Battlelines: The Wal-Mart Church

So, I have watched as the church has transformed over the last 21 years. Actually, it has been even longer than that because I have been around some aspect of the church my entire life. When I was growing up, it was in a small Pentecostal church in Pennsylvania. The church was never large, that was not even on the radar in those days. The question was one of effectiveness, not numbers.

If someone were getting saved, delivered or healed, the church was a success. They might struggle for finances or stay in the same building for 30 years without anyone raising the question of whether or not they were supposed to be there. If God was present, that closed the issue.

When I was first saved, it was pretty much the same. In fact, if you were a big church it probably meant that you had compromised something vital in order to get the numbers up. The focus was still not on size but rather quality of ministry, purity of the Word spoken and effectiveness in evangelism.

Back then there was still street ministry and witnessing that took place, imagine that. And a preacher could still get a crowd if he came to town. If you spit hard enough you would hit an evangelist in shiny shoes. True story. I began my ministry as an Evangelist, first on the streets and then travelling from town to town.

Then Swaggart and Bakker happened. Suddenly, being an Evangelist was linked to money and televangelist flash and it became one of the least popular professions in the country. Pretty soon, you couldn’t find an Evangelist to save your life, unless it was in Africa. Everyone here in America started being “teachers” (during the Word of Faith craze) and then later “prophets” (during the prophetic movement).

Today we just have a hole where a foundational gift to the church used to be.

During these years we also saw the rise of the monster named Rex Walmartasaurus in corporate America. They would plant one of these stores in a town and slowly drain the life from all of their competition. First it was the competition in the city falling by the wayside as Kmart, Shopko, Sears and many others started to tank. Wal-Mart offered everything and they offered it cheaper than everything else. And in a culture addicted to convenience, having everything available in one great location became like crack. Soon, small mom and pop stores had to start shutting the doors because they simply could not compete with the Wal-Mart juggernaut.

Even in the town where we live, prices are dollars higher per item in our local store than at Wal-Mart. And in a slow growth economy, who is going to drive around looking for different items when Goliath has everything right there at your fingertips.

So, small stores in small towns have been forced to adapt in order to survive. The only way to do that is by carving out a niche as a boutique and offering super specialized items that can’t be found at a big box store.

Get the picture? Our small towns have become bedroom communities as our industry moved to big cities and then our commercial businesses got smaller and more restricted in order to stay afloat. The big box dominates all and a person is hard pressed to start a business and prosper by offering goods and services to their own town. Everyone drives 30 minutes to the nearest Wal-Mart rather than pay higher prices for a smaller selection.

The same is true in the church and the changes took place at the same time.

Today, you have mega churches (where God is interested in what they are doing), upper-middle sized churches (that are on their way to being mega) and the small churches serving communities (where God ignores them because they are too small, because if you are from God, you gots to be big, baby).

The mega church offers everything: campuses designed to look like city streets with shops, bookstores, jungle gyms, Kids areas designed to look like castles, programs for everything from singles to the Latvian Lesbian midget support groups. Everything is right there at your convenience and you can rest assured that the teaching is good because the preacher is on TV, which is a sure sign of personal integrity, dedicated prayer lives and orthodox teaching. These are the Wal-Mart’s of the church world. Everyone from the area goes to these places because they can be anonymous, catered to, they are offered convenience and the chance to be a part of something big.

The mini mega church is like the Target chain. They have some of the good stuff, just less of it. But they really want to be a Wal-Mart and so they adapt to whatever Wal-Mart is doing. Ambition drives these churches, usually helmed by a preacher who is certain that he is the next big thing. They have all of the things that it is going to take to break the ceiling and become big and solidify what they have always known: they are from God (I am big! You like me, you really like me!).

At the same time that the fight for growth is occurring, you have those that don’t really matter laboring on anonymously inside of a small church. These churches are like bases in baseball where all of the church hoppers, ne’er-do-wells, dysfunctional elites and know-it-alls have to make brief stops before quitting the system altogether. They are usually hampered by a lack of finances, a lack of devotion, an overabundance of tourists and the crushing weight of ineffectiveness and obscurity.

Now, let me ask you; is this the way that it is supposed to be?

The answer that we need isn’t as simple as some would have us to believe. It is not a matter of the first church having met in houses and so we should meet in houses too. Because near as I can tell, church buildings and houses both have walls, floors, ceilings and windows. They are both buildings, Copernicus. The reason that the first church met in homes was because it was illegal to be a Christian, the synagogues (where they preferred to meet) were closed to them and they couldn’t build a temple.

No, the answer isn’t about location, style or format; it is all about motivations.

Why are any of us doing this? Is it to get rich or famous? If it is, go sit in the back of the bus.

Is it to fulfill our own ego by equating ministry success with personal worth? Go to the back of the bus.

Is it to control people and build a cult following? Sorry, back of the bus for you.

God needs a people that are interested in effectiveness rather than notoriety. We need to change our definition of success so that the question of God’s glory is included somewhere. We need to stop basing our determination of spiritual success on material possessions. And we need to start counting bodies healed, lives changed, hearts melted, lives repenting and salvations occurring as the primary gauge of ministry effectiveness.

We as ministers must start speaking the truth in love with boldness, no matter how large the congregation that God has us serving. We must hear from Him alone as to what He wants our branch of the government of God to be doing.

We must act as ambassadors, regardless of the region that we serve. We have to care for the poor, shower the region with common grace, preach boldly so that the elect hear the message and respond and change the spiritual temperature where we live. Bringing the Kingdom of God to where we live and making that area resemble heaven- that is our calling.

It has nothing to with the flesh, with numbers, with money. And many big time preachers sitting in big time churches are going to be in big time trouble when they approach the Bema and find out that God was more interested in how they treated a little obscure pastor or how they overlooked the poor and hurting than in how big of a building they built to house their congregation of spiritual pygmies.

Have you been reading the red and the book of Acts like I suggested in the last article? Then you should be ready for this next bit.

You will not find success in Christ by buying into the Wal-Mart doctrine. It isn’t through being clever or different that you will see numbers go up. That is the boutique mindset and it can only survive, not thrive. You won’t find personal fulfillment by chasing mega churches or mega preachers either. You will only find success as you get back to basics, shun the system, leave the camp and seek God. See, I have news for you preachers- numbers are no gauge as to God’s favor because it can be counterfeited. No, God’s favor comes through the fire, through prayer and through the breaking of a man until he resembles the Christ that he serves.

I want you to start acting today as if your life is under the hand of sovereign arrangement. Every person that you talk to, every setback that you experience, every temptation, trial and tribulation that comes your way has a hand behind it. The true quality of your life and ministry will be measured by your responses to the acts of God’s sovereign arrangements and by nothing else.

Many of the things that we do for God will not matter at all because they did not originate in God but in ourselves. But our responses to the things that have their origin in Him, they will mean everything.

So, forget the hype and the hoopla, the game and the boy’s club. Instead, consecrate your life to him, ask for the wisdom to see his sovereign arrangements and then live those moments as you saw Jesus live and teach about and the first church carry out. Being big isn’t important, being faithful and pure is.

Battlelines: Pragmatic Modernism

The disease of the church truly is systemic at this point. Everything that it once was, it no longer is. Instead, it has become a steadily focusing mirror of the predominant groupthink of the day. This may sound extreme to you, it does to most people. The reason for that is very simple; you tend to normalize your surroundings in order to keep sane.  Most kidnap victims will begin to have empathy with their kidnappers. A recent poll of girls aged 12-25 revealed that over 45% of them thought there were grounds for a man to hit a woman and 40% said they would take him back if he did it.

You normalize your surroundings and so you bob and weave through life normalizing everything you see until you eventually come to believe that ‘it has always been this way’.

Case in point; in reformed circles today you will hear about how everyone that the Father gives to the Son will come to him. Therefore, why sweat things like evangelism? Since God is the one who seeks you out and since it is he that draws you with irresistible grace, why go through all of the rigmarole of troubling yourself with evangelism? And yet they have forgotten George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards and Charles Spurgeon, all champions of evangelistic effort.

In Arminian circles there is also massive confusion. Everyone is so focused on the newest revelation, the freshest program and the most relevant façade that they have forgotten their own history and thrown orthodox doctrine out the window.

We are a product of the age that we live in, have no doubt about that. And the modernist mindset has held sway in the church for a very long time now. And it is that pragmatic, humanist mindset that has led to the decline that we currently see in the church.

To those under the influence of the zeitgeist, it may seem like there is actually no problem at all. There are large churches; there are Christian radio stations and Christian television channels. There are Christian schools and universities that you can send your kids to. There are Christian bookstores selling Christian mints that you can use to “evangelize” your unsaved friends and loved ones. What could possibly be wrong?

I am going to lay out for you one of the issues that I think is most hindering us at this point and one that I feel we must correct if we are ever going to see revival: pragmatic flesh-based ministry. What do I mean by that exactly? A pragmatic flesh-based ministry is one that sees everything totally based on a human’s viewpoint and then sets goals and meets them based on what works best.

Recently, I had someone get very, very angry with me because I said in a service that it is absolutely wrong to go to church. They were shocked and offended because they had been a church-goer for years and it was a main part of their life, how could I even suggest that going to church was wrong? I can just hear some of you now wondering if I actually said that to the group. I did.

But my point was not that you shouldn’t attend a service or be a part of a group of the Elect who are walking out the dominion of the Kingdom of God on earth. My point was that if you “go to church” you are already deceived because we ourselves are the church. But for most people, it is easiest to confuse the terms because that way, you can assume that you are the church because you attended one. But as Keith Green said, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger”.

Pragmatism says that the most efficient way to be a Christian is to decide to and then proceed to do the things that Christians do, like go to church. You should sing songs, learn the lingo and read a bible. But the Word does not say to do any of that in order to be a Christian. It says that you must repent, it says that you must die and be raised with Him through baptism and receive the promise of the Holy Spirit. But pragmatism can’t be bothered with any of that, it takes too long and is generally outside the comfortable confines of our convenience.

Let me ask you an important question; what is the church? Is it a group of like-minded individuals who gather together regularly to worship? Or is the church truly people of differing skills brought together by God under a single head that serves as the government of God in the area that they occupy?

If it is the former then everything is fine. You can afford to qualify its success or failure on tangible things like the number of people who attend and the amount of money that they generate. As the Pastor, you can drool your seeker-sensitive affirmations all over them and lull them into an eternal sleep because all that matters is the number of people attending not what they are doing. If you know whether or not God is with you by the amount of income generated then use any means that you can to generate it. Go ahead, help yourself.

But if it is the latter then we are in deep trouble. If you can’t determine the success of intangibles using tangibles, how should you determine the success of what you are doing? If we are truly people of differing skills brought together by God under a single head that serves as the government of God in the area that we occupy, how much area do you occupy? How do the poor fare in your district? How is injustice ended? How are your people living under common grace? Is Eden being spread and has the Kingdom come and is his will being done in your district as it is in heaven? If we asked the poor, the drug addled, the suicidal, the criminal individuals in your district who the Christians are, would they say it was you? Or are you hoping that they would say it based on the numbers and money that you generate?

The Westminster Confession states that man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. We like to assume that God is glorified in our buildings and programs. Just like the Crystal Cathedral, right? I mean, they had people and money so God was obviously glorified.

Doxazo (Glorify) means to make something renowned, to render it illustrious, to cause the dignity and worth of some person or thing to become manifest and acknowledged. Most of what we do glorifies ourselves and our inflated sense of calling and importance but does little to nothing for the glory of God.

We are flesh and we have adapted our methods and goals to the flesh. It is as Tozer said, one fallen head instructing another fallen head. But it has been normalized and become convenient and finding the truth would be so darned difficult. Besides, I have to pay bills and eventually retire. So, while truly pursuing the glory of God sounds nice, it is not pragmatic nor practical.

God help us all before the Bema.

So, here is my challenge to you today; read only the red that Jesus said for the next week. Don’t bother with the Old Testament or Pauline sections, just stick to the red bits and ask yourself how closely you are following what He said. Then read just the Book of Acts for the next week. Write down everything that they did and the way that they did it. And then juxtapose that with what you are doing right now. If we are going to get it right then we must base everything on the original intent. It can’t be Luther, Calvin, Finney or Spurgeon alone. We must get back to the whole counsel of the Word of God outside of the zeitgeist.

And then I double dog dare you to begin to live out what Jesus told you to do and to begin to conduct your church as they did it in the Book of Acts. I am not telling you to only meet in homes as cell groups or totally eschew the use of buildings, I am telling you to do what they did; meet together in homes daily for prayer and fellowship, breaking bread together. Voluntarily redistribute your goods. Care for the widow and orphan. Evangelize the world. Stand against tyrants and usurpers. Take correction and love others enough to correct them. Be merciful. Bear fruit. Make disciples.

In other words, settle for no less than actually being a Christian.

Battlelines: The Preamble

Revolution is about the overthrow of one system for another. In the course of time, two ideas that once co-existed have finally become diametrically opposed to one another. At the outset of revolution, one side remains entrenched in power while the other side actively seeks to supplant it. This is revolution, friends, and never mind what the commercials tell you or what the trendy youth group says that it is. Revolution is messy, divisive, chaotic and uncomfortable. Real revolution is never pleasant; the two different sides will dig in and defend their positions, violently if necessary. This was just as true for David and Saul as it is in our day. When God begins to do a new thing, the old thing starts chucking javelins.

Today we find ourselves in a pre-revolutionary period in the church. All of the pieces are in place if you look for them. They are sitting there, simmering just under the surface, waiting for a spark, a move, a shot across the bow that will send the mighty wheel of revolution turning. This is the calm before the storm, that moment when détente is being practiced by diplomats and people are seeking ways to build a compromise that will leave everyone happy.

But there will be none of that. The gulf between mindsets is too far apart now. The ideas and ideals of the two parties can’t be brought together. Saul knows that David is the next thing, his kingdom is coming to an end and his only legacy will be a cautionary tale of humanism, corporatism, gimmicks and the substitution of the real for the gimmick.

It is my experience that people generally do not want to hear this truth. That is especially true in our world today. What we want instead is a series of affirmations that what we think, feel or do is right. We seek churches that will do this, ministries that will do this and read books that do this. When we hear that something that we have been believing is wrong, we immediately get defensive, it is just our humanist nature, I guess.

The history of the Christian church is one of progressive revelation. At times the church has forgotten this and tried to introduce something that had no basis in what God was previously doing. The result of this is always the same- error, heresy and shame. The Protestant church of the 20^th century bears no similarities to the church of the 19^th century. The Pentecostals have lost Azusa and the Methodist church only resembles Asbury and Wesley in name only. The Salvation Army has become thrift stores without salvation, an army of retailers and not revivalists. The reformed churches have forgotten Calvin and Knox while the Presbyterians have forgotten Red River.

We have forgotten who we are and have simply started just making things up that felt good to our flesh. But God instructs us his people line upon line, precept upon precept. The revelation of the previous generation becomes your foundation and God then adds to his grand story with the lines of your age.

Like all true revolutions, this one will occur when we make a decision that no matter what, we must get free or die. The disease of the church is systemic and the only ones that support what it has become are the fat cats that profit from it. For the rest of us, we cannot live in the system as it is set up and we can tolerate no compromise with it. And so we, like Moses, must leave the camp and seek God where he is.

The fault of where we find ourselves today can be laid at the feet of a few trends that have become the norm in the last 40 years or so and an older worldview that has infected us to our core. Let me be clear, these methods and worldviews have nothing to do with the progressive revelation of God but are rather compromises with the spirit of the age. And we must begin to see them as exactly that- a hindrance to revival and in enmity with God.

1. The church growth movement with its emphasis on numbers and money as a gauge of success.
2. The pragmatic mindset that excuses any gimmick, fad or phase as being from God if it works to appeal to the flesh of men.
3. The corporate mindset that tells us that we should grow real big and offer everything to everyone, like Wal-Mart, then franchise our product all over. This mindset has caused the exact same “big-box store versus boutique” phenomenon in the church as it has in the world marketplace.
4. The individualistic mindset that constantly focuses all attention and energy on the all-powerful ME.
5. Finally, the humanistic mindset that places the highest priority on man and his existence rather than on God and his eternal glory.

This is American Churchianity. And like seeing an embattled and aged Ali sitting ringside at a boxing match, everyone knows what you used to be and pities what you have become.

God willing, this is the start of a new series that will begin to look at each of these things in detail and offer the alternative. What you do with this is up to you. I would encourage you to read what is written, prayerfully consider the implications and then commit yourself to the revolution with wild abandon.

The Curious Case of the Missing Evangelists. (Coup D’Church!)

Missing: George Whitefield

I was given a gift for visiting a church on a Sunday morning awhile ago. The church was an Assembly of God and they gave us June’s copy of “Today’s Pentecostal Evangel”. Inside was an article on “The Changing Face of Evangelism” and there was a picture of Billy Sunday and some hipster that I didn’t know.

Anyway, as I read, I became livid.

The first comment that caught my attention was the following, “Gone are the days when a camp meeting was a big event in town”. I thought to myself, “Okay, that’s just an opinion. It lacks foresight but I can agree to disagree with that.” Then I read further “An Evangelist supplements by providing a particular specialty that may not be the local Pastor’s strength, such as teaching on Spirit baptism.”

Um…what?

“The Evangelist complements by teaching the people from a second voice that confirms what the Pastor has been sharing with them.”

Are you kidding me? That is the job of the Evangelist in the church, to complement the local Pastor? And this was coming from the AG! I’m sorry but I don’t know what books they are handing out in Springfield for leaders to read but apparently it isn’t the Bible anymore.

The reason that we are at a .02 percent growth rate for new conversions is because the evangelist has gone as extinct as the Dodo bird. When the people who carry the anointing and calling of God that acts as the means of grace for God to save a soul are busy confirming what a Pastor is saying, no one will be getting saved. When our evangelists spend all of their time going inside churches and no time outside of it, we are in trouble. When they must “book dates” and raise money, they cannot focus on their calling because they have become businessmen instead of prophets.

How did we ever get here?

Here’s is the revelation that we must get right now: you are besieged, church. You are trapped behind the four walls of your church by the enemy outside and the only ministry that you know is to other besieged people. You are devouring one another and defining ministry gifts by what you can do while you are besieged, not by what God had intended for us as His church!

The job of an Evangelist is not to supplement a local Pastor. The job of an Evangelist is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world, in the world. But our Evangelists are not Evangelists anymore; they are travelling preachers with a career agenda and money on the brain. In fact, I don’t even think that I personally know an Evangelist other than Mario Murillo right now.

Let me lay this out for you- it is time and high time for a coup d’church; a radical overthrow of all of the things that we know are wrong in the system but do nothing about.

What is our current state, you ask? Well, let’s take the Moravian Church for instance, who at one time held a 24/7 prayer ministry for 100 years while sending out over 300 missionaries to areas unreached by the Gospel message. Today many of them doubt the infallibility of the very Word that scores of them gave their lives for in the past.

When those who should lead us have fallen into secularism and liberalism, it is time for a coup d’church.

Methodist women used to have “pray-in’s” where they all sat as a group in front of the doors of local taverns and prayed, refusing to move and refusing to allow anyone inside. Methodists used to hold camp meetings where God moved, people repented and were saved. They used to send circuit riders all over the country, covering rural areas with the good news. Today they are now mainstream and neither God nor the people move.

When the new wineskin becomes the old wineskin, unable to contain any new wine, its time for a coup d’church.

We could mention the Salvation Army or the Presbyterian Church and how far removed they are from the radical manifestations of revival in their past.

We could mention Pentecostals who now too dignified to have the gifts of the Spirit operate in public or the Word of Faith folks who took revelation from God and started commanding stones to become bread for their own use.

The list is too long and too painful for me because I love the church. But I cannot abide what a church does to people when it is based on lies, compromise and the world system.

The disease of the church is systemic and what change can come to it must come from outside of it, period.

We must take what we can from the past and never lose them while being sure to lose everything that came later as a result of the compromises of weak men. To be clear, I am calling for an outright revolt where it is deserved. I am calling for a coup in the church because they are simply not competent to lead us into the future.

Let us love them but get free. Let us wish them well but move on. Let us hold no malice but not compromise an instant longer. Let us harbor no bitterness but press forward.

The days of revival are coming, mark my words. But Saul’s armor does not fit and simply singing in the camp is not the battle that we were born for. There is no revival because the people that God has chosen to ignite it refuse to break free and seek him until he is found.

That is you.

You were born for better than this. You were placed on this planet for a time such as this, enginneered by God for the Hell you would see. But you have to be that person right now, throwing off all restraint and the chains of men. Because you are the change that you have been waiting for.

Merry Corporate Christmas.

“Now I’m standing on the corner, all the worlds gone home,
Nobody’s changed, Nobody’s been saved,
And I’m feeling cold and alone
I guess I’m lucky, I smile a lot
But sometimes I wish for more than I’ve got
What about me, It isn’t fair
I’ve had enough, now I want my share,
Can’t you see, I wanna live
But you just take more than you give.”

~What About Me, Moving pictures

So much is taught on in today’s church. You could literally fill your calendar attending conferences on everything from prosperity to revival. Big time preachers fill big time venues with people clamoring to hear what they have to say. We chase every flavor of the month that comes down the pike, listen to the hottest band, buy the biggest book and subscribe to the latest fads. And yet, in the midst of all of these wonderful exhibitions of man’s oratory mastery and emotional manipulation, do we ever say, or hear, what actually needs to be said and heard?

On a local level, we faithfully (-ish) attend church on Sundays to hear messages that we soon forget and seldom put into practice. We try not to overlook asking God’s blessing on our day and to read our daily devotional. We are Christians and yet it is doubtful if many would be found guilty if they were charged with it in a court of law.

But let me ask you this, does any of what we fill our days with do any good at all when we neglect one of the most foundational elements of the Christian life? Does the newest hit by the hottest Christian band that moved you emotionally actually mean anything at all when your life starts, exists and ends with you?

The Apostle Paul wrote that one of the markers that we could use to determine where man was on the eternal timeline is found in 2 Timothy 3:2, “Men shall be lovers of their own selves”. Granted, there have always been selfish people but never on a scale like we are seeing today. It has practically become a religion in and of itself. In fact, it is a major evangelistic tool here in the early 21^st century. The very best way to attract a crowd to your church or event here in America is to make it all about them.

This is true despite clear scriptural references to the satanic origins of selfishness and clear direction against it.

“Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s good.” 1 Cor. 10:24.

“Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” Phil. 2:4

The problem is foundational.

We hold meetings using lights, smoke, emotional appeals using music and offers for God to fix everything. We tell those who want a ‘Get out of hell free card’ to just raise their hands and repeat a prayer after us while no one is looking around.We then tell them to read their bible and pray and listen to Christian music and stop cussing and cut their hair and wear Christian clothes and stop smoking and stop lusting and pretend to be holy and say Christian words and…

Well, that’s about it. Oh, and give money and attend church.

But let me break down the true process of Christianity for you. You were dead, without hope and without God. God called you from the grave. You heard his call and repented. You met him at the cross. You died there. You were then buried with him in baptism. He then raised you to new life. You now live for him and no longer for yourself.

Contrast and compare.

My hypothesis (and it is a good one) is that it is kind of like Christmas has become. It is everywhere at this time of year. You have John Lennon singing about it on the radio, malls filled with shoppers and gifts, towns lit with blinky lights and wreaths, Santa appears at the local grocery store to hold screaming children on his lap and you are bombarded with commercials on what you should buy someone if you really loved them.

The problem is that none of it has anything to do with Jesus, Christianity or him being born.

In essence, most of what passes for corporate Christianity today is exactly like that. We used to be churches and Christians but now we have morphed into something else. And occasionally, we try to remember the true spirit of the thing in the midst of embracing all that it has mutated into. And the sad truth is that we prefer the perversion.

If we were to tell people the truth of Christianity, they would hate us. And having someone hate you is not good for business. I have actually had people say that one of the reasons they no longer attend our church was because they always felt like they weren’t doing enough, as if you could “do enough” to repay the debt of Calvary. And that hits at the heart of the matter, doesn’t it?

We want to give if it is given to us, pressed down, shaken together and running over. The thought of true ownership never crosses our minds. It is His money, not ours. We want to die but only as a symbolic act. We want to take up our cross if that means as little suffering as possible.

So, like corporate Christmas, we have become corporate Christians.

Every Christmas, you see some signs that tell people, “Jesus is the reason for the season!”  We should place banners up in our churches on Sundays that remind people; “Jesus is the reason for this church, this life, this mission and this meeting”. Because we have forgotten that and have turned towards self and self-gratification as a replacement for what is too hard.

“The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried & found wanting but that it has not been tried” G.K. Chesterton

Selfishness causes us to ask how a church meets our needs rather than how we can lay down our lives to further the work of God locally. Self causes us to engage in emotionalism rather than engage the real Spirit of God, who will burn up our chaff with unquenchable fire. Self will say that we don’t like being convicted, we would rather be encouraged. Self always seeks its own and hopes that God will bless it.

Love never does. Love never seeks its own. Love doesn’t leave. Love serves others first.

So, for this Corporate Christmas season for all of  the Corporate Christians out there, I have rewritten a portion of scripture for use on Corporate Christmas morning. Just gather your friends and family around you and read this out loud. you will be blessed and affirmed and that’s what we all long for, right?

“If with the tongues of men and of angels I speak, and have not self, I will not make any money, or gain great fame for what I do; and if I have prophecy, and know all the secrets, and all the knowledge, and if I have all the faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not self, what do I get out of it? And if I give money away and feed others all my goods, and if I give up my body that I may be burned, and do not put my self first, then I will just suffer and how can I help others if I am suffering myself? No, let me first have all and lack nothing and then I will have enough to spare.

Self  is not long-suffering, it is not really “kind” in the traditional sense, the self is glad to envy because that is how we get further, the self vaunts itself in order to promote itself, is totally puffed up because confidence in yourself is good, acts unseemly but it pays off in the end, seeks its own things, is easily provoked by things less than itself, imputes evil in order to better itself, rejoices over the unrighteousness because it makes it look better, and changes the truth to suit itself; all things it endures only because it wants to, all things it believes are comfortable, all things it hopes for it prospers from, all that it does, it gains from.

And now there remains the self, the world and the devil–these three; and the greatest of these is self.”

Merry corporate Christmas everyone!

I, Lazarus.

So, you want to be effective with Gen-X? If you were to gauge exactly who this demographic is and how to win them by the current efforts of the church, more than likely you would start some sort of hipster ministry. For instance, you could take out all titles and replace them with something more hip: Pastor would be out and in its place would be “Pathfinder” or even just “Dude”.

Or you could place religious symbols from as many faiths as you could around your “community space” and then use bean bags and couches to fill empty areas. Oh, and don’t forget your incense and your U2charist… the kids like those; they make them feel like spiritual…

Now, that is exactly the way that many people are going about ministry to Gen-X and Gen-Y. Granted most of the visible ministry to our generation is being done by ex-youth group leaders who are now all grown up and keeping church cool. I have to tell you though, had you tried to win me with any of that I may have tested your faith a bit.

You see, I come from a different group of Gen-X called the Lazarus Generation. We are called that because we are a dead generation that Christ is raising from the grave. Big deal, you say, I was dead as well…we all were. Yeah, that may be technically true but in comparison to the “Lazarus kind of dead” most people were really just “mostly dead” if I can quote Miracle Max from The Princess Bride.

The Lazarus Generation was “all dead” which generally is regarded as a hopeless case scenario where the only remaining option is going through their pockets for spare change.

You have to wonder why the enemy went after Lazarus in the word, don’t you? I mean, he wasn’t an apostle or prophet or pastor. He had not shown himself to be of any consequence whatsoever when the enemy killed him off. In fact, killing him only had one visible consequence: causing grief to Mary, Martha and Jesus. In the end, I believe that this was his intention from the start. He knew that he couldn’t hurt the Lord but he could certainly hurt those that he loved.

Today’s Lazarus Generation were also those that the enemy had specifically targeted to destroy because of who loved them. Most of those considered to be a part of the Lazarus Generation came from the homes of believers before they fell away. Somewhere between the empty religion, the hypocrisy and the system of politics in the church world, Lazarus had had enough and decided that the faith they grew up with was a fairy tale, like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and a winning baseball team in Pittsburgh.

And when they left, they left hard. Lazarus tried Satanism, eastern religion, Nordic mythology, atheism and pretty much anything else so long as it was not the religion that they grew up with. They never really doubted that God existed; they just doubted what everyone was saying about him. And they sinned in every way imaginable, hurt everyone around them and burnt bridges like it was going out of style. And somewhere, someone cried for them.

My mother used to tell me that the “hounds of heaven” were going to get me. I had no idea what that was but it was a bit freaky. Of course, she meant that the “hounds” were goodness and mercy and that they would follow me all the days of my life. And she was right of course because one day during a suicide attempt those hounds finally caught up to me. And I am so glad that they did.

But like the biblical Lazarus, most didn’t want to see me raised from the dead either. “But Lord, by this time, he stinks” can pretty much summarize the first few years of my new life. Shoot, some still say that about me to be honest. They knew that Lazarus was coming back with baggage and as cool as seeing him raised would be, they weren’t entirely sure that they actually wanted him back. I can recall vividly this one established Christian who after hearing that the notorious sinner (me) had gotten saved decided to take it to the Lord in prayer. As he did, power dropped him to his knees as the Lord revealed to him that I was really a Satanist and was pretending to be saved for some nefarious reason. Remember the whole “Lord, he stinks” thing above?

I think in part this has to do with the fact that getting yourself raised from the dead changes your perspective a bit. The Japanese used to talk about the state of euphoria that came with coming back from the brink of death. If someone intervened when they were about to commit seppuku, they described the feeling as being transcendent. Colors were brighter, the air was crisper all around them, and every movement had a delicate beauty that had previously gone unnoticed to them. Life had not really been lived up until that point and there could never be any going back.

How much more would this be the case after having been “all dead”? What would your perspective be like after landing on the other side and experiencing the total hopelessness of death? And then, suddenly in the dark, when all hope that you should ever be saved was taken away, a light suddenly breaks all around you and you hear your name being called down the corridors of eternity! And before you fully know what is happening, you are being violently ripped from the pits of hell, with demons grabbing at your feet and snapping their jaws at you as you take your place in the last place you ever expected to see again: the land of the living. How would that change your perspective?

What kind of conversation do you have with someone who has been raised from the dead? How would you convince them to go back into the very thing that killed them in the first place? How do you tell someone that is full of this ‘gratitude from the grave’ to sit down and just relax a bit? Guess what, you don’t, hero. From the moment that they come back from the grave, they will be a step off from everyone else. Believe me, this kind of thing can make normal people nervous around you to say the least.

I have personally experienced this over and over again through the years. A couple years ago, there was an apparent “error” in my ministry that was so grievous that it was compared by a well-known preacher to homosexuals praying before going out to talk to people about a God who loved gays. Sound extreme? The error was that we teach mixed martial arts (MMA) to men instead of teaching them to hold hands with each other and share their feelings and sing ‘kumbaya’.

This kind of thing is nothing new for me, I am sorry to say. At one time I had some 00 plugs in my ears and some other body piercings. So, of course there were those who took issue with me because I looked too much like “the world” for their tastes. Some still hate the fact that I have full tattoo sleeves on my arms. Some hate the fact that I preach while wearing steel toed boots. Some others think I should not have a shaved head (been told that, true story) and there are still some more who think that preachers should not have long facial hair.

But what these well-intending folks do not realize is that when I was saved the last thing that was on my mind was getting a new wardrobe so that I could fit in with the cutesy church people. All that I had, like Lazarus, were the grave clothes that I had on when I died. Add to this the new perspective that you gain from being raised from the dead and what you have is someone who doesn’t really care one way or the other what you think about them.

It doesn’t matter what some people think of our ministry techniques, what matters is what God thinks. It does not matter that we do not do things the way that you do them because we do them exactly the way that God has led us to. It doesn’t matter that we don’t preach in a way that you like because if you hate it, it probably is not for you.

No, in the end the only thing that you can do with the Lazarus Generation is the very thing that Jesus commanded them to do with the newly-raised Lazarus: “Loose him and let him go!” Just get us free, get out of our way and let us loose for some payback. Don’t try to control us, don’t try to understand and don’t try to change our thinking until it looks more like your own. Our mission is to monkey stomp the enemy and we will do it at any cost.

We that are the Lazarus Generation have something inside that is pushing us. It keeps us up at night with an insistent whisper that says that now is the time. If we don’t play nice, forgive us, we seem to have left our ability to play nice in the grave. If we don’t sound like everyone else, forgive us, we have a different perspective that is driving us. If what we say or do bothers you, by all means forgive us, dying and coming back seems to cause you to cut to the chase.

We may not agree about everything but believe me, we need you in the church and you need us as well. We need fathers and mothers who can keep us grounded and spare us from mistakes. You need someone unafraid to take this message where no one else cares to go. Together we have the potential to literally shake Hell and see millions come into the kingdom. At this moment in time God has chosen to raise something from the dead that was considered totally lost. And in so doing he has created a juggernaut of zeal that is ready to run to the battle. And we need you church. If you cannot understand, don’t try, just loose us and let us go!

Mercenary Loyalty

O love the LORD, all you His godly ones!
The LORD preserves the faithful
And fully recompenses the proud doer.
Psalm 31:23 NASB

Years ago, when I was a very young minister, I went back to Pennsylvania where I was born and where I grew up for part of my childhood. I held some evangelistic meetings in my hometown for 3 days and started to reconnect with some folks that I knew. On the last day of the meeting, one of my childhood pastors came to hear me preach. Afterwards, as we were visiting over some coffee I asked him why in the world was he still there, in the middle of nowhere, dealing with the same 16 welfare people that he had been dealing with for years. His answer made me ashamed of myself and my ambition. He said, “Son, God called me to be faithful”.

Faithful. Just that. He didn’t say that God had called him to be successful, rich, well known. He didn’t say that God had called him to make tons of money through offerings or to grow a big church. Just be faithful.

That lesson has stuck with me through all of these years. And while the temptation is always there to water things down for the sake of notoriety or worldly success, I can’t help but wonder if maybe on the Judgment Day, I will only be asked about my faithfulness and not my success. That has been what has kept us where we are for the last few years. Our church is still small (people have stayed away by the thousands) and we still struggle to make ends meet most of the time. I look at some of the big churches within driving distance, mostly seeker-sensitive drip pans, and the temptation is always there to get mad at God or frustrated due to a lack of big success in my recent service to god. And most times when I am ready to get despondent, I remember that I am called to be faithful, no matter where I am or what I perceive as the high cost that I am currently having to pay.

Faithfulness is a rare thing in the modern church. I have not found it very much over the last twenty years. While I was in the world, I had tons of friends. And those friends were my friends no matter what. Shoot, most times they would defend me even when what I was doing was wrong. And so I learned about the idea of fealty, devotion, loyalty and faithfulness from the world. Your friends had faults but then again, everyone did. And while they had genuine weaknesses and faults, you chose to look past those and glean the good things from them, things that were enjoyable to you about them while you were together. If a friend was in trouble, you helped, period. And if a friend was in danger, you went into it with them because that’s what friends did.

I came into the church after losing all of my friends due to my conversion. But I came with those same street values that I had my whole life. And man, was I in for a surprise.

In the church we do not know what the term loyalty means. We give no grace for growth. So many times, we bolt from churches and relationships because someone reveals (intentionally or unintentionally) their humanity. And while none of us are perfect, we are only too happy to end a relationship when someone else is imperfect in some way. We do not go into danger with one another, we do not share the burdens of life, loss or ministry. For all intents and purposes, we are just simple mercenaries, out for ourselves and willing to team up for brief periods but never forming lifelong relationships with others.

What makes it all worse is the stinking self righteousness that blankets us as Christians. We are more than happy to begin a relationship with someone but once we spot flaws, we immediately begin to distance ourselves. Eventually, when the person comes to be seen as a real, genuine, flawed human being (*gasp*), we decide to destroy them and all that they are doing as well. Because we simply can not believe that God would use a vessel of clay to act as a recipient of his spirit. And we do this with the full knowledge of how flawed we are ourselves, yet we consider this act of fratricide to be safe because our flaws are still hidden away. You know, shoot them before they can shoot you. And this is why so many leave the church and why countless more refuse to even darken the door. It’s not our singing, lights, greeters or programs that is keeping people away, it is our hypocrisy.

One of the most valuable things in life is the fellowship of a true friend. And some of the least important things are the flaws that everyone shares in common. But we will never be the people that God wants us to be so long as we continue to shoot our wounded and defend ourselves from anyone stupid enough to try and be our friend. So for me, I must leave the church yet again. And instead of patterning my behavior on the bad examples of the Christians that I have known over the course of my life, I will go back to the education that I received on the streets and just be a faithful friend, no matter how jacked up the person is.

New AP Ministry

In the church that I lead, we started to see some major issues with marriages and relationships, as you do when you are a pastor. Then we attended a men’s meeting and were terribly disappointed in the content there. It was almost like every one of the speakers skirted around the real issues just to remain church-friendly. And so all of the men who came with issues, left with those same issues.

And so we decided to begin an experiment in our own marriage and see where it took us.

The result of that month long experiment is a new program at Isaac’s Well that we began in 2011 called Love Sex God Life and it is has had a huge impact on so many lives! Spouses are communicating, intimacy is restored, both partners have discovered a new level of intimacy that they didn’t even know existed and everyone is experiencing epic love for the first time ever.

And so we have launched The Love Sex God Life Conferences that we are booking all over for 2012. These are designed to have maximum impact on marriages from the very first hour. There is nothing like this going on, anywhere.

Check out the ministry blog at lovesexgodlife.wordpress.com

No Price, No Power!

One day in the early sixties my mother was making a big chicken dinner in the kitchen. After working for hours she was nearing completion when the Lord began to speak to her. He said “Take the dinner down to sister so-and-so.” My mother began to protest telling the Lord that she had been working on it all day and was about to set the table. The Lord’s answer to her was to “take the dinner and also give her ONE DOLLAR.”

She had a little money and expressed this to the Lord, letting him know that she could give her some money instead of the dinner and a dollar but the Lord again told her to take down that dinner and only one dollar.

Finally she quit arguing and put everything into a large pan and walked it down the street to where this sister lived. This woman was a single mother with three small children and had no visible means of support. When she knocked on the door she handed the woman the meal and explained to her that God had told her to bring it down. The woman began to cry and explained that they had come home from church and there was nothing to eat in the whole house so they all had began to pray for God to send in some food from somewhere.

After she had explained, my mother handed her the dollar bill and told her that God had said to give her just one dollar, though she didn’t know why. The sister, in tears, told her that someone had just given her ten dollars for the rent and she had gone to God and asked, “But God, what about the tithe?”

This was the normal Pentecostal experience during those days. People did not just live nice little Christian lives, attend a church where the smooth talking Pastor delivered clever little sermonettes and everyone gave to missions once a year. They all to one degree or another had a faith walk; they heard from God for others in the church or community, believed for miracles in their everyday life and experienced God first-hand for themselves.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit were in operation in the meetings. There would be tongues and interpretation, prophecy, words of wisdom and knowledge at normal services given by normal people. Today most of the church doesn’t dare do that, there are too many crazy people who may say something wrong. There are too many variables to just allow the Holy Ghost to move freely. And so for the most part there are no gifts in operation in the church anymore. You can’t even tell whether some churches are spirit-filled or not by their normal services, that part of their religion is saved for those times when the general public is not around- we would hate to offend them, you know.

There were certain preachers that God used in Sign-Gift ministry across the country. Men like Jack Coe, A.A. Allen, Oral Roberts and William Branham shocked regions with outrageous displays of God’s power. God was moving all over the nation and faith was evident from the biggest tents and arenas to the smallest church out in the Johnson grass area of town. Miracles happened regularly in these meetings, unlike today. The deaf heard, the blind received their sight and the crippled arose and walked.

And then something happened, something quite subtle and yet the effects of it would change everything in under a decade.

For years, the Pentecostal faith was the domain of the poor and ignorant. In fact, to be a Pentecostal carried with it a stigma that you just could not shake. If you were Pentecostal, you were a religious fanatic, a hillbilly with religion. And they were indeed a peculiar people, from their hair cuts to their dress and their obstinate refusal to conform to the world around them. I can remember being ashamed of them when I was in school, not wanting anyone to know that my family attended “that” church.

I can remember driving to church on Sunday nights and having to take coloring books, some cars and a blanket and pillow “just in case”. And ‘just in case’ ended up being the case more times than not. At some point during the course of the meeting, the Holy Ghost would come in and you knew that you were not getting home before midnight at least. Now let me clarify that these people were not engaging in “soaking” services, this was a full-on Holy Ghost encounter that swept the entire congregation into it.

Things like this soon attracted the attention of those who wanted a little more of God but didn’t want to leave their respectable churches. So, at some point it was decided that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was not just the domain of the poor and ignorant. The charismatic movement opened the doors for anyone to get it, regardless of how they lived. Soon, old dead denominations were experiencing the outpouring for themselves.

I will risk offending some here with my observations and opinions; after all, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.  I would lay the blame for today’s apathy and complacency in the church squarely on the shoulders of this middle-class Charismatic movement.

Now, lay the stones down for a moment and hear me out.

The Pentecostal church had been historically made up of low-income families and those who were generally uneducated.  When the Charismatic movement hit, the spirit and power of Pentecost was introduced to that segment of society that would never have attended those sorry churches out in the Johnson grass area of town.  Now, they would of course, call the pastors of those poor Pentecostal churches when they needed to get a prayer through to God.  But they would not attend themselves; they would not risk their reputation by attending a church that was full of the poor, the uneducated and the second or third generation welfare families.

With the introduction of the Pat Boone Christians in LA, sitting by their pools and having Bible studies—everything changed.  Now Pentecost was available to everyone—regardless of their income.  Certainly that is not a bad thing.  The Holy Ghost should obviously be in whatever church wants Him.  However, that was not the only thing that occurred.  These middle class believers now had their nice homes; their two-car garage and they were speaking in tongues.  But something had disappeared: the cost of following hard after God.

Suddenly the baptism of the Holy Spirit became convenient.  It cost you nothing to get it; in fact, they soon began conducting classes on how to do it quickly and painlessly.  The great fault of the Charismatic movement is in its foundations.  Mix believers who have given up nothing for God and have no fear for Him with the silence of God towards their brashness and irreverence and you have a recipe for the church today. You see, suddenly, you could speak in tongues and have money too.  You could attend a stylish church with beautiful decorations and cute names like Family Fun Church.  In the end, the great difference between Pentecostals and Charismatics became an income bracket. The Charismatics were simply too well bred to call themselves Pentecostals.

They packaged the baptism and then proceeded to streamline its power into a soft, tasteless paste that you could spoon feed your weak neighbors and friends with.  The scandal of being a spirit-filled believer was lifted.  Now, here it was, just like Burger King—your way, right away.

I remember the old Pentecost though.  I remember those families that everyone laughed at for attending the Pentecostal church.  These were dirt-poor believers coming to God because truthfully, they had nothing else and no other hope in the world.  And friend, there is a difference in the prayers of one who has God as an addition to their lives and the ones that have nothing but God in their lives. I have seen both sides, lived among them and tasted of their lives. And I can say with utmost sincerity that what has been produced with the manifestations of the Holy Ghost in Charismatic circles is the direct result of treating God as a hobby.

Don’t get me wrong here; I am not saying that you need to be poor to be a believer.  What I am saying is that the difference is that those who are poor have nothing to distract them from God.  They are not concerned with social standings or what their neighbors will think.  As someone once said, “The most dangerous man in the world is the man who has nothing left to lose.”

It was those early seekers who caused the greatest surge in new believers in the history of the world, those poor people who had nothing in their pathetic (or so it seemed) lives but Jesus.  From the time the fire fell in Azusa at the turn of the century until the late sixties, early seventies, the spirit filled church rose from a handful to hundreds of millions worldwide.

That makes it the second biggest religious group in the world, second only to the Roman Catholic Church, who you may note, had 1700 years to bring their numbers to where they are today.  Standing in stark contrast to this is the numbers on church growth for the last 30 years.  According to George Barna, almost all of the new church growth in that period of time has been due to transfers from other churches rather than new conversions.

As I look across the panorama of the American Spirit-filled churches, I generally do not see those who are centered on Jesus in every aspect of their lives.  Sadly, I see more oftentimes those who live a nice Christian life within the confines of what society dictates as being acceptable.  There is not a casting off of the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof; instead we preach that there is nothing wrong with having both.

Where the disciples were commanded to forsake all and follow, we are told to come to Him and gain it all a hundred fold with you tax-deductible gift.  Does God want us in the church to prosper?  I believe that He does.  Does God want that to be the sole thing that we seek Him for?  Does God want this to be the very center of our relationship with Him?  I think not.  Does God want us to be preaching sermon after sermon on feeling good, getting rich by faith and singing “Money cometh”?  Get serious.  But that is the type of believers that we have become, not only in the eyes of the Father but in the eyes of the world as well.

We have become in many regards, shiny shoed snake oil salesman who are seminary trained—not to forsake all and suffer redemptively for the sake of the kingdom—but rather as church builders and public relations marketing specialists with a degree in politically correct fakeness.

It’s so sad to me to enter into a church and instead of feeling love and the power of God present to deliver and heal the sick, I am confronted with building funds, sermons on how to prosper in ten steps or less, mid-week believers meetings held in the basement when you can be taught to speak in tongues and a slew of propaganda that firmly places the pastor in the enviable position of being “the next big thing”.

If that is something that appeals to you, more power to you, I guess.  Give me something different.  Give me a building with one light bulb hanging from the ceiling and no air conditioning on hot summer nights that is filled with people desperate for God.  You can keep your programs and workshops; give me those who know how to pray and who stay at the altar until the glory falls.

Give me those who would rather tell their neighbors about Jesus than get their approval.  Give me a praise band that may not be professional musicians but mean every single note they play.  Give me a tent filled with mosquitoes and people under the power who couldn’t care less about them.  Give me those who can’t sleep at night because they are so burdened with those lost in their city.  Give me those and keep the rest. 

You do not need to be poor to be a Christian.  But I know from experience how much all of the things that money can buy serve to distract us from God.  It is not a question of whether or not money is wrong or harmful.  It is a question of priorities—what do you love more?  Do you love God enough to praise Him when the car is being towed away by the bank?  When there is no food to put on the table and the children are hungry?

Or is your love for God conditional?  Is it based on how easy your life is at the moment?  Because when you strip away all the things that you possess and all that is left are you and Jesus, that’s where the rubber meets the road.  I believe that God wants to bless us abundantly.  But I also believe that He wants us to be the kind of people that money has no chance at all of becoming an idol in our lives.

There is really no sense in pursuing a discussion on real revival until we deal with some of these issues.  Because the simple fact is that the greatest move of God the world has ever seen will not come at a cheap price.  You will not be able to run down to the latest hotbed of religious fervor, rub elbows with the attendees and take it back home.

It will come with the tearful prayers of those who are committed to the idea that they simply must have a real move of God lest they die.  Those who would rather not live at all then to live a fake life filled with superficial religion and lukewarm mediocrity.

Now you must ask which camp it is that you belong in.

In the end it is not a question of whether you are strictly Charismatic or Pentecostal, it is a question of the level at which you surrendered your life to God. Was it a conditional surrender, based on the promises that you would be treated well? Or were you one of the lucky few who surrendered unconditionally, who had the audacity to tell God “I am yours, no matter what it costs me, no matter what life hands me, I am yours.”

That was the key to the early Pentecostal movement and that was the Achilles’ heel of the modern Charismatic movement- desperation, consecration and the full surrender of your life.

All to Jesus I surrender;
all to him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust him,
in his presence daily live.

All to Jesus I surrender;
humbly at his feet I bow,
worldly pleasures all forsaken;
take me, Jesus, take me now.

All to Jesus I surrender;
make me, Savior, wholly thine;
fill me with thy love and power;
truly know that thou art mine.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Lord, I give myself to thee;
fill me with thy love and power;
let thy blessing fall on me.

All to Jesus I surrender;
now I feel the sacred flame.
O the joy of full salvation!
Glory, glory, to his name!

I surrender all, I surrender all,
all to thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.