I see this desire to be #1 everyday on Facebook and Twitter. We have the most awesome mom, the hottest wife, the most talented children. The volunteers at my church are way more awesome then the volunteers at your church. And when it comes to community service my congregation absolutely kicks butt!!! We baptize more, we serve more, we are just more. We’re #1. I’m #1.

Where does this thirst for first come from? What reward are we fighting for? I think it comes from deep insecurity. I must constantly prove I have value. I need a marker that says I am better, smarter, quicker than you. Or at least that guy. The airlines feed that insecurity by providing a well-defined pecking order. The most important are in 1st class, then Sky Priority, then Zone 1, then Zone 2, then the worthless peons seated in Zone 3 and beyond. Social networking gives us the platform we’ve been looking for: “Look at me, I am at the head of the line. I am winning and you are losing.”

It is this instinct, this deeply seated evil, Jesus challenged when he wrapped a towel around his waist and began washing his disciples feet. This is one of the most absurd pictures in the Bible. The God of the Universe taking the role of a slave. Peter saw the irony and begged Jesus’ to stop, but the lesson was more important than the protocol. The competition is upside down. The desire to win must be subservient to the command to serve. The first must be last. You’re #1.

Jesus knew that the drive to win, to come out ahead, to do whatever it takes to be at the front of the line could, would subvert the invisible Kingdom he came to establish. When I strain to finish first, elbow others aside, “sacrifice the individual for the good of the team”, surround myself with a culture that recognizes the supremacy of me, I ignore John’s admonition “He must increase, but I must decrease.” A lot of what passes for “success” is nothing more than heroin for my addiction to me.

I am seeing more and more the damage this addiction does both in my life and in the American church. We are building a Kingdom built on the greatness of us. Unless we humble ourselves and call on God we are headed in a direction that will not end well. And my biggest fear is that I will get there first.

You have to understand a couple of things. First, this is one of my closest friends. This is a guy I would gladly take a bullet for. (I thought until yesterday) Second, this is an extremely humble man. Jesus would describe him as a man in whom there is no guile. The thoughts I felt coming up like vomit in my mouth came entirely from deep inside of me. My friend would be stunned (he is stunned if he’s reading this post) that anything he said led to this kind of reaction. That makes it even more vile.

Ashamed of my thoughts I mumbled a prayer for forgiveness and headed off to a staff meeting at the church where I work. There the pastor asked me to read aloud a passage from James 3, ask the group to meditate on the passage for 2-3 minutes and then read the passage aloud again. Here is the “random” passage I was assigned:

Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

I do not serve a subtle God.

There in black and white are my twin sins da jour: bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. I might as well have them tattooed on my arms so everyone can see the truth. James describes my little pity party as earthly, unspiritual, demonic. That’s some pretty deep doo doo. And James says bitter jealousy and selfish ambition are gateway sins. Every other vile practice, the stuff I pretend I’d never do, are the natural next steps.

I am incredibly thankful my friend reached out to me for help. I hope I can help him sort through his opportunities, but the greater good for me is that his email revealed something so vile inside of me it will destroy everything I am and love if I do not deal with it. I am reminded again that every thought, every motivation, every desire must be filtered for jealousy and ambition, and where I find the twins growing I have to ask God to do immediate and radical surgery.

If you battle what I battle here are a couple of excellent posts to wrestle with.

http://t.co/mZWTeFWyj5

http://careynieuwhof.com/2013/05/for-every-leader-whos-ever-struggled-through-a-monday/

What are some measurable things we need to keep an eye on in the church that we might not currently see value in?

If I were leading a church I would count four things:

1. Attendance
It is popular today to say that attendance doesn’t matter, but it does. If you don’t have people you don’t have a church. Bigger numbers don’t mean a better church, but small numbers mean people are going away and there is a reason. So I would track attendance, I’d just resist the urge to brag about it on Twitter. (Yes that was a shot at you, you know who you are.)

2. Giving
Giving indicates growth both as a church and as an individual. If giving is increasing then there is growth happening, and if giving is shrinking something may be out of whack. Not always, but often. The two most important giving numbers are the giving per adult (I like annual giving per adult, it’s easier for me to understand), and year over year total giving. Week to week and month to month is meaningless.

3. Leadership Pipeline
Who are the leaders being developed? Every staff member should be able to name two or three people they are developing as their successors and to describe exactly what they are doing to develop those leaders. This should be a main discussion point at least one a month when you sit down with your leaders. I would have a scoreboard that lists ever major leadership position in the church and the leaders who are being apprenticed in each position.

4. Discipleship
Are you  making disciples who make disciples? That seems to be the point of doing church. If we aren’t making disciples we should sell the buildings, stop leasing the schools and go fishing. A couple of maxims here:

What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done
You have inspect what you expect

To measure discipleship you have to define what a disciple looks like and then ask the people if that is who they are becoming. To me a disciple is someone who serves the local church, prays consistently, reads the Bible daily, engages in biblical community, actively participates in community transformation and develops other disciples. I wrote about how I would use the acronym SPREAD to measure this type of disciple here.

One of the glaring omissions from my list are baptisms. I think baptism is a huge deal and essential in the life of a Christ follower. The challenge I have with using baptisms as a major measurement is that it is easily manipulated. A decent preacher with a pond and megaphone can drive up the dunking number with a well-timed “spontaneous” baptism. The more important number to me is how many people are becoming disciples who make disciples.

So how about you? What do you  measure?

God doesn’t talk to me like that. For me he speaks mostly through the Bible, through the wise words of other Christians and through impressions. I don’t always know exactly what God wants me to do next, and there are times when I think I know what God is saying only to realize later that I just ate too much pizza the night before. I long for the kind of dialog the minister describes, but that hasn’t been my experience.

I don’t know how God talks to you. In the Old Testament he came and talked face to face with Abraham and Moses. In the New Testament he sent an angel to speak to Mary and Joseph. Paul saw a bright light. The disciples ate dinner with God. It is obvious that God speaks in different ways to different people in different times. It is also seems that direct, face-to-face communication is the exception rather than the rule.

I think God speaks in the manner he chooses based on the message he wants to communicate and the person he wants to communicate with. He knows that if he talked to me like he talked to Noah I would spend too much time blogging about it and not enough time building an Ark. The communication style God chooses to use with me draws me back to him in faith building reliance on his word and his messengers. While I’d love to have back and forth dialog in paragraph form it would neither build my character or accomplish God’s will.

The key for me is to be honest about my communication with God. I am tempted to make up dialog and convince people that I have an inside track on God. But I fear when I do that it might make you feel like you aren’t as connected as I am. You might wonder why I get paragraphs while you get impressions. So as much as I’d like to say that I never struggle to know exactly what God is saying, I’ll be honest when I’m just not sure.

How about you? How does God talk to you?

During my time working for Rick at Saddleback I saw the heart of a gentle and loving father and grandfather. Between services almost every weekend most of Rick’s grandkids come busting into the greenroom with their parents in tow looking for Papa Rick. In doesn’t matter if George Bush, Tony Blair or CNN is there, Rick has time for a game of Tubby Tubby. (For the uninitiated, Tubby Tubby is when Rick lays on the floor and stacks the grandkids on his stomach. He then wraps his enormous arms around them and rolls from side to side calling out “Tubby Tubby” while the children collapse in squeals of laughter.) After a round of Tubby Tubby everyone grabs a juice box out of Papa’s refrigerator and Rick heads to the stage to preach another sermon to the Saddleback family.

Kay has amazing mother’s heart which has been broken again and again as she has seen her children struggle with enormous challenges. She walked with her son Josh and his wife as Jamie went through a terrifying battle with brain cancer. She comforts and supports her daughter Amy through years of struggle with a difficult to diagnose immune disease. In the midst of all of the challenges her children faced Kay waged her own war with breast cancer. And she did all of this with beauty and grace in the harsh spotlight of public scrutiny that she never asked for.

Woven through all of the challenges of leading a world famous church, answering the demands of thousands of church members and hundreds of thousands of admirers, fueling a worldwide movement to stamp out AIDS and to care for orphans, Rick and Kay have dealt as quietly as possible with the mental illness that finally led their youngest son Matthew to take his own life this past week. Very few people outside of family, close friends and Saddleback staff members realized the daily anguish Rick and Kay dealt with as they desperately tried to help Matthew. Many times Rick or Kay had to cancel public appearances at the last minute to try to help Matthew through another crisis. When I got the email on Saturday morning saying that Matthew had died I knew all that I needed to know. Matthew had ended his long and tortured battle the only way he saw possible. And a family who have known more pain than most could endure now have to face the worst and face it while the world looks on.

My prayer, and I hope your prayer, for Rick and Kay and Josh and Jamie and Tommy and Amy and all of the Warren family is that they will experience the peace that Paul speaks of in Philippians, a peace that passes all human understanding. Rick and Kay are wonderful parents and grandparents. They are remarkable leaders. They are kind and caring people. But today they are hurting and brokenhearted humans, just like you and me. Will you join me in praying for healing that can only come from God?

Video projection is the new Sunday School bus

My dad pastored an inner city church in St Louis when I was a teenager. The church owned a fleet of converted school buses which picked up children in rough neighborhoods every Sunday morning. I often rode the buses as a Bus Captain, knocking on doors and handing out donuts. Every weekend we brought hundreds of children to church who otherwise would never hear the Gospel. Bus ministry was missional before missional was cool, and it was a very effective form of evangelism. And then it wasn’t. Eventually that church sold all of its buses. There are very few churches in America who still have a thriving bus ministry.

Video teaching is a very effective tool right now. Thousands of people are hearing the Gospel from a preacher standing on a stage miles from where they are sitting, and it feels like the wave of the future. And it is. Until its not. Sunday School, bus ministry, and deeply moving while mildly amusing dramas were all powerful tools until they weren’t. Video teaching will someday be in the “remember when” bin.

Relatively few preachers are good on video

I have been told over and over again that video teaching won’t work in a big city, a small town, the south, the east, the west, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia. My answer is always the same, bad video teaching doesn’t work anywhere. You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment, have a “better than live” experience, but if the preacher isn’t good on video people aren’t going to watch. As video teaching has gone from fringe to mainstream more and more preachers will discover they are not wired up to preach on video. Even Paul said he was a lot better on paper than on stage. As more preachers decide “video doesn’t work”, whatever the reason, fewer will take the plunge.

Young leaders want to preach

I am encountering more and more incredible young leaders who are leaving great churches because they have no opportunity to speak. For some leaders they don’t speak because they don’t have the gift, but others are gifted communicators but there is no place to use that gift. It will be increasingly difficult to find gifted leaders to be campus pastors in all video environments.

A new generation will be very resistant to video teaching

You can put what I know about Millennials in a thimble and still have room for your thumb, but I think they will be drawn more and more to personal contact, caring less than prior generations about excellence and more about transparency. Raw and real vs packaged and slick.

Is it time to sell your video camera and projectors? Absolutely not. Video teaching may have a long shelf life ahead. Sunday school lasted a generation and church buses ran for a couple of decades. The bottom line for me, however, is to not get too worked up over a specific tool that God chooses to use for a time to grow His church. Video teaching is neither evil nor holy, it’s just a vehicle. If video teaching works to spread the Gospel for a while then use it. Once you’ve determined that it is ineffective in your context then abandon the camera and focus on what God seems to be blessing.

At one point God used a donkey to preach, wouldn’t that be fun if that’s what’s next?

(You can read more on Flatscreen Preachers here and here)

• I think its ironic that MacArthur makes his comments about flatscreen preachers on a flatscreen. 
• I’m not sure if its the flatness of the screen that MacArthur feels is unbiblical. I know of at least one church that has experimented with preaching by hologram, but I suspect that wouldn’t go over any better.
• I would imagine some of the same arguments were raised about machine printed Bibles in Guttenberg’s day and disembodied radio preachers when Marconi came along. Technology has been scaring the church since the days of Galileo and Copernicus.
• Flatscreen preachers are just the beginning. I attended one Easter service this past weekend on my smartphone. Oh my.
• The argument that the guy who stands on the platform and talks for an hour is the one who personally pastors the congregation is inconsistent. Once a church gets beyond about 30 people the role of pastor has to be delegated if the congregation is to truly know their pastor. In a large church like MacArthur’s there are very few people who actually know John well enough to have the kind of intimate relationship he describes.
• To say that only those who have the gift of teaching/preaching can pastor a congregation is almost idolatry. Every effective flatscreen church I have had contact with (hundreds of them) has a local leader who pastors the local congregation. He doesn’t stand on a platform and deliver a weekly sermon, but he fulfills the role of shepherd. I’m curious when the weekly 30-60 minute homily became the litmus test of pastoral leadership?
• If a flatscreen preacher preaches the Gospel, it seems like he is doing the thing he is called to do. If the Gospel is universal in its application, then the fact that the flatscreen preacher is standing on a platform 10, 100 or 1000 miles away shouldn’t be relevant.

There are flatscreen preachers who have massive egos, do a poor job of pastoring their flock and in the end have impure motives. Sadly, flatscreen preachers don’t have a corner on that market. How about we stop worrying so much about how everyone else is doing it and get busy telling people in our neighborhood about the good news of the Gospel? Even if we have to use a flatscreen to do it?

1. Remember there are more people watching a screen than looking at you live. Even the people in auditorium are looking at a screen most of the time.
2. Looking directly into the camera is golden. Every time you speak or sing directly to the camera it reminds the virtual audience you know they are there.
3. Staring into the camera is creepy. No one wants someone staring at them for long periods of time. Longer than 10 seconds, less than 1 minute at a time is good.
4. Refer to the virtual audience occasionally. Refer more to where they are watching than what they are watching. And refer to them participating rather than watching. (Those joining us from home or an office rather than those watching on computer) When referencing the online audience speak directly to the camera.
5. Remember there may be an international audience. Refer to specific countries if possible.
6. Avoid time stamping the session by referring to time of day, day of the week or current events. Think about how what you say will sound a year from now or in another time zone.
7. Avoid references that don’t apply to the virtual audience. (“Go out the back door and turn left”)
8. For practical examples what late night talk show hosts. They are working with a live audience as well as a television audience. Notice how they engage the live audience and the camera. Also watch Craig Groeschel online.

Words to avoid        Alternative

Watching                 Joining

Virtual                         Home, office, church

Simulcast                    Session

Webcast                     Conference

Tonight                       Today

This morning             Today

Earlier today              Earlier

Later tonight              Later

Jesus hangs on the cross naked and dying. The religious leaders he has often bested in debate laugh as the tables have turned. The crowds he fed and healed turn their attention to a new miracle worker. The men he invested the last three years in hide. His closest friend denies he knows him. Exhausted from the trials, the beatings, the struggle to breathe, Jesus pushes himself up against the rough-hewn and splintered cross he is nailed to and yells between gasps for air, “My God…………..My God!……………….. WHY HAVE………. YOU……….ABANDONED ME?”

This question echoes across time. Why, when we need him most, does it feel like God abandons us?

I grew up in an atmosphere of bumper sticker faith, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” We idolized heroes who stoically faced death without emotion, and repeated stories of friends who received bad news without flinching. I understood that real faith meant I took what God dished out without questioning why.

By those standards Jesus’ faith would not qualify. The night before his execution Jesus is on his knees pleading with God, begging for a reprieve from what he faces in the morning. Having set aside the privilege and power of deity, Jesus is face-to-face with the horror of pure evil. He is experiencing the pain and suffering that evil produces. The pain that a father feels when he learns his young daughter has cancer. The pain a wife feels when she discovers her husband has been sleeping with another woman. The pain of a baby dying, a woman being raped, a son being torn apart by an IED 10,000 miles from home. Face to face with the horror of pure evil Jesus responds as a human, as any human, “My God, why have you abandoned me?”

This question of why is unique to humans. Animals may ponder the when, what, where and how of life, but they never wonder, “Why?” Your dog doesn’t wonder why you are crying, your cat does not think, “Why does that tall man not live here any more?” Your child’s fish does not ask, “Why did the little boy who used to feed me never come back from the hospital?” Only humans are privileged and cursed with the desire to understand the whys of life. For Jesus to truly experience what it is to be human he had to know the anguish of “Why?” His cry on the cross is the anguished cry of the human heart, “Why have you abandoned me?”

But God does not answer, at least not then. His Son is crying out from the depth of his soul, but from heaven there is silence. There is no booming voice from the clouds, no angels sent with a reassuring message, no change of mind in the Roman soldiers. The Son of God demands an answer but his Heavenly Father is silent.

And this drives us deeper into “Why?”

Why doesn’t God answer?

Why does Jesus have to die like this?

Why doesn’t God send fire down on Jerusalem like he did on Sodom?

Why do children suffer?

Why do husbands cheat?

Why do young men die and young women live as slaves?

Why did mom die so young?

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Jesus has strength for one last breath. He struggles to push his ragged flesh up against the cross a final time. He gasps and sputters, “Father…into your hands….I commit….my spirit.” His knees collapse and he hangs limp, suspended from the nails through his hands and feet. He cannot breathe. After a few minutes he suffocates and dies, his question still hanging in the air.

In his final statement Jesus shows the path from “Why?” to peace. He calls on his Father, a Father who can be trusted, a Father who loves, a Father who is just and gracious, fair and merciful. A Father who cannot always give the answer we want in the time that we want it, but a Father  who is always at work for our ultimate good. Though Jesus, in his humaness on the cross, did not know why it seemed that God abandoned him, he knew that, even in the middle of this horrible time, his life, his spirit, was safe in his father’s hands. He does not know the why, but he knows he can trust his Father.

The human response to unfiltered evil is to scream at the heavens “Why? Why? Why?” It is not sin, it is not faithlessness, it is not shocking or disappointing to God. It is how his Son responded in the same situation. To face the ravages of evil without emotion, without pain, without questions isn’t human. God built deep inside of each of us the desire to know why.

But there are times, times when evil is unchained in our lives, times when the why is more than we can understand. Times when the why will take an eternity to explain. Times when mere human perspective can never get to the bottom of why because a mere human cannot grasp the depth of evil or the breadth of God’s mercy. It is in those times that we commit our spirits into the hands of a loving father, angry that we cannot know why, but comforted to know that he loves us and  never abandons us. And through the lens of eternity God will eventually answer every “Why?”

Most people are familiar with the Concierge at an upscale hotel. Their job is to help hotel guests buy tickets, make dinner reservations or suggest day trip destinations; basically to ensure the guest has a positive experience while they are in town. Here is a typical conversation with a Concierge:

“Can you help us find a nice place to eat tonight?”

“Absolutely. What kind of food are you in the mood for?”

“Italian sounds good”

“Excellent, here are three nice Italian restaurants in the area. I highly recommend Guido’s, their lasagna is amazing. Would you  like me to make a reservation?”

“That would be great, thanks!”

“My pleasure”

Wouldn’t it be cool to have a Concierge available at your church? A conversation might go like this:

“We’re new to the church and we’re wondering how we could connect?”

“I’d love to help you with that! Can you tell me a little about your family?”

“We are empty nesters and we just moved to town. We’d love to meet other people around our age”

“Excellent. Let me suggest two or three ways we can help. First, we have a Newcomers Gathering next weekend, here’s a flyer about that. We also several couples groups that meet in homes. Let me show you a list on our website. I highly recommend the Smith’s group which meets on Friday nights in the Oaks Subdivision, they are a lot of fun and love welcoming new attenders. Could I assist with an introduction?”

“We probably need to think about it?”

“Absolutely. Please stop back by any weekend and we’d be glad to help you make a connection. Thanks for stopping by!”

Ideally there are be several trained volunteers who man a Concierge desk each weekend as well as be available at the end of events like Newcomers, Membership Class, Meet the Pastor to help people take next steps. The goal is to provide easy onramps for people with a desire to serve and/or connect at the church beyond sign up sheets or simply answering questions at a Welcome Center.

I think there is huge potential, I just wish I had thought of it.