Church Growth

In the last two decades, the topic of church growth has received a ton of discussion. Most of the time, when you're talking about "church growth," you're either directly or indirectly talking about the size of the congregation. To a point, that's a really good conversation to have.

The church is an organism, and growth is important for any organism. We take my son into the pediatrician on a regular basis for "well baby checkups" to make sure he is growing and developing normally. Always, one of the critical metrics the doctor checks is his size. If Casen stops growing during this point of his life, it will be a sure sign that something is not going well. Growth is important. Same for the church.

However, at some point organisms are no longer expected to grow (size-wise). Beyond that point, any growth the organism experiences is usually unhealthy growth. As a twenty-nine year old, my doctor gets concerned when I do grow. He measures my waistline and looks for tumors or other abnormal unhealthy growth.

I wonder if we shouldn't talk about "church maturity" instead of "church growth." Organisms never stop maturing even after the stop growing. Growth is a part of maturity but not the goal or focus of maturity. It's more of a byproduct.

I also wonder if thinking about the church this way might not allow us to focus on growth for a season as a temporary part of the maturity process while a church is young, before beginning to think about other facets of maturity such as development and reproduction - topics that often get lost in the growth focus.

The Source

Henri Nouwen says about loneliness, " you must try to find the source of this feeling. You are inclined either to run away from your loneliness or to dwell in it. When you run away from it, your loneliness does not really diminish; you simply force it out of your mind temporarily. When you start dwelling in it, your feelings only become stronger, and you slip into depression. The spiritual task is not to escape your loneliness, not to let yourself drown in it, but to find its source."

Nouwen's personal struggle seems to be loneliness and depression but my experience is that his observation is true of ever emotion. Anger, fear, joy, anxiety, and everything else we can feel has a source as well as a ditch on both sides.

The problem with Nouwen's advice is that he stops short. The believer should go to the source of emotion but shouldn't stop there. We have to go to the source of our loneliness, anger, fear, or other emotion, and examine both the source and the emotion in light of the cross.

Anger, for example, is often rooted in our surprise at the sinfulness of others. When we examine it in light of the cross, we're reminded of the seriousness of sin in God's eyes and the satisfactory payment of Christ on that person's behalf, as well as our own sinfulness and need for a Savior. At that point, anger dissipates and worship emerges.

When we take emotion and its source to the cross, we're driven to worship every time.

Disorientation

Last week was a pretty rough week for me. Part of it was the emotional hangover that always follows a huge event. Part was a couple of difficult counseling appointments and leadership challenges that all hit at the same time. The details aren't important but for most of last week I felt disoriented.

Times of disorientation are present in the story of every leader I've ever met. They're scary, confusing, and can be dangerous; if the leader gets disoriented he can't set the pace or the direction. Prolonged periods of disorientation can have a long-term negative impact on the organization. Most of the time, disorientation is not that serious.

When I was learning to fly, a part of my instruction was learning how to deal with spatial disorientation that can come from flying in clouds or at night when you can't see the horizon or distinguish the sky from the grounds. During those periods, pilots are taught to only trust their instruments. Trusting your emotions, your feelings, or your perceptions can get you killed. When you're disoriented, you have to trust what you know to be true and ignore everything else until you can fly out of the clouds and reorient yourself.

It's the same in organizational leadership.

When I face times of disorientation like I did last week, I have to remember that God is in control and that He is good. I have to remember the core of what He has called me to do and that He has provided everything I need to do just that through the Cross (2 Peter 1:3). Those are my instruments. I trust those and keep moving forward, despite what I feel, as I wait for things to clear up.

Understanding the Old Testament

Next Spring I'll be teaching an Old Testament Survey class at the church. I'm looking forward to it, mostly because I love a challenge and am like most people: I don't know the Old Testament nearly as well as I know the New Testament.

But here's some food for thought: I don't believe you can understand the New Testament fully until you begin to understand the Old Testament. Although there are clear distinctions between the two with regard to how God is working (in the Old Testament through a nation, in the New Testament through a Body), the New Testament doesn't start from scratch. Sometimes I think we put too much discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. Just a casual read shows you that the New Testament writers drew heavily from the Old Testament as they wrote their letters. You can't understand the New Testament fully until you begin to understand the Old Testament.

But, according to Jesus in John 5:39 and Luke 24:27, you don't fully understand the Old Testament until you understand what it says about Jesus. You can't fully understand the Old Testament until you see how it points to what the New Testament reveals.

Bible study is a spiral. You have to know what the Old Testament says so you can understand how the New Testament clarifies what the Old Testament reveals.

Forgiveness

Our small group lesson last week was on the topic of forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of those topics that everyone agrees we should do (Ephesians 4:32), though it's rare that any of us actually agrees on what forgiveness means.

Biblically speaking, Jesus' parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18:21-35 gives a good perspective on how Jesus looked at forgiveness. Here are a couple of things to notice:

1. Forgiveness does not mean pretending a wrong never occurred. Both the king and the servant knew there was a legitimate debt owed that the servant was unable to pay (18:24). We don't have to pretend like a wrong never took place in order to forgive.

2. There are often just consequences in the absence of forgiveness. The king would have been absolutely just to require the servant to be sold to repay a legitimate debt (18:25). Forgiveness doesn't indicate that a person is unworthy of punishment. To the contrary, forgiveness means that the person who sinned against us deserves to be punished for what they did. Otherwise, there is nothing to forgive.

3. Jesus defines forgiveness as "cancelling the debt" (18:27). The king erased the debt the servant owed him. Be careful with 18:26-27. When we demand someone apologize before we forgive, we erase our chance to erase the debt. If someone "owes us an apology," and they apologize, they have paid their debt and it cannot be erased any longer. The king didn't forgive the debt because the servant made things right emotionally. He forgave the debt because he chose to do so.

4. Our forgiveness of others should be in direct proportion to the amount we have been forgiven. We should be the first to forgive others who sin against us only up to the point that their sin against us is equal to our own infinite sin against an infinite God. Beyond that, we aren't obligated to forgive.

5. Forgiving does not mean forgetting. When the king's servants heard of the forgiven servant's harsh treatment of another debtor (18:28-30), the king did not need to be reminded about their earlier encounter (18:31-32). Forgiveness means cancelling the debt. It doesn't mean you have to loan to the same person again.

Two Faces of Missional

The word "missional" has been a fad word in evangelical Christian circles for long enough that it doesn't mean anything any more. In fact, now that everyone is using the word "missional," everyone talkin' 'bout missional ain't going there.

Today, as best I can tell, you've got two different uses of the word "missional."

The word originated with churches who had a philosophy of ministry that centered on the sending of Christians into the world. Those churches aren't concerned with attracting a crowd so much as they are interested in sending people into the crowd. They want their people to live "on mission" throughout the week, hence the term "missional."

Now that the word has become a fad, another group is emerging. They've co-opted the word "missional" as well as some of the ideas of missional churches without buying the overall philosophy. They send their people to live "missional" lives with the intent of attracting people to their church.

Lots of churches in that second group are doing some good ministry. God is using them. But, I think they're missing a great opportunity.

The end goal of the missional life isn't someone being attracted to your specific church; it's someone being attracted to Jesus. And while Christ Himself is the great initiator in that process (John 6:44), He is gracious to us to use our lives in that process (2 Corinthians 5:11).

If you are more excited about attracting people to your church than you are about attracting others to Jesus, you've got either too high a view of your church or too low a view of Jesus.

2012 The Bible and the End of the World - A Review

If you've visited Barnes and Noble recently, you may have noticed the ever-growing 2012 display and wondered what the heck was going on. If you spend much time watching the History Channel, you already know.

2012 is the new Y2K; a great chance for basement dwellers everywhere to don their tin foil hats, brush up on their HAM radio skills, and collect a lifetime supply of SPAM and other surviving-the-end-of-the-world staples. With an opportunity like that, you know Hollywood is cashing in. 2012 the movie is coming out next month.

The Mayan people were a mysterious people who lived as long as 2000 years ago in Central America. They were fascinated with the stars and obsessed with keeping time to the point that they kept and observed more than 20 different kinds of calendars. The Mayan Long Count Calendar, one of the main ones, stops keeping time on December 21, 2012.

The reason for the date is that on December 21, 2012, the sun will block the center of the Milky Way, interrupting energy flow from the center of the galaxy to the earth... something that happens only once every 26,000 years. We're not sure what happened the last time this happened, but one thing is for sure: newspaper clippings from that date didn't survive. We've looked.

Add to the Mayan prediction some supposed predictions from Nostradamus, an occult "prophet" from the 16th century who mastered in giving vague fortune-cookie-like predictions, and you've got the makings of an opportunity for every wannabe scientist to get his 15 minutes of fame.

Mark Hitchcock is an evangelical Christian pastor in Edmond, Oklahoma who is fairly fluent in end-of-the-world language. He's written quite a few books about the end of the world from a biblical perspective, and is a scholar (and person) for whom I have a great deal of respect. His book "2012 The Bible and the End of the World" is a very good primer on the Mayan calendar, the Nostradamus prophesies, supposed Bible Codes, and the mystery around 12/21/12.

Whether you're vaguely curious about 2012 or someone who is really passionate about researching this kind of thing, this book is a really great place to start. Hitchcock's work is good scholarship, but doesn't feel like scholarly reading, and his footnotes will point the serious student in the right direction of several other resources to check out.

Hitchcock's conclusion? Who knows what might happen when energy is blocked from the center of the milky way to the earth. But, the Bible's flawless prophetic track record can be trusted above Nostradamus' sketchy guesses and the Mayans' inconclusive suggestions. And if the Bible is right, we've got at least 7 years from today until Armageddon and 1007 years from today until the world is destroyed.

So, continue to watch and wait for the blessed hope - the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13), and begin investing in the tin-foil hat business... you'll have some money for Christmas presents on December 23, 2012.