N.T. Wright responds to the question:
“What do you think are the major challenges to the Church and the Christian message in the light of the current legislation on the redefinition of marriage?”
Wright’s answer emphasizes the problem with changing the meaning of key words in this debate.
With the COVID-19 pandemic totally upending life as we know it over the past several weeks, celebrities far and wide are doing their part to remind us that we’re all in this together.
On Sunday, Candace Cameron Bure teamed up with her brother, fellow 80’s TV star Kirk Cameron, and a star-studded lineup of contemporary Christian artists to put on the ‘Hope Rising’ Benefit Concert to raise money for Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian humanitarian aid organization serving on the front lines of COVID-19.
The at-home benefit concert trend has seen mega success throughout this pandemic, with similar specials bringing in millions for COVID-19 relief efforts.
While Bure and Cameron say they’ve enjoyed similar benefit concerts in the last few weeks, the siblings wished the performances had included contemporary Christian artists.
“My brother called me and he’s like, ‘We got to do this, but with songs that have meaning and purpose and actually give hope from the guy who gives us everything and provides it all and comforts us and helps with our worries,’” Bure said.
So they pulled together their resources, and set out to do a different type of benefit concert—one that would bring hope and comfort that this world cannot offer.
“People are in need of hope, faith, courage, and inspiration during this anxiety-producing time,” Bure says.
The Hope Rising COVID-19 Benefit Concert aired live on Facebook Sunday night, featuring performances by Casting Crowns, Mercy Me, Newsboys, Natalie Grant, Matthew West, For King & Country, Kari Jobe, Cody Carnes, and more—live from their sofas and home studios.
Sprinkled between musical performances were inspirational anecdotes by Bishop T.D. Jakes, Kristen Chenoweth, Franklin Graham, Lysa TerKeurst, and others, as Bure and Cameron hosted the event live from their respective homes.
The special was originally set to air on Easter, but Bure says the network that had committed to airing the concert backed out. The siblings approached several other networks before reaching an agreement with Facebook Live.
“Everyone we approached, aside from the networks, no one we asked said no. Everyone wanted to do it,” Bure says. “I feel like it’s the best in humanity that we see when times get so difficult, and we’re in such a weird, odd time in our lives.”
All performances and production from Sunday’s event were completely donated, and one hundred percent of the concert’s proceeds will go directly to Samaritan’s Purse.
Bure says choosing Samaritan’s Purse as the beneficiary was especially important because they are doing the hard work with purpose during this pandemic.
“Samaritan’s Purse has boots on the ground in Central Park, with those big white tents set up as mobile hospitals you’re seeing on the news. They are on the front lines helping those affected by COVID-19 but also doing it in Jesus’ name,” Bure says. “That was important to us as people of faith, to know the good work they are doing also has a purpose to share God’s love.
You can catch a replay of the concert at HopeRising.live, and donations can be made to Samaritan’s Purse HERE.
Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is stirring up controversy again by asking people for their stimulus money. Spell has already made headlines for continuing to hold in-person worship services long after the governor banned them. As of the first week in April, an attorney representing the church has been hospitalized after contracting COVID-19, and one of the church’s elderly members has died from complications due to the coronavirus. The pastor has flatly denied the coroner’s conclusion about the church member’s cause of death.
“That is a lie,” Spell told WAFB 9 News when asked about the coroner’s findings. The pastor claimed the man died of other causes, adding that he was a “great member of the church” and one of Spell’s “right hand men.”
Since the middle of March, Spell has repeatedly flouted Governor John Bel Edwards’ ban on gatherings of more than 50 people. Instead, upwards of 1,000 congregants have been meeting for worship at Life Tabernacle Church, which has even bused some of the attendees in.
On March 31, officials charged Spell with a misdemeanor for six counts of violating the governor’s order. This did not faze the pastor, however. According to CNN, Spell held a Palm Sunday service (April 5), which was attended by around 1,220 people. The pastor’s argument for defying authorities is that they are infringing on church members’ religious rights and are being inconsistent by banning in-person worship while allowing people to shop at stores.
“We aren’t breaking any laws,” said Spell. “We have a mandate from the word of the Lord to assemble together. The first amendment says that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the exercise of religion.” Spell’s reasoning aligns with that of other pastors in the country, including one in Florida, who was arrested for ignoring a safer-at-home order. That pastor subsequently canceled in-person services, blaming the “tyrannical government” for compelling him to do so.
The Advocate reports that attendance at Spell’s church dropped significantly after Palm Sunday and that only 130 people were present at the Easter service on April 12. Spell disputes that number, which was reported by law enforcement, and maintains that over 1,300 people came on Easter. “The cops are liars,” he said.
The attendance drop follows the death of the Life Tabernacle Church member and the hospitalization of the church’s lawyer, Jeff Wittenbrink. Wittenbrink is the local counsel for Roy Moore, a former Supreme Court chief justice for the state of Alabama. Moore is helping Spell fight a legal battle defending the church’s right to continue to gather in-person for worship.
It is not known where the church member and the lawyer contracted Covid-19. Despite the fact he has come down with the illness, Wittenbrink said he still believes that the pastor and his church are on the right side of their legal fight. “I’m very proud of Pastor Spell,” he said. “I think he’s one of the few people who understands we shouldn’t just throw away our civil liberties without a fight just because there’s some kind of crisis going on.”
In a video posted to YouTube on April 15, Spell announced the #PastorSpellStimulusChallenge. He said he is asking people to take the $1,200 of stimulus money they will receive from the government and donate it to North American evangelists, missionaries and music ministers “who haven’t had an offering in a month.” People can give that money through the church’s website, said the pastor, who added that he, his wife, and his son have already donated theirs.
CNN’s Victor Blackwell asked Spell why he would ask financially vulnerable people to donate their stimulus money, pointing out the church gives rides to people who are unable to make it to services otherwise. “The #PastorSpellStimulusChallenge is to help people who do not get stimuluses, such as evangelists and missionaries,” replied the pastor. These are people, he said, who have not had financial support for five weeks now.
Why, asked Blackwell, is the church not applying for the government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)? The PPP allows faith-based organizations to apply for federally-backed, forgivable loans, even if the organizations do not provide a secular service. “We don’t want to,” was the pastor’s answer.
“We do not want SBA loans,” he said. “We don’t want the government to give us a dime. Never will our federal or state government put one penny into our church, because the second they do, they control us.” Some have observed this argument seems odd since the stimulus money Life Tabernacle Church is willing to accept also comes from the government.
According to Spell, the church is not forcing people to give their money away, but rather, “We are challenging you [to give] if you can.”
Emphasizing that safety and health are paramount, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is discussing ways to allow people “to get engaged in the world again.” Speaking to Pastor Jack Graham during Saturday evening’s online worship at Prestonwood Baptist, a Plano megachurch, Abbott said, “We need to open up our churches to allow you all to be able to congregate and celebrate once again.” The governor also discussed his own personal faith test and urged people to “put your faith in God,” who helps us through life’s storms.
Abbott, a Republican, shared how Texas plans to gradually reopen while preventing further spread of the coronavirus. “People are tired of being stuck at home, and they want to get back out,” he said, adding, “Texas wants to lead the way in opening our state back up.”
The governor’s “phase-in” plan includes allowing more medical procedures, allowing “retail-to-go” services, and getting people “back to work and earning a paycheck” because “the livelihoods of too many Texans have been compromised.” As evidence of that, Abbott pointed to food banks in the state that have been “overflowing with people.”
When the governor discussed reopening houses of worship, Graham—a member of President Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board—said Prestonwood will cooperate with state leaders because it wants to be “part of the solution,” not part of the problem. During the pandemic, Graham’s congregation has been holding blood drives, distributing free meals, and advising people who’ve lost their jobs. Graham told Abbott he appreciates the governor’s strong leadership and said church members are praying for him.
Abbott briefly spoke about being paralyzed at age 26—and how his faith grew as a result. While he was jogging after a storm, a tree fell on him, breaking his back and confining him to a wheelchair. That tested his faith, Abbott admits, because you wonder why God would let something like that happen. But afterward, as he kept reaching out to God, the governor “found God reach back out to me.” His relationship with Jesus “grew even closer after the accident,” he says.
During the interview, Abbott told listeners that God doesn’t promise us “a life free of storms” but rather “a pathway through those storms.” He described how social distancing has been effective in Texas, flattening the virus’ curve and putting his state “into a position where we are going to open up in safe ways.”
The governor continued: “God’s hand is working through the scientists across this great nation by coming out with fast, innovative drugs that would lead to therapeutic remedies…and eventually immunizations that will get us beyond this episode in our lives.”
On Saturday, President Trump tweeted that he’d be watching Prestonwood’s online worship the next morning. Trump held a conference call with faith leaders on Friday to discuss a phased-in return to in-person worship. Graham, who participated in the call, says the conversation revolved around “how would we go about bringing people back together…carefully and gradually, and not put people at risk.”
Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California has tried his hand at a new skill. In an effort to help children remember the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) recommendations for containing the spread of the coronavirus, the megachurch pastor penned some rhyming prose he put to music. The “Quarantine S.H.A.K.E.” was made into a dance video with the help of the Saddleback Kids ministry team.
“Nobody is going to remember all 5 [CDC recommendations], especially little kids. It needs to be memorable and fun! So, since I often create acrostics as memory devices (like our P.E.A.C.E. plan, or our S.H.A.P.E. profile) I created an acrostic for 5 WAYS TO S.H.A.K.E. THE VIRUS,” Warren wrote in the video’s description.
S.H.A.K.E. is an acrostic that summarizes the CDC’s recommendations in easy-to-remember lines:
Stay at home
Hand wash often
Avoid your mouth
Keep your distance
Elbow cough
The song also includes a catchy chorus that reminds kids why they are being asked to do these things: “Save the human race/ When we do the quarantine Shake”.
Warren explains that the idea for the song and the video came after the national director of the CDC asked him to help spread the word about their recommendations. Warren writes:
Bob Redfield, the national director of the CDC, is a very close friend of Kay and me. We’ve traveled together, worked on the AIDS pandemic together, and when I asked for his help in creating a church-based community health care program for Rwanda, Bob invented the process that we used to train 6,000 Rwandans serving through their churches. That program is now being copied elsewhere.
At the beginning of the COVID 19 crisis, Bob called and asked me to use my channels to pastors to help get out the correct information to churches everywhere. I did that, but I also started thinking about a fun way to spread the message to kids.
Warren acknowledged how odd it is that he came up with the song. “I doubt that anyone would guess that a pastor wrote this!” He also said that Saddleback Kids is planning a contest for kids, schools, and church youth groups to record and share their own version of the Quarantine S.H.A.K.E.
The contest Saddleback’s children’s ministry is facilitating is not far outside some of the other initiatives the ministry has taken on recently. Last week the group announced a trick shot challenge on their Instagram page. The challenge asked kids to film their best trick shots and send them in to Saddleback. Over the weekend, Children’s Pastor Kurt Johnston announced the Quarantine S.H.A.K.E. challenge in a Saddleback Kids Church Online video. Saddleback Kids are encouraging those interested to make their own videos and upload them to social media using the hashtag #TheQuarantineShake.
I suspect that this COVID-19 crisis has forced many of us to lean on other church members who are better equipped to work with media and digital options – and we’re learning just how helpful and important these church members are. I hope we’ll continue to delegate post-COVID, but I’m not sure we will. Here’s why we pastors struggle with delegation:
What other causes for failing to delegate do you see?
This article originally appeared here.
We’ve held “online services” for for worship at home for a month now. I am still not adjusted. And I’m not growing to enjoy it. Yes, there are things that I’m learning. There are ways in which I believe this season has the potential to help us for the long haul. But I’m still not okay with not physically gathering as the church. Nor should we be. It wasn’t meant to be this way.
There is another aspect which I have missed considerably. Namely, worship through song. Now don’t hear me wrong. Our praise team has done a phenomenal job of still putting a few songs together each week for us to worship through. They’ve been fitting and helpful. But, it’s not the same. At all.
Part of this might be that I can’t carry a tune so I need louder music around me to actually feel like I can squeak out a few notes louder than a mumble. But I also believe there is a theological reason why your singing along with the television isn’t the same thing as your experience on Sunday morning. And I hope we remember this and carry it with us even after this thing is over. You and I are meant to “sing to one another” and you cannot do that as well with worship at home. It’s hard to live out Ephesians 5:18-19 in your living room.
As we sing theologically rich songs, like some of those precious hymns, we are proclaiming and teaching the excellency of God from one generation to another. Or maybe as we sing some of the emotionally encouraging modern songs we are encouraging one another to hold fast to Christ.
We must not forsake either dimension of worship. To only sing vertically is to forget that we were saved into a people. It isn’t just me and Jesus. My relationship with God is intimately connected to the vital companionship I share with my brothers and sisters. So we need to sing songs together. And to one another.
Likewise if I only sing horizontally I will be missing the personal aspect of my relationship with God. And eventually we won’t have much to sing. Our worship ought to be corporately Godward. There shouldn’t be a deep split between the vertical and horizontal. As we sing about the Lord and to the Lord we are doing this together and encouraging one another.
If there wasn’t a horizontal aspect to worship then we could have easily moved it to our living room without missing a beat. But we haven’t and we cannot. There is a horizontal dimension to our worship, and we would do well to remember this when we’re no longer providentially hindered from gathering.
This article about worship at home originally appeared here.
Equip the families in your church community to understand and engage this important issue in our online world.
From CovenantEyes: “15 percent of teens have faced online harassment in the last year. Cyberbullying, or “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones and other electronic devices,” is a serious problem that can have serious repercussions, resulting in depression, a drop in grades, self-harming behaviors and, in some cases, suicide. Whether you’re concerned your child is being bullied online, or whether you simply want to equip yourself for the future, this free guide, A Parent’s Guide to Cyberbullying, will help you understand what cyberbullying is and what you can do about it.”
Resource provided by CovenantEyes
Download Instructions: Follow the on-screen directions at the download site.
Cybercriminals exploiting natural disasters or tragic events is nothing new. We’ve witnessed attackers take full advantage of 9/11 and hurricane Katrina. However, with the worldwide chaos that continues to spread from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic, I believe we’re witnessing all-time moral lows in the exploitation of individual fears and panic. Over the last few months my firm, Thirtyseven4, has seen a significant spike in COVID-19 scams, in the form of coronavirus-themed phishing scams, hoaxes, fake online donation sites, malware and apps. I’d imagine with stimulus checks getting dispersed, I’d bet that cybercriminals will be looking at creative ways of digitally stealing those funds from you.
According to our Viruslab data, Thirtyseven4 has intercepted thousands of dangerous COVID-19 scams, malware, and dubious apps in just the past two weeks. One such app (on Android) claims real-time city and state data from the Centers for Disease Control about patients who tested positive for COVID-19 and will instantly notify the user if such a patient is in your community. Instead of the downloading and installing the desired infection tracker, the user unknowingly infects the device with ransomware. Another bogus app falsely claims to offer immediate COVID-19 online testing, and a plentiful of phishing scams have been spotted redirecting users to fake confidential cure solution or COVID-19 map tracking websites in an effort to trick users into entering confidential information about themselves.
Here are some vital safeguards against COVID-19 scams:
If this is to be our “new normal” for a while, let’s work smarter and more safely by implementing complex passwords, maintaining regular software updates, not opening attachments from unknown sources, and installing strong antivirus software. And whether we admit it or not, we’re in a war against the COVID-19 virus physically, mentally and even digitally as a nation, and we will come through it together and safely if we are prudent and wise about the health of our devices and ourselves. But please be on high alert.
Thirtyseven4 Antivirus solutions are available at: https://www.thirtyseven4.com/store/. For more information contact Thirtyseven4 at 877-374-7581.
I was leaving our worship center after preaching a sermon on grace. I had been in full-time ministry for a year or so. The man who regularly preaches stopped me on my way out. I expected a few pointers or immediate feedback on the sermon. He was great with constructive criticism. Instead, I saw a man visibly shaken to the point I wondered if a close relative just passed. I’ll never forget what he said next.
“I stood in a pulpit 15 years before preaching a sermon on grace.”
His face screamed of guilt and sincerity. He knew grace was important the day he started preaching, but grace was rarely discussed, especially from the pulpit. It was too risky and too mysterious.
This statement highlights, maybe more than any I’ve ever heard, the worst of my particular fellowship. There are good components as well, many in fact, but this is a huge stain. The past 40 or 50 years, we opted for absolutes and certainties over mysteries and miracles. We chose works over grace.
I’m not bashing my fellowship. This is my experience, so I work from it. But let’s be real. I’m not alone here. Most Christians struggle with grace.
The more I understand Jesus, the more essential grace becomes to faith, salvation and everything in between.
In fact, I’m not sure you can understand faith, hope and salvation unless you understand grace.
Until (and unless) grace becomes the lens through which you see Jesus, your image of Him will be incomplete at best, and completely distorted at worst.
Since this topic bears so much weight on every component of Christian faith, I want to highlight some reasons we struggle to understand grace.
My understanding of grace is some holy algorithm of Bible verses, corporate worship, private meditation and discipleship classes/mentoring. The values assigned to each variable are highly erratic because, well, they’re variables.
The more a tinkered with the variables, the more confused I became. Oh, I could spout off a definition of grace that would make my seminary professors proud. I studied it that much. Something, however, was missing.
The missing component, come to find out, was Jesus.
Most Christians struggle with grace because they attempt to find it in the Bible. Make no mistake. The Bible is a tapestry of grace from cover to cover. But every word highlights God’s plan for redemption, culminating at the cross. Here, high on a hill and overcome with pain, God showed us Grace. Until that point it was words and ideas. While they were true nonetheless, they were also incomplete. When Jesus threw himself on a wooden beam, sacrificing his life, grace became complete.
Any understanding of grace without the cross is incomplete.
Grace isn’t a doctrine, a well-thought arrangement of words reflecting a core truth about God. Grace is God. It’s a person, a real one. Until Christians trade their academic pursuit of grace and fix their eyes on the cross, they will live with an incomplete, shallow, wrathful understanding of God.
Pray for us, brethren, that the Lord’s message may spread rapidly and be honored…and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not all have faith. (II Thessalonians 3:1-2)
Don’t read this article without the preceding one (10 Ways Pastors Fail Their People). That one led to this one.
What happened was this.
I put this question on Facebook: “What are 10 things you wish pastors would stop doing?”
I was unprepared for the answers. They poured in. Within a few minutes, we had 35 or 40 comments. Most were helpful, but a few showed real pain or even anger.
By the time we had racked up 75 or 80 comments, several pastors who read the contributions sent up white flags, calling for help. One said, “Joe, this really hurts.”
When someone suggested we turn the question around and ask, “How do church members fail their pastors?” the comments multiplied just as quickly.
As several noted, there seems to be a lot of pain out there in the pastor/member relationship. It would be great if we could do something, however small, toward healing that breach and lessening the anger.
Here, then, are my Top 10 Ways Church Members Fail Their Pastors. It’s sent forth not to add kindling to a raging fire, but balm to some sore places.
Often in Scripture, leaders asked churches to pray for them. (See I Thessalonians 5:25; II Thessalonians 3:1; Hebrews 13:18)
This is strictly faith work. The believer who lifts his/her pastor to the Father in prayer will not know the difference that intercession made. They will not be in the study when the preacher senses the Spirit opening a passage or enlightening his mind with a great idea or directing him to a supplementary text. They have no way of knowing the way their prayers kept him safe on the highway, blessed him in a witnessing or counseling conversation, or gave him extra energy for the day.
All they will see is the minister when he walks out on Sunday and leads a worship service and brings the sermon. They will have to believe by faith that their prayers were heard of God and answered by Him.
Nothing tells the tale on our faith like whether we pray.
I said those very words to my congregation on one occasion when a few members were criticizing practically everything I did. I told the church it was a puzzle to me how sincere Christians could pray for their pastor–as these individuals professed to me–and then reject and condemn the very sermons that God gave the pastor to deliver to them. What kind of faith is that? What does it say about their belief, their obedience?
The old three-pointer from Philippians 4:6 is a good one: Worry about nothing, Pray about everything, Thank God for anything. That last segment–thanking God for anything–means once we pray for the minister, we should believe that God heard us and that what the man is preaching is what God has sent.
Even if you don’t like it. Even if it offends you. Even if your mind wants to tell you the man is resisting the Lord and that nothing about that sermon is in answer to your prayer. Give thanks to the Lord for that message. Believe that God is at work. After all, He does not finish His reconstruction of a man’s preaching in one fell swoop. It takes time.
I moderated a church business meeting once when members of the congregation rose to tell how the pastor had failed them on occasions. “Mama was in the hospital, and he never came.” “I needed counseling, and he wasn’t available.” “He didn’t speak to me in the hallway.”
Listening to that sad litany, it occurred to me how marriage is so similar to the relationship of a pastor and church. After a few years, each one has grounds for divorce. If you were trying to convince a judge to grant a divorce decree, each husband or wife could probably present enough slights and putdowns, selfish acts and harsh words, to make their case.
So with church.
And yet, I’ve known church members who expected–no, demanded–that the pastor never ever fail them whenever they called. They were leaders of the church, they were longtime tithers, they had given gifts to the preacher, and now he owed them.
Young ministers should be cautioned repeatedly that just because someone is a member of the church and just because they were elected to high office in the congregation does not mean they are mature or godly. Some can be high-handed, gossips, and self-centered.
The pastor who finds himself surrounded by a corps of leaders who are Christlike and mature should count his blessings and tell them repeatedly how much he blesses God for them.
Answers in Genesis (AiG), led by Ken Ham, is building a life-sized ark. When it is completed, it will be the biggest timber frame structure in the world, built to the dimensions God gave to Noah in Genesis 6:15 (translating to modern-day measurements of 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, 51 feet high). The attraction is scheduled to open in July 2016.
In a video on the Ark Encounter website, Ken Ham claims the attraction will be “one of the greatest evangelistic outreaches of our era of history.”
It seems wherever AiG is concerned, though, controversy and lawsuits arise. In January 2016, the organization went to court with the state of Kentucky after the state announced The Ark Encounter could not participate in the Kentucky Tourism Development Program, an initiative that would give AiG an $18 million tax incentive after the attraction opened its doors.
It seems the state was excited about the jobs and revenue the attraction would create, but not thrilled when it learned of Answers in Genesis’ conviction to hire only Christians who adhere to a young earth creationism worldview. Calling their win in court a victory over religious discrimination, AiG posted the court’s favorable ruling on their website.
Despite the favorable court ruling, though, AiG is still fielding flack, even being questioned on whether or not they would consider hiring Christians who don’t agree with a young earth creationism worldview.
Whether you adhere to young earth creationism teaching or not (or AiG’s hiring procedures), the exhibit seeks to spread the gospel. According to their website, “The Ark Encounter project was born out of a desire to share the gospel of Jesus Christ to millions of people across America and the world.”
You can see videos documenting the project’s progress, read about the historical and biblical facts concerning the ark, and even read about God’s plan for salvation on the Ark Encounter website.
The following is an adapted excerpt from the new book Choosing Marriage, and is used with permission.
Did you ever think someone could show you love through a bologna sandwich?
I didn’t think so either.
Until I found out that my then-boyfriend-now-husband (a poor, broke, medical school student at the time) spent close to two months eating bologna sandwiches every day, in order to cut down his grocery budget to $10/week. Just so he could save up enough money to buy me an engagement ring.
The truth is this: Marriage will cost you.
When you think of the cost of marriage, what comes to mind?
According to recent statistics, the average couple today spends $26,444 on a wedding. That’s a lot of money, but it’s nothing compared to the REAL cost of marriage. Because like it or not, marriage will cost you MORE. It will cost you something great. It will cost you a price much larger than the money you spend on a ring or a wedding or a honeymoon.
It will cost you yourself.
I heard a married man on TV say (regarding whether or not he was going to stay in his own marriage), “I shouldn’t be with someone if I’m not happy…” and it made my stomach turn.
What an accurate reflection of the self-centered society we live in, everyone believing that their main goal in life is THEIR OWN personal happiness. What a small and shallow way to live. If you’re getting married with that as your main goal, to make yourself happy, you will be disappointed in a severe way.
Marriage is not about your happiness, it’s not even about you. It’s about LOVE, which is something we choose to give time and time again. It’s about sacrifice, serving, giving, forgiving, and then doing it all over again.
No wonder we often choose divorce over commitment…because most of the time, we’re choosing “personal happiness” over real commitment—over real love.
They say marriage teaches you more about selflessness than you ever wanted to know. I have found that phrase to be true in my relationship with my husband. Because at the heart of it, real love is all about sacrifice. About the giving of yourself, in ways big and small. That’s what marriage will cost you.
It’s about offering forgiveness when you’ve been hurt.
It’s about giving your time though it’s not always convenient.
It’s about sharing your heart when you’d rather hold back.
It’s about cleaning the kitchen after a long weekend, even if it’s your least favorite job.
It’s about choosing to respond with love when you’d rather respond in anger.
It’s about offering a listening ear, when you’d rather tune out or go to bed.
It’s about putting someone else’s needs and desires before your own.
It’s about giving up that last bite of cake, just so your spouse can enjoy it.
It’s about putting aside your rights, to make space for the rights of another.
The list could go on and on, but it always ends with the same formula:
That’s what marriage will cost you.
We live in a world that DESPISES the sacrificial side of marriage and tries to explain it away. They teach us to strive for power, control and the upper hand in a relationship. They tell us to do what feels right, and not to tolerate anything less. They fool us to thinking that love is about doing what makes us happy. And the second we feel less than happy, they encourage us to bail…to abandon ship…and to stop investing…to give up on love.
But they’ve got it all wrong.
Because the more we give, the better we become. Real love is not self-seeking, and it will ALWAYS cost you. More, and more, and more. Again, and again, and again.
It will cost your heart, your time and your money. It will cost your comfort, your rights and your pride. It will cost you to “lay down your life” for the life of another. Because only those who learn to die to themselves are the ones who get to experience the resurrection power that comes with it.
Resurrection into real love, into real life and into meaningful relationships.
This article is an excerpt from Debra Fileta’s new book, Choosing Marriage. Learn astonishing survey results, and practical steps to take in the hot topics of LOVE, SEX, INTIMACY, CONFLICT, COMMUNICATION, CONFESSION and so much more.
Order Choosing Marriage today!
Debra Fileta is a Professional Counselor, national speaker, relationship expert and author of True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life, and Choosing Marriage: Why It Has To Start With We > Me where she writes candidly about love, sex, dating, relationships and marriage. You may also recognize her voice from her 200+ articles all over the web! She’s the creator of the popular relationship blog TrueLoveDates.com, reaching millions of people with the message that healthy people make healthy relationships! Connect with her on Facebook or Twitter!
Every Sunday I gather with a group of about twenty or so women and I teach them the Bible. Even writing that here feels strange because I know that there are better Bible teachers out there. I am a trembling teacher. I know that there are women and men with more knowledge, more spiritual discipline, more wisdom, more polish, a better prayer life, a more consistent study routine. I know there are times when I try to teach things that are out of my depth.
I know that I don’t always communicate as clearly as I should, and there is an ever-present gnawing in my spirit that wonders whether my teaching is doing good or harm. Whether I have spoken out of turn about things that I don’t fully understand. Whether I have stated the absolute truth or unwittingly said something that isn’t consistent with the whole counsel of God’s word. And I often leave my class concerned about something I did or didn’t say. Something that I forgot to explain. Something that I wish I had brought up, or something that I wish I hadn’t delved into.
The truth is that when you talk for almost an hour, you use a lot of words. You say a lot of stuff. And afterward I usually wrestle with the fear that my words didn’t communicate. Or that they communicated something untrue or discouraging or useless.
I think that most Bible teachers feel this way, and I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing. It’s important for those of us who have been called to teach God’s word to approach the job with humility and, yes, trembling. Our confidence in the Bible shouldn’t necessarily translate into confidence in our own abilities and giftings. We get into dangerous territory as teachers when we let pride and self-assurance rule our work. After all, we can’t forget that James warned that not many should even attempt this job because we will be held accountable for what comes out of our mouths. It seems unconscionable to approach the sacred job of teaching the Bible with flippancy or an over-inflated sense of our own competence.
That being said, I think as a trembling teacher I often forget that God can use my willingness and my effort, even if the result is imperfect. Even if my presentation could have been smoother or my explanations clearer. I’m guilty of subtracting the power of the Holy Spirit when I am figuring how things went in a particular lesson, and that in itself is a sign that I have become too focused on myself: my own weaknesses and failings. In truth, if I have prepared to the best of my ability, prayerfully presented God’s word to my class with a sincere desire to glorify the Lord, then when I walk away I should trust that He can do something with even my imperfect efforts. And He has proven that’s true. Many times when I am agonizing over something that I wish I hadn’t brought up in the moment, I’ll get a text or an email from one of my class members, telling me it was exactly what they needed to hear. Could it be that the Holy Spirit inspired that couple of sentences when I thought I was just chasing rabbits? Maybe so. What I do know is that God tells us clearly in scripture that when His word goes out, it won’t return empty. There is power in the inspired words of our Lord, and when we approach our job with a little bit of trembling, just because of the honor of it, the precious calling of being entrusted with it, I believe that He will use that for His own glory.
So, trembling teacher, it’s good to feel the weight of your responsibility. It’s good to realize that this work shouldn’t be taken lightly. Preparing to teach should be a careful and diligent process, one that is steeped in prayer and study and conscientiousness. But it’s also essential to remember that God can and does work through our weaknesses. In this way, teaching can lead us to a greater reliance on Christ and His strength, and anything in our lives that leads us toward more dependence on His power and greatness is a good thing. Striking that balance between our responsibility and God’s perfection is where our souls can find rest in His sufficiency and His ability to teach and empower us to help others know Him more.
This article about James 3:1 and the trembling teacher originally appeared here.
We are in a season of constraint. As a pastor, we are constrained from gathering physically. We are constrained from using all the resources the Lord has given us – from the facility to the events we have had to cancel. We are constrained from lunch meetings where development conversations occur, from face-to-face counseling appointments, from weddings and funerals, and from so much more.
Asking if these constraints can be beautiful can seem shocking or even offensive. For some of us, me included, much of what we have known about the organization (or churches) we serve has been completely altered.
The phrase “beautiful constraint” comes from a book with that title authored by Adam Morgan and Mark Barden. In the book, they identify four types of constraints:
Leaders and organizations have made their constraints beautiful. Zappos took a foundational constraint of not being able to try on shoes before purchasing and turned it into amazing customer service. When Southwest Airlines experienced a resource constraint of having one less plane of four planes (a 25% loss), they innovated on a dramatic ten-minute turnaround time to continue to carry the same number of passengers — which altered the whole future of the company. Constraints can make us more creative and more effective. Constraints can be fertile ground for innovation and new opportunities.
We are in a moment where multiple constraints have converged on organizations and their leaders. In seemingly one moment, all four of those constraints converged on ministry leaders. Gathering is foundational, even theological, to who we are. Resources are a challenge because people often give when they gather. We have limited time to respond to the crisis and many of our methods are unable to be utilized in this season.
What type of leader can view constraints as beautiful and maximize those constraints for greater effectiveness? In their A Beautiful Constraint book, Morgan and Barden confess that their hypothesis initially was that there are three types of people:
Their research and experience convinced them that these are stages and not types of people. When faced with a constraint, we can progress from victim to neutralizer to transformer.
As leaders, we must move as quickly as we can to the transformer stage. We must believe that there are great moments in the midst of the constraint. We must be learners in this season. And we must be committed to our mission so much that we are compelled to make the best use of everything.
The phrase “best use of everything” comes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He wrote, “I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil. For that purpose, he needs men who make the best use of everything.” While Bonhoeffer was constrained in prison, he wrote theology, encouraging letters, and shared the gospel with guards. He took the constraint and “made the best use of everything.” May we as well.
This article originally appeared here.
Every week you hope to have new people at your church.
But there’s a world of difference between reaching the unchurched and attracting serial church shoppers.
I’m fortunate to be part of a church where we’ve had first-time guests every single weekend since we launched eight years ago.
While it’s easy to think of a visitor as simply a ‘visitor,’ not all visitors are the same.
Like many of you, our goal is to reach the unchurched. And in nearly every community, there’s a growing number of unchurched people to reach.
But there’s another group entirely that shows up at your church regularly: church shoppers.
Serial church shoppers are not the same as the family that moved and is looking for a church in their new community who might try five churches before settling. Nor are they the same as a family that is leaving a church they’ve been part of for years, has exited well (here are some thoughts on how to do that) and is looking for a new place to call home for a long time.
Families moving to your community and Christians who transfer well out of another church can be welcome additions to any local church.
But serial church shoppers are different. They’re consumers.
If you end up facing a true church shopper, you might discover that they’ve been to five different churches in the last 10 years, and will soon have another one (that’s not yours). Or you might discover they’ve never settled down anywhere and have three churches they sample regularly, when it’s convenient.
As a leader, being aware of the difference between church shoppers and who you truly want to reach is critical.
I have seen far too many church leaders waste time and energy trying to please church shoppers, to no avail. Do it regularly, and it will take you completely off mission.
Trying to appease a serial church shopper is an exercise in pleasing the unpleasable.
Here are five key differences between church shoppers and the unchurched every church leader should know to ensure your church stays on mission.
A church shopper comes into every church with an evaluation mindset.
Is this my kind of music?
Is the preaching good?
Did the people notice me?
Do I like this place?
It’s not that unchurched people don’t ask the same questions. They do. And be honest. To some extent, we all do.
But a church shopper thinks the church exists to please them. After all, that’s why they left the last eight churches.
An unchurched person might start with evaluation, but they ultimately don’t stay there. They want to learn. They want to grow. They want to challenge and explore, and most are very open to a much deeper journey than one that starts and ends with evaluation.
Church shoppers ask, “Did I like it?” And the moment they don’t, they’re done.
If you really boil it down, serial church shoppers think their mission is to criticize, not contribute.
Four years ago, influential Southern Baptist leader Rev. Albert Mohler was one of evangelical Christianity’s strongest opponents of presidential candidate Donald Trump. Now Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, reveals that he’ll vote for Trump this November because of his conservative leadership record. Mohler adds that he intends to vote Republican for the rest of his life, as long as the GOP platform continues to oppose abortion and support religious liberty.
Mohler shared this news Monday during an “Ask Anything” segment of a T4G (Together for the Gospel) livestream. He also admits “a bit of regret” for giving his 2016 vote “minimal importance” by casting it for a third-party candidate.
During the 2016 campaign, Mohler argued that evangelical Christians would lose credibility if they supported Trump. In a Washington Post opinion piece about the quandary faced by voters of faith, Mohler labeled then-candidate Trump “the Great Evangelical Embarrassment.” He asserted that leaders must meet a “higher standard” and that “continued public arguments that offer cover for Donald Trump are…excruciating.”
Character was key for Mohler in 2016. That August, he was quoted in The Atlantic, saying, “If I were to support, much less endorse, Donald Trump for president, I would actually have to go back and apologize to former President Bill Clinton.” And when the notorious Access Hollywood tape was released two months later, Mohler posed this question to evangelicals: “Is it worth destroying our moral credibility to support someone who is beneath the baseline level of human decency?”
Now, however, Mohler says he’s basing his turnaround on Trump’s track record and on the trajectory of America’s two main political parties. During this week’s livestream, Mohler indicated that as Trump started keeping his promises to evangelicals, his opinion of the president began changing. Specifically, Mohler points to the 2017 Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Neil Gorsuch and the Republican Party’s stances on abortion and religious freedoms.
“I don’t have a different moral estimation of Donald Trump,” Mohler clarifies. “He continually leaves me very frustrated in how he presents himself and how he speaks.” But Mohler praises Trump’s consistency and his appointments of federal judges and other high-level officials. Riley Barnes, Mohler’s son-in-law, is currently a senior adviser at the State Department.
Reaction to Mohler’s new stance was swift, with several key evangelical leaders expressing dismay.
In a series of tweets, Missouri Pastor Mike Leake writes that he’s “incredibly disappointed” by Mohler’s endorsement of Trump. Though Leake says he can “understand a changed perspective,” he wants to know “what changed since 2016” regarding “presidential character.” If the appointment of conservative judges is a major factor, says Leake, “then it shows [that Mohler’s] argument in 2016 wasn’t about character.” Leake concludes by saying he hopes Mohler “will speak to power when it goes off the rails—something [Robert] Jeffress and [Jerry] Falwell and others have failed to do.”
Karen Swallow Prior, an outgoing Liberty University professor who’s heading to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, tweets: “In humility, hope, and faith, I will vote in November for a president who has better character, promotes more consistently life-affirming policies, and isn’t as handsy (or worse) with women than either of the two major party candidates. This is not throwing my vote away. This is refusing to accept a bar so low.”
Other church leaders are raising concerns about racism. Southern Baptist Pastor Dwight McKissic, who has decried his denomination’s track record on racial issues, says he’ll no longer direct black students toward Mohler’s seminary. Of Mohler’s 2020 presidential endorsement, McKissic tells the Washington Post, “It shows you’re tone deaf or you don’t care about the sensitivities of the majority of African Americans who find Donald Trump a repulsive personality and politician.”
Theology professor Wayne Grudem initially supported Trump’s 2016 candidacy but withdrew his endorsement right before the election, when the lewd audiotape surfaced. Now Grudem, citing issues such as Trump’s support for Israel, says, “It’s hard for me to think of someone who’s done that much good for the country in that short amount of time.” Though Grudem admits Trump’s speech isn’t “the most elegant or refined,” he says the president’s “decisions are incredibly good for the country.”
Two Southern Baptist pastors in Texas who say they voted for third-party candidates in 2016 now indicate they’ll likely join Mohler in supporting Trump this November. On Twitter, Bart Barber lists several reasons behind his thinking, including Democratic hostility toward Christians. Barber notes, however, that he still has “almost every reservation” he had about Trump back in 2016. Pastor Tom Buck echoes that sentiment, tweeting that 2020 “calls for a new strategy” and saying he prays for evangelical unity on this matter.
Pastor David Platt of McLean Bible Church in Vienna, Virginia, has a challenge for American Christians: Devote yourselves to significant times of prayer, recognizing your desperate need for God. A little over a year ago, Platt was convicted that he needed to spend more time praying and to lead his church to do the same. So the church started holding all-night prayer meetings.
“Since we have started doing these late, all-night prayer gatherings as a church,” said Pastor David Platt, “we have seen more people confess Christ in the last year than I have ever seen in any church I’ve been a part of.” The fruit the Holy Spirit has brought about simply because they have spent more time praying has been incredible.
Platt said that when he asked himself why he had never really prioritized prayer until recently, he came up with only one answer: pride.
“Why have I been a prayerless pastor?” he asked. “Because I have been a prideful pastor.” To the American church, he says, “Brothers and sisters, we need to learn to pray.”
Platt began by reading John 15:5, where Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” The pastor then went on to share how God did an “unusual, unexpected work” in his heart when about a year ago he travelled to South Korea to preach.
In 1900, said Platt, less than one percent of the Korean population was Christian. But a century later, South Korea alone had over 10 million Christians. Now, South Korea is second only to the U.S. in the number of missionaries it sends worldwide. This is remarkable because the population of South Korea is the same as the combined populations of California and Florida. “In one century, South Korea went from having hardly any Christians to being a global center for Christianity,” said the pastor. So how did that happen?
It happened because of the Pyongyang Revival in 1907 when church leaders gathered for a Bible conference of 1,500 people. Ahead of the conference, ministry leaders, including Koreans and foreign missionaries, desperately sought God for repentance and revival. While they were preaching at the conference, the leaders were struck by their own personal sin and need for repentance and began confessing their sins publicly. People in the audience followed suit and started spontaneously confessing sin in an experience similar to Pentecost. Prayer and confession, accompanied by weeping, spread throughout the audience and continued as the conference went on, leading to revival.
The movement spread throughout villages and churches. Said Platt, “People were coming to know Christ left and right.” Believers would meet early in the morning to pray and would also pray all night, traditions that continue in South Korea to this day.
Platt concluded, “Fruit in Korea began to flow when leaders in the church realized they could do nothing apart from Christ. When they realized all their plans and all their labors and all their strategy and all their sermons were insufficient apart from desperate devotion to prayer.”
But when he considers the church in the U.S., the pastor said, “I can’t help but think we are totally missing this.” When Platt looks at the American church, even the church he pastors, he said, “I don’t see this kind of hatred for sin and humility before God to the point that when we gather for worship, we weep over our sin. When was the last time that happened on a Sunday morning at your church?”
The fact is many of us have never expressed such sorrow over our sin in a corporate setting, even though we have attended church for years. Instead, we are content to consume what happens from the stage once a week and then go on with our normal lives. Platt asked, “What would happen if at some point we just stopped and said, ‘What are we doing?’”
What if, like the Korean believers, we started crying out to God and confessing our sins, sins that we’ve hidden, and repented over them with weeping? Platt asked, “Why does that even seem unusual to us?” The pastor said he hesitates to ask such a question because he knows that repentance and revival are not something we can manufacture. Only the Holy Spirit can open our eyes to our need for God.
But when he returned from South Korea having witnessed an all-night prayer meeting for the first time, Platt decided to start all-night prayer meetings at his church. So his church has been holding night-long prayer gatherings throughout the past year, sometimes meeting from 8 p.m. to midnight and sometimes from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. “These nights are awesome,” he said. “They have become my favorite times as a pastor. I am so sorry I have never done this personally or led the church to do this before.”
For many who see Easter as a time to celebrate corporately with church family and friends, loved ones and neighbors, Easter 2020 was a time of loss and sadness. But for Kristi Bothur, who has experienced incredible loss of her own, this Easter contained a message and a hope that not even the coronavirus could steal away. She hopes that others, too, will see that when all was said and done, we didn’t need the fancy clothes and the loads of chocolate and the big church services to celebrate Christ’s resurrection.
“Maybe this will be the year that people realize that Easter doesn’t come from a store,” Bothur shared in an interview with ChurchLeaders.com.
The thought prompted Bothur to write a poem—an exercise in creativity that she hasn’t practiced in a while—about how different Easter 2020 was, and yet how similar it has been to every other Easter Christians have celebrated for thousands of years now.
The poem, titled “How the Virus Stole Easter,” borrows its structure from Dr. Suess’ classic “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” In that Christmas-time tale, the Grinch, a hard-hearted isolated creature who loathes his neighbors, the Whos in Whoville, steals all of the town’s Christmas gifts, decorations, and fancy food while everyone is sleeping on Christmas Eve. This same Grinch is astounded on Christmas morning when, though confused at first, the Whos come out of their homes and celebrate the holiday in much the same way they usually do: By gathering as a community around the town square to sing carols and greet one another with joy and thanksgiving.
In a similar manner, Bothur believed—before Easter Sunday even came—that the holiday would be the same for believers who have placed their hope and their trust in the risen Savior. The day before Palm Sunday, Bothur saw a post on Facebook from a friend of a friend. The person posted about a reporter’s comment following a press briefing by President Trump. After it became clear the United States would not be able to celebrate Easter by opening back up its churches, the reporter said this would be the first time America wouldn’t be able to celebrate Easter. The post went on to explain that the reporter obviously didn’t understand what Easter was all about. This thought led Bothur to write the following lines (to read the poem in its entirety, go here):
April approached and churches were closed.
“There won’t be an Easter,” the world supposed.
“There won’t be church services, and egg hunts are out.
No reason for new dresses when we can’t go about.”
Holy Week started, as bleak as the rest.
The world was focused on masks and on tests.
“Easter can’t happen this year,” they proclaimed.
“Online and at home, it just won’t be the same.”
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the days came and went.
The virus pressed on; it just would not relent.
The world woke Sunday and nothing had changed.
The virus still menaced, the people, estranged.
“Pooh pooh to the saints,” the world was grumbling.
“They’re finding out now that no Easter is coming.
“They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do!
Their mouths will hang open a minute or two,
And then all the saints will all cry boo-hoo.
“That noise,” said the world, “would be something to hear.”
So it paused and the world put a hand to its ear.
And it did hear a sound coming through all the skies.
It started down low, then it started to rise.
But the sound wasn’t depressed.
Why, this sound was triumphant!
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