Post Covid Questions From Beat-up Pastors #3

It was a small lunch meeting of a few experienced, thoughtful, regular guy pastors. 

No long-bearded whiz kids. No visionaries, empire builders, trail blazers or trend setting, careful dressing innovators at the table. These are the guys that actually answer their phones when people call at odd hours. They make middle of the night trips to the hospital to visit the sick, know how to sit with a grieving family, can talk with a mixed-up kid and because he seldom listens the first time, can get the little knot head out of jail a few days later. They dedicate babies, make a difference when officiating a funeral, juggle budgets and answer questions. Lots of them. All day long. 

Just regular, dependable church leaders whose real specialty isn't sermonizing or saving the world, but problem solving. They've heard the unoriginal jokes about preachers working one day a week hundreds of times and haven't once kicked anybody. These are nice guys.

Though hailing from different backgrounds and traditions and ministry approaches, all had surprised themselves by living through and limping out of the lockdown upheaval and messy aftermath with only bruises and lacerations - none of them yet fatal.

Banter, banter, banter, then light talk turned serious church talk. The unrelenting grind of it all the last three years was mentioned, as was lagging and maddening post-Covid attendance. We poked at the higher profile churches use of money, splash and prominence to 'corner the market', imposing their 'brand' on the community while other churches curtailed activities attempting the thankless juggling act of following public health protocols while keeping a church alive. A lot tumbled out: the law of diminishing returns that weirdly dictates making greater investment in media and digital presence that results in weakening loyalty to our churches. We marveled at the popularity and hard to explain attraction of copycat services by trendy churches that merely sell eye and ear candy with the thinnest sliver of a gospel lite nougat. We worried over the increasingly indispensable need for ever more tech savvy approaches to . . . well, everything.

Then, the unanswerables: Is traditional ministry shifting? Where do regular pastors fit in anymore?

A lot of voices are calling and cultural winds are ever shifting. While the trends may be new, the phenomenon isn't. Since Ecclesiastes at least, things have been in constant flux. 

Here's the thing - people will always need caring, competent shepherds. Human guilt will still invite agony, grief won't take a holiday, the lost will always deserve finding and, as always, the wounded will never wait. Ministry will never change and neither will the Solution.

The reasons the good ones get into church ministry remain worthy reasons. Serving Christ and serving hurting people whom He loves intensely will never go out of vogue. Those are timeless things that pastors do.                                                    

Here's my idea of traditional ministry - 

1. Caring for the poor and neglected and teaching others how to see people the way Jesus sees people  

2. Making followers of Jesus so effectively that they make followers who make followers                                               

3. Showing people how to have a longer than life conversation with a Relationship God who has already included them in His dance

Our God will always make room for called men and women who are willing to do these things well and you don't need a coffee bar, black ceiling tiles or muted lighting to make it happen.

Post Covid Questions From Beat-up Pastors #2

For church leaders, the post-Covid waters are treacherous. Bombarded with frequent reports of universal church decline, the rise of the 'nones', a loss of interest in organized religion and the exodus of millennials, tens of thousands of good pastors are treading water. Many pre-Covid attenders have not returned, having filled their weekends with sports, shopping, get-aways and maybe the occasional peek at the Sunday livestream. Some have made deals with the devil that will come due in unforeseen ways, possibly in the lives of their children, their children's children and their communities some years off. 

An unexpected threat from trendy, blandly tagged, over logoed start-ups, big box churches and wannabes has appeared. Dangling legs of vulnerable church leaders attract an especially rapacious predator: the nearby barracuda pastor is circling, sniffing for blood. With the latest copy of Fast Company on the nightstand, these t-shirted and single-minded visionaries eagerly impose their brand by building on the losses of discouraged brother and sister pastors.  Bleeding churches across the country, helmed by the walking wounded, struggle to survive Sunday to Sunday. Large numbers of exhausted, diminished churches and leaders, wearied from three long years of flailing and blood loss, slip unnoticed into the deep. No grave markers for these losers. 

Beat-up pastors are asking some really hard questions 

Is God pruning the church? Is He pruning the pastorate? Where do regular, average pastors fit in anymore?

If this is pruning season, God's shaping of His church is nothing new. Neither is the idea that the visible church should be always reforming and refining. Ecclesia semper reformanda, popularized by super theologian Karl Barth, goes back at least to that 5th century stalwart and father, St. Augustine.

It may be that average pastors are being pushed and molded by the Spirit, but not to be a better version of themselves or to build character in the churches they lead. There's a misconception here. According to the more radical parts of the New Testament, trials come not to improve our character. They are the vehicle by which Christ is formed in us. As Oswald Chambers observed, the evidence of genuine spiritual formation is a strong family resemblance to Jesus Christ. A best version of me has nothing to do with it. It's all about Jesus living His life in us and that's a mind-blowing concept. Current trials may be a tool in the hands of the Master.

So, perhaps the current shaking will allow Christ to be formed new in some good and longsuffering leaders. 

But what about those predator pastors? They happily point to numbers as permission granted by church planting gurus, denominational leaders and the Holy Spirit to inflict injury on struggling churches and fellow pastors. Buoyed along by marketing strategies, algorithms, social media manipulation, denominational approval and confirmed by an appealing, very American but cynical, pernicious view of success, they are blind to their cutthroat church building tactics.

However, what they are building is no more durable than what they are building on. Lasting structures can't have poor foundations. Much of the current American church profile is confirmation of Rene Girard's insight that human behavior and most human desires are simply imitative. 

The tragedy will not be in the eventual collapse of copycat predator churches but in the lives of hundreds of thousands now sitting in cookie cutter services, enveloped in the essential blue haze, coffee in hand, eyes locked on the very bright stage, who will slowly or suddenly become disillusioned with it all. Once the overconfident pastor steps in it or the hype becomes tedious, they will quit. Wounded like so many before them, they will find the emotional and psychological barriers to knowing a God who desperately wants to be known much higher and harder to navigate. 

"An appalling and horrible thing                                                                                                                  Has happened in the land:                                                                                                                            The prophets prophesy falsely                                                                                                                    And the priests rule on their own authority;                                                                                           And My people love it so!                                                                                                                            But what will you do at the end of it?"                                                                                                                                              Isaiah 5:30-31

Overstatement? What if it's not and what if God meant it? Take heart good pastor. You're not the one being pruned.

Post-Covid Questions From Beat-Up Pastors #1

Making a case that churches and church leaders got an especially brutal pummeling during pandemic and lockdown would be a snap. Even in the long post-lockdown era the beating continues for many pastors. During the worst of it, criticism was of the unanswerable variety - "damned if you do, damned if you don't". Bruise-free quarterbacking from armchair safe spaces - always a favorite spectator sport of the ill-informed - slopped over into unlicensed amateur postmortems from every in-print and online publication, highbrow to low, loudly sacred to proudly secular. All children of Nostradamus confidently predicted, and sometimes welcomed, the certain decline and death of the deficient, deflated, defective American church. 

Led by smart kids in lofty think-tank high places, generously lotioned TV talking heads and cautious officials in shiny, tastefully decorated denominational low places, rising ranks of screeching church quitters, like all good mob members, grabbed pitchforks and muskets on cue, and in the best call-and-response tradition, laid all failures, declines and missteps of the American church at the feet of tired local pastors. 

After three years without much R&R or any hazard pay, this now punchy bunch, already carrying most of the baggage while dodging a slew of slings and arrows with no fortunes, outrageous or otherwise anywhere in sight, started cracking up. Sagacious pipers deafened by their own loud tune and their armed child followers predictably shooting their own eye out, somehow managed to unhear and overlook a lot of decent pastors and families in deep crisis. The same decent ladies and men dedicated to warning them of the unforgiving cliffs ahead.

Budgets and attendance took a hit and many shell-shocked church leaders haven't seen a bounce-back even close to pre-Covid levels. As former church attenders, now out of the habit, stubbornly stayed away, many pastors walked away. Some who still remain live with the daily near nausea of fear and self-doubt that's part of going down with a sinking ship. Many more would quit if they could and tens of thousands will end up quitting even if they can't. Walking away from a life's work will exact a crushing emotional and psychological toll on good people who've been lifelong learners, acquiring specialized and often undervalued skills, typically at great personal cost. The ripple effect on families and communities is not measurable. The loss of spiritual capital and plain old know-how will likely have a crippling effect that can't be contained within church walls.

This is the very real backdrop to questions beat-up pastors are asking each other. I know because I talk with them. 

• Is God pruning the church?
• Is God pruning the pastorate?
• Is traditional ministry shifting or is it dying?
• What will happen when many pastors, like many attenders, simply quit?
• Can the American church survive? Should it?
  

In a few posts, Toto will join me as we grip the curtain with our teeth, pulling it back so you can see something important you're probably missing and may be contributing to - the frantic flailing of the little wizards who are trying to hold things together at the church down the street.

On This Compelling Environment I Will Build My Church

Popeye said "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em", and so I will.

I'm giving up disciple making, hospital and shut-in calling, crisis counseling, fasting, preaching, extraordinary prayer, mentoring and spending lots of time with people. I'm also backing off study time, reflection, journaling and anything else I incorrectly imagined was part of pastoring.

I'm a church consultant now.

I'll be advising leaders to backlight the stage, using plenty of muted blues while darkening the room so everyone is blind as a bat, terrified that any shifting could put them on the floor and knock out a row of chairs. I'll be careful to point out the value of selecting an indeterminate, geometric design for the backdrop that has only the meaning you give it. I'll advise they get a band and install suspended speakers cranked loud enough that nobody can hear themselves singing except the musicians with those little thingies in their ears. I'll sell them on the idea that vocalists should know how to moan convincingly and stop at just the right time to deliver extemporaneous remarks carefully worked out in the previous week's nightly two-hour rehearsals. It ain't worship until it's perfect. 

I wouldn't be worth my chips if I turned an up-and-coming church loose in the highly competitive, barracuda infested marketplace that is contemporary worship without advising pastors to invest in heavily wrinkled, high dollar catalogue clothes appropriate for a camping weekend. Rips that give the appearance of a wolverine attack are a plus. Be original, man!

Strike out on your own is what I always say so I'll do them a favor by selling them pre-made, sure-fire sermon package subscriptions (always in a series and always automatically renewing for the customer's convenience). Included is a slightly inspired, word-for-word manuscript written by some of the most anointed seminary drop-out turned advertising wizards anywhere. It's all ready to be loaded onto video monitors seen only by the pastor so he/she never misses a word. They will even be coached about where to pause and gesture for effect and the best times to pace the stage with head lowered and how fast. It'll look so easy that anybody could do it! Song lyrics, take home coloring pages and snazzy graphics are included. It's essential in today's church to keep all eyes glued to the big screen so the folks don't miss the worship producer's cut-away twelve-foot-high close-up shot of the same people standing in front of them.

It won't be enough to tell them to serve coffee. Everybody knows you'd be stupid to have church without it. I'll show them the proven wisdom of having a coffee team. These serious folks will research the best cup sizes, sleeves, stirrers, ministry logo, team t-shirts and of course the trendiest, earth friendliest, hard to get coffee along with obligatory flavored creams and additives. Everything is ministry, you know.

From time to time I get questions about the expense of fog machines in making things especially spiritual. I do have some thoughts. But this blog is free and that sort of thing is reserved for my upper tier customers. Those select pastor/leader/visionaries who understand that in creating the compelling environment we're all chasing that money is a minor consideration. Special effects are high-level stuff among us church planting consultants.

Move over Apostolic Fathers, Azusa Street, Martin Luther, the gates of hell and good church people, pastors and martyrs of the last two thousand years. The church consultants, the cavalry you've been waiting for, have arrived and they're ready to show you how to do Jesus' job for Him and build the church on the cheap. 

You just gotta create a compelling environment.

What the Pandemic Has Taught Me . . . So Far

 Observing the sluggard's formerly lush vineyard now a neglected field of weeds, thorns and broken walls, the compiler of Proverbs 24 tells us "I received instruction from what I saw".

Having observed the pandemic, the lockdown, the politicizing of mitigation measures, all the fallout, and too many hours of expert analysis, I've also received some instruction. It's very likely there are multiple lessons for me to learn, and I may miss some, but so far, from my vantage point within the church, I am seeing one feature of the Covid reality with startling, disturbing clarity.

It was intended as a dress rehearsal for the church.

I'm not sure what the Covid experience was supposed to have signaled to governments and public health officials, but I think God was telling people in the American church world that things will not always be as they've always been. We're crazy if we think we will be able to do church along the lines we've always been. Could the lockdown and shuttering of churches and church activities been God pushing us to explore new ways of doing church? Seriously. 

Most institutional models of the church experience in the west are built on large group gatherings, property ownership, professional clergy, church loyalty and predictable giving patterns. For some time those models have been hemorrhaging, showing signs of unsustainability. The high rate of church closures and clergy resignations more than suggest as much. Leaders, understandably anxious to preserve their families, health and sanity, are quitting in frustration and exhaustion. The notable big box success of some churches is simply a refinement and honing of a church growth model from an earlier and much different era. You can only double down on a declining strategy for so long and some of the successes appear to be fading. The bigger the box, the more unsustainable it will become.

During lockdown some churches experimented with different ways to do church, some resisted and others just whimpered and waited. Maybe God intended us to use the time to prepare for the next thing. Will a future pandemic close us down again? It's more conceivable than ever. Could we be swamped by a different, unforeseen public health crisis? Nobody saw Covid coming. Persecution? There's plenty of precedent for it. Loss of tax exempt status would result in loss of church properties. A faltering economy would drive operating costs and insurance beyond the reach of many congregations. Things could change really fast, rendering church as we conceive it impossible.

Something else is coming. It won't always stay the same for church leaders. Those who've been at it awhile know change is the name of the game. They could tell you the dozens of ways church life has changed since they began. Bigger change is coming and what different, untried ways of doing church could be learned and adapted while we wait? House churches, small groups, prayer chains, work based prayer groups, live stream forums, podcasting, chat rooms, Zoom counseling and Bible studies could all prove sustainable options if our preferred way of doing church were no longer open to us. 

The earliest church thrived without most of the trappings needed for our current institutional, centralized 1952 approach. An explosive first century Jesus movement had plenty of vicious opposition. It also had no designated church space and no large group gatherings. The Book of Acts cites almost seventy cases of first generation believer's use of public space - free space - to spread the message of good. Is a better, cheaper, untapped way of doing church staring us in the face?

Commanded by the resurrected Jesus in Acts 1:8, those who heard were reluctant to take the message to the wider world if it meant leaving the familiar, predictable pace of established Jerusalem church life. Persecution became the catalyst for them to scatter to Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth, living the words of their living Savior. They discerned a meaning and message in the discomfort. 

If God intended lockdown to be a dress rehearsal in finding new ways to be the body of Christ in our broken world, many churches squandered the opportunity, absorbed in tangential dust-ups over violated rights and government overreach. Some wasted it sitting in courtrooms and cozying up to politicians. Others just sweated the thing out. Once again, it looks like it was His friends who missed the voice of God. It's enough to make you cry.

Rather than end on a note of crippling morosity, let me see if I can't salvage something worthwhile with this message to church leaders:  it's not too late to try something new that's not dependent on a building or a big budget. 

The wise person in Proverbs wasn't instructed accidentally. Instruction only came after he reflected on the broken walls and unproductive fields. Reflection on the last 20 months tells me it wasn't a one off. We're crazy if we think there aren't more surprises coming. 

There's time to rethink the church. Now.

Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #5

Q: What Does the Bible Say About Interracial Marriage?

Without question the Hebrew scriptures/Old Testament prohibited Israel from intermarrying with some nearby people groups (Deuteronomy 7:5). Interestingly, the prohibitions were always based on competing religious allegiances, never on ethnicity or skin color. 

Often hostile neighboring groups were dedicated to championing rival gods who were largely corrupted agents of chaos in the heavens who passed those corrupting and chaotic traits on to their earth bound worshippers. Intermingling with these earthly agents of chaos could and, later in the national life of Israel, would result in abandonment of the Most High God (El Elyon). The exclusive, never before covenant relationship between Israel and her deliverer God - one who was above all rival gods - is what would make her a light to the nations and a fulfillment of the Most High God's promise to Abraham, the nation's founder and father. Daily recitation of the Shema ("hear/listen") prayer of Deuteronomy 6 reinforced the uniqueness of the relationship - "Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD". Israel can lay claim to the LORD/Yahweh/Most High God as "our God" who is uniquely "one LORD" - not simply numerically unique but a "One and Only LORD" without rival. Neighboring people groups were dedicated to lesser rival gods wit vastly different agendas and much lower natures.

Intermarriage with those devoted to lesser rival gods would jeopardize the entire scheme of God toward Israel and severely alter world history. But again, the prohibition was strictly religious and it was in no way based on ethnicity or skin tone. 

Opponents of interracial marriage have long invoked a dire sounding New Testament warning on unequal yoking in marriage. A careful reading tells you inserting race and ethnicity in the passage is a bogus use of the injunction. 

In 2 Corinthians 6:14 the caution to Jesus followers against unequal marriage yoking is consistent with the warnings to ancient Israel, being similarly based on relationship to God. The unequal pairings in the passage are believers with unbelievers, righteousness with unrighteousness. Only the most obtuse and ignorant would see in the third unequal partnering of light and darkness a reference to skin tone. To argue color or ethnicity as constituting an unequal yoking would be a weak argument from silence, which is to say no argument at all. There are no biblical prohibitions against interethnic or interracial marriages. 

In marrying each other, Moses and Tzipporah married outside their ethnic groups. Their differing skin tones brought out the bigot in his siblings, whose nasty, racist criticisms were soundly and dramatically condemned by God.  Both enter the narrative as worshippers of God Most High and by Paul's New Testament definition were equally yoked. Additionally her father was a devotee and priest of the same God as Moses and presumably raised her in that tradition.

Ethnicity is not a factor or cause for division in marriage, the church or the wider kingdom of God since the exposure and naked artificiality of all ethnic, class and gender barriers occurred at and was demolished by the Cross so that "you are all one in Christ" (Galatians 3:28). 

The Bible seems to be in agreement with much recent thinking in the social sciences which describes racial categories as mere human constructs with no bases in biology. In his presentation of the risen Messiah to Athens' intelligentsia, Paul cites the common origin of all people as a basic tenet of his good message that includes the brotherhood of man, the Fatherhood of God and the messiahship of Jesus Christ.

"God that made the world and all things therein . . .hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth . . . that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us." Acts 17: 24-27 KJV

No dividing walls. One blood. Finding a God who's never been that far away. Rightly related to God and each other. Pretty good arrangement, wouldn't you say?

Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #4

 Q: Could you recommend some resources to help me study the Bible?

Most bizarre interpretations and weirdo Bible talk comes from sloppy reading habits, so getting beyond a comfort food reading of the Bible is a great thing. According to the New Testament, serious study of scripture invites an approval from God that superficial reading does not.

A Bible That Fits

The best answer to the 'which translation is best' question is, the one that you will actually use. The King James Version is a fine translation if you remember words can change meaning in four centuries and if you have no problem with Shakespeare or the metaphysical poetry of John Donne. The New American Standard is my preferred choice for serious study, but the New International and English Standard versions are also good. Pick one that has a decent margin so you can jot notes. I prefer a single column format because it better presents the poetic passages (and there are tons of them in the Hebrew scriptures/Old Testament - more than the Psalms). Avoid paraphrases like the Living Bible, the Passion Translation or the Message. They can be helpful, especially in a devotional sense, but aren't true translations and can limit careful study. Also, avoid doctrinally driven versions or annotated study Bibles. You can add those later and there are some that are worthwhile, but they have the added purpose of reinforcing a specific point of view.

Topical Bible

Everyone wants to start with commentaries. There are good ones, better ones and poor ones but beginning study there may narrowly inform your understanding rather than broaden it. As you wade into the any text - secular or sacred - you want an expansive vision of the landscape and settling too early on one scholar's conclusions could short circuit your own investigation. If you're paying for the dinner, you want to chew it yourself - for several good reasons.

Start with a good topical Bible. They aren't exhaustive, but do arrange a ton of passages by general topics - pride, death, miracles, prayer, money, etc. and in most cases the  entire passage is presented. At a glance you can take in most of the main verses dealing with a wide variety of Bible topics, allowing you to quickly compare scripture with scripture. You can then look at each passage in your Bible in its larger context, getting closer to the original meaning and any current application.

A good one is Nave's Topical Bible. Get a recent edition with an index.

Concordance

This tool contains most words in the English Bible - including, as Dr. Suess says, "little words like if and it." and lists where you can find them. It becomes a valuable go-to tool for doing word studies and comparing how the word was used in different settings by different biblical authors and how frequently.

Young's Concordance and Strong's Concordance are both very good. The numbering system in Strong's is used by other reference works you may want to get later, making it a little better investment.

YouVersion

This free app is a must have. Dozens of translations will be available for quick comparison. Owning them all would be a sizeable investment and take a up a lot of shelf space. Having them at your fingertips on phone or computer means you can access them faster than you could turn pages at your desk or workspace if they were physically open in front of you. 

Bible Dictionary

This is good for place names or unfamiliar characters and customs you'll run into in the text. Harper-Collins, Zondervan, Nelson and Holman all have good ones. Make sure it's a recent edition.

Okay, Okay! Commentaries

There are different kinds of commentaries: Textual, historical, homiletic, critical, devotional and some of them require a knowledge of ancient languages or technical jargon making them almost unusable to most of us. Some writers assume the Bible is inspired and some don't. Some are friendly to the text and some hostile. You can dump a load of money without much return on investment so, be guided by your own research and go slow in locating a tool that will actually help you and answer your particular questions. Over time you will find voices you can trust. Maybe in a later post or on our Thursday night Ask Me Anything live stream I'll recommend a few.

Lucky You

A lot of these resources are available online at sites like Crosswalk.com, BibleHub, Bible Gateway and others.

So . . .

That will get you started in the right direction. Get serious and you'll probably sacrifice some sleep because the quiet of late night is the best time to wander through the incomparable Hebrew scriptures and New Testament writings, connecting dots and making discoveries. You'll see why holding up this inexhaustible library for a closer look made the hearts of some early Jesus followers burn within them.