Thabiti Anyabwile responding to the assertion that the traditional sermon is the culprit in “crippling discipleship.”

I think that assertion errs in at least two ways:

1. It assumes that the primary or perhaps exclusive way of making disciples is the Sunday morning sermon.
Wherever that’s being assumed, it seems to me to be wholly in error. Preaching is necessary to but not sufficient for making disciples. It takes the entire body with every member every day to make solid disciples.

The reason we have spiritually immature believers (which we’ll always have in some measure) and burned out pastors isn’t because the pastor preaches every Sunday (which most pastors enjoy doing). The reason we have immature believers and burned out disciples is because so many Christians are not opening their lives, inviting others in, and making spiritual deposits in intentional disciple-making relationships.

The problem isn’t that we have preachers; the problem is that every disciple is not themselves making disciples as our Lord commands.

2. The assertion errs because it makes preaching to believers unnecessary when the NT makes it necessary.
Paul explicitly commands Timothy to “preach the word” in the gathered assembly. What word is that? Likely the OT, which Paul says elsewhere was written for our instruction and example. Insofar as Timothy is to “preach the word,” he’s doing some form of exposition in the assembly. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

That was found in the comments section of a post called “Who’s Doing the Talking in Our Church Gatherings?” The entire post and about 2/3 of the comments are worth reading here.

So this guy named Paul gets arrested in a holy place. He gets arrested, ironically enough, because people who should be his allies are trying to kill him.

Why? Well, they had seen him with a second-class civilian earlier in the day, walking through the city. Now that same guy was in the holy place – not with Paul but… Unlawfully! – and they saw an opportunity to make an accusation.

Some dramatically inclined fellow puts on his acting hat and proclaims: “Help! You Israelites, help! This is the man who is going all over the world telling lies against us and our religion and this place. He’s even brought Greeks in here and defiled this holy place.” (Acts 21:28 MSG) A mob beating ensues…

A more likely scenario is that they dragged the Greek against his will into the temple just to frame Paul. As one commentator put it: “The possibility that Trophimus [the Greek] might have wandered of his own free will into the forbidden area is about as likely as that somebody should wander into the private rooms in the Kremlin for the purpose of sightseeing.”

Besides, they could have asked Paul directly if he’d brought him in but, shucks, he might say no, and then what? Paul was guilty of associating, no doubt, just like Jesus often was, but no proof existed that he had actually transgressed the law. But why let that spoil the fun?

“Never mind the facts – we say Paul brought him here! Let’s get him, boys!”

Part of their message to Paul was, “Be careful whom you are seen with in any place. It could come back to haunt you…” and you can imagine that being followed with an “if-you-know-what-I-mean” wink. In other words, they were seeking to control his actions with fear of repercussions – in this case, direct physical violence.

Like this was news to Paul. He already knew, since the Holy Spirit had notified him, that in every city he went to there would imprisonment, beatings, and persecution. (see Acts 20:23-18-23)

And So…
When people don’t like what you’re doing, they’ll use anything as a stone to throw. Good intentions? – We don’t care. Actual facts? – Maybe later.

When people don’t like what you’re doing, they watch you with an eye for any small mistake that can be leveraged into a full-scale assault.

When people don’t like what you’re doing, they’re willing to believe anything negative about you because they’ve already decided what they think about you.

When people like this don’t like what you’re doing, be blessed, because Jesus says you ARE blessed. Matthew 5:11-16 (ESV):

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (or, as Peterson puts it: “My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.”)

Be blessed.

I’m gathering some people to serve at Ark Aid Street Mission in London Ontario next Friday night, January 28th and I’m inviting you to join the crew.

We need to be there around 6:00pm and we’ll be done around 9:00pm. We’ll be serving hot food, clearing tables tables, doing dishes and interacting with the clients.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in doing, contact me via Facebook, Twitter, email, or blog comment.

Here is an informational video about the mission:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTt-rgm2D7c&feature=player_embedded

Internal of External Focus?
For some churches, making an effort to be more “externally focused” means, “We’ve been too internally focused and we need balance.” This is probably an accurate diagnosis for most churches and, if followed with a balanced correction, a good way forward.

For other churches, making an effort to be more “externally focused” means, “We’ve been too internally focused so now we’re going to stop that and be externally focused.” Again, it’s probably an accurate diagnosis but it’s a bad way to make a correction. One end of the pendulum is not better than the other, no matter how long you’ve been stuck at one end.

It’s not about one or the other – it’s about both.

The Law of Christ
Everyone has burdens and in Galatians 6:2 Paul tells us that by helping each other along we “fulfill the law of Christ”. What is the “Law of Christ”? In John 13:34-35 Jesus says:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for each other!

Love As Evangelism
So when Paul later says that we are to do good to all, especially those in our community of faith he’s not saying, “Don’t worry about the people outside.” He’s saying that loving each other is one way to be a witness to a watching world. Loving each other can be an evangelistic act!

We need to be demonstrating our love for each other both within the community of faith and in more public places where it can be seen by the broader community.

The “How-To” Part
One way to do this is to reduce church-based activities in order to increase members’ involvement in the community outside the church. But this alone will not ensure loving activity.

Asking the following question might help: What activities are people encouraged to attend “at church” that could easily take place somewhere else and be just as – or more – effective?

- Could we do the 30-hr Famine event at the local high school and invite all students there to take part?

- Could the College and Career group meet in a public park to learn and discuss and pray?

- Could the new believer class be taught in town somewhere with an open invitation?

- Could the Cradle Roll team welcome new babies and provide support to single mothers who don’t attend our church?

- Could the Father-Son Camp and Mother-Daughter Camp integrate the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization into it somehow?

- Could we have our hymn sing nights at a nursing home among the house-bound residents rather than require them to come to the church building?

- Could our marriage and parenting seminars be offered in a public space and opened to all?

- Could the baseball teams play in the city league rather than the church league?

What else can you add to the above list?

Highlights from an interview with Kevin DeYoung, the full text of which can be found here:

What is justice and what does it mean to do justice?

Doing justice means giving people their due. On the one hand that means restraining and punishing wrongdoers. On the other hand it means giving people what we owe them as beings in the image of God… Doing justice, then, includes everything from law enforcement to being generous to the poor.

Any cautions you would give to Christians who are eager to transform the world or make the shalom of the city their church’s mission?

I believe that making disciples and doing justice relate (not exactly) but somewhat in the same way that faith and works relate to one another.

We would say that faith alone is the basis for salvation, and yet true faith will always result in good works. We must not “load in” works as if they are an equal with faith as a salvation-base, but neither can we “detach” works and say that they are optional for a believer.

Similarly, I would say that the first thing I need to tell people when they come to church is “believe in Jesus,” not “do justice.” Why? Because first, believing in Jesus meets a more radical need and second, because if they don’t believe in Jesus they won’t have that gospel-motivation to do justice that I talk about in the book.

So there’s a priority there. On the other hand, for a church to not constantly disciple its people to “do justice” would be utterly wrong, because it is an important part of God’s will. I’m calling for an ‘asymmetrical balance’ here.

It seems to me that some churches try to “load in” doing justice as if it is equally important as believing in Jesus, but others, in fear of falling into the social gospel, do not preach or disciple their people to do justice at all. Both are wrong. A Biblical church should be highly evangelistic yet known for its commitment to the poor of the city.

Before I was a pastor I wouldn’t have known where to purchase cocaine. Now, access is just a phone call away.

(For the record, there has been no accessing of this substance on my part.)

What I’ve discovered since becoming a pastor a couple of years ago is that there is more of a drug culture, even in our small towns, than we think. This has led me into some dark places to be with the kinds of people that it turns out Jesus was keen on reaching out to.

They’ve brought their friends to meet me too. These meetings – the initial ones and the subsequent ones – never have fairy tale endings. The friends I’ve met, even the ones who have decided to follow Jesus, still struggle with their addictions. They struggle with their addictions, with their ongoing social strife, with the poor start they were given in life, and with their inability to avoid a daily existence involving the worst kinds of drama.

You know, all of the stuff that most of the rest of us don’t need to worry about.

Walking with someone through all of this is frustrating, draining, and difficult… but it’s not boring, I can tell you that, and it is ultimately rewarding.

Sick Physicians
It’s the sick, Jesus tells us that are in need of the physician. Unfortunately too many physicians are happy to gather together weekly for mutual affirmation while ignoring the sick.

Many of these physicians are just as sick in other ways, but it’s really hard to tell that when you’re surrounded by a bunch of other people with the same sickness. More mutual affirmation…

We Need Each Other
The sick and the healthy – we need each other. Those who are sick with addictions need those who are not and those who are sick with pride need those who have none.

I was in a meeting on Saturday night when a thought occurred to me. I was sitting with three very good friends talking about where the ideal place would be to plant a church amongst the homeless, drug addicted, and sex-trade workers.

What’s important at the outset, we all agreed, is to let people know that WE are not there to change THEM. We are there to change WITH them, since WE are not complete in our perfection.

When you meet someone who struggles with addiction, they are changed but you are too. Sometimes, you change more than they do!

Connections
Do you have the right connections to make a call right now and have the ability to purchase cocaine? If not, you probably don’t know enough of the types of people Jesus did.

I can help you find these people if you’re interested. Let me know.

(Of course there are a couple of cautions to throw in here. Don’t do this if you’ve struggled with this type of substance abuse in the past. Don’t walk into an area of weakness and tempt yourself beyond your limits, etc.)

But for most of the rest of you, you really need someone you can look in the face and say:

“I’m not here to change you; I’m here to change WITH you.”

These questions are worth asking as you set your church’s missions budget for the coming year. From Kevin DeYoung:

1. Are we supporting 1 Timothy 4:16 kind of people?
The command to keep a close watch on your life and doctrine may have been first of all for Pastor Timothy, but it is important for all of us. We are all called to be examples of godliness. We are all called to believe what accords with sound doctrine. This is true for our missionaries as well. (more…)

2. Are we supporting ministry in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth?
It would be pressing Acts 1:8 too far to think that we need to have our missions budget divided up exactly 25% into four different areas. But it makes sense that the priorities Jesus gave the disciples would be our priorities. (more…)

3. Are we striking the right balance of word and deed in the ministries we support?
Very few people are against wholistic missions in principle. Most agree that there is a place for social ministries (education, medicine, disaster relief, agricultural development). And hopefully every evangelical acknowledges that we must share the gospel. The tricky part is how to get the balance. (more…)

4. Are we giving priority to long-term missionaries?
It’s no secret that we’ve seen an explosion of short-term missions in the past generation. Almost every church sends out teams to build homes or do street evangelism or teach in the Bible school for a couple weeks. Thank God for the interest more and more Christians have in serving God in different places. But it’s easy for churches to spend too many resources on short-term missions. (more…)

Read the entire article here.

More often than not I find something quotable in the writings of Douglas Wilson… like these from a recent post entitled “Not the Clerk of Session“.

“The Reformation was a revival of true gospel preaching, and such gospel preaching always comes down to the point of decision. Good preaching is aimed at the will; all good preaching aims at conversion. If the people are not converted, they need to be. If they are, then a message aiming at true conversion will encourage them, not beat them up. As Luther put it, we are called to a lifetime of repentance.

Good preaching reminds every Christian soul that we live before the God who sees and knows the heart, and who will sift those hearts in the great day of judgment.”

And then this:

“A distinction should therefore be kept sharp between the preaching of the Word, and the shepherding of souls. The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, but this does not mean that a minister can see hearts. When it comes to the division of soul and spirit, the Scriptures are sharper than a sword. But at the same point, fallible ministers can be as sharp as a pound of wet liver. But the fact that he cannot see this or that heart exhaustively should not prevent him from preaching the Word searchingly.”

Read the entire post here.

So says David Fitch. First, Fitch offers an admission (one that I could make myself):

I often use the pedagogical tactic that starts out by saying something provocative and then, after I’ve gotten myself into some trouble, and acquired some people’s attention,  I try to explain myself. It’s a bad rhetorical habit. Nonetheless, it works. This time it seems to have attracted some attention so let me take advantage of it and explain what I meant.

So, is there some hyperbole in the statement? Yes, but it did get your attention, didn’t it? Fitch explains:

Prototype youth groups are built on the worst of modernist assumptions concerning the way human beings develop as cultural beings. [Parents] think the answer is to somehow get their children to a place where the youth culture attracts them and somehow makes Christianity attractive to their age group. All these things, I argue, work against the child growing up into a vital and real relationship with the living God and what He has done in Christ for the world.

He then lists as least three ways that prototype youth programs are destructive:

1.) YOUTH GROUPS FOSTER PEER ORIENTATION.

Youth groups segregate the youth from the adults creating programing geered towards them as a separate culture. This creates a gap between the youth and the adults culturally. This then leads the youth to look to their peers for orientation into life. This I contend works against the discipleship of youth into Christ. I contend this peer orientation is disasterous for the lives of our children.

2.) YOUTH GROUPS UNDERCUT WHOLISTIC COMMUNITY from which a child can learn faith in Chirst as a way of life/relationship, not just information slickly delivered… children learn about the living God by being in living relationships within a community where God is present. Once Jesus becomes infotainment, once it becomes a program, detached from real relationships, it loses its reality. It takes on the character of a learning experience in competition with other learning experiences.

3.) YOUTH GROUPS TOO OFTEN TRY TO ATTRACT YOUTH PLAYING TO THEIR WORST INTERESTS.

It’s a mistake to try to “attract” youth to discipleship with either social occasions that play on their sexual insecurities or music entertainment that plays on their desire to be “cool.” There will be times I am sure to attend the occasional rock concert or have the occasional social time together. But what the church should do for its youth most of all is foster spaces for meeting God where they can be trained to listen for God and commune with Him in silence, in prayer.

These are just the highlights. Read the whole thing here. If you have time, take in some the content in the comments section as well.

There was an excellent post at Desiring God a few days ago called “Embracing the Ordinary“. The posts consists of a quote by Carl Trueman in Republocrat followed by six implications – three for churches and three for pastors. First, Carl Trueman:

[The] Lord has blessed the church of today with some remarkably talented individuals who have been used to do remarkable things. The danger is that, in focusing on such men, we create unrealistic expectations. The evidence that the church models developed by these men can be transplanted with success elsewhere is highly equivocal; more likely, their success is rooted in God’s using their own remarkable gifts and contexts—the right men in the right place at the right time for something great, if you like. The life of Don Carson’s father, outlined so movingly in his Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor, is more likely to be closer to the norm for most churches and pastors than that of Redeemer in New York (38-39).

Bingo! This, as I have pointed out ad nauseum, is the major failing of Willow Creek’s “Leadership Summit” event. The “leaders” they present as authorities bear little to no resemblance to the average attendee of the event. Unless you are trying to build an empire with the same look and size (which is actually the goal of many), it makes no sense to idolize these leaders.

They are the exception, not the rule and by defining leadership success by their accomplishments implies that a majority of pastors and other leaders are losers and failures.

The post at DG then considers these six implications (Shortened here. Read the full post for the expanded points):

Three Implications for Churches

1. Listen (attentively and expectantly) primarily to your pastor’s sermons
2. Listen to extraordinary preachers (unless he’s your pastor) sparingly
3. Lower your (likely unrealistic) expectations of your pastor. While he may not be (and likely isn’t) extraordinary, he is (for you and your church) likely the right man in the right place at the right time.

Three Implications for Pastors

1. Broaden your diet of your favorite preachers
2. Be content being an ordinary pastor and preacher
3. To give you proper perspective (and deep encouragement) as you aspire and cope with your newly embraced “ordinariness,” read Carson’s Memoirs annually

Posts like this is one of the reasons I continue to read content at Desiring God written by John Piper and others. Piper’s church is  mega-church size without mega-church BS. Theologically, you may have a few bones to pick with him, but you have to admit that there’s a refreshing lack of mega-church thinking.

There is far too much free-lance pastoring going on, and that’s where this post hits a bit of a paradox. Desiring God and other large ministries put out so much content, with increased influence being the primary goal. Still, I like the “proceed with caution” attitude displayed in the post.

Sometimes people need to be told “That’s a nice thing to say, but that guy’s not your pastor,” and also “If you want him to be your pastor, here’s the address of his church and a membership transfer form.”

In Matthew 28 Jesus tells his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Disciples making disciples – this is what Jesus has sent us to do.

But this is more than a one-trick assignment. We are not called merely to bring people to the front door of faith, usher them through it, and then circle back to gather more recruits.

The task of disciple-making is at least threefold and is accomplished not just in getting new people “into the fold”, but also caring for them while they are there, and retrieving them when they wander off – leaving the other 99 in relative safety, depending on the terrain and prevalence of predators.

Focusing on getting people into the fold is what we’ve tended toward -  a remnant of “sign on the line and get saved” Evangelicalism perhaps.  And while new community is formed with the making of new disciples,  deeper community is found only as we pursue the other two aspects of disciple-making.

These other two – care for and retrieval of – are by far the more difficult and time-consuming, and for that reason they are more often neglected.

The entirety of chapter 10 of Eugene Peterson’s “The Contemplative Pastor:Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction” is worth further exploration since it deals with small talk. What’s that you say… you didn’t think Peterson would be a fan of Seinfeld?

He may or may not be, but endless, mindless, pointless chatter is not what he’s talking about in this chapter.

I have to admit that sometimes as a pastor I feel the need to turn ordinary conversations into “spiritual” conversations. There is sometimes a guilt experienced in the aftermath of a coffee meeting or an evening spent with people from my church in which the conversation never made its way past the ordinary things of life. But this is more guilt than conviction; more a capitulation to a perceived requirement than a failure to act on what I know to be right.

“Pastoral work,” says Peterson, “is that aspect of Christian ministry that specializes in the ordinary. It is the nature of pastoral life to be attentive to, immersed in, and appreciative of the everyday texture of people’s lives – the buying and selling, the visiting and meeting, the going and coming.”

There are always crisis situations to attend to but most people, most of the time are not in crisis.

“Small talk: the way we talk when we aren’t talking about anything in particular, when we don’t have to think logically, or decide sensibly, or understand accurately. The reassuring conversational noises that make no demands, inflicts no stress. The sounds that take the pressure off.  The meandering talk that simply expresses what is going on at the time.”

This is about the only way I do person meetings. No agenda, no point list, no “desired outcome” – just start talking and see where it goes. But I’m not sure that this is working, insofar as I haven’t tried going prepared, with an agenda and a desired outcome. Something to try perhaps – being more “intentional” – but I don’t think I can bring myself to do it.

Being intentional, to me, means being available, being involved, trusting God providence to supply opportunity. Seeing what happens, watching where it goes, making my contribution (by the grace of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit) and then repeating the cycle. Time will be the judge of the effectiveness of this strategy.

Peterson’s childhood pastor was the opposite – the only thing he ever wanted to know was how your SOUL was doing. The pastor’s refusal (or inability) to engage in any other kind of conversation implied that most of Peterson’s life was being lived at a sub-spiritual level. “Vast tracts of my experience we ‘worldly’, with occasional moments qualifying as ‘spiritual’.”

Not only is this practiced by some, it is expected by many. Back to Peterson’s earlier quote about the Pastor as court jester.

“I never questioned the practice,” he continues, “until I became a pastor myself and found that such an approach left me uninvolved with most of what was happening in people’s lives and without a conversational context for the actual undramatic work of living by faith in the fog and drizzle.”

I don’t have a 5-year plan – I don’t have a 1-year plan… I question whether I can legitimately say I have a plan beyond next week. I rely on serendipity as much as intentional action. I am wary (and weary!) of manipulation – of me or by me.

Stay tuned…

Here’s a book that looks like it’s worth getting: Strategically Small Church, The: Intimate, Nimble, Authentic, and Effective

Some highlights from an interview by Ed Stetzer with the book’s author Brandon J. O’Brian.

A “strategically small” church is one that has learned to recognize and leverage the inherent strengths of being small. Being strategically small means that instead of trying to overcome your congregation’s size, you have learned to use it to strategic ministry advantage…

Many small churches try to operate like big churches. The idea seems to be that if we imitate what the megachurches are doing–if we do ministry like them–then we’ll grow like them. The trouble is, operating like a big church can undermine the inherent strengths of being small…

What I’m trying to say is that small churches aren’t ineffective because they are small. Size isn’t the problem. The problem is being star-struck by mega ministries so that we fail to recognize all the wonderful things the small church has going for it…

We need to learn to be more creative–and more biblical–about the ways we measure ministry success. The churches I highlight in the book determine their success based on the percentage of their youth and young adults who stay active in church life after high school, the number of people they are training and sending out to launch sister congregations, the percentage of congregants who are involved in ministry outside the church, or the congregation’s ability to reach people on the margins. These things may, and sometimes do, result in numerical growth. But they definitely contribute to kingdom growth, which is ultimately much more important…

Buy it here.

On Thanksgiving weekend I had the privilege of preaching once on Saturday night and twice on the following Sunday morning. I chose to prepare a “giving sermon” on Thanksgiving weekend. Gasp… the audacity!

At this church, long before I was around they started a tradition of collecting financial contributions as well as canned goods on Thanksgiving weekend. This collection is then strategically distributed locally and globally to relieve both physical and spiritual suffering. And so giving is the main event of the weekend.

I was preaching in those services in order to motivate people to give – I really was. Nobody asked me to do this. In fact, I designed the sermon series and assigned myself the “giving sermon” for Thanksgiving weekend.

By the end of the services I was preaching in, at the very moment it came time to stuff an envelope and bring it forward, I wanted them to be extremely motivated.

The question was: How would I do that? How would I motivate them?

Would I do it in a way that communicates that I don’t care one bit about how they felt afterward?

Would I play on their emotions? Would I show them pictures of starving children in other parts of the world?

Would I employ the hammer of guilt? Would I give them stats about how many people in the world live on less than a dollar a day while many of us own two cars and a house that could house 3 families the size of our own?

Or would I talk about how little they’d given in the past? Would I say that it’s time to make up for that?

Did I want them to give, even if it was reluctantly?

Did I want them to give in response to pressure or coercion?

Did I want them to give out of a desire for the praise of others?

Did I want them to give out of fear of criticism?

Would any of those tactics work? They might have worked that day, that one time. But would they really work? Would they transform anyone into a person who is so eager to give and so full of joy when giving that they’d regularly put their own financial well-being at risk in order to give as much as they can?

No, it wouldn’t. And yet, this is often the way the “giving sermon” is designed and delivered. And it’s not that the goal of the average “giving sermon” is wrong – it’s that the the tactics and methods used to motivate people to give are wrong.

Why? Because the average “giving sermon” is designed to make you feel bad about yourself – to feel guilty. This motivates immediate giving but it does very little to transform your heart and your passions and desires. It does very little to take your eyes off of YOU and turn them toward God.

So I didn’t use any of those tactics. Instead, we dug into a passage of scripture that we often summarize with these words: “God loves a cheerful giver.”

In 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 Paul is preparing the Gentile believers in Corinth to send a gift of financial relief to their Jewish believer brothers and sisters in Jerusalem.

(to be continued)

Eugene Peterson:

[As a pastor] “the culture treats me so amiably. It encourages me to maintain my orthodox creed; it commends me for my evangelical practice; it praises me for my singular devotion. All it asks is that I accept its definition of my work as an encourager of the culture’s good will, as the priest who will sprinkle holy water on the culture’s good intentions.

But if I, even for a moment, accept my culture’s definition of me, I am rendered harmless. I can denounce evil and stupidity all I wish and will be tolerated in my denunciations as a court jester is tolerated. I can organize their splendid goodwill and they will let me do it, since it is only for weekends.”

– The Contemplative Pastor:Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (p16)

For the majority of the congregation in most churches, the Pastor search process is heavily biased toward the 30 minutes people see the candidate on one Sunday morning when they deliver a sermon. This is unfortunate both when the candidate is a good public speaker and has few other skills and when the candidate is a weak public speaker but has many other redeeming qualities.

It is also a disservice to both the pastoral candidate and the people who are called upon to offer an evaluation. But it is not terribly surprising. Churches typically look for a Peter-type leader – the bold, outspoken extrovert – so if the candidate doesn’t impress as that type of person in his “30 minutes of examination” they assume he won’t be a good fit.

But what about the Paul-type leader?

Paul was, by his own admission and by the testimony of the people who heard him, not an overly impressive public speaker. That didn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of things since aside from Jesus, Paul is the most influential Pastor/Shepherd in all of Christian history. Why? Because (among other things) he could communicate clearly and powerfully in other ways and often led the charge from among rather than from the front.

When in need of a new Pastor, most churches are still looking for that Peter-type leader because that’s what they’ve become accustomed to looking for over the years; it’s what they believe a Pastor should BE. I don’t believe that one type is better than the other but the Paul-types are rarely hired and that’s a shame.

Unfortunately most people (even those on Pastor Search Teams) are unprepared to make such a distinction.

What do you think? Should a candidate still be hired if their verbal proclamation skills are sub-par? Can we make room for a Pastor who communicates primarily in epistles rather than strong verbal presentation?

Should a candidate’s Sunday morning preaching skills be the ultimate go/no-go gauge for their hiring?

Eugene Peterson on pastoral busyness:

“How can I persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if I have to juggle my schedule constantly to make everything fit into place?

The word busy is the symptom not of commitment but of betrayal. It is not devotion but defection. The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront.”

– The Contemplative Pastor – p17-18

This is what I’m failing to live. “Busy” to me is still a win, not a FAIL.

This is one of the reasons I love blogging. Not only does it allow me to express my thoughts on all manner of things, I also get to hear the thoughts of people from all over the world on the topics I write about.

A couple of weeks ago I posted something called “Church Planting: Slums or Suburbs? WWJP? (Where Would Jesus Plant?)” in which I basically made the case that Jesus was intentional about spending time with the poor and that we should follow his example and do the same.

A lot of good discussion followed – some comments in agreement, others not. I found this comment by Edgar de Blieck (who lives in Scotland and blogs here) particularly compelling as a rebuttal:

It’s not clear from the existing evidence that Jesus did make that choice. Let’s imagine – for the sake of argument only – that he was democratic in the way he spread his ministry about. Of course, that would involve him being with more poor people than rich people, on demographic grounds: there are *always* significantly more poor people than there are rich people.

Moreover, in his day, the Roman occupation saw to it that the poor-oppressed were proportionally greater in percentage terms than they are at other periods in history and in other locations. Given the paucity of the source material, and given its qualitative nature, I’d be uncomfortable making a quantitative case about how Jesus spent his time on the basis of it.

I do hear about him getting into trouble for hanging out with rich embezzlers like Zacchaeus. I daresay that the wife of Herod’s steward wasn’t flavour of the month with the ornery folks either…

At the same time, it’s clear that rich and poor hung out with Jesus, and that he sent his people out without money or provisions, expecting that they should be provided for.

This provision might reasonably be expected to come from those whose charity could extend to itinerant preachers on the basis of their ability to support them. The labourer may be worthy of his hire, but if he can’t be paid, then he labours in vain.

All I can say is that Jesus loves me, and, like you, I’m mind-meltingly wealthy. (We don’t even have to get as far as the fact that you’re reading this on a computer screen to make that deduction: the fact that you’re literate at all is evidence of your wealth!)

I’m glad God laid obedience to the great commission on the hearts of the folks that planted my church, where someone told me the gospel, or else how would I have heard it? It was through hearing it that I was saved.

Wealth isn’t a constraint or a consideration. The earth is God’s. He’ll make it possible for churches to come into existence wherever his Spirit blows. I’m praying for African missionaries to come to Scotland.

One must avoid becoming a pipeline of other people’s thoughts, but when it comes to Doug Wilson, at times I can’t resist. Sometimes I don’t even understand what he’s saying, but even then there are always a few paragraphs that ring true. Like these:

“If American Christians succeeded in having the Apostles Creed put into our Constitution, we would not then have a new nation in the new Christendom. We would have something like England, a teetery relic nation from the old Christendom. England is a Christian nation on paper. We cannot fix our problems on paper, or with paper. What we need is fire.

[pullquote]We cannot fix our problems on paper, or with paper. What we need is fire.[/pullquote]

And we cannot have fire without preachers of the gospel who know what they are about. We need preachers who have experienced the new birth themselves, and who know what the Bible teaches about the necessity of it. And we need preachers who have experienced the anointing of the Holy Spirit on their pulpit declarations, who know what real power is. Further, we need more than one of them. Two or three thousand should do it.”

From: A Decorated Altar is Still a Cold One

Chris Vacher gets it so right in his post here about the “weird love/hate/love relationship between worship leaders and Chris Tomlin in the church today.”

And it’s not just worship leaders. Prof. John Stackhouse did a piece on Tomlin about a year and a half ago (read it here) listing Tomlin’s many – as he sees it -  deficiencies. It was a pretty disgraceful piece of writing.

Chris (Vacher) goes on to say:

I do know this: more often than not, if I do a Chris Tomlin song with our church they are singing their hearts out for the glory of God. As a worship leader, what more could I ask for? Why do I care whether the last word of each line rhymes? Why do I care whether the melody is simple or not?

This is my experience as well. Tomlin’s albums contain an unusually high percentage of songs that are both well-written and singable for a congregation.

I discovered Chris Tomlin about three years ago. I had been unplugged from worship music for a number of years and just didn’t care for it at all. But I would hear a song every now and then that would wake me up to the possibility that there was good stuff out there.

I kept a list and eventually asked someone more knowledgeable about the list. They immediately picked out the common thread: they were all Chris Tomlin songs.

That’s a great way to discover a God-gifted artist.

The Problem With Most Worship Songs

The problem with most worship songs written today is NOT simplicity, it’s singability. Writing a good, singable song requires both artistry and servanthood. These qualities are difficult to balance, and unfortunately many of today’s worship writers are not doing a very good job of it.

Unique melodies and song structures are fun to listen to but when a congregation is subjected to it, more often than not the song is rejected by silent majority.

Vacher again:

All I care is that I am putting words in the mouths of the people of this church which give God glory, stir the hearts of people toward Christ and proclaim the gospel to those who don’t know Him.

Absolutely. And you can’t put those words in people’s mouths if they’re unable to sing the melody the words are paired with. The same goes for structure – if it’s too complicated to figure out after a couple of times through, it might be a good song but it’s not a congregational song.

When you lead and look out and no one is singing, there’s a problem. If you’re a songleader, you know the feeling.

The question is why do you keep doing songs that people can’t sing as a congregation? Isn’t that the point of congregational singing?