Hello, friends,
and welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
It is a joy to have you with us here today as we now come to conclusion of our latest series.
We spent the first part of the series talking about things that bug pastors,
and then in our last conversation and then also in today’s conversation,
we’re going to talk about things
that give joy to pastors,
things that inspire pastors as we get to look on the church and
its work from our own vocational kind of vantage.
And I’m excited about this conversation because it’s easy as we go, Clint, I think,
to make it maybe seem like the church is fraught with lots of difficulties,
and any gardener will
tell you that wherever there’s dirt that needs tended,
there’s going to be weeds that grow
in that place.
That’s what happens in fertile soil,
is it grows lots of different things.
And so one of the pastor’s tasks is to confront that.
Maybe the proportion of the number of series we had talking about things that bug pastors
to the things that are a positive,
maybe that does reflect a little bit of the day-to-day
that there is, it sometimes seems like there’s a lot more reading than there is getting to
see the garden, but I think that’s much of a spiritual practice of getting to be pastors,
getting to see those things.
And today we’re going to focus on what it gets to look like when the church is living
its life in such a way that it gets outside the bounds of the church.
It lives beyond its own walls,
and when you get to see those things,
it’s an incredibly beautiful thing.
I think, Michael, that historically and certainly in the modern world,
we pay a lot of attention
to negativity, and so the church has often been called on the things that it has gotten
wrong.
We’ve often been held accountable,
and rightly so, for the places we’ve missed it.
And the church has been guilty of lots of the things that people have complained or
the charges leveled against it.
We have historically missed the boat many times.
But I think in that conversation what doesn’t happen is that often the church doesn’t get
celebrated for the things it does well.
I mean, you think of the number of schools and hospitals.
You think of the countless hours of volunteerism.
You think for the heroic stories of Christians who, you know,
risked self-harm to deliver
medicine and to take the gospel and to teach people to read and help people vote and build
societies and repair things that were damaged.
The church has done a tremendous,
tremendous amount of good in the world.
And sometimes, though, again,
we deserve some of the criticism,
we don’t get credit for
those moments that we get it right and live up to being the church.
And I think this portion of this series is kind of a celebration of those moments that
sometimes get overlooked, those moments that get missed.
When the church acts like the church,
what is the good that comes out of it?
And as those involved in leadership,
you know, we celebrate that, we rejoice in that.
Those are the wonderful moments that in golf they talk about the shot that keeps you coming
back, even though the rest of the round is frustrating or whatever.
In the church, it is those moments that make it easy to feel good and celebrate.
It doesn’t erase the mistakes.
It doesn’t erase the challenges.
But it does reaffirm that when the church lives into its calling,
it is a great place.
And some real good is done,
not only inside the congregation,
but in the world.
And I think that’s where we want to end.
That’s what we want the last note to be in this conversation.
I wonder if you would agree with this, Clint.
I think that my sense is that the church is incredibly effective at connecting with the
mission in its own locale.
There’s a sense in which a lot of the good that the church does often goes unannounced
because it’s not national kind of stuff.
It’s not the kind of thing that makes the headlines of tomorrow’s newspaper or the next
Facebook post.
It’s the kind of stuff that looks like every day volunteers serving meals to seniors in
their homes.
It looks like people making sure that within their community,
kids have food when they
get home from school or it looks like people going out of their way to volunteer to tutor
inside classrooms or maybe in their own homes.
There’s a sense in which a lot of the ministries of the church, I think,
actually happen in the midst of community,
but they very much happen sort of underneath the radar.
A lot of people don’t see the kinds of work that churches are really especially, I think,
in more rural places where much of the social fabric is actually built on top of the
volunteerism of people living in the faith.
And so it is a beautiful thing to get to see.
The dilemma of that,
though, if you’re willing to let me say that,
is it’s easy for the
church to sort of lose our mark.
We become more fixated on the programmatic stuff,
on the mechanics of,
you know, do we have enough volunteers?
Can we run this program?
And we begin to lose sight of the actual kingdom work we’re called to do.
So I think that maybe helps us as a frame here getting into the conversation.
Yeah, I think that’s really interesting,
Michael, and I’d want to circle back to that.
But to start with,
I think, to frame along the lines of what you’re talking about,
I think that is the fundamental issue when the church can keep the kingdom at the center,
when the church is able to differentiate between things that matter to the kingdom
of Jesus Christ and things that matter in the smaller realm of the church.
And as long as we keep those two things separate,
as long as we keep those two things in perspective,
I think we’re much better able to do good work.
When we equate what’s important to us as kingdom stuff when it isn’t,
it’s always going to lead us off track.
We’re always going to have the wrong focus.
And it’s not to say,
and we’ve said this 100 times in this series,
it’s not to say
that those things don’t matter,
that the paint color of the wall and the way who
uses the tables and all of those things,
what kind of music we play,
those things are important.
But those things really don’t have kingdom significance.
And when the church can keep most of its energy directed toward what has kingdom significance,
I think the church is in a far better position to do the kind of work
that has an impact and a positive impact on people.
The thing that’s interesting as you say some of that,
Michael, is so much of what the church does
through its members doesn’t get called church.
In other words, that person volunteering at the nursing home,
that person sitting at the hospital desk doing the pink lady stuff or the receptionist stuff,
that person tutoring kids at the school,
they don’t wear their Christian jacket,
and we don’t call that a church program.
But some of that,
I would argue much of that,
is connected to the church’s mission
and to that individual’s understanding of what faith in Christ leads them to do out in the world.
We don’t ring bells over it.
We don’t call it Christian service.
We simply call it living out the faith.
And I suppose there’s an upside and a downside to that.
The upside is probably we don’t draw undue attention to ourselves and we don’t run the
risk of conflict and all of that.
But the downside is,
if I could say it this way,
the church doesn’t get credited
with some of what it helps to do through people who are in the church.
And that’s unfortunate because so much of that kind of stuff in a local community
does have a faith component in it for the people who do it.
And it’s a shame that that gets missed.
I think you’re right.
I also am mindful that maybe there’s someone joining us for this conversation
who just a short little description of what we mean by kingdom might be helpful here.
Because in our scriptures in the New Testament,
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God as at hand.
He used this language over and over and over again.
And especially in the Gospel like Luke, we really see,
fleshed out in some great detail, that that kingdom,
as Jesus understood it,
looked like an advancement of God making right the world in places where humans fell short.
In our own brokenness,
God was able to advance.
And so the lost are found,
the broken are restored,
the sick are healed.
Those who are possessed by demons,
those demons are cast out.
This language in the New Testament that we often consider miraculous,
these are examples of this kingdom being brought to bear.
And then we see at the end of Matthew,
Jesus says that the disciples are called to go out.
And then we see in Acts how the church grows by region and region.
It’s an expanding kind of kingdom.
And that’s,
I think, the fundamental definition that we are turning to here as we say, you know,
the church is always tempted as an institution to live inside its own boundaries,
to think of its walls as a separation from the world.
And I want to encourage you,
one of the thoughts that has really stuck with me through the COVID
season, Clint, is I think there’s something deeply beautiful about the church recognizing
its walls are transparent,
that we don’t have them there to keep the world out.
We actually have them so that we have a refuge,
a place, an outpost that we come and prepare
for our real ministry,
which is the kingdom work.
It’s the leaving of that place to go out and do our vocational work,
to serve with our families,
to care for those who are given charge around us to the extent that we’re able
to do that work around the world by supporting others and by lending our own hand when possible.
I think it’s a beautiful image of a church that comes in and is sent out.
It’s much more porous than we’re tempted to make it.
We make it about the defined church, which is us.
And when we do that,
we forget that our calling is always beyond the walls of that group.
Yeah, I think it’s natural to focus on the small picture and sometimes miss the big picture.
And again, the church has been guilty of that in many instances and many congregations
are guilty of that at times.
And so when we say kingdom,
we mean to focus on just that,
Michael.
The work of Jesus,
not only in the community of faith,
but in the world outside the community of faith.
And I think that the church does that for the most part pretty well,
especially if you talk about congregations.
If you want to talk about denominations and Christianity as a whole,
that gets to be a kind of muddy picture.
But if you talk about congregations,
I think most of them do some of that,
and they do it well.
I will never forget,
I hope I never forget,
we did a mission trip to Ocean Springs,
Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
And we were working on houses,
rebuilding some things that had been destroyed, et cetera.
And that meant daily trips to the Home Depot,
because at that point they were trying to get in supplies
and it was literally checked multiple times a day to see if a shipment had come in,
et cetera.
And I remember being struck on one of those trips,
we went for supplies,
and as we went into the parking lot,
we had a van that had a sign on it,
First Presbyterian Church Spirit Lake, Iowa.
We parked next to an Assemblies of God church from Georgia.
There was a church van from Colorado.
There was a church bus from Massachusetts.
And I remember being struck that in that initial wave of people who showed up and said,
“How can we help?”
I would argue that,
at least in my very limited experience,
the majority of them were people of faith.
They were coming through institutions of faith.
They were coming through organizations of faith,
and they were bringing that to a group of people who had been deeply wounded,
and they were saying in Jesus’ name,
“How can we help?”
And I remember feeling really good about that,
just looking at that parking lot and realizing that people from literally all over the country
had piled in vans and buses and cars and driven to Mississippi in the aftermath of a hurricane to say, “Hey,
how can we help you?
Let us do some of the work.”
And that, I think, is really the church at its best.
When we put our faith into action,
when we get out and we do those things,
when we look for those opportunities and take advantage of them,
that’s a good moment for the church and something I think we can be proud of.
To a person looking in, Clint,
I think it’s true that it might be easy to look at the church
and to see it like many other nonprofits or giving organizations.
There’s lots of organizations where people get together to do good work.
What I think is interesting about the church is our thoroughgoing commitment
to connect the stuff that we do to our deeper-held beliefs
and from my own seat,
one of the most inspiring aspects of seeing people serve is not the service
itself.
Like I said, you can see service in lots of different places.
Lots of people serve for lots of different reasons.
But when you see a person who for a lifetime has learned the way of Jesus,
who cares a lot about what Jesus teaches,
for whom they consider themselves a follower of the
one who proclaimed the new kingdom,
and then you see them as an inherent part of that belief,
having no other choice but to use their own hands,
their own feet,
their own resources.
They feel compelled to do the same kind of work that Jesus did because of who they are
and who they are becoming as a child of the living God.
That’s a kind of unification of action and identity that I think is unique in the church.
I mean, I know lots of people who would say, you know,
I’m a part of Kiwanis.
Kiwanis is an important part of my life.
But there are very few who would be able to say,
like these men and women of faith who serve out
of a reflection of their truest identity,
I serve because I’m a Christian,
because I serve because Christ served.
I mean, that’s a beautiful unity we don’t find often in our culture really at any level.
And to see that happening in the church is special.
It’s unique and it’s inspiring.
Yeah,
as you know, Michael, and I think maybe people who are familiar with First Presbyterian
Church know, I have a mixed experience of being Presbyterian.
There are some things we do really well.
There are some things we struggle with.
But one of the things I’m proud of as a Presbyterian is our historic willingness
to join with others who call themselves Christian and try to do good work,
whatever that is, whether that’s housing projects,
whether that’s ministries of food and support housing,
whether that’s in other countries digging wells and trying to provide water or transporting medicine.
Presbyterians are generally pretty quick to say,
“Yeah,
we don’t need to get into the
doctrine.
We don’t need to get into this stuff.
If you say you love Jesus and you want to help us do something or you’re willing to
let us help you,
let’s go and let’s put aside some of those other things and let’s do this
work.” And I think that’s a strength we bring to the table,
both at a local level and even
I would say at a national, international level.
Presbyterians,
our theology allows us to quickly join with others without getting bogged
down in the stuff and simply trying to say,
“How can we partner in a way that does honor
to your tradition and our tradition and our collective faith in Christ and makes a difference
for some people?” And, again, I don’t celebrate everything about our church in the current moment and
I suppose nobody does,
but I think that’s something we do really well and I’m proud
to be a part of that in many different ways.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I would say that my experience of the church has been that we have a very wide spectrum
within which we’re willing to operate because we fundamentally believe that we’re motivated by
the good news of Jesus Christ and that as long as we seek to do that faithfully and we do it
to the best of our conscience and ability,
that we trust that God’s going to fill in the rest.
And I think that is what animates the church’s understanding of mission at its best,
is we recognize that I come to think of that story of the young boy,
right?
The disciples and Jesus are out there.
Jesus has been teaching.
It’s late in the day.
The crowd doesn’t have anything to eat.
And the disciples are trying to figure out how do we feed these people.
They’re going to be really angry.
We can’t afford to buy food for everybody here.
And it’s a little kid whose sack lunch is the only thing that they can rustle up out
of the entire group.
And, you know, that is the image for me of the church doing its mission.
We are the sack lunch people.
We always bring far less to the task than what is required.
And on one hand,
you know, when we take ourselves too seriously,
we get all worked up about it.
We get frustrated.
You know, there’s never enough, right?
On the other hand,
if we have the eyes to see the faith enough to step back and to look,
I think what we see consistently is that God does show up and somehow God does miraculously
far more than what we could have done to our smaller part.
And so whatever we have to offer,
we’re not trying to change the world.
We’re not trying to start a new revolution of some social fabric change,
right?
I mean, we’re trying to be faithful with the small amount that we’ve been made stewards of.
And we believe that God is able to make more of that than what we can make of it ourselves.
That is, I think, what animates the mission of the church.
And when you get to see that at a local level,
what you begin to see is a group of people
who do a lot of things well,
that, you know, churches care about worship and we care about
fellowship and we care about the service of people inside the church.
Are we taking care of widows?
Are we taking care of kids?
Are we doing what we can to make a strong fellowship within our own ranks?
But then when you see the church turning to recognize that is for the sake of
everyone else that we can serve.
That’s for the sake of us serving in our community.
That’s for the sake of us being on the school board or working at the hospital or being someone
who can be a counselor at the school.
Every person individuates that mission in their own life with the gifts that they’ve been given.
And then the church suddenly begins to blossom and grow into this thing that is
invitational.
That is the church, I think,
displaying its greatest health is when it can sort of lift off
the ground a little bit with all of those concerns that really feel like they demand
the bulk of the church’s attention.
And when we begin to see that what we’re called into is a strong fellowship together for the
sake of service and witness to the world,
then suddenly things gain momentum.
And there’s a kind of levity and lightness and life in the midst of the church.
That is,
it’s honestly, it’s hard to name.
It’s hard to put words to,
but once it’s experienced,
I don’t think you forget it.
Yeah, I would agree, Michael.
And I think that often if you look behind those things as they happen,
you find Christians,
you find people of faith.
I’m not trying to pat us on the back unfairly,
but this is an episode in things that we
enjoy and things that we admire and things that delight pastors.
And for me, that’s been an experience that I would say is delightful.
When I get involved in something and I go to a meeting and I see people from the congregation
I serve or from other congregations in town,
and I know that those are people of faith.
I know that their concrete attempts to follow Jesus have led them to say,
“What can we do here?
How can we make a difference?
How can we help?”
Whether that’s in the aftermath of tragedies or of difficulties,
whether that’s praying for people, whether that’s taking care of people,
whether that’s social issues.
You know, if you look, and again,
I know there are lots of wonderful people who do lots of
great things.
I’m simply celebrating when those people are also church people.
When you look at the money that gets donated in our country,
when you look at the time that
gets allocated, when you look at who is it that really puts their feet on the ground
when it comes time to get things done,
it’s not exclusively Christian,
but it is a lot of Christians.
It is a lot of faith-based and faithful people living out that faith in a public context,
perhaps without even telling anyone that.
That’s admirable.
I think that that is the church teaching the gospel.
You know, and you’re right.
If all that looks like is us sharing some meager gifts with Jesus to see what he’ll do with it,
some time, some talent, some treasure,
and Jesus wants to expand it, wonderful.
But in order to do that,
you have to show up.
You have to be there.
You have to bring those gifts and be willing to let go of them,
be willing to invest them.
And when I see the church and its people do that,
I’m deeply encouraged by it.
And it’s not rare.
In fact, I think if anything,
it happens so often we take it for granted.
But when you stop and think about it,
when you stop and focus on it,
I think it’s a beautiful
testimony to not only who we are,
but more importantly, who Jesus is and what Jesus does
in the lives of real people.
And I think it’s beautiful to see it.
There are times when the church gives and it has come to a place as gathered believers,
and that gift is truly without any strings attached.
There are moments in which the church sort of jubilantly almost like this image that we
have of the Trinity,
that God’s love is so much that it’s just abounding and overflowing,
that there’s so much relationship and fellowship and goodness in life that it bubbles out of God,
that God creates because God has so much of that intrinsic to who God is.
It’s a beautiful image of a God who’s more than enough.
When the church lives into that identity and when that life bubbles up within the church,
it can’t help but to give,
to give of its riches,
to give of its, honestly,
its courageous admission of its lack.
I mean, the church,
when it is in that moment of the spirit,
it’s able to give.
And this is a critique I think is leveled at the church a lot,
is that we give with strings
attached.
And certainly that happens.
There’s times where the church is trying to,
for many different traditions of the church
or for many different reasons,
maybe there is sort of an end goal that is intended.
I just want to assure you,
from the pastor’s perspective,
daily gifts are given for no other
reason than to bless someone else.
No other reason than because that day that person needed food or that day that person
needed someone to talk to.
We could not count,
in the life of a vibrant church,
the amount of daily ministry that
happens because of the disciples who have been fashioned and formed as their identity
as the people who serve in the name of Jesus Christ.
It is a kind of propulsion into the world.
And when it happens,
it is absolutely stunning.
And it has nothing to do with sort of making a point or trying to convince someone of
something.
It comes from a deeply centered identity that I want to serve and I can help.
I have a gift that applies here and it’s given.
And when that happens,
Clint, it’s a human image,
which means it’s small and it’s fragile
and it’s not always perfect.
But it is a human image of what Jesus Christ has done for the world.
It’s a small picture of it,
but it’s a real picture.
Michael, you and I have both had the experience multiple times over of advocating for some youth experience,
a trip,
a conference or something.
And the church member shows up and says, “Hey,
I just want to make sure that any young person
who wants to go to this can go,
whether their family, if their family is struggling.”
And they’ll hand you money.
They’ll pay for an entry fee.
How many times have people come in Christmas or Thanksgiving and said,
“Hey, we want to donate this turkey or we want to donate this meal or this gift card or whatever.”
And could you all get it to a family in need?
And just the regularity with which people are able in the name of Jesus to think outside
of themselves and think outside of our own circumstances,
it’s really inspiring to see
graciousness and generosity at work on a regular basis.
Those seem like small things,
right?
And in the scope of the world’s problems,
that means very little.
But to a family who receives it from a person who gives it because they’re moved by the example
and the ministry and mission of Jesus,
it means everything.
That’s the kind of stuff the church is built on.
We think the church is big stuff.
But underneath that big stuff are millions and millions of examples of those little movements,
those little gifts, those little moments where people said,
“How can I be a blessing to someone
who might need it?”
And yeah, there’s a lot we don’t get right.
But when we do that right,
we’re poised to succeed.
And good things are going to happen in a place where stuff like that is occurring regularly.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think what we discover in the midst of that is that every Christian has a part to play.
And maybe that’s the last part of the volunteerism conversation that I’d like to add,
is that we all have gifts to share regardless of our circumstance.
Whether you’re young and it feels like you don’t have the freedom and ability and responsibility
yet to contribute to things that you feel like are way bigger than you.
Or whether you’re on the other side of the spectrum and your age or your health has
brought you to a position where you can’t do the things maybe even physically that you could do.
You don’t have the stamina.
You wouldn’t have the ability to volunteer in person to run that event or whatever you imagine
it means to volunteer.
A thing I’ve honestly been taught by men and women of faith far beyond my years
is that each and every one of us has capacity no matter where we are
to serve others in the name of Jesus Christ.
That sometimes looks like a prayer warrior who sends cards.
It’s a person’s birthday.
It’s an anniversary.
A person’s hospitalized and they get showered with cards.
That is a gift.
That is Christian service in the world.
That sometimes looks like making a phone call because someone
lost their husband or their wife six months ago and you’re checking in with somebody.
If you’re a kid that looks like,
“Hey, I can go help and serve in the nursery.”
And that may seem absolutely tiny.
But Clint, to your point,
this builds in a progression through life.
We learn that there is no act of serving another too small to reflect the glory of Jesus Christ
and the gifts that he gave the world.
That’s what we mean by that idea of kingdom.
The kingdom comes in in these small little cracks.
Just these small little places.
And it somehow grows.
It somehow gets much bigger than its point of entry.
And that is the inspiring part of being church.
So I guess maybe this is the instruction that comes from within an affirmation of when the
church gets it right,
is that you have a part to play.
You have a part to play in your church.
There’s no position or there’s no rule book that needs to be followed for you to be able
to live out your calling as Christian,
to volunteer, to serve, to care for others.
Whatever your station in life is,
when you do that task as part of your body,
that will bring life.
It will be a place where the kingdom is made known.
And that is an incredible generative engine by which the church continues to do far more
than what you’re doing.
It catches fire.
And that fire is an incredible thing to be in the midst of.
Yeah.
And that’s the exact right word,
Michael, I think, in the midst of.
Because when the church,
the significant difference for me is when the church gets
it wrong versus when the church gets it right,
is what is in the center and what is at the edge.
And as long as the church commits,
and as long as the people in the church commit,
to let Jesus be at the middle,
to let Jesus be central to our decisions,
to what upsets us,
to what inspires us,
when our opinions and our experiences are centered in Christ,
we are incredibly more likely to get it right than we are to get it wrong.
And when we put ourselves at the center,
we are equally as likely to get it wrong
versus get it right.
And so it really is just the struggle of what’s the lens through which we look at the world
and ourselves and our opportunities to serve.
And to whatever extent that’s selfish,
we’re going to struggle.
To whatever extent that’s about a particular person or a particular congregation or a particular community,
we’re not going to see that bigger picture of what does it mean
to be connected to the body of Christ,
to be inspired by the gospel of Christ and to be sent
out by Him to proclaim good news by word and by deed.
And in fact, in our tradition, probably heavier on the deed side than the word side.
We are people who try to do the faith.
And when we do that well and we testify that in the middle of our community stands the cross
and the Savior,
then I really think,
Michael, that at that point the church doesn’t have
a lot to worry about.
Now, will it have to figure some things out?
Will there be disagreements?
Yeah, of course, because we’re human.
But if the church keeps Jesus in the center and takes its direction from Him,
we’re going to be fine.
There’ll be some challenges.
There’ll be some bumps in the road.
But I don’t fear for the church that is able to do that.
They will be okay and they will do fine.
You know, Clint,
I’m not aware of a church split that has happened in the midst of a service project.
I’ve heard lots of church splits that happen during building renovations or during pastor
searches or as a result of sermons.
But it seems striking to me that when we’re out serving as the hands of feet of Christ,
whether that’s holding a hammer,
trying to put up some sheetrock,
or whether that’s trying to
get food on the table for people who need it,
or advocating for those who our voice
may be able to help advocate for a better position,
whatever that looks like.
There are so many ways in which the church seeks to be faithful.
It is hard to turn on a brother and sister in Christ as we serve side by side.
And it compels me that Jesus Christ is the center.
And that’s not a trite word.
It’s not a sort of Sunday school children’s sermon idea.
It’s like the doctor who spent their entire life studying one particular razor’s edge of medicine.
They can go deeper and deeper and deeper,
and there’s still far more room to go.
And yet when you ask them,
you know, what should I do?
They generally come back to,
you know, eat healthy exercise,
right?
There is this beautiful simplicity to what it means to be the people of Jesus Christ.
And when the church gets it right,
the stuff that delights pastors,
to the point of our conversation today,
is when the church lets go of all of the positioning,
and the us and them,
when the church is able to quiet the voice of disagreement,
and to find a center in Jesus,
that then generates a kind of energy that is ineffable.
I mean, it’s hard to speak to until you felt it.
It drives the church outside of its walls,
not because a pastor stood up and said,
“We need to go do this church,” but because the church has no other option.
Well, if we’re witnesses,
it’s time to go do it.
I mean,
if you are part of that kind of Christian community,
it’s a gift.
And if you’re not,
your calling as Christian is to contribute to a community,
so it might have the gifts to do that.
I mean, every single one of us is called to that particular task
in whatever context and place we’ve been.
And if this sounds strange to you,
this is not your experience of church,
or maybe you’re not even Christian,
and for you,
you wonder how could this be possible?
This is what church was designed to be,
and I don’t mean,
like, architected by humans.
This is what the nature of Christian community results in.
We get it wrong.
You just look to the newspaper.
You’ll find plenty of examples of ways that the church gets it wrong.
But I encourage you to look deeper,
because healthy, vibrant Christian community,
for centuries,
thousands of years,
have resulted in people running into dangerous and war-torn
and, quite frankly, godless circumstances so that God might be found in that place.
And that’s who the church is,
and at our best,
that’s an inspiring vision of who we’re called to be.
One of the things that is delightful in those regards,
Michael, is that people might be tempted to think that’s a pastor telling people what to do,
but you and I both know of.
It is often the case that that comes from people of faith
who come to the church and say,
“Hey, pastor, I’m aware of this situation.
We should do something.
I’ve been doing this,
but I wonder if some other people would like to help.”
It’s often not top-down,
and that’s one of the things that makes it so exciting and so
encouraging is that it’s coming from people who are out there living their life in the real world,
not in a church office like I sit often,
but in real places with real people who are then coming
and saying, “I have this moment where the world and my faith are intersecting,
and I’m wondering what my faith has to say about it.
I’m wondering what my faith compels me to do about it,
and how can we get involved?
How can we help?” And those are really exciting,
really encouraging, and I think really important moments for the church.
And whenever the church turns to only look at itself,
whenever the church becomes obsessed with its own problems and its own stuff,
that church is beginning the process of dying.
That church is going to shrink in upon itself,
and ultimately, I think,
probably implode, because the gospel naturally compels us beyond ourself.
And so, yes, it’s important what happens in a faith family,
it’s important what happens in
a congregation, but that’s only half the story.
Equally as important is what that church does
with what happens and taking it out into the world,
into the community, into other people’s lives,
and that’s where progress is made,
that’s where passion is formed,
that’s where gifts are harnessed
and utilized, and that’s the intention of the church.
We were never called to be an island,
we were called to be an outpost,
and an outpost sends people on,
and that’s really our mission.
And when we do that, again,
good things happen.
They just do.
So, a Clinton image that came to mind there as you were talking is that sometimes I think the
pastor gets this impression,
or maybe people think of the pastor as the one who does things.
I think for me,
the image of pastor is one who’s the air traffic controller.
You’re not flying the planes,
you’re not getting people and things from point A to point B,
you’re trying to help direct
that movement so that the mission and life and work of the church doesn’t get impeded by that stray
plane or that runway that needs repaired.
You’re trying to keep all of those things out of the way
so the church can do its mission.
Sometimes people think, “Oh, the pastor’s going to do it.” No,
in a church that is living outside its walls,
that’s the work of the church,
and the pastor tries to help make that happen in the most efficient and God-fearing way possible.
And I think another part to this is it struck me as you were speaking,
this was not our intention
coming into this conversation,
but we’ve sort of ended here unintentionally.
You could go back and
listen to everything that we’ve said,
and if we change the title of this episode to “Evangelism
101,” you would not be wrong.
What we’re talking about is the church at its best is invitational.
We don’t do it as some sort of bait and switch.
The church doesn’t go help people so that they’ll
come to church.
No, that is against the identity of who we are.
We serve people because the children
of the living God can do nothing more than offer ourselves because we stand underneath the one who
gave himself for us.
I mean, we will always be defined by the gift of his life,
and so therefore, because of that,
we by our nature are evangelistic,
and what we mean by that is not dogmatic.
We don’t mean by that that we are going to make you take a test and make sure you get all the answers right.
It’s that we are going to give as Christ gave,
and in that we believe that there’s a compelling
vision of what God wants for the world,
and if that scene,
my experience says that people want
to be a part of that.
They want to be a part of a movement,
and by that I don’t mean a human
movement.
I mean a kind of connection to God’s ordered world, which is beautiful.
Once again, to go back to that language of kingdom,
and that is by its definition, evangelistic.
We in the church spend a great deal of time trying to engineer how to do things that would
happen naturally if we spent that same time and energy focusing on just being the church.
Being the church is attractive when lives are being changed,
and people are being changed,
and grudges are being let go of,
and forgiveness is being celebrated,
and people are being cared
for and respected and welcomed.
When life happens in a church,
there is something attractive
about it, both in the sense of desirable,
but in the sense of it draws people to itself.
It literally attracts people,
and I think the best
outreach program any church could have
is to just try to do its very best job of being the actual church,
being the people of Jesus Christ,
loving one another when we’re hard to love,
forgiving one another when we are human and hurt one another,
putting our own opinions in second spot behind is this good for everybody,
and most importantly, is it in keeping with the gospel?
Is this about Jesus or me?
When we do those things, Michael, the church will grow.
The church will do fine.
Again, it will not be without
some bumps and bruises,
but ultimately, the church will be okay.
We won’t need programs.
We won’t need
strategies.
We just need to be the church,
and if that sounds overly simplified,
I know that it
isn’t, and I’m sorry to paint it with that brush,
but I just simply believe that there is something
so beautiful about the people of Christ living up to their calling as His body
that that is just simply the best thing we can do,
and we don’t need to do a lot else
if that’s happening.
If that’s happening,
it’s going to be good,
and it’s going to work fine.
Yeah.
In a world which knows far too well division,
frustration,
insult,
in a world which
seems trapped in this kind of vortex,
pulling it apart,
the vision of the church at its best may sound utopian.
It may sound laughable,
to be honest with you,
that there might be a place
where you can go where the things that divide us are smaller than the center of the thing that unifies us,
and if it sounds utopian,
I want to encourage you to find yourself in the midst of
a vibrant Christian community,
because what you will experience there is not church without complication.
We spent weeks talking about that.
I would say go back and talk about the ways that
the church gets it wrong,
but the church does get it right,
and it doesn’t get right in some
intellectual theological way.
It gets it right when it allows Jesus Christ center place in the community,
and when that life infects the lives of all of those in it,
it begins to transform us
from those who are focused on our own ends,
and our own goals,
and our own preferences,
and our own needs,
and it shifts to Jesus Christ and his love for the other,
and as that transformation
happens in the church,
we call that a conversion,
a moving from one state to another.
As that happens in individuals,
it also happens as a community,
and this beautiful transformation,
it’s a moving kind of relationship, and as it happens, people are served,
there’s a compelling vision of what
intends for the world.
This small kingdom is a foretaste of the larger kingdom that we believe
God is desiring for the whole world, and that’s invitational.
It’s a beautiful thing,
and to whatever extent the church is able to show that,
well, first to live it,
to experience it by the
grace of Christ, and then to show that to a watching world,
that’s a beautiful gift.
We flippantly called this series Stuff That Bugs Pastors,
and the idea is there are things that
get under our skin,
which is true, and it’s true of people in churches too,
but we hope that as
you’ve listened, if you’ve been through us,
with us through this series,
we hope that what’s come
across is that what ought to bug any of us about church is when we substitute the beautiful vision
of God for the people of Christ with something lesser,
like a social club,
or an activity center,
or whatever it is that fits our own particular wants and needs,
instead of that bigger and more
beautiful vision of the kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth and people being invited to participate
in it.
And so,
you know, we don’t want to do a kind of bait and switch,
but the truth is,
most of what bugs us in church doesn’t matter that much.
It’s on the level of personal preference.
What ought to inspire us about church is whenever we can rise above that
and put our focus on Jesus as really the only thing that matters most and the center of the
church.
And when we do that,
if you can do that in your church,
in this church, in any church, I think you will find that the number of things that bug you will be fewer,
and the number of
things that delight you will be more,
will be higher, and you will be better able to serve and to follow,
as will your community for your contribution to it.
And that is the wonderful
gift that we’re all invited to participate in.
And I hope it goes without saying that Michael and I
love the church, and we hope you do too.
And if you’ve struggled to love the church,
we hope this is an invitation to think about why that might be and where it might be that you would
find the best version of it.
So, because in the best version of the church,
we also find the best version of ourself,
because again, we put Jesus front and center.
We sometimes give far more power to the negative Clint than we give to the positive.
And I think it’s a tumultuous, difficult journey,
being united with people who are by definition different than
you.
It’s hard.
I mean, it’s a not cultural thing.
And I don’t mean by culture,
just Western culture.
I mean, I think in many ways,
it’s against the human general movement.
So, what really stands as an invitation for all of us, I think,
is to ask,
are we willing to allow
the things that bug us to become energy to drive us to the thing that matters?
And that is Jesus Christ.
And if we’re willing to do that,
then we’re going to discover a world of things that delight us.
And as people who are in no way, quite frankly,
better able to do that than anyone else,
we just sit at a particular role in the midst of Christian community.
We see that happen all of the
time.
We see people who we ourselves get bugged.
We see people get bugged.
We see that get turned into the positive.
And friends, that’s the invitation to each of us.
So whether you find
yourself in a Christian community,
and this is a call and encouragement to continue that work,
or find yourself out of it,
and it may for you be a maybe a question mark,
you know, what are they talking about?
Either way, I hope that there’s something valuable in the conversation.
Do go to the comments of this.
We respond to those.
So if you have a question or if it raises a
thought, put it in there.
We’d love to have a conversation.
Of course, if you think that this
series has been helpful,
share it with someone else so that they could enjoy it as well.
But we look forward to seeing you in our next conversation.
It’ll be a week from today as
we kick off a new series.
We’re excited to talk through some book recommendations,
but we’ll talk more about that next podcast.
But until then, friends, I hope you’re blessed and
glad you’ve been with us.
Thanks for listening.