A Word to Graduates 2012

I want to talk about authority.  What you believe makes you who you are.  Example:  If you believe that the world exists to serve your needs, you will become a greedy, opportunistic, self serving ego-maniac.  If you believe that it is important to help people in need, you will become a more generous and caring person.  

But whatever you believe, you believe on the authority of someone else.  Example:  If you believe that because you’ve trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are going to heaven when you die, you believe that because Jesus said it. 

If you believe that two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule makes water, chances are you believe that because your chemistry teacher told you so.  

Graduation from high school is a one of life’s passages.  It usually means that you are leaving the shelter of home and the certainty of Mom and Dad and striking out on your own to pursue your own career or further education.  I think graduation represents a change in your life because it is a natural changing point for what and who has authority over you in your life.  

C.S. Lewis, a famous Christian writer of the last century said this: “Don't be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you've been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I haven't seen it myself. I couldn't prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority -because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.” 

― C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

So, who has authority in your life?  

We are defined by who has authority over us - whom we give authority over us.  Because we believe what they tell us.  

Hopefully, right now, your parents and your family have authority in your life.  You are now stepping out into a new stage in life and there is a high probability you will put much of what they taught you to the test.  In some things you will choose to accept their authority and continue to live according to what they taught you.  In other areas, you will choose to test whether or not what they taught you has authority in your life or not.  In the end, you will own what your parents worked so hard to teach you or not.

Who will be the new sources of authority in life beyond high school?  There are many.  Make wise choices in whom you grant authority in your life.  Here’s a brief list:   

1.  Roommates/peers.  You are about to enter experiences in which you will make friends that last a lifetime.  The college years tend to be like that.  The friends you make now might well be the friends you keep for the rest of your life.  So choose wisely.  Don’t try to impress other people.  True friends are impressed with who you are already and don’t want you to be something else.  Don’t try to fit in, just be yourself.  True friends will find you where you are.   For some strange reason I find it also true that some of the friends you meet your first year you will try to get rid of your second year.  I’m not sure why that is, but true friends will make that “first year cut” so to speak.  

2.  Girl/boy friends.  You may very well meet your future husband or wife in college.  There does tend to be a lot of pairing up in college.  So stay pure.  Don’t date anyone you haven’t gotten to know as a friend first.  Ask yourself before you date, “Would I consider spending the rest of my life with this person?”  If not, don’t date that person.  It only causes misunderstandings and hurt feelings down the road.  It is always better to be alone than to be together with the wrong person.  Don't commit to a relationship with someone before you answer the authority question in your life (who will have authority in my life?).  It’s unfair to your husband or wife to be under one person’s authority one day and another’s the next.  Be sure the person you’re committing to has also resolved that  authority question as well, and that together, you are submitting to the same authority.   Otherwise, you’ll have issues down the road.   

3.  Mentors.  College years provide the opportunity to meet significant people who can help to shape you as a person and possibly open doors for your in your future.  It is a real gift to have someone who is older and wiser and who is interested in helping you as you struggle with the authority question and find out who you truly are and what you truly believe.  Always be looking for a mentor.  Get more than one if you can.  However, if you can't find one, become one for someone else one day.  The world is suffering from a lack of people willing to invest in other people for their good.  

4.  Professors.  Your college professors will have an incredible amount of influence over you.  Some of them will seek to indoctrinate you. They will try to make you disciples of themselves or Keynes or Hayek (if you study economics, for instance),  liberal or conservative.  You will go through a period of time over the next several years where you try on many different hats and try out many philosophies.  Guard your heart.  So many of the things that are so important during this time of growth and testing during college will turn out not to be so important later on.    

5.  Jesus.  Some of you will have classes in the religion department at your schools.  Be very careful of what they tell you about what you believe.  Professors are usually given a lot of authority by their students.  But when it comes to faith, many professors misuse that authority in order to destroy what you’ve been taught in church.  They do this by going after the Bible.  They try to discredit it.  They treat it as if it were just another piece of literature, like a book by Dicken’s, and not as God’s holy word.  One favorite technique to try to make the Bible unscientific.  We tend to give scientists more authority than anyone else.  The Bible doesn’t ask you to disbelieve science.  But frequently science is used to make you disbelieve the Bible.  Some professors will teach you that apostle Paul was uninformed about modern research into the nature of human sexual activity.  But remember, God has been around since before any of his critics and He will be around long after they have passed.  When presented with a choice between human reason and God’s will, choose God’s will.  It has survived.  Religion professors tend to be very intelligent.  But most of them lack any experience.  What your pastors have taught you comes from seeing God’s word in action in the lives of real people every day.  The professors will tell you that people don’t get miraculously healed and that people can’t change.  I can tell you that people are healed and changed every day by the word of God.  Because Jesus is alive.  He is risen.  And the world has never been the same since Easter.  

Jesus says, “Follow me.”  So now he’s leading you into another great adventure as you go off to college with him.   You're leaving home and have all sorts of choices now.  In the end, his authority trumps all the other authorities that will lay claim on your life.  The Bible tells us all other authorities will be brought under his authority.  Remember what Jesus says at the end of Matthew?  He says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations...”  My prayer is that Jesus will always be the final authority in your life and that you will involve him in every decision you make.  

Here are five things I’d encourage you to do as you move on to college:

1.  Learn history.  I don’t believe there are any new ideas.  Throughout history we have asked all the questions and considered a variety of different answers.  These times we live in are not so different from other times that people who have gone before us have lived in .  As a race, we have faced similar problems before and great minds have provided answers.  Find those answers.  Consider the struggles of past generations as you seek your answers for the future. 

2.  Find a young, vibrant, Bible believing church that loves and accepts students like you and attend regularly.  Don't go to a denominational campus ministry.  Why?  Because you come from a rather young, vibrant, Bible believing church and you need to continue being nurtured in the way you have been brought up.  Denominations are dying because they no longer teach what they profess to believe.  They have exchanged the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ for a lie and there is no life in most of them.  As a believer, you are meant to be part of a church.  Seek your friendships and your relationships there among people who share your beliefs. 

3.  Seek out quality. Keep the best forever.  Seek out the best people to be your friends.  Not the most popular or richest, but the one’s that have the best character, the greatest loyalty, and who hold themselves and you as their friend, to the highest standards.  Seek out the best ideas, the best thoughts, the soundest theories.  Paul writes in Philippians 4:8, “...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

1.   Pray and ask God to reveal to you what you’re good at, what gifts he’s given you, and then ask him to let you go on to use those gifts and to do those things that He made you to do for his glory.  In other words, ask him to help you find out what you were made to do and do it with all your might to the glory of God.  The people who achieve joy in this life do so because they are doing what God made them to do. You don't have to be a pastor to serve God. Rather, serve God in all that you do.

5.  Read your Bible and pray every day.  

Thanks for reading.  God bless.  PJ 

Why We Want to Call a Burmese Pastor

Part I:  Quick Overview

Look at all the exciting things that God is doing at Zion Church!  

• The pews are filling up with those people who ministries and individuals within in the church are helping out of homelessness and other forms of poverty. 
• There are now 150+ kids from local apartment complexes, most of them refugees, who regularly attend our Wednesday night programming.  As many as we can transport coming to Sunday School.  
• We are now serving 267 hot meals on Wednesday nights.
• We have Arabic speaking Muslims attending on a regular basis.  They come to us for information about Jesus (Arabic Alpha), for help in getting established in our community, and for fellowship.
• We are in the local elementary school every week helping to tutor kids.  We also provide transportation to an ever growing group of children to and from school.  We now provide weekend meals for 24 children identified by the school as not having adequate nutrition apart from the school breakfast and lunch programs.
• We live and worship in a changing neighborhood.  More and more of our friends and neighbors are from other countries or are otherwise different from us. 
• We are celebrating one year together with the Mizo people from Burma.  We have a service at 1:00 p.m. on Sundays in the Mizo language.  We provide pastoral acts like weddings, sermons, visitations, prayers, communion, guidance and assistance for nearly 300 Burmese/Mizo members at Zion.  
• We have a good history of joint projects with our Burmese members including their financial participation in the new van, the new soundboard, the new carpet, cash gifts to the church, and our joint work in the community gardens and cleaning projects.  We are now ready to take our relationship to the next level.  It’s time to hire a pastor who will help us all bridge the remaining gaps so that we can truly be one church together and will be able to minister to needs our Burmese members have that our current pastoral staff cannot meet.  

Part 2:  Benefits to Zion of Being a Multi-Ethnic Church:

• Biblical Faithfulness.  God will be honored by calling a Burmese pastor.  The mystery of the Gospel, Paul says in Ephesians 3:6, is that the Gentiles are now co-heirs with the Jews in God’s salvation plan.  That means that every nation is invited to enter the Kingdom of God.  Heaven will not have a Jewish section and a Gentile section, an African section or and Asian section, we’ll all be there together, falling down and worshipping the Lamb together.  When we worship here on earth as we will in heaven, we show the world and ourselves that Jesus is Lord (John 17) and that the Gospel is our new community which tears down the things that have formerly divided us (see Ephesians 2 and 3).  It is God’s intention to unite all things in Christ, and that includes the races.  See the miraculous story of the spread of the Church in Acts:  it spread across the world, uniting groups formerly divided by race, origin, belief, age, income, education, ability, etc.  When we open our hearts and our church to those who are different from ourselves but share our love of Jesus the Savior, we bring a smile to His face and do something beautiful for Jesus.
• Authenticity in our Neighborhood.  If we wanted to remain a white, mostly suburban church, we should have sold the building by now and moved away.  But we are committed to stay in this neighborhood.  If we are to minister to this neighborhood with integrity, we need to look like the neighborhood.  The neighborhood to our immediate east is defined by Zion on the West and Thai Village and the Vietnamese Culture House and Museum on our East.  All the statistics we have indicate that Asians will be a major part of our immediate neighborhood for the next generation.  Having an Asian pastor helps us reflect to the neighborhood that we are serious about welcoming them to Zion and to the kingdom of God.  
• Consistency for Our Membership.  I asked the Friday morning men’s group  a year ago how they thought people in our church would react to being a multi-ethnic church family.  They all responded the same way:  “Why should our church be any different than our kid’s school or our workplace?”  And they’re right.  Twenty five percent of our city is non-white, why wouldn’t our church reflect that?  I personally wonder if the segregation of most churches is a reason that our young people think we’ve failed to accurately reflect Jesus in our churches.  Having a Burmese pastor shows our membership and our world that we are serious about ministering to the people we serve.
• Spiritual Growth.  The most exciting benefit to being a multi-ethnic church is that we will all grow spiritually.  Why?  Two BIG reasons.  1.)  When you teach, you grow.  There are things that the Mizo members can teach us and things we can teach them.  We will grow together in Christ because we’ll be teaching what we believe and that will stretch us.  Neither of us in perfect, we’re all human.  All of us are sinners.  But our experiences of God in our various contexts will serve as curriculum that will help us share the great and glorious Gospel with each other.  2.)  Because we’re different, we’ll have to stretch together and learn how to live out the Gospel of forgiveness and grace.  We’ll actually have to do what the Bible says:  bear with each other; speak the truth in love; forgive as the Lord has forgiven us; be patient, be quick to reconcile.  We’ll learn all these things.  We’ll have to have a relationship that is open and honest and full of integrity.  Our leadership will have to be completely transparent.  And we’ll have to learn how to communicate as Jesus loving people across different cultural platforms.  All of us will.  And this will help us grow immensely.  We’ll have to live what it is that we believe every time we come together.  As a pastor, I can’t think of a better exercise to make us practice what it is that we preach.  
• We will grow our future membership.  What I mean by this is simply that there are many people in this city, both believers and those we are still considering the reality of Christ, that are waiting for the kingdom to be realized in this particular way.  They will respond positively to a church that seeks to bring the nations together under Christ.  I forecast that many are tired of being segregated and are longing to worship God with brothers and sisters from all over the earth.  Calling a Burmese pastor will help us grow the church numerically as well.
• A Preview of Heaven.  When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together we call it a “fore-taste of the feast to come,” meaning that we will celebrate it all together when we reach the bright shores of Heaven and are One with Him who is One with us and with the Father.  How better to celebrate this feast together as people from every tribe and race, tongue and nation.  This visual will be a powerful reminder for us all at Zion that our true home is in Heaven and we shall be there together.  
• Ability to Teach Other Churches.  Not a month goes by when we don’t get an inquiry from a pastor or a church or members of another church about what we’re doing.  We even get donations to help us!  Other churches want to know how to do the things that we’re doing.  It is God who does them, not us.  What we have to share is a testimony about how great our God is, and how Faithful He is, and about how, if you surrender to Him, He will come and show every church how to do mission and how to integrate with others who are different. 

Part 3:  The Benefits of a Burmese Pastor

• The first is obvious:  calling a Burmese pastor will helps us minister to a group that is now as much as 25% of our church.
• Calling a Burmese pastor will help us increase communication across our entire church.  Right now our situation is this:  for nearly 300 Burmese members, we have only 2 translators.  Those translators work full time, have growing families, and also have to translate for everyone who has to fill out paperwork, receives mail, or wants to buy a car or register something.  They are soooo busy that communication across the entire church suffers.  I can’t make a home visit or go to a meeting without a translator.  If we really need them, they have to drop everything and come and help.  Having a pastor on staff will allow us to have a translator available to us full time.  Translation is important.  It’s a major deal to invite the 1:00 service to come to a meal or event.  Everything has to be translated at this stage.  Sometimes, we’re not able to get it done in a timely matter and we are all deprived of each other’s company as a result.  We need a full time pastor to help us bridge the communication divide.
• Integration.  We need to be one church, not two.  Think about all the things we could do together:  mission work, church suppers, Family Camp, family exchanges, prayer requests, celebrations, picture directories...etc.  The list is endless.  But we need help, full time help, to bridge the language and cultural divides.  Having a Burmese pastor on staff will help us bridge these gaps, and help us all get educated in cross cultural relationships so we can figure out how to work with our members from Liberia, Sudan and other places.
• Neighborhood Outreach.  The pastor we will call will speak Mizo, our particular dialect, but also English and Burmese.  Our Burmese refugees are made up of many different ethnic groups and if they speak a common language, it’s Burmese.  That means that with the hep of the new pastor, we might be able to communicate to many more families at Samuelson School, within our WEdnesday night programming as well.  Imagine our frustration when some of the neighborhood kids who come on Wednesdays are asking about baptism and we can’t communicate with their parents!  Having a Burmese speaking pastor might help us breach this gap in many, many cases.
• For the Edification of the Entire Congregation.  Imagine what it will be like to learn from a pastor who grew up and ministered across the planet from us.  Imagine what his testimony is like, living and preaching in a country that does not acknowledge Jesus as Lord, but actively persecutes the Church!  Oh!  How much we have to learn and how we will all be built up and edified together as a church with his teaching!   

Part 4:  The Details.

• Our Denomination, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, Supports us Fully.  We’ll need help with the visa and immigration papers for this pastor.  LCMC has pledged to support us fully and are very, very excited about the ministry Zion is doing in our neighborhood.  They seek ways to encourage us.  
• How Do We Pay For This?  Regular offerings from the 1:00 service which are currently being “saved” are more than sufficient to pay for new pastor’s salary and benefits.  Each month, funds will be given to the General Fund from the 1:00 service to pay for the expenses related to this new position.
• Procedure.  The procedure to call this pastor is pretty straight forward.  Here it is: 
• solicit list of candidates (on going)
• work on job description (on going)
• assemble call committee.  The call committee will be made up of 1:00 service members, Pastor John and someone from the BSO.  
• interviews (mostly phone and Skype).  Will be done by the call committee.  
• offer/acceptance.  They say “yes!”   
• visas/green card.  Paper work.  
• credentialing.  We’ll work with LCMC to get our new pastor certified with the LCMC. 
• Job Description.  The job description will include the following:
• minister to particular needs of Mizo members
• preaching/teaching/pastoral acts for entire congregation
• aid in integrating Mizo with entire congregation
• neighborhood outreach and mission
• new effort for fully integrated student/children ministry

• Who Will Provide Supervision?  Pastor John as lead pastor and a joint task force of the BSO and 1:00 service.  

Conclusion:  The Future of the 10:30 Service.

We didn’t feel called to be a land lord.  We didn’t want to rule over our 1:00 service.  So when they came to us asking for help over a year ago, we asked them to simply join the church.  We continue to believe that God doesn’t want another ethnically specific church in Des Moines.  We believe He wants to make us one.  Zion was a German speaking congregation for 60 years.  We nearly died.  In order to do mission in our world, we need to speak the language of the culture.  The Mizo kids are learning English quickly.  Our Wednesday night neighborhood kids, too.  Where will they worship?  Probably not in the language of their parents.  Who will they marry?  Probably not someone who speaks their dialect.  We have a unique opportunity to provide these kids and their future families a place to worship together in English.  So we’re offering the 10:30 service to become more “global” in it’s style.  Call it the World Beat Service, perhaps.  We already worship monthly with Pastor Gakunze’s Swahili speaking congregation.  Why not add everyone in the neighborhood into that mix.  The songs will be in English and other languages, the sermons, too.  But we’ll be one.  Worshipping together the One God.  And this, I believe, will be something beautiful for Jesus.  Thanks for reading.  PJ 

End of April Update

Here are the facts as I see them.   In my opinion, as lead pastor, we’ve been crazy obedient to our Master, Jesus Christ.  We’ve taken all kinds of risks as a congregation and I think that God is glorified because of it.  I’m amazed at how much work God has done.  The facts are these:

1. Fact 1:  We have become a multi-ethnic church.  We now have 25% minority membership, predominately but not limited to, Asian members.  We also have Iraqis, Sudanese, Liberians and Congolese in attendance.  Are we excited about this?  You bet.  Our neighborhood has changed.  On one end of our neighborhood we have Thai Village.  On the other end we have Zion.  We also have the new Vietnamese cultural center in the Triangle on Douglas.  This all makes sense and I believe it is all by God’s design.
2. Fact 2:  We’re ready to call a pastor to minister to all of us, but especially to our Burmese members.  They are, after all, the fastest growing segment of our congregation.  Worshipping over 100 per Sunday and contributing regularly to our common good, the Burmese membership is an amazing blessing.  A pastor who speaks Burmese, Mizo (our particular dialect at the 1:00 service), and English, will solidify us as a congregation and allow us to make a major advance in unifying the congregation.  Imagine what it will be like to have someone on staff who can help us integrate the entire congregation together!  
3. Fact 3:  Our African immigrant membership continues to grow.  We are growing in Liberian and Sudanese members.  What is remarkable about these members is that when I ask them, “Why did you come to Zion?,” they all answer the same way:  “God said to come here.”  So we continue to believe that God is up to something and knows what he’s doing, even if we don’t fully understand it yet.  In the meantime, Pastor Gakunze’s church and ours have begun to worship together at the 10:30 service monthly.  Gakunzi preached on Palm Sunday and was a big hit.  I think God is up something with this and look forward to what he has in store.  
4. Fact 4:  Our Wednesday nights are off the charts.  Last count, we were up to 150 kids from the apartment complexes which complements our current program of 30 Zion kids well.  We’re serving over 200 meals each Wednesday night.  Praise God!  The week before Easter we were able to do a Gospel presentation for the kids that really hit home.  I used kids to act out the crucifixion, and as I was about to drive home the nail into Dede’s hands, an enormous number of children stormed the stage to see.  It was a very moving experience for many of our volunteers.  I imagine that next year at this time we’ll be having baptisms for some of these kids.  And I’m grateful to our Master for being able to be a part of what he’s doing here at Zion.  Two weeks ago we started a new joint opening with our regular WOW program. Pastor Brent and a bunch of middle and high school students lead it.  It is amazing and the kids are responding beautifully.  
5. Fact 5:  Two weeks ago we launched a new concept:  seminars for the church and the neighborhood.  Our first one was on how to parent your child in the digital age.  We had an expert from Houston come in and explain to people what was appropriate and inappropriate in terms of your child’s use of technology and why.  What do you do with Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace?   We invited the church and sent out over 1700 direct mail invitations.  We had 40 people attend and we learned a lot.  We’ll do it again.
6. Fact 6:  We’re back in the baby business!  I hadn’t seen babies for a while and thought that was odd.  We had two new borns in church on Sunday and found out we have 2 more on the way in the next few weeks.  Wow.  
7. Fact 7:  The volunteers are starting to arrive from beyond Zion.  I’m amazed at offers to help from outside the congregation.  Tutoring, clothes closet help, organizational help, and even some money are coming in.  I think it’s a trend and I’m grateful.  If we are to be a successful bridge to our neighborhood and the suburbs, we should expect to see it.  It’s coming.  Let me convey this story to you:  Last Wednesday night I was concerned because we didn’t have enough money in the kitchen account for more groceries.  Our exit offering from the weekend after Easter was a flop (duh, so was attendance!).  I was after the Lord, chastising him for his lack of provision, when a volunteer from Waukee came in and said her neighbor heard what we were doing and gave us a check for $500!  God provides.  
8. Fact 8:  Have you noticed how our own middle school and high school students are responding to the new ministries we’re doing?  They’ve jumped in with both feet.  Ask Brent.  The response is overwhelming.  I think this is proof that helping others will leads to spiritual growth.  It isn’t just the content of what we teach that is important, it’s providing the opportunity to put what we teach into practice.  

Thanks for reading.  Be encouraged.  God bless.  PJ 

The Difference Between Being "In" Mission and "For" Mission and the Homogenous Unit Principle

You’ll forgive me, I hope, for sharing some thoughts that may not be fully formed.  These thoughts have dominated what clear thoughts I’ve been able to have lately and it’s time to submit them to public scrutiny.  

When we left our former denomination and joined LCMC, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, which is more a movement than a denomination, I told people that now, out of the denominational bubble we had lived in, we would have to “do mission or die.”

I’d like to amend that phrase.  I think that based on what we see at Zion Church these days, it must be said that we have learned that we must “do mission and die.”  To be fully devoted to mission means the death of self.  To be fully devoted to mission is the summation of what Jesus said about following him, “You must deny yourself daily (die to self), pick up your cross, and follow me.”  To live in mission is to everyday give up your life for the sake of making disciples.

What does this mean for a church?  It means a daily dying by everyone in the church to comfort, stability, preferences, procedures, etc.  I means living in a state of risk, maybe even danger (emotional or physical) for the sake of the mission.  It means learning to love and be patient with others, even and especially those who may be different than yourself.  

This is a great challenge.  Imagine that all your life you’ve gone to church with your friends.  They are people who look like you, talk like you, have similar incomes and schooling.  Now, suddenly, we’re doing mission and here come people and their kids who have a different education, perhaps a different language, perhaps different child raising philosophies, perhaps a different skin color and for certain, a different life experience.  It’s scary.  It’s risky.  It’s messy.  Mission is messy.  Following Jesus is messy.  You have to leave things, even comforts, in order to “go” and follow.

It occurs to me that there is an enormous different between being a congregation “for” mission and “in” mission.  Here’s what I mean.   A lot of churches have great mission programs.  You go as a group and fly in to some place and then after ten days or two weeks you fly home again.  You are changed by the experience and you begin to see that the world is a bigger place and that God has plans and is busy all over the planet.  But at the end of the day you get to come home.  To safety.  To the “normal.”  To comfort.

It’s like my favorite police dramas on TV.  Here are guys who, because they are public servants, don’t make much money.  They work hard, are consumed by their profession and catching the bad guy.  But at the end of the show, they go home to this gorgeous house and drive an amazing car.  It just isn’t that way in the real world.  Work follows you home and if you’re serving full time plus, you probably have a small place that hardly ever get’s cleaned and a beater car.  

When my family and I were abroad as missionaries, we were full time in mission.  We were always watched.  We stood out.  We knew that we were always on stage for Jesus.  We lived in a culture that was very much different from our own.  There wasn’t any going home.  

When you’re “in” mission, you are continually on stage for Jesus.  We aren’t asking our church to go and fly in for a while and do great ministry, we’re asking the church to be “in” ministry 24/7.  We’re saying, “Look, our neighbors need Jesus, move over, let them sit in the pew next to you, let them eat your food, share your space.  Let’s do life together with our neighborhood so that, as our Master says, ‘People will see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.’”  We’re not asking you to fly in and fly out.  We’re asking you to live mission.  To be missionaries.  We’re asking you to give up your seat, perhaps pay for someone else’s kid’s dinner, volunteer for some extra hours, and agree to go through life with people who are different than you are.

Most successful churches in the US are built on a subtle idea that is so normal for us we don’t even think about it.  It’s called the Homogenous Unit Principle.  The idea behind HUP is simply this:  to grow a church big and fast, get people who are the same together.  It works.  The trouble is, it leads to a church that is more than likely to be “for,” rather than “in,” mission.  Because everyone is similar in the church (education, income, race, experience), it’s hard for “different” people to come and feel comfortable.  So in order to do mission, the church has to fly in and fly out, either around the world or across town.  

Our situation is different, therefore our call from the Lord is different.  We must be “in” mission.  We must find a way to welcome our changing neighborhood into our building and we must, because of the Great Commission, find a way to meet people who are different form ourselves with the Gospel.  It’s an amazing, beautiful, exciting, thrilling adventure.  But it requires of us to be “in” mission.  All the time.  24/7.  There is no leaving and flying back home.  We live here already.  

No doubt all this change is very hard.  For generations, we had a common understanding about how church was done in our society.  Church is where you went to hear the Gospel.  You heard it and then you went home to hopefully live it.  Because of the death of mainline Protestantism, Globalization, and other factors, we have to do church differently than before.  One of the biggest changes must be that in church you don’t just hear the Gospel, you also have to live it out right there, because the church, the local congregation, is the frontline of mission in our society.  

People like mission “neat.”  They like to go do it and then go home to what they think is reality.  We’re asking you to change your reality.  We’re asking you to live mission, be “in mission,” to let mission be our new reality together.  There is no going home, we’re already there.  

What would Jesus have us do?  What would he say?  When we see the hundreds of kids hungry for a meal and for the Gospel, how can we not change everything?  And the amazing thing is that as we change for their sake, our Master will change us for His sake.  We will grow in spiritual maturity, in wisdom and in Christlikeness.  What more could you ask from your church?  

Thanks for reading.  God bless you.  PJ 

I'm Back

I’ve been silent for a long, long time.  In fact, I’ve had trouble blogging, even posting anything to FaceBook or Twitter for the last six months.  Why?  Because I lost my nerve.  Around twelve families left our church during these six months and the one thing that all of them had in common was that they blamed me for their departure in some form or fashion.  I did something wrong to them or didn’t do what they needed.  Simply put, they didn’t see Jesus in me.  It sort of took the wind out of my sails, as you can well imagine.  Every pastor’s nightmare is that people will leave the church and maybe even lose their faith and stop believing in Jesus because of him.  None of us want to give our Master a black eye.   So when a group decides to leave it’s a big deal.  The onus is on the pastor.  How can I interpret these events in any other way than “I failed?”

And because I failed, I stopped speaking.  My thinking went like this:  “If I’m so offensive, maybe nothing I say is worth hearing.”  It caused me to question everything.  It caused me to stop and over-think everything I said and did so that I could hardly utter a word in confidence.   “How will this be interpreted by people?”  I’m emerging, like a ground hog, from six months of self examination and reflection.  

Pastors deal with the dying every day, no matter how big your church is.  Because we’re all dying.  Some of us just haven’t realized it yet.  Most pastors know that they are dying, too.  They  know that one day, sooner than we think, we’re going to stand before our Master and he’s going to pass sentence on us.  Either our Master will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” or, “Depart from me, I know you not.”  When a pastor says, “Because God says,” on a Sunday morning, we realize that we will have to answer if we’re wrong.  It’s why we pray so much.   I’m not sure most people realize that pastors take eternity and judgement and salvation very, very seriously.  Because we know what’s coming, most pastors would never lead a church down a path they didn’t think the Lord of the Church was calling us to go down.   

My Dad, a retired pastor of over 50 years, wonders what the Lord will say to him for some of the weddings he wasn’t sure about but did anyway and which later failed.  There is so much pressure to give people what they want.  And there is such a high price to be paid when you don’t.  

People have become so quick to turn their backs on churches and pastors these days and walk away.  Every pastor I’ve talked to in our city has seen a surge of solid, long time members get angry about seemingly small things and then leave.  There is a real restlessness out there. Things that a decade or two ago would have been quickly forgiven and forgotten are now causes for separation.  It’s almost as if people are looking for reasons to be offended.  They also report an increase in hostility toward pastors and a general loss of respect for the office.  

I wonder if we’ve been trying to please people too much and not our Master?

It is an awesome task to stand in front of people week after week and speak the word of God.  Our Savior told us that the world would hate us because of him.  I think most of us pastor types just assumed the attitude of the church would be different.  

I commend to you the following blog from a pastor’s kid who gave up on the church.  I think a lot of people do give up.  They see the way we quarrel and bicker in the church and they are just turned off.  There are consequences in failing to hang together, be patient, speak the truth and being willing to change.  Our inability to maintain community no matter what sends the world a message that we don’t practice what we preach.  Please know that if you have been wounded by a pastor, a church, or church people, I apologize to you from the bottom of my heart on behalf of the entire Church of Jesus Christ in all times and all places.  But don’t give up.  If you believe then you belong in Church.  

http://www.catalystspace.com/content/read/why_i_quit_the_church/

Anyway, I’m back now.  I’m still hurting, I’m still wondering how things could’ve been different, I’m still sorry for the mess, but I also realize that my role is not to make people happy.  It’s to live out my life as a leader in the Church before an audience of just one, the One. To be faithful to him above all else, no matter what the cost.   At the end of the day, it’s his opinion that matters.  At the end of the day, when I look around our congregation, I don’t see destruction and devastation.  I see trees loaded with fruit.  For six months I’ve been consumed with destruction and have totally missed the fruit in front of me.  Please forgive me.  From now on, let’s talk about the fruit.  Thanks for reading.  God bless.  PJ 

Easter and No More What ifs.

Happy Easter!

Easter is a celebration about the triumph of Jesus over sin, death and the devil.

He was absolutely obedient to the Father and was raised from the dead by the power of the Father.  Jesus was the pioneer.  The promise for those of us who follow him and have been spiritually united with him is that we, too, will be raised from the dead to live with the Father and the Son and the Spirit in eternity forever.  

This is an amazing promise and ought to fill us with hope, joy, love, peace and an overwhelming desire to love God and our neighbor and share this good news in every word and deed.  It is the kind of news that captivates your imagination, changes your life, and gives you meaning and purpose.

But so many Christians and so many churches seem so hopeless.  It’s like they’ve lost the power of the resurrection.  It’s like they are uncaptivated by the excitement of eternal life later and new life now.  

What if the followers of Jesus lived in the power of the resurrection?  

What if....?

1. What if the Church wasn’t afraid?
1. We wouldn’t be afraid of what people would say to us - we could preach the Gospel without fear and with joy
2. We wouldn’t be afraid to share our faith and we wouldn’t be afraid of being rejected by the world or by our friends.
3. We wouldn’t spend so much time worrying about money but would trust God to provide.
4. We wouldn’t be afraid of losing everything and even dying for what God wants.

1. What if the people who went to church strove to be genuine and real?

a.  There would be no “posers” trying to project to everyone that they were better than they really were.   No false humility, false piety, just real people struggling with real sin in light of a real savior.

1. People would speak differently:  there would be no passive aggressiveness, no gossip, no lies.  They would say what they mean and mean what they said.
2. They would seek to help each other in their spiritual struggles and bear one another’s burdens.

1. What if the church always thought long term?  

a. It would be like planting a garden that would be enjoyed by future generations and not just us.  

1. What if the church thought more about what was good for the kingdom than what was good for the congregation?  

1. We would always be thinking God sized thoughts that were bigger than ourselves.
2. We would always think about developing future leaders.
3. We could be free to “tithe” members to new churches that were starting.
4. We’d be more interested in multiplying churches and leaders than in keeping the doors open.
5. We’d be free at last to lose ourselves in pursuing a greater goal than just our own survival.  

1. What if the church learned to listen to God?

1. We’d have amazing prayer times together.
2.   We would know the direction God wanted us to go and could stop struggling internally for power and pride.  
3.   We might experience times of “inaction” as we waited for the Holy Spirit to reveal his course for us.  

1. What if the church were all about Jesus Christ and not about us?

1. We would put Jesus and his Gospel first, last and always.
2. We would learn how to separate our preferences and personal piety from what Jesus  called us to do.

1. What if the church thought about thriving and not just surviving?

1. Then 10% of the congregation would no longer give 50% of the budget - we’d all up our stake in what God was doing here.

1. What if church were fun - full of celebration, innovation, and creativity?

1. We’d all invite our friends because we couldn’t wait to show them how much fun it was to worship Jesus and follow him together.
2. Our kids couldn’t wait to get here each week and wanted to come even when nothing was going on.
3. We’d all experience a great sense of freedom - the sense of obligation to be here would be gone.

1. What if the church really believed that people could be changed by Jesus?

1. We’d always have to believe the best about people because God wasn’t finished working on them yet.
2.   We’d stop being so judgmental.
3.   We’d start seeing miracles every week.

1. What if the church were an environment in which all these things could happen?

1. Why can’t it be?

Thanks for reading.  God bless you.  PJ 

Can a church add value to it’s community beyond care of poor and Biblical/moral teaching?

This continuing conversation will make more sense if you read my previous blog at: http://www.pastorjohnsthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/01/plan-to-meet-some-of-our-neighborhoods.html

Can a church add value to it’s community beyond care of poor and Biblical/moral teaching?

If you read the neighborhood plan put forward in the last blog, you’ll see that we want to do at Zion is more than feed the hungry and house the homeless, we want to be a positive and innovative witness within our community that helps the neighborhood become the best place to live this side of heaven.  We want to see the kingdom of God manifest in our neighborhood.  We not only want to address the issues of people not having enough, we want to better the lives of those who have plenty.  What we desire is nothing less then the redemption of our community as a whole.  We want to help people not only get established, but enhance the quality of life for those already here.  We don’t want just the refugee or underprivileged children to get career counseling, we want every child to have assistance discovering what they are good at and getting help developing a plan to “become” what they are good at in life.

The idea that the local congregation exists as an outpost of heaven for the benefit of all within the community is an old one.  I think it’s most common manifestation was in what was called “the Parish Model.”  My favorite example of this model comes from 17th and 18th century England where geographic areas were divided into “parishes.”  Each parish had a church which was responsible to call people to the worship of God and prayer on Sundays and other holy days and when necessary for special prayers on behalf of the king and nation.  It was responsible for baptisms, weddings, funerals, and all the rest, and also for the care of the poor.   The parish church might be a large edifice which was used for many kinds of community activities, including concerts and meetings.  It was a very public sort of “community room.”  Frequently, the “parish council,” the local government met at the church.  The council frequently included the “parish pastor” who was responsible for the spiritual needs of the community.  In such a way, the government, the church and others worked hand in hand for the benefit of the entire community.  

What w’ere talking about at Zion is to effectively put this model of ministry into use in our relationship with our community.  We imagine being able to convene various groups and organizations together to solve various problems in the neighborhood but to also work together to form a plan for the future.  Every group we’ve spoken to thus far has been very open to such meetings.  We believe that our local community has the opportunity to be one of the most vibrant, diverse and exciting neighborhoods in the city and that the church should be a part of that vitality, diversity and excitement.  We believe that by modeling the kingdom of God and showing how things could be, that we can help the entire community bring “could be” into reality.  

Another hallmark of the old parish model is that every resident of the geographic area of the parish was a de facto member of the church.  Now of course in England, where there is a state church and so you are a member of this state church simply by being born, this makes sense.  But what would it be like for our church to simply acknowledge that every person within our geographic area was also a de facto member of church, able to use the building and receive various services from the church?  In other words, what if we erased the lines between church and neighborhood and earnestly sought to integrate the church and the neighborhood, the neighborhood and the church?   No doubt such a church would be a place that would provide more to the community than help with the poor and Biblical/moral teaching.  No doubt such a church would be the center of activity within the community, the place to go to for everything, not just help.  

Here’s an example of how this thinking might play out:  A certain world famous artist lives in our area, he is a refugee from a certain country.  What if Zion provided our space for a showing of his art?  His entire ethnic community would attend the opening  and it would give us a chance to show hospitality to this group.  The whole community would be invited and for many, it would be the first time that they had ever been to our church, or even in a church.  Later, with the art still in view, we could invite the entire community to a round table discussion about the refugee experience in our own city.  In such a way we provide public space for art, for the education of the community, and for fellowship between the various ethnic groups, generations and economic groups within our neighborhood.  And it all happens in God’s house, under the cross.  Redemption, reconciliation and peace result within our community and our Lord Jesus is glorified.  And people who were far from the church come near to experience our common life together.  

Barna Group has done some research on this approach.  You can read about it at 

http://www.barna.org/congregations-articles/502-do-churches-contribute-to-their-communities

I think there is no doubt that the church can add value to the community beyond it's traditional role.  I think that some might ask, "But should it?"  I would answer with another question:  "Will so doing make our Master smile?"  I think it would.  I think he intended for his church to be the way forward for the world.  

Thanks for reading.  God bless.  PJ