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In my last post “9 Traits of Church Bullies,” I dealt with the traits of church bullies. I now move from descriptive to prescriptive. How do we deal with church bullies? What can we do to prevent such bullying? Here are nine of my suggestions:
Church bullying is more widespread than we often like to admit. I hope these nine suggestions can help keep the bullies out of your church. Let me hear from you. 
Rachel asks to meet in a fried chicken restaurant. “It’s basically my favorite food ever.” She has long brown hair, thick glasses, and a slightly offbeat sense of humor that makes her fun to be around; as she looks at the menu she makes a joke about ordering chicken breasts, which she later decides is too trashy to include in this write-up.
The joke works, it turns out, because it was Rachel’s sexuality that was one of the reasons she became totally opposed to Christianity as a teenager. “I didn’t grow up in a Christian home at all,” she explains. “So I guess I started life neutral toward Christianity, and then, as I moved into my high school years, I became more opposed to it. The main reason was that I saw it as being for stupid people. Then, as I was about 16, I started to understand my sexuality more. I’d already had some sexual relationships with men—well, high-school boys, really. But as I started to be attracted to women and then act on those attractions, I was like, ‘Oh, this is where my heart is. The reason stuff with boys felt out of place was because it’s not my place.’ I gradually started to own that identity more and more. I knew from the culture that Christianity was against homosexuality. So by the time I was 18, I had concluded that Christians were both stupid and bigots.”
Rachel continues, “At college I became curious about the existence of God…but at the same time I was ashamed about that curiosity. So I would secretly look up things about faith and Christianity on my computer. What I read about Jesus online was much more compelling than what I’d expected. So I was drawn in by this different Jesus—but at the same time, my sexuality was a big barrier. I knew that I wanted to marry a woman someday, and I knew that Christianity wasn’t OK with that.”
But somehow, Rachel couldn’t shake off her interest in Jesus. One day, she was in the room of a college friend and noticed a book on her shelf with an intriguing title: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, the university-professor-cum-children’s-author who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia stories. “The title grabbed me, but there was no way I was going to admit that I was interested in Christianity by asking to borrow it. So I stole it.” As she read it, she had a dawning realization which she describes as: “Oh my goodness—God is real, and I am in a lot of trouble. Because not only is he real; he is perfect, and I am incredibly imperfect.” But there was an element of hope there too, she says: “I understood for the first time that Jesus had come to place himself as a kind of wall between God’s wrath—his right and fair anger at my sin—and me. I knew that if I trusted in Jesus, I was going to be saved. Now, did I understand the full implications of that? Certainly not. But I knew that I could be somehow be connected to Jesus and saved from God’s anger.
“I remember thinking, ‘Well, I like to drink a lot, I like the excessive parts of my lifestyle, I like to sleep with women—and all those things will have to go out the window. But it is stupid to pretend like what the Bible is saying isn’t true just because it’s inconvenient. I need to take this deal because I’m never going to get a deal like this again.’ I had a sense that I needed to pray, and so I just talked to God right then.”
A couple of days later, Rachel ran into the Christian student group on campus. “I had a ton of questions, obviously. I didn’t know anything! They were very good in giving me a Bible, showing me how to pray, taking me to church. The female friends who drew around me became very close to me, helping me fight through the sexual temptation and sexual failure that came. It became pretty clear to me after a little while that my attractions toward women hadn’t just gone when I became a Christian. Those first few years were littered with bad decisions. I was committed to Christ, but then I would choose a sexual relationship and get stuck in these cycles… But my friends would lovingly keep calling me back to what I believed in.”
As I sit eating fried chicken, listening to her story, I’m left with a question: How could you just give up such an important part of your identity, something that had been so fundamental to your sense of self for so long? “Well,” Rachel says slowly, “it would definitely be tragic to give up something that valuable for something that is less valuable. And it would also be tragic to pretend like this real part of my life, my sexuality, is less than it is. But Jesus is more precious than even that very deep part of me, because of his great love. And…” she pauses for a moment with a smile, “that sounds really weird if you’re not a Christian, right? But the Bible talks about a Christian’s relationship with Christ being something we should be able to die for because it’s so precious. And celibacy and singleness are not death,” she says frankly. “Not having sex or not experiencing a romantic relationship is a severe thing, but I’d be willing to give up even more than that. In fact, giving up things is a very normal part of the Christian life. There are lots of people who give up sex, who give up their bodies, who give up their money. And you don’t really do it out of obligation—you do it out of love. You’re captured by Christ’s love, and it drives you to do things that you never thought possible before, because Jesus gives you this sense of security and purpose and an ultimate destination.”
Rachel concludes, “The reason that most people aren’t Christians is either because they think that Jesus isn’t really real or that he isn’t really worth it. But Jesus is both—really real and really worth it. Yes, I gave up some major things and some significant sexual relationships—but God has heaped upon me beautiful and good things in their place.”
Read more of Rachel’s story in Finding More: Real Life Stories Worth Telling. The book is available to buy here.
This article originally appeared here.
The third and latest report in Dr. George Barna’s American Worldview Inventory 2020 evaluated the perceptions of God that people have in the U.S. Among the survey’s most surprising findings are that more Americans believe in Satan than believe in God and that more people believe that Jesus was divine and a sinner than believe he is divine and sinless.
“All of the spiritual noise in our culture over the last few decades has obviously confused and misled hundreds of millions of people in our nation,” said Barna. “The message to churches, Christian leaders, and Christian educators is clear: we can no longer assume that people have a solid grasp of even the most basic biblical principles, such as those concerning the existence and nature of God.”
The American Worldview Inventory 2020 is a series of 12 bi-weekly reports Barna is releasing through the Cultural Research Center (CRC) at Arizona Christian University. Barna is the Director of Research for the CRC, which studies the relationship between faith and culture in the U.S. The latest report, “AWVI 2020 Results – Release #3: Perceptions of God,” explores whether or not Americans’ views of God are orthodox.
The study found that 51 percent of Americans believe God is an “all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect and just creator of the universe who still rules the world today.” This is a significant decline from 30 years ago when the number was 73 percent.
When asked about the existence of Satan, 56 percent said, “Satan is not merely a symbol of evil but is a real spiritual being and influences human lives.” Forty-nine percent, on the other hand, said they are not entirely sure that God exists. The authors conclude, “Americans are now more confident about the existence of Satan than they are of God!” There has also been a striking rise in the level of skepticism about God’s existence. Thirty years ago, only one percent of Americans said “a higher power may exist, but nobody really knows for certain,” but now 20 percent agree with that view.
Confusion also exists as to the nature of members of the Trinity. Forty-four percent of Americans said that, during his time on earth, Jesus was fully God and fully man and that he sinned. That is compared to 41 percent who said he was fully God and fully man and that he did not sin during his time on earth. Furthermore, fifty-two percent of those who answered did not view the Holy Spirit as a personal being, but rather as a manifestation of God’s power.
The report outlined which U.S. demographics are most and least likely to hold a biblical view of God defined as “one who created and controls the universe; is omnipotent, omniscient, and without fault; and is just in His decisions.” The group with the highest percentage of this belief in God (97 percent) is, unsurprisingly, people who hold a biblical worldview. The South is the only region of the U.S. where over half of the residents have this view of God. The group that is least likely to have this understanding of God is adults ages 18 to 29.
Another notable finding of the study has to do with which denominations saw the greatest decline in a biblical view of God. The data show, “The largest declines in possession of an orthodox, biblical perspective on the nature of God since 1991 were among individuals who attend Pentecostal or charismatic Protestant churches (down by 27 percentage points).” Adults ages 18 to 29 came second at 26 percentage points, followed by adults born before 1946 (25 points) and women (25 points). Only one group saw an increase (two points) in orthodox belief in God, and that was adults whose income level is at least 20 percent above the national average.
Majorities of Americans believe God loves them unconditionally (71 percent) and has a purpose for everything that happens to them (66 percent). However, the study also found that “a mere one out of three (34 percent) who have a biblical view of God also believe that He is involved in their life.”
Pastors and church leaders cannot assume that people in their congregations believe even the most basic tenets of the Christian faith. Dr. Tracy Munsil, the Executive Director of the Cultural Research Center, concludes,
Biblical beliefs that used to be thought of as ‘no brainers’ can no longer be classified as such. The fact that four out of ten adults believe that Jesus Christ—who came to earth to save us from our sins—was Himself a sinner and therefore in need of salvation is mind-boggling. Add to that the fact that more people believe in the existence of Satan than the God of Abraham, and you cannot miss the breadth of the spiritual crisis in America today.
Sy Rogers, a pastor and former president of Exodus International, has died. Rogers, 63, was notable in the evangelical world for leaving a homosexual and transsexual lifestyle behind to follow Christ. Rogers had been battling kidney cancer; he went to be with God on Monday, April 20, 2020.
“I’ve lost a friend, and we’ve all lost a giant,” Joe Dallas, author and ministry leader, wrote in a tribute to Rogers.
“Such a sad day with the news of the passing of Sy Rogers today. He was truly a loved, trusted, loyal and faithful friend,” Pastors Paul and Maree de Jong of Life Church in Auckland, New Zealand wrote in an Instagram post.
Rogers and his wife, Karen, were living in New Zealand. Rogers served for many years as the teaching pastor at Life Church, multisite church in Auckland. Although originally from the United States, Rogers and his family had also lived in Singapore for a time.
Rogers battled cancer once before, five years ago. The recurrence he was most recently battling hadn’t been announced too broadly. On April 2nd, Restored Hope Network asked their followers to pray for Rogers, whose cancer was threatening his life.
In his early life, Rogers wrestled mightily with homosexuality. In an essay published to ExodusGlobalAlliance.org, Rogers recounts childhood trauma and his experience with same sex attraction. He wrote:
The first half of my life was an emotional concentration camp: My alcoholic mother was killed in a car wreck when I was four. Prior to that, I was sexually molested by a family “friend.” After my mom’s death, I was separated from my father for a year. I lived in an emotional vacuum. My identity and security as a male was left unaffirmed and unnourished. Later in school, I was routinely ridiculed, rejected and physically abused due to my effeminate mannerisms. Even though I tried to “conform” to the norm”, I was continually labelled a homosexual and a failure as a man. It’s no wonder I had problems. As a teenager, I had not yet identified myself as a homosexual. Yet, I was certainly aware of my attractions to the same sex and I felt fear and shame. A few years later, when eventually involving myself in the gay scene, I felt such a sense of relief. I felt accepted and understood. At last, I had a place to belong. It was great for a while. Soon I was living in the fast lane, and always surrounding myself with others who would reaffirm and reinforce the gay life.
At one point, Rogers’ gender confusion caused him to seek gender reassignment surgery. While he didn’t end up going through with the procedure, he did take hormones and lived as a woman for a year and half. It was when his gender confusion came to a crisis point that Rogers started seeking God. “It wasn’t that I was trying to stop being gay. I didn’t know ‘how’–or if it was possible. I was however, willing to stop living my life on my terms. Instead, I yielded to God on His terms.”
This decision ushered Rogers into a totally different lifestyle than the one he was used to. In the evangelical world, Rogers became known for sharing his testimony candidly and encouraging others to trust where God leads them—as unfamiliar and scary as it may seem.
Tributes to Rogers and words of comfort to his family have flooded social media.
Jentezen Franklin wrote: “Sy Rogers lived a life of truth, sharing the hope & grace found in Jesus with everyone he could. After battling cancer, he was welcomed home with Jesus this morning. Sy made us a more compassionate ministry. Our hearts and prayers are with his wife Karen & their family.”
Priscilla Shirer replied to the announcement of Rogers’ death on Instagram: “My heart is with Karen and this incredible family. Sy was a spectacular gift to Jerry and I. We will miss him greatly.”
Jakarta Praise Community Church wrote: “Your passion for God, His Word, and His people will always be remembered. Rest in peace dear our friend, Sy Rogers. We are so grateful for what you’ve done for us and for taking part in our faith journey. Till we meet again in the Father’s house.”
Rogers leaves behind a wife, a daughter, and grandchildren.
Dr. Dan Allenderserves as Professor of Counseling at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. He received his Master of Divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Michigan State University. He travels and speaks extensively to present his unique perspective on sexual abuse recovery, love & forgiveness, worship, and other related topics. Dan is the author of Healing the Wounded Heart and several other titles.
How have pastors/ministry leaders changed over the years in their response to sexual abuse?
What are some of the warning signs of abuse?
What does the enemy do to shame someone after they’ve been abused?
What can a trusted leader in someone’s life do and what should they leave to a professional counselor?
“We live in a sexually violent world.”
“A great portion of the believing community still won’t deal with sexuality…But I do find—far more than there would have been 25 years ago—a willingness to say ‘We live in a fallen world where harm will occur that creates trauma.'”
“You’ve got to engage the human heart in the harm in order to have hope truly of healing.”
“We’ve got to grapple with the intersection of lust and anger, and ultimately that’s the realm of shame.”
“Probably over 50% of the women in a pastor’s congregation and 35% of males have experienced sexual abuse.”
“When you find a person who is really struggling with hope, they’ve had the evil one come and not literally kill them, but stolen and therefore killed something of their hope.”
“We are as sick as our secrets.”
“You can’t hope for redemption in that what you have not named.”
“We cover our shames with things like self-contempt.”
“Redemption’s not only possible, it’s assured, but you must engage the process [of healing].”
“I can’t think of anything more fun on earth to do than to put my foot on the neck of evil and simultaneously grow the fruit of the glory of God on this earth.”
The Allender Center
Make Way Partners Article
How Dan Allender Broke on Through (to the Other Side)
In a particularly poignant scene in Albert Camus’ “The Plague”—which reads like it was published three weeks ago because of the pandemic, instead of in 1947—the doctor works tirelessly to lessen the suffering of those around him. But he is no hero.
“This whole thing is not about heroism,” he says. “It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.”
It’s decency that matters. Kindness. Community. Interdependence, not independence is what makes healing possible. We are interconnected, so let’s live like it.
I have a long and loving relationship with the song, “Lean on Me.” It started when the song was selected as the theme for a high school youth retreat. We repeatedly sang the lyrics, “We all need somebody to lean on”—forever stamping in our brains the truth of that message.
Much of the Bible emerged in times of conflict and crisis, so it’s no surprise that songwriters like the late Bill Withers and poets perhaps say best what we need to hear. Take, for instance, one of my favorite socially conscious poets, Richard Blanco, in a poem he wrote titled, “Declaration of Inter-dependence:”
“We’re a Buddhist serving soup at a shelter alongside a stockbroker. … We’re each other’s shelter and hope: a widow’s fifty cents in a collection plate and a golfer’s ten-thousand-dollar pledge for a cure. … We’re the good morning of a bus driver who remembers our name, the tattooed man who gives up his seat on the subway. … We’re the promise of one people, one breath declaring to one another: I see you. I need you. I am you.”
Words like those above can help and heal. Words—and the ideas they transmit—can also harm and hurt.
In times of crisis, unhealthy theologies proliferate, harming most especially the most vulnerable. Take, for instance, the ministers claiming to speak for God while actually speaking words of hate and blame. They take God’s name in vain by identifying catastrophic events with God’s will or the direct action or reaction of an angry God.
All of us, including the authors of Scripture, seek an explanation for why bad things happen to good people and good things to bad people. We want the universe to make sense. We want a blame when there is misfortune, a cause when there is punishment, and a reason when there is reward.
In fact, parts of Scripture have this acts-consequences understanding of rewards and punishments. Do good, get good; do bad, get bad.
Other parts of Scripture turn this notion on its head. Think Job, the quintessential good man, most righteous of persons who loses everything—children, wealth, social status, moral standing, everything. Job doesn’t just take it on the chin; he protests his innocence, challenges superficial understandings of suffering, and even files a spiritual lawsuit against God.
Likewise, Jesus further challenges this notion, and even goes so far as to suggest, much to the chagrin of those who claim to be morally superior, that God’s love is for all. Not a certain nation or race or religion. All.
Maybe that’s the first reason that Jesus commands us to love our enemies: God loves them too. Notice that the very same sentence in which Jesus commands us to love our enemies goes on to say, “For God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.”
There’s also that time when Jesus was asked who sinned to cause a man to be born blind—the man or his parents—and he said none of them had. That is, there was no direct action-consequence.
So what to do in these days of pandemic as people of faith and good will? Blaming God is bad theology. Blaming others is worse, and it’s immature. Maybe we turn to ourselves, not for blame but for action.
In this, a poet can help us again. In her “Poem to the South African Women,” June Jordan writes this remarkable line that King and Mandela and others quoted, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
We are the images of hope and agents of compassion. We are the ones who can show decency and build community.
It strikes me that the ancient prophetic vision of human unity is now an urgent, pragmatic necessity. We all belong one to another. Our unity is not something we are called on to create, but only to recognize and to make manifest.
Recently we celebrated Easter Sunday, which means we are now in the Season of Easter. It’s a scary time, much like I’m told the original Easter was.
Whatever it is, I hope it is characterized by more decency. I hope it fully embraces that we are connected and that we need each other.
I hope it is life with leaders who realize that the world as a whole must be managed, not just its parts. No longer is the survival unit a single nation or a single anything. It is now the whole world – humans, other animals, and the environment.
After delivering a lecture, Madeleine L’Engle was asked, “Do you believe in God without any doubts?” L’Engle responded, “No, I believe in God with all my doubts.” She continued, “Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”
I’ve seen more than one Christian theologian in the blogosphere sneering at the federal government’s decision to dole out grants to arts organizations, as part of the historic coronavirus stimulus bill. One pastor said the grants were evidence of conspiratorial hysteria, or “covidiocy.” In an otherwise superb piece, Carl Trueman writes: “‘Redeeming the arts’ doesn’t seem quite so urgent when your immediate problem is not that of obtaining tickets to the Met but of potentially dying before the box office reopens after the COVID-19 crisis.” From what I can gather, the point is not about the particular worthiness of the National Endowment for the Arts, but about the self-evidently unimportant nature of art in general, which is obscured in times of wealth and ease but exposed during crisis.
There’s a point here, to be sure. We take entertainment far too seriously and spend too much money and time on it. And Trueman is right to say that our elite aesthetes trivialize life. All variables being equal, it probably would be better for our collective souls if a few film studios were allowed to go bust.
Yet I’m not sure that a deathly plague is the correct launch point for reflecting on the futility of art. Trueman is absolutely right that the church must take seriously its charge to prepare believers for death and eternity, but is such seriousness opposed to something like “redeeming the arts”? I don’t think so, for a few reasons.
First, as Trueman himself notes, bad art has conditioned many in our culture to feel flippancy toward their existence. Good art, on the other hand, awakens our spiritual senses and makes us feel the weight and givenness of everything. If glib depiction of things like suicide and sex numb our moral imagination, good, true, and beautiful depictions can also animate it.
A couple nights ago I re-watched 1917 and was moved again by its visceral depiction of courage [warning: spoilers in this paragraph]. For me, the most powerful moment in the film is when Schofield happens upon a young woman living underneath a town engulfed in flames. She is caring for someone’s infant—she doesn’t know who. He calms the uneasy child and offers it some of the milk he found on the farm that was the site of his friend’s slow, agonizing death. The scene is unspeakably beautiful, and we wish it could go on–that Schofield could somehow escape from the flames of the Nazis and find solace in this dimly lit room. Yet he pulls himself away:”I have to go,” and the words have to reveal the kind of spirit that builds and defends civilizations.
That is the moral power of art. It is one thing to know that soldiers are brave. It is another thing to somehow imaginatively participate in the moments of such bravery. This is the kind of art that can help us prepare for our own deaths.
God invented art and he intended it to have this kind of power. That is why the Scriptures are full of stories, poetry, music, and parables. Failing to nurture our God-given, creative nature can have devastating consequences when we come to the Bible. As Russell Moore has noted, evangelicalism is worse off when believers emphasize rote Bible memory to the exclusion of allowing ourselves to be shaped by the story of redemption.
Second, I think we should be leery of pitting good things against one another. It is good that General Motors can switch its machines around to make ventilators instead of transmission lines. It should do that! But the current desirability of ventilators over transmission lines is not actually a statement about the worth of cars. After this virus has abated, the future flourishing of many will depend on those machines making cars once again.
Like Imrahil urging the Captains to leave behind a defense for Minas Tirith, we ought to use our time and resources to preserve what we will need after this crisis is over. We can debate how many dollars such a goal is worth in a federal stimulus. But dismissing artistic reflection brings us perilously close to the utilitarian reasoning of many contemporary universities that shutter their philosophy programs at the first sign of financial stress. Such decisions do not result in the end of philosophy, they simply ensure that Silicon Valley technocrats will be the only ones teaching it. Likewise, Christians deciding that the gospel doesn’t speak to art will not make movies and music less distracting, but it will mean that more are distracted by flippancy and materialism instead of by truth and beauty.
Here we must admit that we need discernment between the American value of efficiency and the Christian virtues. If efficiency were a Christian virtue, there would be nothing to mourn and everything to celebrate about being forced to livestream a sermon. The time it takes for believers to wake up on Sunday morning, get dressed, and lasso children (in the home and the Sunday school class) merely for the sake of sitting on hard seats with people they wouldn’t otherwise befriend is what the smart people would call a sunk cost. Yet the Bible tells us that something mysterious happens in that physical gathering—that somehow that disparate group of sinners can be in the presence of the King of the universe, commune with him, and bear each other’s sorrows and joys.
The danger in forgetting art is not that we will forget to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” but that we might forget what “as it is in heaven” even means. Let’s say instead with Lewis that the only way out of COVID-19 is toward the place where all the beauty comes from.
This article originally appeared here.
Recently my sister-in-law, Kim, was called to the front lines. This is a love story.
I still remember the first time I met Kim. She was my older brother’s 16-year-old girlfriend. I would have been about 11 at the time. I remember thinking to myself, “How did Jerry get a girl that beautiful to like him…let alone date him?” As the years have turned into decades I’ve come to realize that Kim’s beauty comes from the inside. She’s smart, accomplished, tough, kind, hard working, faithful and resilient.
Just about a year into their young marriage, Jerry and Kim had their first baby, a little girl. Shelby. Then about not so many months later they had triplets. Yup. That’s right. Four little baby girls in diapers, all within 18 months. Kylie, Christi and Abby. This just about broke them. Certainly there is no better gift than a human life to care for and to love…yet four tiny littles. At once. Four diaper changes. Four snuggles. Four car seats. Four cribs. Four multiple feedings a night (What is that, 16 sleep disruptions a night? What sleep?).
From the very beginning of their marriage, God was telling a love story. This love story didn’t come with a notebook, no chalet with a veranda. This was a love story of a different kind.
So when Kim was deployed to the front lines to head into Methodist Hospital, the hotbed of COVID-19 cases in Indiana, she was ready. She didn’t hesitate. Her heart was beating with compassion for the sick and she was ready to care for them.
I was reminded of John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Inaugural Address. In this famous speech, JFK elevated our thinking as he reminded us that that an enduring love story, is a story of a different kind. “And so my fellow Americans,” he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
This idea that, “love gives no matter the circumstances,” where does it come from? This higher idea of:
Staying up all night feeding and changing four babies, when you could be sleeping?
Running to the front lines, when others are sheltering at home?
Asking what you can do for others, when you could just be looking out for yourself?
Where did this higher idea originate? I mean, where did this really come from?
There are all sorts of world views to help us figure this stuff out. There’s Naturalism, Pantheism, Postmodernism, Islam and such. But the one worldview that resonates with me…the one that is most consistent with reality is Christianity. In the Bible, as recorded by Moses in the first chapter of Genesis, while describing the creation account, there’s this little word. A two letter word, “us.” This word doesn’t appear until we see God creating humans. God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” This is such a small portion of Scripture, but with deep worldview implications. God the Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit, in their complete love, joy and satisfaction in the unity of the relationship within the Trinity, decided to give and share with humankind. Verse 28 of Genesis chapter one says that “…God blessed them…” And in verse 29 God says, “Behold, I have given you…” and God goes on to describe His kind provision over humankind.
From the beginning, God gave. Out of His infinite love He was generous and He gave.
Fast forward to the life of Jesus…In the climax of the Bible, we see this theme emerge once again. To an unbelieving world, John 3:16 may seem as only game day face paint for a Tim Tebow type of character, or perhaps a sign in the clutter of the crowd, but in this one little verse is contained this love story of a different kind, which says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
There it is again. God loved the world so much that he gave. And man, he gave it all. Remember that little two letter word in Genesis chapter one, “us?” That two-letter word represents all pleasure and satisfaction of eternity past…that two-letter word means everything to a Father.
God gave it all. He looked out over His creation and he thought, “it was very good.” But He also knew we had a big problem. And a problem that we humans could not solve on our own. In His great love for His people, He gave. He gave us Jesus to save us from sin and rescue us from death. And it came at the highest price to a Father.
That’s love. That’s a beautiful love story. That’s the very blueprint from which all enduring love stories get their code. So when an unbelieving world sees a nurse volunteering to head to the front lines, to save the sick and comfort the dying, the world gasps at the beauty of such love and generosity. What we are gasping at in those moments, when we are on our heels in amazement, is the blueprint of the Gospel. This higher idea that “God so loved the world that he gave…” has been made plain to us and we recognize it as true beauty when we see it. It’s the inescapable impact of the Gospel on the human heart. That’s a love story of a different kind.
This article about a love story of a different kind originally appeared here.
So much is going on in the world now and from the crisis, five practices of smart churches are standing out.
Recently, a friend of mine visited with a church in Alabama to discuss the church’s culture of generosity. The conversation included discussing their current giving needs as well as future capital needs.
He told the leaders in attendance something interesting. He said, “There’s a pretty good college football coach in the state right?” To which all enthusiastically nodded. It was then a drop-the-mic statement was made. He asked, “What do you think Nick Saban is doing right now? Do you think he is just trying to make it and hope this virus passes as soon as possible? Or do you think he is planning, thinking ahead, getting better, and positioning Alabama for a championship season?” The answer was obvious to those in attendance.
He then said pastors and churches should do the same thing. Nick Saban is planning ahead, personally improving, innovating, and positioning the Alabama Crimson Tide to try to win a championship. Pastors, your mission and vision is far more important. Are you doing the same?
1. Leadership development for their staff and key volunteers. Don’t waste a crisis. Now is the perfect time for training and developing new skills. I recommend every staff member identifies one thing they want to learn or improve upon and then development a personal growth plan which they will be held accountable for.
2. Killing sub-standard ministries. Pastors, there are things in your church you have known for a LONG time were are not being done with excellence. Now is the time to kill them with the plan of relaunching new, improved or repurposed versions when we are able to gather together again.
3. Smart churches are having financial planning meetings right now. Whatever space or funding needs you had pre-coronavirus, those needs are only going to be greater post-coronavirus because of the large number of people who will be attending weekly services. Smart churches are currently developing strategies to increase weekly giving, rebuild their giving base, help unemployed or under-resourced people get back on their feet, and raise significant capital in the Fall or early 2021 for space or debt retirement needs. If this describes you, click HERE and I will be glad to have a consultation call with you. Now is the time to be having those initial conversations.
4. Hiring new staff. This sounds counter-intuitive but economic downturns are a garage sale for the rich. There is a lot of quality talent available right now. Churches with margin should take advantage of this opportunity. Click HERE to speak with my friends at Chemistry Staffing if you are looking for key ministerial staff.
5. Serving and building relationships with the medical community. We have always honored and served educators, law enforcement and first responders. And my heavens rightfully so!!! They are heroes. One of the good things which has come out of COVID-19 is we have added the medical community to this list and spotlighted the vital role they play in our lives.
Once again, do not waste this crisis. Nick Saban isn’t and neither should you. Develop Leaders, Kill Substandard Ministries, Plan For Generosity, Hire New Staff, and Serve The Medical Community. These are 5 things smart churches are doing right now.
This article originally appeared here.
From CMD, “Our pets are precious to us. They were all created by God, and each has unique qualities and characteristics. We can learn from our pets some of the characteristics that we need to have for a Godly life.”
This kids lesson package includes:
Resource provided by Children’s Ministry Deals
Download Instructions: Follow the on-screen directions at the download site.
I have been involved in a number of conversations lately about church growth.
What should growth look like? How does it look different for various sizes of churches? Should you add services or multisite? Are the measurements for success primarily attendance and budget? Can you be successful without numerical growth? If not, what is a healthy rate of growth? What about the growth within your people and the making of disciples? And on and on and on …
In the March edition of Inc. magazine, Leigh Buchanan interviews Stanford professors Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao about the practices of companies who successfully grow and scale. I found their insights quite applicable for some of the things needed for churches to grow.
While this is obviously not a fully-inclusive list, the following are Seven Practices of Growing Churches I gleaned from the article:
Intuitive church leaders know attendance and budget only tell a portion of the story. Rick Warren introduced us to the concept of church health. Rick reminded us that healthy things grow. Therefore, focus on church health.
Rao points out, “When people think of growth, usually they think of anatomy. How big are the limbs? But the real thing is physiology. Is stuff circulating well—the blood and the oxygen? Even if your anatomy is very developed, your physiology can be bad.”
Growing churches know the level of excellence must keep pace with the level of numerical growth.
Sutton says, “Companies grow well and scale badly when they focus on running up the numbers but not the quality.”
As the company grew to over 13,000 stores, Howard Schultz acknowledged the “watering down of the Starbucks experience.” In contrast, Sutton notes Facebook employees are “internalized in a very deep way what is sacred and taboo at Facebook. They are are going to take their eyes off that mindset ball.”
Shawn Lovejoy, lead pastor of Mountain Lake Church, says, “You must be mean about the vision.”
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.
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