"Whose idea was this?"

  "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty."
  I think that it must be one of the many weird things about the English language that makes it confusing for the rest of the planet: "awfully good"; "jumbo shrimp"; "pretty bad"; etc. The words alone offer no confusion of meaning but their combinations do. Paul's words from Philippians describe the extremes involved in a normal life, yet they are not the same as what has come to be known as "extreme living", but they should! Or should they?
  We are privy to more information about the context of these words than many from Paul because we have the Philippian story, but unfortunately we treat it like a cleaned up version of the old west as portrayed in Gunsmoke. I recall my parent's complaining about the spaghetti westerns of Clint Eastwood and how bloody they were, never acknowledging that the violence of Matt Dillon spilled more than a few drops albeit, never shown! The Philippian church was planted by the blood coursing from the wounds of a jailed, beaten missionary. In a matter of hours his beating translated into a baptism for the jailer and his family. He began in need and finished with plenty. Although not a proper description, it certainly fits the profile of "extreme living".
  This is the observed pattern that I wrote about last month: the cycles of life. In retrospect, they last for a brief moment but, when we are in them they can seem eternal. The problem of human nature is in wanting to treat the extremes as the norm. The "for better or worse" in marriage vows is a perfect example. Oh, that the honeymoon were what marriage is intended to be like! Then, there is the first fight, mean words, cold shoulders. This is what we were warned that marriage is really like: cohabitation. It is why so few marriages last past a few years. Or, like learning to drive. The laws of physics tell us that the nature of motion is to go in a straight line. Our minds tell us that we have to steer the car in a straight line. With our hands white-knuckled at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, we will be fighting the car to keep it between the ditches, never realizing that if we just relax it won't need our help!
  Don't let me lose you now. In Kingdom work, we will have moments of success, excitement, appreciation, approval and victory. If we have been to the conferences and read the books we will conclude that we are doing something right and make our plans to never change a thing. We are the captains of our fate and we are good! But, in Kingdom work, we will have moments of failure, sameness, betrayal and defeat. If we have been to the conferences and read the books we will conclude that we must be doing something wrong and make our plans to change everything. We are the victims of our fate and want to walk the plank! Don't tell me that the Apostle Paul didn't know the feeling.
  How did he manage to endure until he lost his head? In his own words we find the answer, "I have learned to be content." What? Paul didn't know everything that he needed by divine inspiration? Gasp! Blasphemy! Heresy! No, relief! In almost 40 years of ministry and 20 year as a church planter I can honestly say that "I have been to the mountain and it is a volcano!" The peaks and valleys of the cycles of life and ministry are what they are, they just don't happen to represent where success is measured. I am currently in a valley and don't like it. Never have. Never will. Have I learned contentment? No. I have learned to make no rash decision either here or on the mountain top.
  A couple of years ago my brother-in-law, college roommate and I hiked 50 miles of the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smokey Mountains. As we began, someone asked, "Whose idea was this? This is awesome!" By the end of the first day, someone asked, "Whose idea was this? This is awful!" Same day, same trail. By our journey's end, the question was, "When can we do this again?"

Asterisk

   A Bucket List. I believe that everyone has one and our DNA determines both how long it is and what’s on it. Not only is mine long but it continues to get longer. Check one more thing off of my list or at least put an asterisk next to it. I took a flying lesson.

   From that period as a child when my brothers and I would jump off of a mound of earth hanging onto a big piece of cardboard (way before hang gliding was invented) to marrying the daughter of a pilot, I have loved the idea of learning to fly. Last September I purchased an online coupon for a discounted flying lesson at a local airport. As life happens there never seemed to be an acceptable alignment of circumstances to use it before it expired in June. I had to use it or lose it. I make the appointment and show up the last week, on a day when the wind was blowing 30 mph with gusts! After the pre-flight orientation we roll the aircraft out of its hanger, climb aboard, taxi down the runway, turn and begin the 36 minute flight. Just getting off of the ground was a trick accomplished only by turning the plane slightly sideways to compensate for the crosswinds. I take the controls, cross the Chesapeake Bay, turn around and return to the airstrip. Upon the approach my instructor resumes control and brings us safely home. The flight fits firmly into the category of a “white knuckle” experience: watching the altimeter, airspeed indicator, altitude indicator while being bumped, dipped, buffeted and bounced around, listening to the instructor and enjoying the sights! The asterisk is for the yet-to-be-determined future of flying lessons.
   Junior High School (I’m showing my age). Reading class. Mrs. Holder. She had a nickname: Hawkeye Holder. It was well deserved! You couldn’t blink without it attracting her attention and then she was fond of using a ruler but not for geometry. She survived the years and excelled in her discipline because of her keen powers of observation; a lesson not lost on me.
   The day of the flight only one person knew where I was, a friend who agreed to take the pictures. Because the takeoff what so hair raising, I did two things: first, I thought about the fact that we could crash and die and my wife would not even know it; second, I asked the instructor, “How many people under these conditions say, ‘Take me back to the hanger!’?” I am taking serious mental notes about the experience because I felt like it was just another day in ministry.
   Of late I have begun to understand some patterns of human behavior based upon personal process and observation. I have become my Reading Teacher. There was more to the flight than the flight. There was the compulsion for flight that had nothing whatever to do with altimeters and flap controls! Consequently, I am gaining increased insight into the conduct of Biblical characters and patterns of behavior among spiritual leaders. When we planted twenty years ago, we were followed by several others within a couple of years. They were friends, confidants, fellow laborers and golfing companions. Only one of them survived beyond five years.
   New experiences that we aspire to, regardless of whether it is a new career, a new church or a marriage begin the same; on a note of exhilaration! We’re excited, the future is bright, everything and everyone are wonderful. We can’t wait for the next day, the next assignment, the next experience in the journey. We’re pumped. We’re excited. We’re the poster children for whatever it is. This is what we have lived for. This is what we were created for. This is our place in the universe! It just doesn’t get any better than this. (The Apostles had to feel the same way immediately after answering the call to follow Jesus.) Then we climb into the cockpit and attempt to take off in 30 mph crosswinds. Honeymoons are awesome, but they are not what life is made for... (to be continued)

Knowing Our Limitations (continued)

   In 1991 I had the privilege of attending a John Maxwell Leadership Conference. Having been around church for a lifetime and having served in various churches doing youth, music and pastoral leadership gave me a great appreciation for his Five Levels of Leadership. His message resonated when he made the statement, “and if you don’t take enough people with you to the next level, they will cut a hole underneath you and you will be on your way out of town in a U-Haul truck!” While Senior Pastor of the Skyline Wesleyan Church in Lemon Grove, California, he lead his church to plant. Their first Sunday for the new plant saw 800 people in attendance. He recounted the story of connecting with new people in subsequent weeks by knowing their names because he had one person responsible for taking photos, writing names on the images and placing them on a flip-ring for him to carry around! John got the credit while someone else did all of the work. He simply knew his limitations.
   From 1975-1993 I was simply another hireling. That’s what most churches wanted in leadership, be it the primary talking head or a subordinate staff member. My objective was always simple: lead the church to a new level of reaching people and making disciples. I didn’t realize then that sacred cows have horns which serve principally as altars of sacrifice. I had never been warned that being called to a new church was akin to the annual event in Pamplona, Spain. It was only after having violated some sacred tradition that I would hear the approaching hoof beats: the running of the sacred cows. I’m such a quick study that I figured it out after only getting gored and/or trampled twelve times! I was beginning to learn my limitations.
   1993 was supposed to be the beginning of a new day. What could be better than Mark Twain’s solution of “outliving your critics” than predating them? Planning, organizing and launching a new ministry without a stable for sacred cows was supposed to be the answer. Twenty years of hindsight merely allow me to place little crosses beside the road where I’ve been gored and/or trampled since. The primary difference this time is that it has been those whom I had invited to serve along side me that have driven other kinds of trampling herds. How ironic is that?
   I think that I know how Moses felt. It wasn’t enough that he hadn’t volunteered for the job. It wasn’t enough that he didn’t have an advanced planning guide for the journey. It wasn’t enough to be hated by the Egyptians. It wasn’t enough to be herding ungrateful, fickle cats (a.k.a. “Israel”). It wasn’t enough to have an unsupportive wife. He had to have a brother and sister who overestimated their own importance. Rather than seeing their relationship to God’s chosen leader as one of privilege, Miriam and Aaron both view it as a stepping stone to personal greatness.
   And what about David? Like the legend of Daniel Boone, David had not only killed a bear but also a lion in route to slaying a giant. I’m reasonably convinced that the lowest point in his long and arduous journey from herding sheep to dying as King was the heartbreak of being undermined then hunted by his own son, Absalom.
   It was Machiavelli in “The Prince” who said, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” What he didn’t tell us what how to distinguish them. The great travesty of leadership and certainly church planting is knowing that we need others to make it happen yet never knowing what we’ve got until they’ve attempted a coup. “Et tu Brute?”

Knowing Our Limitations

   Unlike many of my acquaintances, I am not a movie buff. One of the many reasons that I don’t bother with crossword puzzles is to avoid the frustration of the frequently provided actor/actress clue. I confess, as a rule, I am clueless. But, even though I am not a buff, I do enjoy a good flick. It may have come about as the result of that stage of life when my brain was much more impressionable than it is now or it may have been the result of a sense of affinity with the primary character, but in the end, the ‘why’ really doesn’t matter; I was smitten with Inspector Callahan in 1971. Me and a few million others. As it turned out, he would become one of the most quotable characters in film, more affectionately known as ‘Dirty Harry’. Case in point: how many of you have ever said, “Go ahead, make my day?” You can all put your mental hands down and thanks for making my point. As easy as it might be do to a philosophical quote-by-quote blog, I’ll save the rest for later. For my confessional purposes regarding church planting, growth and spiritual leadership, I’ll restrict my observations to this one: “A man has got to know his limitations.”
   Having been raised in a pastor’s home marked me for life. Having been raised in ‘one horse’ churches, marked me in a different way. My reading has convinced me that the average size church in America of 75 is so, not because of spiritual reasons but sociological ones. Social scientist tell us that our relational network hits a wall at 60 people. We can’t really know, with any degree of closeness, more than that. Economically, it takes roughly 75 good, God-fearing, church-giving-folk to provide the financial support for one pastor. Additionally, the average pastor encounters the ‘Peter Principle’ somewhere along the way. It is here that Inspector Callahan would say, “A man has got to know his limitations.” This is where leadership faces a test.
   Every aspiring young preacher begins with big dreams. They will typically have more than one role model that they admire and see themselves in those shoes. I’ve never met a preacher yet who will admit, “I’m really terrible at preaching!” I’m reminded of the pastor, who having delivered what he believed to be a history changing message, asked his wife, “Honey, how many really great preachers do you think there are?” She responded with, “One less than you think!” I’ve dispensed with those illusions a long time ago. Even the truly gifted communicator cannot grow a great church on Sunday morning alone. Accepting our limitations means either finding contentment in those ministries of obscurity or recognizing that we will need the help of other people to distinguish our ministry from the rest. What we do at this point will probably determine how long we last in the trenches.
   He was generally a good man. He had been married for 50 years, operated a good sized farm in north central Texas and was a Deacon at the local Baptist church. I was his pastor. When my wife and I failed to be appointed as Foreign Missionaries in 1988, I made the mistake of thinking that we could remain in leadership at that church. Once again, I was wrong. Paul was among the Deacons seeking my removal. I met him at his farm with a question: “What is the Biblical basis for your actions?” He answered my question with a question: “What does the Bible have to do with it?” It was at this point that I knew that we had nothing else to talk about. He then went on to say, “Pastor, what you need is to be somewhere with good people around you.” It was in that moment that I recognized my limitations. My ministry will never rise any higher than those who serve with me will allow it to.
   (To be continued....)

Hitting the Wall

If you have tracked with this blog very long, you recognize that I am not an every day blogger. Neither am I a weekly blogger. I suppose that if I were a W. Robertson Nicoll, who as a cigarette smoking invalid with little else to do, I might have more to say, more often. (He is responsible for The Expositor’s Greek New Testament.) I am none of the above. I have concluded that there needs to be another spelling: blah-ging. Even as a once-a-month writer, I find myself challenged in offering something of enduring value beyond mindless musings. My confession this time for being a week overdue is a deep seated belief that I have “hit the wall.”
In itself “hitting the wall” is an odd but highly familiar metaphor. Through most of life it was associated with long distance runners who, regardless of conditioning, talk about that point between starting and finishing when the certainty of crossing the line was subject to doubt. In recent years I have heard it referenced on the popular food-a-thon known as Man vs Food in which Adam Richman takes on the challenge of consuming copious amounts of it. Regardless of venue the meaning is the same: “It would be real easy to quit right now!” In both cases success comes by “pushing through”. While it is somewhat accurate to describe life/ministry in terms of a marathon, let it be said that having consumed far more than is healthy in a diet of either crow or their droppings will also so manifest itself. (If you are asking yourself, “Did he really just say what I think he said?” Yes!)
In his helpful work, Halftime, Bob Buford provided guidance for people in the tough middle years make sense out of that normal time of assessment and struggle. It was nice to know that what we were experiencing in our 40's was normal. It was more of a hump than a wall. I have certainly recommended it to a number of people who looked and sounded like they could benefit from it. “Hey, Bob, how about writing about hitting the wall!” I suppose it may be out there and I simple haven’t had it recommended or stumbled upon it. In any case, here are my thoughts about it.
While it may be advisable for a runner to alter their pace as they regroup, it is never recommended to simply stop. (I suppose it could hold true with eating, but let’s stick with the running scenario.) Whether the wall is physiological or psychological or spiritual doesn’t seem to matter. Once you stop, it is really hard to get started again. In a recent conversation with a retired pastor friend, I asked him what his journey had been like and what he would do differently. (This is real evidence that I am not who I was at 30. I’m asking what someone else thinks!) He confessed going through the same struggle and suggested taking a sabbatical in order to regroup, something that he didn’t do. It appears far too easy to make poorly informed, rash decisions under the stress of the moment. Slowing down is preferable to sitting down. At the very least it allows you to make certain that you are running in the right direction.
I’m always very guarded when it comes to humanizing the experiences of Jesus. Since I subscribe to the doctrine of His impeccability, I simple can’t support the more emotionally driven analogies. That whole scene in the Garden, the night of His arrest, makes me wonder if He had “hit the wall”. I’m okay with His complete Godness and yet total human exhaustion in that moment of His race. I just don’t happen to think that He considered quitting. It looks and sounds like He slowed sufficiently to ramp up for the Grand Finale.
I plan on finishing the race. If it looks like I’m not doing as much as before, it’s because I’m not. I’m slowing my pace at the advice of Isaiah to make certain that the pace setter is in front, not behind. I am “waiting for the Lord” in the confidence of “renewing my strength”. Come to think of it, I like the idea of “drafting” behind Jesus!

Call it Bozing

He was known as “The Boz”. His was one of the stories, that for whatever reason, grabbed my attention at the time. I’m not a sports junkie but on occasion I become intrigued with a particular athlete. I did the same with LeBron James when he was drafted into the NBA out of High School. Brian Bosworth had played under Barry Switzer at Oklahoma before being drafted by the Seattle Seahawks. He was the rare athlete to not enlist an agent to represent him in negotiating a contract for $10 million. As a linebacker he was ferocious with only two play settings: off and full throttle. The coach in Seattle would have to reprimand him for playing too aggressively in practice, as though it were game day in a Super Bowl. Apparently, he didn’t learn. He lasted only two years, having surgery on both dislocated shoulders, the product of his aggressive playing style.
I recently had lunch with a friend and church planting protégé, Stan. He has not only done well as a planter but has been part of an assessing process for other planters. Unaware to most church people, those who are actually called to plant are a rare breed. Many dream, some pursue, a few attempt, most fail. Millions of Kingdom dollars every year are invested in misguided dreamers who are smitten with romantic notions of church planting. Assessing planters is an attempt at “weeding out” the ‘wannabe’ from the ‘should be’. Stan observed that his approach to assessing had produced positive results; everyone he had approved was still “in the hunt”. Those kinds of statistical results are impressive. When I inquired as to what the key was, he responded, “I look for the most pigheaded, because if you’re not, you will not survive.”
I confess, I’m pigheaded! That isn’t my preferred terminology. Tenacious. Determined. Committed. Resolute. All synonyms for ‘pigheaded’. While I fully understand the implications and agree with the theory, I am also painfully aware of the dark side. There are certain attributes that are shared by all high profile Bible characters, be it Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, Daniel or even Jesus. They accomplished much of what they did because of a unswerving determination. But except for Jesus, that same attribute could be an Achilles’ heel. In our own time two of the most successful church planters on planet Earth learned the hard way: Bill Hybels and Rick Warren. They both planted, drove hard, experienced success and landed in the hospital! It was at the point that they understood a critical issue for enduring success.
Let’s just call it “Bozing”. I so get it! After twenty years of leading a church plant through all of the ups and downs of growth, betrayal, challenges and frustrations; when those around me would shrug their shoulders in resignation, I would “Boz” it. The portrait is simple: lowered head, shoulder engaged, legs driving. My mantra has been “push, pull or get out of the way!” While I am aware that our success has been admired, I am more painfully aware of the need for balance. There is a time to “slay all of the prophets of Baal” and a time to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord”.
I am now convinced that church planting should be less like Ultimate Fighting and more like Brain Surgery. Might does not make right. Work smarter not harder isn’t just good advice for manual labor. The Armor of God doesn’t include a Battering Ram. Slam dunks don’t win basketball games, precision shooting does. When Elijah was beaten down, depressed and dejected, he discovered that God was to be found in a subtle voice, not fireworks. Like the difference between courage and insanity is the difference between success and survival.

A Few Good Licks

“What do you do when you’re preaching and forget what you’re saying?” Admit it, unless you operate from a manuscript where nothing is left to chance, you’ve been there, done that! Easy. “You keep talking until you remember.” Thank you Dr. Puckett for the pithy retort.
Proclamation is at the heart of our calling if we are “called” to preach. I, for one, didn’t volunteer for the job, I was drafted. Of course, I was a little biased against it because I couldn’t separate preaching from pastoring. My Dad was a pastor of the garden variety, not to be confused with the “TV pastor”. For all of his shortcomings he could be sharp as a tack. I recall his response to the belittling comparison between the two: “When you end up in the hospital, call your TV pastor to come and pray for you.” Dad would show up anyway. As hard as he worked at preaching, he was a pastor at heart and he paid for it. Because we paid along with him, I wanted no part of preaching as a vocation. Like a notice from the Selective Service Board, there were only two options: show up for duty or flee to Nineveh. Not liking the idea of submarine duty with seaweed for a blanket, I showed up.
Now it’s called a disorder: obsessive. When I yielded to the “call” I thought it was a passion for excellence. If I’m going to do it I want to be the best be it softball, racquetball, golf or preaching. How? Study the best. Learn from the best. That was 1974. If you do the math, next year will make it 40 years ago. If you’ve been paying attention for the last 40 years you will have recognized that what was called great preaching then no longer is. Among the books that I acquired from Dr. Puckett were several entitled, “The History of Preaching”. Why a history? Obviously someone has done their homework and realized that public proclamation has been an ever changing process not to be confused with fashion trending.
What has evokes these reflections are those ever-endearing words, “Pastor, I’m looking for someone who is deeper in their preaching.” After 40 years, I confess, my grace is wearing thin in places. I have to remind myself to not argue with a fool, lest I be thought foolish. Historically speaking, the most successful evangelical churches 40 years ago were built around expository preaching. W. A. Criswell, while at FBC Dallas, spent 17 years preaching verse-by-verse through the Bible. Worship services were for believers. Evangelism took place at other times and places. The largest evangelical churches today have been born since then with decidedly different preaching styles. This is not an assessment or critique of either, merely a summary of fact.
I spend a lot of time in sermon preparation. I want to know what the historical context is and the meaning of the ancient languages because I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and the historical/critical method of interpretation. That is not my biggest challenge. Contextualizing the truth of Scripture for the purpose of effective communication is. Because my church exists to reach the unchurched and has effectively been doing so for 20 years, over half of those in attendance may not be in a committed relationship with Christ. How do you feed sheep and goats at the same time? Creatively! Who has the obligation to adapt for the purpose of the Kingdom? Believers. Paul became “all things to all men that by all possible means he might save some”. His preaching was contextually relevant and theologically sound. Please don’t get me started on the preaching of Jesus....
Suffice it to say that we can’t please all of the people all of the time or some of the people any of the time. Given the cultural challenge of how much time anyone gives us to speak the truth in love and the fact that those without Christ don’t owe us the time of the day, what sort of preachers ought we to be? Those who are hyper-critical because they are so spiritually advanced need to get off of the bench and into the game. A few good licks to the head might give them a greater appreciation for the veterans in the game.