Up Close and Personal

Tuesday I had a great conversation with one of my buddies who works at another church about the method of discipleship in each of our churches. Churches try to tackle the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) in a lot of different ways: through large group growth, small group growth, a lecture format, hands-on service projects, one-on-one relationships, and about a thousand permutations of each.

As I talked about the method I prefer, I was reminded of something I heard Howard Hendricks say a long time ago: "You can impress anyone from a distance; you can only impact up close."

To me, there is just no substitute for life-on-life, intentional discipleship. The level of intimacy, degree of accountability, and ability to laser-focus biblical principles in the most personally relevant ways can't be replicated in even a relatively small group. You can fake out a large or small group from a distance with any reasonable talent in deception.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in small groups. I believe in large groups. But when it comes to having the greatest impact for my buck, I'll choose life-on-life relationships every day.

Backwards Marriage Illustrations

I was thinking about something yesterday:

When we read Ephesians 5 and other passages about marriage, we usually read them as if Jesus' life is the ultimate illustration of marriage. Wives ought to be voluntarily selfless (5:22), and Jesus showed us how by submitting to His Father's will despite the cost to Himself. Husbands ought to be sacrificial lovers (5:23) and Jesus showed us how by dying for someone who didn't deserve it.

But I think we have it backward.

It wasn't like God was sitting in heaven puzzled, thinking "How in the world can I help their marriages be better? Oh, I know! I'll send my Son as an object lesson for them."

We've flipped the illustration. Jesus isn't intended to be an illustration of marriage; marriage is intended to be the ultimate illustration of Jesus, and specifically the gospel.

There's a huge difference.

Jesus' main purpose wasn't to make your marriage better. Your marriage's main purpose is to make the gospel of Jesus more evident to everyone around you. And here's the thing: when that happens, our marriages usually get better as a result.

Here's a question for you: "How can I love my spouse today in a way that the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be made more clear to others?"

Hooked - Book Review

I heard about "Hooked" by Joe McIlhaney and Freda McKissic Bush from my mother-in-law who heard about it on the radio. The subtitle of the book is "New Science on how Casual Sex is Affecting our Children."

I do a lot of premarital counseling, and it is staggeringly rare for me to counsel a couple in which both parties are entering marriage sexually pure. I also do a fair amount of regular marriage counseling, and have been confident for a while that premarital sex scrambles something for couples and individuals that is hard to sort out. This book is the science behind that scrambling.

McIlhaney and Bush are both ob-gyn physicians who are a part of a group called "The Medical Institute for Sexual Health." That institute has done a significant amount of testing and research on the response of the brain to sexual activity, and their conclusions are pretty fascinating.

To sum it up, the brain responds to sexual activity a way that promotes a long-term highly-committed sexual relationship. Casual sex, "hooking up," rewires the brain and desensitizes a person (male or female) to the brain chemicals that promote connection and intimacy. Because the brain chemistry of a person bonds them to another person, a person naturally moves more quickly into another sexual experience after a sexual relationship ends, attempting to recreate what they had previously. When this happens in a younger, under-developed brain, the rewiring can be difficult to unscramble.

The book has a lot of technical jargon, but it's well-explained. If you're a parent of a teenager, or a teenager yourself, you'll be able to understand the book. It isn't a page-turner, nor written particularly well (in my opinion), though the information alone makes the read well worth it.

I don't know where McIlhaney and Bush are spiritually; this is not a "True Love Waits" book written by church ladies trying to rob high school students of a fun prom night. It is a book written by doctors based on years of scientific research. But the conclusion is thoroughly biblical: sex inside marriage is great for a reason; but outside marriage, it can destroy your current and future relationships.

Holiness

I just finished a great book called "Healthy Congregations; a Systems Approach." If you're a pastor, it's worth picking up.

I love this story about holiness near the end of the book.

It seems that a young aspirant to holiness once came to visit the hermitage of an old holy man who was sitting in the doorway of his quarters at sunset. The old man's dog stretched out across the threshold as the young spiritual seeker presented his problem to the holy man. "Why is it, Abba, that some who seek God come to the desert and are zealous in prayer but leave after a year or so, while others, like you, remain faithful to the quest for a lifetime?"

The old man smiled and replied "Let me tell you a story:

One day I was sitting here quietly in the sun with my dog. Suddenly a large white rabbit ran across in front of us. Well, my dog jumped up, barking loudly, and took off after that big rabbit. He chased the rabbit over the hills with a passion. Soon, other dogs joined him, attracted by his barking. What a sight it was, as the pack of dogs ran barking across the creeks, up stony embankments and through thickets and thorns! Gradually, however, one by one the other dogs dropped out of the pursuit, discouraged by the course and frustrated by the chase. Only my dog continued to hotly pursue the white rabbit.

In that story, young man, is the answer to your question."

The young man sat in confused silence. Finally, he said, "Abba, I don't understand. What is the connection between the rabbit chase and the quest for holiness?"

"You fail to understand," answered the old hermit, "because you failed to ask the obvious question. Why didn't the other dogs continue the chase? And the answer to that question is that they had not seen the rabbit. Unless you see your prey, the chase is just too difficult. You will lack the passion and determination necessary to perform all the hard work required by the discipline of your spiritual exercises."

Organizational Healing

A few weeks ago, one of Casen's friends fell into the corner of his parents' coffee table and busted his forehead. Just a few weeks before that, the college-aged daughter of some of our friends was run over by a pontoon boat. Her arm was almost completely severed by the motor.

For the smaller injury, the trip to the ER involved a few sutures, a band-aid, and some hugs and kisses. The boat accident required different treatment. It was a major enough wound, no sutures could hold the wound together tight. A careless doctor who attempted to "fix" the wound too quickly would have endangered the life of the person he was trying to heal. Deep wounds have to heal by a process called "granulation," where the wound is packed and the body naturally heals from the inside out. During that long, gradual process, the wound is especially vulnerable to infection and disease so doctors have to be very careful, and patient.

I think organizational wounds heal much the same way. Cosmetic, surface wounds can be serious if they are ignored but can be treated quickly. With those wounds, healing happens rapidly, often leaving no trace of the injury behind. However, deep wounds have to be treated slowly and deliberately. If you rush to close up a serious problem, you risk causing the organization even more damage.

Before your organization begins the healing process, it's probably a good idea to do some triage and figure out exactly what wounds you're dealing with. Failure to do so could have long-term implications.

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.