At the recent Acts 29 Boot Camp in Raleigh, NC, I had the chance to sit down with Acts 29 Pastor Alex Earley. In this video he shares the amazing “God story” of how Four Corners Church began and how he has dealt with the criticism that has ensued because of their nontraditional approach. This story is an encouragement to every present and future church planter of the faithfulness of God.
Listen. Learn. Tweet.
As many of you know, Leadership Network is sponsoring an upcoming online conference called “The Nines.” This year, they solicited videos from anyone who would like to record a 6-minute video about some kind of “game changer” truth (this year’s theme) that they had learned in life or ministry. This is my submission. Hope it encourages and challenges you.
*Disclaimer: if you haven’t seen it and want to, you may want to stop here. Possible spoiler alert.
So I just saw The Hurt Locker last night.
Powerful movie. Lots of fast camera work. It’s an edge of the seat-er. It is also a war movie so there is pervasive language and war violence throughout so think that through and whether or not your conscience is clear before you get it.
Though I don’t know if it lives up to the “best picture hype,” it is a profound movie. In fact, I would even call it a “film.”
Throughout the film, I found myself continually praying for our troops abroad, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the fallen world in general. I also found my heart hurting for the men and women who serve and daily see their friends blown to bits in scenarios just like the ones portrayed.
The characters drew me in as well.
The more I watched, the more I began to wonder why the lead guy is so gung-ho about running into the face of danger. Most of the time, his motives seem reasonable but after the 15th bomb or so you begin to wonder how he can run headlong into the fight and not think of his girlfriend and baby back home.. There is even a scene toward the end in which he has a moment where he begins to wonder the same thing but he has no answer.
Suddenly I remember the opening quote about war being a drug.
And the scene at the end when the lead explains to his baby that he really only loves one thing in life…defusing bombs…or at least the rush from doing so…and then he hops back on the plane doubtlessly feeling god-like.
And that’s when I thought about pastors.
If we are honest with ourselves, how many of us would be guilty of doing something similar in ministry?
Every pastor knows what I am talking about.
I also thought that if there were to be a part two of The Hurt Locker story, I bet it would have a woman who got tired of waiting, a jacked up kid who never knew his dad and a man with a lot of regrets.
And I thought about pastors again.
And through that lens, I think it is worth our stopping to ask a couple of hard questions:
If we were to watch a movie of our lives and ministries today, what would it look like? Like the life of Jesus or like the story of an adrenaline junkie who thinks mostly of himself?
If there was a sequel, what would it portray?
You know it is the decisions we are making today that are making those movies already.
Stop.
Reflect.
Pray.
And know that I am praying for you and myself today that we all do the right things for the right reasons instead of blowing ourselves and our families to smithereens in the process of “doing God’s work.”
At the recent Acts 29 Pastor’s Retreat, I had the opportunity to sit down with Matt and Lauren Chandler to talk about how to lead your family through suffering. As expected, Matt and Lauren share their helpful unique perspectives and offer much helpful counsel. Men, this is one that I would share with your wives as well.
At the recent Acts 29 Boot Camp in Raleigh, NC, I sat down to talk with Acts 29 Director, Scott Thomas, to talk about a painful, but important, topic–the loss of two of our pastors.
In this video, he shares some poignant counsel on how to process suffering within our network and in our own ministries.
At the recent Acts 29 Boot Camp in Raleigh, NC, I sat down with Acts 29 Director Scott Thomas to talk about a number of topics. In part one of this conversation, we talk about the growing diversity among our movement when it comes to how to “do church.” Listen. Learn. Tweet.
Friends,
Just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know why the content has not been flowing as freely as it once did.
Simply put, I have been SUPER BUSY.
So, I’m not letting up on the blog, I’ve just been overwhelmed by life and ministry and wanted to let you know.
In fact, I have some of the best content yet from the Advance Conference that is yet to roll out.
Stay tuned.
I recently sat down with Matt Chandler, Pastor of the Village Church (A29) at the recent Acts 29 Retreat in Vail, CO. In part one of this conversation, Matt shares some great insights from what he has learned from his experience with cancer and how to lead yourself and your church through suffering.
Expectedly, this is a “can’t miss” video. The next one with both he and Lauren is as well. Stay tuned.
Thanks for helping us get the word out.
John Calvin wrote that the human heart is an idol factory. He was right.
Throughout history, we have bowed down to golden cattle, celestial beings, stone animals, and even human body parts. The passage of time has only increased the number of ways we exchange the worship of the One True God for lesser, false gods. Today, we can sadly add yet another idol to the list—social media.
Social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), as technology, is neutral and harmless. Social media can and should be used for the glory of God and the advancement of the gospel in every possible way. But natural-born idolaters like you and me are no more than a few clicks away from making this good thing a god thing.
Social media carries a unique set of temptations. Much like the adulterous temptress described in Proverbs, social media offers us the invitation to come into her house and enjoy the choicest foods, only to find the meal poisoned.
The most dangerous of these tainted meals is pride. Few other creations in history have allowed us to see how “important” we and our thoughts are with such tantalizing immediacy as our blog and tweet stats. There are times we check our stats because we are more concerned with the applause of man than the affirmation of Jesus, and we forsake the true justification of who we are in the gospel for the false justification of who we are in the eyes of our followers. We do the opposite of what we set out to do in the first place; we serve ourselves instead of God and his people.
Pride creeps in through tweets and status updates. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with mentioning where we are having lunch or who we are with, we would be well served by checking our hearts before we do. Are we sharing this information to give people a helpful window into our lives as we seek to live out the gospel, or are we unwittingly (or even quite wittingly) enticing our friends toward coveting the life we are living? Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth tweets.
So what’s the answer?
It sounds simple, but stopping to think about why we are about to do what we are about to do is an amazing sin-killing weapon. Use it and use it often. It has been a great help to me.
While this may seem extreme, in light of Jesus’ counsel about tearing out our eye if it makes us sin (Matthew 5:29), fasting seems like the least we could do to expose the true condition of our hearts. If we are flatly unwilling to consider it, that tells us something.
Make your solid theology soundly practical in daily life. If, when we are tempted to go to the fleeting approval of man to shore up our insecurities, we instead go to the approval of God that is ours in Christ, the approval unaffected by the abundance or absence of re-tweets, we, our followers, and the kingdom are better for it.
Calvin was right. The heart is an idol factory.
But at this intersection of technology and idolatry, pull the plug on the bad and keep the good.
Let’s start with a confession: I love Affliction T-shirts.
The fleur de lis reminds me of my city. The skulls remind me of my depravity. They are comfortable and hand crafted. I love ‘em. But because of their cost, I own only one of them that I bought on clearance at Macy’s. Oddly enough, at the risk of sounding girly, I actually think about that one shirt a lot (although the bones do help my case). And it’s not primarily for the comfort or the craftsmanship, though it may indeed have something to do with my depravity.
As the thought turns in my mind, the question that haunts me is, “Why did I really want that shirt in the first place?” Is it for the reasons I mentioned above, which seem harmless enough? Or is it for some less harmless reason like, “All the cool kids wear them and I want to fit in?” Hmmm… The plot thickens.
We have just stepped from the dark closet where my shirt hangs into the much darker corners of the soul.
All of us have “false justifiers” that we use to try to justify ourselves before God and others, and there are ways we seek false justification that are as nuanced as our own personalities and ministry contexts. For many, what we wear, or at least our appearance, is high on the list. And each time we allow how we appear before others to become more important than how we appear before God, it is stark evidence of our belief in the great Lie that Jesus and the good news that he has spoken over us is not enough.
As with any lie, the only way to effectively counter it is with the Truth. When we seek to “clothe ourselves” in the righteousness that the “right kind” of clothing can provide, we must remind ourselves that we are already clothed in the righteousness of Christ (Isa. 61:10). When we seek to find our value in the fact that we can buy something of significant value on earth, we must remind ourselves that we are of great value to God and have been bought at a great price (1 Cor. 6:20) already. We have to counter the Lie with the Truth.
So is it wrong to wear an Affliction T-shirt? No.
Is it wrong to define yourself by what you wear? Yes.
So tomorrow when you reach in the closet for what to wear, stop and ask yourself, “Why am I about to wear what I am about to wear? To honor God or to seek to impress others?” If you find the Lie at work, kill it with the Truth. “I am not justified by what I wear, but by the righteousness that I am now clothed with in Christ.” And with the name of Christ written on your soul, it doesn’t matter what name is written on your shirt.
To be continued.
