How Far Can You Fall?

The Pinnacle Of A Pyramid Is Really Up There!

I am tired of a hierarchal pyramid church structure telling me that we are a “family”, the family of God, where we play different roles like mother, father, child, pet dog, etc., but we are equal as family members. I know very few Christians who view their pastor as an equal. His position dictates his spirituality, thus one elevates his stature, often out of noble causes like respect. Church elders, deacons, and board members are treated differently again out of respect to an elevated position. The pastor is looked upon as a super Christian, the leadership as superb Christians while regular none titled members feel inferior, rejected, and sometimes even lost.

I have been impressed, but the last three pastors at our local church have been home grown, birthed, nurtured, and equipped in the faith by our own local body. The last two were saved as youth, went off to seminary only to return to their home church, became Youth Ministers, and eventually given the reigns of leadership as senior pastor. What has been tragic is a pattern I have seen develop over the last two decades: People come, get inspired, become active, given leadership positions, directed up the hierarchal ladder in positioning until they have attained top positions as elders or pastors.  The trouble comes when they resign. The last two resigning pastors left so they would not be in conflict with the new pastor. 80% of resigning elders also left the congregation over disputes or conflicts. Those respected as leaders because of the “character” of their lives, abandoned the character of the family when conflict rose its nasty head, and the fall from high up leadership down the bumpy pyramidal wall became rocky and brutal, forcing resignations, hurt, and despair. Leadership preaches how to solve conflict, but have not modeled it very well in the past.  This is not only true for my local church, but churches everywhere, and it got to stop.

We need to look for “linear” models of leadership, not hierarchal ones. We need leaders beside their people, not above them, so when someone falls, there won’t be permanent damage by falling a great distance. That is why we MUST apply I John 3:16, the laying down of our life for our brethren, as a mandatory Christian practice. If we are laying down our life, one will fall on top of you when they fall, not fall beneath you to be trampled. We can pick each other up together! That is body ministry!

Instead of diversity and our weaknesses hindering us, if we embrace the five fold as a linear ministry of equal peers accepting one another as a priesthood of believers, our strengths will breach each other’s weaknesses, and the body as a whole will be strong.

I have a personal friend who has been so damaged by the revolving door of pastors at his church over the years, that he now is skeptical about building a relationships with any new pastor, which is a lonely position to be in. Just because someone is paid as a professional does not elevate his spiritual status nor eliminate his need for fellowship and relational commitments. We have to think linearly.

Attending a funeral yesterday brought home the feeling of lost no matter how many times you attend funerals. Grieving comes with loss. Every time a pastor leaves a congregation there is lost, but we do not look at it that way, nor give the congregation time to process it that way, but immediately build hype about the expectations of a new leader with new hope, new life, and new direction. Families grieve over loss. The Family of God, the local church, needs to do the same, or embrace those who have fallen from their hierarchal positions to allow them to be regular pew sitting Christians again. They are equal brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus; let’s treat them that way if they allow us.

I am tired of the awkwardness of hierarchal changes in leadership structures, looking at the fall of one as being the potential for rise for another. True linear leadership never “lords” or “hovers over” nor “micromanages” those below them, but walks beside them. Jesus is the true example of that process. He always walked with his disciples.  When ascending to heaven, above his brethren, he sent his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, to not only walk with believers but personally indwell them. “Do you not know your body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit?” Even his Spirit is not in a hierarchal position over you, but with you, in you, being a part of you! Relationally, as believers in Jesus Christ, that is where we should be with each other, then no man can fall far, only into the arms of the one beside them! That is commitment; that is unity; that is the truth of Body of Christ if we follow linear leadership. We must be our brother’s keepers, even when they have fallen! 

History of Experience?

A Historic Jesus Or An Every Present Jesus!

We are a data driven society. We want to know facts in order to rationally figure everything out. What happens if the rational or natural becomes irrational because of the supernatural? What do you do when the explainable now becomes supernaturally unexplainable?  How do you handle it when the facts of data are face-to-face with actual experience that goes counter to those facts and data?  How do you handle faith?

It is amazing what we know “about” subjects but really don’t “know” the subject. For example, we know a lot about “marriage”, what it should and should not be, how it should or should not work, yet once we said “I do” and experienced marriage do we discover we know very little about it!  We learn more and more about it as we experience it! I love to talk to couples who have been married 35 years or more, for they can share wisdom that is not data driven, but experience driven.  Marriage works, but only if it is applied, if you experience it, work through it, embrace it, live it.

I’ve met people who know a lot “about” Jesus, so they think, yet they do not really “know” Jesus because they have not experienced him! They can spout off about the historical Jesus, their conception and “scholars’” conceptions of what Jesus was like when he was a human here on earth, but they know very little about the Jesus of today, personally or corporately.  If Jesus today is the corporate church, they know him as an institution, a religious organization, not as a living organism of relationships between his people. You have to “experience” Jesus as an “”organism”, a living form through his people in order to truly understand him. How?

The five-fold is all about relationships, the laying down your life for your brethren in a peer-to-peer relationship of equality and acceptance. It is all about bringing life to the individual believer, developing him in the image of Jesus Christ, and to the corporate body of believers called the church, bringing unity in spirit and truth. If you pattern Christian life after church history, you follow traditionalism, the very thing that opposed Jesus when he was on earth. Jesus came to earth to bring life for man to experience life in Him not to establish traditions never to be broken. If you follow only a historical Jesus, you establish your understanding of Jesus through tradition, laws, decrees, etc., not out of personal relationships and experiences.

It amazes me how someone as dedicated as a seminary student can know some much about Jesus, yet not have personally experienced him, but it happens. I know ministers who deliver excellent sermons and exegeses “about” Jesus historically, quoting Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and every known scholar, yet never having personally experienced him as a living, unexplainable, supernatural organism.

In order to understand the five-fold, you have to experience the five fold. Just knowing “about” it is not good enough. It is one thing knowing everything about evangelism but never evangelizing, know about care, nurturing, and discipleship but never shepherding anyone, knowing about the Word and being able to quote it verbatim but never experiencing or living it, knowing about God personally but never prophetically listening to his still small voice, knowing about administration from a business model, but never seeing over what the Holy Spirit is already doing while networking his people from an apostolic framework. My goal is not for the Church to know about the five-fold but experience it, live it, making it an organism of personal, sacrificial relationships.

We face a challenge in these days to either bring life through experiencing Jesus, or follow the “traditions of men” as the Bible calls them, and continue our Westernize view of the gospel of “knowing about” our faith through facts and data while quoting scriptures. We need to live our faith, live out of our faith, and experience our faith if we wish to see it as an organism. What a challenge! Let’s do it!

Demolition Or Historical Preservation?

Part III: Demolition… Ka-Boom! There She Falls!

Isaiah 57:14-27:  It shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstacle out of the way of My people.” For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. “For I will not contend forever, neither will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before Me, and the breath of those whom I have made because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry and struck him; I hid My face and was angry, and he went on turning away, in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and to his mourners, creating the praise of his lips. “Peace, peace to him who is far and to him who is near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him. “But the wicked are like the tossing sea for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up refuse and mud.  There is no peace,” says God, “for the wicked.”

I love historic sections of cities, the “old section” of town that is rich in heritage and history. What happens though when it turns into the “slum” of the city. Slumlords become tenant renters never fixing up their place, trash is strewn throughout the streets, crime, prostitution, and drug selling is found around every corner. At this time the section of the city gasps for life, shakes in fear, and loses hope. Soon “death” hovers over the streets instead of “life”. Something needs to be done when so much “life is lost”!  This is the time for renewal; cities call it urban renewal; churches call it revival.

Revival demands change: individual changed lives as well as structural institutional changes. If we keep the same institutions, we get the same results, and the slum mentality will remain in a new environment until it eats away at any progress that was made. Often total demolition is a necessity before renewal can be birthed or maintained.

Isaiah pointed out that to “build up, build up,” first “ remove every obstacle out of the way of My people,” needed to happen. Demolition to religious structures had to be done before renewal was to begin. The Tabernacle had to give way to a Temple when the nation Israel was established. The Temple eventually had to be destroyed, never to be rebuilt, when Christianity was birthed because Christianity professed that the believers’ bodies were the temples of the Holy Spirit, not physical structures. Old structures had to give way to new ones. The previous “Books of God” were now called “the Old Testament” giving way to the new “Books of God” called “the New Testament”. Old influenced the new, but a time came for the old to be old, gone, done away with, “Ka-boom”! It was replaced by something new, something better! That is how God has worked historically as recorded in the Bible, and will continue to do so!

I have written blogs in the past on excerpts of a manuscript I have written called “Metamorphosis” where I believe the Church is going from their current caterpillar stage into a cocoon stage that will “restructure” what a caterpillar looks like. In fact what comes out of that caterpillar will not look like a caterpillar at all; it will be a butterfly, a completely new structure. The old will be gone; behold the new!

What will this new structure look like? Well that is what almost 500 of these blogs have been written about.  I believe we will have a new structure build around the five fold as passions, beliefs, and points of views of average, normal believers in Jesus Christ who have linear relationships with each other of “laying down their lives for their brethren.” This sacrificial love will transform the way we do Church in function, worship, and personal relationships. It will be revolutionary in our thinking, because it will be a new structure. Old hierarchal clergy/laity structures will fall as well as institutional, organizational mindsets based on those structures.

If everything we do becomes relational, either vertically with the way we worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or horizontally, the way we accept one another, it will force us to rethink how we do Church, what is the Church, and demolish old mindset while openly receiving new ones, new revelations as the Holy Spirit reveals.

“Ka-boom”! Another structure falls, another organization, but in its place a butterfly, an organism suitable for flight into the heavenlies, replaces it, a better structure, a better form, a re-form, a newness: revival!

Organizational Structures

Part II: Understanding Organizational Structures: Pyramidal Versus Linear

We have asked the question, “How can we keep from becoming an organization, an administrative and functional structure, and remain an organism, “a living thing, a living being, an individual?” In order to answer this question we have to look at understanding organizational structures.  In America, the hot bed of world capitalism, we worship the “Business Model” of Corporate America with C.E.O.’s, Boards, Stock Holders, and Workers. This mentality has also infiltrated the American Church.

Christian church leadership America primarily follows the C.E.O. model of a Senior Pastor heading a staff of associate pastors, staff, and personnel being monitored by a Church Board. All positions, paid or voluntary, have titles, job descriptions, and professional expectations. The Stock Holders are their parishioners whose “tithe” finances the institution. They are told they are investing in the “kingdom of God”, when most of their investment goes to building and grounds maintenance, professional staff salaries and benefit packages, and paying for programs to bring nonchurch people into their building or enrich or entertain their constituents. Benevolence and missions, the origin of this organization, is now lost in the miniscule regions of the over all budget, as most finances goes to maintenance of the system.

We who have been part of this system all our lives feel it is normal, acceptable, never questioning it, and believing that supporting it is “God’s will”, but what about new believers or even nonbelievers? How do they see it? A fact is that the church has been losing membership over the last couple of decades, and are losing the “young” that are to be the anchors of the church of this century. What will it take to attract the “young” adults back into the “life” of the Church? By returning to the “organism”! The question is how?

We, the Church, need to look through their eyes. When I was young, I wanted to believe I was “anti-establishment”, opting for relationships over religion and systematic organizations. Now older, I catch myself defending my “religion” and the organizations that support my lifestyle while hearing the “young” still crying out for “relationships”. Today’s 20-30’s have been labled “flat-worlders”, believing in linear relationships as being “friends” on Facebook, supplemental “likes” as accepting comments and websites, and networking with others, all relationship on a linear, horizontal plane. They look at hierarchal structures as “speed bumps” (See earlier blog). Social Networking has given them a voice of peer acceptance and equality, but hierarchal structures and leadership have stifled that voice, minimizing their importance and losing the feeling that they are neither “accepted” nor “equal” to anyone, thus they don’t come to church, primarily because of the structure.

So the structure must change from a hierarchal one to a linear, horizontal, accepting one of peer equality as believers of Jesus Christ, a priesthood of equal peers, without titles or positions of stature.  It is what we do, not who we are, nor what title we wear that gives us validity.  It is the “laying down of our lives” to one another that says everything, so titles and offices become irrelevant to our actions and attitudes.

Changing our “religious” mindsets to “relational” mindsets will not be easy, for it will demand structural changes to our established organizational thinkings laid down for centuries. The over emphasis of organization brought the “Dark Ages” for hundreds of years; the emphasis of returning to becoming an organism will bring “Reformation”, or revival. Reformation will not just include “re-forming” our structures, but disposing many of them so the Church can remain fluid in following the Holy Spirit as it had to do during its birthing process. Relying on the Holy Spirit and being obedient to him will trump established church tradition or the Church will forever be fragmented, which is not the will of the Father. Jesus prayed, “Father, make us one,” and to do that drastic change will have to evolved.

How do we have this change evolve? By tearing down the old, and believing in ICorinthians 15 that in “Christ Jesus all things are new!” It is hard for even me to accept, but urban renewal begins with the demolition of old structures, in spite of the local historical federation wanting to keep everything as it was when first established, before new can be build.

Organization or Organism

Part I: Can We Keep An Organism From Eventually Becoming An Organization?

Organism

Definition: noun, plural: organisms  (Science: Biology) - An individual living thing that can react to stimuli, reproduce, grow, and maintain homeostasis. It can be a virus, bacterium, protist, fungus, plant or an animal.  Supplement - Word origin: Greek organon = instrument. 
Related forms: organismic (adjective), organismal (adjective), organismically (adverb). 
Synonym: living thing, living being, individual. (http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Organism)

or·ga·ni·za·tion noun \ˌor-gə-nə-ˈzā-shən, ˌorg-nə-\

1) a company, business, club, etc., that is formed for a particular purpose 2) the act or process of putting the different parts of something in a certain order so that they can be found or used easily 3) the act or process of planning and arranging the different parts of an event or activity

Full Definition of ORGANIZATION - 1  a :  the act or process of organizing or of being organized;  b :  the condition or manner of being organized 2  a :  association, society <charitable organizations>  b :  an administrative and functional structure (as a business or a political party); also :  the personnel of such a structure. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/organization)

It is so easy to go from being an organism, “a living thing, a living being, an individual, to becoming an organization, an administrative and functional structure. We discover how to bring life or a solution to a problem, then immediately want to organize it to make it more “efficient”.

For example, many hospitals were birthed as a “living” effort to reach out to the sick, especially those who are poor, but once established it becomes an organization to improve its “efficiency” which has brought us to America today where we have developed entire “conglomerates” whose bottom line is the business model of dollars and cents rather than for care for the poor. What started as a good cause, became an efficient system, that eventually becomes all consuming and overwhelming where the organization becomes more important than the original cause. An example is the YMCA, originally a British Christian outreach program for physical health and cheap housing, who now has lost the “C” and is known strictly as the “Y”, and is memorialized by the Village People propagating the gay population in San Francisco in their hit song, “YMCA”.!

This phenomenon also happens with the Church. A person shares one-on-one the gospel producing fruit with several others now believing. As they share their faith, the group grows in size. As it does, they soon believe they can meet more needs if they organize resources to make it more efficient, thus structure and order is formed. Soon structure and order leads to tradition, and we begin to lock in our organization standards which eventually become set in stone, and the movable, fluid, organism is stifled, if not crushed. It is also the dream of some churches to organizationally grow into “religious conglomerates” known as mega-churches where maintaining the huge system becomes an albatross to the effectiveness of the ministry.

We, the church, spend so much time and effort into organizing structures, services, and activities to be more efficient, believing that is the definition of “good stewardship”, rather than spending it on relationships and personal one-to-one contact with our neighbors and other believers. Soon we are willing to “invest” our finances to hire a professional staff to fill organizational positions to perform religious activities rather than staying personally involved in one-to-one relationships, and we wake up discovering we have also become “the institutional church”, though we tend to deny that truth. 

Five-Fold Recipe

Ingredients for Five-Fold Revival

If the Holy Spirit is “cooking” up the next revival, what would be the ingredients needed for such an adventure? Here may be a few suggestions that I would have.  None of these are new. They have been addressed in previously written blogs, but together they could become a powerful pastry!

- A Recognition That The Holy Spirit Is In Control – Without the Holy Spirit, there is no revival, yet so often we, the established church, try to dictate the dosage allowed. Often we want enough of the Holy Spirit to bring revival but keep it clean, neat, and orderly, but not enough to lose control, but without allowing the Holy Spirit total freedom, there will be no true revival.

- A Dose of the Doctrine of the Priesthood of Believers – Revival begins at the grass roots level with the masses, the believers in Jesus, the Church. I Peter 2:9-10 states, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” When God’s people and their voices get marginalized, revival validates their voice, their position in Christ, and takes them out of their darkened state into enlightenment.  Peer acceptance and equality are standard ingredients for revival.

- Diversity in the Body, the Church, is a Mandatory Ingredient - Galatians 3 verse 26 states, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ", and verse 28 concludes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free man, neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Although there is great diversity in the Body of Christ, the Church, there is equality and acceptance as peers, as priests in a united priesthood. The Body of Christ transcends nationalities, races, denominations, and political points of view. The Great Commission calls the Church to be comprehensive on a world wide scale, and with today’s world-wide-web of internet activity, the church needs to look at a new set of ingredients that will “raise” the bar of evangelism, nurture, teaching, prophetic insight, and apostolic over sight to a world wide level of influence.

- Leveling The Playing Field – Today’s younger generation looks at the world from a “flat world” mentality, of peer relationships and acceptance rather than hierarchal structures of leadership. They look for leadership to be walking beside them, rather than being over them in dictatorial fashion. The Church needs to examine its hierarchal structures of leadership, modify, adjust, and sometimes even scrap the old for a more linear relationship built model based on service and sacrifice.

- A Large Dosage Of New Mindsets – If we are to embrace this next generation, their broadening world view, their peer acceptance, and their yearning for linear, meaningful relationships built on trust, respect, and acceptance, then we, the Church, must embrace new mindsets on how we do church, what it means to be the Church, and how the Church is to function among its diverse members to develop individual Christian maturity in the image of Jesus producing group unity. This is why the five fold would be the best ingredient possible to attain those goals according to Ephesians 4.

- Cook Slowly, Simmer, Heat Thoroughly – When “the heat is on” revival flourishes. Persecution and martyrdom were the ingredients that brought expansion to the 1^st Century Church. What “heat” will need to be produced to bring a “world wide” revival that transcends countries, nations, and continents. What will the Church have to experience globally to bring it to its knees, in humble recognition and obedience to a sovereign, merciful God who created this world, and whose kingdom is to reign over it? The Church in the past has looked at “revival” as a time of blessing, but this time it will come at a price: the “laying down your life for your brethren” (I John 3:16) which will bring unity, not division, preparing the Bride of Christ, the Church, for the Groom’s, Jesus’ return to a Church without spot or wrinkle. Setting the oven the right temperature always is a prerequisite for properly baked goods. You don’t want to under-bake it nor burn it, and the same is true for revival.

There you have it: some of the ingredients needed for the next revival. Come Holy Spirit, supply the ingredients, mix the diversity into one united batter, then heat precisely to have it raise it into a beautiful baked work of art. Holy Spirit, bring revival!

What If You Tithed Your Time?

A Different Mind Bending Concept About Tithing

Being a church member, unfortunately, usually breeds passivity. Sadly, we need only “attend” church services to be looked upon as a Christian in most cultures. Attending Sunday morning worship and one activity listed in the bulletin per week satisfies our stature.  We are so dependent on the professional staff to do everything, that they “enable” us by doing their job effectively. No wonder we do not feel part of the life of the local church.  Usually churches that are professionally programmed driven usually ask only one major form of activity from their casual members; their financial giving.  The offering is a central piece of every Christian program. Sometimes pre-offering speeches can be longer than the sermon, and “tithing” is a quarterly sermon theme.

What would happen if we Americans would tithe from what is most precious to them; their time?

What would the church staff do if each and every member in your church was willing to volunteer 4 hours, 1/10^th of their 40 hour work week to the church? The staff would probably generate more programs for them to attend! Really, if you have 100 members in your church each giving four hours, what would they do with 400 hours of volunteered time each week? A 500 member church with 1,000 free hours? Sounds like a cell phone plan!

If I would ask that question during a staff meeting I may get suggestions like: janitorial work, building maintenance, shrubbery trimming and clean up, painting, secretarial work, running off bulletins, up dating data base of members for email, newsletters, and mailings, etc., all institutional chores, but what happened to feeding and clothing the poor, caring for the widows in the congregation, hospital and jail visits, etc.  Most staff hired by churches are program related where they are highly visible, but who does the invisible tangibles that empower a church?  What they would list on a whiteboard as suggestions would show the priorities of that church.  With 400 hours a week of volunteering would force a change in priorities.

What would happen if the members spent their volunteer time forming nonprofit businesses in a service sector like a lunch time deli where they would feed and serve their community in a nonchurch financially profitable atmosphere?  How about a “Foot Wash”, fancy name for a car wash reflecting the foot washing passion of Jesus to the community, not as a fundraiser for more church activities, but for community benevolence. How about a moving company to help low income families and church families in moving to a new residence? These business would not only produce financial profits, but “help equip the saints for the works of service,” the Ephesians 4 principle as well as produce entry level jobs for young people, the homeless, and those wanting to start a life of financial independence while serving. Actually these acts of service are great evangelistic efforts, touching the secular community, and grafting them and the local church into stronger community bonds.

What impact would volunteered tithing hours have on the elderly if church members did not just visit them for ten minutes on a Sunday afternoon during visiting hours, but instead took them to their doctor and dentist appointments, or helped maintain residential housing that is beyond the physical capabilities of an aging widow, so she can still have the freedom of living in her home instead of being forced into an assisted living situation?

What freedom would it give a parent of a physical or mental handicap child if volunteers would spend time with that child, freeing them to go shopping alone, going to the athletic club for their own health, or just have a badly needed date without the pressures of caregiving 24/7?

These possibilities only scratch the surface; allow your imagination to soar at the possibilities of how “active” how “alive” a local church would be if we tithed from our most sacred resource, our time. I cannot find in the scriptures where Jesus asks for our money, but he does request our time when he says, “Follow me.”  “Following Jesus” will always change the way we think of doing church, the way the community sees church, the way the “staff” would have to operate, and the way we would chose church leadership.

What do you think? What impact would “tithing of our time” change the way your church would do “church”? What would “church” then look like? How would the church manage all those volunteers and hours without hiring a “case manager”, another full time professional position? Let’s hear from you! 

Surrounded By Care; The Five Fold Phenomenon

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part XII

We have been looking at what it means to “equip the saints for works of service” as out lined in Ephesians 4.  Part of equipping is surrounding a person with those things that will make them successful.  That is the power and beauty of the five fold; the strengths of many support the weaknesses of one.  Because the five fold is a team effort, a family effort, a community effort, no man is an island.    Personally, I have learned to realize that several attempts at ministry in the past to which I have been involved were not as successful as they could have been because I did not have that support of diverse passions, desires, and ministries around me. My weaknesses help hinder the success of ministry, but I had no one around me to support and lift me up through their diverse passion in the time of my weakness.

Let’s say that you have the pastoral passion of shepherding; you love to care for others and nurture them physically, emotionally, and spiritually toward maturity in Jesus Christ.  To get the full potential results of your ministry, you need the other four (evangelist, teacher, prophet, & apostle) components of the five fold to aid, abate, support, and equip your ministry.  You need an evangelist to birth “babes in Christ” so that you have someone to nurture.  You need the aide of the teacher to “ground” these new believers in the Word of God, the Bible, the aide of the prophet to teach them to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit for themselves and how to make the Logos Word a Rhema, or Living, Word, and the aide of apostolic oversight to monitor their spiritual growth from birth through maturity.  Shepherding is only one part of the entire picture in equipping a saint in his spiritual journey!

Without added support, one can feel swamped, over extended, and eventually burnt out trying to be all things to all men. Often in the current pastor/laity model of most small churches, the burn out rate among clergy is staggering because the congregation expects their pastor to be strong in all five areas when he/she may be gifted in just one or two of them, and we expect him/her to do it alone because he is a professional.  We need to change our perspective of ministry from a solo effort to a team approach of five.  Ministry should be a “team effort”: the strengths of those around you should shore up your weaknesses and free you to minister in and through your strength.  Ministry should be a “family approach” where all are members of the family of God; as in most families, members count on one another in order to succeed. Ministry should be a “community”: a community is made up of many different, diverse components that aide each other for the good of the group.

The key word of “equipping the saints for the work of service” is the word “service”.  We have to learn not only how to serve, but also be served.  If we become too arrogant, to independent, rejecting help from our brethren, we will rob them of the joy of servicing us. The reciprocal serving back and forth is the key to the success of the five fold ministry as a team ministry. It is a give and take situation. One’s strength and passion, mixed with compassion, can be a very effective tool at aiding, abetting, and supporting another brother or sister in the lord with a different passion than our own.

In conclusion, we need to accept the fact that we cannot do it alone; the kingdom of God is too big for just me or you to do it all. We are a body in Christ, the Church, so there are many other parts, people, whose gifting, though drastically different from our own, are needed to maximize the ministry of the gospel. Divisions will diminish if divergent passions serve one another, draw from one another, aide one another, and equip one another. Truly, then will we see a powerful Church with effective ministry.

Rethinking Our Theology

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part XI

In Greek Theo = God; ology = Study of; thus theology = study of God, yet if we take a higher level graduate theology course at a seminary we discover it is a collection of a lot of theologian’s, men who claim to be studying God, views on various religious topics.  It is all about how we, man, have interpreted scriptures.  It is basically what we as an individual believes about God.  Every man has his own theology: how he perceives God at that moment.  I have discovered that my theology has changed over the years, for I have often boxed in God, trivialized my faith, sought to systematically place things in order so they made intellectual sense, organize, characterize, even politicize my religious experience. 

Like Saul, who later became Paul, I have sat under and read the works of some remarkable religious theologians who have molded what I believe God to be, sat under thousands of hours of religious training during my 50 years as a Christian believer, often being doctrinated by the religious camp who was doing the teaching. The Westernized Church honors the theologian for his highly intellectual interpretation of the Scriptures. Introduction to the Bible 101 is an entry level course, but Theology 502 is a high level graduate course.  Saul and I both have sat under some incredible theological teachers, but where did it get us?

We, the Church, honor our scribes and Pharisees, the intellectual religious leaders of our day, just as the Jewish people honored theirs in Jesus’ day, yet they are the very people Jesus criticizes heavily, “Woe, you scribes and Pharisees…..”  It was the theologians of his day that received his verbal wrath.  Saul, “the Pharisee of Pharisees”, has to literally get knocked off his horse and blinded before he is willing to see the deception of his religious zeal of persecuting the very thing he should be advocating.  He was forced to rethink his thinking!  This experience led him to he wilderness to rethink and cleans himself of his old beliefs and reestablish and build upon the new before being released to become one of the greatest apostles and theologians of his time.

A friend once had a vision of me in a bird cage with the door to the cage open, but I remained inside perched in peace, unwilling to fly to my freedom. Why? After struggling for an answer, the Holy Spirit spoke to my friend who said I was the bird inside, the cage was the religious structure I had build around myself.  In it I found safety, comfort, and peace, so I chose to remain content, perched inside.  Who knows what would happen if I left the cage and became free?  Where would I perch? Is there a haven of safety somewhere else? What would being free really mean to me?  I realized that I had become a Pharisee like Saul, and a transformation from the safe confines of my religious experience would be needed in order to “fly in the spirit” on “wings as eagles”. That flying in the unknown would change my theology, the way I perceived God in my life’s experience.  God was still God, faith, unchanging; it was my perception of him that changed!

It is that perception of who God is in our individual lives that is so important.  That is why it is so important to “trust” the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ to “teach us all things”, for He, and only He can be the revealer of Truth to us through the Word of God.  Equipping the saints is all about guiding a person, directing someone, releasing them to discover for themselves the Truth, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, in their personal lives so their life becomes a “Living Gospel”, not a legalistic, written, intellectually driven gospel.  It is different “to know God”, to experience God, than it is “to know about God” or study, or theologize God!

But “What are we to believe?” you may ask. “What do we know is truth?” Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal that to you through the Logos Word, the Bible, and make it the Rhema Word, the living word in your life.  I believe, in the five fold, the Holy Spirit gives the apostolic passion of the Church the wisdom to “know the mysteries of God”, the truths, the nuggets of the gospel that brings unity. That is what I call the Apostolic Teaching!  It is not doctrinal teaching that has divided the church into its many sects, divisions, and denominations.  I have learned over the year that doctrine divides, the Holy Spirit unites, so we must “trust” and “rely” on the Holy Spirit to reveal “apostolic” truth for the “entire Church” in order to see sectarianism diminish and eventually disappear.

In order “to equip the church for the work of service” we must equip our future evangelists, shepherds, teachers, prophets, and apostles with the knowledge on how to “trust the Holy Spirit” of Jesus Christ, the Revealor, to reveal universal truths to His entire Church, truths that will be shared and honored by every member of the Body of Christ, truths that will draw all men toward Jesus Christ, truths that will unite not divide.

Going through such a drastic change from intellectualism to practical experience, the living out of the gospel will bring radical change. When Saul met the “living God”, he was literally knocked off his horse.  The transformation from what he “knew about God” to “knowing God” caused such a radical change in his life, like his Father Abram who changed his name to Abraham, Saul changed his name to Paul and started “life anew”, a life transformed, a life free of studying about God, to a life of intimately knowing God.  That is one of the goals for preparation and equipping the saints.

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part X

Equipping Through Community

Can you imaging your local church going from approximately 120 to 3,120 in one weekend. That is what happened to the church at Jerusalem because of Pentecost.  Churches today pray for “revival”, but if 3,000 were saved in one weekend, what would your church do with these new converts?  How would they nurture them, disciple them, effectively teach them the Word particularly if they did not have a religious background, and live out what they learn?  Initially everyone would gather because of the excitement of the newness of the movement, but eventually numbers would begin to dwindle. With the new income from 3,000 people coming into their coffers, today’s churches would react by hiring more staff and starting a new building program to house all the people. All looks glorious at the beginning, but as numbers dwindle, so does the financial support, and soon layoffs occur and the huge building becomes a fiscal albatross.

In the Old Testament, priests were created to commune with God. They were a select group, one-tenth of the population, exclusively from the tribe of Levi.  In the New Testament the priesthood was no longer a selective group but a collective group of anyone who had accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  The Old Testament elevates the priest, but nowhere in the New Testament does it talk about being a priest, only establishing a “royal priesthood”.  It is the collective group that is elevated.  It is the community of faith, the believers corporately in Jesus Christ, the Church. I contend that it is the Church’s job to prepare and equip these new believers corporately to do the corporate work of service. How did this community get established?

The book of Acts vividly points out in its early chapters that this new movement of believers in Jesus Christ met in homes.  They “continued to break bread together”, in other words, fellowshipped with each other. They just did not “hang out” with one another on Sundays, but daily ate meals together, fellowshipped with one another, talked with one another, shared their day, their lives, intricately becoming a part of each other.  They accepted their differences, but began to blend into a group, a community, a family, a body, the Body of Christ, the Church. 

They began to sacrificially give, not to build a “church” building to hold the growing numbers in their congregation, not to add new staff, for there was no staff with academic degrees to hire, not to build a Bible School or Theological Seminary to advance the academia of this new movement, but they laid their finances at the feet of Jesus, literally at the feet of the Apostles, who used it to feed the poor, take care of the needy, the widows, the homeless, and the hurting. Deacons arose “to serve tables”, or do the work of service to those in need.

By fellowshipping together, living together, participating in each other’s lives on a daily basis, “relationships” were born and established.  Christianity is all about “relationships”.  John 3:16 points us to our relationships with God the Father through his son, Jesus Christ, re-establishing a broken relationship caused by sin, yet sanctified through the Cross.  The vertical relationship with God and man has been restored. I John 3:16 points us to our relationship with each other through the principle of “laying down one’s life” for each other.  People who are willing to sacrificially do that, as Jesus had done during his life, will discover that it develops a very close community, a community that even persecution can not dissolve, a community built on intimate, committed relationships.

Soon passions of “service” arose from this new group: some wanting to go out and evangelize, telling those who have not heard about this gospel, this “good news”; some wanting to nurture those who were already in their midst, to help them grow toward maturity in their new faith in Jesus Christ; some who discovered that all this had been foreshadowed and written about in the Torah, the Old Testament, among the prophets and the writings of David and Solomon, and diligently began to search the scriptures to reveal the truth; some to make sure this new revealed scriptural truth did not become just academic nor legalistic, but continue to be pliable, active, living.  In spite of this diversity, they continued to fellowship in unity of faith and purpose. They learned to give to one another and take from one another, thus causing their relationships to deepen even further.

When persecution finally did hit Jerusalem, the Church had already prepared and equipped their believers to move on in their flight for safety to all different regions throughout the world, and the Church continued to grow, develop, mature, preparing and equipping another generation to “serve” their God and “serve” one another.  Soon the Church was no longer looked upon as a new Jewish sect, but a vibrant, living, organism to be reckoned with, challenging all the already existing religions and leaders of its day.

 As we have institutionalized the Church over the centuries we have lost the sense of community among believers, instead establishing divisions among us through clergy and laity and through denominational distinctions, labels and beliefs.  We claim to be one body, but are so fragmented, divided, and even hostile towards one another because of our divisions.  Large portions of our church budgets finance large institutions and magnificent edifices while minimal amounts go toward the poor, the widows, the homeless, and the hurting.  To reestablish the power of the first century Church back into our institutions, we will have to first again establish community and the willingness to “lay down our lives” for one another, breaking bread with one another, fellowshipping daily among one another.  We will have to establish community back into the Church.

Preparing And Equipping Toward Maturity

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part IX

It is basic to human nature to want to feel needed, to fulfill a purpose, to feel appreciated, to hear someone say, “What would we do without you?”  Unfortunately we often enable people in order to get the gratitude we think we deserve. What kind of parent would we be if our twenty-eight year old son still thanked us for doing their wash, feeding him, financially supporting him while he plays computer games all day, drive him everywhere, and are a part of every decisions he makes, but he shows his gratitude by saying, “What would I do without you?”  We would be considered a failure as a parent. The adult child is nowhere close to becoming independent because he has learned that you will enable him every step of the way.

Most church’s attempt at spiritually parenting is usually a disaster, for we enable those who come into our door. We greet them, pamper them, preach to them, pray for them, tell them what to do, when to financially give, when to stand, when to sit, when to be social, and when quietness is reverence.  We teach submission to authority to the point that authority tells one everything they should or should not do, never allowing them to figure it out themselves or let their conscious be their compass. When that authority or leadership leaves, everyone gasps, “What are we going to do without you?” while beginning to look for a replacement.

Enabling and equipping are opposites. When we equip people, we are preparing them to stand alone, no longer needing our assistance and care, and actually propelling them to accomplish feats beyond our capabilities. Enabling enslaves the person, keeping them in a position of control, continuing to draw them toward dependency. Jesus never enabled. He prepared and equipped his disciples to be able to stand alone once he left earth to return to his rightful place beside his Father in heaven. He built their faith on the Word of God while releasing the Holy Spirit to “teach them all things”.  In fact, he said that they would do “greater things” than he did during his earthly stay.

Apostle Paul would kick into the evangelistic mode when entering a new town or city. When new followers accepted Christ he kicked into the shepherding/pastoral mode and began to nurture them in the faith, using his teaching skills to make the written Word relevant while prophetically living it. He would see over what the Holy Spirit was doing amongst the whole group before leaving.  When he left, he left a fully sufficient, independent church of believers standing on their own faith. They did not have to have Paul around any more. They freed him to move on to his next evangelistic project. He had prepared them and equipped them.

Paul, and older brother in the faith, also prepared and equipped others younger in the faith in becoming apostles, future leaders. He and Barnabas journeyed together, but eventually Paul took young Mark under his care. Even though their relationship was rocky on his first missionary journey because of Mark’s immaturity, Paul eventually praises Mark, supports Mark, encourages Mark to continue in leadership, and the rest is history.  Preparing and equipping means walking beside a brother or sister in the Lord in their journey, not preaching at them or having them read numerous books on the topic.  As we have scene Paul used this principle and so did Jesus who walked with the 12 disciples.  It is not an academic exercise but a physical and spiritual one. It is the walking out, and working out, of one’s faith walk together. It is a daily walk, an intimate walk, a relational walk that prepares, builds, and equips others.

A key component after preparation and equipping is releasing.  Paul had to release each new church to stand on its own. He equipped them with the Word, the Holy Spirit, with spiritual gifts, with community, and the tools needed for leadership; now they had to stand alone.  All that preparation and equipping would be useless if he had not released them.

We as a Church need to rethink what preparing, equipping, and releasing means in our relationships of discipling and nurturing our brothers and sisters in their spiritual growth. As parents we celebrate when our sibling graduates from high school or college, gets married, and becomes a parent, all steps in growing up and becoming independent from our parental care.  The empty nest syndrome is the realization that our sibling has left the nest, our home, and established their own, gotten married or become independent, and may become parents themselves now supporting their own siblings. Most churches I know do not experience an empty nest syndrome as they have prepared and equipped their own laity, their own believers in Jesus, to become independent enough to go out and start their own church, their own ministry, their own acts of service producing growth. They do not reproduce others to replay themselves!

As we learn about the passions of our fellow believers in Jesus, we need to encourage them to grow in their passion, to develop relationships of equality with others who have different passions than their own, to learn to support one another by laying down their lives for one another, to prepare them by encouraging self reflection, developing a private discipline devotional time of Bible study and prayer, giving them an outlet to share what they have seen and heard during these times. We need to equip them with the Word, the Bible, teach them the literal Word of God, the Logos Word, and how to live it, the Rhema Word, and surround them with community, the Church. Then we may see a change, a transformation, from dead-beat Christians, enabled Christians to active, living, growing, nurturing, and supporting Christians. If we see those changes, we have prepared and equipped successfully.

Equipping The Saints Soccer Analogy

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part VIII

In Elizabethtown College Soccer History it has been eulogized as “The Game”!  The year before Elizabethtown College battled Hartwick College for the Division III NCAA National Soccer Championship to a nil-nil tie after six overtime periods. To prevent another tie when they met for a rematch for the National Division III title again, they started the game an hour early, just incase history would repeat itself.  It did! When regulation play ended, neither team had put the ball into the goal for the second straight year. In the fifth overtime period, during an offensive attack by Hartwick the Etown goalie was drawn out from his net and a Hartwick attacker fired a thunderous shot taking the breath out of every Etown fan. A sigh of relief was replaced by thunderous exaltation when big Dale Beiber, the son of an African missionary, placed his enormous thigh in front of the ball, knocking it down, and then kicking it down the field to safety.

After playing 90 minutes of regulation play, and 5 ten-minute overtime periods, every player, exhausted, was running on pure adrenaline. Each team was looking for the “break” that would tip the scale. That came when Sandy Kilo, the shortest player on the field, drew the Hartwick goalie out of his goal on a break away, and lobbed the ball gently over his head into the goal! Elizabethtown won 1-0! A front page pictorial of their victory lap on the Etownian, the official weekly Elizabethtown College paper, recorded history.

Why did Etown win? They were in phenomenal physical shape which provided the stamina needed and one-third of the student body weathered the 7 hour trip to create a “home game” atmosphere . Months earlier, before the student body arrived for the fall semester, the team had extensive two-time a day practices and drills. I recall one soccer player’s return from the late afternoon practice, where he took off his soccer spikes and collapsed on the hard stone porch, falling a sleep there in spite of the student traffic throughout the evening. Those exhaustive practices prepared the team for the stamina needed later.  I also was part of the masses who crammed into any vehicle heading towards New England for the game and the long, joyous, return home before the team bus arrived for a victory celebration like the College had never experienced before.

Elizabethtown had been better “equipped” for the game.  They had invested their time in physical conditioning, had worked hours upon hours on their soccer skills, had worked hard on developing a “team” concept, and had built a radical fan base that would travel anywhere to support them. They were prepared; they were equipped.

We, the Church, can learn from their experience.  We should be “equipping the saints for works of service.”  “Prepare ye the way!” is the cry heard throughout the Bible.  Preparation always precedes ministry. Jesus prepared his disciples for when he would leave the earth: he prepared them for apostleship; he prepared them to be the foundation of this new movement, the Church.  He not only prepared them, he equipped them with the Holy Spirit to “teach them all things”; he equipped them through the Word; he equipped them by teaching them the principle of laying down your life for your brethren (IJohn 3:16) so that they would establish community, a community that would survive even the most brutal persecution possible.  Preparing and equipping were essential principles needed in birthing and establishing the Church.  They are still needed today in the maintaining of the Body of Christ, the Church.

Any good building needs a foundation and needs the proper equipment to build that foundation. God knows what foundation the Church needed and equipped the Church with evangelists, shepherds, teachers, prophets, and apostles.  I personally believe that evangelists, shepherds, teachers, prophets, and apostles are still currently in most churches, but we need to equip them for service, then release them to do the calling they have been prepared and equipped for.  The more we prepare them, the higher we raise the bar for success, the more effective the Church will become.  Instead of dead-beat Christians who are enabled by a professional staff, we need to develop a new mindset of how to prepare them, equip them, and release them for works of service.

Life sometimes seems as exhaustive as a six overtime period soccer match, a tug of war, back and forth free-for-all that we can only win if we have been properly prepared and equipped. Like the terrific fan support, the Church needs to rally around each other as a community of faith, of believers, as priests unto the Holy Spirit, who are willing to “lay down our lives” for one another.  When that occurs, the Church will be ready to obtain that definitive score that will win the match, or “The Game” of “life”.

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part VI

The Church’s Role In Releasing The Saints For The Work Of Service

What is the Church’s role corporately in “preparing”, “equipping”, and “releasing” the saints for the work of service?

Preparing:  The Church needs to get away from its program and organizational way of thinking, developing programs and structures that then need to be filled by positions and bodies.  Instead they need to begin to look at each individual member’s spiritual DNA, that which makes them up spiritually.  What is their passion, their desire, their dream, their calling, their goal, their point of view?  What spiritually makes them tick? How do they best function?

If they have a strong evangelistic strain in their spiritual DNA, what can the Church corporately do to prepare them to “live” and “give” the message of spiritual “birth” and “rebirth” that will be the core of their being?  The Church will have to guide them in learning what it means to “lay down your life for your brethren” (IJohn 3:16) so that believer can “live out” as an example the principle of what Jesus did for those who do not know him: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) What safer place to learn this kingdom of God place, than in the midst of the Church?  That’s preparing an evangelist to be an evangelist. The pastor/shepherd can nurture the practical life experiences of this dying and resurrecting principle, the teacher grounding it in the Word, the Bible, while the prophet can bring spiritual life to the principle, and the apostle coordinate is activity in the Christian believer’s life through the working of the Holy Spirit.

The same can be true for those strong with the pastoral/shepherding spiritual DNA strain, or teaching, prophetic, and apostolic DNA strains. The other four spiritual strains can exemplify, support, and strengthen the spiritual genetic make up of a believers growth in Jesus Christ toward maturity.

Equipping: While being prepared, the Church also needs to “equip” the believer toward his diverse unique calling in Jesus Christ. Corporately, the church can offer facilities, finances, mutual support from other believers and their giftings, callings, and DNA make up, as well as materials needed to support the effort of the individual calling of a believer.  In the Church “no man is an island; no man can stand alone.”  God has developed a body with different parts, different functions, different purposes that all work toward the health, stability, and function of the entire body. He has developed a priesthood of believers, a corporate function of all involved for one general purpose. When a person is about to be release into maturity, he knows he will not be sent alone, but with the blessing, the support, and the full backing of other believers which will serve him and whom he will serve.  When this occurs, he is now equipped.

Releasing: Now that the Holy Spirit has prepared the believer, the body of Christ, the Church has surrounded the believer in equipping him, the mature Christian is now ready to be released.  Even though released on his own, he still is, and always will be part of a corporate body of believers, the Church, who will surround him/her when needed to help fulfill their destiny and calling in Jesus Christ.  If when in the heat of spiritual battle, if one falls, they will fall into the arms of another Christian believer, another priest in the priesthood, who can administrate immediately what is needed to bring back their healing, their preparation, their equipping, to stand again in the faith.

In Conclusion: That in summary is the calling, the purpose, the direction of the five fold ministry, to prepare the individual believer for his calling in the corporate Church, to equip the individual believer by and through the corporate Church, to be released to do “works of service” glorifying the corporate Church, the Bride of Christ, the Body of Jesus Christ today!

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part V

 Releasing Different Personalities

In a previous blog, I have written about the song “Little Boxes”, where they all came out the same.  The Church as an institution is great at producing little boxes.  Baptist create little Baptist boxes. Lutheran boxes are different from Baptist boxes but all look the same. There are Pentecostal boxes, Roman Catholic boxes, even nondenominational boxes.  I don’t think those labels will be on the boxes when God’s UPS truck takes us to heaven!

If you are a parent having “several siblings”, you quickly learn that none of them are the same even though they possess the same DNA from the same parents!  The “perfect” child who slept throughout the night since birth is followed by the “child from hell” who screams, cries, and demands a feeding, diaper job, and cradling every two hours, twenty-four hours a day!  That is enough to quit having children, but then you stretch your limits and end up having a third child because you don’t remember making love while you both were sleep deprived!  The third child is even different from his/her other siblings!  How can this be?

There are spiritual parallels. Even though we have the same spiritual DNA of our Father God, it is amazing that almost every Christian I have ever met is different!  We have different drives, different passions, different looks, different cultures, different styles of dress, accents, and personalities.  Even though we carry the same label, Christian, we act differently, think differently, are motivated differently, etc.  We have come to learn that even though we are a Church, a body of Christ, maintaining the same image, that of Jesus Christ, we are still all uniquely made, uniquely designed, uniquely wired, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.  It is amazing how God loves us individually, accepts us unconditionally, yet sees us corporately!

If we are “to equip the saints for service”, then what is that to look like? What are we shaping, molding, developing, transforming? When we are finished, what does a mature Christian look like?  The answer is as nebulous as a painted portrait of Jesus Christ.  We do not know what he actually “physically” looked like, but we do know “spiritually” and even “emotionally” what that looks like? Then why do we as a church so often look at the “physical” appearance of what a mature Christian looks like rather than developing the “spiritual” or “emotional” Christian which we are supposedly preparing and equipping?  I suppose, because of the diversity of the human experience we all come out differently.

So maybe we need to learn to accept our diversity.  Maybe we should first see what the DNA make up of a person is before we try to transform them into “little boxes”, cloned images of what we think a Christian should appear or be. One person’s DNA may hold the passion and drive for the lost as a predominate gene, while another may possess the drive to care for others, to shepherd as their predominate gene.  Another may find the combination of spiritual molecules to make them strong in teaching, or the prophetic, or even the apostolic.  Each Christian has a different drive, a different bent, a different spiritual personality that still exemplifies Jesus, but in diverse ways with diverse degrees of emphasis.  The key to “equipping the saints” is giving them, “equipping them”, with what they need to be successful on their spiritual journey.

As the Body of Christ, the evangelist needs the equipping of a pastor/shepherd to nurture their spiritual growth and the growth of those they “birth” into the kingdom as well as a teacher to anchor their work and drive in the Logos Word, the written Word, making it a prophetic Rhema Word, a living Word, while being guided by the apostolic over sight of what and how the Holy Spirit is doing in one’s life in edifying the Body of Christ.  The laying down of the lives of the pastor/shepherd, teacher, prophet, and apostle around the evangelist is the “equipping” of that person, giving them what they need to have a mature, balanced ministry in the kingdom of God, the body of Christ, the Church.

The “equipping of the saint for the work of service” can be diversely different for every believer in Christ that could be a logistical nightmare for the way we do church today, but is not difficult for the Holy Spirit who sees over the entire body of Christ, individually and corporately.

With the proper preparation needed, and the equipping of the five fold around them, believers in Christ can be “released” to allow their passion, their drive, their point of view, their motivation to arise, develop, and to flourish. This step is crucial in the development of every believer!

What does a “prepared” “equipped” believer in Jesus Christ, a mature Christian look like?  Because of the diversity of God’s DNA, it may look as varied as each grain of sand in the ocean!  That is why we need the Holy Spirit who is in each individual who professes Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord to arise and bring out the uniqueness of each individual to be combined with his corporate ability of unify and develop his Church into the image of Jesus Christ to be the agent, the teacher, the drive behind the development of believer in Jesus Christ individually and the Church as a whole corporately.  Only then will the diversity of the body of Christ be accepted, respected, and released!

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part IV

 The Only Way To Be Released Is To Release

One of the hardest things about parenting is releasing!  What! They’re 16 already, and its natural to want to be released from the “bondage” of going everywhere with your parents and counting on them for everything! They want the car keys, a driver’s license, to drive on their own? If we want them to be successful adults, we have to release them!  What! An 18 year old going off to college where there is drinking, partying, peer socializing in ways that were taboo when they lived at home! Can they morally stand on their own?  Be responsible enough to make 8 o’clock classes, develop their own proper study habits, hygiene habits? Release them!  I think it is harder for the parent experiencing an empty nest, than it is for the yearling to establish his/her own nest.  Both need to release each other: the caregiver from constantly giving, and the recipient from always receiving. It is a process called “growing up”!

Paul even is fascinated by what it takes for an immature Christian to “Grow Up” in the faith. When they are young in the faith, new in the experience of faith walking, they often stumble as new walkers do when first learning to stand on their own.  Paul calls them “carnal Christians”, those who would rather remain spoon-fed, diaper changed, cuddled and pampered rather than “growing up” and standing on their own.

The key to a Christian believer “growing up” from the perspective of the five fold who has birth them (evangelist), help them develop and grow in the faith (pastor/shepherd), taught them the Word, the Bible (teacher), guided them into how to hear from the Lord on their own (prophet), and help them to see the big picture of the Church, the family of God, as a corporate group (apostle) needing one another, is to “RELEASE”.  If we have done a proper job of “preparing” and “equipping”, no one can stand on their own unless “released”!

If we have become “enablers”, it is difficult to release, because who will do it for them if they cannot do it themselves?  Most church leadership looks at their members as never being “mature” enough to be released, thus constantly enabling them, then wonder why they haven’t grown or become independent from them! In spite of having a “heavy foot” on the gas pedal, a parent has to “release” their son/daughter to drive, even if it takes an accident to teach them why they need safe driving habits. Who hasn’t done “really stupid things” in their 20’s that they never want to admit about in their 40’s or 50’s as part of their learning process of “standing alone”, “growing up”!

When Jesus “discipled” his 12 disciples, they acted like 20 year olds, fighting for positions, trying to figure things out practically on their own, inserting foot in mouth, and often lacking the “faith” needed for the coming call.  Jesus, the Teacher, the Shepherd, had not only called them, birthed them, their Evangelist, he now was in the process of nurturing and developing them.  He was preparing them, equipping them, for what lay ahead. He didn’t freak out over their falls, their failures, their short comings, he kept pouring himself into them, willing to lay down his life for them.  He was “preparing” them!  Once he ascended into heaven, he then “equipped” them, sending His Holy Spirit. Now they were ready!

On Pentecost he RELEASED them! They were on their own, now grown up!  They were no longer called disciples nor thought of as disciples; they were apostles and began to walk, think, and act like apostles, standing tall, standing on their own.  They had been released, and were now called to “see over” what the Holy Spirit was doing to the Body of Christ, His Church, His Bride, for the purpose of “preparing” and “equipping” others to be “released” for the “kingdom of God” was no longer at hand; it was in full “Acts-tion”! They were released, a live moving forward. 

The book of Acts does not record the stupid 20-year old actions of their Pre-Pentecost experience, but records the “Acts-ions” of what they are doing as “grown up” Christians!

That is the goal of the five fold: To help the believers “Grow Up”!

And the only way to allow a child, a teen, an adolescent, to “grow up” is to eventually “release” them!  The final step to the “equipping the saints for the work of service” is the “releasing” of them.  It’s a “hands-off” policy, so the hand of God can be on them for the rest of their Christian lives of “service”.

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part II

 It’s Not Your Job To Be The Teacher

I have been a public school teacher for 40 years!  For forty years teaching has been my job.  That is how I financially supported my family.  It became my identity, defining who I am.  I would introduce myself as, “I am Anthony Bachman; I teach 8^th grade at Spring Grove Middle School.” Being acknowledged as “Teacher of the Year” by my school district during the last year of my career was a fulfilling honor, signifying my professional growth as a struggling “new teacher”, maturing into a master teacher, gleaning from other educators that I admired, being willing to change with the times, the climate, the new swing in educational philosophy over a four decade experience.  All that changed in June of 2011 when I retired”.  Then I discovered that I was still a teacher, in spite of my new employment status, for it was what drives me; it’s my passion.

I was fortunate having Clarence Barnhart who received the honor of being one of the Top 10 Qualifiers for Teacher Of The Year for the state of Pennsylvania as my educational mentor.  He was dynamic, creative, highly organized, motivated, loved kids, love coaching by introducing track to athletes and developing them for High School, great at intramurals, willing to try new ideas while incorporating multi-disciplines into his teaching style.  Rather than lecturing and showing filmstrips and films about the Revolutionary War, he taught students how to research history for themselves, how to dig for answers, how to discover history nationally, state wide, and even locally.  His students not only “knew” their history but “experienced” it!  That is what teaching is all about: not only knowing your subject matter, but experiencing it, living it, consuming it, making it part of your being!

As I began my retirement, I spent time reading my Bible.  I soon realized that Jesus’ model of teaching differed from my Westernized thought and experience.  Jesus never took a “course” or “earned a degree”, but confounded the spiritual intellects of his day at the Temple when he was only 12 years old!  He “earned the respect” of being called “rabbi”, teacher, for what he taught and how he taught with “power”.  Now a successful rabbi, he never founded a College or University on “new Jewish thought”, but chose 12 of the most unlikely candidates in which to invest his “teaching” career. He walked with them, discussed one on one with them, lived with them, ate with them, taught them through life experiences, even taking them to Jerusalem and to face the cross and his resurrection.  Their education continued on the Road to Emmaus, as they were explained “all things” and the fulfillment of the gospel by Jesus.  With his ascension, their education came through the Holy Spirit who taught them that in Christ there is no difference between male nor female, Jew or gentile, master or slave, nor rich or poor.  How I taught for forty years as a public school teacher was so foreign to the way Jesus taught in his three-year career as a rabbi, or teacher.  I taught academics; Jesus taught experience.  I taught intellectual theory; Jesus taught practical everyday life style.  I taught through my intellect; Jesus taught through His Spirit!

Just as I became a “professional” educator and thought my way was the correct way; it is easy to become a “professional” Christian, a member of the clergy, who can feel his way is the correct way.  We have been “trained” to think and act “professionally”, intellectually.  It’s our job!  It is the way we identify ourselves.  It becomes who we are, and if the Holy Spirit shows us that our mind set is foreign to the actual ways of teaching the gospel, we become defensive and personally assaulted. At least I did as a professional educator.  All my higher educated role models, professors, lectured “what they knew through their P.H.D. degrees” to us students; all our higher elevated role models, senior pastors, Bishops, etc., preach, religiously lecture, to us “what they know through their theological doctorate degrees”. Their methods of teaching are the same, yet “lecturing” has been proven one of the most ineffective ways of teaching! Having students “experience” their material is far more effective.

In “equipping the saints for the work of service,” we often feel we, the teachers in the Church, have to teach the materials that we are most comfortable with in our own faith journeys.  Here is the hard lesson that I have had to learn: I AM NOT the teacher; Jesus, His Holy Spirit, IS the teacher. Jesus, upon his ascension to heaven to sit at the right hand of God, promised to send the Holy Spirit “who will teach you all things”. He is the teacher. Jesus continually taught through example while being a human on earth. His teaching HAS NOT ceased, for His Holy Spirit has been sent to CONTINUE the job.  We need to get out of the way and allow the Holy Spirit to teach!

If someone opens the Bible on their own, the Holy Spirit can teach them its truth; it is called “revelation”. He, the Holy Spirit, is the “revealer of truth”!  Some of the best teaching comes through private daily devotions when it is only the individual believer with the Holy Spirit reading the Word, the Bible, together privately.  The Holy Spirit “recalls” those passages in the believers every day life, making the Logos Word, the written Word, the Rhema Word, the living word.  Not only does the Holy Spirit help the believer in Jesus to “hear” the Word in their private time together, but calls them to be “doers” of the Word, experiencing it!

Bottom Line: If we are to be teachers helping to “equip the saints for the work of service”, we need to teach them how to hear the Holy Spirit on their own, how to be obedient to what has been “revealed”, seen & heard, and learn to walk out their faith on their own, relying only on the Holy Spirit.  Then we have “equipped” them properly.  It has nothing to do with the intellect; it has everything to do with “obedience” to the Holy Spirit, so let’s allow the HOLY SPIRIT to be the TEACHER! It’s just NOT our job! It’s HIS!

What Does “Equipping The Saints” Mean? – Part I

Our Spiritual Library’s Story

I’ve been thinking about what does it mean to “equip the saints for the work of service”?  In most Westernize churches that means intellectual training: reading books, taking courses, and holding intellectual discussions.  If I am in a men’s ministry group, I will probably have to read a book called “10 Ways To Be A Better Christian Man” or “How To Be A Better Christian Husband”. If in a small home group atmosphere, I may be asked to read a book that every small group is reading to keep the message consistent throughout the body or read articles that complement the Pastor’s sermons.  If in a youth group, “How To Win Your School For Christ” may be the reading of choice. If in a women’s group, “Thousands Of Ways To Submit To Your Husband” could be another satirical title. If being a new attender, you might be asked to read, “What We Believe” book, or if you are a developing church leader, you might be asked to read “25 Steps Towards Righteous Leadership”!  If you attend a mid-week service, you might read “Missions, A Call To The World” to keep you informed of the church’s missionary endeavors.  If you are an “active” member, you could be reading multiple books at one time!  Then when meeting as a small group, you discuss whatever book you have read: “meet & discuss” sessions.  Application of what you have read will probably be done on your own, but at least you got to discuss the matter.

Being a Christian of over 50 years, I now have accumulated a large library of books (most of which I have now discarded), have taken a multitude of courses, have sat through thousands of teachings and sermons, have taken online/workbook individualized courses, have attended a multitude of conferences, to specifically train me for what?  When I get to heaven, will I have to read “10 Steps To Get Into Heaven” so Peter and I can discuss it before allowing me to enter?

The Bible says that we are not only to be hearers of the Word, but doers! Unfortunately, very seldom has reading a Christian themed book lead me to become a doer of its material.  I have become “aware” of its topics, “informed” of its topics, and maybe even “intellectually stimulated” by its themes, but usually not motivated to actually “do it”!  Why does almost everything in Western Christendom have to be intellectualized?  The Jewish culture, which is where God decided to immerse Himself, operates out of the heart, the emotion. King David is known as a man with God’s heart, not God’s head.  His son, Solomon, is known as the intellect, constantly trying to intellectualize his faith unlike his father. Knowing God with your heart means experiencing God!  Experience goes beyond just intellectualizing it, for if you feel it, you “do it” in order to “know it”!

Maybe to start out asking how we are “to equip the saints for the work of service”, we should ask how we can help people “experience” God for themselves, and stand beside them, behind them, next to them in “their” walk of faith, in “their” unique faith journey.  What can we do to “support” them in their walk, their growth, their journey?  Finally, can we “release” them to “do it” on their own, without our guidance, in other words, “grow up spiritually”, become mature in the faith?  How can we teach them to depend on the faithfulness of the Father, depend on Jesus, depend on the Holy Spirit rather than depending on an older mature Christian or a professional staff member?  Can we “release” them so we can move on as well as they move on in our faith walks?

Being an English teacher who emphasized reading good meaningful literature, it is ironic that I am saying that we need to at some time place aside the books written by other authors, and begin to write about our “Acts” of faith, our spiritual walk, what we are “doing” for the kingdom of God. This is not to put us under legalism of a “works” kick, but to free us to walks the journeys we are equipped to walk. 

In order to understand how “to equip the saints for works of service”, I propose that we need to first understand that this journey will NOT just be just an intellectual journey, but a journey of the heart, a journey of our emotions, a journey of experiencing our faith, a faith journey in Jesus, lead by the Holy Spirit.  We will continue to walk in this journey in the next series of blogs!

Lesson Learned From The Church In China

Thoughts By Watchman Nee

I’ve been reading some of Watchman Nee’s writings, seeing how the Holy Spirit was preparing the Church of China for the upcoming persecution with the coming of the Chinese Communist Party coming into power in the 1950’s. They would outlaw westernized religion while imprisoning their leaders and later any believer professing faith in Jesus Christ. Watchman Nee, as well as countless others professing Christians would die in prisons because of their faith.

Active vs. passive:  Some unique insights that I have seen through his writings is his emphasis on never allowing Christian believers to be “passive” in their faith. He was not a fan of the sermon from the pulpit to the congregations passively sitting in their seats that he called “worker’s meetings”.  He encouraged active participation by all Christian believers that he called “church meetings” because the entire church, the body of Christ, the priesthood of believers, the average Christian would participate.  This set the groundwork for every believer to be responsible to be active for Christ once persecution hit the Church. When Christian organizations were destroyed, the faith of individuals could not be diminished.

Meeting Places: He did not believe in building buildings called churches. He thought the Church was God’s people, and where ever they met they had church. This philosophy became vitally important when persecution hit, because it is easy to burn down and destroy a building, but it is harder to tear down and destroy one’s faith, particularly if it is an active faith. The church met in homes, rented rooms, public buildings, etc. It became fluid. I understand that today the underground Chinese Church still meets in homes, rented rooms, warehouses, etc. whereever they can.

Organizations: Unlike his Westernized counterparts, Nee did not feel obligated to form Missionary Societies or highly structured organizations, but gave “workers” leave way to birth and develop new churches as the Holy Spirit led.  When the Communist Party came to power, there was no central organization or leadership for the party to direct its persecutions toward. This set the groundwork for the “fluidity” that the Chinese Church exhibits today.

Finances:  Nee felt faith for one’s finances was mandatory for every full time worker of the gospel. A set salary with “benefits”, he felt, hurt one’s faith for believing God to provide all one’s needs.  Also costs of ministry wer also upon the “worker”. This prevented debt, budgets, perks, and the power of enablement through entitlements. Again, this turned out to be a powerful principle for the underground church to utilize during a time of persecution.

Unity & Division: Nee frowned on the theology that constantly divided the unity of the Church as a whole. He felt that the only division would be geographical.  All the Christians who fluidly met in, lets say, Washington, D.C. would be known as the Church of Washington, while those in Baltimore, MD, would be the Church of Baltimore. There was to be no divisions between sects meeting in a given locality.  If you were a Christian, one who was saved, redeemed, and sanctified through Jesus Christ was a member of His Church, your were part of that local body of Christ. This kept sectarianism from dividing the body, and is monumental in the way Christians in China think of themselves individually, locally, and corporately today.

Holy Spirit:  The listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit and being obedient to that voice was crucial in Nee’s ministry, and is crucial in the ministry of local churches today in China.

Because of the silence of the underground Church in China, which is understandable even today because of persecution, I personally do not know how and if these principles are being used, but I do know that they probably were and are effective for ministry in this setting today.

The  Church of China has been tried and tested through persecution. The way they “do” church and “are” the Church may look and feel quite different their Western Christian counterparts, but, I feel, we in the West can learn much from them about being active or passive, where to meet, setting up our organizations and finances, dealing with Unity and Division in the body, and trusting and being obedient to the Holy Spirit for all things and guidance. 

When the communist walls of the U.S.S.R. fell, many westernized churches sent missionaries back there to establish westernized formed churches; when the walls of communism eventually fall in China, I think that it will be the Chinese underground Church who will send missionaries to the United States rather than the West returning to their land.

I pray for the day when I can see and verify how the five fold is operating in the free, underground Church of China. I know it is there!

Church Pigeon Hole Politics

Putting The Cart Before The Horse

Most American churches are programmatic, that is, as an institution they design programs often run by volunteers but administrated by the professional staff.  Programs make positions, and positions must be filled by people, thus titles and job descriptions are developed.  As laity, we are often told by our clergy that we should be willing to serve, to do anything for the kingdom, thus under that premise, many volunteer to fill vacant positions as nursery attenders, Sunday school teachers, youth advisors, children’s church workers, back ground singers or choir members, ushers, and other menial positions, and get stuck there for life or until they are burned out or bored. Many times people who are placed in positions don’t have the knowledge to do that position well, or don’t have the passion or drive to push themselves in that position. When there is no life in the program, we begin questioning why?

I believe that the five fold is for the laity because it is just identifying the passions that drive them, and the mentality or point of view from which they think and operate. A person whose passion is to win the lost doesn’t need motivation, they are driven by the Holy Spirit to do just it. They can’t help themselves. They think continually about winning the lost. They just need equipped by their local church, then released.  If a person is passionate about shepherding, caring for others, we need not find a “position” for them; just equip them and release them! The same with someone driven by the prophetic, or a teacher, or apostolic oversight of seeing the big picture.

The church needs to identify the passions, drives, and points of view by the people who are already active in their congregation, give them what they need to succeed, whatever that would be, alias the equipping, then release them to do their thing!  They will do it with gusto, determination, striving for success, wanting only the best, and be happy and fulfilled doing it.  The church should not place a pastoral/shepherding saint in children’s ministry just because no one else will do it, but allow them to develop a small group ministry to disciple people as they are driven to do so. If some one sees the big picture, apostolic in vision, drive, and point of view, making them an usher to see over people financially given during the offering just because the position needs filled, does not enhance their chances for ministry, and stifles their drive to use their passion effectively for the kingdom of God.

The church needs to reprioritize its efforts. People should go ahead of programs! Developing their talents and equipping them for ministry should come ahead of developing programs and asking them to fill positions.  Releasing them to go with their passion and fulfill their desire to minister effectively in their own giftings and talents should trump having to teach them, design them, and train them to successfully fill a position that drives a program.

In the world of professional public education, you have teachers who are “driven” with “passion” to teach children when they graduate with their teaching degrees. They are driven to evaluate what is best for their students and adjust their multiple teaching styles to meet that student’s need. They are in the classroom because they love teaching, are driven to do it, and are fulfilled by seeing their student’s succeed. Yet in spite of teachers earning four year degrees in higher education and multiple graduate courses and  graduate degrees, today’s public school administrators think they have to bring “programs” in for “professional development” to tell their teachers how to teach, as if they aren’t qualified to do so in spite all the education they have received.  This is thwarting and devastating many teacher’s drive, their passion to creatively and professionally teach, feeling muted, downgraded, and frustrated by always being told the administrator’s ways are always better than their own inclass proven ways. Administrators decades ago use to do anything they could to “equip” their teachers to teach, fighting for materials for their teachers and their classrooms, provided the best schedules and class sizes to be effective, not telling their teachers how to teach.

Today’s churches find themselves in a parallel position. Instead of allowing the people in their congregation to go with their passions, use their already established talents, free them to be who they are in Christ to do the works of service and “be the church”, they establish positions and tell their people ‘how to do church”! “Leadership Conferences” for pastors and staff teach “professional development” on professionally how to “do church” rather than teaching them how to equip their saints to be who they are in Christ, equip their saints with resources to succeed in their passions and endeavors, equip their saints to be successful, nor how to release their saints without micromanaging them. 

If we want the church, the people of God, to be the church, the people of God, then we got to allow the church, the people to God, to be the people of God by releasing them to be so!

We got to learn how to let the Holy Spirit be the motivator, the passion within the saint, to be the trainer and developer of the saint, to be the equipper giving the saint whatever he/she needs to succeed.  The professional staff has to quit trying to be the Holy Spirit for the saints! That never works!

We have to develop a new mindset: Instead of investing in church programs, instead of investing in more staff or “professional development” for the staff, let’s start investing in the saints, the Church, the people of God!  Let’s start equipping them for success, and releasing them to be what God has created them to be! Let’s put the horse again in front of the cart! 

Store House Tithing: A Lost Art In Christendom Today

Preparing A Church For Rough Times

In the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis, Chapter 41 portrays the powerful narrative of how Joseph goes from imprisonment to be second only to Pharaoh in power. He interprets Pharaoh’s dream of 7 years of abundance and 7 years of famine. Pharaoh places him in charge of “store housing” 1/5 of Egypt’s grain during the years of plenty to be distributed during the years of famine. By the time the famine subsides, the Egyptians have sold their souls for grain, and Pharaoh owns all of Egypt and begins building a great empire built on tyrannical control.

By the time we get to the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, Chapter 3 God asks, “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask me ‘How do we rob you?’ In tithes and offerings. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.”  Israel is being challenged to use the very principle that God had Joseph use in Egypt. I call it store house economics: creating a store house in times of wealth to be drained during times of need.

Watchman Nee was a Bible teacher and leader of the church in China before the Communist take over. I enjoy his teachings in the context that he is preparing a Church for persecution.  What Nee teaches would be monumental in the Church’s survival under extremely harsh persecution.

Many Christian church leaders want you to read his “Normal Christian Life” book because it is about submission to authority which they want their people to dutifully do, but very few recommend his book “The Normal Christian Church Life” which is about apostles, elders, the basis of union and division, and store house tithing, topics that are not propagated by most American churches, particularly financially. 

I do not personally know of a Christian church that practices store house economics here in America. During times of plenty we have built monumental cathedrals called mega-churches, increase professional staffing, invested in theatrical lighting, sound, and technological advances to create a highly professional worship service.  During times of plenty we have created marvelous monuments of awe, but when the size of the congregation dwindles, the economic hard times arrive, budget cuts are the buzz word, and our edifices are mere replicas of former years, the cry of need arises, but there is no funding for the now drastic programs needed for survival. We failed to heed the call of store house economics. During the time of prosperity we have heard the mantra over and over again of “give, give, give” financially from your blessings, and as downward economic times hit that of “give sacrificially”, yet there is no store house from which to draw in time of need. The fat of America’s churches has been squandered, and during the recent economic downturn their colors have shown. Churches have faced budget cuts, downsizing of staff and personnel, aging buildings, yet try to maintain pre-lean year budgets.

We have invested in our buildings and properties, in taking care of our professional leaders financially, and in developing our staffs, but have we invested in our people, those who attend our churches?  Have we effectively taught them discipleship to stand on their own faith, read the Word on their own, listen to the still voice of the Holy Spirit on their own and corporately, then act obediently to what they have seen and heard? Have we equipped the “saints” for the work of service (Eph. 4) or have we financed a professional staff to do that work for us?  If the professional staff is eliminated due to economic strains, can the common committed brethren stand on their own?  If the church doors would be closed, where would they go to congregate, to pray, to get teaching, to corporately hear from God and worship?

A church that invests in its people will survive any economic downturn, persecution, famine, or time of difficulty. God says, “test me” in Malachi to see if store house economics works! He promises only blessings if the Church practices it!  If economic recovery returns to America, will the church's wasteful spending and grandiose projects come back, or will it have learned to make “store houses” for the next economic down turn, the next time for need!

During down times, we naturally look to the Lord to provide our needs; we got to naturally look to the Lord in good times to provide from our excesses and store it for times of need. For America and most of the Westernized world, that is a totally radical mindset, but a mindset we MUST embrace if we are to be good stewards of God’s kingdom.