Wisdom

When a Church Is Filled with Judges, Busybodies, and Advice-Givers

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A great verse for today:

“…they will learn to be lazy and will spend their time gossiping from house to house, meddling in other people’s business and talking about things they shouldn’t.”
—1 Timothy 5:13b (NLT)

If you stand up in the bathroom at church, you’ve probably been to a men’s prayer meeting. Men share prayer requests and look for other men to call down God’s help for their situation.

Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. In actuality, when men share prayer requests in an hour-long prayer meeting, they give each other advice for whatever the problems might be and spend a grand total of 57½ seconds praying about those requests—no matter how many requests were made in total.

The ladies, on the other hand, suffer from the same problem, except in a far worse form. Amplified YammeringMen tend to keep their mouths shut unless asked for advice. Women, though, sometimes go barging into other people’s lives with their “godly wisdom,” whether it is asked for or not. To their credit, women do a better job with prayer requests, bumping up the men’s 57½ seconds of total prayer time for requests to at least a minute and a half.  😉

Life is hard enough as it is, but to have judges, busybodies, and advice-givers deluging us with their man-made wisdom isn’t helping anyone. If anything, all it accomplishes is either to upset recipients or lead them down dead-end paths that eventually have those recipients questioning God’s direction  (when they should have been questioning the advice-giver’s qualifications to speak).

I believe God offers us the best way:

1. If we are prone to be an advice giver, whether prompted or not, we should stop. No one needs our man-made advice. Undoubtedly, wisdom that comes from the minds of humans will fail. God says it will, so that pretty much settles it. In short, we’re not as smart as we think we are.

2. Chances are, we don’t know enough of what is happening behind closed doors to say anything about another person’s situation. Only God knows what a person truly needs. Instead, just listen and withhold judgment and advice (then consider #5 below).

3. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” applies to judgments and advice. Would we want to hear what we are about to share? Probably not. Then best keep quiet, especially if our advice is unsolicited.

4. In contrast to failed human wisdom, God provides perfect solutions through the spiritual gifts of word of knowledge and word of wisdom. My experience is that they are rare, but they are the only type of “advice” that is truly godly. If we are not given such a word, then we should keep still. If we are, we should not be afraid to share it gently and with tact. And also remember: Chances are, you and I were not the ones chosen to deliver that message. If we were, then we need to be humble about it.

5. Most people don’t want our judgments and advice. What they do want is us and our time. It is one thing to tell someone they need to do such and such. It is far different to actually help them do it. (Personally, I have no respect for people who tell others what they should be doing yet will not lift a hand to help them do it.) If we are not willing to help see our advice through, then we should not be giving it. All the advice in the world is nothing when compared to being there in person for someone else. Talk is cheap; walk is priceless.

In the end, talk less, listen more, and walk beside people who need help. That is the way of the Christian.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and Why No One Can Get (or Give) Any

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I’ve got about six months until I hit 50. That milestone isn’t sitting well with me, though.

Part of my unrest is that the major tropes of my youth with regard to the accumulation of years have failed. Or perhaps I should say that I failed to fulfill them.

By the time you are 50, you are supposed to be in the prime of your career. You are a leader in your community. Your savings account is overflowing. You have power. Your words matter to people and they listen to you because you are a success.

At least that is what I grew up believing because that’s what we were all taught to believe.

Problem is, I haven’t achieved any of those. My careers (yes, multiple) have all been derailed at one point or another by uncontrollable economic factors, so this elusive “prime” I keep hearing about seems to be some mysterious other’s to enjoy. I’m not rich, so I have no power, since the money = power equation only grows stronger the larger the number of years on the calendar. Politics seems to be the only avenue to leadership anymore, and no party will have me. And since achievements in those preceding traits are the sole signal for success in our society today (with the possible exception of scandal, so there’s at least that still open), I’ll never be a worldly success.

They say that youth is wasted on the young, and I understand this more and more. Supposedly, the counterbalance is wisdom, but no one cares about wisdom. In an age of knowledge, where Google can give you answers to nearly any question you have, and it’s all within reach of a ubiquitous cell phone, what is wisdom? The Internet is filled with dime store philosophers, and most days anymore, I feel like just another of their horde. Name a topic and there’s a pundit for it.

So if none of this works, what is left for the guy who has managed to get to 50 years without making a total wreck of life?

I was taught to always refer to adults with “Mr.,”Mrs.,” or “Miss” preceding their surname. Even when I was in my 20s and 30s, my parents’ peers were still “Mr. Kreider” or “Mrs. Frey,” not “Joe” or “Phyllis.”

This gave those neighborhood stalwarts some ethereal cachet that made them different from me. Better. Smarter. More worthy of respect.

Just the other day, I was out with my son, and we ran into the daughter of a friend. She’s 19-21, if my faulty memory serves, and she called out to me by saying, “Hello, Mr. Edelen.”

I found it almost startling to hear “Mr. Edelen.” Perhaps I am now an adult, part of that elusive set of peerage that reserved such titular prefixes for the friends of my deceased parents.

If anything, that callout got me thinking more deeply about respect.

If none of the other standards for adulthood drilled into me in my youth can be assumed, surely respect can. Yet despite being called Mr. Edelen by one well-raised young lady, I think that more of us can identify with Rodney Dangerfield.Rodney Dangerfield - No respect

Getting to 50 without screwing up one’s life no longer merits the special favor of respect. Perhaps it never should have in the first place. We keep hearing that respect must be earned, and if anything, that’s still the prevailing thought.

Yet if our societal beliefs on respect are to be grasped, no one is earning respect.

The presidency used to be a position of respect. I don’t know if that was forever shot down by the presence of presidential protein on an intern’s dress, but since that event, neither of our last two presidents have garnered any respect. Even from Christians, respect may be talked about with regard to the POTUS, and we can blabber with the best of ’em about Founding Fathers and the greatness of America, but the words we say about our president don’t encompass respect.

In fact, even in the Church today, I can’t think of anyone who gets any respect. The world at large has a built-in reflex for questioning authority, and that seems to have slid down the gutter into the American Church.

Don’t believe me? Consider the following.

An elder from your church pulls you aside some Sunday and says, “I notice your giving has been down this year. What can we do about that?”

For many of us, the first thought is, Take a long walk off a short pier, buddy.

Even if we substitute pastor for elder in that scene, nothing improves. Doesn’t matter who the person is, we don’t want anyone telling us we’re doing it wrong.

But, Dan, the giving thing is a naturally divisive issue, you may say. And I know you don’t ascribe to a New Testament tithe, anyway. OK, then have the elder or pastor suggest that you’re not spending enough of your time in service to either the church or the community. Or that a church leader noticed a sin in your life you may need to address. Or that you might think you’re a gifted teacher, but that class you really want to teach is not what the church needs from you now. Or that you’re not as gifted in teaching as you think you are, and that perhaps your gift is driving the church bus.

How quickly the thought becomes, So which other churches can I visit next Sunday?

We can talk all we want about respect, but no one seems to get any anymore. We are so selfish and believe ourselves so wise, that no one can speak into our lives with any authority and have us instantly consider his or her words worthwhile simply because who he or she is demands respect.

We don’t honor offices or the people who inhabit them. Titles now mean nothing. We have become like cliffs of granite, immovable, unswayable, and suitable only for jumping off for those who would suggest we move or sway.

Sure, plenty of Christian leaders have abused their authority. Sure, some people may not be worthy of respect.

But is anyone?

I maybe a poor example of human being and perhaps an even lousier Christian. Maybe respect should not be afforded me simply because I’ve hung around nearly 50 years.

Yet what else is there? If we can’t respect those people who are still standing after 50 years or more, especially within the Church, what hope do we have to ever move anything—including the Church—forward? Instead, we may be dooming ourselves to a downward spiral of selfishness that keeps crying out for others to respect us, even as we fail to respect anyone else.

Your Church’s Budget–And Why It May Grieve the Lord

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Jesus or Money?I was thinking about how churches spend their money. Given all the verses in the Bible on finances and the sheer number of Christians who ascribe to Dave Ramsay’s philosophies, one would think we Christians in America would have this money thing down pat.

One would think.

But what would happen if we were to scrap the way we think about church budgets and adopt something more aligned to what the Bible says?

I could list a thousand verses on money in this post, but you already know them, right? We all know them. We just don’t adhere to them very well.

Here is what I’m thinking:

First, let’s take church staff salaries off the table for now. This is a baby-step process I’m advocating, and it’s no use angering anyone by suggesting we reevaluate staff costs now. Maybe when we’re more mature in the Lord. 😉

Take the church budget and set salaries aside. Now take all the money leftover and split it into two equal piles: Inreach and Outreach.

The Bible states that we must take care of the needs of the brethren. That’s our Inreach. In truth, staff salaries should be part of Inreach, but we’ve got them excluded for now. Inreach covers the church physical plant, programs, and benevolences given to church members who need financial assistance.

The Bible states that we then take care of those outside the church. That’s our Outreach. Missions, connecting with lost people, and benevolences for the needy outside the church community comprise Outreach.

And that’s your basic church budget. I think that’s a Kingdom-minded approach, don’t you?

Now how many churches out there work that way?

I would suggest that Inreach and staff salaries dominate most church budgets. But there is a HUGE “however”: Inreach as allocated in too many churches leaves almost no money for benevolences given to church members. In fact, benevolences monies, whether for Inreach or Outreach, are often the smallest pool of cash in the church budget.

So much for “Give and it shall be given to you.”

As much as we talk about being others-centric in the American Church, our church budgets don’t reflect this. We really are too self-centered. For many churches, the Great Commission is thwarted by building and physical plant maintenance costs. When a church allocates little money for outsiders, it grows into itself and withers.

If you are a church leader, consider a different way of budgeting that better reflects the Kingdom of God. If it means not erecting a $10 million building so you can use those funds to finance the education of single moms in your community instead, then cancel the groundbreaking ceremony. If it means a Sunday School teacher who has been out of work gets to keep his house because you set aside monies for this kind of help, then go for it.

We live in disconcerting times. If we don’t adjust the way the Church spends money, we won’t be the first choice when lost people come looking for answers. The Church will look like any other worldly, tightfisted corporate entity, and no one is running to Megabiz Inc. for salvation.