On Pastoral Prayer: It Should not Be so Difficult for Me but It Is

This summer the pastor-elders of our church listened to a 9Marks podcast about leading corporate prayers during church worship services (here). We found Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever’s discussion both stimulating and convicting. We even made the change to incorporate more time for meaningful prayer during our worship services.

Now, each of our pastor-elders takes a Sunday to pray before the offering is collected, which is typically done right before the sermon. Sometimes teaching and travel schedules are such that an elder-qualified man who is not currently a pastor-elder may lead the prayer. But you get the idea. The prayer typically lasts around five minutes and often has overlap with the themes of the sermon. I’m so thankful Scott, one of our lay pastor-elders, initiated and maintains this ministry.

This weekend it was my turn to pray. We had a service less full than normal, so I took the opportunity to stretch us a bit by praying closer to ten minutes. It stretched me too. Because we’ve recently had an influx of newcomers, I used the opportunity to pray through our church’s five-year goals, which our leaders think and pray about often, but, admittedly, we do a poorer job of keeping in front of our people. For what it’s worth, we’re in year four of five.

Below is an edited version of the prayer I wrote Sunday morning before church. Jesus warned against praying in public to be seen by others (Matthew 6:1–4). But Jesus did not mean this as an indictment against all public prayer, for he immediately proceeded to teach us what we call the Lord’s Prayer. In this stream, I share below my pastoral prayer from last Sunday. I hope it encourages you to make prayer an increasingly important part of your local church services.

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Heavenly Father, we pause when looking over our goals. We do not want to be like those described in the book of James, those who in their arrogance and self-reliance presumed that by simply putting in time and effort they could bring about their goals of more profit and more abundance, not realizing their lives—indeed, our lives—depend upon you for strength and energy. Our hearts do not beat, and our lungs do not breathe, apart from your sustaining grace. We read in the book of Hebrews that your Son upholds the universe by the word of his power. The planets of the solar system continue to orbit because you say so, just as the details of our lives are held in place because you say so.

Yet, Lord—acknowledging your sovereignty, acknowledging your goodness, acknowledging the power of the gospel that is at work among us—we come boldly before your throne of grace.

Plant a church

Heavenly Father, we ask that you would help us plant another church in the city of Harrisburg, not for our glory and fame but for the name and renown of the one who spilled his blood so that more and more people could taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

We thank you for those who, some twenty years ago, left the comfort of a great church so they might, by your grace and power, labor to see our church built up in love. May you even now be giving some among us that same kind of pioneering, sacrificial spirit who see the name of Jesus being magnified as of more importance than the comfort of attending an established church.

Pursue a “new” facility & Care for our local community

Heavenly Father, we give you praise for our church building. We thank you for the beauty of the renovations you enabled us to complete eighteen months ago and the way people continue to come to this church building and find hope and peace and comfort. Lord, we thank you for the neighborhood in which you placed us. We thank you for the inroads that have been made in this community. May you enable us to become servants who seek to bless our neighbors in your name.

As we see brokenness around us—whether it be the search for joy that takes place in the strip clubs just around the corner or the quiet lives of desperation led by many who feel alone in their homes—we pray that you would make our church building a safe place, a place where people can heal and find joy that will truly satisfy.

Increase racial and ethnic diversity

Heavenly Father, please help our church to grow in racial and ethnic diversity as a testimony to the uniting power of the gospel. We thank you for those among us who enrich our lives by bringing other perspectives. We thank you for the dozens of people who come to our building three days a week to learn English as a second language. We thank you especially for those who have taken a particular interest in the immigrants and refugees among us. Lord, please forgive us for being slower to help than we ought; forgive us for being reluctant to reach out; forgive us for being hesitant to love. Forgive us, Lord, for using the pronouns us and them.

Stay streamlined, program-light

Heavenly Father, when we set the goal to be streamlined and program-light at our church, we do not intend to stifle the work of your Holy Spirit among us. Forgive us, Lord, if that has happened or is currently happening.

Lord, we do not want to be streamlined and program-light because it’s easier or because it allows us to remain lazy, preferring our comfort over your mission. We do not aim to be streamlined and program-light so we can have more Netflix.

Instead, we believe we should measure spiritual maturity, not by how often we attend church meetings other than Sunday mornings, but by how many of our neighbors and co-workers we know well enough and have loved well enough that they could ask us to pray for them when their lives seem to be crashing down around them. In a culture that applies increasing pressure to do more and more and more, we ask that you help us to intentionally build margin into our lives so that when your Spirit does lead us to begin new ministries, we can do so with joy and obedience.

Lord, we long to stay streamlined and program-light so that the members of this church are not so burdened with the ministry initiatives of our leaders that they can’t be free to serve you wholeheartedly as your Spirit leads them; we long for a passion for new ministries to bubble up from within the hearts of those who call this church home. Lord, I thank you for the new ministry of the Christmas Giving Tree that will bless those among us with Christmas presents signifying, in tangible ways, your love for us. We’ve never done this before, but I thank you, Lord, for placing the idea upon the hearts of a few individuals and giving them the vision and obedience to see it become a reality.

Expand evangelism ministry

Heavenly Father, we pray for our evangelism ministry. Oh, that you would cause your gospel to go forth from us with greater power. Lord, as we share the story of the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, and his second coming, oh that more and more people would come to understand the sacrifice you made for them. Lord, would you cause your good news to be received by us in such a way that it is actually treasured as good news, news we long to share with others. Forgive us that our love for you is so small that we find it easier to talk about things that are here today and gone tomorrow.

Connect and disciple newcomers

Heavenly Father, you commanded us to go and make disciples of all nations, to baptize people into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You promised that your authority, your power, and your presence would be with us as we do so. I pray for the many relationships that have formed among our church, relationships not built around simply having coffee or watching our children play together, but relationships intentionally seeking to help one another be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

Lord, many at our church have no idea what being in a discipleship relationship would be like—to have someone to offer sound, biblical counsel and someone to weep with when their children walk away from the faith. Lord, would you make us into the type of church where discipleship relationships are not only natural but that to not be in intentional discipleship relationships would be seen as rare and unusual.

Lord, I pray especially for the older, mature Christians among us who were never themselves discipled by someone else. I pray that though they never received such care, they would build into others, giving what they never directly received.

Lord, as I think about the connection’s ministry of our church, I pray for the new pastor we are seeking to hire. We’ve been looking and praying for the last six months and are currently interviewing pastors. Give us wisdom; we need it.

Lord, I think about what one candidate said when we asked what it might look like for a connections ministry to thrive here at Community. He said it might look not so much like one new pastor doing all the work of connections, but rather like a congregation who sees themselves more and more as connecting pastors and a church where a young couple notices an elderly couple who needs care and love and, unprompted by staff pastors, they move toward each other in love. Lord, yes, for more and more of this kind of connection here among us.

Increasingly become a church of prayer

Finally, Heavenly Father, we ask you to make us a church that increasingly values prayer. I don’t think we are good at this, at least I do not think I am good at this. Praying to you in a church service for ten uninterrupted minutes should not be as difficult as it is. Forgive me for thinking I can build your church simply through effort and time on task. Forgive me for mistaking commotion and activity and sawdust flying around in the air for the substance of true spiritual life. Lord, we will cast our cares upon you when we see the weakness of our shoulders and the futility of our ingenuity.

As we call out to you in prayer—as a church gathered together in unity on Sunday mornings; as a church scattered around the city in small group Bible studies during the week; as families and homes and individuals who follow you when no one is watching but you—Lord, surprise us with the beauty of your grace, the joy of your forgiveness, and the peace of your presence.

So we ask all this, Heavenly Father, knowing you can do more than we could ask or imagine. And we pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ, by which we mean prayers prayed not consistent with our will but Christ’s will and prayers prayed not on our authority but upon Christ’s authority.

Amen.

* Photo by Tyson Dudley on Unsplash

The Doctrine of The Church: EFCA Ordination (Part 7 of 11)

For the last few months, I’ve been writing about my ordination process in the Evangelical Free Church of America. If you’d like to read about what the process looks like, check out the first post in the series (here). Throughout the autumn, I’ll occasionally share the remaining sections of my ordination paper, which engages with our denomination’s 10-point statement of faith. This week’s post is from the section on the church, which also required me to interact with the preamble to our statement of faith.

Thank you for the prayers and encouragement along the way,
Benjamin

{Previous posts in this series: God, The Bible, The Human Condition, Jesus, The Work of Christ, The Holy Spirit}

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The Church

7. We believe that the true church comprises all who have been justified by God’s grace through faith alone in Christ alone. They are united by the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ, of which He is the Head. The true church is manifest in local churches, whose membership should be composed only of believers. The Lord Jesus mandated two ordinances, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which visibly and tangibly express the gospel. Though they are not the means of salvation, when celebrated by the church in genuine faith, these ordinances confirm and nourish the believer.

In the context of the Bible, justification is the legal declaration from God that he has declared a person “not guilty” and imputed Christ’s righteousness to the repentant (Rm 3:21–30; 2 Cor 5:21). We call this exchange double imputation, the believer’s sin reckoned to Christ and Christ’s righteousness reckoned to us. All this good news comes by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. To say justification comes by grace is to say that the loving favor received from God is an undeserved gift (Eph 2:8; Titus 3:7). To say it comes through faith means that a person must look away from his own works and instead cling to and depend upon the provision of Christ (Phil 3:9). We add the word alone to grace to clarify that in justification we add nothing to grace or it wouldn’t be grace; alone to faith because nothing more than faith is required; and alone to Christ because no salvation is found except in Christ. The reason we do not always have to say that we need faith and repentance, though the Bible sometimes but not always says repent and believe (Mk 1:15), is because of the proper understanding of what faith includes. Faith in Christ involves turning from treasuring X, Y, and Z to treasuring Christ, which must include repentance, the renouncing of our old ways to walk in obedience.

The true church is the sum total of all those justified by Jesus—throughout all time and place. We see this understanding of the church in Ephesians 5:25b where Paul describes the church as all those for whom Christ gave himself up. Jesus loves the church as a groom loves his bride. Jesus Christ is the head of every local church because he is the head of the true, or universal, church (Eph 1:22–23; 4:15–16; 5:23; Col 1:18; 2:19; Rev 1–3). As head, Jesus lovingly rules, commands, and nurtures his church, which is his body, and in turn, his church should respect and submit to his gracious rule.

A part of the church’s role in respecting and submitting to God’s gracious rule involves the practice of the two ordinances that Jesus instituted to be carried out under the auspices of local churches, namely, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I have experience in both paedo- and credo-views of baptism, and I see many strengths in each (as well as perhaps some weaknesses), but I do practice believer’s baptism. Once a person has experienced the saving power of the gospel, we properly display what has happened on the inside with a sign on the outside (Rm 6:1–11). In this way, baptism parallels wearing a wedding ring. It signifies to the world that the person is in an exclusive relationship with another. The ring—and baptism—do not put a person in the special relationship; they symbolize it. At our church, we do not require baptism for membership, though we certainly encourage it and typically discuss baptism with those applying for membership.

Concerning the Lord’s Supper, various views exist. The Roman Catholic Church errs in her sacramentalism, the understanding that sacraments such as the Lord’s Supper (Eucharist) confer salvific grace to participants regardless of their heart posture. Although far less dangerous, I think the strict memorialist view goes too far in the other direction, as though all we are doing is remembering. Christians never just remember anything (cf. “remembering the poor” in Gal 2:10 means far more than recalling to one’s mind that some people are, in fact, poor). When Christians remember the death of Christ by participating in the Lord’s Supper, God supplies his church with nourishing grace and unites believers. In 1 Corinthians 11:17–34, all the negative observations about the church’s malpractice of the Lord’s Supper imply spiritual blessing when practiced rightly as together we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26; cf. 10:16). It’s common to hear people say that the provocative “eat my flesh, drink my blood” saying of Jesus in John 6 points us to the Lord’s Supper. But it’s the Lord’s Supper that points us to John 6! The bread we break and cup we drink is participating in Christ (1 Cor 10:16–17). In the Lord’s Supper we taste and see that his body and blood are true spiritual food and drink.

There seems to be a biblical, gospel-logic order to these ordinances, namely, that gospel awakening should be shortly followed by baptism (Mt 28:19; Acts 8:35–39), which should be followed by regular participation in the Lord’s Supper in a particular local church, all overseen by qualified shepherds. The last part of that sentence (in a church under the care of qualified pastor-elders-overseers) and the association in the Bible of the ordinances with whole-church unity (1 Cor 11:26) has implications on when and where the ordinances should be celebrated. A youth director should not baptize children while away at a camp, and four Christian guys on a hike or a small group Bible study should not hold a communion service; even when the small group leader is a pastor-elder, his small group is not the local church but only part of a local church. (The inability of a shut-in to come to the regular gathering of the church isn’t the same thing.) To be candid, our own local church could do a better job teaching about the ordinances. We noticed this last year when we changed the default method of handing out the communion elements. Rather than passing trays through pews, we began inviting Christians to come forward to receive, which showed us that a few unbaptized, young children were partaking as well as others we suspect have unclear professions of faith. Clearly, we have work to do.

Preamble

The Evangelical Free Church of America is an association of autonomous churches united around these theological convictions:

EFCA local churches are autonomous because no official, governing body higher than the local church (e.g., a bishop in Episcopalian government or General Assembly in Presbyterian government) decides matters of dispute, exercises church discipline, and calls pastors. Rather, each local church handles such things (Mt 18:15–17; 2 Cor 2:6). We recently updated our own local church constitution and bylaws, which were adopted long before I arrived. In one place, the document had said we were a “completely autonomous” church (emphasis added), to which I occasionally remarked in elders’ meetings “there is no such thing.” While each local church is in a sense autonomous, churches are interdependent, meaning we function best when we affiliate with other like-minded churches for the many benefits to each other and for the greater witness to Christ locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. Additionally, we too quickly forget that every church exists upon the faithful brothers and sisters who have come before us, even those who planted each of our current churches. Every church is a church plant.

There are different structures of congregational government, but each variation holds that the final authority, under Jesus Christ, belongs to the local church membership (Mt 18:18–20; 1 Cor 5:4–5). Membership in a local church is for believers, which is why the pastor-elders of our church listen to the testimony of every person applying for membership. Those reading this paper who regularly listen to membership interviews likely know both the joys of listening to the redeemed of the Lord say so (Ps 107:2) but also the angst that comes when an applicant’s testimony and gospel clarity are fuzzy.

In addition to being in the Bible, congregationalism has particular importance in the EFCA because of its European roots that reach back to the time shortly after the Reformation. The EFCA, although not officially organized and named as such until the 1950s, has strong ties to believers in Europe who sought the freedom to worship God without the constraints of state churches. Today the term free carries a different nuance in the EFCA, but the spirit of freedom continues in the way a local congregation rules its own body and decides on theological matters deemed to be of second- and third-order importance (Acts 6:1–6; 2 Cor 2:6). In our church this means membership must vote on matters such as amending the constitution and bylaws, calling and affirming pastor-elders, affirming deacons and deaconesses, approving the budget, and buying and selling property. A healthy church can thrive when each office—the office of pastor-elder, the office of deacon/deaconess, and the office of member—knows its role and humbly serves within it.

Discussion Questions (created by the EFCA)

Justification

1.  How do you understand “justification” (cf. Romans 3:21-26)?

God’s Grace Through Faith Alone in Christ Alone

2.  Define “grace” and “faith” and explain how grace and faith in Christ are related to justification.

3.  What is the significance of the emphasis on “alone?”

Body of Christ, Jesus Christ as Head of Church

4.  How are the scriptural metaphors of “the body of Christ,” “the bride of Christ,” and “the Head of the Church” to be understood?

True Church and Local Church

5.  What is the relationship between the “true church” and the “local church?”

Local Church

6.  What does it mean to be a “believers’ church?” Why is membership important for a local church? What responsibilities do members have in a local church?

7.  Address the various types of church government. What is the biblical defense of congregationalism?

8.  Within congregationalism, how should the Pastor(s), Church Board (Elders and Deacons), and Congregation function together for effective church ministry?

9.  What is your understanding of the statement that the “EFCA shall be an association and fellowship of autonomous but interdependent congregations of like faith and congregational government?” What does “autonomous but interdependent” mean? Why is denominational affiliation important for you and the congregation?

Ordinances

10.  What is the meaning and purpose of baptism? What are the various modes of baptism?

11.  What is the meaning and purpose of the Lord’s Supper? What are the various ways this is understood?

12.  How do baptism and the Lord’s Supper relate to one another, i.e. is there a biblical order? How do they “confirm and nourish the believer?”

* Photo by Karl Fredrickson on Unsplash

New Hire: Connections Pastor

This summer I wrote about the change of pastoral seasons for our church and me (here). My co-pastor, Jason Abbott, moved to another church in Chicago. Jason pastored faithfully at our church for seven years, and it was a joy to share five of those years with him.

Rather than continuing the co-senior-pastor model, I’ve moved into the more traditional role of lead pastor, and we need to hire another associate pastor—there’s plenty of work to be done! We had 30 new people ask to join a small group in August!

We have assembled a search team. The job of the search team is to advertise the position, narrow in on a handful of candidates, and then hand one candidate back to the pastor-elders for more vetting, and then we’ll present that candidate to our membership for final affirmation. We’ve posted the description on our church website, with several seminaries and other job boards, and now below on my blog. You can also download a PDF of the job description here. Our search team met for the first time last night. We appreciate your prayers.

Please advertise with us if you know pastors who might be interested. Encourage them to send a resume and cover letter to Scott Elder, the head of our search team: jobs@communityfreechurch.org. Within two weeks, we’ll follow up with each applicant about potential next steps.

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Associate Pastor of Connections

Overview

The connections pastor will serve as the primary shepherd to move people from visitor to engaged member at our church, helping us to become the type of community God desires local churches to be. He will implement strategies to integrate a growing refugee population into membership and full participation in the life of the church. As an associate pastor, he will also help with church administration, preaching and teaching, and supporting the men’s and women’s ministries and deacons. The connections pastor will be one of the pastor-elders. He will operate under the direct supervision of the senior pastor and under the overall governance of the Pastor-Elder Board.

Compensation

Benefits: 6 paid holidays; 15 paid vacation days; 5 paid personal days; 1 day off during the week in addition to Saturday, which is considered a day off (Sundays are considered a workday); Pay every 2 weeks on a Wednesday

Salary: Annual Salary **; FICA  **; Health Insurance  **; Retirement  **

Total Compensation: Please ask for the salary range during interviews.

Job Requirements

• Committed Christian who will participate and engage in our church and who agrees with the EFCA Statement of Faith.

• Humility and willingness to work with teams.

• Deep love and compassion for people, Christian and non-Christian alike.

• Excellent people skills with the ability to engage diverse types of people.

• Skilled expositor of God’s Word; ability to teach and preach to all ages of the church.

• Passion for discipleship and seeing people shaped by the gospel in all of life.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with strong gifts in administration.

• Aptitude for training, recruiting, and catalyzing leaders for ministry.

• 5–10 years of ministry experience, preferably in a church that emphasized small groups (MDiv degree preferred).

• A shared theological and philosophical DNA with the pastor-elders including warm complementarianism, a humble embrace of Reformed soteriology, and a gospel-centeredness in all of ministry.

Job Responsibilities & Duties

The connections pastor is the curator and catalyst for our small group Bible study ministry. He will serve on the teaching team and preach approximately 6 times a year on Sunday mornings. The connections pastor will work with the men’s and women’s ministries to implement the vision of the church and enhance connection; oversee the volunteer-led greeting & ushering, and deacon ministries; help with church administration; and participate in the discipleship of individuals and young families. The connections pastor will also serve the church more broadly as an associate pastor, performing weddings and funerals, visitation, counseling, and the administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Church bio & How to Apply?

Our church belongs to the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA). We have around 300 people in attendance each Sunday and 200 people in small groups. For more information about our church, please see our website, CommunityFreeChurch.org. Send your resume and cover letter to Scott Elder, the head of our search team: jobs@communityfreechurch.org. Within two weeks, we’ll follow up with each applicant about potential next steps.

A Change of Seasons: A Pastoral and Personal Update

Photo: The steeple of Community Evangelical Free Church, the church I’ve been a pastor at for the last five years.

When I was a junior in college, a local youth group hosted a city-wide “service day” with other local youth groups. After the day of service, everyone gathered that night for worship and preaching. The youth group hosting the event had asked me to preach. I did. I only remember a few details from that sermon, but my main memory comes from what happened after the preaching.

My wife, Brooke, was my girlfriend at the time. After the worship service was over, Brooke and I went out for ice cream at McDonald’s with one of the pastors and his wife. As I ate my McFlurry and we talked about our lives, the pastor who heard me preach encouraged me to consider going to seminary after college.

That was sixteen years ago, and the couple who went out for ice cream with us was Jason and Natalie Abbott. As we sat at McDonald’s that night, I could have had no idea that I’d spend the last five years pastoring with Jason at Community Evangelical Free Church.

A Church Announcement

I told this story to our church a few weeks ago before my sermon. I shared it because the story gives more context to what it meant to me a few months ago when Jason first told me he was likely going to be taking a position at another church in the summer. Jason pastored faithfully at our church for seven years, and it was a joy to share five of those years with him. For the better, his preaching and pastoring shaped our lives in both obvious and subtle ways; that’s what faithful pastoring does.

Before I go on, let me acknowledge that I don’t presume most people out there on the world wide web want or need an update about one individual church in the middle of Pennsylvania. Most people don’t need this update. But a few people—people who know me and our church—might like to know about the changes.

What Does This Change Mean Practically?

As we go forward, it’s my hope and the hope of our pastor-elders that as the senior pastor I will anchor the preaching ministry of our church, which for now will mean preaching around 3 times a month or 36 times a year.

I’m not sure I know all the ways the change at church will affect the writing that I do in the mornings. For now I’ll just say that it’s been difficult to do anything except what feels like the most pressing ministry item in front of me. Few books are being read and few writing projects are being pursued as squeaky wheels keep getting all the grease.

The other major change is the promotion of our director of youth and music ministry to the role of associate pastor. He’s been here for several years and done a fantastic job. I’m excited to see him do more preaching.

We are also going to be hiring another associate pastor. We’re still working out the details, but likely the role will be a connections pastor, that is, someone who helps shepherd us into the kind of meaningful relationships that God calls his people to have with each other.

Please Say a Prayer for Us

As I wrote above, I don’t want to presume that people want to know what is happening in our little church in the middle of Pennsylvania. But a few of you might like to know. If you’re one of those people who made it to the end of this post, please say a quick prayer for me and our church. It would mean a lot to me.

Is God Big Enough to Handle Your Pain?

When tragedy strikes, we often don’t know what to do next. Yet, when the Lord’s hand of judgment fell on Israel; when the temple was leveled by pagans; and when the most tender and refined of women resorted to cannibalism (cf. Deut. 28:56–57), Jeremiah knew what to do. He sat in ash and wrote an acrostic poem. Let that sink in. When all around his soul gave way, Jeremiah penned the book we call Lamentations, a series of highly structured and theologically dense poems.

That response to tragedy might strike us as odd. But Jeremiah’s response is a gift to posterity. His laments illuminate the way out of the dark jungle of despair. He gives us a path to walk toward life, healing, and toward God himself.

The Importance of Lament

Mark Vroegop’s new book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament draws its title from two verses in Lamentations: one about the clouds of judgment that hung over Zion (2:1), and the other from the stunning promise of fresh mercy each morning (3:22). “Lament stands in the gap,” Vroegop writes, “between pain and promise” (26).

Buy on Amazon

When tragedy strikes our lives, our churches, and our communities, we need a competent guide through the laments in the Bible, which are less familiar to most Christians than they should be. Take our diet of modern worship songs as an example. The book of Psalms is one-third lament, while the overwhelming majority of our modern worship songs are “positive and encouraging,” as one radio station boasts. Focusing on the upbeat in music and calling funeral services “a celebration of life,” are not necessarily wrong, but it does leave us impoverished. We also need to know how to grieve.

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy has three sections: the first engages with four psalms of lament, the second with the book of Lamentations, and the final explores applications to individual and corporate life. The book has also discussion questions at the end of each chapter. Not only would it be a good book for preaching and worship pastors to read individually, but it’s also a good book for them to read together. Last fall at our church, we preached a 10-week series through the book of Job, and though Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy wasn’t published yet, I wish it had been so it could have better shaped not only our preaching but the whole worship service.

Learning the Meaning of Lament

There’s a famous joke from the show Seinfeld where George’s father creates the holiday Festivus, a foil to Christmas. Each year Festivus beings with the “airing of grievances.” Mr. Costanza bellows, “I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!” To the uninitiated, it can seem like biblical laments are like that, the mere ranting to God our pent-up anger and disappointment throughout the last year, a vomiting of emotions and a verbal shake of our fists. As Vroegop engages with four Psalms of lament in the first section of the book (Psalm 77, 10, 22, and 13, respectively), I gained a better understanding of what lament, biblically speaking, is and what it is not. And more importantly, the detailed discussion through each modeled how to make use of lament as an individual Christian and in the life of the church. Big surprise: it’s not the way of Festivus.

Biblical laments have, according to Vroegop, three key features. First, there is an address to the Lord. In this way laments are for believers, not those shouting to the void or an impersonal universe. Second, laments complain. The complaint might be overtly because of some sin, or it may be less clear why the tragedy struck, but regardless something has gone very wrong and the people of God aren’t going to pretend it’s okay. Finally, laments have an expression of trust or praise, sometimes both. When all the sawdust of a lament finally settles to the ground, a believer is still a believer because God is God. Often this expression of trust marks a turning point in the psalm. Appendix 4, entitled, “But, Yet, And,” traces a number of examples of this “turn” in various psalms. “In some cases,” Vroegop writes, “the specific word [but, yet, or and] is not present, but the tone of the sentence fits the purpose [of asking boldly or choosing to trust]” (209).

Like the book of Lamentations, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy was also born out of tragedy. The Vroegops first experienced lament in the wake of a stillborn daughter and they later had other significant troubles during pregnancies. “Pain and fear mingled together in a jumbled torrent of emotion. . . . I wrestled with sadness that bored a hole in my chest,” he writes (17). My wife and I—and I’m sure many in your churches—know a little bit about this. You don’t forget that pale look on an ultrasound technician’s face when she says, “I’m going to grab the doctor,” on her way out the door. But it was in this season of sorrow that the Vroegop’s found solace in the Scripture. “The Bible gave voice to my pain. . . . I discovered a minor-key language for my suffering: lament” (17).

A Book for Those in Pain

Whenever I read a book about suffering, I find myself wondering about the author’s intended audience. Russ Ramsey, the author of Struck, another edifying book on suffering, has said there are two kinds of books on suffering. “There are books that you give to people who are interested in the subject, but not necessarily afflicted or suffering in the moment. And then there are books for people who are in the middle of suffering.”

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy is more in the latter category, but it’s not the book you hand them on the way home from the funeral. The wounds are probably still too raw for this book. It seems to me that Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy is best given to someone when the steady delivery of meals from the church has stopped, when friends forget to check in, and when acute grief has dissipated but long-term grief still lingers. It is a good book for every pastor to read, but at some time or another, it will also be a book for most people in the pews.

* This book review originally appeared at 9Marks.

** Photo by Alex Plesovskich on Unsplash

Jesus Was Crucified at 9 am: Reflections on Good Friday

The following are my notes for our church’s Good Friday Service. I hope these reflections bless you as we prepare our hearts for Easter.

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Welcome

My name is Benjamin; I’m one of the teaching pastors here at Community Church. Welcome to our Good Friday Service. In just a moment we’ll formally begin our service. To prepare our hearts, please listen to our music team play a rendition of Psalm 88, which is a well-known Psalm of Lament. It’s an appropriate way to begin our Good Friday Service.

Song: “Can the Dead Rise Up to Praise?” (here)  

Would you join me in prayer? “Dear Heavenly Father...”

In the early church, there was a young pastor named Timothy, who was called by the Lord to pastor a church in the ancient city of Ephesus. The Apostle Paul wrote two letters to Timothy that we have in our Bibles. In one of those letters, Paul told Timothy to “devote [himself] to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Timothy 4:13). Each Sunday we do all three of these: we read Scripture, we exhort, we teach. But we often have more of the latter two (exhortation and teaching) than we do the reading of Scripture. So tonight we are going to major on the reading of Scripture, and I’m praying that the plain reading of Scripture would have its own way of exhorting and teaching us with the goal that our hearts might be strengthened by grace.

All ten of our Scripture readings tonight come from the gospel of Luke. The readings encompass the events that took place on Good Friday so many years ago. We are going to intersperse the readings of Scripture with songs, a few we’ll ask you to sing along with if you know them and a few the band will play over us as we listen and reflect. Before each cluster of readings, I’ll come forward to give a brief introduction to the readings. I’ll also venture a guess as to the “time stamp” of when each event took place throughout the Thursday night when Jesus was arrested and to Friday afternoon when Jesus died. Some of the times are exact because they are stated in the Gospels; other times are approximations based on what seems plausible. (I was helped by this article by Russ Ramsey.)

I’ll lead us in the first reading, which comes from Luke 22:47–53. This reading covers the betrayal and arrest of Jesus, which took place sometime in the late hours of Thursday night, so, perhaps something like 11:00 pm. Jesus, as you’ll see in the passage, refers to the following events as the beginning of an evil hour and “the power of darkness” (Luke 22:53)

Reading 1: Luke 22:47–53, Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus

Song: “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us”

After Jesus is arrested, he is beaten and mocked by soldiers. As well, religious leaders convene a council where Jesus is tried. All this takes place in the early morning hours of Good Friday, perhaps somewhere between 2:00 am and 6:00 am. Meanwhile, we’re also told that just as the sun is coming up, Peter denies knowing Jesus.

Reading 2: Luke 22:54–62, Peter Denies Jesus
Reading 3: Luke 22:63–65, Jesus Is Mocked
Reading 4: Luke 22:66–71, Jesus Before the Council

Song: “Oh God” by the Citizens

Now that the sun is up, the pace of the story quickens. Between 6:00 am and 8:00 am, Jesus appears before the Roman governor Pilate, and then the Judean ruler Herod Antipas, and then he goes back to Pilate where Jesus is sentenced to crucifixion. Between 8:00 am and 8:30 am, Jesus begins his march to Golgotha, which is an Aramaic word. Luke calls Golgotha by its translation: “The Place of the Skull,” likely so called because the rock formation looked like a skull and also because it was a place of execution and burial.

Weakened from his sleepless night, his beatings, and his flogging, Jesus is unable to carry his own cross, so a man name Simon is conscripted to carry the cross for him. We can’t be certain, but when you piece together what is said in Mark’s gospel with something that’s said in the book of Romans, it would seem that at least one of Simon’s sons and Simon’s wife became followers of Christ and even leaders in the early church (Mark 15:21 and Romans 16:13). We can’t know, but I’d love to think Simon became a believer in Jesus as well.

The crucifixion begins around 9:00 am. Over the next three hours, Jesus has a conversation with the criminals on the cross, and we do know for sure that one of those men becomes a believer, because Luke tells us so.

Reading 5: Luke 23:1–5, Jesus Before Pilate
Reading 6: Luke 23:6–17, Jesus Before Herod
Reading 7: Luke 23:18–25, Pilate Delivers Jesus to Be Crucified
Reading 8: Luke 23:26–43, The Crucifixion

Song: “Man of Sorrows”

After Jesus was on the cross for three hours, from 9:00 am until 12:00 noon, a strange darkness was over the land. Then, at 3:00 pm, in a loud voice, Jesus cries out to his father and gives up his spirit.

Sometime later that afternoon, as the sun sets—so perhaps around 5:00 pm—Luke tells us of a rebel, a wealthy religious leader named Joseph. Joseph did not consent to the condemnation of Jesus, as the other religious leaders did. Very bravely, Joseph requests permission to bury Jesus in a tomb.

In the Jewish reckoning of things, one day ends and a new day begins at nightfall, which means Good Friday comes to a close at sundown. But just before the sun goes down, Luke tells us a few women followed to see where Jesus is buried. Then they return home to prepare spices, which they intend to bring to the tomb in two days, after the Sabbath rest day and the celebration of Passover.

Reading 9: Luke 23:44–49, The Death of Jesus
Reading 10: Luke 23:50–56, Jesus Is Buried

Songs: “The Power of the Cross,” “There Is a Fountain,” and “Nothing but the Blood”

Closing Thoughts & Prayer

I don’t think it’s stealing the punchline from Sunday’s Easter sermon to tell you what happens. We know the story. The women never get to use the spices they prepared to place on his body. His body is gone.

Tonight we’ve been reading from Luke’s gospel, but it’s fair to say that the rest of the New Testament, in a way, is doing two main things: first, the New Testament gives us the interpretation of the events that took place on Good Friday and Easter. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God was reconciling us to himself (2 Corinthians 5:18). Jesus bore the punishment we deserved and now—wonderfully—the perfect life of Christ is given to us. Through faith in Jesus, God now sees us as having the perfection of his Son.

The second thing the New Testament authors do is explain the implications of Good Friday for our lives, the life of the Church, and the future of the world. We certainly don’t have time to tease out all of the implications of the death and resurrection of Jesus. That will take our whole lives, indeed even our eternities.

But we should mention one implication. One implication of Good Friday and Easter is that believers in God do not grieve as those who have no hope, as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:13. We certainly grieve when a Christian who we love dies, and we certainly do the same on Good Friday.

Yes, we grieve the weight of our sin and the gravity of the cross of Christ. But Christians do not grieve on Good Friday as those who have no hope. We have great hope because the spices prepared for his burial were never used. And even so, when we die one day, our own tombs will not be our final place of rest. We will be with Jesus in paradise, just as Jesus promised the thief on the cross.

Join me in prayer, and then we’ll be dismissed. “Dear Heavenly Father...”

* Photo by Aaron Burdon on Unsplash

My Heart Is Full: A Miniature Memoir after Five Years of Ministry

John Piper has said that “God will hide from you much of your fruit [from your ministry efforts]. You will see enough to be assured of his blessing, but not so much as to think you could live without it” (The Supremacy of God in Preaching, 25).

I’ve found this to be true. I hear enough encouragement in ministry that I don’t want to quit—most of the time. But I don’t tend to hear so much encouragement as to become proud—at least I hope I haven’t become proud.

But the receiving of encouragement is not always so balanced of a thing in the short run. It’s a lot like gaining and losing weight. When you are, on the whole, losing weight, you still gain weight each time you eat, even if the total calories you burn create a weekly deficit. And when, on the whole, you’re gaining weight, each time you exercise or do any movement, or make no movement as you sleep, your body burns calories. Encouragement and discouragement in ministry are like that, something in constant flux.

It’s fair to say that encouragement didn’t come my way often when I first arrived at my current church five years ago. Early on, I never really wanted to leave, nor did I feel like anyone especially wanted me to leave. But I sort of had this sense that if I did leave, no one would miss me too much. People didn’t love or hate my pastoring; they seemed indifferent. That might be overstating things, but it’s how I felt.

I’m not sure of all the reasons I perceived these feelings of indifference. In hindsight, I believe the largest contributing factor was my change in role. At my former church, encouragement dripped into my inbox like it was hooked up to an IV bag, and the encouragement was broad and steady.

But at my last church, I was an associate teaching pastor not a senior teaching pastor. Church members seem to like rooting for an associate pastor, especially if he’s trying hard and improving. I’d preach an okay-ish sermon one week, but then a few months later I might preach a sermon that was a little better than just okay. People would let me know ways I had improved. They’d show me notes they took during the sermon. Then, eventually, I’d preach a few sermons that could almost be considered good, at least by associate pastor standards. A few times near the end I might have even preached well. That was fun. Again, the congregation rooted for me. Who doesn’t want an underdog to win?

When five years ago I came to Community Evangelical Free Church no longer an associate teaching pastor but a senior teaching pastor, someone also pulled the IV out of my inbox. It’s not that anyone ever said this outright, but it almost felt like people were thinking, Hey, you’re a senior teaching pastor now; we sort of expect your sermons to be good, and the same goes for your counseling, discipleship, Bible knowledge, administration, and everything else you do.

For whatever deficit of encouragement there was in the first few years—whether it was an actual deficit or it was just perception, only the Lord knows—I certainly know now that my church is rooting for me. Last weekend my church gave me a big dose of encouragement as we celebrated my five-year anniversary. A few members of the original search team, staff, elders, my small group, and a few other friends, gave up an evening to share ways that my wife and I have blessed them through our ministry here. They even prayed over us. My heart is full.

In one note, a dear friend wrote,

I see you in the trenches week in and week out wrestling with the Scriptures, honing your preaching craft, writing for the edification of God’s people, centering (and re-centering) your work, ministry, and family on the gospel. . . . Over the last five years you’ve made gospel-centeredness tangible.

That note and the other notes hold more life-giving encouragement than I feel comfortable sharing here. I don’t want my reflections to be considered self-serving. But one thing stood out as people around the room shared: the wide cross-section of life that pastoral ministry occupies. For one couple, I had officiated the weddings of two of their daughters. For another couple, I had visited them in the hospital while they sat beside the bed of a dying parent, once for a father and once for a mother. I had also prayed with new mothers and fathers in hospitals when their children were born. With others, we’d shared tears and prayers and pans of brownies in homes during countless small group meetings. And all of them had endured my preaching. Speaking of preaching . . .

My best friend, Mike, had a raffle of sorts to see who could guess how many sermons I had preached in the last five years. My co-pastor and I alternate preaching, so it wasn’t difficult to do a little math and make a decent guess. My guess didn’t count, but I thought it might have been around 110, which turned out to be a little high. In a few seasons, like last year when we renovated a building, my preaching frequency slowed a bit. The answer was 104 sermons in the last five years, which amounts to something like 400,000 words. That’s a lot of words.

Do you remember those arcade games with a mechanical bar that slides back and forth, continually nudging a huge stack of coins resting on a shelf? You play the game by dropping in coins and hoping the mechanical bar will nudge the stack in such a way that some eventually fall off the ledge. That’s often how I think about preaching and pastoral ministry. Preaching is a series of tiny nudges. There are the granular nudges in 400,000 individual words and the aggregate nudges in 104 completed sermons. With most nudges, nothing seems to happen. So in faith you reload again. And again. And again.

But then sometimes the nudges connect. Change happens. People are helped and healed. I’m thankful my church cared enough about me to show me the fruit from a few of my ministry nudges.

My heart is full.

* Photo by Amanda Herrold Photography

8 Sojourn Network “How-To” Books in 30-Seconds Each

I love writing book reviews, which I know makes me weird to many of you—like, Didn’t you get enough of that in High School? But over the last year Sojourn Network has released so many helpful books in their “How-To” series that I don’t have time to write about each of them. So, I thought I’d just get in front of a camera for a few minutes and tell you a bit about each book.

If you don’t know anything about Sojourn Network, it’s a group of pastors and churches banded together for encouragement, training, and church planting. I think they are doing a lot of good things.

Full disclosure: I was privileged to help these books come into print, so I have a vested interest in their success. But I wouldn’t be telling you about them like this if I didn’t actually think they were helpful. I’d love for you to check them out. There are more coming in 2019.

Let me know in the comments which book sounds most interesting to you.

Healthy Plurality = Durable Church: “How-To” Build and Maintain a Healthy Plurality of Elders by Dave Harvey

Life-Giving-Groups: “How-To” Grow Healthy, Multiplying Community Groups by Jeremy Linneman [Listen to my interview with the author here.]

Charting the Course: “How-To” Navigate the Legal Side of a Church Plant by Tim Beltz

Redemptive Participation: A “How-To” Guide for Pastors in Culture by Mike Cosper

Filling Blank Spaces: “How-To” Work with Visual Artists in Your Church by Michael Winters

Before the Lord, Before the Church: “How-To” Plan a Child Dedication Service by Jared Kennedy with Megan Kennedy

Sabbaticals: “How-To” Take a Break from Ministry before Ministry Breaks You by Rusty McKie

Leaders through Relationship: “How-To” Develop Leaders in the Local Church by Kevin Galloway

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Is the Engine of Your Team Healthy?

Local churches mentioned in the New Testament always had more than one pastor. They always had a plurality of pastor-elders. Numerous passages in the Bible indicate this. For example, see Acts 20:28; Ephesians 4:11; 1 Timothy 4:14; 5:17; Titus 1:5; and 1 Peter 5:1–5. This is why the leadership of our church is carried out, not by one leader, but by a team of spiritually qualified men.

The pastor-elder team at our church includes two “staff pastors” and six “non-staff pastors.” We typically meet every other Wednesday night for 3–4 hours. We share a meal, pray for each other and our church, and discuss things related to the health and direction of our congregation.

During the meal at our pastor-elder meetings, we often discuss a book we’re reading together. We spent significant time at our last three meetings discussing Dave Harvey’s latest book Healthy Plurality = Durable Church. The book is short, sweet, and full of thought-provoking questions and ideas. It’s the kind of book you’re thankful for even if you do not see every point the same way.

Harvey begins his book with a thesis: “The quality of your elder plurality determines the health of your church.” In my own experience, although far less extensive than Harvey’s, I’ve found his thesis to be true, especially over the long-haul of a church. This means working on the health of your elders is a nearly constant priority. As with healthy eating, you can take a break for a meal or two, or even a week or two, but bad things happen if you eat hot dogs and Cheetos and sticky buns and drink Mountain Dew and IPAs for a year.

In an appendix of the book, Harvey lists several questions he finds helpful for an elder team to consider as they evaluate the health of their team. I’ve included these questions below. But you don’t have to be an elder board to find these questions helpful. I suppose with only slight modifications here and there, they could apply to most teams that are committed together in Christian ministry.

If you’re a pastor, I encourage you to grab this book and discuss it with your team because “the quality of your elder plurality determines the health of your church.”

*     *     *

Four Indicators for Inspecting the Healthy of a Plurality

1. Agreement: Do We Agree with Each Other?

• Is the doctrinal basis of our unity as a team well-defined?
• Do we have a statement of faith, and if so, do we all affirm our statement of faith?
• Are we growing together theologically through study and discussion?
• Is it clear to me that you have worked hard to understand my positions and can represent them without exaggeration or misrepresentation?
• Is dissent sufficiently principled and coming from a heart that honestly believes this decision may contradict our values or harm the church?
• Will you wisely represent the position of the plurality to others, whether you agree or disagree?

2. Trust: Do We Trust One Another?

• Will you be loyal to God’s Word by being completely honest with me?
• Will you judge me or exploit me when I show weakness?
• Will you be patient with me in areas I need to grow?
• Can you be discreet once you really know my temptations?
• Am I confident that you will not share what I confide with anyone who should not know?
• Do you have my back?
• Will you be humble if I risk correcting you?

3. Care: Do We Care for Each Other?

• Is it clear to each of us that our state of soul matters to each other as much as (or more than!) our performance?
• Are conversations more likely to encourage or critique?
• Can we point out specific times where we talk about our lives, families, struggles and/or temptations (something apart from ministry!)?
• Does my feedback on your performance include encouragement?
• Does someone on this team know where I am vulnerable to temptation?
• Would my wife feel free to call you if I was tanking? Why or why not?

4. Fit: Do We Enjoy Each Other and Know Where We Fit?

• Does my personality appear to mesh with these men?
• Are we able to work together in ways that deepen our relationships rather than strain them?
• Do I know my role and what is expected of me?
• Have we clearly defined how we will evaluate one another and what determines success?
• Am I aware of the specific and regular contexts where we will evaluate our fruitfulness as a team?

Life-Giving Groups: An Interview with Jeremy Linneman

Jeremy Linneman and I both graduated from the University of Missouri. We met a handful of times over a dozen years ago. I’m excited to see how the Lord is using him.

He’s the pastor of the recent church plant Trinity Community Church in Columbia, Missouri. He’s married to his wife Jessie, and they have three boys. From 2010–16, he was a community and executive pastor at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

I recently had the privilege of interviewing him about his new eBook on small groups called, Life-Giving Groups: “How-To” Grow Healthy, Multiplying Community Groups.

You can listen to the 30-minute interview below.

These are some of the questions we discussed:

1. For those that don’t know who you are, can you introduce yourself?
2. Where do you see small groups in the Bible?
3. What are small groups for?
4. What are some of the significant hurdles to meaningful and healthy small groups?
5. How should small groups include (or not include) children?
6. What would you say to a person that has been in small groups before that were more hurtful than helpful to their process of becoming a mature disciple?
7. What role can small groups play in church plants?
8. If you and I were in a cycling race, how bad would you beat me?

Yesterday, I posted short reviews of all the recent ebooks from Sojourn Network. Here’s what I wrote about Jeremy’s book. If you think you’ll purchase his ebook, in December all of the profits go directly to those planting churches in their network.

Life-Giving Groups: “How-To” Grow Healthy, Multiplying Community Groups by Jeremy Linneman

If you’ve been in enough small groups, then you know not every small group is “life-giving.” Some are, to be frank, “life-sucking.” But participating in a group that “gives life” means that you need to be giving your life to others.

In this ebook, Jeremy Linneman explains how an individual group (or a small group ministry) can cultivate mature disciples. He sets forth a biblical vision for groups, as well as offering tons of practical insights for cultivating the health of these groups. If your church has a groups ministry but no established training plan for leaders, you’d benefit greatly by taking all your current and new leaders through the material.

A favorite quote: “Like Jesus, we exist for relationships. We are created in the image of this triune God. To be fully human means to live in relationships. If Jesus was the most ‘fully alive’ human ever, it shouldn’t surprise us that a person cannot become fully human without a community.” (Linneman, Life-Giving Groups, 10)

 

New eBooks from Sojourn Network for Christians and Church Leaders

When it comes to learning, sometimes you need a “deep dive” into a subject: you need a 12-week course that meets thrice weekly for 90 minutes. But other times, an office visit with a professor will suffice.

This difference is the difference between books and ebooks. Ebooks are typically quick hitters that don’t say everything but do say enough to bring clarity to a specific topic. This fall, Sojourn Network released a series of “How To” ebooks for Christians and church leaders. Sojourn Network is a group of reformed Baptist churches that band together for greater church health.

I recently read each of their ebooks and gladly recommend all of them. Below are a few specific reasons why I liked each. Also, if you think you’ll purchase one of them, I was told that in December all of the profits go directly to those planting churches in their network.

Filling Blank Spaces: “How-To” Work With Visual Artists In Your Church by Michael Winters

“When the earth was brand new,” writes author Michael Winters, “it was formless and empty . . . . [B]lank spaces were everywhere. Now they are rare.”

This means that if your church is going to begin a ministry that promotes art and artists, you’ll have to do some de-cluttering first. You’ll have to clear the sanctuary walls and stage, the foyer and welcome area, the café and restrooms. You’ll need to make room for paintings and sculptures and photos that give sight to the blind.

It’s in this mission—giving sight to the blind and freedom to captives—that Winters contends artists can play a crucial role. And when they do, they are doing what God did and does, taking the blanks spaces, those formless and empty parts of creation, and filling them up with the glory of God.

Winters is the Director of Arts and Culture at Sojourn and is himself an artist. In addition to the practical advice and theological reflection on the arts, one thing I appreciated about the book is the way Winters transparently shares some of his missteps and failures as he has sought to cultivate the arts. I enjoyed this ebook so much, I’d love to see Winters expand his reflections beyond the visual arts to the written and spoken word.

A favorite quote: “Everyone and everything contributes to your church’s visual culture, from the kid’s ministry coloring sheets to the preaching pastor’s hair gel. The visual culture of your church should not be an obsession of control and marketing-driven scrutiny. But when you make aesthetic decisions, they should thoughtfully complement the church’s vision. Major factors would include: the architecture of your space, its interior design, technologies, graphic design, along with decoration, furnishings, landscaping, and outdoor signage including parking lot demarcations.” (Winters, Filling Blank Spaces, 10)

Life-Giving Groups: “How-To” Grow Healthy, Multiplying Community Groups by Jeremy Linneman

If you’ve been in enough small groups, then you know not every small group is “life-giving.” Some are, to be frank, “life-sucking.” But participating in a group that “gives life” means that you need to be giving your life to others.

In this ebook, Jeremy Linneman explains how an individual group (or a small group ministry) can cultivate mature disciples. He sets forth a biblical vision for groups, as well as offering tons of practical insights for cultivating the health of these groups. If your church has a groups ministry but no established training plan for leaders, you’d benefit greatly by taking all your current and new leaders through the material.

A favorite quote: “Like Jesus, we exist for relationships. We are created in the image of this triune God. To be fully human means to live in relationships. If Jesus was the most ‘fully alive’ human ever, it shouldn’t surprise us that a person cannot become fully human without a community.” (Linneman, Life-Giving Groups, 10)

Healthy Plurality = Durable Church: “How-To” Build and Maintain a Healthy Plurality of Elders by Dave Harvey

Dave Harvey begins this ebook with a thesis: “The quality of your elder plurality determines the health of your church.” In my own experience, although far less extensive than Harvey’s, I’ve found his thesis to be true, especially over the long-haul of a church. This means working on the health of your elders is a nearly constant priority. As with healthy eating, you can take a break for a meal or two, or even a week or two; but bad things happen if you eat hot dogs and Cheetos and sticky buns and drink Mountain Dew and IPAs for a year.

Local churches mentioned in the New Testament always had more than one pastor. They always had a plurality of pastor-elders. Numerous passages in the Bible indicate this. For example, see Acts 20:28; Ephesians 4:11; 1 Timothy 4:14; 5:17; Titus 1:5; and 1 Peter 5:1–5 (see Appendix 1 for a complete list).

In the ebook, Harvey takes readers through the philosophy, principles, and process of creating and maintaining healthy plurality among elders. He’s also the author of When Sinners Say “I Do” (which we keep in our church bookstore) and Am I Called? (which I read just a few months ago).

At our church, we do not have a single lead pastor but rather co-pastors, where each of us shares the role of a lead pastor (weddings, funerals, vision casting, preaching, disciplining, etc.). This is a deviation from some of what Harvey advocates for in his ebook, but I’m not sure we are all that far off from his intent either in the letter of the law or the spirit. As with the other ebooks, any elder team would benefit from reading this together.

A favorite quote: “Humility is the oil that lubricates the engine of plurality. When one considers all of the polity options God could have chosen for governing churches, I theorize that God chose plurality because he loves humility.” (Harvey, Healthy Plurality = Durable Church, 19)

Before the Lord, Before the Church: “How-To” Plan a Child Dedication Service by Jared Kennedy with Megan Kennedy

I just loved this ebook. It was relentlessly practical, even including several options for liturgies when conducting a child dedication service; sample invitations a church can send to relatives; suggested resources to give away on the day of a dedication; and instructions about putting an “X” on the stage with masking tape to show families where to stand. This sounds like micromanaging, but it’s not. Church leaders need this kind of help. I need this kind of help.

If your church does child dedications, you need to read this book. Doing shabby child dedication services is not helpful or honoring to anyone.  

A favorite quote: “As I said, I don’t have any Bible verses to reference here. I can’t point to a passage which says, ‘Thou shalt have child dedication services.’ But I do know parents are tempted to think about their relationship with their kids as if it was a contract. And I also know nothing challenges consumer thinking quite like making really difficult covenant promises. It’s true for marriage, and it’s true for parenting too. The child dedication covenant confirms this reality: parenting is a higher, self-sacrificial commitment. The sacred public vow helps us teach parents to practice regular patterns of sacrificial love from the very beginning of their parenting journey.” (Kennedy & Kennedy, Before the Lord, Before the Church, 12)

* Your can purchase the ebooks here.

Good Leaders Ask Good Questions

“Where are my keys?”

I’ve asked this question many times, sometimes in a low whisper and other times with my fists clenched, eyes closed, and vocal cords strained. “Where! Are! My! Keeeys!”

Regardless of tone, my reason for asking is always the same. I ask because I don’t know.

In the Bible, however, when God asks a question it’s not because he doesn’t know the answer to his question. He’s not asking to get new information. God knows the number of hairs on our heads and the number of the stars in the sky, even calling each star by name (Matthew 10:30; Psalm 147:4). In theological parlance, he’s omniscient.  

So when God asks a question, if he’s not asking to learn something, why does he ask? The answer is that he asks questions to teach.

I was reminded of this as I prepared last week’s sermon. In Luke 8, Jesus is surrounded by a huge crowd. When a woman touches Jesus, trusting that Jesus can heal her, Jesus then asks who it was who touched him.

As I looked at the story closer, it was clear that Jesus wanted this woman to publicly identify herself so that she could be restored to the community of God’s people, which she had been excluded from for a dozen years because of her issue with blood. Jesus asked the question, not to gain new information, but so that those in the crowd, and the woman herself, could gain new information. In short, he asked the question to teach.

The Bible is full of these types of questions. When Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?”, Jesus is not having an identity crisis. He want’s Peter to learn something. When God asks Adam, “Where are you?”, it’s not because God lost him. He want’s Adam to learn something.

A few years ago, when I was at my former church, I helped produce a monthly video for small group leaders. The very first video was on this topic of asking good questions.

This fall, in churches throughout the world, thousands of small group Bible studies will be launching and re-launching. If you help lead one, or even if you want to grow in your ability to be a thoughtful participant in one, perhaps you will enjoy the video. It’s just four-minutes long. In it, I encourage leaders to ask good questions to teach. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

On Church Aesthetics and Spiritual Gifts

All things being equal, no one wants to worship the living God in an ugly building. If the stars proclaim his handiwork, so should church architecture.

But how does an ugly building become a beautiful one? One answer is to pay the right people, or at a minimum, ask the right people to volunteer. Let’s go deeper, though. Who are the “right people”? And how did these people become good at what they do?

The Spiritual Gift of Artistic Design

When Christians teach about spiritual gifts, the conversation often focuses on gifts such as teaching and preaching, or administration and acts of service. If not these, the focus is probably on speaking in tongues and healing.

This post, however, isn’t a post about those gifts. It’s a post about the often overlooked spiritual gift of craftsmanship and artistic design.

In the book of Exodus, two men (and one man in particular), were explicitly said to be given this spiritual gift (Exodus 31:1–11).  God’s people had lots to build. There was the tent of meeting, the ark of the testimony, the mercy seat that is on it, all the furnishings of the tent, the table and its utensils, the lampstand with all its utensils, the altar of incense . . . and the list keeps going and going (vv. 7ff).

Remember, you can’t buy this stuff at Ikea or even Restoration Hardware. It had to be made. And when it was made, it was to be done with care; each aspect of the design was to reflect the creative beauty of God himself.

So what did God do? He filled individuals “with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft” (vv. 3–5). In short, God gave people the gift of craftsmanship and artistic design. This is a gift I’m so thankful God has given to people in our church.

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Currently, we are planning for a building move which will involve, among other things, a 5-month renovation project. In preparation for the move, a book that I found helpful was Church Buildings: A Strategic Guide to Design, Renovation, and Construction by Katie Burch, a Christian architect who specializes in church building projects. If your church is going through a building project, I highly recommend that your leaders read it.

Also, to prepare for the renovation I assembled various subcommittees, including an “Aesthetic and Design Committee.” Any guess who is on the team? Individuals who have the spiritual gift of design. In fact, this morning we met to go over the architectural drawings, as well as make the final carpet and color selections for the whole church. Exciting stuff.

In the rest of this post, I thought I’d pass along some of the guiding principles I put together for our design team. These might be boring to many of you. But maybe, just maybe, they will spark a passion to make your local church more beautiful, whether through a large-scale renovation project or simply as you give a long overdue facelift to the décor in your church nursery. Please make sure you modify the principles to fit your context. 

7-Guiding Principles for Our Church “Aesthetic and Design Committee”:

1. Think about the whole church
Make selections based on the interest of the whole church, not just a few individuals. Here’s a caveat though. Don’t feel like you must consult lots of people to get their opinion. Don’t do that. You’re on the aesthetic and design team because we want you to pick the things you like (because we like what you like!). Our church leadership is asking you to think about others as you choose design features, which is different (and wiser) than asking everyone to give their opinion.

2. Strive for continuity
There should be continuity throughout the building. Each of the children’s rooms can be distinct from each other (even distinct from the rest of the building), but each children’s classroom should feel like it belongs in the whole building. This is the opposite of hodge-podge. To use another example, we want our church to be decorated like a university that has continuity across its campus, and not like a shopping mall where each store has its own design.

3. Blend both classic and contemporary designs
Go for a “feel” that is both transcendent and relevant. I say this because that’s what I think the Bible is. The Bible has deep roots (“In the beginning, God . . .”), but it also speaks to our everyday lives. The Bible is then, and it’s now. Each week when we preach, we try to show how the Bible is both then and now, both transcendent and relevant. Let’s try to bring it out in our aesthetics too by tastefully blending classic and contemporary design.

4. Buy new stuff
When it comes to the decision of what to keep and what to toss, let’s lean toward the principle, “Out with the old; in with the new.” This is not a rule so much as it is a guideline. Sometimes, in my opinion, in the name of frugality (perhaps an idolatry of frugality), churches unduly sacrifice beauty by reusing things that are, well, used up. 

5. Create Word-centered art
There’s a question that has been important throughout the history of our denomination (The Evangelical Free Church). The question asks, “Where stands it written?” The idea is that everything Christians do should be governed by the word of God. Therefore, we would love to see our church decorated with Scripture and thoughtful quotes about Scripture from Christians who have come before us.

6. Work as a team by communicating well
As much as possible avoid meetings and conversations that don’t include everyone. It will hurt the unity and creativity of the team if two people get together and say to the rest of us, “The two of us already made a decision about that; it’s going to be X, Y, and Z.” At the same time, let’s have formal communication to the architect and the general contractor go only through me. This isn’t to be harsh; we just don’t want to burden people with unnecessary emails. No one ever tells me, “Gee, Benjamin, I wish I was copied on more emails.”

7. Have fun
Don’t get stressed about this. It should be fun!

[Photo by Jeremiah Higgins on Unsplash]

God’s Joy Project: A Small Group Discussion Guide

[Update June 29, 2018: Tony Reinke published an updated edition of The Joy Project with it's own study guide, which means mine is now longer for sale.]

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I’ve written a discussion guide for Tony Reinke’s book The Joy Project: A True Story of Inescapable Happiness, which can be downloaded free of charge in three digital formats at desiringGod.org. Reinke is senior writer for desiringGod.org, host of the popular “Ask Pastor John” podcast, and the author of several books, including 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, which was published in the spring.

My workbook for The Joy Project includes a short introduction to Reformed theology as well as a 7-week discussion guide. This companion guide is ideal for personal study and small group discussion. It provides questions for each chapter of Reinke’s book and discussion questions related to Christian songs that share the themes of each chapter.

We are all looking for joy. The Joy Project, however, is the story of how joy finds us. It’s the story of how God has worked, and is working, to save his people and love them forever.

Reinke tells this story through the theological framework of Calvinism, or more specifically the acronym TULIP (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints). In one of my favorite quotes from the book, Reinke writes,

Anticipating unending joy in the presence of Christ changes everything. It means we can relinquish control over our lives. It means we have no fear of the future. It means all our pressing toward personal holiness is not in vain. God elects so that we will be conformed to the image of Christ, in his holiness and in his happiness. It will be done, and we strive and obey in this inescapable hope.

You can download electronic versions of the workbook free of charge here (PDF, Kindle, iBook).

{Special thanks to Ben Bechtel, Stacey Covell, Jason Abbott, and Alexandra Richter for their editorial assistance on the workbook.}

The Wilderness Makes or Breaks a Man

I love this quote about the wilderness. It’s from the late Peter C. Craigie. He was an accomplished biblical scholar from Britain.

I stumbled upon it years ago when preparing for a sermon out of Deuteronomy. The quote is about what the Israelites learned, or should have learned, during their 40 years in the wilderness. But it’s also about what all followers of God learn, or should learn, in their own wildernesses.

The wilderness tested and disciplined the people in various ways. On the one hand, the desolation of the wilderness removed the natural props and supports which man by nature depends on; it cast the people back on God, who alone would provide the strength to survive the wilderness. On the other hand, the severity of the wilderness period undermined the shallow bases of confidence of those who were not truly rooted and grounded in God.

The wilderness makes or breaks a man; it provides strength of will and character. The strength provided by the wilderness, however, was not the strength of self-sufficiency, but the strength that comes from a knowledge of the living God. (Craigie, Deuteronomy, pg. 185)

I love so many things about this quote.

I love this quote because of the way it gives me a paradigm to understand my own wildernesses. We all have them. The underlining causes of our wildernesses and their particular outworking may be different, yet we all have them. But what do you do when you are in one? Where do you go for strength? When relationships are wounded, finances are weak, and health is fragile, what should we do? Shall we dig deeper into the “props and supports which man by nature depends on”? No, but we should dig deeper—deeper into God. If you are a Christian, your current wilderness is not a place of abandonment but a place where God draws you near (cf. Hosea 2:14–15).

And I love this quote because of its unexpected twist. Conventional wisdom would say that training and hardships make a man stronger because they teach his body and spirit to survive in such harsh conditions. And I suppose there is some truth in this. In a moderated form, this line of thinking is the basis of all athletic training. We detest running sprints at the end of soccer practice because they hurt. But, in time, we also know wind sprints make us strong. Yet, this type of strength—the strength that comes from the cycle of tearing down muscle fibers and letting them rebuild again—is not the strength the wilderness brings, at least this is not the strength that Craigie has in mind. The twist in this quote comes near the end. Over and over and over the wilderness breaks and re-breaks a man, but this breaking makes him stronger because he must learn the source of true strength: reliance upon God. In the wilderness, we come to the end of our natural strength to find the source of true strength.

Finally, I love this quote because I found it buried in the New International Commentary on the Old Testament (NICOT). For some, this detail might not mean much of anything, but when you hear NICOT, picture fat hardback books written by academic scholars. And in my experience, many commentaries that emphasize rigorous scholarship also tend to only rarely have warm, devotional reflections about our relationship with God, and many times are completely without such encouragements. Anyway, I love this quote because Craigie, at least I presume, must have believed that rigorous thinking and devotional application should never be put asunder. The former, in fact, should flow into the latter. This quote reminds me that biblical, theological precision should lead to doxology. It reminds me that theology, when done properly, should forge within us not merely the strength of intellectual knowledge, but deep strength—the strength of mind and heart. This is the strength of faith, the “strength that comes from a knowledge of the living God.”

[Photo by Andreas Selter on Unsplash]

How Much Does a Pastor Work?

I have no idea how much “a pastor” works. I’m sure a few pastors don’t work enough, while many others work way too much. I did some reading recently about why pastors leave the ministry, and the authors cited an interesting study. In the 1950s the average pastor worked 69 hours a week, while in the 1990s the average pastor worked between 48–55 hours (Hoge and Wenger, Pastors in Transition, 226). That’s a significant drop, and a healthy one if you ask me.

What Counts as Work?

Deciding what counts as work and what doesn’t count is not as obvious as you might think. Much of my job involves the kinds of things you expect it to involve, the kinds of things easier to track. Pastoring includes counseling, administration, overseeing staff health, hospital visits, officiating weddings and funerals, leading and attending meetings, preparing and preaching sermons, and so on.

But pastoral ministry sometimes involves less expected things, things such as hosting a 4-square tournament; arranging the stage before and after a wedding and then vacuuming up all the glitter stuck in the carpet after the wedding; washing church table cloths after a memorial service luncheon; graphic design for our welcome booklet, coffee mugs, and posters; helping the random guy who just needs gas money to get home; talking for 30 minutes to a church member at a swimming pool on my off day when I was there to play with my kids; occasionally shoveling icy-slush from the church walkway, plunging a church toilet, and painting the church foyer; and so on.

This isn’t a campaign for sainthood. It’s normal-pastor stuff.

Some of these tasks fit in the typical 9-to-5, but much of it doesn’t. And this is what makes it difficult to figure out how much, and how hard, we pastors work. Pastoring is more of a lifestyle job—an it-goes-with-you-everywhere-you-go job—than a punch-the-clock job.

Recording Hours Worked

Rewind the clock with me two and a half years. At that time, I had been at my current church for just over a year. Perhaps in the hopes of doing a good job and perhaps because of my sinful inclinations to be a people-pleaser, I said “yes” to everything. And—big surprise!—my schedule got out of control. Over one particular month, I remember working in the evenings five or six nights a week. You can’t work both first and second shift for long without problems. I was having problems.  

Talking about this with a great friend and fellow pastor-elder, he helped me to prioritize activities. Also, per his encouragement, I began tracking every hour worked.

I had previously resisted tracking ministry hours, though, for two main reasons. First, I resisted because when I was formerly an engineer, for almost six years I had to bill every half hour of work to a particular job. My time sheet was complicated and frustrating to keep accurate. When I traded the calculator for a Bible, I never wanted to record my hours again.

The second reason I resisted was because, as I said above, the nature of pastoral ministry makes it difficult to track hours. Sometimes it’s hard to know if the prep work to host 20 people for dinner at your house counts as “work,” or if it’s just cleaning your bathroom, mowing your yard, and scrubbing your floor. And sometimes it’s not clear whether the dinner meeting was a “work meeting” or a “friend meeting.” (Please don’t take this the wrong way, church; I’m just trying to be honest about the issues of pastoral ministry.) And after the 20 people leave, do the 45 minutes of clean up count as “work”? And if I bought the food for the meal with my church credit card, does my family get to eat the leftovers tomorrow?

Putting aside these musings and reservations, for the last 27 months I’ve done it. I needed to know how much I was working, especially how many evenings a week I was away from home. You can see the numbers below, but the average is 46 hours a week dedicated to ministry and around 2–4 evenings a week away from home.

What about “Writing Time”?

Tracking ministry hours is further complicated by the calling I feel to write. For the last three years, I’ve been treating this calling as an unpaid, part-time job. I don’t often tell people that, but that’s how I look at it. I do most of my writing early in the mornings between 5:30–7 am, and sometimes also on Friday afternoons from 2–4 pm.

Let me talk about the “unpaid” part of this for a minute. Writing has not been lucrative. So far this year I’ve worked on my writing projects an average of 10 hours a week, which is over 300 hours. This includes all the time required to research, write, edit, and publish blog posts and books. So far, I’m almost $1,200 in the red! You can see a detailed list of my expenses below. This financial investment in my writing would be greater if it weren’t for a few kind donations recently given.

About $300 each year is for blog hosting and email services. Most of the extra cost this year, however, comes from paying editors and mailing books. (Quick aside: I’m working on a book to help pastors find the right job in a local church. I’ve mailed almost 100 “beta versions” of the book to pastors in the hopes of securing 50 interviews for research. Later today I’m doing my final interview. Nearly all of these interviews have been on “writing-time” not “church-time,” by the way.)

So far I haven’t been too worried that writing has become an expensive hobby. Maybe someday “losing a few thousand” will become “making a few thousand.” But regardless, it feels obedient to the Lord to work at improving my craft, to work at growing my ability to write words that help people find joy in God. And besides, I enjoy writing.

But here’s the question: where do these extra 10 hours-per-week fit in relation to my 46 hours-per-week? Is writing a hobby, in which case the hours don’t count at all? Or is this writing work so related to ministry that these hours do “count” as work? I mean, with each blog post I work on getting better at communicating Christian truth, which I’d say is something closely connected to pastoring.

I’m not going to share my answer to these questions here, the question of how writing hours do or don’t add up to work. I have my guesses, but they are only that. In the near future I hope my elders can help me think more deeply about these questions.

Why Am I Sharing This?

I am not sharing this because my confidence is high that I do everything the way it should be done. In fact, I don’t really know. I’m doing the best I can. I try to listen to my wife and the council of other men I respect.

I’m writing this post for the same reason I share one post each year about how many books I’ve read: I share it to keep me accountable. It wouldn’t be healthy or honoring to God for me to work 32 hours or 82 hours. Working 46 hours of “work-work” and 10 hours of “writing-work” seems to be an okay amount. When it’s not okay are the weeks I officiate a wedding. In those weeks I can’t seem to figure out how to work-work less than 55 hours.

But as it is, this schedule has me with my family for almost every dinner, almost every breakfast, and almost every sporting event for my children. I do wish I went on more dates with my wife, but I can’t blame work for the infrequency. That’s more a function of lack of effort on my part (and having a large family, and living far from extended family) than it is too many evenings away.

The hardest part for my family, it seems to me, is not the number of hours I work or the pay. The most difficult part is that too often I don’t turn off work when I’m not working. I keep thinking about a certain marriage that is imploding or the sermon I don’t have written yet, the person who is mad at me and vice-versa. At home I keep thinking about how to keep all the work-plates spinning.

Carrying the stress of work to one’s home is not only an issue for pastors, but I should have less of an excuse; the theology I preach, is the same theology I should live. Rest is about faith that God is God, and he is the one who builds his church. When looked at this way, the anxiety I too often carry is evidence of my lack of faith, not my love for the church.  

If you feel inclined to pray for me (or to pray for your pastor), you can pray this: Pray that we would work hard for the Lord and not man, but when we are not working, we would not unduly carry the work home in our heads and hearts.

If there’s a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to figure out how to stop working when work is over, let me know. I could use it.

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A graph of the number of hours I have worked over the last 27 months. (Click to enlarge.)

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A table of the the writing expenses I have incurred this year so far. Numbers in red are expenses and numbers in black are income. (Click to enlarge.)

[Picture by Nick Hillier / Unsplash] 

Pinterest Perfect Wedding Pressure

The pressure on couples to have a beautiful wedding is enormous, far more than when Brooke and I were married 12 years ago. When we were married, Facebook had only been around for one year, which meant no one expected us to release breathtaking photos. All of that has changed.

Last year, a year in which I was a part of seven weddings, I wrote an article for Desiring God titled, "The Problem with the Pinterest Dream Wedding." In it, I encouraged Christian couples to keep what is the center of their marriage (the gospel) at the center of their wedding ceremony.

Heather Sells, a reporter for CBN, recently interviewed me about that article and the broader trends we pastors are seeing at wedding ceremonies. Sells notes, “That 10 years ago, couples spent $16,000 on a wedding with an average of 110 guests. Today, they’re spending an average of $28,000 with 124 guests.” That increase in cost is far more than mere inflation. Also, in the last decade, the average length of engagement has increased from 8 months to 13 months.

Why do you think this is? Why the increase in cost and length of engagement? Why do weddings need a clever hashtag on social media? Why do couples feel the need to have Pinterest-perfect centerpieces? And why do I, as a pastor, feel the need to preach the perfect wedding homily?

I’m not sure all of the reasons, but I do have a few guesses. In the interview I say,

Culturally I think right now we’re at a place where our identity is not so much looking upward to God and who He says we are in the Gospel—the good news that we’re His sons and daughters in Christ—but rather who we posture ourselves as in social media.

You can watch the video interview here, which includes my comments and those of a few others.

[Picture by Allef Vinicius / Unsplash]

Visions of God – A Hymn I Wrote

John Calvin famously wrote, “Man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.1.2).

In other words, there is a feedback loop at work: We can’t (truly) know ourselves until we know God.

In the Bible, when men and women come face to face with God—that is, when the volume of this feedback loop is turned up loud—the response is always the same, and it’s always twofold: a heightened sense of one’s own sinfulness and a heightened sense of the holiness of God.

Several years ago, I wrote a hymn about this experience of coming face to face with God. It’s called “Visions of God.” I included the lyrics and the audio below. I hope you enjoy it.

I based the hymn on the passages where Job, Isaiah, and Peter have dramatic encounters with God (Job 42:1–9, Isaiah 6:1–7, Luke 5:1–11). While these encounters (and the others like them in the Bible) have always been interesting to me, I found it difficult to capture their experiences in a song. People often complain about the music in church, but I don’t think most of them realize how difficult it is to write a good song until they have tried it themselves. This humbling experience is a lesson I’ve had the privilege of learning several times.

I didn’t set the hymn to music. That would have been far more than humbling; it would have been impossible! I’m very thankful that one of my brothers (Brian) is very gifted musically and was able to do this. Brian’s wife (Molly), who is also very gifted, was gracious enough to help him. Though the audio recording below is only a rough demo, I think it turned out very well.

The only other comment that I would like to make on the hymn is that I know it is not the whole story. I realize there is much more to Job, Isaiah, and Peter’s encounter with God than what was felt on the front side of their experience. That is to say, there is more to their experience (and our experience for that matter) than an overwhelming sense of our smallness and sinfulness.  

If I had written another hymn, I would have attempted a sequel to “Visions of God.” In it I would have attempted to write about the great mercy of God in forgiving Job’s self-righteousness and God’s blessing the latter part of his life more than the first; the mercy of the atoning coal that touched Isaiah’s lips and his commissioning as a missionary; and the mercy of the instructions to Peter, “Do not be afraid” and his new employment as a “fisher of men.”

Maybe someday I will write that hymn.

*     *     *

Visions of God

Verse 1
I knew by the hearing of the ear
But thunder, storm, and lightning roared
Now in dust and ashes I repent in holy fear
For my eyes have seen, seen the sovereign Lord

Chorus
To know me as I am
And see You as you are
Sovereign and Wise
Holy and True (x 2)

Verse 2

Woe is me, I am undone
I am a man with lips unclean
Now all my former ways I shun
For my eyes have seen, they have seen the King

Chorus

Verse 3
Faced with the greatness of the haul
I know I am a man with sin
Now to the Saviors knees I fall
For my eyes have seen, the Fisher of Men

Chorus

[Picture by Sam Ferrara / Unsplash]

Beware of the Me Monster

If you don’t know the comedian Brian Regan, I’d love to introduce you to him now. I’ve been a fan of his for the last ten years, though he’s been doing stand-up comedy for much longer than that.

For my birthday last Sunday, my wife and I were given tickets to see Regan perform. What a gift! It was the first and only time that I’ve seen him live. He did not disappoint. Almost all of his material was brand new.

My all-time favorite bit, however, is called, “Beware of the Me Monster,” which you can watch below or click here to see. A “Me Monster” is someone who always has a better story, a better joke, a better experience. They tend to dominate social settings.

It seems to me that it is one role of poets, prophets, and preachers to cause us to reflect deeply on human nature, especially to do so in fresh ways. The best comedians assume this mantle, too. Sure, they want us to laugh, but sometimes it’s an awkward, uncomfortable, guilty laugh. At one point in the clip, Regan even asks rhetorically, “What is it about the human condition that we get something out of [topping another person’s story]?”

I’ve often wanted to show this clip when I train small group Bible study leaders. Small group leaders have to deal with so many different personalities and levels of maturity. There are new Christians and long-time Christians; there are those comfortable praying out loud and those who are not; and there are those who don’t talk enough and those who are . . . Me Monsters.

And by the way, if you don’t know who the Me Monster is in your group of friends, uh-oh, it might be you!

[Picture from Comedy Central]

Why We Sing What We Sing, Part II of II

Last week, Ben Bechtel, the director of music and youth at Community Evangelical Free Church, shared Part I of how he chooses worship songs for our church, which you can read here.

Below is the second half of his post.

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Why We Sing What We Sing, Part II of II
By Ben Bechtel

6. Diversity

At our church, we desire to have a repertoire of songs that give voice to the full range of human emotion and experience, and simultaneously honor all the aspects of God and His work in the world. We don’t want all of our songs to focus on the love of God or the grace of God, although those are central characteristics of God. We don’t want all of our songs to be happy in tone, although we should rejoice for what God has done in Christ.

There are certain topics or emotions not commonly evoked in modern worship music. Thus, as we add new music to our library, whether a new song or an old song rediscovered, we want to have an eye on enriching and diversifying the various songs we sing. 

Good Example: “Speak O Lord” by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend (Spotify, YouTube). This song blew me away the first time I heard it. It is a prayer asking for God to speak to His people through His Word. The content of this song, coupled with its emotional and prayerful tone, makes it a heavyweight. As far as I am aware, there truly is no other song like it.

Bad Example: Adding a mediocre new song about God’s love when we have a plethora of incredibly written songs about the love of God.

P.S. This is where the Psalms and particularly poetic songs come in handy. The Psalms contain poems of joy, praise, sadness, lament, despair, longing, fear, and all human emotions by people seeking to love God in all of life. Whether read or sung, this book is invaluable to our corporate worship because it puts inspired words in our mouth to pray and sing to God in all times of life. As well, poetic songs have a tendency to say old things in fresh, vivid ways. For instance, we recently played the old hymn “The Love of God”, which contains beautiful, poetic language describing God’s love. Consider this stanza:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky

This song, and songs like it, has a way of stirring the affections towards characteristics of God that may have become stale to us because the ordinary way of speaking about them sounds, well, ordinary.

7. Past and Present

I believe there is a great need in worship music to have balance between old and new songs. This is not motivated by a desire to please young people with contemporary music and elderly people with hymns.

In the midst of a modern worship culture, we need to remember that the music we sing, and the church for that matter, didn’t start 20 years ago when Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman stepped on the scene (although we owe a great deal to them!). Ever since creation, God has placed songs of praise in the mouths of his people. Singing lines from the Psalter and old hymns that date back to the Reformation, and even before, reminds us of the rich tradition we have as the people of God and helps keep us connected to the history of Christianity.

Good Example: For our church, a good example of this is when our set on a given Sunday contains both contextualized hymns and contemporary songs. Our goal is to have both in every service.

Bad Example: I think the worst example for us would be a one-dimensional service where we play either all contemporary songs or all hymns.  

8. Symmetry with Sermon Themes

One thing we stress very heavily in planning the liturgy is that our songs and Scripture readings should accentuate the content and themes of the sermon. Hearing from God’s word is the most important part of the weekly gathering. Therefore, we believe that the songs we sing should help to highlight that endeavor.

A carefully crafted worship service with the same biblical themes brought out in all its various aspects allows us not only to hear truths about God but also to praise him for those truths. Thematic song selection drives the Word of God deeper into the hearts of the people we are leading in worship and produces a greater joy and gladness in God as a result.

Good Example: A service that centers all the elements of the liturgy on several themes from the passage being expounded. For example, our church just recently went through a short series on the book of Titus. The first sermon of the series was on Paul’s greeting to Titus at the beginning of the letter. Although there are numerous themes brought out in this letter, we sang songs such as “Christ is Risen” by Matt Maher (Spotify, YouTube) and “How Great Thou Art” (Spotify, YouTube) to capture the themes of resurrection life and the greatness of God and His plans. Then, immediately before the sermon, we sang the song “Grace and Peace” by Sovereign Grace (Spotify, YouTube) which explicitly picks up on the “grace and peace” greeting from many of Paul’s letters and expounds it. This is just one small example of how we structure the service at our church to bring out sermon themes.

Bad Example: There are two errors of which to beware. The obvious error is to pay no attention to sermon theme when selecting music. However, another error is to try to select every song around one specific theme in the passage. For instance, if the sermon is on God’s faithfulness, you don’t need to sing five songs on God’s faithfulness (although I’m sure you could!). Rather, a better approach would be strategically placing two or three songs that highlight God’s faithfulness while interspersing a few other songs that highlight other themes in the passage or that simply complement the songs about the specific theme.

9. Reflects and Projects

The songs that we sing, much like the sermons we preach, need to reflect the DNA of a church. As well, the songs that we sing should forecast and project where we want to be and where we are headed.

In selecting songs, it is important to know which songs have been particularly impactful in the past. There are certain songs that a church holds dear because of a specific time in the life of the church, and that is great! Songs have a way of defining communities, and I believe this should be celebrated and encouraged with good Gospel-centered “regulars” in the song catalogs of a church.

I also think that, just like preaching, singing needs to address issues that will arise among the congregation in the future. In selecting songs, it is important to be mindful of the vision the elders have for the future of the church. The hope in doing this is that the songs along with the preaching can forge a pathway for the future of the church by the Spirit of God.

Good Example: Currently our church is seeking to plant a church as well as grow in certain key areas. As I am selecting music, I need to keep an eye on choosing songs that address what we hope to be as the people of God in our local context moving forward while still maintaining who we are currently.

Bad Example: Selecting songs without careful attention to the people in the congregation and the leadership of the church.

10. Best of the Best

Finally, if a song meets all of these criteria, I want to ask, is this song great? Will this be a song worth singing for the next ten years? With the abundance of worship music being written in our day, it is important to be selective. We want to sing only the best of what’s out there. There are only so many songs you can introduce without overwhelming people. Ultimately, I want to introduce the best songs, both musically and lyrically, with the goal of helping the people of the church glorify God through musical worship.

[To read Part I, click here.]

BEN BECHTEL is the director of music and youth ministries at Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, PA. Ben earned a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies from Liberty University where he met his wife Whitley. In the spring of 2017, he will begin a masters of divinity program. You can follow him on Twitter.

[Picture by William Iven / Unsplash]