I'm Just Here for the Food

Dr. Roy Lauter was a professor at Asbury College while I was a student there. He grew up in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, spoke with a thick mountain accent, and loves to tell stories (some of them true- others just because he's a good preacher) about the life he knew growing up there.

One of his stories had to do with a cousin, Rembrandt Tacket. Rembrandt was not his real name, but that is how he came to be known to family and friends because he was an enormously talented painter. Although he never had any desire to give up his hillbilly lifestyle, he became known as one of the most talented folk artists in Kentucky.
A wealthy horse farm owner from Lexington became familiar with Rembrandt’s paintings, and wanted to hire him for a project. So she drove out into the mountains one day and tracked him down, finding him sitting in his yard in his overalls. She introduced herself and explained that she would like to hire him to paint a portrait of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples.
Rembrandt began to protest, saying that he wasn’t much of a religious guy, but when the wealthy woman mentioned that she was prepared to pay $25,000 for the work, he agreed and said he would have it ready in a week.
The week passed, and the wealthy woman returned to see what Rembrandt had been able to do. He unveiled the painting, and it was beautiful. She had trouble believing that an artist with no training and so little education could produce such a wonderful piece. As she studied the painting, however, she noticed something wrong. She double-checked to make sure, “1,2,3,4,…13! Mr. Tackett, there are 13 disciples with Jesus in your painting!”
“Is that a problem?” Rembrandt responded.
“Yes, it’s a problem. I’m not paying you $25,000 for a picture of the Last Supper that has 13 disciples!”
“Don’t worry, ma’am. I can fix it. Just come back tomorrow, and I’ll have your painting with 12 disciples.”
She left and returned the next day. What was Rembrandt’s solution? He had taken the extra man in the painting, and added a sign hung around his neck that said, “I’m not a disciple. I just came for the food.”
The author of the book of Hebrews gives us a similar image to encourage his readers to go on to maturity in Christ:
Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned. (Hebrews 6:7-8)

It’s easy in our Christian lives to settle for showing up for the food, or to be the land that drinks in the rain without ever producing the appropriate fruit. In a culture like ours, where even in financial times like we are experiencing now the large majority of us still live very comfortably and free from persecution or danger in our lives with God, it seems that the option will always be available to us to show up, enjoy the good things about being a Christian and being part of a good church, but never seriously enter into Jesus’ school of living as one of his disciples.

The author of Hebrews goes on to say that we cannot stay where we are in our relationship with God, but that we must continue pressing on, all the way to maturity in Christ. May it be so for each of us.
Imagine what it would be like if all of us decided to fully pursue the life that God has for us: if we set ourselves to learning daily from God how to live our lives through reflecting on the Scriptures, if we committed ourselves to finding ways to do good to others around us, and if we took any means necessary to rid our lives of the things that hold us back from God’s best for us.
It is wonderful to think about, and the best part is that because of God’s limitless grace given to us in Jesus, it is possible. For you, for me, and for all of us together, full and abundant life in Christ is available, at hand, and waiting to become a reality among us.
We can begin by thinking of a way that each of us can live our lives as God wants today, and then make it happen. We will all be in it together, and God is with us.

We're Not as Strong as We Think We Are

Last night, I was working late but didn't mind doing so since my wife and son were able to be with me. I was working on some final details for an experience our entire church will be going through together over the next five weeks, which I have been working on and looking forward to for the majority of the past year. What I needed to accomplish last night was to get curriculum and materials into rooms so that the groups that are studying the material will be ready to go on Sunday morning. I had a dolly (or hand truck? I'm never sure which is correct) loaded up with about 150 packets of materials and books to distribute to different classrooms, and my two year old son was following me around as a helper. He always likes it when he sees that I have the dolly out for something. He walked with me to the closet to find it, and as soon as I had it, he said, "Ride on that." So he enjoyed getting carted around for a while.

After we loaded the materials onto the dolly, I loved it that he continued walking around the church building with me, carrying my pen and pad of paper, and with some guidance was even able to stand in front of some doors to keep them open for me when I wheeled the dolly in. I really dislike working many evenings if it means not getting to see him, but we were having fun together accomplishing our task last night.

The dolly was pretty heavy with all of those materials stacked on it, and at one point he said, "push that" and reached out his hand to take over for me. (I suppose I'm so out of shape these days that my toddler thought he'd better give me a break.) I told him thanks, but that it was very heavy. I told him, "But you can help Daddy push it if you want," and I showed him where he could put his hand on the dolly's side bar. He put it there, and we kept walking to the next classroom while he carried my pen and paper in one hand and helped me push the heavy load with his other hand.

What he was doing was not insignificant in either of our minds. To him, he was helping his daddy push the heavy stuff. To me, I loved it that he wanted to be with me and be part of what I was doing rather than doing anything else.

Whenever I have the chance to pray with coworkers in ministry, I usually say something along the lines of thanking God for giving us the opportunity to be part of his work. I genuinely mean that when I say it. As frustrating as ministry can be at times, it is a privilege to be part of helping see God's kingdom come and his will be done in us and in our world. I realized two things about this as my son and I pushed that dolly last night: 1) I think God genuinely enjoys having us play a part in the process of his work in the world, and 2) in whatever kind of work we're doing, we aren't as strong as we think we are. God carries the load; we just follow alongside him with our hand on the dolly.

Even though God carries the load, it still requires some choices on our part. We have to choose to be with him rather than the myriad of other things that are constantly throwing tantrums to get our attention. Then, being with him in our work, our work can become much more his load than ours- whether we're a pastor, farmer, grocery checker, school principal, pharmacist, or nearly any other kind of work. God can accomplish good through the vast majority of professions that we have. It's just up to us to put our hand on the dolly and offer to help.

(For any of you who are fans of Rich Mullins, like I am, yes, his song of the same title came to mind and helped me realize this last night- although he was looking at our weakness and God's strength from a different angle in the song.)

P.S.: I laughed when I noticed (at the time of proofreading this) that the two Google ads at the right were for companies selling hand trucks and dollies.ind it, and as soon as I had it, he said, "Ride on that." So he enjoyed getting carted around for a while.

Bigger Christians, Not Bigger Churches

My wife and I recently put out the big bucks for a month's membership at the local YMCA. We've talked for a long time about the need to be healthier, but had yet to do the necessary things to make it happen. We had to be at the Y for something last week, and that did it for us. Unfortunately that was a week and a half ago, and I still haven't gone to work out. Obviously I was there on the day we signed up, so that should count as a visit even though I didn't do any exercise while we were there. When they gave us a tour, it was hard not to feel a bit out of place. I'm in the worst shape I've ever been in, not having done anything competitive in a decade. Yet walking around the Y, there were plenty of people sweating profusely and enjoying it, as well as guys lifting weights so heavy that when the bar went back on the rack, I could feel the floor shaking. (Sure, there were also plenty of people there in a physical condition much closer to mine, but I didn't take as much notice of them.)

While it felt intimidating in a way, there was also certainly a sense of it being right. If we had walked around the Y without seeing anyone who looked healthy, there would be a serious problem. Health clubs don't exist just to get people to sign up; they're there to help people get healthy.

Pause those thoughts about a health club for a moment and think about a church. The focus in churches often comes down to how many people are there. Or, broader than numbers of people, churches easily focus on the "ABCs of church growth": attendance, buildings, and cash.

I need to preface the remainder of my remarks with admitting that for most of my life, I've had an anti-large church bias. I'm not sure what to attribute that to, except the fact that I had always been in small churches, and I guess we all like to think we're doing things better than everyone else. I've gotten rid of the bias during the last two years, which has been very convenient in timing as I've been on staff at a large church for the first time.

Giving up my bias, and experiencing some of the goodness of a large church has helped me to realize something simple about small churches: there is some reason that they are small. It's possible that the reason is that they're in a rural area and have already reached and discipled everyone within driving distance, but I've yet to come across such a church (although there are some great churches in small towns). More likely causes for a church remaining small could be disfunction among members, no interest in engaging the world around them, a lack of leadership ability, a refusal to accept change, etc., etc., etc. Generally, if we are communicating the message that Jesus preached and have any serious roadblocks out of the way, churches will grow. This is my disclaimer to establish that I am no longer a Christian with an anti-large church bias, which some of you may need to keep in mind in the rest of what I write in this post.

I once heard Dallas Willard say, "We need to stop counting the people who come to our churches and start weighing them." Obviously he wasn't advocating that we place scales around our churches and start singing, "O Jesus, Lord of My Girth" (all credit to Stu Smith for the hymn title). Rather, he was making the point that the number of people who come is only relevant if they are reliably becoming more like Christ in the substance of who they are. Or, back to the health club, the number of members is irrelevant if no one there is getting healthy. Although health clubs would probably go out of business if it was a rarity to have members become and stay healthy, it is highly possible to have a very large church whose people do not naturally become any more Christlike as time passes. We can work hard, do everything with "excellence," be extremely well-organized with strong leadership at all levels, and if those components are in place, chances are that a church in our culture will not have trouble drawing a crowd. But those characteristics in themselves say nothing about whether or not people in the church are naturally growing in their love for God and others.

Another way of looking at what we're aiming for, which I've also heard Dallas Willard and James Bryan Smith talk about, is that rather than aiming at building bigger churches, we should aim at building bigger Christians. Surely some health clubs get this right. They exist to help people get fit, and if they do that extremely well, I doubt they have trouble finding business. If I were a health club director, my primary goal would be to get as many people as possible onto a reliable path to getting and staying fit. So, as a pastor, that means that my primary goal is to help those under my influence to enter ever more fully into "the life that really is life" (1 Tim. 6:19), leading them in the kind of lifestyle that will naturally produce the love, joy, and peace of Christ deep within them as they learn to rely on God's grace.

Also as a pastor, it means that I have to be experiencing the kind of life I'm promoting to others. I suppose that health clubs can run successfully as businesses without fit directors, but that seems difficult. Pastors can certainly build big churches without having had their characters transformed to be very significantly like that of Jesus, but it's very difficult to build "big" Christians without doing so. In fact, without Christ's character growing in us through God's grace, we likely won't even know what it would mean to make "bigger Christians" and may not even realize it if we met one. Because we naturally lead people to become like us, building bigger Christians requires those in Christian leadership themselves to be apprentices of Jesus, learning to do everything he taught us. (See my earlier post, "Is Leadership Overrated?")

Maybe I'm giving health clubs too much credit. I'm sure they also occasionally fall into the trap of focusing on expanding their customer base without giving the needed attention to how effectively they're helping the people already there become healthy. If that's true, the largest health club in your town is not necessarily the one most likely to help you get in shape. And the largest church may not be the place that can most effectively help you experience Jesus' kind of life. Size is not the point. The point is bigger Christians, not bigger churches.

It Bothers You More Than It Bothers God

 

Several months ago, I was playing with my son in our backyard. We have a freestanding porch swing where I prefer to spend a significant percentage of my life, so I sat on the swing while he had toys that he was playing with in the grass. I love it when he wears his cowboy hat, and he really liked wearing it that day. I was enjoying watching him play, and then at times, he would put his toy down, come climb up in the swing next to me and just sit next to his daddy on the swing, wearing his cowboy hat. Then, pretty quickly, he would see something else he wanted to play with, get down and play with it for a while, then crawl back in the swing with me, and the cycle kept repeating. 
My heart felt so full that afternoon. I loved it that even though he had his toys there and enjoyed playing with them, at times he still wanted to come sit with his daddy on the swing in his cowboy hat. The fact that something else would quickly grab his attention didn’t bother me in the least. He wasn’t yet two, and I was much more capable of enjoying his company than he was mine, but it still made my heart want to burst with joy and pride over that little guy when he did turn his attention to me and wanted to be by my side.
When we pray, it is easy to become discouraged, thinking that we have not prayed "well" because our minds have gone in a hundred different directions rather than staying focused on God during the time of prayer. The best spiritual guides I've read and listened to encourage us to completely do away with the categories of praying "well" or "poorly" because of their irrelevance to how God works in us in prayer. They say that the part we play in prayer is mainly just showing up, and I'm convinced that's the part that matters most to God. Distractions will come to us when we pray, and since I expect that's been the case for the huge majority of people who have ever walked the planet, I doubt God is surprised or bothered when it happens to us, particularly in a time that we have set aside to be with him. Even with the distractions, we end up giving God more of our attention when the time is set aside than when it isn't. Surely the distractions bother us much more than they do him.
So, when we realize that the distractions have come, the best advice I've been given is just not to hang on to them with our attention. Rather, as if they were a cloud going by in the sky or a piece of wood floating on a river, we just let them pass by. Once we're aware that the distraction has come and we've made an decision to let it go, then, we crawl back up in the swing with our cowboy hats on and return our attention to our Father, and continue enjoying the chance to be together.