Roots & Wings

So, your church is Gospel-centered. But is it Gospel-scented?

2026-02-16T09:32:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had someone come into your church and name an atmosphere that you felt intuitively, but hadn’t yet found words to articulate?

It can be a profound gift.

This happened to me last year. We had invited a wise and gifted leader who helps coach churches around theology and worship, to come and spend the weekend with us. He attended our weekend gatherings and also spent some time speaking with our music teams and worship leaders. On the Sunday night, we gathered around a fire pit in my back yard with some of our elders to hear his impressions of our church and reflect on how we could grow.

He said one thing that stuck with me.

“I want to try and name an atmosphere in your church that exists not only among your leaders and musicians, but in your people as a whole. I have been to plenty of churches that have good worship and strong preaching. I would include yours with them. But there is something else in the air that I smell beyond your preachers and musicians. It’s in your people.”

I could barely contain my curiosity. “What do you smell?”

“I smell the aroma of expectancy.” he replied.

We have often read the account of Mary, the sister of Lazarus, who poured out perfume worth a year’s wages on Jesus’ feet. She was chided by Judas for wastefulness, but Jesus jumped to her defense, replying , “Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial.” (John 12:7)

I am arrested by John’s description of this act of worship. “And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” (John 12:3) The word fill here means to be fill completely, so as to intoxicate. It is the same word that the apostle Paul uses when he exhorts the church in Ephesus, “Do not get drunk with wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit.”(Eph 5:18) There is something more going on in this house than the mere smell of expensive perfume. It is the intoxicating aroma of worship. Mary’s worship gives off the scent of adoration and expectation that pleases Jesus and offends Judas. In fact, Mary’s worship was a prophetic act pointing to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

I wonder if churches like ours, that place a high value on being gospel-centered - that is, we want all of our preaching, worship, community life and mission to maintain the centrality of the gospel - are also putting a high value on being gospel-scented?

In other words, do our churches carry the scent of unbridled devotion and expectation for the presence of Jesus in our midst? I have been in too many churches that take pride in theological depth and orthodoxy but the aroma of their worship is one of stale stoicism and even judgmentalism towards any act of worship that is overly demonstrative. Dare I even say it, more like Judas than Mary?

I carry deep conviction about gospel centrality in our churches and our worship. But if we understand that in the gospel we have been forgiven lavishly by Jesus, it should surely result in us loving lavishly? When we get that, it will change the scent of our churches. They will be filled with the aroma of the presence of Jesus.

(AN EXCERPT FROM "A FIRE BY NIGHT" : Becoming a people of God's presence)

A FIRE BY NIGHT : becoming a people of God's presence.

2025-11-21T17:15:00.000-08:00

A Fire by Night: becoming a people of God's presence

Introduction

“And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.” Exodus 13:21

"Jacob, why are we alive? "

A few years ago, I took our daughter to see Jacob Collier play the iconic Hollywood Bowl. It’s my favorite live music venue because it’s an open air amphitheatre, so you can take a picnic basket with you and you can see the Hollywood sign up in the hills beyond the stage. Our sons teased me because the prodigious British jazz/pop musician is quite eccentric and they see him as pretentious. To be fair, it is definitely musician’s music. Every song has multiple key and time signatures. You might call it snob rock. But the concert was magnificent - an outpouring of joy and beauty from a humble genius. It was a memory making night of joy with my daughter that I still treasure today. Around this time I watched a conversation on YouTube that Collier had with some of his fans after a similar concert in Barcelona. I was arrested by his approachability. The multiple Grammy award winner stood there on the curb without any entourage, surrounded by fans, in no rush to escape. Impressive. The conversation was mainly about his music until one of his young fans took a sharp right turn down Philosophy Street.

“Jacob, why are we alive?” she boldly ventured.

Visibly taken aback and speechless for a moment, his hesitant reply was a sincere, yet hollow echo of our cultural moment.

“It’s so fun being alive. We must be open to the world and the world will be open to us. It’s hard, but that’s what love is. Being open and trusting the world. Why are we alive? There is no reason. Not even one. But it’s worth celebrating.”

I’m not sure the fan was satisfied with his answer. I know I wasn’t. But it was a poignant reminder that genius is not the same as wisdom. All the talent and fame in the world was not able to answer the universal cry of the human heart.

How would you answer that burning question if it were asked of you?

Why are we alive?

Fun, open experiences of the world, for no particular reason? Is that why we are alive?

Thankfully, no.

Do you know that if you can answer that question rightly, you are far more wealthy and wise than any Grammy award winning, platinum selling genius who says there is no real reason to be alive?

Eli Wiesel, the Jewish Holocaust survivor, famously wrote, “If you can find your why, you can survive any how.”

Perhaps you’ve given up in the midst of hardship and pain because you don’t know your why? Perhaps you feel frustrated and empty because you’ve spent too much time sweating over your what, where and when, but have never stopped to do the hard work of your why?

One reason for this is that most of us are swimming in the murky waters of post-modernity, which tends to reject any grand coherent telos or reason behind our existence. It’s your narrative versus my narrative. No transcendent truth. No overarching reason and therefore, no ultimate hope.

The German theologian, Helmut Thielicke described human history as a dramatic play, in which God is the playwright. There have been acts and scenes before us. We’re born. We come out onto the stage of history. We have no idea what the story is. We have no idea who the heroes and villains are. We have no idea who the playwright is. We have no idea when the story began or when it ends, what our role is or what lines we’re supposed to say. And so, we end up with a life of great confusion and perplexity. This, contends Thielicke, is the human condition, and in that sense Jacob Collier has hit the nail on the head.

Enter the Biblical story. Thielicke proposes that the Bible tells us our origins, our Author and our future. That we come from God. That God is the playwright, and that we’re going to God. And in the middle, we’re here to be in relationship with God. In fact, he argues that God desires so strongly to relate to His creation that the Author writes himself into the story! When we meet the playwright and learn the plot and come to recognize the heroes and the villains, we find that we do, in fact, have a meaningful part to play in the author’s story.

To put it plainly, Thielicke contends that you and I are here to know God. That’s the ultimate reason we are alive.That is our why.

You may protest, “But, I do know God.” To which I would reply, “You may have met him, but you and I have not even begun to plumb the depths of what it is to know God.” We will spend eternity getting to know God. Jesus said it plainly in his high priestly prayer to his Father on his disciples behalf. “Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

Augustine of Hippo, the 4th Century African Church father, was converted after drinking deeply from the cisterns of worldly pleasure and coming up thirsty. Having finally been satisfied from the fountain of Christ’s presence, he famously concluded:

“Almighty God, you have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they have found their rest in you.”

Thielicke was riffing off the bold thesis of Augustine. If we are made for God’s presence we will only find our rest in God’s presence.

CS Lewis, the 20th Century British apologist, co-signed.

“Human history is the long and terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

This virus of restlessness and unhappiness from which we suffer today is because we are on a fool’s errand to try and find rest and happiness apart from the presence of God. The only cure for us is to become a people of God’s presence.

I realize that some of you may be doing the proverbial eye roll right now because this all seems quite mystical. Perhaps even simplistic. A people of God’s presence? Downright impractical. How does knowing God help me choose the right career? Help me find a life partner? Solve my debt problem? Relieve my anxiety or my addiction? Heal my broken marriage or my depressed child? Grow my church? Deal with the political mess we’re in? Are you suggesting endless hours of solitude up on a mountain?

Well, solitude would do many of us a world of good. But stay with me, won’t you?

Your why has a huge bearing on your what, your where and your when. It offers you the priceless gifts of perspective, resource and hope. Knowing God means knowing Someone greater than your current trial and stronger than your current storm. It means drawing from Someone deeper than your deepest longing. It means hearing from Someone wiser than your current complexity. Jim Packer, in his seminal book Knowing God, summarized what I am trying to say in this way:

“Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.”

While knowing God does not seem that practical, it is the most fundamental root that resources us for every practical issue we face, enabling us to bear fruit in the most adverse conditions. As the prophet Daniel, whose dreams and interpretations in exile solved the conundrums of the King of Babylon declared,

“The people that know their God will be strong and do exploits.” (Daniel 11:32)

Dear reader, this book is firstly about your why. Every one of you is created for the presence of God. Of this truth, I so desperately want you to be persuaded. The prophets of the Old Testament spoke about their oracle. For instance, Jeremiah the prophet talked about an oracle concerning false prophets and false shepherds. (Jeremiah 23:1)The Hebrew word here is, massa, which means a weight or burden from the Lord. I have written books on worship, church planting, revival and emotional health. But I feel that the common burden of these books, the massa that I carry, is for the Church to be a people of God’s presence. Of course I want you as an individual to encounter God’s presence. But I pray as I write, that the story of the cloud by day and the fire by night would melt away any individualistic view of God’s presence, igniting your vision for the Church as a people who encounter and carry God’s presence into the world together. One cannot read these passages of Scripture without acknowledging that God dwells among a people. God leads a people by his presence, rather than merely, a person.

Hence, the burden of this book is to convince you of your great why and help you to live confidently from that why, by recognizing and responding to God’s presence in your life. I intend to do this by narrowing in on the wilderness years of Israel, following their dramatic Exodus from slavery in Egypt. While there are many instances in the Biblical narrative in which God demonstrates his presence with His people, few are as vivid as God dwelling with Israel as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. (Exodus 13:21) I chose this portion of Scripture in particular because life seems to feel to many like a wilderness. The heat of our day and the darkness of our cultural mood are pervasive and oppressive. Yet, the cloud by day and fire by night stand as a sacred billboard, selling us on the promise that God is ever present with His people, even in wilderness seasons. Perhaps, particularly in wilderness seasons.

This is also the reason I settled on the title, A Fire by Night, instead of the more exact, ‘a cloud by day and a fire by night.’ For a start, A.W. Tozer had already written a book by that name. For the sake of brevity I will refer in this book to the mysterious phenomenon as the fire-cloud. But I chose to emphasize the fire by night as a reminder that God’s presence does not depart when night falls.

The fire-cloud powerfully demonstrates that God’s presence not only dwells with his people, it also moves before them. It is not only a comforting presence. It is a guiding presence, leading us as God’s people on his mission. Canaan awaits, but God’s people must break camp and follow the fire cloud when it moves, if they are to cross over the Jordan. So, the fire by night connects God’s presence with God’s mission. They are inseparable.

They are why we are alive.

Song: People of your Presence

A Call to Apostolic Partnership

2025-08-08T07:02:00.000-07:00

A Guest Blog by Dr. Andrew Butterworth

Churches & the Ends of the Earth

Is your church having an impact beyond your city? In 1900, Nobel Peace Prize winner John R. Mott wrote a booklet called: ‘The evangelization of the world in this generation’. It was a bold call to action – could Jesus’ mission to reach every tribe and tongue be completed by the people living on the earth at that time?

Mott’s generation has come and gone, and now the baton has been passed to us. It’s the tension that every local church should feel. We have our ‘Jerusalem’ that we focus on, but we need to keep an eye on ‘Judea, Samaria and the ends of the Earth.’ (Acts 1:8)

In my own church’s new members’ meeting, we tackle this head-on. As a local church, we get to reach our ‘Jerusalem’,we say, but through partnership with our global church family, Advance, we get to help reach ‘Judea, Samaria and the ends of the Earth.’

The New Testament Pattern

Partnership multiples impact. Have you ever considered what the best model for churches to partner together to do this is? Personally, it’s something I don’t want to leave to chance to get right. If Jesus has given us an approach in Scripture, then I want to back it – because I know there will be wisdom in doing that.

When I read the New Testament, I see churches planted and elders (in the plural) set in place by travelling teams of Ephesian 4 ministers (Eph. 4:11-13). In the Book of Acts, we see that Paul goes on mission, launches churches and then travels back to care for them.

Once the number of churches he looked after became too large, Paul sent delegates in his place, such as Titus,appointing elders on Crete (Titus 1:5), Timothy going to Corinth (1 Cor. 4:17) and Epaphroditus to the Philippians (Phil 2:25-30). Even when Paul wasn’t with those churches, we read that he was thinking about them and praying for them(2 Cor. 11:28, 1 Thes. 2:17, Phil. 1:3-11). Paul carried these churches in his heart and used his team to convey that care and concern to them when he couldn’t.

We see Paul’s heart for local churches in Acts 20. The mission calls Paul onwards, but such is his fatherly concern for the elders he has set in place in Ephesus that he asks them to journey 50 miles to the port at Miletus so he could say a tearful farewell to them and give them some final instructions. We see a similar parental heart with John when he writes to the churches he looked after in Asia Minor, referring to the believers as ‘my little children’ (1 John 2:1).

This is the apostolic model. Over time, this model evolved into something more static and pastoral. By the late second to early third century, most cities had churches led by elders that were then overseen by a city-wide overseer or bishop. It was these bishops who gathered to form the first councils: Nicea(325 AD), Constantinople (381 AD), Ephesus (431 AD), Chalcedon (451 AD), etc. The church was organised and busy fighting heresy, but it lost its early momentum.

The Apostolic Model Today

Picture churches led by plural eldership teams, maintaining local authority, yet influenced by experienced leaders who carry the heart for the broader mission. These leaders don’t dominate – they aren’t interested in wading into local church issues. Instead, they serve, equipping the church and encouraging it to stay missional. Local churches respond by getting caught up in this mission, releasing leaders and resources. Could the approach we see in Acts be meant as a blueprint for churches today?

Discrete, independent churches that voluntarily choose to be interdependent for the sake of mission.

You might think that this is simply a description of how many church networks operate. And I understand that because there are a lot of those around with genuine desires to see churches planted and strengthened and the mission of God continued.

But there’s a big difference. While these networks offer peer-level support, they typically lack the kind of fathering dynamic seen in Paul’s ministry—a relational authority rooted in mission, not structure. Many networks might describe themselves as offering a ‘brothering’ or fraternal connection. But the apostolic model goes beyond this.

While the apostolic model has these brothering relationships,it has, in addition, fathering relationships too. I understand that this sort of language can get into really dangerous territory really quickly. But just because something can go wrong it shouldn’t mean we avoid it together. The solution to misuse is not ‘no use’ but correct use (1 Thess. 2:11). And when I look at New Testament leaders like Paul and John, I am not referring to their unique role as Scripture writers, I am referring to their trans-local, Ephesians 4 role of caring for churches beyond their own. If the ascended Christ gave gifts to ‘build’ his body (Eph. 4:12), shouldn’t we, as local churches, make use of them?

Eldership teams can still be the final authority of governance in their local church but also receive fatherly input for the sake of mission. In my 20s, I grew up in this type of movement, which birthed the movement I am part of now.One of these leaders of this earlier movement wrote a book on what this should look like titling it simply: ‘Fathering Leaders, Motivating Mission.’

The Need for Fathering

When I talk to young planters, this is what they are desperate for – fathering. In its absence, this void is filled by coaching or mentorship. Or failing that, finding older leaders in church networks who can give a form of informal fathering-style input. While I know this helps, this isn’t the apostolic model we see in Acts. The danger is that mentorship or coachingwithout catching people up in a bigger missional urge can become more therapeutic rather than spurring the missiononward. To use the title of the book, leaders need fathering,but they also need motivation towards mission.

When our church faced a leadership transition, we invited a fathering leader from within our movement, Advance—someone with four decades of ministry experience, who had planted multiple times. He brought a sense of stability but alsokept the community on the bigger vision. Genuine apostolic leaders will always do that—it’s how God’s wired them.

It's people with big, let’s-do-this visions that have kept our church looking outward. In 2021, we planted out into a neighbouring suburb. In 2024, we sent a young family to the coast to start a church in the city of George. And in 2025, we sent a young family to plant north of us in a suburb called Edenvale.

If I am honest, if I had just become a pastor of a church that wasn’t part of this kind of movement, I am not sure our church would have taken some of those risks or borne some of those costs. But it had been helpfully imparted to us that we exist for something bigger than ourselves, that we have a part to play in the Great Commission that starts in Jerusalem, but finishes at the ends of the earth.

Why Apostolic Partnership Still Matters

Our church needs to be part of something bigger. I need to be part of something bigger. And for me, it needs to be more than a brother-to-brother connection. We need experienced fathers in the faith, who have been there, done it and made the mistakes along the way to mentor us, assist us - and exhort usto look beyond our city.

That’s the goal of the apostolic movement or apostolic family of churches. It has its flaws, like anything else. But since I came across this at university, I haven’t looked back. It’s the model I hoped for. It’s what I see in Scripture. And when it’sworking well, it feels like we are back in the days of the early New Testament church - churches multiplied, leaders released, and the gospel advancing to the ends of the Earth.

In that kind of environment, rallying cries like Mott’s don’t feel idealistic. They feel necessary.

The evangelisation of the world in this generation? Let’s do it!

Loaves in the Storm: Navigating the Joy and Sorrow of Multiplication

2025-07-12T13:43:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday we commissioned Ryan and Stacie Macdonald, their children and pre-launch team to plant a church in Portland, Oregon. It was a momentous moment both for them and for us - a dream 8 years in the forming, now became the beginnings of a journey. What a joy it is to send! what a longing fulfilled to join Jesus in the redemption of that beautiful and broken city. But after the joy of the moment, I and others, have felt the storms of sorrow blow in. I've never known anything other than leading in a multiplying church, so these feelings of loss and vulnerability are not new to me. But they are no less real. And they are not uncommon.

I’ve heard few people talk about the emotional storm that can brew after multiplication, both for those who are sent and for those who send.

How do you maintain emotional buoyancy in a post-multiplying storm? I have returned to a chapter I wrote on this in my book, Broken for Blessing, in order to steady my soul. Perhaps it will help steady yours too?

Mark’s Gospel describes the disciples navigating through a storm immediately after the feeding of the 5,000. I’d never noticed any connection between the loaves and the storm, but Mark certainly makes one.

Jesus tells the disciples to get into a boat and go to the other side after the multiplying miracle. Meanwhile, He goes up on a mountain to pray and watches as they make painful progress in the boat because a strong wind is against them. Jesus waits all night before He walks on water to them, and when they see Him they are terrified, thinking He is a ghost. They call to Him, He gets into the boat and the wind dies down to a whisper.

This is the verse that caught my attention: “And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, for their hearts were hardened.”(Mark 6:32)

They did not understand about the loaves. Sometimes in Scripture, storms are a result of disobedience. When Jonah disobeyed God’s call, the ship he was on went through a terrible storm until Jonah repented. This was not that kind of storm. It was a God-ordained storm of obedience. Some of us have been taught that obedience to Jesus will ensure fair weather and plain sailing. This storm of obedience rips that idea to shreds. Mysteriously, Jesus sent the disciples into the storm to reveal Himself to them. He wanted them to understand about the loaves in the storm. What they learned about Jesus from the high of multiplication was meant to be carried with them into the low of the storm. He was still compassionate. He was still powerful. He was still able to provide for them, this time not with bread to fill their empty stomachs but with bread to nourish their fearful souls. This is true of every storm of obedience.

But I have found it particularly true of post-multiplication storms. No matter how many you send, it seems to me that you make headway painfully for a while after multiplication. You lose some momentum, which can cause you to lose heart. It’s one thing to lose resources in the process of multiplication, but these losses are another thing altogether.

This is a natural consequence of sending people from your congregation. It’s not just how many you send. It’s who you send: your volunteers, your encouragers, your givers, your worshipers, your leaders. These are all the qualities that make church compelling. Not surprising, then, that it feels like the wind is against you after you send. For those who go, the excitement of the new journey can make way for the storm of loneliness, unfamiliarity, the lack of a large, warm encouraging gathering.

In the storm of obedience one can start to second guess God's calling. Didn’t we do what He told us to do? Mark's gospel is clear that Jesus sent the disciples into this storm of obedience.

Over the past 15 years at Southlands, we’ve sent over 300 people to plant 9 churches. Remember, we were a church of around 500 adults and 100 kids when we began sending. Each time we began to recover from the last sending, we felt called to send again. While it’s been a joy to see how the newer churches have experienced growth and life, sometimes it’s felt like we were going backward as the primary sending churches. Other times it was like we were rowing just to stand still. Most of the time it has felt just like Mark’s Gospel describes it.

"They were making headway painfully with the wind against them."

If you do the math, they had been rowing from the first watch of the night to the fourth. That's about 9 hours. They had gone 3-4 miles, about halfway across the Sea of Galilee. That's about 300 yards an hour! I think it's funny that they were going so slowly Jesus could catch up to them and walk right past them, walking! But it wouldn't have been funny to these disciples, who were terrified and discouraged.

Losing momentum after multiplication can cause a storm of discouragement and fear to brew in the hearts of the church and its leaders. Jesus’ command in the storm to “Take heart” was not just an exhortation to the disciples. It was a description of their inner weather system. They’d lost heart: lost their inner buoyancy, something that esonates with me deeply. I should know better by now, but, every time we send, I experience an inner storm and begin to lose heart.

This passage about the storm has helped me enormously in my inner storms after multiplication. I have come to treasure the first three words of verse “He saw them.” Jesus saw the disciples making headway painfully. The word in the original Greek is deeper than simply viewing them. It means to possess significant vision. In other words, Jesus understood the significance of what they were experiencing. He empathized with them and was able to do something about it. The Matthew account of the same storm says that Jesus prayed while He saw them. The truth that Jesus is a sympathetic Savior who is touched by our weaknesses, and that he lives to pray for us in our storms, is a real comfort in heavy weather. I have also learned to take heart in the post-multiplying storm by trying to understand the loaves. The disciples lost heart in the storm because they did not understand the loaves. They were blind to the connection between Jesus’ bread miracle and the deeper significance. Jesus was crystal clear that the miracle was, in fact, a sign that He is the Bread of Heaven. He Himself would be given to fill the emptiness of the human heart. On the cross, His body would be broken to heal our fragmented souls. At the Last Supper, He took the bread, broke it and said, “This is my body, broken for you.” The prophet Isaiah describes the implications of Jesus’ broken body for our souls.

“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4-6)

Christ’s body was broken to give us peace in our crushing anxieties. His broken body

holds us together when we feel like we are being torn apart in a storm of self-pity, doubt and despair. Because He bowed His head into the ultimate storm on the cross, His broken body is like ballast in the hull of our souls, keeping us afloat when the wind and waves threaten to sink us.

An Anchor for our Souls

The second verse of Edward Mote’s hymn, “On Christ the Solid Rock” is one of my favorites:

“When darkness seems to hide His face, I rest on

His unchanging grace, in every high and stormy

gale, my anchor holds within the veil.”

What a vivid description of how Christ is an anchor for our souls. But what does that mean? What is the basis of that promise?

It’s taken from Hebrews 6:19 “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

Christ is an anchor for our souls because he has weathered his storm of obedience on the cross, and can strengthen us as we weather ours. But don't miss that He is a High Priest in the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek was the priest who blessed Abraham, confirming God’s oath to bless him and multiply him. "I will surely bless you and multiply you." So, the promise that is an anchor for our souls is not just a personal, priestly promise. Rather, it is a commissioning promise with global implications. It is a promise that God will lead us on a multiplying mission to all nations! The storm of commission includes the pain of sending and leaving people you love, the cost of giving of your best, the insecurity of uncharted waters, the cold wind of stretched resources, the icy fear of possible failure or rejection.

But God’s promise is that as we obey Jesus our Great Commissioner, we experience Jesus our High Priest,

who calms our fears, undergirds our insecurities and strengthens our frailties. Christ has gone before us, completing His mission on earth. He is a wise forerunner who can now help us navigate the same journey. Not only does He help us in the storm of temptation, but Christ also strengthens us in the storm of mission!

This is a sure and steadfast anchor for our souls. We may still have moments of panic or discouragement. However, I have found real comfort in the even-keeled presence of Jesus, which in turn has made me more even-keeled. The One who slept through storms with his head on a pillow in the bow of the boat is able to give us anchored emotional buoyancy, whether we are the sent ones or the sending ones.

And mark my words, in His time, the storm dies down to a whisper and the wind fills our sails again.

More than a Prodigal: a tribute to Carl Tuttle

2025-06-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we hosted the memorial of my friend, Carl Tuttle, at our church. Carl was world renown in the Vineyard movement and beyond, for writing worship songs that became standards in the Charismatic renewal of the 70's and 80's. Gifted with an ability to write simple, intimate choruses of adoration to God, they birthed a waved of contemporary worship around the world that accompanied the powerful ministry of John Wimber. His songs were anthems that breathed the Vineyard movement. Carl travelled with Wimber extensively, writing and recording albums that sold hundreds of thousands of units. When I am in the UK, I still hear stories of how powerful their conferences were, marked by Carl's worship, the Wimber's teaching and signs and wonders that followed them. Carl and his wife Sonya spent a season leading a church in Santa Maria, which Carl always told me was the happy time of their marriage and ministry. But after Wimber died afrom an aggressive form of cancer, they moved back down to Southern California for Carl take the role of senior pastor of the movements' flagship church, Anaheim Vineyard.

This was a large and famous church and Wimber's shoes were impossibly big to fill. Carl writes in his book, Reckless Mercy, that he did not have the structural integrity to cope with the pressure of it all. Tragically, he fell into harmful patterns of addiction, losing his marriage and eventually his ministry.

I first met Carl at one of our Sunday evening services. He had been literally and spiritually in the desert for 15 years. He was living out in Palm Springs painting houses and was a worship leader for hire out in a little church there. After a few subsequent connections he decided to move from the desert back to his old stomping ground in Orange County, to re-establish his painting business and join our church. There was no offer of ministry at all. Carl desperately desired restoration to God and his people, more than to ministry. I really got to know him when he painted our old house. It was a massive job to strip and re-paint a 110 year old house with lead paint. He gave me a great deal and didd a fine job! During that time I came to know a man carrying a huge weight of sorrow and regret, but who also had a fantastic sense of humor. He was easy to be around but I wondered whether his was genuine repentance or merely regret.

At this point Carl was persona non gratia in Vineyard circles and the rumors about his notoriety made me quite wary. The thing was though, I saw a genuine humility and contrition in Carl. He never asked for formal ministry. In fact, he was willing to leave a paying ministry gig to land at our church. (That right there is always a telling sign of genuine repentance. The other telling sign was that he was willing to go through our membership process. I remember a few ex-Vineyard people arriving at our church, partly because Carl was there, and grumbling to Carl about the formality of the process. Carl wouldn't tolerate it. He would reply, "Just look at us? You don't think us Vineyard people need a little bit of discipline in our lives?" He had a humorous candidness about him. Eventually he co-led one of our community groups and I can remember him leading one song on stage - but he never grasped for it. He was simply one of us, and he was deeply loved.

I remember calling Sonya, Carl's ex-wife, one day. I wanted to hear the truth about Carl from the person who had experienced him at his worst. She was amazing. She simply went through the list of rumors about him saying, "That and that is true, but that and that is not true. He never did that. don't believe them. she added that in all his ups an owns, he had always been a faithful and generous provider to her and the children." That clarity meant so much to me, and I am grateful to Sonya for refusing to bless the rumors, even though she had been the most hurt by Carl's actions.

One day Carl came to me and asked if I would help to mediate a meeting between him and Carol Wimber. I have written about this more extensively in my book Broken for Blessing. Carl carried 15 years of guilt and shame and he wanted to ask for Carol's forgiveness for his destructive actions towards her and the broader Vineyard family. Marvelously, Carol was quick to forgive him. She had had a dream around that time about welcoming back prodigal sons. I watched her from that day appeal to her church and broader family to welcome Carl back with mercy and love, which they did with open hearts. I realized that many had been offended on Carol's behalf. So, when they realized that she was no longer offended, they dropped their offense. It was marvelous to see. What I did not realize, is that this would mark the end of his time at Southlands Church. Carl loved us, but longed to be united back with the spiritual family that had formed him so deeply. How could I stand in the way of such a family reunion? He was restored to ministry in the Vineyard soon after that and spent a number of happy years co-pastoring a church in Costa Mesa and traveling as a speaker and worship leader.

But Carl's deepest longing was to be reconciled to his flesh and blood family. By God's mysterious grace, this happened. Carl moved to Colorado after a series of debilitating strokes. His ex-wife Sonya, nursed him until his death and he was surrounded by his children and grand children. Strange that it would take illness for this to take place. God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Chatting briefly to Sonya yesterday, I could see that though they were not re-married, the reconciliation with Carl was deep and genuine. what a remarkable woman of grace she is to welcome her prodigal husband back like that.

I spoke briefly at the memorial about how Carl is more than a prodigal. Without underplaying the damage he caused to church, family and friends, Carl stands as a powerful model of reconciliation to us. For many of us, stuck in relational stalemates, we can learn from this humble, broken man, some powerful gospel lessons that will get us unstuck. I see 6 ways Carl pursued reconciliation that are a model for us to follow.

1.Carl owned what he could own without excuse. No blaming others for his sin. His sin was bigger in his eyes than the sin of those against him. He genuinely looked at the speck in his eye as more serious than the log in the other's eye. This is rare. We get stuck when we cry "Mercy!" for ourselves, and "Justice!" for those who have wronged us. That results in a relation stalemate.

2. Carl refused to play victim himself and make others villains. He knew it was more messy than that. Carl overlooked offense without bitterness saying he deserved it. When people would say terrible things about him he was not overly defensive. He didn't agree with them all, but he would shrug and say, "I kinda deserve it."

3. Carl extended much mercy because he had received it. Although he had a lot to repent of, he also forgave those who had wronged him, knowing Christ had forgiven him generously. He resisted offense like the plague. He uprooted bitterness and banished vindictiveness over time through repeated forgiveness and remembrance of God's kindness to him. He allowed God to vindicate him where he was not guilty.

4. He paid the price of reconciliation Carl knew that forgiveness was one thing, but reconciliation was another. It required the wronged party to desire relationship. I saw this happen over time in profound ways because he was willing to make restitution to those he had wronged. I saw this first of all with his ex-wife, Sonya. She told me personally that he was financially generous to her and their children. He was not into cheap grace. I think this is one reason why reconciliation was possible.

5. He treasured intimacy in his final years with those from whom he had been estranged. Carl longed to end his days with his spiritual family and his flesh and blood family, and God granted him his desires. He died surrounded by family and friendships that had spanned more than 5 decades. In the truest sense, he died a rich man.

6. He didn't waste the pain. He realized that some would not reconcile but he did what he could to live at peace with all people. He had this saying, "Don't waste the pain." He didn't expect his sin to be absolved in a pain free life. Instead, he lived with consequences, and learned from them. He was genuinely a softer, more humble, more grateful man at the end of his days.

I watched God break relational stalemate after stalemate in Carl's life. This is not primarily because of Carl. It is because Christ himself is our peace, having destroyed the dividing wall of hostility between those traditionally hostile to each other. (Ephesians 2:14) The reconciling power of the cross is what I want to magnify here, more than Carl's reconciling powers. But Carl was willing to navigate through the rubble of that hostile wall that Christ has broken down, and so must we if we are to enjoy reconciliation in our strained relationships. In this sense, Carl is more than a prodigal. He is a model of reconciliation, worthy of imitation.

Rumors of the Quiet Revival

2025-06-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

Walking under a London bridge near Waterloo, covered with artful graffiti, I spot a Bible reference verse amidst the vibrant urban colors.

John 14:6

No verse attached. Just the reference. For those who have eyes to see and hearts to explore, the reference is the famous claim and invitation of Jesus in John's gospel.

"I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me."

The quiet, yet unmistakable truth claim amidst the graffiti speaks of a deeper movement afoot across the UK and Europe. They are calling it The Quiet Revival.

The UK Bible Society was the first to coin the phrase after ground breaking research data released a few months ago that church attendance in the UK was experiencing a drastic up-swing.

Co-author of The Quiet Revival report, Dr Rhiannon McAleer writes, "The Quiet Revival shows that the most dramatic church growth is among young adults, particularly young men. In 2018, just 4 per cent of 18–24-year-olds said that they attended church at least monthly. Today, says The Quiet Revival, this has risen to 16 per cent, with young men increasing from 4 per cent to 21 per cent, and young women from 3 to 12 per cent.

The report shows that what people believe about Church decline is no longer true. ‘These are striking findings that completely reverse the widely held assumption that the Church in England and Wales is in terminal decline. While some traditional denominations continue to face challenges, we’ve seen significant, broad-based growth among most expressions of Church – particularly in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. There are now over 2 million more people attending church than there were six years ago." (the whole article here The Quiet Revival)

Here in the USA, at least in the circles that I run in, the rumors of the Quiet Revival abound. Some are skeptical. Many abound. I was curious to see what it felt like being on the ground as we visited the UK this past month. We spent 10 days investing in around 50 churches from 13 different UK and European nations.

Here are 8 signs that the rumors are not an exaggeration.

1. I saw young men walking the streets of London carrying Bibles. I’ve never seen that before in the 30 years I’ve been visiting here. We know that Bible sales are on the up, but the boldness to carry a Bible publicly seems remarkable.

2. Every church we were with said that their Alpha courses (exploring Christianity) were better attended than ever and Christians were more bold in inviting people to church and sharing the gospel.

3. We witnessed a growing hunger for God in prayer, especially prayer between churches. In our Advance Movement family of churches 85 leaders from about 20 churches travelled from Wales, N. Ireland, Scotland and all over England for two days of prayer and fasting.

4. Regular testimonies of salvation and healing. We saw one lady at a @newgroundchurches conference arrive on crutches and leave carrying them. No smoke and mirrors. Her friends vouched for her. She had been healed by Jesus.

5. A significant increase in cultural diversity in churches and leaders from different cultures being raised up.

6.Churches were all leaning freshly into multiplication: of disciples, leaders, meetings & churches.

7. Churches taking big steps to serve their cities through compassion with favor from civic leaders

8. Worship was unpolished, passionate, participative, not performative. A genuine hunger for God’s presence.

May the quiet revival spread deeper and wider and spill over into the nations!

Is your Church playing Broken Telephones?

2025-04-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

Our Easter weekend was one for the books at Southlands Brea. From our Good Friday gathering through to our three Sunday services, I am grateful and amazed at the life that was found at the foot of Christ's blood stained cross and His empty tomb. The baptisms, the salvations, the army of joyful volunteers hosting the great throng of guests and the faithful so warmly. Thank you, sincerely, to all who served and all who attended.

One conversation I had with a newly married couple from our church has lodged in my heart though. It is why I am writing this piece in reflection. They recently relocated to another city and church about an hour away because of work. I was saddened to hear of this, but recommended a church I know in the area they were moving to. They came back to worship with us on Good Friday, which was a joy, and the husband said to me, "We have had some concerns about the church you recommended to us." I probed further. He replied something to the effect of, "I think they are editing the gospel for the sake of reaching their culture." I asked for an example. He replied, "For instance, they have changed the lyrics of the song "'Christ Alone,' from "And on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied," to "And on that cross as Jesus died, the love of God was magnified."" This lyric change was emblematic of larger concerns they had with lack of Biblical integrity in the church.

Although disappointed to hear of this, I actually felt really proud of this couple for their discernment. They were looking beyond the vibe, the excellence and the popularity (this church has all of these) to the substance. Let's be honest, this is rare.

In my Easter message, I preached from Paul's entreaty to the Corinthians to keep the gospel as 'the most important thing.'

"When I came to you I preached the gospel to you as the most important thing. For I passed on to you what I received," that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried and was raised ion the third day, according to the scriptures." (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

Paul then goes on to say that he has heard that some of them have stopped believing that Christ was bodily raised from the dead. He is horrified that they have changed the message that he had passed on to them. without the resurrection, the gospel bears little resemblance to the original message, Paul contends. He is emphatic that if there is no empty tomb at the center of the Corinthian's, their gospel is empty. "If Christ has not been raised, we are false teachers, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins, and in fact, you are to be more pitied than anyone!"(v 17-19) Understandably strong words by Paul.

Andrew Wilson, in his commentary on this chapter, sums up Paul's warning as follows: "Christianity is nothing without the risen Christ. If the corpse of Jesus had been found in the Middle East, it would not just mean that the walls of Christianity needed repainting , it would mean that the whole house had come crashing down. If Jesus is still dead, then sins have not been forgiven. If Jesus is still dead then we are all lost, hopeless liars. If Jesus is still dead then we are not just mistaken, we are to be most pitied. Christianity cannot survive a dead Savior.'

It's as if the Corinthians had been playing a game of broken telephones, in which one person whispers a message to the next and each time the message is passed on, it changes, leaving the final message with no resemblance to the original. Paul will not tolerate the 'lost in translation' message, and clearly restores the miscommunication back to the original integrity of the message with this emphatic affirmation:"But as it is, Christ has indeed, been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep." (v 20) Jesus' resurrection guarantees our resurrection, and that changes everything! This is at the heart of the gospel message.

Why were the Corinthians changing the original message? In short, their culture was generally gnostic. They had allow view of the metal world and a high view off the spiritual world. This meant that they believed in the immortality of the soul but not the body. That sounded implausible Perhaps, too Jewish. They edited their message to suit their culture. And we are prone to do the same. Which is why a church would feel tempted to play broken telephones with a concept like wrath. It is not the material world we struggle with like the Greeks, it is the idea of a God who punishes sin that were struggle with. It seems so judgmental and unkind. And yet, if we look at the cross, we must admit that Jesus the Lamb of God, was experiencing God's wrath on our behalf. he was taking our punishment as a substitute, absorbing God's righteous anger against our sin, to give us peace. "We considered him stricken and afflicted by God, yet it was the Lord's will to cause him to suffer. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by his stripes we have been healed."( Isaiah 53) This is not being pedantic. If you remove substitutionary atonement from the gospel, you have lost the gospel.

I want to ask you whether your church has been playing broken telephones, editing out the hard parts of the gospel for the sake of so-called cultural relevance? Cultural relevance at the expense of Biblical faithfulness, is a fool's errand.

Instead, I commend two antidotes to Biblical Broken Telephones.

First, the Creeds. I want to Make Creeds Great Again! This year is the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed. This confession is what the Church has agreed upon throughout the ages, that defines Christian Orthodoxy. Protestants, Catholics, Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians agree upon this confession. Hold your church up against this creed, for a start. If it does not affirm it, it is not a Christian church, period. I have found this to be so helpful, particularly when contending with progressive Christians who have an issue with our stance on sexuality, gender, the sanctity of marriage or life. The first thing I ask is, "Do you affirm the Nicene Creed before we have a discussion?" Very often I find that they cannot. "They say something like, "I do not see God as father. Or I do not believe that Christ died for sins, or that Jesus is the only God. It is then that I realize, we are not agreeing about the fruit of Christianity because we have different roots. Theirs is a version of Christianity that falls outside the bounds of historic Christian Orthodoxy, which means they are coming to different conclusions about the fruit of their faith. If they do affirm the Creeds, then I am more than happy to have discussion about the fruit of our faith.

Second, I commend to you Tim Keller's concept of Middleware from his book, Center Church: doing balanced gospel ministry. he describes how churches tend to grow. The first is through what he calls 'hardware', which he describes as Biblical faithfulness.Hardware churches are courageous. The second way is through 'software,' which he describes as 'cultural relevance.' Software churches are creative. But he proposes that the best way for a church to grow, is 'middleware,' which he describes as the point at which Biblical faithfulness is bright to bear on a changing culture in such a way as they can and want to receive it. Middleware avoid playing broken telephones through courageous faithfulness, but they also pass the message on effectively through creativity and winsomeness. Lord, help us as we trust in the power of Your gospel.

From Consumers to Partners: in praise of church membership

2025-03-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

After three years pastoring at Southlands Brea, I was asked to take the helm of the team that led this intrepid and depleted church in 2010. We’d navigated an economic recession, fought a lawsuit over the sale of our church building, and led through the purchase, remodeling and move to our new premises in a new county. It was the perfect storm. To add to the doldrums, the church had planted 12 times in 14 years prior to this. We were the little church that would. We were willing and eager, but closer to breaking point than we were willing to admit.

I’ve written extensively about how we pushed pause on planting for three years in the hopes of winning home games, not just away games. This was a key move in our long term health and sustainability. It occurred to me yesterday though, after our 15th annual members meeting, that I’ve never written about our decision around that time to institute formal church membership.

I know, this is a controversial topic. Images of pastors campaigning for popularity, contentious voting and power plays by deacon boards, most likely make you want to scroll on rapidly. But before you do, let me say that our church membership doesn't practice congregational voting, although we do make decisions collaboratively. We are elder governed rather than congregationally governed. When I talk about church membership, I am really talking about people who have committed to becoming partners in the gospel. And to be honest, when I look back at 15 years of church membership practice, I think it has saved our church from consumerism, passivity and perhaps even implosion. Besides prayer, I would venture to say that church membership is the single most important practice that makes our church vital and viable. It has moved the crowd towards community, expanded the core towards the fringe, and shifted consumers to becoming invested partners.

So, what are the Biblical reasons for it?

1. Accountability After Pentecost there were 3000 people saved and added to the church. (Acts 2:41) Added. The new believers voted with their feet. They said, "You can count me in and you can count on me!" Those that were added were devoted to their church community. (Acts 2:42) That's what members do. They make themselves available and accountable.

2. Health The apostle Paul's teaching on the Church as the Body of Christ describes a heathy body as one whose members are both connected and active. (1 Corinthians 12: 1-8) While baptism makes us members of the universal Body of Christ, we see in the Bible that individual believers walked that out in local churches under local pastors. A healthy body member, according to Paul then, is both connected and active.

3. Safety When the apostle Paul's tells the Corinthians to put the immoral brother among them out of the church until such time as he repents, he is implying that he was a part of them. You cannot put someone out unless they were first in. This is not a vindictive act. It is an act of love and protection towards the flock. We have had two do this on a few occasions with abusive people, vindictive people and heretic people, who are doing harm to God's people. It is never a pleasant task. But it is necessary for the safety of the flock. (1 Cor 5:11-13)

4. Sanity If, as the apostle Peter writes, shepherds are to give an account to Jesus, the Chief Shepherd, for how they cared for the flock, surely they need to know who is in their flock? I can love and feed anyone, but I can only shepherd those who have placed themselves under my care. It is those for whom I will give an account. So, membership is for the safety of the flock and the sanity of the shepherds. (1 Peter 5:1-3)

How practically do we implement it?

1. Stick 6 (Courtesy of Vintage Church) We encourage visitors to stick around for 6 weeks before they decide to join us or not. During that time they will have 3 opportunities to meet pastors and hear about the church and make a decision: a newcomers lunch, a potential membership class and a one-on-one membership interview with an elder.

2. 3 practices We call all our members to commit to 3 practices involving their time, talents and treasure. ( not original , I know, but memorable) we ask them to commit to a community group, to tithing, and to serving in a volunteer team once a month. We welcome new members in publicly every two months.

3. Celebration We have an annual membership celebration where we tell stories of God's grace and growth, have a quality meal, give detailed feedback about finances, and talk through new decisions, new leaders, or new vision. We receive feedback from members. Members are first to hear and first to give feedback.

4. Non mandatory We have just under 400 members at Southlands Brea (there are more in our other Southlands churches) and this is about half of our average Sunday adult attendance. (which means, I'd guess, about 1/3 of everyone who calls Southlands home) So we serve many who are not members. we do not force people to become members. Many of these people do serve and give. But we are working towards it becoming a majority culture.

Finally, membership has been a a culture we've had to contend for, because in Southern California, the largest church groups do not practice it. (Calvary Chapel, Vineyard, Friends, independent mega churches) People are fearful that it will be weaponized to control them, or suspicious that we will be legalistic. Basically, there is a fundamental fear around commitment in our casual Christian culture. But membership has been worth contending for, because it runs so counter to this culture, moving consumers towards being more committed gospel partners. If you lead a church I would commend it to you as a vital discipleship practice for a more vital church and mission.

Lead with Zeal: recovering an undervalued leadership virtue

2025-02-17T20:50:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I decided I wanted to be more of a thermostat than a thermometer leader. I wanted to set the tone and temperature of the room I was in rather than test it. I haven't done that perfectly, but if I've done it all well, it's been because this often under-valued virtue we find in the Bible called zeal.

If I ask you to think of a zealot, who comes to mind? Perhaps you think of someone with misguided or unbridled passion for a cause. Maybe a placard waving protester or a hell, fire and brimstone preacher shouting at passers' by from a sidewalk? Perhaps even a worship leader who gets carried away, losing all track of the time and the congregation?

If we know the Scriptures, we probably think of the warning against zeal from the book of Proverbs.

"Zeal is not good without wisdom, and the one who acts hastily sins." (19:2)

The Bible provides living examples of this in Simon Peter, whose misguided zeal led him to cut off Malchus's ear at Jesus' arrest. Another example would be Saul who described himself as zealously obeying the law and persecuting Christians. Not to mention Simon the Zealot, who was trying to overthrow the Roman government before he began to follow Christ. I think it is because we have read about and experienced unwise zeal that we tend to view zeal as a whole with suspicion. And so we choose wisdom over zeal and knowledge over passion. But what if wisdom without zeal was also not good? What if zeal was, in fact, a Biblical imperative for Christian leaders?

Many years ago, a leader called Ray Johnston gave me some unforgettable insight on leadership. "There are two kinds of leaders that help God's people move upwards. I understand them in terms of rocket launching. There are those with a guidance system - that's wisdom - and those with rocket fuel - that's zeal. The best leader's have both guidance system and rocket fuel. They are rare."

Is it possible that your guidance system needs some rocket fuel?

It's fascinating to me that the once zealous Saul doesn't reject zeal after his conversion. Instead, as an apostle, he commends it, even more, insists on it for leaders of Jesus' Church.

"Let the one who contributes, contribute generously; the one who leads, lead with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness." (Romans 12:8)

In other words, of all the virtues Paul could have chosen to describe how Christian leaders should lead, he chose zeal. That is notable. You and I need zeal to lead! And then, in case we were not yet persuaded, he writes a few verses later, now speaking to all who serve in the church, "Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor as you serve the Lord." (Romans 12:11) So then, zeal is an imperative for all servants of Christ, but particularly for leaders. We also note that zeal is something we can lose as we serve the Lord, but are able to keep. "Keep your spiritual fervor as you serve the Lord."

So, if leading with zeal is an imperative for all leaders, what is it and how do we keep it?

First, zeal is not merely passion for a cause. I would describe Biblical zeal as spiritual fervor for God, his people and his priorities. God is a zealous God and he wants his people to be zealous for Him and his purposes. Isaiah's prophecy about the Messiah, so often read at Christmas time, gives us a glimpse of God's zeal in sending His Son to save and rule the world.

"For unto us a child is born, and he shall be called the Prince of Peace, the Mighty God, the wonderful counsellor and the everlasting Father. He shall reign on David's throne, and of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. The zeal of the Lord will accomplish this." (Isaiah 9:11-13)

God was enthusiastic about sending His Son. Fervent about saving us. Earnest about bringing about his eternal rule through Jesus. There is absolutely nothing half-hearted about God. He accomplishes his purposes with zeal. Too often, especially in the educated West, because we equate zeal with a lack of education or wisdom, we cultivate a kind of curated disinterest, as if being too passionate isa sign of immaturity. But this is far from God's character. Think of Zephaniah the prophet's description of God's zeal for his people.

"The Lord your God is with you, he will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his live and rejoice over you with shouts of joy!" (Zephaniah 3:16)

So, how do we ensure that we never lack zeal but keep our spiritual fervor as we serve the Lord?

First, let's beware of zeal comparison. That is a sure way either to depress us or make us proud. Elijah the prophet, after defeating the prophets of Baal, complained, "I have been very zealous for the Lord. I am the only one faithful in all of Israel." (1 Kings 19) God graciously corrected him. You are not the only zealous one, Elijah. There are 7000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Elijah was likely looking for certain signs of zeal, but zeal looks different in different people. It's not always calling down fire and slaying false prophets. So let's beware of zeal comparison, especially those of us who are more intense or extroverted.

Second, let's imitate the zeal of Jesus as our model. In the account of the Jesus cleansing of the temple in John 2, his actions reminded his disciples of this verse in the Psalms, "Zeal for your house consumes me." (Psalm 69:9) Jesus' zeal was certainly radical. He turned the tables of the money changers. But before turning the tables, he spent the night at Mary and Martha's house, making a whip. His zeal was not an uncontrolled temper tantrum, but rather a deliberate plan for purity. Jesus' zeal was about God's priority for purity in his house.

Jesus was also zealous for hospitality. His insistence that his father's house would be called a house of prayer for all nations, meant that any mechanism which kept the Gentiles from worshipingYahweh had to be radically death with. We should also be zealous for this kind of hospitality too. Then we see Jesus zealous for healing. He didn't only turn tables. He healed the lame and the sick in the temple. We should also be zealous for healing. Finally, we see Jesus being zealous for freedom. He would not let people stop the children running through the temple to worship him, shouting 'Hosanna. Blessed is the King!"

Following in the footsteps in Jesus, leaders are also called to be zealous for purity, hospitality, healing and freedom. Our zeal tends to flow easily towards some of these pursuits, but few off us are fervent about them all. Let's ask for Jesus' zeal for His father's house. Let's not play wisdom off against zeal. Refuse to be too cool to be zealous.Too studious to be zealous. Too mature to be zealous. If you want to lead in God's house, you're going to need zeal. Let's ask Jesus for God's zeal to consume us again, just as it consumed Him.

Living in the tension between self-care and self-denial

2025-01-24T21:22:00.000-08:00

Camino de Santiago north of Porto, Portugal

I see a spiritual director called Bill once a month, who has a been a profound gift to me for the past 7 years. Some time ago Bill said to me. “You need to give yourself more to self-care.”

I found myself having a visceral response towards that advice.

“Bill," I responded, "I think I understand what you are saying but I cannot tell you how many times I have had people say something like, 'My therapist says I cannot love others unless I first love myself and so I am going to prioritize self-care for now.' This usually means they stop serving, stop connecting regularly with Christian community and begin becoming very self-absorbed, even self-indulgent. How does this counsel line up with Jesus call to “deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me? ” (Matthew 16:24)

Bill responded, “I can see how immature people can abuse that kind of counsel. But you are not that kind of person. You are highly responsible. And I still believe you need to consider giving yourself to more self-care for the sake of serving others. If you don’t care for yourself there will be nothing left of yourself to deny.”

This began a time of reflection for me on what self care did and didn’t mean. It seems to me to be an important truth in-tension for those who follow Christ. I found a helpful piece from British theologian John Stott on what self-care does not mean.

'Loving yourself' is not Jesus' 3rd Great Commandment: John Stott

"Unfortunately, many Christians seem to have allowed themselves to be sucked into this self-esteem, self-love movement under the false impression that the Mosaic command, endorsed by Jesus, that we love our neighbor as ourselves is a command to love ourselves as well as our neighbor. But it really is not. Three arguments may be adduced.

First, and grammatically, Jesus did not say, ‘the first commandment is to love the Lord your God, the second to love your neighbor, and the third to love yourself.’ He spoke only of the first great commandment and of the second which was like it. The addition of ‘as yourself’ supplies a rough and ready, practical guide to neighbor-love, because ‘no one ever hated his own body’ (Eph 5:29 ). In this respect it is like the Golden Rule to ‘do to others what you would have them do to you’ (Mt 7:12 ). Most of us do love ourselves. So we know how we would like to be treated, and this will tell us how to treat others. Self-love is a fact to be recognized and a rule to be used, not a virtue to be commanded.

Second, and linguistically, the verb is agapao, and agape love means self-sacrifice in service of others. It cannot therefore be self-directed. The concept of sacrificing ourselves in order to serve ourselves is nonsense.

Third, and theologically, self-love is the biblical understanding of sin. Sin is being curved in on oneself (as Luther puts it). One of the marks of ‘the last days’ is that people will be ‘lovers of self’ instead of ‘lovers of God’ (2 Tim 3:1-5 ). Their love will be misdirected from God and neighbor to self. Let’s put this silliness to bed.

But then, how are we to regard ourselves? How are we to avoid the extremes of self-hatred and self-love? The cross of Christ supplies the answer, for it calls us both to self-denial and to self-affirmation.”

Whatever we are by creation we must affirm: our rationality, our sense of moral obligation, our sexuality (whether masculinity or femininity), our family life, our gifts of aesthetic appreciation and artistic creativity, our stewardship of the fruitful earth, our hunger for love and experience of community, our awareness of the transcendent majesty of God, and our inbuilt urge to fall down and worship him. All this (and more) is part of our created humanness. True, it has been tainted and twisted by sin. Yet Christ came to redeem it, not to destroy it. So, we must gratefully and positively affirm it."

Stott goes on…

"Whatever we are by the Fall, however, we must deny or repudiate: our irrationality, our moral perversity, our blurring of sexual distinctives and lack of sexual self-control, the selfishness that spoils our family life, our fascination with the ugly, our lazy refusal to develop God’s gifts, our polluting and spoiling of the environment, the antisocial tendencies that inhibit true community, our proud autonomy, and our idolatrous refusal to worship the living and true God. All this (and more) is part of our fallen humanness. Christ came not to redeem this but to destroy it. So we must strenuously deny it."

So, we are to avoid the extremes of self-hatred and self-love by managing the tension between self-denial and self-affirmation. That’s a good start.

Affirming Self-Care

But, practically, how does self-affirmation flow into self-care? How do we take care of ourselves without becoming self-indulgent, without getting curved in on ourselves?

It seems that this tension is held beautifully in the life of Jesus.

In Mark 6 :30 after the brutal death of His cousin John, Jesus said two his disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a remote place and rest for a while.”

Jesus’ self-care consisted of retreat, solitude, rest, eating, recreation, beauty and friendship. V 31 It was in response to grief, tragedy, busyness and depletion. "Many people were coming and going and they did not even have time to eat." Self-care recognizes signs of physical, emotional and relational depletion early, and makes plans to replenish them.

What fills your tank? What do you look forward to? If the answer is nothing, you are in danger of redlining on reserve. Sabbath is God's gift of self care and his common grace is available to us all to replenish our bodies and souls.

Signs of poor self-care are boasting about busyness, emotional numbness, mental foggyness, masking of pain with media/sugar/alcohol/tobacco/spending, procrastinating about our health, the desire to stay in bed longer than usual, a refusal to rest on our day off, an inability to say no, irritability, when ministry becomes merely a job, reluctance to exercise, neglecting grooming, lack of romance or emotional connection with our spouse, daydreaming about vacation, a lack of joy!

Do you have a wise, mature, sacrificial disciple of Jesus who can call you out on this without leading you into self-indulgence? Who is your friend, who sees it as their role to care for you rather than unload on you? God wants us to have a happy, holy, healthy self to give away! We take care of ourselves for the sake of serving others.

In Praise of Self-Denial

What about self-denial? In some ways it is noble to say, “Yes, you’re right. I work too hard. I am bad at self-care. But to admit that I am bad at self-denial stabs at the core of what it is to be a Christ-follower. “If anyone would be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”

Mark 6:34 tells us, that when Jesus went to ashore for his retreat, "He saw a large crowd and had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Then he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples approached him and said, “This place is deserted, and it is already late. Send them away so they can go into the surrounding countryside and villages to buy themselves something to eat.” “You give themselves something to eat,” he responded. How many loaves do you have. Go and see.”

Jesus exhibited a powerful ability to deny himself, motivated by compassion for people. He allowed his retreat with his disciples to be interrupted because he was concerned that the crowds were like ‘sheep without a shepherd.’ He cared for people spiritually and physically, not out of abundance but out of his lack. He pressed into His father for miraculous power to nourish spiritually and physically hungry people and God met him profoundly.

Verse 45 tells us that he did not forget his retreat. Immediately after the miracle, He dismissed the crowd and told his disciples to get into the boat. But he was willing for his routines to be interrupted and and margins to be invaded for the sake of people. He had a rhythm more than a routine.

How do we know if we are poor at self-denial? We have an inflexible routine that cannot be interrupted by people, we have an inflexible threshold of service that cannot be stretched by unique demand, we are motivated more by duty than compassion, we only give to people out of abundance not out of lack. We resent people arriving at our house unannounced. We are extremely boundaried about serving beyond our defined ministry responsibility.

So, let's ask for the Spirit's power and wisdom to live in this healthy tension. We need help to willingly deny ourselves for the sake of others, for that is the last thing our flesh wants to do. But let's not forget to care for ourselves for the sake of serving others. Because if we don't there will be nothing left of ourselves to deny.

Tea with the Queen : a tribute to Carol Wimber-Wong (1937-2025)

2025-01-04T08:55:00.000-08:00

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Carol Wimber -Wong this past week. I am also so grateful for her faith legacy and wanted to post a tribute to her for the way in which her life and ministry impacted mine. I am praying that the blessed hope of the resurrection would comfort and all who mourn her death and that her life would inspire thousands to keep following hard after Jesus. This is something I wrote about Carol in 2013 and it remains as meaningful as ever to me today.

"While I have always wanted to see leaders raised up to make a kingdom impact, my vision for cultivating young leaders with profound character was catalyzed and clarified over a cup of tea in 2013. I don’t even like tea, but I was excited at the privilege of having a cup with Carol Wong, who had been married to John Wimber—the founder of the fellowship of Vineyard churches. John died in 1997 but, by then, God’s work in the Vineyard had left an indelible mark on the worldwide church in terms of worship, healing and the prophetic.

A number of years after John died, Carol married Ken Wong, a close family friend who had also been wid
owed. In fact, Ken was the doctor who treated John during his battle with cancer. I visited them with a friend named Carl Tuttle. Carl had joined Southlands a year prior and was a worshipleader who had first met John and Carol as a teen. Even though at the time Carl was a young Christian who could barely strum three chords on the guitar, John asked him to start leading worship in the Bible study that would one day become the first Vineyard church. Carl eventually grew to be a prolific songwriter with a number of his songs becoming Vineyard standards around the world. He was also the man who took over leadership of the Vineyard in Anaheim after John became ill. Carl eventually had a breakdown and left the Vineyard under a cloud of suspicion and resentment.

He lost his marriage, his ministry and many friends during that tragic season—including his friendship with Carol. Fifteen years later, Carl was penitent and hoping to build some of the bridges that had been broken. I reached out to Carol in the hopes of being a bridge builder. By God's grace this happened. Carl and Carol were reconciled and she welcomed Carl back as a prodigal son to the Vineyard family. He was restored in both relationship and ministry, partly because o0f that meeting that day.

But I got much more than I bargained for because having tea with Carol was like having tea with the queen. Sitting in their Yorba Linda home, Carol and Ken told me how they had recently been invited to Yorba Linda Friends Church’s 100th anniversary. It’s a remarkable thing to be able to celebrate a century of gospel impact. Yorba Linda Friends has an amazing record of faithfulness, extending as far as India, where they are the largest builder of schools among the Dalit caste.

Like any church, though, their tapestry has a few dark strands woven into the stunning pattern of their history. One of those strands was added at the end of the 1970s when the church asked the twelve families from a single Bible study to leave the church. The group had been meeting in the home of Carl’s mom and was led by John and Carol. They had begun exploring intimate worship, saturated by the presence of the Holy Spirit. It was an intoxicating time for these folks but uncomfortable for a church more cautious about the charismatic. In these rather messy circumstances, the Vineyard was planted.

Sitting in their lounge, Ken and Carol told me how delighted they were, more than thirty years later, to be invited to Yorba Linda Friends’ centenary celebrations and to be publicly honored as a movement that God had birthed and multiplied. I believe this kingdom gesture will have immense redemptive ripple effects in the time to come.

But here’s the part that arrested me. Carol tells me that they were sitting there at the 100th anniversary when she turned to Ken and had the following conversation.

“Kenneth, these people haven’t seen the miracles we’ve seen. They haven’t enjoyed the worship we’ve enjoyed. They haven’t heard the prophecy we’ve heard. But they’ve done something we didn’t really do.”

“What’s that?” asked Ken.

“They raised sons and daughters who love and serve God. They discipled their kids,” she replied.

Then she turned to me with royal fire in her eyes and said, “We thought if we loved our kids enough and if they were anointed enough, it would be enough. But it wasn’t. We didn’t really discipline our children. Don’t choose between powerful encounters and discipling the next generation.”

It was a statement of honor towards Yorba Linda Friends, and a humble admission that as a people hungry for the power of the Spirit, we’ve often been guilty of valuing anointing over character, sudden over slow, converts over disciples—breakthrough now over maturity one day.

I don’t believe we’re called to ignore one at the expense of the other. An expectation of God’s power breaking in now is vital to capture the imagination of the next generation. But I wonder how differently we would live and lead if we thought, “What would this mean in a century’s time?” And I wonder how different our churches would look if we placed as much value on a lifetime of anointed plodding as we did upon one moment of power."

An excerpt from my book,"Broken for Blessing : the underrated potential of the medium-sized multiplying church."

The Cabin and the Gift Basket: a Thanksgiving Reflection

2024-11-27T16:42:00.003-08:00

About a decade ago, a very kind lady in our church heard that I was struggling to find time to finish my Masters thesis in the midst of juggling ministry and family. She approached me and told me that her father pastored a church about an hour away from us that had a small cabin on the property. She said she had asked him if I could come up to study and write for a couple of days a month, and that he was happy to provide the cabin to me free of charge. The cabin was in Lake Gregory, a quaint little alpine town with a picturesque lake in the San Bernardino mountains.

To say I was grateful would be an understatement. I was overwhelmed by her thoughtfulness, her father's kindness and the church's generosity. For a few years, once a month, I would drive up to that cabin on a Thursday afternoon, spend the night, work through my day off on Friday and drive back in the evening to be with my family and church for the weekend. The cabin was a gift of predictable solitude. I would pray and sing on the drive up and down the mountain. It wasn't just productive. It was life giving. Although it was a working retreat, I would look forward to that monthly pilgrimage up the mountain to that cozy little cabin. I'd always make a point of stopping by the church office to pick up the key and express sincere gratitude for this wonderful gift.

As if this were not gift enough, there would always be a gift basket on the kitchen table when I unlocked the cabin. The basket would have all manner of little treats in it; coffee, soda, gum, candy, chocolate. It was a most unexpected surprise to find that this church had not only given me the use of their cabin, but had thoughtfully considered how to make my stay even more comfortable with this gift basket. Over the months on the drive up to the cabin I would find myself anticipating that gift basket, wondering what they had put in it this time. To be honest, as the months past by, I began to think more about the gift basket than the gift of the cabin. I'd arrive, collect the key from the office and make a bee line to the kitchen table to see what was in the basket this time around.

Eventually, the day arrived when the inevitable happened. I collected the key from the church office and upon opening the cabin, I discovered, to my dismay, that they had forgotten to give me a gift basket. I searched the cabin high and low but my gift basket was nowhere to be found. I felt disappointed. Sadly, even a bit sorry for myself.

After some time, self pity made way for conviction. I had become ungrateful and entitled. There I was, sitting in a comfortable, warm, free cabin, feeling sorry for myself that I did not have my little gift basket. I had forgotten the enormous gift of shelter, comfort and peace in my fixation with a passing caffeine and sugar rush! I sensed God speak to me in the moment about how the cabin and the gift basket revealed a broader pattern of ingratitude in my heart. I tended to fixate on His sweet, temporary blessings, taking for granted His immovable blessings toward me in Christ. His salvation, His grace, His presence, His Word and His people were something that I so easily took for granted. And yet, they were by far the more enduring gift. The gift basket of material possessions, ministry success, new adventures, physical health and pleasure were all common graces, but they were fleeting at best. I had become forgetful of the Lord's great benefits and fickle in my gratitude.

I love Thanksgiving as a holiday. I love the traditions of turkey recipe swapping and tables laden with green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and pecan pie. I love settling in to watch the football feeling stuffed after the meal, enjoying a lazy afternoon with family and friends with nothing more on the agenda than perhaps a second helping of pecan pie. I love that we take time to go around the table to express gratitude for God's provision. That's how Thanksgiving originated, after all. But I'm also aware of the irony that Thanksgiving morphs very quickly into Black Friday. One moment we're expressing gratitude for all that we have and the next we are rushing to the nearest mall or laptop to get the best deal on what we simply cannot live without. Discontentment crouches at the door of Thanksgiving.

So, at this time of year I use the cabin and the gift basket lesson as a kind of Thanksgiving audit of my soul. I will begin by giving thanks to God for the gift basket: For the common graces of where we live, the food on the table, the money in our bank account, the roof over our heads, the health in my body. I thank God for his ministry blessings and the new adventures I've enjoyed. I thank God for the rich gift of marriage, family and friendship in our lives.( To place these precious relational blessings on the same level as financial blessing would be foolish, but my point is that none off these blessings are guaranteed to be permanent.) Then I thank God for the cabin of His immovable blessings in Christ; His gospel of grace, His Word and His Spirit, His family and His kingdom. While I am thankful for both gift basket and cabin, I try to ensure that my joy is anchored in the immovable cabin rather than the movable gift basket. When I do this it helps me to avoid self pity when the gift basket seems less full or even absent. (That family member I wish was at the table with us, but is not. That check I am waiting for that has not arrived. That purchase I am wanting to make but cannot afford) Giving thanks for the cabin helps me avoid fixation with the gift basket.

So, I commend this audit to you at Thanksgiving, both for your joy and God's honor. May Jesus shape in us a powerful posture of gratitude that rejoices in the Thanksgiving tradition, but endures beyond it.

"Thanks be to God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus." (Ephesian 1:3 )

Happy Thanksgiving!

No Longer Children: reflections on a decade of church planting

2024-10-15T08:40:00.000-07:00

Branded on the leather key chain to the keys of my 2008 Ford F150 are the words "Southlands: A Gospel Constellation." It speaks of our multiplying vision. We are not trying to grow to be one giant planet of a church. Instead, we want to be a constellation of churches shining the light of the gospel into the darkness of this world.

My truck is as old as my American sojourn. In 2008, we joined a church that had multiplied 12 times in 14 years. Southlands was a bit like my old truck. Sturdy, willing, productive but showing some signs of wear and tear. She was a medium sized church - about 500 people, which is remarkable really, when you think that only 1% of American churches under 1000 ever plant churches. She was the little engine that could.

When the apostle Paul described a mature church in his letter to the Ephesians, he seemed to mix his metaphors with ships and children. 'Then we will no longer be children, tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine." What he seemed to be driving at, was that stability is a mark of maturity. A mature church has enough ballast in its boat to navigate through the storms of heresy and theological faddishness without getting blown over, whereas an immature church is easily blown off course, or pushed over like a little toddler trying to stand in the ocean.

What is true of doctrinal maturity, is also true of missional maturity in a church. One may need to navigate different seasons and weather conditions, but mature churches can hold their course against rip tides and cross winds, tacking along until the tides turn and the winds are at their back. There was a year that we somehow made it into Christian Leadership magazine for being one of the top 100 multiplying churches in the nation, but honestly, much of the time we have flown beneath the radar, and our journey has been a bit like that of the missionary William Carey who said, "My only genius is I plod."

By God's grace we have multiplied 8 times in the last 11 years and are preparing to plant again next year. One of those churches was folded back into the base at Brea during the pandemic, having lost its venue and many of its people due to the strange socio-economic dynamics of that time. But all of the others have grown in health and strength, some steadily, some slowly and a couple more rapidly. What makes me most joyful is that one church has already planted another two churches amongst unreached people groups in Thailand. I heard about one of our plants that is around 150 in size that baptized 11 people last Sunday. This is the dream. This is the why of church planting. Ultimately it is not about pins on a map. We plant new churches because we believe that they are the most effective way of fulfilling the Great Commission. As Ed Stetzer, a prominent missiologist and president of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism once said, "In winning new converts to Christ, church plants are light-years ahead of the average church because of their focus on reaching the unchurched. Healthy new churches have an outward focus from day one, communicating every month that the goal is to be a multiplying church.” (He is now the Dean of Talbot Seminary)

Another benefit of multiplication is that it creates a healthy vortex that draws spectator Christians out of the stands and on to the field of play as active disciples. This is true of leadership, volunteerism, generosity and prayer. In multiplication, the saints are equipped to do the work of ministry with a greater sense of urgency because multiplication creates a crisis of need. Larger churches that meet in one place tend to gather a larger crowd of consumers who assume that the work of ministry will be done by professionals. This is true of smaller churches too, who can assume that it is only larger churches that will multiply. This is why I wrote Broken for Blessing (Broken-Blessing) about the underrated potential of the medium sized multiply church.

One of the tensions we've had to manage as we've matured into multiplication, is what I refer to as managing home and away game wins. Until 2010 we were like a team that won its away games but lost many of its home games. We had to push pause on planting for three years to regain home game wins - like financial and leadership health and seeing new disciples come to Christ regularly in our own zip code. Still today, more than ten years later, we are trying to find a sustainable rhythm of multiplying that enables the sending base to thrive, not just survive. That can be tricky, but we remain convinced, that like the boy with the loaves and fish in the feeding of the 5000, Jesus is asking us to put our loaves and fishes in his hand to be broken, blessed and multiplied. He is able to multiply what we give him to feed the hungry multitudes with His life, and is able to replenish what we entrust to Him in good time.

But the question remains, to every disciple and every church, "What will you do when Jesus asks you for your lunch?" When we respond willingly, we are caught up in His stunning multiplying miracle.

A Fresh Commissioning

2024-05-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

I am so grateful to God and to Southlands for the gift of a sabbatical once every 7 years. This is our second sabbatical, and it is a chance to visit family in South Africa, reconnect as a family and lean in to slower rhythms of grace for God's refreshing and fortifying before the next season of life and ministry.

The start of this sabbatical brings with it a convergence of change for us as a church and for us as a couple. I would describe this convergence of change as a season of fresh commissioning.

How so?

First, this month we moved from One Church Multiple Congregations, to A Family of Churches. For ten years we have been planting Southlands congregations with Brea carrying a central burden of finance and administration. This has enabled congregations to get up and running without being weighed down by too many administrative details. Now, both Southlands Chino and Southlands Santa Ana have experienced sufficient growth and strength to be able to carry their own administrative and financial responsibilities. So, from here on, we will be able to maintain meaningful rhythms of togetherness such as prayer, fasting, worship, leadership training and church planting, while giving full autonomy to these Southlands churches. It is like the training wheels are coming off each bicycle, and I believe we will all ride faster because of it, while continuing to ride together. So, we celebrate a fresh commissioning for our Southlands family of churches.

Personally, Rynelle and I have also experienced a fresh commissioning, having been asked to lead the Advance Global team. We have led as part of this remarkably gifted team for around 8 years, and it is an honor to provide a catalytic, collaborative leadership role to men and women of such great capacity and integrity. To be clear, we have not been asked to lead the movement, but rather to lead the team that leads the movement. Advance is a family of around 150 churches on a mission to plant and strengthen churches into over 20 nations around the world currently. Our team has experienced God's enlargement, peace and joy in this leadership transition, and we are so grateful to have been helped by our broader partnership with New Frontiers. We are beginning to witness real momentum and gospel opportunity as we emerge into a season of greater clarity as a movement.

I will continue to provide visionary leadership to Southlands and will continue to lead the team of elders, but this is also a moment of fresh commissioning for our Southlands leaders to step into greater roles of responsibility and authority. I want to ask you to give them your full support as we all follow Jesus, our Chief Shepherd. We are in a season of God's life and growth and I am confident that Jesus does not want that to slow down because of our new role in Advance. I believe it is a moment of fresh commissioning for all of us in the Southlands family as we embrace God's call on us to be a resourcing church for a global movement.

Ryan TermosHuizen had this word for us that frames our season well, I believe.

"The name Southlands is about a people, but not about the boundaries of your mission. You will be enlarged to reach the highlands and the lowlands, the inlands and the coastlands. North, South, East and West freshly impacted. There will be an increase of people coming in for seasons of healing and learning. There will be fresh growth and generosity for the nations to be well served. I think of swimmers whose lungs are freshly filled with capacity for fresh air for a new race. God wants to fill you with fresh capacity for fresh wind for a fresh race."

Southlands, let's inhale the life of God's Spirit deeply, so that Jesus enlarges our capacity as a people commissioned to see the gospel take root and bear fruit all over the world.

God's Methodist Moment: reflections on the Asbury Outpouring

2023-09-08T20:29:00.005-07:00

I was raised in a Methodist church, shaped by the Wesleyan holiness tradition. My parents have been immovable pillars in that Methodist church for some 50 years. The great legacy of the Wesley brothers - magnificent hymns, revivalistic preaching and deep piety - is gratefully mine. But the emphasis on personal holiness drained my soul of the assurance I craved as a young believer. I have vivid teenage memories of kneeling at the altar to take communion and sticking my fingers through the communion cup holes to grip the altar rail as I confessed my sin, terrified I'd lost my salvation. It took me until my 30's for the doctrines of grace to anchor me in gospel assurance. I also longed for an environment of greater openness to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So, a year after getting married in that church, my wife and I left it for a church that met those longings.

Several years after leaving, I found myself pastoring in a large church that put a lot of effort into the quality of its music, media, lighting and sound on Sundays. If something went wrong with these production values, our team leader would would say, "Well, that was a bit of a Methodist moment, wasn't it?" This was his way of saying, 'That was a bit clunky and old-fashioned.' We would laugh and make sure it didn't happen again. I am actually not against high production values, but looking back, I cringe a little at how smug we were and also that I didn't speak up and say, "Hey, that's my parents' church you're talking about!" But I didn't.

So, you can imagine my surprise on hearing two decades later that there was an outpouring of the Spirit on a small Methodist college campus in Wilmore, Kentucky called Asbury University.

What began as a standard students' chapel on February the 8th, 2023, with a local pastor preaching a no-better-than-average message, led to sustained repentance as students knelt at the altar rail. Zack Meerkreebs recalls, “I called my wife after my message, told her I had preached a stinker and cancelled my two afternoon meetings so I could go home and take a nap. But after a couple hours of worship and repentance I realized Jesus had something else in mind.”

Such was the heat and weight of God’s presence in that chapel, the President of the university emailed all students and faculty at 9 pm that evening, encouraging them to go to Hughes Auditorium and told them that classes were canceled until further notice. That chapel service morphed into a 16 day continuous prayer meeting that attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors to Asbury and touched millions online around the world. Eight months later, Asbury has become something of a revival catalyst, with fires of gospel awakening flickering on many college campuses across the USA.

After a group of us led by my friend, Todd Proctor, visited with faculty, student and pastoral leaders who stewarded the outpouring this past week, I can only conclude that the Asbury Outpouring is God's Methodist Moment.

By this, I mean that on the surface, there was absolutely nothing flashy or produced about what was going on there. Zero hype. It was unpolished - even a little clunky at times. The worship and the preaching were biblical and heart-felt, but unspectacular. There were multiple authentic testimonies of miracles, but they were told in understated ways. There were no big names attached to the outpouring. No book deals or record contracts thus far. In fact, the leaders had an aversion to celebrity culture. And yet despite this, perhaps because of this, the veil between heaven and earth felt paper thin. It felt like what the Celtic Christians called, a thin place. There was a kind of naive purity about it all that I hope will remain unspoiled. Jesus was the only spectacular attraction.

Make no mistake though, the leaders there carry some wise values that left a deep impression on me. I would describe them as follows:

Consecration

The four words emblazoned above the Hughes Auditorium stage at Asbury University - Holiness unto the Lord - best describe what I encountered when meeting with the leaders there. What left the deepest impression on me was the sense of consecration among them. The repeated theme of repentance and dying to self marked every conversation. One lady described the Hughes Auditorium as a beautiful graveyard where I crucified my old self and buried it. Worship leaders and preachers would rush to pray in the consecration room before getting on stage to crucify pride, confess weakness and declare dependence upon the Holy Spirit.

David Thomas, the pastor/theologian described by the group as the man who fathered people through the outpouring, insisted that repentance came from kindness rather than severity or manipulation. “People were so enraptured by the beauty of Jesus that they were only too glad to be rid of their sin. Holiness was no longer a set of behaviors. Holiness became a Person.”

The consecration looked like genuine humility and hard work on relational unity. Impressive.

For me personally, returning to my childhood environment of consecration with my soul more tethered to the grace of God, was beautiful and needed. As I knelt at the altar God’s presence reminded me of C.S Lewis's description of Aslan the lion when he peeled off Edmund’s dragon skin in The Voyage of the DawnTreader.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. "

Grace is not permission to sin. Grace is the power not to sin. And this grace was available through an atmosphere of consecration.

Leadership Courage

I heard repeatedly about the courage of the University’s leadership to allow the outpouring to interrupt the normal rhythm of their institution. This went further than merely suspending classes for two weeks. Dr. Kevin Brown, the President of Asbury, insisted that all giving buttons be turned off during the outpouring on their website so as not to leverage it for financial gain. One student leader told me the university had also refused to leverage the outpouring as a marketing ploy to grow their student body. Both President and Vice President were integrally involved in the prayer ministry during the outpourings too. They were ministers, not just administrators. Dr. Brown explained, Asbury has a revival history, so if there is an outpouring, we are a riverbed that means the water knows where to go.”

His institutional courage acted like a river bed for the outpouring channeling it purposefully towards consecration and mission. Imagine the courage it took to interrupt normal academic rhythms for 16 days, allowing hundreds of thousands of revival seekers to inundate the campus? Imagine the courage it took to bring the prayer meeting to an end after 16 days when it was still in such full flow?

I wonder if there have been hundreds of other chapel or church services that have experienced a deluge of grace but there was simply insufficient institutional courage to welcome the interruption?

Lingering Worship

The third virtue was lingering worship. Perhaps the small town affected this, but nobody was in a rush. Planning center was nowhere to be found. Worship was unhurried, uninterrupted singing; congregational in nature, theologically true, but more adoration than description about God. I am all for rehearsing rich gospel truths in our singing, but if worship does not lead to adoration of Jesus it can be a theological exercise. Do we have such an environment in our churches at some point in our calendars?

Travailing Prayer

David Thomas taught a profound message of travailing prayer, from the Old Testament prophets, to Jesus to Paul to the 'Spirit who intercedes with groans too deep to express." (Romans 8:26) He warned about the American Churches' affair with casual prayer, calling Biblical prayer a language of tears. Here is a link to his book on Travailing Prayer. I believe leaning in to travailing prayer is going to be a mark of awakening in our churches and on our campuses.

Generational Risk

Finally, the generational risk was impressive. Asbury was primarily an outpouring for Gen Z led by Gen Z. Included in the leadership team who met with us was an 18-year old freshman who preached, and a student in her twenties who single handedly directed the 4 prayer rooms that operated adjacent to the main auditorium. The 24-hour worship was co-ordinated by a young white woman who was married to an African American man who led the gospel choir. Their willingness to be mentored and coached by older leaders was remarkable. But the older leaders' willingness to have them take the lead was beautiful. Our church has hundreds of Gen Zers and I returned intent on taking more risks with them as leaders.

So, I'm considering these values deeply and crying out for God for a Methodist Moment in our church and the college campuses we serve. Won't you join me?

The Revival Nobody Wanted: untangling the mess of church leadership scandal

2023-08-05T12:50:00.014-07:00

I count myself among those who long for Jesus to revive his people.

I love to read about revival and remind people to live expectantly for it in our day. I am often asked to teach about revival and work closely with my friend, Oscar Merlo, who is the Director of Biola's Center for the Study of Revival. Our church spends significant time praying for it and I've co-written a primer on revival prayer. I am taking some of our pastor's to meet the leaders of the Asbury Awakening this month. I celebrate the thousands of baptisms that took place at Pirate's Cove in Newport Beach this past month that hint at a new and desperately needed move of God coming to California. All this to say, I am more of a revival enthusiast than a revival skeptic.

Man-manufactured or God-orchestrated?

But I took heed of Francis Chan's warning a few years ago that we need to be able to discern between man-manufactured 'revival' and God-orchestrated revival. He compared a wave machine in a wave pool that manufactures a predictable pseudo-wave to the beauty, power and unpredictability of a genuine wave. One of the marks of true revival is unpredictability. Men cannot start it, control it or end it.

Which brings me to a recent conversation that I had with a wise friend about the tragic leadership scandals in the Evangelical/Charismatic Church these past years. From Bill Hybels to Ravi Zacharias, from Mark Driscoll to Carl Lentz and Brian Houston, from Mike Pilavachi to Alan Scott, I have looked on with utter dismay at these gifted, high profile leaders who have either fallen morally or been accused of spiritual abuse. The last two names give me a pit in my stomach as I type them. They are men who I know personally. One of them leads a church less than 5 miles from mine. The other has stayed in my house and ministered in every church I have ever pastored since 1997. My daughter was an intern in his church for a year in London. And while the investigations into these two men are not yet complete, it's safe to say that Church leadership scandal has come far too close to home this past year.

An Unlikely Revival

As my wise friend and I tried to make sense of the tragic deconstruction of faith and disillusionment with the Church that is understandably taking place in the wake of these leaders' scandals, he suggested, "Perhaps this is a strange and unlikely revival? Perhaps God is cleaning house for the sake of his glory?"

This is in no way meant to minimize the painful trauma experienced by so many people through sexual, emotional or spiritual abuse at the hands of these leaders. I am so heavy-hearted hearing of the appalling treatment of so many people at the hands of church leaders. I am learning to listen carefully and walk tenderly with some of those victims who are close to me. Justice must also take its course and I am all for that.

But if we are able to view these repeated tragedies through the lens of God's mysterious providence, perhaps we could glimpse God at work orchestrating the revival that nobody wanted in His Church. One lady in our church this week told me, "I saw a giant broom. God was cleaning house. He was sweeping out the dust to prepare His house for another wave of His glory." The sobering warning from the Apostle Peter that, "Judgment begins with the house of God," reminds us that while Jesus is gracious to forgive us of our sins, He holds those who have tasted of His grace to a higher standard.

So, what if these painful scandals were about purifying God's leaders from using God's people to serve themselves? What if they were also about God purifying His people from being overly reliant on charismatic leaders to mediate between them and Himself?

What if this was a revival God was giving that nobody wanted?

So, what now?

If this were so, what would an appropriate response be?

Without being over-simplistic, deep and lasting repentance would be a great place to start. Genuine revival is always marked by genuine repentance. An example of this is Ezra's prayer.

"As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice....But now for a brief moment favor has been shown by the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery." (Ezra 9: 3-9)

Leaders, let's be lead repenters. Let's repent of sexual sin. Let's repent of greed. Let's repent of using people to serve us. Let's repent of micro-managing. Let's repent of emotional abuse and gas lighting. Let's repent of confusing bravery with bravado and courage with always getting our own way.

I don't want to rob you of courage. Leaders desperately need courage these days. Leadership in the church is an almost impossibly difficult task. People have become more difficult to lead. They have become more sensitive and less co-operative. But it is still possible, with the help of the Spirit of Christ, to maintain courage and compassion as a leader.

In the midst of calling out injustice in the Church (and we must), let's all repent of having an easily shaken faith that was overly dependent on gifted, charismatic leaders. Our faith is not theirs to shake. Let's honor the gift of leadership without idolizing it. Let's repent of wanting a king, like Israel. Let's esteem good leaders who care for us more highly than great leaders who don't even know us. Let's resolve to have no King but Jesus.

I bet you this kind of repentance would precede a wave of genuine revival.

God treasures up His bright designs

As humans with limits on our wisdom, we view life and especially suffering, as if looking at the back side of a tapestry. All we see is a tangled mess. But God is at work making something beautiful of this mess on the other side of the tapestry. Every now and then He flips it over and gives us a glimpse of His grand design. But one day we will see face to face, and we will realize He makes all things beautiful in His time.

As William Cowper, the hymn writer once wrote, "God treasures up his bright designs, and works His sovereign will.”

Or as Joseph, the abused brother and slave once said,"What man intended for harm, God intended for good, for the saving of many lives." (Genesis 50:20)

Learning from the Church in Asia

2023-03-17T21:49:00.004-07:00

Flying somewhere between Seoul and Bangkok, I began counting the number of international ministry trips I've done in my lifetime to pass the hours - a bit like counting sheep to fall asleep. I started flying internationally in 1990 and worked it out to be around 100 trips by 2023, not including the many times I've driven across international borders. This is not a flex. It's a confession. While I love the nations, international travel has lost its novelty for me. My body is not designed for it. My soul does not long for it. Long haul flights in particular, make me feel every year of my age. I can no longer shrug off jet lag like I used to. It hovers around like an unwanted visitor who has overstayed their welcome.

So, why do I still do it?

Very simply, I do it because I believe embodied visits impart something to churches that videos, zoom calls and books do not. The Apostle Paul, in his inestimably great letter to the church in Rome, wrote that he longed to be present with them so that he might impart some spiritual gift to them to make them strong, that they might be mutually encouraged by each others faith.

I do believe that in some way Rynelle and I impart something to churches when we travel. I also know for sure that we always gain some mutual encouragement from being with them. Having just returned from our 10 day trip to Asia where we spent time with our dear friends at One Light Church in Thailand and Redemption Hill Church in Singapore, though my body is tired, my heart is full. Despite my travel complaints above, both visits were a real joy, re-kindling treasured friendships and strengthening gospel partnerships. So, I waned to share some of the encouragement I have received from being with them.

Of course, Asia is not monolithic. It is vast and wonderfully diverse. Thailand and Singapore themselves are vastly different from one another, both culturally and economically. But collectively they have something to say to us, so I am reflecting on the gift of the Asian Church broadly to us as the American Church broadly.

What does it have to teach us?

A Minority Faith is a Robust Faith

First, it teaches us that a minority faith is a robust faith. Thailand is just over 1% Christian, while Christianity has slightly more influence in Singapore at 11%, but in both nations, Christians are a vast minority. Bhuddist monks are so revered in Thailand that they have special seating for them in airports and Bhuddism is by far the majority religion at 94%. The spread of religions is more even in Singapore, with Bhudddism at 31%, Islam at 15% and Taoism at 8%, while 20% of the population identify as having no religion. Overall though, the religious rights of Christians in Asia are fragile to non-existent. Churches live at the mercy of watchful and mostly suspicious government authorities who fear that their growth may disrupt the religious and cultural status quo. People who become Christians are often viewed as betraying their families, their faith and their culture, so there is a significant cost to following Jesus. Yet, this minority faith reality serves to forge an astonishing common bond among Christians.

While the debate rages on about whether America is or should be a Christian nation, there is no debate for me as to the quality of Christian that is forged in a minority faith context. It is simply a more robust faith because there are no social benefits to becoming a Christian, so believers count the cost of following Jesus in more sobering ways than do Christians in the U.S. Does this mean that we should wish that Christianity becomes a minority in the USA in order that it should flourish? Certainly not. But neither should we fear the fact that we are living in an increasingly secular post-Christian reality. It creates more robust Christians, while a majority Christian nation tends to create more nominal Christians.

An Embattled Gospel is a Treasured Gospel

While Christians live lives that are embattled by hostility to the gospel in Asia, there is a treasuring of the gospel that is marvelous. I spoke to a man in the Singapore church who was from Malaysia, which is a strict Muslim country. He personally knew of people that had been imprisoned or killed for trying to convert Muslims in his home country. He was sensing a call to leave the relative comfort of Singapore and return to Malaysia, but was wrestling with the danger of the call. As he talked you could see that despite real fear, the love of Christ was compelling him.

If you compare the last words of Bhudda to the last words of Jesus you will understand why Christians from primarily Bhuddist nations treasure the gospel. On his death bed, Bhudda's last words to the monks around him were, "Monks, work hard to earn your salvation!" In contrast, Jesus last words to those who surrounded him at the cross were, "It is finished!"

Christ finished the work of redeeming humanity from slavery to sin, paying our debt in full with his own life to set us free. While grace calls us to worshipful effort in serving God, it is opposed to earning of our salvation. Asian Christians treasure the grace of God in Jesus that has freed them from slavishly having to earn merit with God. There is a palpable relief and joy because of the gospel. Make no mistake, they are generally sacrificial and highly disciplined. But they treasure the gospel. You can hear it in their voices as they sing. You can see it in their faces as they speak. You can hear it in their earnest prayers. An embattled gospel is a treasured gospel.

A Communal Christian is a Healthier Christian

The communal nature of Christianity in Asia is compelling. The idea of being a Christian who is not part of a church, just doesn't make any sense to a Christian here. For a start, culture is far more collectivist, less individualistic. But also, following Jesus without the encouragement of other Christians and godly leaders is just too hard. We should take our cue from them. A Christian walking alone is a Christian in walking in danger. One Light Church in Thailand builds community by feeding their whole congregation a simple lunch after their morning service. Nobody rushes off to their favorite restaurant. It's more important to be together. RHC in Singapore is a bigger and busier church with 5 different congregations so there is no after-church lunch, but still, people linger after each service in their rented hotel ballroom, chatting at length and praying for one another. Both churches have facilities that are solid but minimal - no high end coffee shops or playgrounds to get people to stay around. (I am for both of these, by the way!) And yet, there is a profound priority on an unhurried gathering that weaves a strong communal fabric within the church. While both churches do Christian counseling and community groups it seems as though much of the disciple making and counseling is happening organically and relationally, rather than programmatically and professionally. This makes for a more healthy Christian.

A High Carb Diet is the Best Kind of Diet!

Not really. But seriously! Lots of walking, 5 small meals a day, lots of carbs, and very few overweight people. What are we missing?

You may think I am idealizing Asian Christianity. Make no mistake, there are many qualities of Christianity here in the USA that have resourced the Church in Asia. Our music, our books, our seminaries, our innovation and our generosity have fueled the mission of Christ in Asia in remarkable ways. But let's not fall into thinking that the resourcing is a one way street. Far from it. The Church in Asia has so much to teach us, and in the years to come I believe the American churches that are humble enough to learn from our brothers and sisters there will be noticeably stronger than those that don't.

I'm forever thankful to God for Asia and particularly, the Church in Asia.

2022 in the Books

2022-12-24T11:37:00.003-08:00

I know these 'Books I've read this year' lists can come across as a literary flex. Or even worse, they can serve as a guilt trip for those who feel they haven't read enough. I hope this list is neither. I hope it serves as a recommended list for you if you're looking for something to read over Christmas or into the New year. The truth is, in a year when I finished writing and releasing Psalms for a Saturated Soul, I assumed I would not get much time to read beyond that.

Happily, I was wrong, for two reasons.

First, I co-lead a morning book club with about 20 men from ages 14 to 71. It may be my favorite time of the week. It forces me to keep reading myself and it's been a joy to see relationships and faith deepen as we've journeyed together. Second, while I prefer reading books in print, leaning freshly into Audible this year meant a good deal of travel was spent listening to books rather than podcasts. That was time well spent and some books, like Bono's 'Surrender,' are actually better in Audible because of the musical interludes.

Some books were hard work. Others I enjoyed so much I didn't went them to end. A couple of books on the list are as yet, unfinished, but still recommended. Here are a few lines on each one of them, in three categories.

A. Non-Fiction

1. The Gospel in Genesis by Dr. Martin-Lloyd Jones

I returned to read this little gem of a transcript of sermons from the good doctor as we entered our Genesis series at church. While I would not include some of the heavy-lifting commentaries that have been required reading during the sermon series, this is an easy and insightful read with timeless truths and fascinating Welsh anecdotes.

2. The Secular Creed by Rebecca McClaughlin

McClaughlin is a British author and Christian apologist living in the USA. This work is a brief but insightful engagement with the secular creed through the lens of Scripture. She asserts that Christians tend to take a hammer to the secular creeds, 'Black Lives Matter, Love Is Love, Gay Rights Are Civil Rights, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, Transgender Women Are Women,' either hammering them into their lawn in full endorsement or breaking them up in pieces in complete rejection. Instead, she argues that if we engage them through Scripture, we can take a highlighter pen to the aspects that are Biblical, while critiquing the aspects that are not. Her writing is clear, concise and Biblical and the book equips believers to engage thoughtfully with friends, family and neighbors.

3. Prayer by Timothy Keller

This is probably my 5th time reading this timeless classic with a group. Who knew that a book by a Presbyterian New Yorker would become my all time favorite book on prayer. Keller is one of my heroes, not just because he is so wise, but because he has lived faithfully for so long. His secret sauce is his prayer life.His chapters on the Jesus' intercession and the Spirit of adoption in prayer are mind blowing, as well as his summaries on Calvin and Luther's prayer lives. You will not regret praying through this book.

4. God's Treasured Possession by Terry Virgo

During a July month long break I read this journey through the life of Moses as a devotional. It was both refreshing and consoling. The author has become something of a father in the faith to me, so I could hear his voice through his writing. Like Keller, Virgo has a remarkable track-record of faithfulness and fruitfulness over almost fifty years of ministry. This matters more than ever to me against a backdrop of common failure among high profile Christian leaders. Terry's faithfulness to the Scriptures mixed with his deeply personal relationship with the Spirit, yield a kind of insight into God's character that has the reader going, "I never saw that about God, but it was there all along, hidden in plain sight." A devotional gem.

5. Heaven and Nature Sing by Hannah Anderson

Anderson lives with her family in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. Her husband is the pastor of a small town, rural church and she is an acclaimed author and speaker, particularly focussing on the intersection between nature and theology. This is a stunning Advent devotional, providing insights into the coming of Christ from the Scriptures and God's creation. My wife and I have read it together for a devotional this Advent. Not yet completed, but highly recommended.

6. Psalms for the Saturated Soul by Alan Frow

This is cheeky, I know, but I did actually read this book with my book group this year, which was a most gratifying experience. I didn't realize how it would work in a group, but it was so warmly received that I am taking some time off to write a group work addendum to each chapter which will be re-released some time in February. I'm still surprised and grateful and at how God has used this little book to help people find emotional health from the Psalms.

B. Fiction

1. Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

We have just completed studying this series of letters as a book club and while some of the 1950's Oxford Don's language and context needs translation, it is brilliant satire written from the perspective of an uncle demon called Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood, as they strategize to tempt and trap a new Christian.There is really no other work I know that gives such a profound glimpse behind the curtain into the dynamics of spiritual warfare in the Christian faith.

2. Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

This book is a sequel to Jayber Crow, the small-town barber from Port William, Kentucky, which first turned me on to Berry's remarkable writing. You have to read him slowly. Every page is a masterpiece on the young widow who lost her husband to the second World War. It is not what you would expect of a traditional novel - far less about the dramatic arc of a story-line and far more about a testament to the mysterious beauty and brutality of life. The characters are reflected upon in a way that is empathetic and prophetic -a most surprising gospel art-piece.

C. Autobiographies

1. As Many as the Stars in the Sky by Robert Glover

I stumbled across this inspiring autobiography because Robert's son, Josh, is part of our church. It is the story of a British social worker who senses a call from God to facilitate the adoption of one million Chinese orphans into families. In obedience, he moves with his whole family to Beijing and God begins to open doors of favor to those in authority in astonishing ways. While the book title comes from God's call to Abraham about his many descendants, Glover's story is more like Joseph - an outlandish dreamer with a common touch who is at home with the poor and the powerful alike. The remarkable thing is that the vision has been accomplished and Care for the Children continues to grow in other nations. Beyond the beauty of adoption taking place on such a grand scale, the story is one of ordinary people being obedient and witnessing God's extraordinary hand on their obedience. Because of the book, we were able to have Robert come and share his story in person at our church and now it is a privilege to partner with his organization, Care for the Children.

2. I think therefore I Play by Andrea Pirlo

I'm a fan of sports autobiographies, and this one about the Italian genius who brought such a magical quality to his soccer, was an absorbing read. Pirlo continued into coaching after his acclaimed playing career, and as I've followed him with Italian super-club Juventus, he will surely enjoy similar success in that realm. Pure, enjoyable escape for me.

3. Greenlights - Matthew McConnughey

This book was better listened to than read, because its author, the charming,Texan rogue, is such a great actor. The man has jam-packed 5 lives into his fifty-plus years. He is an American icon with an insatiable thirst for adventure, risk and fun. His story-telling is superb and his love of Southern sayings is winsome. I would say that his story-telling is better than the conclusions he comes to about life. I was disappointed by two things in particular. First, his soft stance on promiscuity and drug abuse are irresponsible. Just because he has escaped its ravaging consequences to some degree does not do justice to the fact that countless others have not. Also, his syncretism is regrettable. He claims Christianity as his faith. He has a pastor and a local church. And yet he seems to believe as strongly in the power of luck and Voodoo magic as he does in Jesus. A sad window into our cultures' affinity for a create your own hybrid religion.

4. Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri

This was the most unique book I
read this year. I have enjoyed it so much that I am saving the last chapters for vacation reading. It is the true story of the author's family as they flee from Iran as religious refugees to the Oklahoma because of their Christian faith. It is written in the style of an adolescent - heart-breaking, hilarious, awkward and hopeful. It is both irreverent and deeply reverent all at once. A needed window into the plight of the Global persecuted church that is such a brilliant literary work that it has received multiple mainstream awards.

5. Surrender by Bono

As a life-long fan of the band U2, whose songs were the soundtrack of my 20's and 30's, I have gone through a decade of disenchantment with Bono. I have felt that his music has suffered from his philanthropy, and I've longed for the band either to pack it all in, or do the hard work to produce another album with great songs. But this book reveals a man who is both brilliant and self-aware with a deep Christian faith and a consuming drive to change the world for the better. Every rock star has an ego problem, and Bono is no expiation but I respect the fact that he has allowed God to use his fame and wealth for good. So, here's to one more great album!

Building with Redwood: a metaphor for Vision 2067

2022-12-12T10:08:00.013-08:00

The Davies House was built in 1900 in downtown Fullerton, name after it's original owner, Mr. Davies, who was a well-known Welsh greengrocer in the burgeoning little city. In 1981 it was moved lock, stock and barrel on a flat-bed truck up onto a hill a few miles north of Fullerton in a leafy suburb overlooking Hillcrest Park by its new owners. We discovered her there for sale in 2011 and promptly fell in love with her wrap-around-porch. She was a fixer, for sure, but her bones were beautiful. The city recognized her dilapidated beauty by calling it a historic landmark property.

Part of our purchase of the house required a termite report. Little did we know, that the guy who did the termite report was none other than Matt Holmes. Matt and Adri would join our church four years later. They would become dear friends of ours who would travel around the world with us doing ministry and Matt would become one of Southlands' elders. God must have been chuckling back then when I just saw Matt as the Termite Guy! Anyway, Termite Guy had a strange report for me back then. The 111 year old house had no termites, whereas the double garage, built in 1981, had plenty. "What's up with that?" I asked, mystified.

Matt's response was poignant. "The old house was built with Redwood, so she's fine. The newer garage was built with Douglas fir. It's cheaper but far less resistant to termites. Thats why it's half the price." Materials matter, you know. We're still thankful that Mr. Davies didn't cut corners, choosing instead to build with sturdy materials that would outlast him.

This has become a metaphor for us in the way we are trying to lead Southlands. I believe one of the wisest ways we can live and lead is to have a vision that will outlive us, To build with materials that will outlast us. We want to build with God's enduring Word, Christ's eternal gospel and His indwelling Spirit. We want to hear Jesus and obey Him like the man in Jesus' parable who built his house on the rock that stood firm when the storms came.

Materials matter. We don't want to cut corners and have future generations lament that we left them a termite-infested house. We must build with Redwood instead of Douglas fir. It seems to me that many church leaders in California are in survival mode. I understand that to some degree. There is such uncertainty around the future, such volatility in our culture. Many people are scanning the horizon for easier building conditions in other States. It results in building under the tyranny of the urgent in a way that will cause the next generation to lament our decisions. We simply must come back to God's covenant to bless his people and make them a blessing from generation to generation.

This is where our Vision 2067 comes in. Southlands is 55 years old. By God's grace, she will be 100 in 2067, unless Jesus returns before that. She may have a different name by then and she will certainly have different leaders. But I believe she will exist as a family of churches in many nations by then. What would it take for us to build now, for Southlands to be faithful and fruitful in 45 years time?

Vision 2067 aims to invest financially in church planting, in raising up the the next generation of leaders and in the Global persecuted Church. (both strengthening and being strengthened by them) Here is a short video shot on the Davies House porch with myself and Matt Holmes talking about Vision 2067.

We are so thankful for so many who have invested themselves and their finances into God's call on Southlands. We want to ask that you would prayerfully consider investing into our future together by clicking on the Southlands giving link with the Vision 2067 giving tab.

Yours in grateful hope,

Alan

California Voting: a pastoral guide

2022-11-05T16:18:00.010-07:00

It's mid-term election season in California. Every time elections roll around, whether state-wide or national, I am asked by someone in our church why we aren't telling people what and who to vote for. My response usually goes something like this. "My job as a pastor is not to tell you how to vote. It is to teach you to think Biblically about everything and then to vote accordingly."

I stand by this statement. Over the last 12 years our church has by-and-large managed to avoid partisan politics by focussing on the gospel, teaching the whole counsel of God and celebrating diversity around disputable matters.

But I also realize that this may be a cop out; a refusal to step in to the land-mine infested field that is partisan politics. You see, we live in a moment of fierce political polarization. Politics has become a religion for so many Americans. Our political convictions are our creed and our political party is our tribe. We often feel more identified with our tribe than with other Christians who may vote differently from us. Therefore people are more willing to leave a church based on perceived political differences than they used to. All this means that there is a temptation for pastors to stay further away from politics than they should out of fear.

So, with that in mind, I offer some simple pastoral guidance around election time.

1. Vote faithfully

Vote faithfully, recognizing that living in a democracy is a privilege, citizenship is a responsibility and your vote does make a difference. Even if you feel like you are in the minority, your vote still has value. Voting can change history for good. Glenn Scrivener writes about the powerful combination of preaching and voting in Christian History in his book, The Air we Breathe.

"Consider three social transformations in Christian history: the end of infanticide, gladiatorial games, and the slave trade. They’ve come through preaching and politics. It’s both—but in a particular way. On infanticide, Christians saved babies from exposure and raised them long before Valentinian I made laws that parents must raise their offspring and forbade the killing of an infant. Preaching and politics. On gladiatorial games, Christians didn’t only preach against blood sports. What reportedly moved Emperor Honorius was the martyrdom of Telemachus. The monk entered the arena to stop a duel, was stoned to death but his witness changed Honorius’s mind and Rome’s laws.On the slave trade, abolitionism was a religious movement first and last. Preaching won hearts but without the Imperial power to change the laws, and diplomatically spread abolitionism to Catholic and Muslim lands, the evil would have remained."

Preaching and voting are a powerful combination.

2. VoteThoughtfully

Voting Biblically does not mean we check our brains at the door. We need to discern between clear Biblical imperatives, more complex Biblical ethics, conscience and preference as we vote. The propositions facing us this week include abortion, gambling, arts in education, climate control and the selling of flavored tobacco. Not all propositions are created equal. They require thoughtfulness. For instance, there is really no clear Biblical text that can help us to decide whether schools should, or should not, have an arts program. As a musician who taught the arts, I am for it, but this is simply a preference of mine. While I believe it is socially and culturally beneficial for schools to have an arts program, it has no clear connection to the Biblical text. (Although you can find a Bible verse for anything if you try hard enough!) It's a matter of preference.

Then there are propositions that have a Biblical ethic but are more complex. For instance, the proposition about electric vehicles. Clearly, care for the environment is in God's commission to us in Genesis. I find it sad when Christians deny that the Bible speaks to creation care. However, one may accept this and dispute the degree to which climate change is taking place. Or one may not see electric cars as the best solution to our environmental issues. To say that to be Christian is to ignore the environment because it is a liberal agenda, is absurd. Equally, to say that to be Christian is to drive an electric car, is simply first world naïveté. (Sorry Elon) Creation care is clearly a Biblical ethic while its solution is disputable. It requires thoughtfulness.

Then there are those propositions that cut right to the heart of what the Bible says about God's image and morality. The Scriptures' clear and repeated teaching about the sanctity of life in the womb means we should do everything we can to protect the most vulnerable image bearers of God on the earth. Even as we hold the tension of honoring the image of God in women, particularly mothers who were victims of abandonment or sexual abuse in their pregnancies, we are not free to sanction violence against the most vulnerable image bearers - the unborn. Instead we are to give ourselves to the dignity of mothers who feel overwhelmed with their pregnancy through adoption, foster care and support of those who choose to raise their children. While this issue is politically volatile, it is not Biblically disputable.

3. Vote Unpredictably

If we are to vote both Biblically and thoughtfully we may find ourselves voting less predictably. Less tribally. Less on brand. These propositions in particular, allow us to vote in a way that may depart at times from one party line. So for instance, a Republican who would vote against late term abortion might feel compelled to vote for electric cars because of a biblical conviction about care for the environment. Unpredictable. Or, a Democrat who would typically vote to care for the environment, might also decide to vote against late term abortion because of Biblical conviction. Unpredictable. Perhaps both would vote against the selling of flavored tobacco to teens. How marvelously unpredictable.

4. Vote Worshipfully

Finally, Jesus words should ring in our ears as we vote. "Render to Ceasar what is Caesar's. Render to God what is God's." Remembering that only Jesus is King will help us to avoid deifying those politicians we vote for and demonizing those politicians we vote against. It will help us remember that no politician, party or policy is perfect, and sometimes we have to vote holding our noses, for the lesser of two evils. Refuse to give politicians or their parties the kind of allegiance that belong only to Jesus and His kingdom. Politicians are of some consequence, but they are not Sovereign. While some politicians and their policies are better than others, they and their policies are all flawed. As we vote worshipfully, we are able to treat those with whom we differ with dignity, instead of demonizing them. Our King told us to love our neighbors and our enemies, after all.

John Wesley gave some wise advice to his congregation about how they should view those who vote differently from them on October 6th, 1774.

"I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them

a. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy

b. To speak no evil of the person they voted against, and

c. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side."

250 years later this is still good wisdom for us.

By God's grace, voting faithfully, thoughtfully, unpredictably and worshipfully, it's possible!

The Overhanging Fruit of the Gospel : remembering the unforeseen benefits of the Good News.

2022-07-22T08:03:00.004-07:00

I have a generous neighbor with a prolific orange tree, as one does in Orange County. Its branches hang over our fence, heavy with fruit in season. He has told us that they have more oranges than they can eat themselves and that we are welcome to pick as many as we can reach from our side of the fence. So, we enjoy the abundance of the overhanging fruit from a tree we did not plant or water.

A kind neighbor, an irresistible metaphor.

It's made me think about the unforeseen benefits of the gospel that we have enjoyed over the last twelve years leading at Southlands.

Believe it or not, we've been at Southlands almost fifteen years, but three of those years as members of a leadership team led by Chris and Meryl Wienand. In their last couple of years of leading, God began a gospel re-awakening among our team. It's not that the gospel had been absent. It was that it had drifted out to the margins of our life together, displaced by other centers. We visited it every now and then when we gave an altar call or took sporadic communion, but the gospel was not where most of our traffic was found. A theologian from Kenya named Michael Eaton admonished us around this time about what had become central in our church. "You guys are experts at preaching your model of church, but you're novices at preaching the message of Christ," he said. We felt gut-punched. But the gut-punch became a gift.

Convicted by the Holy Spirit that our model had become more central than our message, we resolved to make Jesus and his gospel the blazing center of our church. From then on, we began to say, "If Southlands was a town, Main Street would be the gospel." Thankfully, this resolve was not just a catch phrase or a passing phase. I still believe we are called to preach the gospel as of first importance, and let everything else be shaped by that center. (1 Corinthians 15:1) We would not only preach the gospel to the lost. We would beat the good news into our own heads every day until it became the best news again, to paraphrase Martin Luther. As we did we began to experience new life again at the foot of the blood-stained cross and at the mouth of the empty tomb. We felt like we had been born again, again.

"But surely Jesus should be the center?" you may protest. Absolutely. I think most churches would say that Jesus is their center, but that can mean many different things to different people. It could mean Jesus and politics, Jesus and social justice, Jesus and miracles, even Jesus and morality. I mean, all these were part of Jesus' ministry in some way, weren't they? But the apostle Paul told the church in Corinth that when he came to visit them he resolved to know nothing among them except Christ and Him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2) In other words, nothing else really matters if we don't know Christ and Him crucified. This is the essence of gospel centrality. It seems almost too simple, doesn't it? But there is powerful beauty in its simplicity. Since then, the term Gospel-centered has risen to popularity and then began to go out of vogue, carrying some cultural and political baggage. But it's not a passing phase for us.

By God's grace these past twelve years, we have grown steadily and multiplied fairly rapidly because of the gospel. We've also baptized hundreds of new believers and are so thankful to God for every person who has come to find and follow Jesus. The ways in which we have seen the gospel transform people, marriages and families is breathtaking. The gospel is still the power of God to those who believe! Still, gospel sowing and reaping can be painstaking work at times. Some seasons have felt like slim pickings.

But in retrospect, keeping Jesus and His gospel central has produced some unforeseen fruit. By this, I mean it has produced some unexpected benefits there for the picking where we did not plant. A bit like plucking overhanging fruit from your neighbor's tree.

Here are eight benefits that I never saw coming.

1. It's kept us from developing a Savior complex

I believe the finished work of the cross propels us towards the unfinished work of the kingdom. There will always be unfinished work to be done until our Savior returns. Sometimes longing for the Kingdom to come in a broken world can be heart-breaking because it often comes more slowly than we would like. The gospel has given us reason to rest in the midst of what is unfinished. We can rejoice that Jesus' saving work, which is the most important work, is already finished! We've been redeemed and our names are written in heaven! We are not the saviors of the world. Jesus is. This has given us buoyancy as we long for the Kingdom to come that has kept us from despair and striving.

2. It's protected us from the tyranny of novelty.

The gospel has set us free from what C.S. Lewis called a horror of the same old thing. We live, work and play in California, a hive of creativity and new ideas, and while I enjoy many aspects of this innovative spirit, it comes with its own pressure to always be about the new thing. I call this the tyranny of novelty. Essentially, the gospel has helped us to keep the gospel the main thing amidst a tyranny of novelty. Whether it's Hollywood-styled celebrity church, or Disney-styled theme park church, the temptation to build around novelty crouches at our door here. More subtly, the novelty of faith deconstruction, fixation with politics and social justice, charismatic sensationalism - all have their own allure. While we have tried to learn from new ideas and movements that seem to have God's fingerprint on them, keeping the gospel central has kept our people from getting whiplash because we haven't taken sharp turns down novel side roads that become cul-de-sacs. By-and-large, we've stayed on the Main Street of the gospel, learning to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints' (Jude 3). We've become less concerned with novelty than we are with fidelity, and that's produced good fruit.

3. It's given us a category for suffering as we've pursued the power of the Spirit

The gospel is the good news that God has justified us through Jesus' death and resurrection. This is stunning. It is also the good news that God has reconciled us to Himself through His Son. Once exiled enemies, we are now welcomed into His presence as friends. Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit to help us live in the reality of God's presence. His gifts are a manifestation of God's desire to dwell among His people in power. We are not cautiously charismatic. We've tried to obey God's command to pursue love and eagerly desire the gifts of the Spirit. (1 Cor 14:1) We've seen God do many miraculous things as we've pursued the Spirit's presence and power. But the gospel has also given us a category for a sovereign God who sometimes mysteriously allows us to go through disappointment and even suffering. The gospel teaches us that if such great good came to us through Christ's suffering, then God can also do great good in and through us when we suffer. We have found, to our delight, that one of the ways in which God has answered prayer is by giving us sufficient grace to suffer well for His glory rather than sulk because our supposed miracle was denied. It's been remarkable to see people persevere through trial and suffering with grace while trusting for the Spirit of God to break in with power at any moment.

4. It's given us grounds for unity in a divisive age

This last decade has been the most divisive I've ever lived or led through. I've watched heart-broken as disputes about race, politics, sexual ethics, viruses, masks, vaccines, end-time theology and conspiracy theories have divided the Church. I've watched believers become so zealous about their political ideology of choice that it becomes their new gospel and their preferred politician of choice becomes their pseudo-Savior. Thankfully, I've also had a front row seat to the gospel of reconciliation that has empowered people of different views on all of these disputable matters to engage with humility and civility, love one another in their differences and stand on the higher ground of gospel unity. I've watched our own leadership team apply the gospel to their differences with great relief, joy and a pinch of fatherly pride. The gospel has become our holy ground of agreement amidst disagreement. And this has provided a space for people of different cultures and convictions to feel at home with us.

5. It's taught us a different way to lead.

It's relatively easy to lead people with a carrot or a stick. The first way motivates through the promise of reward, while the second motivates through the fear of punishment. Each one of us has tendency to use either carrot or stick because it produces quick results, but doesn't produce healthy disciples. Of course, the Bible does talk about rewards for obedience and consequences for disobedience, but the gospel calls us to a deeper core motivation. Jesus said to his disciples, "If you love me you will obey my commands."(John 15: 1) The apostle Paul wrote to Philemon and said, "I could command you but I prefer to make my appeal out of love." When we motivate people with the gospel we are saying that Christ's obedience has already given us a great reward and rescued us from punishment. So when we obey, we do it out of love and gratitude towards Him. "I urge you, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice." (Romans 12:1) This motivation has sometimes produced slower results but it has also produced far more secure disciples.

6. It's shown us a better way to preach the Bible.

The Gospel has given us a more cohesive way of preaching the Bible. Instead of preaching it as a book of morals and heroes to be emulated, we have found that Jesus is the Bible's One True Hero, to be trusted, emulated and adored. In the words of Sally Lloyd-Jones, "Every page whispers His name." The storyline of the Bible is that God's good creation, corrupted by the sin of Adam, is being redeemed and restored by the Second Adam's saving work. All of the law and the prophets are fulfilled in Jesus, the Great Redeemer. We have learned to search, uncover and magnify Christ and His gospel story in all of Scripture and our people have developed an appetite for Christ-exalting preaching through Books of the Bible. Topical preaching is tolerated from time to time, but there is an appetite now for walking slowly through books of the Bible. I think we've become better preachers because of this, and our people have grown in their love for God's Word. Seeing them liberated from moralism and self-help theology as they learn to trust the Jesus of Scripture, has been thrilling.

7. It's given us language to fight for family

Amidst a cultural drift towards individualism, the gospel of adoption has given us language to express the communal essence of Christian faith and to fight for church as family. Through Jesus being forsaken on the cross, Christians have been adopted by God the Father into a forever family of brothers and sisters. As we've continued to emphasize the priority of this diverse family purchased by Jesus' blood from every nation tribe and tongue, we've begun to see many who walked in isolation and independence, find the warmth and sanity of a local church family. The gospel has empowered us to repent when we have hurt a family member, forgive when we've been hurt and aim for reconciliation. It's given us tools to cut down offense and dig out roots of bitterness.

8. It's helped us to become better local missionaries

Finally, gospel centrality has protected our church from being an inward-looking family that exists for its own benefit. It has shaped us as a people living on mission. In the midst of Californians generally disenchanted with their own State, we have asked what it means to live as sent ones here, like Jesus, becoming flesh and dwelling among the people where God has placed us. This has shaped a church that serves its city faithfully. It has meant that our global church planting vision has been better earthed in local faithfulness. We are learning to make disciples of Jesus on our own zip code.

No, we are not in revival. Not yet. We still long to see a great harvest of souls in our day. We are laboring and praying with other churches in our region to that end. But by God's grace, we have harvested where we have not sown. This is not a humble brag about how faithful we've been. Our faith has been feeble at times. But God has been faithful where we have been feeble. I am writing this as a reminder to avoid being forgetful about His gospel. God forbid that we boast in anything save in the Cross of Christ.

Let's resolve to keep boasting in the Cross!

A Legacy and a Liturgy in a Land of Famine.

2022-06-29T11:08:00.007-07:00

Oasis in Ein-Gedi, Hadorom, Israel.

It was the summer of 2010 and I'd been asked to take the role of leading our team of elders. I was full of hopes and dreams about the future but daunted by the financial situation I'd inherited. We were still emerging from a national recession, had an eight hundred thousand dollar lawyers' debt from a law suit we'd had to defend, plus we were down about twenty thousand dollars a month. The whole situation weighed on me heavily. Out of the blue I received a phone call from a man called Mike Hanchett who was a friend of the church with a proven prophetic gift, asking if we could meet. Over coffee he said he felt God had given him a word for our church. It was profound in its simplicity. He quoted from Genesis 26:12. "Isaac sowed in a land of famine and reaped a hundred fold." He reminded me that God enabled Isaac to open wells in a drought so that he could plant a crop and yield a harvest, and proceeded to tell me that God wanted us to sow our way out of financial famine through teaching and modeling generosity.

At this stage we had been doing a good job of cost cutting. I thought we could save our way out of financial famine, but the idea of increasing our giving as a church seemed counter-intuitive. Still, Mike's prophetic word brought faith to me and consequently to our team, and that was exactly what we did, looking for ways to give beyond ourselves to the poor and to other churches. I figured that even if we didn't reap a hundred-fold, his counsel lined up with the words of Jesus that it is more blessed to give than to receive. (Acts 20:19) We continued to be thrifty, but rejected being stingy. I did a few weeks teaching through Genesis 26 on Biblical principles of generosity. Quite quickly, things began to change.

Within months we began meeting our monthly budget as a church. Within three years we had paid off our lawyers debt. Our elder team decided around this time to start putting our personal tithes into a church planting war chest instead of using them for the running of the church. Soon after that we were given a second church property and school which we now use to house Southlands Chino. God is faithful. Mike Hanchett's prophetic legacy lives on in our church. Sadly, Mike passed away recently after battling illness, but I wanted to let those who knew and loved him know that his faithful obedience was pivotal for our church. He also never asked me for a cent when his prophetic word came to pass. He was a not-for-profit prophet! A rare breed indeed. I honor both his prophetic accuracy and his prophetic integrity.

Twelve years later recession threatens us again. Inflation is at a 40 year high, interest rates keep creeping up and it costs me $150 to fill up my truck. Crazy days! Many fear the threat of financial famine. Of course, we are all looking for ways to cut our spending, and this is wise. But I want to exhort us again to consider God's counter-intuitive ways. He calls us to keep sowing in famine as we remember His faithfulness. He is the one who opened up wells in the desert for Isaac, so that he could sow and reap a hundredfold in famine. I don't buy into the prosperity gospel. But I do buy into the Biblical truth of sowing and reaping as we live in the abounding grace of God no matter the season.

The apostle Paul reminds us of this same principle : "The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work."

God is able to make financial grace abound to us, not so that we can get rich, but so that having sufficiently what we need, we may abound in every good work. Good can make financial grace abound to us so that it can abound through us. In all things and at all times. Even in famine. Even when it takes $150 to fill up my truck!

Of course, I write this as a pastor who lives on what my flock gives to the church, so I may be easily accused of having mixed motives for writing at this time. So be it. I do want our church to keep being able to meet budget. But hear me out, I also write this as a husband and a father, and owner of an Airbnb business, who is looking with you towards an uncertain future. I feel the anxieties that many of you feel. Still, Jesus' teaching that our Father, who clothes the lillies and feeds the sparrows is able to feed and clothe us, because we are worth more to Him than sparrows, ring louder than my anxieties. These truths anchor my soul in peace and in generosity and I want them to anchor your soul too.

Every time I send off our monthly tithe or give to some kingdom cause, it is a faith declaration of three truths that Rynelle and I have lived out over almost 30 years. First, that God is our Provider. Second, that money is not our God. Third, that sowing into eternal things, even in the midst of our material needs, will reap an eternal reward that we will never regret in heaven. Tithing and giving makes no sense apart from the reality of these truths. But when done in faith, it is a sacred liturgy, one that we have seen God confirm abundantly even in this life.

So, to our dear Southlands family, thank you for your faithful generosity. You have been extraordinary. Let's keep it up. For some of us, let's step it up. And let us trust God together for a harvest as we sow in famine.

Making More of Church Gatherings

2022-05-23T22:20:00.007-07:00

Martin Luther once said, “History is like a drunk man falling off a horse into a ditch on one side, getting back up on it and falling off the other side into another ditch.” (credit Andrew Wilson) We are forever over-correcting and over-balancing, living in drunken reaction to the extremes.

For instance, before the Reformation, the Church had fallen into a ditch of legalism, preaching a salvation through penance and piety. The Reformers, affirming the 5 Solas, got the Church back up on the horse of salvation by grace through faith alone and for that we are forever grateful. I am over-simplifying, but in the years that followed, the Church over-reacted and fell into the ditch of license. The Council of Trent convened in 1545 with the aim of getting the Church out of the ditch and back on the horse, by helping it to see that true saving faith is shown by good works. John Calvin emphatically stated, “It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone.” In other words, stay on the horse! The ditches of legalism and license are still there for us to avoid today, but in the West, our license presents itself especially through individualism. We are not just law-breakers. We are a law unto ourselves.

We dare not underestimate the role of individualism in our cultural moment of Church Deconstruction. Certainly, the hypocrisy of leaders whose moral failure was exposed rather than confessed, the horrific abuse of countless congregants covered up to preserve power, the megachurch pursuit of celebrity and wealth; these have all produced an understandable mistrust towards leadership and the institution of the Church. The vital need of the hour is to distinguish between the church that man is building and the Church that Jesus is building, and to some degree, this will require deconstruction. But let's not be so naiive as to think that all deconstruction is done in good faith. Much of it is an expression of rampant individualism that resists the gospel's call to sacrifice for God's covenant family, that claims to love Jesus but scorns his Bride. If I can dismantle God's household, nobody can call me to come to the table. Deconstruction too often seeks its own convenience. We've fallen off the horse and into the ditch again.

The writer to the Hebrews has this in mind when he gives this exhortation. "Consider how we may spur one another on to love and good works, not neglecting the gathering of the believers as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching." Hebrews 10:25

Apparently, some Jewish believers, having been set free from the ritualistic legalism of temple sacrifice, and having realized that Jesus made a sacrifice once, for all and for all time, had climbed on to the horse of grace and fallen over into the ditch of neglecting gatherings altogether. It was not just that they took the odd Sunday off to go to the beach. They were in the habit of neglecting gatherings. Church gatherings were in their planner in pencil and everything else was in ink. If something better came along church gatherings were erased and replaced. Ring any bells?

What had they misunderstood about the gospel that caused this neglect? The writer to the Hebrews argues that while the blood of Jesus gives each one of us confidence to enter into the presence of God at any time and in any place, that Jesus is a high priest over the house of God. (v 20) He is not just a high priest for us as individuals, but a high priest over God's house. And God's house is not a brick-and-mortar place in the New Testament but a gathered people. His presence is experienced among his people in ways that it is not experienced when I am by myself. There is an encouragement that is peculiar to worshipping Jesus in his house. There is a spurring on that is peculiar to gathering with Jesus' people in God's house. I can encounter the presence of God by myself on a mountain, but I won't be spurred on to love someone that's not like me, or to serve someone that can't serve me back. That only happens in the gatherings of God's house in its various shapes, sizes and places .

It seems from this passage, even with our helter skelter schedules, that gathering with the believers does not get less important the busier our lives get. No, it would seem that as the Day of Christ's return approaches, discouragement from the world, the flesh and the devil will intensify, and so the need to find encouragement from other believers will increase. "...but encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching! " All. The. More.

So this summer, enjoy a vacation, by all means. Don't fall into the ditch of legalism by thinking you can't be in God's presence on the beach or at the river. But stay on the horse of prioritizing the gathering of God's people. Put the gathering of believers in ink in your planner. Let other gatherings be in pencil, for the sake of your encouragement and the encouragement of your brothers and sisters. They need you more than you know!

Below is a link to the full message I preached on Making More of Church Gatherings. It's about 10 minutes longer than I normally preach, but there it is.

Chapter 1: The Saturated Soul

2022-04-27T10:18:00.004-07:00

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? - Psalm 42:5a

Burn-out. Exhaustion. Workaholism. Those are a few symptoms of my generation一a generation that spent the 80’s and 90’s addicted to Prozac, donning power suits with shoulder pads, and launching multi-million dollar tech startups from their parents’ garages. Yuppie flu (a euphemism for chronic fatigue) infected us with pandemic-like potency.

Naively, we wore burn-out a bit like a badge of honor. The cool kids lived at work and lived to work. Everybody was red-lining on reserve, burning the midnight oil, chasing the next deal. Business was booming. Revenue was up. But emotional and physical health was in the gutter.

Today, work-life balance is a treasured topic, and I’m grateful for that. I’m also encouraged that churches are reemphasizing a theology of sabbath, because of course, burn-out is still prevalent. But it’s not the hot topic it was 25 years ago. Today, our lives are not stretched thin as much as they’re weighed down.

So Full, We’re Empty

Sometimes we’re thirsty because we’re too full of the wrong things. You can eat loads of salty popcorn until you’re stuffed, but all that sodium will make you unbearably thirsty. In the same way, our souls can be so intoxicated with things other than God that they need detoxing before we can drink from God’s river of life. This is what I call a saturated soul and I believe it is a cultural pandemic.

Our souls are saturated with nonstop news cycles that bombard us with calamities around the clock and around the globe. Our souls, designed by God to empathize with the hurting, are burdened beyond what they can bear. It’s little wonder we feel numb. The circuit breaker of our souls trips. We shut off to survive. Callousness isn’t our goal一it’s a survival tactic.

Our souls are saturated with entertainment. Endless streaming services claw for our attention and wallets. When one episode ends, within seconds another starts automatically. Binging is touted as “taking a break,” but really it’s breaking us. The title of Neil Postman’s 1985 classic, Amusing Ourselves to Death, proved to be prophetic.

Our souls are saturated with online connectivity一a slew of mile-wide, inch-deep acquaintances replace the deep, embodied intimacy our souls crave. We try to be known using platforms that isolate us. Rather than friends around the table, looking each other in the eyes, we’re loners peering into the glow of screens.

This world offers a feast of technology and information, but ironically, the more we gorge ourselves, the more hungry we become. Oversaturation promises satisfaction while slowly starving us. Could it be that we’ve fire-hosed our souls into an emotional drought?

I find this paradox at work in my own life in perplexing ways. God alone can satisfy the human soul, as Augustine writes: “Almighty God, You have made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” I have experienced such deep satisfaction and comfort from God’s presence in my soul.

But sadly, like the well-known hymn, I’m prone to wander from the God I love. While my soul thirsts for the living water of Christ, I still stoop to drink from the bitter waters of Marah. C.S. Lewis sums up humanity’s disallegiance well: “Human history is the long and terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah warned Israel about the dangers of seeking life outside the Lord:

For my people have committed two evils:

they have forsaken me,

the fountain of living waters,

and hewed out cisterns for themselves,

broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jer 2:13)

I can be a real sucker for broken cisterns, how about you? Broken cisterns not only let precious water leak out, but they also let dirt in, which contaminates any water that’s been conserved. But these self-made cisterns leave us feeling overfed-yet-underfed, gorged yet grasping, filled but famished.

A Psalm for the Saturated Soul

In Psalm 42, we meet someone caught in this same dilemma一thirsty for God’s presence but oversaturated with the things of the world. In the first verse of the psalm, he expresses the dryness of his soul and his longing to be quenched by God’s presence:

As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, my God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

Yet, despite his thirst the psalmist’s soul is also overflowing with turmoil. Verse four says: ‘These things I remember as I pour out my soul.” In order to drink in God’s presence, he must first pour out his soul. Psalm 42 is not a quick-fix formula for our thirsty souls. It points to a process of emptying, investigating, reconnecting and speaking to our souls in the hope of God’s promise to refresh us more fully than we ever dared dream. Like the psalmist, to fill our souls with God we must first empty our souls of all else.

Too Full to Feel

One of the dynamics of the saturated soul is that we are too full to feel. Like a child scribbling too many colors on a page, the barrage of emotions in ourselves and others clash on the canvas of our souls, and the end product is the dull gray of numbness.

If you’re like me, you know the wretched feeling of wanting to feel, but being unable to. You sit listening to someone you love tell you an amazing story of answered prayer. You celebrate with them cerebrally, but not emotionally. You watch another devastating crisis on the news and you feel unable to empathize. Like the Rascal Flatts song, you “feel bad that you don’t feel bad,” or at least not as bad as you think you should feel. You know that it’s right to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, but it feels forced. You listen to a powerful sermon or song, knowing you should embrace the wonder of it, but instead you feel indifferent. The guilt of not feeling is almost worse than the numbness itself.

We get so desperate to feel again, we’ll actually harm ourselves to revive our emotions. Pink Floyd’s 1979 hit, Comfortably Numb, describes fighting numbness with narcotics:

There is no pain, you are receding

A distant ship smoke on the horizon

I have become comfortably numb…

Just a little pinprick

There'll be no more, ah

But you may feel a little sick.

I have become comfortably numb.

Others fight numbness by self-injury. The Mayo Clinic explains the rationale of cutting or burning oneself: “People so badly want to feel something when they are otherwise dissociated and numb.” Feeling pain becomes better than feeling nothing. But mutilating your flesh doesn’t solve the problem in your soul. Like narcotics, they offer temporary relief, followed by painful emotions like guilt and shame. They push people into a life of secrecy and denial. No doubt, self-injury is one of the saddest symptoms of a saturated soul.

Freedom to Feel

Still others normalize numbness, as if it’s a virtue. We justify our stoicism with various mantras: “I’m too strong to feel,” or “I’m too grounded in Christ to let emotions push me around.” There’s certainly validity to emotional resilience, but many of us who grew up in the church were taught to ostracize our feelings in unhealthy ways.

As a teenager, my father sat with me at the kitchen table and drew a picture of a steam train pulling some carriages. On the train he wrote the word “Bible” and on the carriages he wrote the words “feelings.” The message was: Let God’s Word lead and your feelings follow, not the other way around. It was wise counsel for an emotionally stormy young man, and thanks to my Dad, I’ve learned to ground my fickle feelings on the unshakable foundation of God’s Word. Emotions are a wicked master if we’re slaves to them.

But emotions are also a profound gift from God, and too often my pendulum swings toward emotional denial. I’m unduly suspicious of my feelings. I’m stoic where I should be soft-hearted. Honestly, really happy people tend to annoy me and really sad people tend to exhaust me. More concerningly, my stoicism distances me from Jesus himself, who scripture calls a “man of sorrows, acquainted with suffering” (Is 53:3), and also “a man anointed with joy above his fellows” (Heb 1:9). If Jesus sounds too emotional to me, something’s wrong.

Rather than check our emotions at the door, we’re to use them for God’s glory. It’s noteworthy that the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 have an emotional dimension: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control (Gal 5:22). The Spirit-filled person is an emotionally healthy person. The incarnation, in which Christ exercised the full range of human emotion, proves that we’re meant to feel. God’s love isn’t just his willpower, exercised impassionately through gritted teeth; it’s his affection and passion.

Christ gives us freedom to feel fully, and wisdom to feel rightly. He teaches us to pull negative emotions out from under the rug, into the open, where we can process them in a safe environment of grace. In the next chapter, I’ll unpack how to do that, using Psalm 42 as our guide.

You can purchase Psalms for a Saturated Soul by clicking here.

Psalms for a Saturated Soul: An Ancient Guide to Emotional Health

2022-04-07T20:57:00.005-07:00

Introduction: A Perplexing Paradox

Maybe, like me, you’re a bundle of paradoxes.

On one hand, I bear God’s image. I have a marvelous capacity to cultivate beauty, experience intimacy, invent solutions, make promises, show mercy, resist evil, build culture, and encounter wonder. On my best days, God’s glory is profoundly displayed in my life. Humans can be quite magnificent, really一just a little lower than the angels.

On the other hand, I have this inescapable sense that I don’t reflect God as I should. The mirror of my life gets smudged and tarnished. I have a dreadful capacity to corrupt beauty, shatter intimacy, create problems, break promises, exploit the vulnerable, be tempted by evil, destroy culture, and become jaded with wonder. Humans can be quite awful, really一just a little higher than the devils.

There is a fickle fragility in my soul. I flit back and forth between peace and anxiety, joy and sorrow, obedience and disobedience, forgiveness and bitterness. Like termites in a wooden boat, my inconsistencies gnaw holes in my soul一then as I frantically bail water to remain buoyant, discouragement gushes over me. Can you relate?

What do we do about the frustrating duality of our souls? Proposed solutions abound.

Moralism says effort is the solution. If we can be good enough一through religion or neighborliness or parenting or profession一our positive behavior will outweigh our bad behavior. But this places an oppressive burden to perform that’s easily squashed by our next messup (which is likely imminent).

Mysticism says contemplation is the solution. But meditation isn’t medication, and sometimes silence makes our failures scream louder. Mindfulness plus good Karma minus bad Feng Shui does not equal zen.

Psychology says that healing from trauma inflicted by others is the solution. This is immensely important and can be instrumental in helping someone heal. Counseling has certainly been of great help to me. But secular psychotherapy has no category for the biblical doctrine of sin, which scripture names as the greatest threat to human flourishing. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

"The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner."

Individualism posits “being yourself” as the solution, as Polonius advises Hamlet: “To thine own self be true.” If nothing else, this mantra exasperates our sense of duality. Much of the time, we’re unsure of who we are or who we want to be. In response, individualism sometimes celebrates the paradox within, blurring the lines between right and wrong. But impropriety leads to insecurity, leaving us with the burning question: To which self should I be true?

The Psalms: Formation not Formula

Enter the Psalms一the hymnbook of God’s people. The psalms don’t offer simple formulas to solve the paradox of our souls. Instead, they employ the language of formation. They give us permission to be in flux, while simultaneously pointing us to the unchanging stability of our Creator. The Psalms let us rant and weep, sing and scream, laugh and lament一all with an eye to heaven, knowing that our help comes from the Lord (Ps. 121:1). As a trellis prods a vine sunward, so the Psalms turn our souls God-ward. In real life, confusion and confidence often go hand-in-hand, thus the Psalms speak powerfully to the intricate anatomy of our souls.

As you read the Psalms, it’s immediately obvious that God doesn’t want His people to pretend. The God of the Bible wants His people to be brutally honest with themselves and with Him. He’s not interested in platitudes or pseudo-peace. Religious charades might fool others, even ourselves at times, but God sees our souls as they truly are.

Souls of the Saints

In the modern world, we often think of the soul as the immaterial part of you that flies off to heaven when you die. But in biblical theology, your soul (hebrew: nephesh) is your whole person, including your will, mind, emotions, and body. Thus the Psalms speak directly to our souls, expressing the vast breadth of human experience, as Calvin notes:

"I have been wont to call this book not inappropriately, “An Anatomy of all Parts of the Soul;” for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror."

When reading the Psalms, we discover we’re not alone. We suddenly realize, with a sigh of relief, that the path we’re on is well-worn by the saints before us. Our bloodied knees don’t make us freaks; they merely signal we’re on the path of formation. Satan would have us believe that, because we struggle, we’re unworthy of Christian fellowship. The Psalms retort: No, these are the normal growing pains of a child of God.

Walter Brueggemann says that when we read the Psalms, the experiences of the psalmist interacts with our own experience:

"The work of prayer is to bring these two realities together一the boldness of the Psalms and the extremities of our experience一to let them interact, play with each other, and illuminate each other."

In other words, we don’t just read the Psalms; they read us. They unlock the prayers, petitions, and laments of other faith sojourners, revealing the sacred solidarity of saints from every age. They have found God to be both present and good, even when their souls were disoriented or faint. They testify that indeed there is hope for you and I, because God is good and ever-present.

A Community of Souls

The church is a community of souls, therefore it’s not only about individual health, but the collective health of the entire bride of Christ. The church I lead and the family of churches I am a part of are not as fluent as we should be in the language of the soul, and it has hurt us. We are fairly fluent in the language of Christology, ecclesiology and missiology. But there is a hesitancy around psychology and sociology because they can be so subjective. “Let’s stick to gospel truth,” we tend to say. But in protecting the gospel (which is right), we’ve neglected how it applies to soul care. After all, Christ is the great physician who gives rest to our souls (Matt 11:28).

The past year has provided a rude awakening about the consequences of neglecting communal soul health. In November 2021, I sat with six other leaders from our church network. There was a furrow-browed sobriety around the table that day. Two of our dear friends and leaders in our movement had just stepped down, in part, due to patterns of emotional and relational unhealth. Though relieved we had escaped the spectacular moral scandals so prevalent in the headlines these days, we were nonetheless heartbroken. How did we get here?

We felt blindsided by a threat we didn’t know existed. Like the quiet-footed foxes ruining the vineyard in Song of Solomon, emotional unhealth had covertly crept into our leadership team. We didn’t notice until it was too late. We often do wolf-checks, but rarely fox-checks. Foxes seem less destructive than wolves, but left to their own devices, they’re just as deadly. Maybe we looked the other way because of the giftedness of these leaders. Fruitfulness can cover a multitude of foxes. Until it doesn’t.

In the past ten years, we’ve seen the gospel advance in encouraging ways through our family of churches, yet we concluded around that table that Jesus was using this crisis to lead us away from hubris towards humility, away from a self-confident swagger towards a God-reliant limp. We resolved to self-audit our souls more seriously and to build a sturdier culture of accountability. With sage-like wisdom, my friend Rigby Wallace articulated our conviction: “In this next season together, the gospel must advance along two frontiers: to the outermost parts of our world and to the innermost parts of our souls.”

The writing of this book was commissioned out of that conversation. This isn’t for church leaders only; it’s for anyone who longs for their soul to thrive, not merely survive (3 John 2). This book is for those who believe the gospel impacts all of life一the Savior who forgives sins is also the Good Shepherd who restores souls. This book is for those whose unstable emotions ache for the commanding calm of Jesus’ words and Spirit. This book is born out of some teaching I’ve done from the psalms, but more importantly, it’s a book born out of God’s work in me. Into my paradox, he continues to bring peace.

May the gospel advance not only to the outermost parts of our world, but also to the innermost parts of our souls.

You can purchase "Psalms for a Saturated Soul by clicking here.