A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Walking though Barnes & Noble today, I had to laugh. The title of a book on the 'bargain' shelf caught my eye as it seems to reflect the essence of my last entry, Corporate Church.

Mind you, I've never read this book so it may indeed be the best leadership book ever and worthy of being a national best seller. Really, anytime we can learn from Jesus that is a good thing. I guess the problem seems to be we so often create a Jesus in our own image or a Jesus that we are comfortable with. So, rather than God, Savior, Creator, or Sustainer of all things we have Jesus as CEO. Think about what a CEO does and with what he is concerned. When Jesus is viewed through that lens, is it any wonder we end up with corporate church?

Here it is. Enjoy. A picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

Corporate Church

One of my pet peeves over the course of my church work has been observing the behavior of church consumers. These are the people who church shop every few months. Who will come up and tell you that they "don't feel fed" and that your church does not offer the programs that the need to grow. And because there is a perfectly good church just down the road that has not committed the offense of challenging their spiritual life, they leave your church and the hurt they have cause, never to be seen again. Sometimes this is not a bad things.

Yet, the reason that there are so many church consumers is that, as leaders of the church, we have created this system that produces them. They are our product; our spiritual children, if you will and we cannot forgo at least part of the blame for the monsters that we have created. As church leaders, we have made it mostly (or all if you are honest with yourself) about measurables. Yes, we can rationalize this all we want, but we want bodies in seats. Bodies in groups. Dollars in the offering basket. And more and more people volunteering to do work in the church. These are the things we look for. External stuff.

So, people's spiritual lives get measured by what we can see. And "good Christians" are looked at as the product. It is no wonder that when people are having doubts, involved in conflict, not measuring up, not "being fed" (which is a sense of their own stagnation), or not able to produce in the way we've defined - that they leave our churches. Their spiritual lives are viewed as a product that the church as a corporation produces. Defective products have to go.

As I have progressed in my journey, the question has arisen in my mind again and again - what is the true measure of growth? What should we be looking for within the people we lead to know the state of their spirituality - their relationship with Jesus, creator of their soul?

Steadfastness. The apostle Paul defined it. If you are a college basketball fan, Dick Vitale would call it stick-to-it-iveness. (So funny to me that spell checker did not underline that work. Thanks Dickie V!) Here's how we define steadfastness: it's like the man swimming for his life in the ocean from a shipwreck. He arrives on the beach tattered and exhausted. But he's arrived by his own effort.

This looks like the marriage where the wife decides that the godly thing will be to grin and bear the abuse. As long as she is able to make her husband happy enough they he doesn't explode, then everything will be OK.

Or the man who is addicted to pornography that decides that he just won't look. Even though it is all he thinks about, not looking, he is going to gut it out and make this change.

Or the parents who bring their kids to church no matter what, but who resent each other and never miss an opportunity to tear each other down at any other time.

All these look the part, but they are not examples of steadfastness. They are examples of self-righteousness. Making our own way to God. Covering our own shame with the fig leaves of our pretending. As long as I look good enough, my church buddies will accept me and I'll know God loves me.

A better way to understand what Paul is referring to is maintaining our openness to God. Being open to what He is doing no matter what the circumstances. Finding God as your delight rather than what God does for you.

This is a fundamentally less satisfying definition from a leadership perspective. How do you measure openness? What does delight look like on a bar graph? How do we report these things to the elder board? More than that, this is much tougher. It means that we are going to have to allow people to mess up. To be comfortable with a spirituality that doesn't progressively lead to a better life day by day before Jesus returns. Church leaders are going to have to believe that God DOES work all things for the good of those who love Him, and let people or help people experience their rock bottom so they can delight in the God who has given His EVERYTHING to save them.

Defining steadfastness outside of performance means that we have to take seriously the charge to restore our brother, not just discard him when the going gets messy. That we'll have to bear each other's burdens. Entering into each others lives in a meaningful way in order to do so. Really, doesn't it just lessen the burden we have to bear for each other when people perform well and look the part? No more obligation to be involved in the lives of others when they have it all together. Is "my best life now" even a realistic reality for the one in Christ while we remain in a world that is the dominion of the evil on in these last days? What should we expect from our people?

Our churches should be places where people have the freedom to go beyond the performance that we can measure. Sure they are in a group. Sure they serve every Sunday. So what? The Church should be a haven for those in Christ to walk through the mess of their brokenness with someone who has walked the path before. Without shame or guilt. If God gives none, then why should we? Most of all, the impression should never be given that we need to put ourselves back together in order to be acceptable before God. That is His job. We are the clay. He is the potter. We are the soil. It is God who makes things grow.

Please don't misunderstand my rant. I'm not discounting preaching, Bible studies, small groups, community, service projects, Sunday school or any other way churches get people involved. Those things are of the utmost importance. They should be a point of intersection between our lives and the Gospel.

Where we go wrong is imparting to those things the power to change. They don't have that power. God does. What each of those things are is an opportunity to foster our openness to God and His work in our lives. We are the soil. God is everything else. Nurturer. Lover. Forgiver. Pruner. Teacher. Comforter. Tender. He is the gardener of our soul.

It is time that we evaluate the predominance of Maxwell (or I could name a dozen other business oriented leader gurus, his name just came out first) style leadership within our church structure. Corporate structure and pastors as CEOs lead to people being products. Performance is success. Numbers are what we celebrate. It is time to abandon the performance driven church (how can people believe our words about grace when we are sticklers for performance???).

It is time for corporate leadership to give way to spiritual leadership.

Alas, there is the problem. For that to happen, we leaders must deal with our own root. Through the power of Christ begin to become aware of our own junk. From our awareness comes the ability to deny ourselves, take up our cross on which we crucify daily the old self, and follow Christ. Only then are we fit to tell people to follow me as I follow Christ. Because only then are we trusting the God whose church it is in the first place.

Family Bill of Rights

I am on a vacation and as I type the the sounds of the gulf waters are in my ears. God's creation is enormous and amazing. This has been a great time of spiritual refreshment and family time.

While reading a book on healthy spirituality, I came across this Family Bill of Rights. The author claims to have posted it on his fridge a decade ago so everyone will have an understanding of family expectations on how they will be treated and how to treat each other. I like it, not out of a legalistic sense, but as a clear definition of a minimum standard.

Here it is for your perusal. Maybe it will be posted on my fridge.

FAMILY BILL OF RIGHTS

Respect means I give myself and others the right to:

1. Space and privacy. (i.e. knocking on doors before entering, respecting each other's needs for quiet and space)
2. Be different. (i.e. allowing preferences for food, movies, volume of music, and how we spend our time)
3. Disagree. (i.e. making room for each person to think and see life differently)
4. Be heard. (i.e. listening to each other's desires, opinions, thoughts, feelings, etc.)
5. Be taken seriously. (i.e. listening and being present to one another)
6. Be given the benefit of the doubt. (i.e. checking out assumptions rather than judging one another when misunderstandings arise)
7. Be told the truth. (i.e. counting on the truth when asking each other for information)
8. Be consulted. (i.e. checking and asking when decisions will affect others)
9. Be imperfect and make mistakes. (i.e. leaving room for breaking things, forgetting things, letting each other down unintentionally, failing when we've done our best)
10. Courteous and honorable treatment. (i.e. using words that don't hurt, asking before using, consulting when appropriate, differentiating from one another)
11. Be respected. (i.e. taking one another's feelings into account)

Lord Jesus Christ, Have Mercy On Me

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ - Luke 18:13

On my journey, I have discovered something called the Jesus Prayer. It is derived from the verse above in Luke that was part of Jesus' parable of the pharisee and the tax collector. Reciting this prayer is one of the cornerstone rituals of Eastern Orthodox Christianity that is refreshing and different from the Christianity that we practice. My first encounter with this tradition (aside from the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding) was when I was directed to the book The Way of a Pilgrim, which recounts the wanderings of a 19th century pilgrim across the Russian countryside.

Jesus told the famous parable as a response to those who were confident in their own righteousness, or put another way, those who felt that their works and their disciplines were enough to get them to God. As a contrast, the words given to the pharisee in the parable to differentiate him from sinners are that he fasts twice a week and diligently gives his tithe. That is as clear a statement of basing your righteousness on works as you will find.

Thing is, Jesus is not dismissing disciplines or advocating that they be abandoned, but simply that we must guard against using them as our way to become like God. As if we can achieve that on our own. Remember in the garden, after their sin, Adam and Eve hid from God and sewed together fig leaves to cover their shame. Trying to make themselves right apart from the Father. It is that exact thing that Jesus is cautioning against when he rebukes the pharisees. Disciplines are good just as wearing clothes (provided by God), but not when we are using them as our righteousness.

Ironically, a subtle switch is possible here. What if instead of tithing or fasting, the Jesus Prayer becomes the thing that we are trusting in? So we revel in the fact that we've said it 1000 times today and now use that as our righteous platform. Hey God, look how many times I said this sinner's prayer. Doesn't that prove I love you?

I love saying the Jesus prayer. To remind me to enter into it and help me keep track of my sayings, I even purchased a chotki from an eastern supply store. It is a great reminder and a connecting to historical Christianity that I treasure. Yet, the prayer is not a formula and the chotki is not a protective amulet. Saying the prayer doesn't put a special hedge of protection around me, nor does it cause God to leap to my aid or do what I want him to do.

Here is a humbling definition that should give us pause. It is from the book Spiritual Theology by Simon Chan (an amazing and dense book). "Magic is trying to manipulate natural or supernatural powers to serve our purposes. The self stands at the center of the universe, not God...If you have faith, they say, anything you ask in prayer will be yours. Prayer is a technique for twisting God's arm to get what they want. Such prayers are an abuse of relationship."

In other words, if we are saying a prayer as a way to get something from God, rather to know and be known by Him, it is an abuse of our relationship. It is magic. Chew on that for a bit. Before you doubt me on this, do you remember the Prayer of Jabez? One old testament verse describing Jabez' magnificent faith become our one line prayer. So, at the end of everything, Christians were saying "God increase my territory." That book was a best seller for some time.

I'm guilty of saying "in Jesus' name" at the end of my prayers. We're told anything we ask for in the name of Jesus will be ours, right. So, just to get God's attention, and He won't be fooled by where my heart really is, I stick that phrase at the end so I've done my duty. We could go on and on with examples.

Point is, our prayers can become just as much a way we justify ourselves as any other discipline. In Luke, Jesus is not saying replace one discipline for another. Saying "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner" is not a magic formula.

What Jesus is contrasting is what the faith is in. The pharisee had faith in the power of the spiritual discipline. The tax collector had faith in the God behind the discipline. The key is one's heart for God.

That's why I love the Jesus Prayer. For me, it is about openness. It is a reminder of God and his infinite mercy on me. When I begin to say it, my thankfulness wells up to the top. My mind is staggered that God would and will continue to bestow His mercy up me. Between repetitions I am able to supplicate as God brings reminders to me, I'm able to meditate on scripture that I carry with me. The discipline of the Jesus Prayer gives God a sliver of an opening within me so that the spirit within me can cry out to him. It is praying in Jesus name.

Obviously it is not the discipline for everyone. That is the point. For others fasting takes them to that place. Or solitude. And I'm not saying to focus exclusively on one. But I am saying that nothing carries me to the presence of God like the Jesus Prayer (or a hike, but that's for another time).

We sin when we are closed to God. That's why David said against God alone had he sinned. He laid eyes on Bathsheba and invited her to the palace. He was closed to God. Paul tells us to "take captive every thought" and "renew our minds" so that we do not become closed to God.

Disciplines to not make us more appealing to God, rather practiced with the right perspective, they open us to the God who loves us and transforms us, the one who began a great work in us and wants to carry it on to completion. We have to be open to His work.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!