Tag: bible college

I Skinned My Shin On A Honda

I am 100% committed to an intelligent Pentecostal hermeneutic. If you have seen crazy stuff, as I sure have,  I understand if it has caused you to be skeptical.  I’ve been there.  Just be sure that human foolishness does not turn you away from that which is genuinely from God. If we abandon that which the Lord describes in detail in scripture because we have seen good things abused we are just as carnal in our approach as the person who abuses what God gives. In both cases we are elevating human reason and human experience above scripture.  The Word of God instructs us in proper, orderly usage of every thing from tongues in our private prayer life to the many gifts given to His Church. Disorder distracts from His glory. To decide not to pursue that which God has chosen to give us is not intelligence, but arrogance. It is our attempt to make intellectual peace with something that shouldn’t occur in the first place. We are essentially saying, “I’ve seen so much craziness, I am going to ignore the fact God addresses craziness and forbids it. Instead, I’ll neglect all of His gifts with which I feel uncomfortable.”  (“I” being the standard of what is good and what is not, just like the garden).  The idea of using what He has given, as He has instructed us is apparently too simple a choice.

Christians are a supernatural people. We should live like it. God is not unwilling to do what He speaks of in scripture but there is a remarkable dearth of volunteers to simply act on the Word of God.  If we genuinely sought that which God has placed before us, and acted in the orderly manner described in 1 Cor. 12-14 our services would be thrilling.  God never intended the a Pentecostal service be a madhouse that frightened visitors. This is not about us. The saints gather for a dynamic display of God at work and to bring others into a vibrant relationship with the Living God.  We shelve His plans, make our own,, and wonder why we find it hard to show up at our self-powered gatherings.  We know something is missing and ask what it is.  The Bible is rather clear what we’re missing so our choice should be clear.

Dumb Stuff That Turns Us Off

People get turned off to even the prayer language of tongues by “dumb stuff”.  Someone takes people in a room and tells them to repeat nonsense syllables.  People need a genuine experience with God and are understandably perplexed when they are counseled to repeat things that sound like items off the local Chinese restaurant menu. One pastor, expressing his frustration with people being coached that way that way, joked that there are people who would encourage sincere seekers to say, “I skinned my shin on a Honda”really fast believing the tongue twister would  trigger a real experience with God.  This kind of thing sounds crazy, because it is.  It also turns people off from using a gift of grace that is theirs by faith. Nothing makes the devil happier than to see God’s people make peace with living with less than God would give them. The less we have to fight him, the happier he is.

Why This Really, Really Matters

All of this really, really matters. We need all God offers His church not 54.9% of what is in scripture or only that which makes us comfortable. End time predictions do not matter.  It is always the final generation for everyone we meet. Everyone gets just one lifetime to hear.  God has made the same things available to every generation so each generation chooses whether to seek all that God provides or not.  I often feel that we are like people who show up to a five alarm fire equipped with buckets of water and Swiss army knives because “we’ve had some bad experiences with power tools” and then wonder why we are so ineffective at rescuing people from certain death.  Better for everyone is we showed up with the power tools and handled them according to the instructions.

Intellectual Objections

I understand fear of speaking in tongues, because I had a case of it myself. I didn’t want to make it up. I was not wild about having dozens of people cling to me like human fly-paper at an altar call. Yet scripture spends a lot of time talking about these very issues. I had one choice: to seek God and ask if it was true. The scriptures are remarkably convincing, as is God, when given a chance. Every revival in the last two millennia has been marked by a return to the gifts of Spirit.*  Is that because God only gives these gifts during revival or because we get desperate enough for revival that we finally pray for God to do “anything” in us and He simply does what He promised in scriptures?  Why do we choose to live with so much less?

Next: The Supernatural for the Skeptic

*I started to document details and have so many pages of references it does not fit a blog.  I will provide these upon request.

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All Do Not Speak In Tongues

In 1 Cor. 12:30 Paul asks a rhetorical question, “Do all speak in tongues?” Remarkably, Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals agree that the answer to that question is “No, they do not”. In the context of Paul’s discussion in I Corinthians 12, where the context is spiritual gifts as they are used in a church setting, everyone agrees that not all speak in tongues. Regardless of your starting point, it’s universally agreed that if everyone speaks in tongues out loud at the same time we have one messy confusing church gathering.

Likewise, as to the context of I Corinthians 12-14, Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals agree: Paul is discussing the use of gifts of the Holy Spirit in a church setting. The areas where people do not agree focus on two major questions: “Did the gifts cease when the canon came into being?” and “Is speaking in tongues in a church setting, the same as speaking in tongues in one’s private prayer life?”

How Important Is This?

Being a planner, I struggled with the issue of tongues and gifts for a long time. Prior to becoming a Pentecostal minister, I struggled with “the initial physical evidence” for a long time. So if you struggle with this, you have company. You have questions that deserve answers and the scriptures have those answers.

Being honest, it takes a lot hermeneutic gymnastics to explain away the gifts of the Spirit. That is extremely inconvenient for those of us who like predictable things. While we love to sing that God is alive, we seem rather shocked that He has this plan to to actively participate in church gatherings. However, the Lord deemed the gifts so important that He devoted a great deal of scripture to instructing His people in the proper use of them. None of us want to lay claim to arrogance, but if the Lord God instructs us in the gifts so that His church might be healthy, who are we to say, “We have no need of them”? We cannot read Galatians 3, Romans 12, or these chapters in 1 Corinthians and escape the fact that a “normal church experience” as Christ intended church to be “normal” was meant to include the use of gifts of the Spirit. I can think of nowhere else in all of the New Testament where Christians are so eager to explain away three chapters of scripture.

Being stuck with the truth that “Gee, there’s a lot in there on gifts”, I had to work through the issues. People often enthusiastically point out that tongues are not that important because if we speak with tongues and have not love, we are like an annoying gong. This leads me to ask, “If we don’t speak in tongues and act like a loveless jerk, are we any less annoying?” Chapter 13 does not exist to belittle the gifts but to remind us they do not trump the fruit of the Spirit. By the time we get to I Cor. 13:10, we have to be grasping at straws to take the Greek word for “mature/perfect” and decide for this time and this time only in scripture, it really means “the authoritative canon of scripture”. It takes more faith to come up with that explanation and ignore three chapters of scripture than to simply read the text for what is says.

Unfortunately when I read the text I realize something that requires change on my part. We are living with far less than Jesus offers His church and we are so comfortable living with so little, we find it easier to justify our ease than to seek what we lack. We find church predictable and boring because we are by nature, predictable and boring. We’ve left so little room for God to move, and are terribly afraid of the consequences if He does. Yet we hold in our hands a very clear New Testament model of what a healthy church should look like.

Putting Tongues in Place

My first hurdle, personally, was to determine if Paul spoke about tongues as “a prayer language”  that was distinct from the gift of tongues used to edify the church. In I Cor. 14. Paul explains why speaking in tongues in church without interpretation is counterproductive. He also teaches us the following concerning tongues:

Speaking in tongues is a form of speaking to God, by the power of God and it is a mystery (vs.2) that strengthens the person who is praying (vs. 3)  Paul states his strong desires that everyone speak in tongues (vs. 5)* and boasts that he personally speaks in tongues more than everyone (vs.18). Tongues are a sign for “unbelievers” (vs. 22) and an expected part of church gatherings (vs. 26). The only limit he gives is that no more than two or three messages in tongues with interpretation should occur per meeting, so everyone in the church has a chance to contribute using his or her corporate gift. (vs. 27). Even as Paul reminds the Corinthians of the importance of orderly worship, he says clearly “don’t forbid speaking in tongues” (vs. 39).

The Big “But”

My original question was why anyone would think of tongues as “private prayer language” that was not one and the same as the gift listed in Chapter 12.   (If Paul could have made paragraph breaks, used HTML and inserted emoticons, a lot of things would be easier to understand. Just saying….)  The truth that praying in tongues privately, should not be confused with the gift of tongues spoken in a corporate setting as prompted by the Holy Spirit, is the very reason Paul had to write chapter 14.  He spends so much time explaining the difference, that  I nearly missed the glaringly obvious “but“. Paul’s boasts how much he spoke in tongues, privately,  and the very next phrase is “But in church …”

Right there in front of me Paul made a distinction between speaking in tongues privately and speaking in tongues in church. Oops. In fact, he spent much of the chapter parsing the two that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. So there I was, willing to consider that “mature/perfect” (I Cor. 13:10) might somehow be contorted to mean “the authoritative canon of scripture” yet I was overlooking a conjunction of contrast with an unmistakable meaning: “but”.  Why?  Because like most people I am tempted to harmonize my experience with scripture so I am comfortable with my lack.  The real problem most of us have with scripture surrounding the gifts is they point out our church experience lacks what scripture says should be normative.  That should not cause us to reinterpret scripture. It should cause us to earnestly seek that which we lack.

I had studied myself into a corner:  Paul did indeed distinguish between praying in tongues privately and the gift of tongues as a sign to unbelievers. Like it or not, I had to dig deeper and so this series will continue….

Next Time: I Skinned My Shin on a Honda
*(The words “wish” or “could” are not in Greek, so adding them to English sounds like it would really great if people could speak in tongues but it is not actually possible. If Paul wanted to express wishful thinking,  he would have used the subjunctive. Instead, Paul used the indicative form.  Paul is expressing a strong desire that everyone speak in tongues, not to frustrate people who have not done so, or make them feel bad,  but to encourage them to keep seeking.)

The Great “Who Is”

Sundays come and go. We sing to the Nameless “You”. We sing of being ravished by love, wanting to shout it out, jump, freedom (x7), and other nice things that happen to us. We don’t sing using the Name of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, nor of the Son of God who shed His blood to ransom us back, nor the Holy Spirit who indwells us. We do not sing of the sin from which we are blood-washed, the joy of salvation by the grace of God Incarnate. Often I think we should just rename it “we-ship” since we focus on our feelings, thoughts, reactions and how well it is going for us. Today, a pastor friend expressed her feelings after a morning of service saying, “I was singing like Jesus is my boyfriend”.

I laughed but with a heavy heart. Neither of us were raised with any Bible knowledge but as the Bible says, through the “foolishness of preaching” and the proclamation of Christ in song, we were changed. I’m a 10 years + older than my friend and hymns were not our chosen genre (think Crosby, Stills and Nash for me and she’s so young I don’t know) but as much as we joked about tunes in 9/8 time, we sensed God’s Spirit’s present when the church sang about Jesus, the Lord Almighty, the Maker of the Universe, the Son of God Incarnate who baptizes us with the Holy Spirit and fire. Yes, music has modernized and we are glad for it. But we did not need to stop singing truth. Our God has a Name and His Name still makes my heart soar. We actually can sing “This I Believe” and we should.

NEWSFLASH: WE ARE NOT UNITARIANS

Unitarians have no name for God. They are lovely people who believe that it is possible but not mandatory that there exists a Nameless Great Gender Neutral Someone/thing/force who can’t really be known except as we/you/me/they/he/she/ze/e* perceives said Being. Unitarian optimists hope, in the wishful sense, that when someone dies they go to a better place. Unitarian pessimists just let people live on forever in their hearts. There is no assurance of anything since nothing can be known. They normally meet in very nice landmark churches with rainbow flags out front. They are not more welcoming than we are, but the one thing they firmly believe is that should A Great Who-Is exist then He/She/It welcomes you to that house of faith (or doubt) depending on your faith or faithless orientation.

Their music is as pallid as their belief: God has no name.

Our God Has a Name

Our God has a Name. We should sing it. We should proclaim it. We should shout it from the roof tops. We live in a post-Christian era when people simply cannot be expected to guess their way into the gospel. They don’t need to guess if we spend our services proclaiming Jesus Christ the Son of God. We are called to ascribe worth to Him. It is not a 45 minute sing-a-long led by a coach who tells us how to act like we are blessed. We don’t need to pretend if God is really there. We need to sing the truth and proclaim it clearly and with the joy that truth still resonates within my heart 40 years after I first heard it.

As my friend shared, she spoke of a teen, for whom time on earth would seem quite limited. He came to church for hope. When she asked him the subject of the songs, he replied that he presumed the songs were about God but had no clear idea they were about Jesus. Forty-five minutes of what might have been joyous song-filled proclamation of Christ, gave way to “singing like it was to a boyfriend” and this young man still had no clear hope.

Young People Change This

Each of us is called to reach our generation and train the next. I can’t sing or write like I am 20-something. Someone 20-something can and must create music that sings the unashamed, unabashed truth that Jesus Christ came to save sinners and if He is lifted up He will draw all men to Himself. If He is not lifted up we and all who hear us will be bored to numbness. Don’t blame your pastor or worship leader. Fix it. Write songs worthy of the Son of God. Stop rolling the dice with visitors. Stop rolling the dice outside the church with other people’s souls. We are saved by One who deserves that we sing with beauty and power and promise. When a lost person meets you he or she should not leave without hope. May we always be ready to share the only name given among men by which we might be saved: The Name of Jesus.

*ze/e are new alternatives that a famous university is providing so students can choose their own pronouns

(Yes, I will pick up on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit tomorrow. I just had to get this out of my system).

When Azusa Street Makes Bad Theology

I chose that title to grab your attention. Before anyone panics: I am an ordained AG minister who whole-hardheartedly adheres to the fundamentals of our faith. I do not question the validity of the Azusa Street revival, nor do I question the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. But I chose this title after a number of young people told me that the foundation for their understanding of the doctrine of the Baptism of the Spirit was based on the events at Azusa Street. That misunderstanding deeply concerns me. Our beliefs are not based on any extra-biblical historical experience but on the only authoritative source for faith and conduct: the Bible. The moment we use experience as the basis for our beliefs, we open the door to deception. All our experiences should be evaluated in light of the Word of God. The Baptism of the Spirit is not something that was born out of a revival in 1906. It can and must be evidenced in scripture. If you hold firmly to that which is not found in scripture, lose it ASAP.

We are Christians, Not Existentialists

Azusa Street was a great revival prompted by the Spirit of God. I know this because that which was experienced was in accordance with the teachings of the scripture. As Christians we evaluate all experience in light of the Word of God. When John Wesley was so overcome by God’s presence in prayer that he slipped into “ecstatic utterances” we do not wonder if John somehow forgot how to speak his mother tongue or briefly lost his mind. He “prayed with the Spirit and not with (his) understanding”. (I Cor. 14:15)  Scripture interprets his experience for us. The world does not use the scripture to discern what is genuine and what is not. The world determines what is true and what is not based on experience and the end result is a subjective mess. Those who judge truth by experience are “existentialist”. Christians can determine personal preferences by experience (hazelnut, or caramel latte?) but we are never, never to determine truth by our experience.

Why is this Crucial?

I chose Azusa Street because it touches on a “distinctive” of our faith: our belief in the Baptism of the Spirit. It is vital. It is true. It is biblical and we should be able to demonstrate that from the Word of God. In the next several posts I will do my best to answer the questions I am most frequently asked regarding the Baptism of the Spirit.  At the same time, my prayer is that everyone reading this will remember that is is crucial that we evaluate everything through the lens of the Word of God. The fact that something “can occur” does not mean that it is from God. The magicians of Egypt were able to replicate some of the miracles that Moses performed. Scripture repeatedly reminds us that power is not the same as truth. Truth is powerful but not all demonstrations of power are truth.

False prophets will come. Deceivers will work signs and wonders that seem so powerful that were it possible they would deceive even the elect. (Matt 24:24)  People will cast out demons, prophesy and do mighty works in Jesus Name but they will still not be people sent by the Lord (Matthew 7:7). How will we discern what is true from what is false? Only by an excellent knowledge of the Word of God and discernment by His Spirit.

Next: A Deposit is not a Dollop

www.vanaria.org

Healing – Part Two

What Makes a Person Truly Healed?

Those familiar with New Testament Greek know the words we translate in English as “saved” or “healed” are based on the same root ‘sozo’.  Yet, we know that being healed and being saved are not the same thing.  Though it has stunned me, I have seen people healed of terminal cancer, terminal heart problems, and survivors of impossible car accidents, who walked away from the faith.  If you met them today, you would never know they had believed. Physical healing does not guarantee salvation.  People can be healed but not “made whole”.  There are people who do not cling to Jesus and so their healing will ultimately fail. The same cannot be said of those who are cling to Him no matter what comes.  Everyone who has placed their hope in the Lord can say with certainty,  “And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God”.  (Job 19:26) On my tombstone I want these words inscribed, “From this place, I shall rise” because I am certain that  in a very short time I will enjoy all the benefits of total healing as I walk the New Earth and speak with my God. Complete physical healing was paid for in the atonement and is the absolute, unshakable destiny of all who believe.

Affirming that truth does not diminish the importance of praying for the sick.

If Jesus Healed Everyone, Why Can’t We?

Jesus did not, in fact, heal everyone but it is a fact that everyone for whom He prayed for physical healing, was healed.  As my husband has wisely observed, “Unlike us, Jesus always knew the Father’s exact purpose and perfect will and acted accordingly.”  Jesus’ miracles demonstrated His Divine nature.  Jesus rarely healed the same way twice. He spoke. He spat. He made mud.  He healed in crowds.  He healed people alone.  He laid hands on them or He didn’t show up at all and just gave an order.  If we learn anything from the healings of Jesus in regards to our own ministry it is that healing is not related to methodology.  If Jesus did nothing of Himself but did only that which He saw His Father doing, we should approach healing prayer with a sense of holy dependency.

If Jesus did not heal everyone, it should not surprise us that we do not either. God has gifted individuals within His body with a special gift to heal (I Cor. 12:9) and told us when we are sick to call the elders for prayer (James 5:14).  When burdened for someone we love we have every right to “pray about everything” (Phil 4:6) and in praying for their healing  we do so secure in the knowledge that the answer does not depend on us, but on One Worthy to Open the Scrolls. I have a perfect God with perfect vision, perfect timing and a perfect nature.  The answer as I perceive it might not be the final answer at all.  The purpose of healing is never physical healing in and of itself. God’s great desire is that “all men might be saved”. (I Tim 2:4)  God wants everlasting ‘sozo’ for everyone He created.

Healing and Wholeness

So where does that leave us?  I come back to my favorite “wholeness” story in scripture: Jacob.

In praying about my paralysis the Lord gave me an answer many years ago using the story of Jacob.  Jacob was a robust man the night he wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. He was so strong, he wrestled till dawn.  Then the Angel of the Lord touched his hip and put it out of joint. For those who have never had a hip go out, I am told it is agonizing.  In spite of his pain Jacob, hung on and refused to let go until he received a blessing. In his “disabled” state he got what he asked for:  his name was changed to Israel and he realized that he had seen the Lord Himself.   Jacob had a big night. It just cost him his hip and he limped for the rest of his life.  ( Gen 32:31-32)

Which version of Jacob was “most whole”?  Was the non-limping, pre-theophany Jacob “whole” because he didn’t limp or was the observably disabled man who was given the name Israel a man more whole than he’d been when his hip was in place?  Jacob met God face to face and left with a mark of physical dependency.  His “observable brokenness” was the visible reminder of the most amazing night of his life.  God valued Jacob’s long run wholeness over his ability to walk without pain. He was “healed” with a limp.

Exodus 4:11 and Healing Ministry

Most people have not heard sermons on Exodus 4:11. “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” (Ex. 4:11)

As surely as people are born with brown eyes, or long legs, the Lord creates some born blind or deaf or mute for His own purpose. They are not “sick”.  They were created as they are.  Even those of us that have become disabled may pray for deliverance and receive the answer,  “My grace is sufficient for you”.   Paul prayed three times, got an answer and moved on.  Not everyone is intended to be “delivered or physically healed” of what we might think is a “disability”.

How does that impact healing ministry? As stressful as it might be, we need to be discerning.

Ask anyone who has an observable disability and they will tell you how difficult it is to respond to an altar call.  It doesn’t matter what the message is on, if you move forward, people tend to swarm you and pray for physical healing.  That can be very distracting from the work the Spirit of God would do in your heart. I know I am not alone in staying in my seat so I can actually concentrate in prayer. Something is not quite right when disabled people have to expend a lot of energy keeping other people comfortable with their disability.

Last night a young man shared how he has been called out from the platform, an unpleasant experience I have also had.  One night  I was responding to an altar call to intercede for the lost, when the speaker interrupted my prayer and challenged me to “throw away that cane”. Not wanting to make a scene I motioned to speak to him privately and told him the Lord had answered me on that and I tried to return to prayer. Unfortunately,  he persisted so publicly that I had to leave the service because the focus on lost souls was being totally overshadowed. At first I just sat in my car and cried in frustration but a moment later, I caught myself laughing a bit realizing that a man wearing contact lenses was challenging my faith. Apparently it had not crossed his mind that if he applied his theology to himself, then he should have pulled his contacts out of eyes and tossed them to the floor, claiming 20/20 vision was “his birthright”.

“We walk by faith and not by sight” even in healing ministry.  “Sozo” is God’s heart for His people, and His desire is that they might be forever saved and healed.  If we pray for the things He loves, we cannot go wrong.

vanaria.org

Healing – Part One

Healing is Biblical. It is not a Formula

The first time I laid my hands on a person with a tumor it was so large it could be felt in the arm of the woman for whom I was praying. I had been a Christian for about three months. The pastor told me to lay hands on Michelle and I did as I was told and as we prayed it shrunk. I could feel it shrink in my hands. She was supposed to get her arm amputated that morning but she was healed and I felt it. She went to the hospital that morning and they marveled.  For the next eight years, during which our church was in a state of revival no one died of any prolonged illness but everyone was healed. One close friend was healed of metastatic ovarian cancer and later attended what was then known as Zion Bible Institute. The only man who died was a well beloved deacon who dropped dead two days after Christmas and shocked all of us. We just never got a chance to pray over Don.

So, in 1988, I went off to the mission field believing that healing was the norm. Our first week among the Kobon-people presented enough challenges to blow my theology out of the water. One woman hemorrhaged to death in my husband’s arms. Over the next four years we prayed for everyone. I’m not sure but at the time I thought they all died. I reached the point of saying, “Dear Lord, they are so sick maybe I better not touch ‘em”.

I had prayed full of faith and people died. That was not in my theology.

In the years that followed I struggled a lot with the issue of faith and healing and began to notice things I had not noticed before in scripture. Personally, I am partially paralyzed below my waist and am very much a “walking miracle”. In praying about my own situation the Lord reminded me of Jacob who wrestled with God and thanks to the Lord’s touch,  limped for the rest of his life. How many people would have dragged that poor man down for total healing to every altar call were he in a healing service?

I began to see that on some days Jesus healed everyone of everything. On other days Jesus didn’t heal everyone. He just picked someone and healed one person and the rest, well, He loved them but they were as sick before as after. (See John 5 for selective healing). For the first 30 years of His life there is no record he healed anyone and His own earthly father died in that time. How had Jesus prayed then?

I thought of the Apostle Paul who first evangelized the Galatians because he got sick in their area (Gal. 4:13) and of Elisha who was suffering from the illness that ended his life when he prophesied to Jehoash (II Kings 13:14) There are countless other instances of illness healed and illness not healed in the scripture. There simply is no formula.

What Do We Learn?

The good news is if you pray for some people and they are healed and you pray for others and they are not, you are having a very biblical experience. Welcome to the real world where God does things you do not expect. Keep praying, because that is what we are commanded to do.  If you are currently a “walking miracle machine” you’ve been saved a fairly short period of time. Be sensitive to the Spirit.  Eventually you see healing evangelists who have a real gift but continue to try and work beyond what the Lord has enabled them and finish a meeting with as many spiritual casualties as healings.

Secondly, scripture records highlights. Extraordinary moments between God and man. It is condensed information. If I wrote the highlights of my life in a hundred page volume it would sound like I lived from one amazing moment of glory to the next, with slight breaks for terrifying incidents which we survived only for more amazing things to come. Ask anyone who knows me well and they can tell you I’m fairly boring on a good day. “Non-episodes” are not recorded so we tend to think the highlights were the norm when they were, in fact, the highlights.

Thirdly, when I was once asking God, “Why?” regarding His timing and response to prayer, He replied back with a question of His own. “You want to worship a God whose character is infinite, limitless and eternal, all-knowing and unseen. Do do you really expect Him to answer all your prayer in accordance with your character which is finite, fallible and trapped in time?” Good question to which the answer is, “No, I do not.”

God is in the business of furthering His kingdom and healing is part of the plan. It is never an end in and of itself but there are many more questions we face.

Tomorrow: what makes a person truly healed?
www.vanaria.org

Processing That Summer Ministry Experience

This post is dedicated to those of you who think you already have, or still are processing your summer ministry experience. You will generally fall into one of these two categories:

  1. “Everything was amazing. It changed my life forever”. This reaction is normally spoken by those who got on airplanes and went to new and exotic places. Some worked very hard building things for two weeks, sweating profusely and being exposed in real life to sights, sounds, faces and souls that are a lot more heart-tugging up front and in person than they are on a video.  For those who took those trips I applaud you for going and remind you to please remember the following:  you took a two week trip.  You did not commit a lifetime to the foreign field, don’t really know what it is like, and all Americans are not spoiled hypocrites.  You are in the initial stages of processing an experience unlike any you had before so give it time to gain perspective. Be nice to your classmates and fellow church members when you get home. For those who spent an “entire summer” in (name that country) you are not experts on any place you lived in for just a couple of months.  You were probably caught tourist sights, had some ministry experiences, and got just enough exposure to fall in love with someplace.
  1. “It was a total waste of time and all I know is I never want to do that with my life. I might even crawl through glass before I spend another week in a cabin with 7th graders”. This reactions is typical of people who spent the summer doing things within the realm of their skill set, faithfully serving in settings with fairly predictable outcomes.  Nothing was spectacular except the level of aggravation pre-teens can arouse in an adult and the work got to be rather repetitious  “I never want to do that” can be said of many jobs.  I once spent a summer making shoe tongues (really, 40 hours a week, stamping out leather shoe tongues) and I can honestly say the high point was sharing the gospel with people at lunch.  The job itself was mind-numbing. Years later I learned that five people converted as a result lunch time conversations but at the time I thought God had me in the factory so I would have greater insight if I needed to write an essay on the hardships of working conditions around the time of the Industrial Revolution.

To those in group “a”, the dust will settle and while the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, you were entrusted with a great experience and now need to ask the Lord how to best use it for His glory. Other people are not called to live up to your experience, but you are, so if the Lord gave you that opportunity, He gave it to you to use wisely for His Name’s sake. Whether it is pray for the people with a certain need, support work in such a place, or return there yourself, treasure the experience. It will not be wasted.

To those in group b, you have had the tough and real experience of faithfully doing things that need to be done and are not personally thrilling. Good.  It’s part of growing up and growing up means learning there is a lot of value in things you do not enjoy.  As you get some distance you will see more of the bright spots, remember the kid at camp who dogged you and will one day pray he or she can find you again and thank you for what you have done to help them.  For those camp counselors and youth pastors you met who looked tired and burned out, the summer is a lot of work for camp leaders and youth pastors and they were tired. Cut them some slack and buy them a smoothie. They are not less genuine or less passionate. They might just be tired. But they are faithfully serving an age group that is notoriously time consuming, self-centered and thankless.  It is an interesting reality that if a group of 50 people banded together to save a life it would make national news.  Yet that scene is repeated over and over again in camps and VBS and summer programs across this nation, when college students, and youth workers spend themselves and the eternal lives of dozens are saved and as it was not observably dramatic the miracle of what occurred goes unnoticed. The fact remains that 80% of those who come to Christ do so before the age of 18, so before anyone bashes a youth pastor, show some respect. Those of you doing those jobs no one wants to do, are actually the “top harvesters” in the kingdom.

Fall is coming. Perhaps you graduated and are now beginning to really transition. Perhaps you are returning to school. If you graduated and don’t know what to do next, take a peek at my last blog. If you are going back to school, embrace what you learned this summer and keep growing and you will find that you eventually have a healthy perspective. The great part about having a fantastic experience is you realize this is not about you but something so much bigger.

The great part about having an uninspiring experience is you will understand it was not a waste because the experience wasn’t about you. You did those skits, sang those songs, and got covered in mud for some kid for whom that was the greatest week of his or her life. Life is not about you and your ride on an elephant or the camp staff who showed the same maturity as the campers.  It’s bigger than that and you all did the part you were given for these short weeks. Now be thankful: You all had a great summer.

What To Do When You Graduate

OK, the philosophical stuff is fine but what do we really do when we graduate?

First, all college graduates have the same problems transitioning to the work world. For everyone who said, “I have a useless degree from Bible College” please be reminded you are actually trained for a vocation. My first degree was in sociology and I was trained for nothing. You can actually apply for a job with your degree and it is remarkable how few look at the job postings on their own school’s website.  The postings are there.  Everyone has a time of transition and secular students do not get a free pass.

Our nephew attended a prestigious business school and graduated the year the economy crashed. He ended up as an elite firefighter and the joke on the fire line was, “What was your major?” Responses ranged from Engineering to Law.  A bachelor’s degree is always an asset and you do not need a second one to gain additional skills to tide you over while you transition. I went back to a community college and took some courses in accounting to improve our income situation and I landed a great job at a big company, while never wavering from our call to missions.  So be thankful for your degree.

You didn’t go to Bible College to get rich in the short term but because you are a longer-range investor. You have vision. You won’t settle for things that moth, dust and rust can ruin.  Since you have vision, use it. To transition, you will have to do some crazy wild things that are totally off the charts. You’ll actually have to do them for the rest of your life so start practicing.

Radical Step One: “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up”. Take a ministry position, even if it is not full time, or not paid, in addition to whatever else you need to do to meet your adult financial obligations. You have to start someplace and that place is usually lower than you hoped.

Your first job, unless daddy and mommy can arrange it for you, will be less than your dream job. (And if daddy and mommy can give you a great job right off the bat and do, they have zero judgement) No one in any field starts at the top. It’s counter-culture to our kingdom mentality where we imitate the Great Servant. As for your friends going off as missionary associates fairly soon after graduation, think twice before you get jealous. Firs they fund raise, which is a real job. Then they face that obstacle called “language learning” . Having recently started on Arabic I am sure that many unreached people are still unreached because learning their languages is like rocket science. You do not get to learn a language by inoculation. You actually have to work at it.

So, all you Jesus-loving servants out there: it’s OK to work in a church part time doing youth work, children’s work, or serving in some capacity that is not your full time dream job. You might not find little kids or youth are your passion but if you serve the Lord, He promised to raise you up. Take a job even if it is not “your thing”. It’s “His thing” and you claim you are all about Jesus so act like it. You might not think the soul of the 5, or 15 year old is quite the same as if you were speaking to the teeming masses but if you save someone from a nightmare life or an eternity of hopeless, it’s really OK if you had to dress up in that inane VBS costume. Worse things can happen. Ask a Christian in Iraq.

Radical Step Two: Trust God. The most terrifying issues for graduates are their loves lives and dealing with your debts. Most people are in debt when they graduate. I applaud every parent who has jumped hoops to enable their children to more quickly get to work by sacrificing so they are not in a ball and chain relationship with the government. However, debt is a reality for most people. Last week I met with a couple in ministry where something like 70% of his take home pay was set to go to loans. We spent a day working together and when all was said and done he got an adjustment where he now pays 1/3 of what he did before. Your payments are negotiable.

Your love life is not as negotiable but keep in mind: marriage is something you cannot “walk back”. We women are “made to complete” someone so we tend to get more anxious about this. Guys are normally still figuring out if their future wife is the right one long after the girl has feels sure. This means you are like 99.9% of other people on the planet. Guys often have to figure out their work then their love life. You can certainly think of exceptions but as a general rule of thumb, just get moving and trust God for the right person but don’t hang out waiting for things in the wrong order.

Radical Step Three: Keep your vision. Remember when your heart broke for victims of human trafficking? Or when you thought of people in places so isolated no one in this day and age had the guts, or gumption to walk into where they are and try to live among them? The vision might tarry but at the appointed time, it will come to pass. Don’t let debt, doubt, or circumstance cloud your vision. Don’t let your broken heart for the hurting be dulled by a wide screen TV at home. Nothing great happens overnight but it is during that waiting period when your endurance and vision is truly tested. Sadly a great many people compromise their way out of their destiny because they lack the patience to wait and keep their eye on the ball. Don’t invest in the world or the things of the world. The Love of the Father is not in them.

Lastly: Don’t forget who you are. No one is to look down on you for being young. You are a royal nation and a holy priesthood and every day you get up there are good works prepared beforehand in Christ Jesus for you to walk in them. Go find yours today and every day and you will soon discover that you did not get a useless degree. You were blessed with a foundation for the work to which God has called you. And for practical advice: develop a good sense of humor. There’s a lot of enjoyment on the journey.

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“The 42%- Part 2: We Know We Believe

Consider:

“There is no other name given to mankind by which they might be saved”.

“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation”..

“No man putting his hand to the plow and turning back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

“You were bought with a price and are not your own”.

“Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth for you are dead and your lives are hid with Christ in God”.

“They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth…….. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.”

Beautiful encouraging words! We believe:

All those words are true.  We believe, we are people for whom the greatest ransom in history was paid. We believe we are inheriting a glorious incorruptible kingdom. We know, for just a fraction of eternity, our eternal, perfect, forever-lives are hidden with Christ in God and we know we have just a small window of time called ‘life’ to share this great salvation with others.

We believe the response to redemption is self-evident. Compelled by powerful love that pursued us to salvation, we are incapable of ignoring the plight of billions trapped in isolation and hopelessness.  We know the uselessness of investing our lives in that which is eternally insignificant.  We believe Jesus is returning and we know this visible world is nothing more than a blink of the eye.  We believe and see with glorious anticipation that incredible city whose builder and maker is God.  We know that we have been tasked with loving others as sacrificially as we have been loved so we long to put our hands to the plow and stay on task.  We know no better expression of gratitude to our Savior, than to accept His invitation to discipleship and we rejoice in the privilege of being called.

In my heart I am troubled by something I don’t know:

In light of what we believe,  why are 42% unreached?

We know we believe, don’t we?
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The 42% – Part One: Delusion

Who are the “42%”.

Forty-two percent of the people on this planet have not heard the Name of Jesus. That means they have no reason to hope and no chance to be sure of eternal life. Given that most of them live in very harsh conditions they face a reasonably miserable temporal existence with no hope of ever-lasting life. It simply can never get better.

Relieving the plight of the 42% would be easy if we understood the word “go” is a verb which requires movement. People feel called to “raise awareness” and wear rubber arm bands which alleviates guilt and makes the wearer feel satisfied. The plight of the lost remains unchanged. Why?

Why the Lost Remain Lost

The plight of the 42% has many causes. One cause is the convenience of self-delusion.

When I was a new Christian, I heard preachers say that with “radio and TV beaming the gospel to the ends of the earth, the great commission has been fulfilled”. In 1988 I moved to the ends of the earth and life looked nothing at all like it sounded when the televangelist spoke. One night I saw an older woman silhouetted against the setting sun. She held 40 pounds of food and firewood on her head and turned to walk another hour home. It struck me that it made no difference to her that she was surrounded by unseen radio waves. They were beaming words of hope she desperately needed to hear, in a language she did not understand, to a radio she did not own. Those who believed the gospel had gone to the ends of the earth desired to reach the four corners of the globe from the comfort of home. The people who inhabit the four corners of the earth require a messenger with flesh and blood to come and be with them and speak a language they can understand. They need the gospel presented to them, the same way it was presented to us. The Son of God had to leave His throne in heaven to live among humans and speak our language and share His life with ours. Any message can be sent by radio. The gospel message can only be lived out in person. To believe the 42% who have not heard can be reached without the same leaving and living and sacrifice that was required of the Son of God, is nothing more than self-delusion.

Technology Marginalizes Those in Need

With the explosion of technology has come the false impression that the world is a “global village”. If you had enough to eat today, have secure housing, indoor plumbing, and constant power, you are not living in the same village as 42% of the world’s population.  It is a great inconvenience to us that most of the 42% live in inconvenient places. They are off the grid, live simply and their lives focus on survival. Travel is difficult. Supplies are short. Sacrifice is required. One of the reasons the 42% are unreached is it requires sacrifice to reach them. We cannot rely solely on the methods we would most readily like to employ. There is no technology available that makes them easier to reach with the gospel. The gospel is a relational message and it requires physical presence among those who need to hear. Technology is a tool but it must travel with real people to dark places if it is to bring light. This is a message that must travel with a human messenger or it is not the gospel. The gospel is the story of Love Incarnate. It still requires flesh and blood to bring the message. There is no shortcut. There is a only a lack of courage and self-sacrifice to live a life without shortcuts.

Technology is part of the age in which we live. God will bless and use it as He has the tools of every other age if it is used in keeping with the pattern and commandment He gave us. The commandment He gave us was, “Go”.

Pack your computer, your camera and your phone. Bring a paperback copy of scripture for those nights by camp fires. Pack up your knowledge, faith and love. Love cannot be broadcast. It must be lived out side by side with those for whom He died. He did it for us. Do they deserve less?