When churches attack

My doctoral project was to coach six bivocational pastors for three months and write a thesis on how coaching can benefit bivocational ministers. I asked for volunteers who would benefit from the coaching experience and received several responses from interested persons. I'm happy to report that my paper has been downloaded about 3,500 times since it was written. My last book, The Art and Practice of Bivocational Ministry: A Pastor's Guide, details what was included in my thesis in a more readable format. 

One of the pastors I coached was a woman serving a small church in the northern plains. In one of our sessions I asked her what she most wished she could do in ministry. She responded that she would like to minister to people who have been hurt by the church. I laughed at her answer and explained that if she could do that she would not be in a small church very long. She would find that there were likely a large number of people even in her small community who had been hurt by a church at some time in their lives. We spent the remainder of that coaching session discussing what such a ministry might look like.

It is a sad reality that those who claim to follow Jesus Christ who taught us to love one another can be so mean-spirited and hurtful towards others. Only God knows how many have walked away from the church, and sometimes abandoned Him, because of the pain caused by persons within the church. I have heard countless stories during my ministry. I have good friends that left the church for a season because of hurtful things that were said to them from people within their own congregations. One pastor's son admitted he once contemplated suicide because of the way the church was treating his father and their family. I have known churches who had members who saw it as their spiritual gift to point out perceived mistakes others were making in their lives driving these people away from the church and God. This has to end.

Some will argue that sin must be confronted, and I would agree, but not in the manner in which such confrontation often occurs. Too often such confrontation appears to back people into a corner waving a 97-pound Scofield Reference Bible over their heads and screaming, "Turn or burn." Doesn't Jesus model for us a much better way to confront people with their sins? I think of Him speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well or with the woman caught in adultery. I'm reminded of His words to Zacchaeus, and His willingness to eat with this despised tax collector. The only time Jesus spoke harshly to those involved in sin is when He spoke to the religious leaders.

Jesus invites us to come to Him just as we are. Once we do that He will begin the transformation process we need. If you'll stop and think about it, He did the same thing with you. I'm not suggesting that there is never a time when we should challenge people about the choices they are making. Sometimes we need to be very honest with people that some choices do not honor God, but then we will be much better off letting God take over at that point. Let His Spirit begin the convicting work in their lives which will lead to transformation. One last note...don't expect overnight changes. After all, God is still working on you as well.

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?

The secrets we keep

Secrets are a serious problem because most of us have them. I was recently reading a book about estate selling, and one of the things the writer cautioned people about was to make sure they didn't leave their secrets for others to find. The writer is a 20-year veteran of selling estates. As he has gone through houses preparing them for an estate sale he has discovered many things that would be very troubling if loved ones found them. For instance, he says that in about 80 percent of the estates he sells he finds pornography, which he does not sell. He finds pictures of people in compromising situations which would hurt family members. In my auction business I have also found items that would be very hurtful if family members had seen them.

Of course, one of the problems with secrets is nearly everyone has them. There are things we simply do not reveal to anyone. Some of these secrets may be relatively minor, but others have the potential to do great damage to one's family or to others. Of course, they have even greater potential to do harm to us. I often tell troubled churches they are only as healthy as the secrets they keep. The same is true for individuals.

Perhaps the quickest example of this in the Bible is the story of David and Bathsheba. King David had an affair with the married Bathsheba while her husband was fighting in a war David should have led. The affair led to her becoming pregnant. When David learned of this he sent for her husband thinking he would be intimate with her while he was home, and everyone would assume the child was his. However, her husband refused to sleep with his wife while his fellow soldiers were fighting a war. His refusal led David to send him back with secret orders to have him placed on the front line and abandoned so he would be killed. When word was received of his death, David married Bathsheba hoping that no one would know of his sin.

For approximately a year it seemed that his secret was safe, but David admitted that his strength had left him, that he had lost the joy he once had known through his relationship with God. Still, he kept his secret until God sent a prophet, Nathan, to confront David. Once confronted, to his credit, David admitted his guilt and cried out to God for forgiveness. God did forgive him, but he and his family paid a terrible price for his disobedience and his attempt to hide his secret from others.

Secret sins have a way of eating at us. Satan uses them to cause us to feel great guilt and shame which robs us of the joy of the Lord. Being unwilling to confess our sins we often become unable to overcome them leading us further and further away from God. They not only alienate us from God, they can alienate us from our loved ones.

In Psalm 51 we read David's prayer of confession. Like David, we need to repent and seek God's forgiveness for the secret sins we might be keeping. There are many reasons why some people are unwilling to admit their sins, but none of them make any real sense. God already knows our lives, both the good and the bad. It's not like we are hiding anything from Him. When we refuse to confess our sins we are only deceiving ourselves.

The author of the book I'm reading is right. If you have physical things in your home that you would be ashamed of someone finding, you need to get rid of them. More importantly, if there are secret sins in your life you need to deal with them so you can be spiritually whole. If you do, like David, you will find that God will quickly forgive you and set you back on a course of spiritual healing.

New books for a new year

The past couple of days I shared my top 10 favorite reads for 2017. Today I want to let you know what I'm reading now and some of the books on my to-read shelf. The books I'm currently reading are

Knowledge and Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga. The author is  Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Notre Dame. The majority of his books are written for fellow academics. I heard this was one written for the general reader. I definitely do not want to read any he wrote for academics! Although I find this a difficult read, it has been one that is most interesting and helpful.

Whatever Became of Sin by Karl Menninger. This book was written in 1973. Menninger illustrates how many of the things that were once called sins became illegal acts. This made those acts subject to the courts rather than the church. Later, another shift occurred when many of these acts were classified as diseases. When this occurred the person committing the acts came under the care of the doctors and psychologists. Each of these shifts removed the act further and further away from being an act of transgression against the commandments of God. I do not agree with everything the author discusses in the book, but it does help me better understand why many people now reject any notion that they are sinners in need of a Savior.

Ghosts in the Fog by Samantha Seiple. For decades the US government denied reports that the Japanese invaded Alaska during World War II. This book tells the story of this invasion. I am finding it an incredible story and read about half of the book in one sitting.

Some of the books on my to-read shelf are

Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright
Praying the 23rd Psalm by Elmer Towns
Night by Elie Wiesel

I also plan to re-read a number of books in my library this year. It's time to revisit some of the books that have impacted my life in the past to see if I can glean some new nuggets of gold from them.

I hope you have a reading plan for 2018.