right or that they are wrong. Certainly, the world-wide pandemic, the chaos in the streets, the rejection of Christianity and God by so many, the wars and threats of wars are all spoken of in the Bible as events that will occur prior to God's judgement coming upon the world. However, we can also point to many other times in world history when such events were occurring, so I'm not prepared to say Armageddon is just around the corner or that the Rapture is about to occur. Too many have made such predictions in the past only to find that they, and their followers, were mistaken. I'm content to accept the words of Jesus when He said that this will occur at a time when we least expect it.

What I am prepared to say is that we are seeing the results of a world that has rejected God, His teachings and His Son, Jesus Christ. Our culture has denied the existence of God, the existence of absolute truth and morals, and the need for forgiveness and salvation. It has deemed the church to be irrelevant, made mockery of the moral teachings of Scripture and denied the sanctity of life. We have sown into the wind and reaped the whirlwind. As a result, our news media brings us nightly reports of violence, hatred, crimes and chaos masquerading as demands for freedom.

Freedom without morality is not freedom. It is not freedom if I can do as I please without considering the freedom of others. It is not freedom that permits one person to burn down the home or business of another. It is not freedom that allows those in authority to harm or even take the life of another without just cause nor is it freedom if one race or religion is permitted to mistreat those of another race or religion. Those who have created CHOP in Seattle built a fence and patrol it with guns, the very things these same people criticized the president for wanting to do with the border, but at the same time they denied those who have lived and worked in that area of the city their freedoms.

When we abandon the morality found in the Bible we sacrifice our freedom and our humanity. No African-American should fear the police, but neither should the police fear the public. Once again, there was violence in the larger cities in the nation this past weekend with numerous shootings and killings. No respect for life. No respect for our fellow human beings. Exactly the kind of conditions the Scripture tells us will exist in the latter days.

What can the church do in such times? We must be faithful to proclaim the Word of God inviting people to repent of their sins and to invite Christ into their lives. Furthermore, we must be faithful to hold fast to the teachings of Scripture. We cannot deny those teachings in order to appease the PC crowd or those who would stand against biblical truth and morality. We must be able to defend our faith to those who do not understand it or openly question it. We must be filled with the Holy Spirit and cover ourselves in prayer if we want to see the church come through this times of crisis. We must be willing to stand with those who are truly oppressed, and, at the same time, refuse to join with those who would seek to use this unsettled time for their own personal advantage.

In the midst of all the chaos that exists at this time it's important to remember that God is still on the throne. While the media breathlessly tells us of one crisis after another we must not forget that ultimately God's will shall be done.

More Christians defend the Bible than read it

For my devotional reading right now I am reading through the New Testament using The Message and reading J. I. Packer's book A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. In my reading a couple of days ago I read in 1 Timothy where Paul challenged Timothy to "Stay at your post reading Scripture...." That same morning I was reading in Packer's book how the Puritans expected the parents, especially fathers, to study the Scriptures so as to be able to teach their children. When they returned home from the church service the fathers were to examine the family to see how well they retained the sermon and to answer any questions any of the family might have about what they had heard. In order to do that, they had to first learn the faith themselves.

When I read these passages I thought about how much more difficult it was for Timothy and the Puritans to study the Scriptures than it is for us today. On one shelf in my study is a row of Bibles of various translations. On the opposite side of my study is nine shelves of commentaries and other Bible study helps. I realize that as a minister that might be more than most people would have, but the fact is each of us has access to that much, and more, aids to understanding the Scriptures. The question is, how many of us are spending time reading and studying the Scriptures.

During a stint as a Transitional Pastor in one church I invited the congregation to join me in reading through the Bible in one year. Several did so. One family read through it together with their children. A long-time Christian man told me it was the first time he had ever read through the Bible in a year. A few talked about how difficult it was, especially when they came to some of the OT passages that challenged their concepts of God being loving and merciful. Many told me that reading through the Bible in that way was a good experience.

As a pastor, I wanted people to read and study the Scriptures as much as possible. We spend a lot of time defending the Scriptures against those who challenge its authenticity. We complain that the courts have taken Bible reading out of the schools. But, many of us spend little to no time in personal Bible reading and study. That's obvious by some of the comments Christians make and how some live their lives. We expect our pastors to teach us what we need to know. More than once I've heard someone explain that they left a church because they "weren't being fed." How about feeding yourself? You're an adult. Feed yourself. Yes, the pastor has a responsibility to teach the people who listen to him or her, but each person as a responsibility to feed themselves from the richness of the Scriptures.

One other thing needs to be said, unfortunately. Some of what some pastors teach is poison to one's soul. Some seminaries produce ministers who have a very low view of the Scriptures, who do not accept them as inspired or authoritative. Such ministers teach things that are not biblically sound which can do great damage to those who listen to them. People sit in these churches week after week listening to such sermons and conducting their lives according to what they are hearing without realizing the faulty message they are hearing. They do this because they do not take time to study the Word for themselves.

The Bible is the inspired Word of God given to us to teach us sound doctrine and instruct us how we should live our lives. Every Christian should be a student of the Scriptures and should spend time every day reading and studying it. If this is not your habit, I pray it will become so.

The absence of Scripture in today's church

During my pastorate we had two Scripture readings during the worship service. One was the sermon text which I would normally read as I began my message. The other was another Scripture that seemed appropriate for the day. It might be a responsive reading that contained a number of Scriptures from the back of our hymnal, it might have been a responsive reading that I put together for that day or it may have simply been a passage from the Bible. Regardless, we always had two readings from the Scriptures. On Communion Sundays we had a third reading as I would begin our Lord's Supper with the passage from 1 Corinthians 11 in which the apostle Paul discusses the Lord's Supper.

Unfortunately, I find little Scripture reading in many of today's worship services. The sermon text might be read, but that is often all you hear read from the Bible. I'm not sure I understand why it is this way.

We spend a lot of energy defending the Bible as the infallible Word of God. We talk about how it does not return void but accomplishes its purposes. Many conservative Christians complain about Bible reading being removed from schools, but we don't read it in our worship services.

Billy Graham was well-known for his frequent references to the Bible when he preached. "The Bible says..." he would thunder to his audiences. He was not ashamed of the Scriptures because he knew they pointed to Christ and therefore had the power to change people's lives. He sowed the Word and trusted God to bring in a harvest, and hundreds of thousands of people turned to Christ because of his faithfulness to the Word of God.

Could our barren alters be the result of our largely ignoring the Word of God in our worship services? In the book of Mark we read that the disciples went out to preach and God confirmed his word with signs and miracles. We do not read anywhere that God confirmed the opinions of individuals or the latest polls with signs and miracles. Perhaps the reason we do not see more people saved and transformed is because we have ignored the Scriptures in an effort to be relevant.

Not only do we need to be reading the Scriptures in our worship services, we need to take our people deeper in understanding what the Scriptures teach. As a pastor I began preaching through books of the Bible during the summer months and into the fall. I would begin the Sunday after Father's Day and continue until the book was completed. I never had to wonder what I would preach the next Sunday because I would just start up where I left off. It forced me, and those hearing the messages, to confront passages I might have preferred to ignore. These expository messages helped me and our congregation to grow in our faith and understanding.

Let's bring Scripture reading back into our worship services. Let our congregations be exposed to as much of the Word of God as possible that it might richly impact their lives.

Confessing sins to plants

You may have read about a recent chapel service at Union Theology Seminary at which the students prayed to a group of plants confessing how they had sinned against the plants. As people heard about this the seminary posted on their Twitter account "Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. What do you confess to the plants in your life?"

I ate a salad for lunch on Wednesday so I guess I could have confessed to them that I might have eaten some of their cousins. But, if I did that I would probably have had to confess to some cows about the hamburger I had for lunch yesterday. There is no telling how much penance I would have to do to appease the hogs with all the bacon I eat!

Scripture is clear that if one does not worship the Creator one will worship creation. The apostle Paul in Romans 1 writes that "although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man - and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things."

John wrote that "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9)." He goes on to write, "If anyone sins we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Our Advocate is not some oak tree in the middle of a forest or a dandelion growing in our back yard. Our Advocate is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and it is God alone who can forgive sins. Praying to and worshiping anything other than God is paganism.

If we want to know what is wrong with many of our churches we need to look no further than this example. Churches across our nation are being led by individuals who have seminary degrees from institutions that have forsaken the Scriptures for man-made philosophies and secular worldviews. They stand in the pulpits denying the truths of the Bible and spreading the fables they have been taught to unsuspecting listeners.

This is not a recent problem. Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught at Union for a short time in 1939. Even then he was shocked at the liberalism of the students and wrote they "are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They are not familiar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanist phrases, are amused at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level." He remembered the students laughing at a lecture about sin and forgiveness. Bonhoeffer decided to leave Union to return to Germany to resist the Nazis where he would later be executed for his role in the plot to assassinate Hitler. One can only wonder what he would have thought about this recent chapel service.

As I was listening to a radio program this morning this chapel service was discussed. The hosts spent a good while making fun of this seminary and pointing out, as laymen, how wrong it was to seek forgiveness from plants. I had to laugh at some of their comments, but this really is no laughing matter. At least, it shouldn't be to anyone who cares about the church and the Kingdom of God. If the men and women who are preparing to lead the church are not taught to worship the one true God and to respect the authority of the Scriptures, what hope is there for the church and for those people for whom Christ died to save?

What is truth?

Apologist Ravi Zacharias says that we now live in a post-truth culture. The media today has replaced journalists who sought the truth with spin doctors who want their listeners to believe their version of the truth. This is true of both liberal and conservative news organizations. News reports today are more editorials than actual reporting of the news. In the last presidential election we had numerous fake stories appear in social media such as Facebook planted there by organizations trying to influence the election.

Truth also takes a beating on many university campuses today. We are told there is no such thing as absolute truth, which by the way is a self-refuting statement. If there is no absolute truth how can a statement saying there is no absolute truth be true? BTW - If this is true my high school math teachers owe me an apology because I thought my answers were true so why did they mark them wrong?

Even in the church we sometimes struggle to know what's true and what's not. Too many pastors are willing to preach to people who have itching ears telling them what they want to hear instead of what Scripture teaches. Some have watered down the gospel so much in an effort to bring more people into their churches that the gospel is unrecognizable. Still others have substituted man's philosophies and preferences for the clear teaching of Scripture that they have abandoned any pretense of presenting biblical truth to their congregations. Such false teachers will one day be held accountable.

When we stand before our people on Sunday morning we must not be afraid to preach the Word of God boldly and with confidence. Our Bible is not a book about God; it's is God's revelation of Himself to us. Holy men of old wrote as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit giving us a Bible is that infallible in all it teaches. While some modern day pastors want to limit the use of Scripture for more "relevant" sources I will join Billy Graham and countless others reminding my listeners "The Bible says...."

I admit I do not understand everything I read in the Scriptures, but I have absolute faith in its trustworthiness. Some people want to point out all the mistakes and contradictions found in the Bible. The next time someone wants to make that argument ask them to show you one. Most are just repeating what they've heard others say and have no personal knowledge of any error.

In a time when people are tired of fake news and spin doctors pretending to be journalists, at a time when people are fed up with robocalls and scams on their phones, the church must be a place where people can hear the truth proclaimed. That will only happen if the pastor has a high view of Scripture and is committed to preaching what it says rather than giving his or her personal opinions. God's Word is true. Preach it like you believe it.

Pastors must work the angles to be truly successful

Eugene Peterson, one of the truly fine Christian ministers of our time, has passed away. As a pastor, professor, and writer he influenced thousands of ministers during his lifetime. I was one of them. Although I never met the man, his books found their way into my library where they were read again and again. My favorite was Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity.

In that book Peterson pointed out that many of us in ministry focus on the visible tasks of ministry: preaching, teaching and administration. After all, it is in these areas where our congregations evaluate us. After a few short years in ministry almost anyone can become rather skilled in each of these tasks and enjoy a respectable ministry.

However, it is in the invisible, quiet tasks of ministry that gives integrity to what we do. These invisible tasks are prayer, scripture reading and giving spiritual direction. These are what Peterson called the angles of ministry, and he wrote that if we got "the angles right it was a simple matter to draw in the lines. but if we are careless with or dismiss the angles, no matter how long or straight we draw the lines we will not have a triangle, a pastoral ministry."

He then reminded his readers, "We can impersonate a pastor without being a pastor. The problem, though, is that while we can get by with it in our communities, often with applause, we can't get by with it within ourselves."

I've had seasons in my ministry where I felt I was merely impersonating a pastor. While I was going through the motions, at times it felt like I was robo-pastor. Just push a button and out pops a sermon. Push another button and I show up at the hospital. But, during those times I felt empty, and I knew I was not what God had called me to be.

The first time I read this book I realized what was missing: the angles. I had abandoned the times of prayer and scripture reading I needed to feed my own soul, and when your soul is sitting on empty it's hard to give spiritual direction to another. Any time I felt myself falling back in my old ways I would read this book again to be reminded of what God had called me to be as well as what He had called me to do.

A number of Peterson's books sit on my shelves. While all have benefitted me, none touched me or impacted my ministry as much as Working the Angles. The church lost a great Christian leader, but Peterson's influence will be felt for many more years to come.

Second greatest need of the church

Last week I posted an article that stated the greatest need of the church is prayer. Many churches no longer have prayer meetings during the week nor is prayer an integral component in many churches. We have substituted programming, technology, and education above prayer. and at the same time seen reduced baptisms,less growth, and less impact on our communities. We need to return to an emphasis on prayer.

Today I want to focus on the second greatest need in many churches: a return to the Scriptures. Last week news outlets reported on a message a congresswoman gave during a church service. It was nothing more than a political rallying cry. There may have been an occasional reference to God, but there was nothing in the article that indicated anything in the message that was biblically based. In countless churches across the country the same thing happens each week.

The message may not always be political. It may be a message that promises health and wealth, popularity, and countless self-help messages. Regardless of the focus of the message, it won't come from Scripture.

Some pastors today believe that preaching the Scriptures might offend an attender. One popular mega-pastor now promotes the need for the church to abandon the Old Testament because people struggle to relate to it and many find it offensive.

While many churches are turning away from preaching the Word of God numerous books and publications tell us that is exactly what people seeking a church want to hear. They are tired of easy, greasy preaching that cannot change lives. They're tired of hearing "I'm OK, You're OK" when they know they're not OK. If unchurched people begin attending a church they want one that believes something and isn't afraid to proclaim what it believes.

No minister should ever apologize for preaching the infallible Word of God. It points the way to Jesus Christ and eternal life. It teaches us how to conduct ourselves in this life. The Bible is not a book about God. It is God's Word given to us to teach us how to live. Where the Scriptures are proclaimed from the pulpit there is life, and when they are ignored in the pulpit spiritual death is inevitable.

As the apostle Paul wrote to young Timothy, "Preach the word! be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching." Our churches need pastors who will preach the word without compromise and without apology. I urge you to be that kind of pastor.

What is the most important thing a pastor can do for those he or she serves?

I written before about the impact Eugene Peterson's book, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity, has had on my ministry. In the book he mentions that while pastors are judged by their people for the visible tasks of ministry, the most important tasks are those that are often not seen by others. These are what he calls the angles of ministry, and only when the angles are right can we do ministry with integrity. These angles are praying, reading Scripture, and giving spiritual direction.

Although this book has influenced me, like many pastors I sometimes get so busy with the visible tasks that I find it easy to neglect the angles, and God has to remind me again of what is most important. He did this recently when I was reading an article that asked "What is the most important thing a pastor can do for his or her congregation?" The answer was to pray for them.

I often find that when God speaks it's not long until I have the opportunity to respond. A few days after reading that question and answer an individual approached me at a store and shared a private prayer concern and asked me to pray for their family. That evening I began to pray about their situation, and as I prayed I began thinking about others in our church family that needed prayer. I began to pray for them as well, and then I thought of a recent tragedy in our community and began to pray for the family affected by it.

My primary spiritual gifts are preaching, teaching, and leadership. I am working in my natural giftedness when I'm involved in any of these tasks. You'll immediately notice that these are all ministry tasks that are done in public. The angles Peterson talks about do not come natural to me. In fact, at times I can become jealous when I read about some of the saints of old who spent hours each day in prayer or in the study of Scripture. But, just because these do not come natural to me does not mean that they are less important nor does it mean that I can ignore them. It does mean that I must discipline myself to ensure that I do pray for those I serve, that I do spend time in the Scriptures, and that I am involved in giving spiritual direction.

This also means the pastor must spend time with the people in order to know how to best pray for them. The pastor who never leaves the office can only pray in generalities, and that's not enough.

I love to talk to people about God, but I think Peterson would argue that it's more important to talk to God about the people. And, I think he's right.

The theological crisis in the church

A 2016 survey conducted by LifeWay and Ligonier Ministries revealed how confused Christians are regarding theology. For instance, although 62 percent of those responding agreed that Jesus Christ is truly God with a divine nature, 53 percent said that Jesus was the first and greatest being created by God. Sixty-four percent of Evangelicals reported that everybody will go to heaven and yet they also said that only persons who trust in Jesus Christ as Savior will be saved.

Other recent surveys found that some believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife, and that over 50 percent of high school seniors thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife.

Why is there such a lack of theological understanding among Christian people? For years we've heard complaints from church leaders about this problem, but it's obvious that little has changed. Why is that?

Any pastor who has been at his or her church for more than three years has no right to complain about the lack of theological knowledge within that congregation. As the authors of The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision writes, "The theological integrity of the church will never rise above its pastors." The authors go on to blame pastors for the lack of theological integrity that exists in many congregations.

In too many churches today the sermons sound more like they came out of a self-help book than from the Scriptures. People attending these churches are seldom challenged to think theologically nor are they taught how to do so.  Pastors have so many things that demand their time they don't have time to do the difficult, time-consuming work to develop theological sermons that contain rich, meaningful content. At least, many of them do not believe they have the time.

Pastors are the primary theological teachers in their congregations. If we do not fulfill that role we cannot expect our church members to hold to sound theological beliefs. We should also not be surprised if they begin to buy into questionable and even pagan beliefs that they hear from other sources. If pastors do not help them understand the theological truths found in Scripture they will be unable to identify false teaching when it appears.

Of course, not all the blame can be placed on pastors. Compare the numbers of people who attend the morning worship services with those who attend Bible studies. The numbers at the latter event is so low that many churches today have eliminated Bible studies. Some replace them with small groups, but these groups are often more for fellowship than for the study of the Scriptures. Many Christians never pick up their Bibles except to take them to church on Sunday. It's sad to hear people say they are leaving their church because they are "not being fed" when many of them do nothing to feed themselves.

Both pastors and lay people must take action to reverse the problem of widespread theological illiteracy among Christians. Pastors must take seriously their mandate to "Preach the Word," and lay people must become serious students of theology themselves. We cannot afford to continue in the direction we are going.

Staying grounded in ministry

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a proponent of strong pastoral leadership. I don't believe in dictatorial, controlling leadership, but I do believe one of the reasons why the church struggles today is because of a lack of strong leadership from their pastors. I believe in discerning God's vision for the church, setting goals to enable that vision to be achieved, and being very intentional about hitting those goals. Sometimes I can become so focused on the doing aspects of ministry leadership that I can forget the being aspects of ministry.

Out of all the books in my library the one that has helped me stay grounded in the work of ministry more than the rest is Eugene Peterson's book Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity. In the book he describes the three tasks of visible ministry: preaching, teaching, and administration. Peterson calls these the visible lines of ministry. These are the tasks on which we are most often evaluated by our congregations. If we can perform these tasks well we can enjoy a fairly productive ministry that will be approved by most congregations.

However, the author points out that the invisible tasks of ministry, what he refers to as the angles, are prayer, scripture reading, and spiritual direction. Because these are seldom seen by anyone other than God we can ignore these at least for a season and no one will challenge us. As Peterson states, "It is possible to do pastoral work to the satisfaction of the people who judge our competence and pay our salaries without being either diligent or skilled in them." However, these angles provide the necessary foundation for a long-term, effective ministry.

Peterson writes, "Working the angles is what gives shape and integrity to the daily work of pastors and priests. If we get the angles right it is a simple matter to draw in the lines. But if we are careless with or dismiss the angles, no matter how long or straight we draw the lines we will not have a triangle, a pastoral ministry."

Later he writes, "We can impersonate a pastor without being a pastor. The problem, though, is that while we can get by with it in our communities, often with applause, we can't get by with it within ourselves. At least not all of us."

Some of us in ministry leadership spend all our time putting out fires. It seems everyone wants a piece of our time. In addition to that there are the regular duties of the ministry such as sermon preparation and the administrative duties that are a part of the job. It's very easy to ignore the angles of ministry because no one notices them anyway. Few pastors are asked by their boards how much time they spent last month reading the Scriptures for their own personal growth or how much time they spent in prayer. But, many are expected to give a report on how many visits they made to parishioners and how many committee meetings were attended.

However, if we continually fail to practice the angles we will grow empty spiritually and have nothing of real value to give our congregations. This is one reason so many ministries go off track. The visible lines of ministry begin to shoot off in different directions because there are no angles to attach them to. I've seen it happen in my ministry and in the ministries of many others. That's why I re-read Peterson's book from time to time. I need to make sure I stay grounded in ministry and work the angles to keep the ministry God has given me healthy and spiritually productive.

Read through the Bible in 2017

Every year I read through the New Testament and every few years I read through the entire Bible. It's a great discipline, and it helps Christians grow in their faith. There are passages that I've read many times, but as I'm reading them again some of them will almost jump off the page at me with new insights I had not previously seen.

It's much easier to read through the Bible in a year than many people think. Basically, you only have to read three chapters a day to read through the entire Bible in a year's time. For most chapters that would only be about 15 minutes of reading. With some of the Psalms you can read three chapters in about two minutes. When I get to them I usually read a few extra to help me when I get to Psalm 119!

Remember, this isn't Bible study. This is reading, so you can go a little quicker than if you were studying the passages. Sometimes I will go back and spend time studying a passage I just read, especially if I did find some new insights there, but this is after I've finished my reading.

Another thing I often do is to buy a new Bible for my reading, usually a different version than I've read before. I often pick one that is a more modern version as they are easier to read. Sometimes when a passage is worded a little differently a new insight is revealed. This also adds to my collection of Bibles which can help me later when I am doing sermon preparation. Finally, it allows me to mark up a new Bible. When I read through something I've previously read and marked I tend to focus primarily on the marked sections which can cause me to overlook something new.

In many parts of the world owning and reading a Bible is forbidden by law. We in America have a tremendous opportunity to study the Scriptures due to our freedoms. It is a shame that so many do not take advantage of this freedom.

God told Joshua in Joshua 1: 8 "This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success." This promise was not limited to Joshua but given to all who will read and study the Bible.

I've decided to make 2017 another year to read through the entire Bible, and I invite you to join me. If you want, buy a new translation you've not read before and prepare for an adventure reading God Word. You'll find reading three chapters a day is not difficult to achieve, and you will be amazed at the spiritual growth you'll experience.

Preaching with authority

In the 1940s Billy Graham was a young evangelist who was beginning to have questions about the authority of the Bible. A number of theologians were questioning that authority and Graham began to have doubts. He began studying the subject because he knew he could not continue his ministry if he could not be certain of the authority of the Scriptures he was preaching.

One night he went outside, opened his Bible, placed it on a tree stump and began to pray. In his prayer he told God that he even though there were things he did not understand he would accept the Scriptures as the Word of God by faith. When he finished his prayer he never again doubted God's Word. Interestingly enough, this occurred about one month before his Los Angeles crusade which launched his ministry.

Graham was well known for saying "The Bible says...." throughout his messages. The foundation of his preaching was the Bible, and this is what gave his messages the power and authority they had. His absolute confidence in the Scriptures enabled him to preach with passion resulting in large numbers of people coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

The authority of the Bible must also be the foundation that supports our preaching. Man's wisdom and philosophy cannot change a person's heart. Only the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and able to divide even the soul and spirit of a person. Only biblical truth can convict a person of his or her need for a Savior.

Some preachers believe they must water down the Gospel in order to reach more people. Studies have found that is not true. Formerly unchurched people report that one of the things that attracted them to the churches they eventually began attending was strong, biblically based messages that did not compromise the teachings of Scripture.

The apostle Paul told Timothy, "Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching." His word is for those of us today who preach as well. Preach the word! Preach it with authority as one who believes that Word has been inspired by God. Only such preaching will change a person's life.

Why do atheists try so hard to disprove God?

A thought that often occurs to me when I hear an atheist speak or read something they have written is why are they so insistent that God does not exist? I don't believe in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny, but I don't spend time writing volumes trying to prove my point nor do I engage in endless debates with those who do believe in either of those childhood stories. Whether others believe in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny really doesn't impact my life so I spend no time in trying to prove my worldview that they don't exist.

If an atheist doesn't believe in God, other's belief in God doesn't impact that atheist's life. He or she is free to live their lives as they please. So why do some of the new atheists work so hard to convince others that God doesn't exist?

For some I'm sure it's financial. Some well-known atheists have written best sellers and get invited to share their beliefs in the media and on college campuses. Their unbelief in God can be very lucrative. Perhaps that drives some of their obsession with trying to convince people there is no God, but I doubt that is the primary reason they are so insistent that God does not exist.

Perhaps the real reason is that if God does exist that means they are not God. Dallas Willard has written, "God being God offends human pride. If God is running the universe and has first claim on our lives, guess who isn't running the universe and does not get to have things as they please. (Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ)"

It is only when people can convince themselves that God does not exist that they then can become God. They can choose their own moral principles and live the lives they wish to have. The real reason people reject belief in God is not intellectual, it is moral. They understand that if God does exist they either have to conform their life choices to his teachings or live lives of disobedience and will one day face his judgment for their disobedience.

Every attempt to remove God from the public square is to be able to make the state God. As God, the state can then enact laws that reflect its own views of right and wrong. Behavior that God calls sin becomes legitimatized through the passing of laws and rulings of the courts. At that point a society begins to call good evil and evil good and in danger of God's judgment (Is. 5:20) so it becomes even more important to eliminate belief in God.

We are often told that we are in the midst of a culture war, but it goes much deeper than that. We are in a spiritual war with the very soul of the nation at stake. Too often, the church has been sitting on the sidelines letting others determine when it's proper for us to engage. It's time to get off the sidelines and enter into the battle.

It's past time that we proclaim the word of God without apology. Just as the Old Testament prophets stood up to the false gods of their day, the church today must stand up to the false gods of our day. Billy Graham and other preachers of his generation spoke with authority to the masses because they depended not upon their own personal wisdom or philosophy but stood upon the authority of the Scriptures they proclaimed. We can do no less today if we want to see God move once again in the lives of men, women, and young people.

Let the nation rage and people plot a vain thing against God (Ps. 2:1). They will not prevail against God nor against a church that proclaims the Word of God.

Behold his glory

For my devotional reading I am now reading Tim Keller's book Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God.  It is one of the best books on prayer that I have ever read.  In my reading today I came across some thoughts on beholding the glory of God in our prayers.  In part of this section he refers to the writing of John Owen, a Puritan theologian.

To behold the glory of Jesus means that we begin to find Christ beautiful for who he is in himself.  It means a kind of prayer in which we are not simply coming to him to get his forgiveness, his help for our needs, his favor and blessing.  Rather, the consideration of his character, words, and work on our behalf becomes inherently satisfying, enjoyable, comforting, and strengthening.  Owen insisted that it was crucial that Christians be enabled to do this.  He reasoned that if the beauty and glory of Christ do not capture our imaginations, dominate our waking thought, and fill our hearts with longing and desire - then something else will.

How much of our prayer life focuses entirely on the character, words, and work of Christ?  I must admit that most of my prayers do not, nor do I hear this in the majority of prayers I hear prayed by others.  Such prayer takes time.  It takes time to read and meditate upon Scripture.  It takes time to get our focus off our needs and desires and upon nothing but the glory of God.  It takes time to still our hearts enough that God's glory bursts through all the noise that makes up so much of our lives.  And who has that kind of time?

Life is lived at great speed today.  We rush from one activity to another, and if we pray at all we offer up brief snippets asking God to bless whatever is the next item on our agenda.  Scripture does tell us to pray without ceasing, and I find it helpful to pray brief sentence prayers as I go throughout the day. But, it is not enough.  We must also take the time to behold the glory of God.  We must take the time to align our thoughts upon his word and to reflect upon his character.

A shallow faith that gives God one hour on Sunday mornings, when we can spare it, is not sufficient to behold his glory.  A faith that leaves our Bibles in the back seat of our cars so we'll know where to find them next Sunday will not help us behold the glory of God.

I have been a Christian for nearly 40 years, and I feel I am still very much a student of prayer.  I wish I could report that I have mastered this concept of beholding the glory of God through my prayer life, but I cannot.  There are occasional breakthroughs when it seems the heavens open up and I see the Lord "high and lifted up."  Those are holy moments, but they are too rare.

This passage from Keller's book really spoke to me this morning, and I felt it needed to be shared with my readers.  Perhaps God will speak to some of you as powerfully as he spoke to me, and he will use it to enrich your prayer life and your walk with him.

Pastoral priorities

The modern pastor is expected to be many things.  He or she is required to be an administrator, a counselor, a fund raiser, capable of working with both senior adults and children, a teacher, a preacher, a coach, and a friend to all people.  In some churches the pastor is expected to be skilled at plumbing, wiring, cleaning, lawn care, building construction, and driving a bus.  In a church of 50 people the pastor may have 50 different job descriptions in addition to the written one.  It should not surprise anyone that clergy have a very high burnout rate and many leave the ministry prematurely each year.  No one person can be expected to effectively do all these things, and the fact that many churches do have such expectations of their pastor shows how out of touch they are with what should be the priority of the pastor.

Ephesians 4: 11-12 tells us that God gave the pastor to the church to equip the saints for the work of ministry.  Verse 14 explains that this would prevent believers from being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.  In his final letter to Timothy, Paul urges him to rightly divide the word of truth so that he would not be ashamed to stand before God (2 Tim. 2: 15).  Later, Paul would add that he needed to be ready to preach at all times sound doctrine that the people would need to hear 2 Tim. 4: 2-3).

These verses, and more, indicate to me that the preaching ministry of a pastor must be one of his or her highest priorities.  A significant part of that preaching ministry is to set aside sufficient time for study of the Scriptures so that what is presented is sound doctrine.

I've just finished reading Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God by John Piper.  In the book Piper challenges Christians to become more serious in their studies of the Scriptures.  Many Christians in North America seem to have a very shallow grasp of the Christian faith and its doctrines.  I think Piper would argue that part of the reason for this is that many of us fail to think deeply about what we read and hear.  Too often, we are content to listen to a 30 minute sermon on Sunday morning and go about our lives without really examining what was said.  Shallow thinking leads to a shallow faith.

Unfortunately, such shallow thinking is not confined to the pew.  It can be found behind the pulpit as well.  Here, the damage can be even worse.  Not only can it lead to a shallow faith in the minister, it can also lead to the spread of false doctrine that will poison the faith of others.  To correct this problem requires the pastor to be committed to being a student of the Word as Paul commanded Timothy.  Time must be set aside each week for study if the minister is to stand in the pulpit on Sunday to proclaim the truth of God's Word.  This often will require that some of the other expectations listed above will have to be given to others.

While this may not be popular in those churches that still have the mistaken belief that they have hired a minister to do all these things for them, this is exactly what the Ephesians passage is saying.  The pastor is to equip the saints to do the work of ministry.  While I am not one who believes that the pastor should not visit people or spend time outside the church office meeting some of these other expectations, I do believe that the bulk of that work is to be done by spiritually mature and equipped lay leaders.  The pastor must have sufficient time to study and prepare his or her messages.  The pulpit ministry must have priority.

The Puritan preacher, John Owen, once stated, "The first and principal duty of a pastor is to feed the flock by diligent preaching of the Word.  It is a promise related to the New Testament, that God 'world give unto his church pastors according to his own heart, which should feed them with knowledge and understanding' (Jer.iii.15).  This is by preaching or teaching the word, and no otherwise."

I have to admit that there were times reading this book that I felt convicted in my own ministry of allowing other pastoral duties to take me away from the proper study of Scripture.  Billy Graham has admitted that he now wishes he had spent more time in study and less speaking, and I share that regret.  However, it's never too late to turn that around.  One of my 2015 goals is to deepen my study of the Scriptures so that when I do speak I will have a word from God to share with my listeners.

Pastoral work that is seldom seen

Most pastors are very busy people with a lot of responsibilities.  If you ask most Christians what their pastors do you will hear that they preach, teach, visit people, and handle the administrative tasks required by the church.  These are the things that people most often see pastors doing, and these are the things by which most pastors are evaluated.  When I have conversations with people unhappy with their pastor the usual complaints I hear are that the pastor is not a good preacher or that he or she doesn't visit people, or that they are unorganized and the church is not being well-managed.  The interesting thing about each of these tasks is that once a person has been in ministry for even a short period of time he or she can do a decent job in each of them without any reliance on God.

Eugene Peterson makes this point in his book Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity.  He refers to the tasks I mentioned above, with the exception of visitation, as the visible lines of ministry, but he goes on to say that these lines must be connected to the proper angle or they lose the God-given shape they should have.  Those angles are prayer, Scripture reading, and spiritual direction.  If the angles are given their proper place, the lines of ministry will fall into place, but if the angles are ignored we will eventually no longer have pastoral ministry.  We may have a professional ministry, but we won't enjoy a pastoral ministry.

Professional ministers can meet people's expectations of what a minister should be, but that often leaves us feeling like something is lacking.  Peterson writes, "We can impersonate a pastor without being a pastor.  The problem, though, is that while we can get by with it in our communities, often with applause, we can't get by with it within ourselves."

I can recall times during my pastoral ministry when I felt like RoboPastor.  Dial my phone number and I will appear in your hospital room.  Punch a button and out pops a sermon.  It didn't take long to find out what made my congregation happy and how to produce that.  But, those times of ministry were never satisfying.  I may have been meeting the expectations of the congregation, but deep within myself I knew I was not meeting my expectations of what a pastor should be.  I was also not meeting God's.  Those times always felt empty.  Even before reading Peterson's book, the way I got out of those empty times of ministry was to return to the angles: prayer, Scripture reading, and spiritual direction.

But, to set aside time for such things is not easy for many of us.  People want us to be involved in their lives.  Much of the time we hear it as that they need us involved in their lives, and many pastors need to be needed.  When the phone rings we are too quick to run right over to someone's house because they need us.  It keeps us visible before the congregation and often results in appreciation from the one who called, and who doesn't want to be visible and appreciated?

However, if the time we spend with our parishioners is to have any real value it will come after we've worked the angles.  We will have spent time in prayer, in reading the Scriptures, and in spiritual direction, and then when we minister to others we will do so with the ability to offer them something solid and lasting.  Otherwise, we will, to use another of Peterson's terms, be putting plastic flowers in people's lives.

The thing I have to remind myself, and what I want you to remember, is that God called us to be something before he called us to do something.  We are called to be disciples.  We are called to be growing in our faith.  Our best doing will come out of our being, but if we are not working the angles it won't be long before we really have nothing left to give others except our professionalism.

A shift in the inerrancy debate

When I attended Bible college in the 1980s there was much debate about the inerrancy of Scripture.  It was the hot topic on the campus I attended and played no small role in the denomination of which that school was a part making a shift from being rather moderate to becoming very conservative.  Numerous books were written at that time stressing the importance of holding to an inerrant view of Scripture.  I certainly held to that position then and continue to do so today, but today the discussion about inerrancy has shifted, and many ministers and leaders of my generation may not understand the shift.

David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw discusses this shift in one chapter in their book Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier.  They point out that the debate about inerrancy is not about the Scriptures themselves but the interpretation of those Scriptures.  Holsclaw writes, "I knew that no one my age cared about inerrancy because they were always questioning the authority of the interpretation rather than the authority of the text.  My friends all assumed that a hidden bias was always controlling the supposed objectivity of an interpretation...In their minds, every interpretation is an imperialist act, seeking to control other perspectives."

In some of my workshops I address one of the main reasons people give for not going to church: they find it irrelevant to their lives.  They believe we are answering questions no one is asking any more, and too often they are right.  In the case of biblical inerrancy, we are often giving answers to questions that people are not asking today.  If the authors of this book are correct, people are not nearly as interested in whether or not the Scriptures are inerrant as whether our interpretations are correct.

By saying this I do not mean to say that teaching the inerrancy of the Scriptures is wrong.  I believe the Scriptures remain the foundation of all we believe, and if we cannot trust that they are correct then our theological foundation becomes very weak.  But, we cannot limit our teaching to that question.  We must go beyond that and address the question that people are now asking: is our interpretation of those Scriptures correct?  In a postmodern world where there are no absolute truths that becomes a much more difficult challenge.  I can claim my interpretation of a particular passage is true while someone else promotes a completely different interpretation of the same passage, and too many today are willing to accept both as equally true.  So, how do we convince others of the validity of our interpretation?

The authors of this book point out that the way to do this is through allowing others to see the truths we proclaim to be lived out in our lives.  They write, "As prodigal Christians, we should rarely find ourselves defending the Bible's authority.  Rather, its authority becomes undeniable when its compelling reality become visible among us.  The story of God as displayed in a people speaks for itself."  The book then fleshes this out for the reader in the next chapters.

In my opinion, this is what separates a missional church from one that is merely involved in social work.  Too often, we limit being missional to being involved in one's community, but there is much more to being a missional church.  Yes, a missional church will be engaged in ministry to its community, but most social organizations will also be involved in community service.  What makes the church's ministry different is the way it lives out the Gospel before the community it is serving.

Christians often do a better job of talking about their beliefs than we do in living out those beliefs.  When we fail to walk the talk we should not be surprised that those outside the church question our interpretation of the Scriptures we claim to believe in.  If we talk about the grace of God, then they have a right to expect that we will extend grace to people.  If they see us continue to shoot our own wounded then they also have a right to question our interpretation of what grace is.  If we talk to them about the love of God we should not be surprised if they are confused by the lack of love we often show others both outside and within the Christian family.  Obviously, I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

To convince others that our interpretation of the Scriptures is correct we must consistently live out what we claim to believe and allow them to see the impact of living such a life.  If we do this well we will have answered one of their most important questions.

The Healthy Small Church

My most popular book continues to be The Healthy Small Church: Diagnosis and Treatment for the Big Issues.  Published in 2005, it remains the best selling book of the ones I've written primarily due to the desire by most people to be in a healthy church.  Recently, I was asked to preach in a church and lead a workshop afterwards on healthy, small churches.  The person who introduced me said that she thought their church was healthy until she read the book and realized there were many areas of church life they needed to address if they wanted to be healthier.

For a long time our churches were focused on church growth until people began to realize that church health was really a precursor to church growth.  An unhealthy church will not grow, and if it did it would only grow to become even more unhealthy.  We do not need nor want that.  We want to pursue health in our churches knowing that such health will lead to growth. 

This does not mean that if our smaller churches become healthier they will turn into mega-churches.  Many factors besides the health of a church impacts the size of a congregation, but any church can grow in various other ways than just numerical growth. Churches can grow in their missional outreach into their communities.  They can grow in their level of stewardship enabling them to do more local ministry and better support the worldwide ministry of the larger body of Christ.  They can grow in their focus on justice issues.  They can grow deeper in their understanding of the Scriptures.  And, they can experience numerical growth as they invite people to faith in Christ even though they may never become a large church.

As I state in the book, the first step in a church moving towards becoming healthier is having a proper theology and doctrine.  It all begins with what we believe about the Scriptures.  As Glenn Daman has written, "The theology of a church will have a greater impact upon the future health of the church than will all of the church's programs and strategies."  A biblical theology provides the foundation upon which a church can become healthier and the foundation for everything else the church will do.  A house built upon sand wil not stand; one built on a solid foundation will stand against everything that comes against it.

Other keys to church health addressed in the book include vision, transformational worship, the acceptance of change, the ability to handle conflict and a host of other factors that are covered.  The final chapter of the book consists of diagnostic questions that church leaders can use to measure the health of their church in each of the categories covered in the book. 

One of the interesting things that has happened is that some churches have bought copies of the book for each of their church leaders.  At each leadership meeting they address a different topic from the book and use the diagnostic questions to grade how their church is doing in that area.  One church bought 95 copies to distribute to every family in their church so they could study it as a congregation.  They later invited me to speak and hold a Q&A session after their service so people could ask questions the book generated for them.  This was a church that had recently suffered a significant church split and had much healing that needed to happen.  Judicatories have purchased copies for every pastor in their district to study.  I encourage churches and others that want to purchase bulk copies to contact me directly as I gladly sell them their books at a significant discount.

Some churches are quite unhealthy and will require a lot of intentional work to return to health.  Most are healthy in general but can become healthier in specific areas of their lives.  The healthier a church becomes the more effective it will be able to minister.  I'm excited to have been able to provide a resource that is helping so many churches enjoy the health they want.