How to Serve Your Missional Church

Posted on May 20, 2010

In a blog post on the Resurgence today, Mark Driscoll posted some sage advice on training leaders in the church. The main theme in his post is “train the called, don’t call the trained.”

Driscoll on Training the Called

Jesus called his leaders. He didn’t get a committee. They didn’t take a congregational vote. They didn’t do nominations. Jesus called them. Jesus still calls people into ministry. We believe that. Acts 20 says that the Holy Spirit chooses the leaders in the church, he appoints the overseers. So God still picks leaders. Jesus still picks leaders through the indwelling, empowering, calling of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus trained the called. We don’t make leaders, God does. We recognize them, and then train them….

But how do you know what you are called to? Driscoll continues…

Serve How You Want

When asked about how to serve, Driscoll responded: “Do whatever you want.” They’re like, “What? Do whatever I want?” “Yeah, because if you delight yourself in the Lord, he’ll give you the desires of your heart. He’ll put desires on your heart, so that God’s desires become your desires.” Augustine said it this way, “Love God and do whatever you please.” I said, “Well, what do you like?”

Except When You’re on Mission

One exception to this excellent advice is that we don’t always have the privilege of serving “how we want” in small missional churches. If leaders come from servants, and they do, then your desires for the mission will be greater than you desires for gifted service (serving where you are gifted). Very often we mistake “the desires of our heart” for “preferences fo the heart.” We mistake natural ability or spiritual gifting for license to not sacrifice or be on mission to the poor and the needy. Although God has created us with unique gifts, he has also called us to humble ourselves to serve out of “gifting of the gospel” to bless the peoples of this world.

It is critical that we make the distinction between “preferences of the heart” and “desires of the heart.” Preferences are entitlements. Desires, in Psalm 37, come from the Spirit of God. Remember that your spiritual gift is not your spiritual gift; it’s is the Spirit’s gift, given along with a host other gifts, talents, faculties, and abilities to push the mission of God forward.

For the sake of the Gospel, many people are called to lay down “the preferences of their hearts” in order to cultivate a heart that desires God’s greater mission. If we love God first, we may find ourselves doing what we want, not second or third, but fourth or fifth. In my church, we have well-educated entrepreneurs setting up chairs, husbands serving in Kids ministry, people helping with media who aren’t “media geeks”, people running PowerPoint who could be leading worship. We also have some people serving in their natural gifts and strengths.

Using Gifts for the Mission

In the missional church, there should always be seasons of sacrifice and re-alignment of our hearts desires through serving in areas that we are not “comfortable.” Gifting and calling doesn’t lead to comfort but it does lead to joy. As small churches and missional churches grow, people will be able to move into places where they have gifts. This will bless and strengthen the community and mission of the church. It will allow the diverse body to be unified in the mission of Christ, pushing the gospel into a harmonious community that brings the sound of the gospel into every domain of the city. However, if they move into these natural places without the heart of a servant, then they can end up sabotaging the mission through “burn out”, or hurting the church through a demanding heart.

Driscoll is right. Our service stands and falls in the heart, where the gospel must be applied daily so that we can love God first and then do what our heart desires. The challenges is to so truly love God first that, for a season, you may serve out of sacrifice and the “gift of the gospel” than out of your heart’s preferences. In fact, your gifting will inevitably taking into the heart of suffering. Was Jesus “gifted to be the messiah”? Absolutely. Did it remove discomfort, inconvenience, ans suffering? Quite the opposite. The further we move into God’s calling, through obedience and mission, we will discover there is a discomfort in discipleship that must be embraced, but that with it comes a profound, deep joy of serving in the strength that God supplies so that in all things Jesus Christ may be magnified (1 Peter 4:11).

Read the rest of Mark Driscoll’s helpful post on leadership in the church.

Rewriting the Crusades with Rodney Stark

Posted on May 18, 2010

Because the Crusades are often understood within a larger framework that says that Islam is the gentle faith and Christianity the violent one. Karen Armstrong would have us believe that Muhammad was a pacifist.

Take Major Nidal Hassan, the man responsible for the Fort Hood massacre. Had an evangelical Christian of the nutty sort gotten up in front of Army psychiatrists and talked about how much he respected people who shot abortionists, he would have been out of the Army an hour later. But everybody tiptoes around the issue of Islam.

[Clinton] said we had much to be sorry about, and we bore some of the guilt for sending those airplanes plunging into the Twin Towers. Now, Clinton isn’t a nut. He’s not an anti-American. He’s just been miseducated.

Several months after 9/11, former President Clinton gave a speech at Georgetown University in which he apologized for the Crusades. He said we had much to be sorry about, and we bore some of the guilt for sending those airplanes plunging into the Twin Towers. Now, Clinton isn’t a nut. He’s not an anti-American. He’s just been miseducated. He’s been told a whole lot of nonsense about the Crusades.

Read the rest of this intriguing interview with Rodney Stark on his new book God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades.

Open But Cautious Church Planting

Posted on May 17, 2010

If we’re honest, many of us treat the Holy Spirit more like a silent partner than the third person of the

Trinity. We are so cautious of the Spirit that we eliminate him from our leadership. Instead of relying on the Holy Spirit, church planters often rely on one of two directions to plant churches: apostolic moxie or academic models and methods. When we lean on either of these, we lean away from the Spirit-led center of church leadership.

Reliance on Apostolic Moxie

Moxie is that self-starting, self-motivating quality, often present among entrepreneurs, which enables them to push through the odds of failure with a determination for success. When moxie is linked up to apostolic gifting, you get a type-A church planter. Sin results when we possess moxie without humility—a determination to plant and lead the church without leaning on the wisdom of others. The planted church will likely be unhealthy. Why? The church is treated like a task to be executed, not a people to be shepherded. It was planted in dependence on yourself not dependence on the Spirit. It’s planting by making little of the Spirit and much of yourself. Church planting takes more humility than it does moxie. We need less moxie and more Spirit.

Discernment in Planting Location

Self-reliance in planters is often expressed in a of lack discernment. Instead of asking “What is the Spirit already doing in this city, town, and village?” moxie-driven planters barrel into town with a “vision from God” and in the process burn their family, polarize their community, and disregard their city. Planters that depend on the Spirit, however, learn to listen to others, to God, and to the city.

Reliance on Academic Models

There also are planters who, instead of relying on self-determination, rely on information. They diverge from the Spirit-led center by resting on academics or personal knowledge. Those who depend on models and methods are, perhaps, more submissive to God’s call, but slowly attach their significance and success as a planter to what they know and not to God’s calling. They think to themselves: “if I learn enough then I’ll be ready to plant.”

Discernment in Mission

You have a plan to reach your city. That plan does not include the Holy Spirit; it includes your research. You pull out your strategic plan and your church planting model and methods and say: “This is what God is doing in the city.” You over-think and out-plan the Holy Spirit. What we need is fewer books and more prayers.

The Spirit Leads through (and away from) Methods

Following the Spirit does not mean we abandon methods and planning. The Apostle Paul clearly had a strategy for planting churches in urban centers, spinning his disciples off to lead and plant in rural areas.

When I arrived in Austin I was armed with a prospectus and timeline. I was also ready to protect my wife, son and baby to be in the womb. As if all that wasn’t enough change, I soon  discovered a different church planting methodology. A friend told me I was more wired for Organic Church. I had previously blown off a lot of Neil Cole’s writings because of his weak church governance and polity. As I began to read Organic Church, however, I became convinced of the value of decentralized church and its fit for urban Austin. Indie church for an indie city.

As much as I like the word “organic”, I began to realize that it was not a process but a Person that was guiding me in all of this—the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who creates and directs the church, not models (organic or traditional). The Spirit should be free to change your expression of ministry, the way you plant Christ’s church.

The Spirit Leads through Suffering

Expect the Spirit to lead you into unplanned change in order to accomplish the mission of God. For example, Stephen’s stoning led to the Eastward expansion of the Church (Acts 7; 11:19). Paul’s planting strategy was directed westward, towards Rome. If we had stuck with methods, only half the globe would have heard the gospel, but the Spirit made sure that the church expanded eastward through the martyrdom of Stephen. The blood of the martyrs made church planting a global movement. It was unplanned change, suffering. How many of us have martyrdom written into our church planting timeline? How will you respond when suffering comes? Will you ask the Spirit for direction when it comes, or will you blow through in moxie or ignore it by taking methodological detours around the God-ordained suffering?

Conclusion

Planting churches isn’t meant to happen by might or by power but the Spirit of the Lord (Zech 4:6). We need planters that are less pridefully cautious and more open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. When we open ourselves up the Spirit’s leading, remarkable things can happen on the mission of Christ!

See the audio and notes from the original Acts 29 talk: Spirit-led Ecclesiology

For more on the Spirit check out Winfield Bevins booklet.

What is an Excellent Wife?

Posted on May 13, 2010

The biblical proverb reads: “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.” Indeed, the worth of an excellent wife is beyond price, but an excellent wife is not born on her wedding day. She becomes excellent step by step, year by year, by walking in the direction of excellence. This kind of worth does not simply fall upon you, it is cultivated over time.

Charm & Beauty

There are many obstacles to becoming an excellent wife. The Book of Proverbs is littered with them. Proverbs 31 closes with two obstacles–charm and beauty. Not what you would expect. Doesn’t the excellent wife dazzle her husband with her beauty and charm, her looks and her wit? Maybe, but that’s not what makes her excellent.

“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Prov 31:30). A woman who fears the opinions of others runs to the refuge of “beauty” instead resting in the refuge of her God. Inadvertently, she makes a new god out of her looks. She obsesses with her face, her figure, and her fashion not with wisdom, faithfulness, and godliness.

Charm makes a bad god too. A woman who fears losing the limelight chooses charm over faithfulness. She attempts to lure the light—attention, approval, or applause—in discreet or overt ways. Her comments bend conversation in her direction. Her attire bends the eyes of men towards her body. Her preoccupation is not: “How may I bless others”, but “How may I capture their attention?”

The More Excellent Way

There is a way forward in becoming an excellent wife. It has to do with fear. The excellent wife, the woman who is worthy of praise (not who tries to get it) is a woman who fears the Lord. What does it mean to fear the Lord? Is it cowering in the corner in prudish silence? Or perhaps a general terror of the judgment of God? Neither. Then what?

There is a kind of fear that a daughter has of her father, a deep reverence and respect and admiration of his authority in her life. This fear isn’t sinful; it’s trusting, hopeful. It’s not the fear of a servant but the fear of a son. A woman who lives under God’s authority, who trusts in his providence, no matter how bitter it may be, is an excellent woman, a woman worthy of praise.

This kind of fear gets tested in marriage. My wife has had reasons not to trust me at times (seasons of confusion, anger, selfishness), but she knew that she had every reason to trust God, her heavenly Father. See, a woman who holds her highest respect for her Creator is freed under his protection and love to honor her husband. When her source of acceptance and love fits securely in the arms of an unfailing Father, she is freed to be an excellent wife. When her husband fails her, her world does not fall apart because she trusts in the God who put the world together. This kind of fear isn’t daunting; it’s delightful (Isa 11:3).

My Wife of 10 Years Today

Many women have done excellently, but you my dear, you surpass them all. You bear the beauty, the trustworthiness, the wisdom, the enterprise, the mercy, the kindness, the strength, and the faith of an excellent wife. Thank you for fearing and trusting God more than you fear and trust me. Thank you for not relying on charm and beauty but on grace of God. Thank you for laboring to bless others and placing me in the center of your blessings. They are innumerable. Indeed, an excellent wife is hard to find, and I have found one. These ten years have been a gift I do not deserve, your companionship beyond what any man could imagine. I love you. Here’s to many more decades!