God

Church Innovation and the Father’s Doings

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I’ve been reading more nonfiction books on Christian living and church practice. Without exception, they’ve been a little (or a lot) disappointing.

What bothers me most is how quickly man-made ways of doing things come to the fore in those books. You can almost always trace the author’s primary influences back to their sources, and far too many times those influences are NOT primarily from Scripture.

This is not to say that there is no biblical justification for what is written, but the tendency is to take a man-made idea, wrap it in Scripture, and then sell it as wisdom.

That cannot work.  Anything of worth must start with Scripture and proceed from it, not the other way around.

Over at Outreach magazine, Larry Osborne wrote on innovation in the Church (“Real World Innovation: It’s a Lot Like Sausage”). Coincidentally, I have Pastor Osborne’s Sticky Church on order from my local library as the next Christian living and church practice book on my to-read list. So, I was eager to hear his insights on this topic.

For as long as that article was, it didn’t have much to say about how Jesus, who was clearly the exemplar of innovation, approached the subject. Instead, I kept feeling like I was reading something out of Forbes rather than from a Christian source.

Let’s cut to the chase. This is Jesus’ approach to innovation:

Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
—John 6:28-29 ESV

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.
—John 5:19 ESV

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
—John 16:13-15 ESV

You want to be an innovator in the Church? You want to be a genuine leader? A visionary? Then do two things:

Believe wholeheartedly in Jesus, and do only what the Holy Spirit shows you the Father is doing.

Trinity - SpiritDo we not see the beauty in the Trinity at operation here? Is this not truth?

Then why are we so loathe to live this way? Why must we find some other kind of wisdom from some other source and try to position ourselves as some kind of Steve Jobs of Faith?

For all that Osborne wrote in his article, you know what I really would have liked to have read? How we Christians can better attune ourselves to understand what the Holy Spirit is showing us about what the Father is doing.

The sad part is that we seldom get that kind of answer, and I think it’s because too many of our contemporary Christian “leaders” simply do not know how to get it. They can recite content from an MBA course, Seth Godin, or Steven Covey, but they don’t know what the Spirit is telling them right now and right for them and their church.

It all comes down to this:

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
—1 Corinthians 2:12-16 ESV

Spiritually discerned. Anything lasting, anything innovative, is spiritually discerned.

Church, it is long past time that we return to living by the Spirit. My prayer will be that God will raise up more leaders from among us who are better led by the Spirit and less by the wisdom of the world.

On Peace and Mental Strength

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You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
—Isaiah 26:3 ESV

I’m reading How Children Succeed by Paul Tough. One of the startling study results noted in this book is that stress may be the major difference between a child that learns and one that doesn’t. Remove stressors from a child’s life and brain function kicks into learning gear. Add stress, and it shuts down. Memory and recall suffer. The difference between the smart kid and the not-so-smart one in any classroom may have little to do with the smart one going to some tony pre-preschool and everything to do with the not-so-smart kid being bounced between relatives and getting smacked around. So if you’re thinking about having your 4-year-old tutored in pre-algebra, perhaps give her more hugs instead. Seriously.

Another fact from the book discusses the reality of modern life that our stress levels are through the roof and unceasing. While “olden day” stressors such as evading enemies cause a needful surge in stress chemicals within our bodies, that kind of physical stress is wholly different than mental stress. That latter kind, which is part and parcel of modern living, doesn’t spike and then fade like the evading enemies kind does. Instead, it persists and causes all sorts of longterm damage within the body.

In short, our American lifestyle is packed with mental stressors that ruin our health–and make us forgetful and stupid.

Jesus said this:

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
—John 14:26-27 ESV

Holy SpiritPeople often quote the second half of that verse alone, but in separating it from the first half, we lose meaning. The promise Jesus makes is that He is leaving, but the Spirit is coming. His Spirit will quicken His disciples to remember. He gives them peace.

In breaking up that passage, we divorce receiving the Spirit from peace. But read that passage again; the two are linked.

The world can’t give us the Spirit. The world can’t give us peace. God can do both through His Son Jesus.

Note also how the Spirit helps us to learn and remember. While the world’s stressors make us forget, the Spirit counters that mental erasure.

Want more peace in your life? Want to be sharper mentally? Ask God for more of the Spirit of Jesus. Learn what it means to live by the Spirit. Sadly, it’s almost a lost art to live by the Spirit and not by our human understanding or wisdom. The things of Man fail; the things of God do not.

Cultivate the Spirit and you will know peace—and be strong in your thinking.

The Nonsense of Life

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Jackson Pollack, "Number 8"Recently, I spoke with a peer who is a dedicated educator. He is going blind rapidly. This will end his career and render him disabled.

This doesn’t make sense to me.

I am 50 years old. At an age when I should be awash in wisdom, most of life makes little sense. I don’t understand why some people prosper and others don’t, even when both take the same course to success. I don’t understand why some people get handed insanely difficult burdens that leave them perpetually struggling to keep that burden from crushing them. I don’t understand how people can work for years toward a goal that seems blessed and then overnight it blows up and leaves lasting wreckage.

Perhaps I am admitting my own folly, but I just don’t understand.

Not understanding is not the same as not having an explanation. I can tell you from a theological perspective what the explanations might be. I know how living in a sin-filled world works. I get the sovereignty of God. I can call up chapter and verse. I can answer you with logic and “wisdom.”

But that doesn’t mean I understand.

The title of this post is “The Nonsense of Life.” And indeed, despite being a Christian of many years, I still find life to be nonsensical. Again, this does not mean there is no sense in it at all, only that I am unable to comprehend it.

God says that His thoughts are far higher than mine. For this reason, they appear as nonsense to me. Like the directions for building a complex microprocessor, one paragraph in Finnish, the next in Hungarian, finishing in base 3. It reads like gibberish because I don’t have what it takes to understand.

Tragedies reverberate through time, the ripples spreading out and colliding with other ripples, both good and ill. Some cancel out, while others amplify.

I know another teacher, many years ago, who had saved most of her career to go on a year-long cruise around the world when she retired. Her students were excited for her because she would take that cruise a month after retiring. Yet within a week of getting her gold watch, she died unexpectedly, never having set sail, all that preparation and hope wasted.

Why? I can’t tell you. I’m sure another teacher in another place at another time DID take a similar cruise. Sure I can offer theories, and perhaps they have some element of wisdom, but in the end, they won’t be any more enlightening as to why one took that cruise and the other never made it.

Sometimes, I think the worst thing we can do is try to explain. Sometimes, the best thing we can do is show up and be available for the ones left behind, the ones with questions we would be foolish to answer.

I am a Christian because no other way offers the same truth. No other way explains life more thoroughly. All the other options are meaningless in the long run.

I wish I could say that being a Christian has answered all my questions, but that would be a lie. If anything, I have more questions the older I get, and the answers I defended so vigorously as a younger man are less crystal clear today.

One day, I will understand. Until then, there is the nonsense of life.