From a few weeks ago, as we began a study of Adam Hamilton's book, Enough. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/16395630 w=400&h=300] Enough: Faith in the Midst of Financial Crisis (CWS) from First United Methodist Church on Vimeo.
There's Nothing in the Election Coverage About This...
Although I'm never very involved beyond voting, I enjoy paying attention to politics. Of course there are things that greatly annoy me about listening to candidates or people in office, and one is how high a degree of confidence they usually ask us to have in them to accomplish incredible things. The reality is that there are things politicians can and should accomplish and other things that simply aren't in their domain or range of possibilities to see come to pass. Every election includes numerous candidates talking about "cleaning house" in Washington, fighting for the people, making our futures more secure and generally giving us good lives. As he always is, Dallas Willard is the master of offering a different perspective:
"We must at some point stop looking for new information or social arrangements or religious experiences that will draw off the evil in the world at large, abolish war, hunger, oppression, and so forth, while letting us continue to be and to live as we have since Adam... The monstrous evils we deplore are in fact the strict causal consequences of the spirit and behavior of 'normal' human beings following generally acceptable patterns of life. They are not the result of strange flukes, accidental circumstances, or certain especially mad or bad individuals." (From The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 234)
As much as politicians talk about social arrangements and things like war, hunger, and opression, they rarely say anything about solutions that actually have the potential of a deeper answer to our problems: people changing their lifestyles, both individually and in mass, to allow more room for God to change us and our world. I don't expect candidates to talk much about these things, and honestly that's okay. It is primarily the responsibility of the Christian church (you and me) to put this to the test, and once reliable ways are found (or better, rediscovered) of living the life that is truly life, we should invite others to join us. So, church, the entire world is waiting on our progress in discipleship.
Big Spenders, Over-Savers, or Contentment and Generosity
I think that in a very broad and over-generalized way, every one of us becomes one of three kinds of people. It’s probably more accurate that we’re a mix of all three of these than just one of them, but by the end of my life, I think it’s true that people will be able to look back at the things I did and place me into one of the three of these categories:
Either we become
- a big spender,
- an over-saver,
- or someone that lives in contentment and generosity.
If I don’t intentionally make the decision to let the ways of the kingdom of God shape my finances, rather than letting my finances shape me, then I will most likely end up being either a big spender or an over-saver. In an average day, you and I receive 600 advertising messages, and almost all of them are trying to get us to be one of these two kinds of people. I mean, how often have you seen a commercial whose point was, “be content with what you have”? No, the tactic they take is by telling us that if we don’t spend in big quantities or save everything we have, then bad things are going to happen to us. Again, in one of the books from James Bryan Smith's Apprentice Series, The Good and Beautiful Life
, it says,
, it says, “Advertisers know how to play on our fears and desires. By the age of sixty we will have seen over two million commercials, which is the equivalent of watching nothing but those ads for eight hours a day, seven days a week, for six straight years. While they appeal to desire, more ads tapping into our fears get us to buy their products."
Then it has this quote from Martin Lindstrom that explains:
"Practically every brand category I can think of plays on fear, either directly or indirectly. We’re sold medicines to ward off depression, diet pills and gym memberships to prevent obesity, creams and ointments to quiet fears of aging, and even computer software to ward off the terrors of our hard drive crashing. I predict that in the near future advertising will be based more and more on fear-driven somatic markers, as advertisers attempt to scare us into believing that not buying their product will make us feel less safe, less happy, less free, and less in control of our lives.” (pp. 164-165)
So for the big spenders, the messages are presented in different words, but they go something like this:
- “You’ve got to have these clothes so that people will think of you the right way.”
- “You have to buy your wife this big diamond or she may not kiss you anymore.”
- “You need this new kind of phone or computer, or you won’t be able to get anything accomplished.”
- “You’ve got to drive this kind of car, with a great stereo and GPS and all of these safety features, or you’ll likely get into an accident you and all of your loved ones will probably die.”
I guess it’s harder to advertise to the over-savers, because by definition one is less likely to make money off of them, but the professionals find ways to do it. For the over-savers, the advertisements are something like these:
- “You need to invest now in gold, because the entire economy could collapse around us, and at least when it does, then you would own some gold.” (Recently I was using a site that I use often to look up scripture and there was an ad there encouraging me to buy gold that said, “It was given to Jesus by the wise men; wise men still own it today.” So, according to them, an important way to let my life be shaped by the scriptures is by investing in gold???)
- Or the ads might be pushing insurance policies, sure-thing investments for retirement. Or how about the car that can get you better gas mileage by 10 miles per gallon?
This is a bit of a tangent- from me, not the Bible, but that last one gets to me, because let’s say that what I drive right now gets 20 miles per gallon. I know that I spend a lot on gas, and I’m a big saver, so when the commercial comes on for the new thing that will get me 30 miles per gallon, I start thinking of all of that money I’ll save on gas. But, they’re counting on us not doing the math. If a gallon of gas costs $2.75, and even if I average driving 25,000 miles in a year, and the new car costs $20,000, it would take 17 1/2 years for me to break even on the money I save on gas with my new gas saver versus the money I had to spend to get it. And that’s if I paid cash... if I take out a loan for that new gas saver, it would likely take me at two decades to break even on the deal.
Now, I’ve got a lot of saver in me, so for all of you fellow savers, I don’t have anything against good gas mileage, or retirement plans, or insurance policies, or investments. And for you spenders, I don’t have anything against computers or diamonds or clothes. All I’m trying to do is to get us to ask ourselves: in what or in whom do we hope, trust, and believe? Paul said it very well in 1 Timothy 6:17-19; we either hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, or we hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. I’m trying to help us see that when we do not decide to let the ways of the kingdom of God shape our finances, our finances easily come to rule us by making us into a big spender or an over-saver.
Part of the reason this is true is because apart from the kingdom of God, it becomes so easy to be motivated by fear- either (for the big spenders) fear that we aren’t valuable without more stuff, or (for the over-savers) fear that we have to save all we can to try to protect our own futures. And these fears always stay a few steps ahead of our finances. Our finances will never quite be able to catch up to those things we’re afraid of. The big spenders will never have quite enough things and the over-savers will never have quite enough stored away.
John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 and died 98 years later in 1937. He was the wealthiest man in the world, and was the first American to be worth more than a billion dollars. At his death, he was worth $1.4 billion, and that was a long time ago... adjusting for inflation, he is regarded as the richest man in history. What was $1.4 billion then would be $20.7 billion today. (Based on the first salary I had out of college, it would take me 1500 years to make that much money!) ... One day a reporter asked him how much money it would take to make him happy, and Rockefeller’s famous reply was, “Just a little bit more.”
Apart from the kingdom of God, we always need “just a little bit more,” and we work to satisfy our fears through spending to make ourselves feel happy or saving to make ourselves feel secure. But our finances never quite reach far enough, we never become the content and generous people that we wanted to be.
So what’s the other option? If we hope that at the end of our lives we it will have been obvious to others that we were neither big spenders, nor over-savers, but joyful men and women who lived with contentment and generosity, how do we make that happen? I'm no financial counselor, and won't pretend to be. Plenty of great information on the how-to of this is available from folks like Dave Ramsey or Crown Ministries. The only point I'm attempting to establish is that there’s a decision that we have to make intentionally, a decision about which will be placed in that central place in our hearts: will it be the kingdom of God, or will it be our own resources?
Everything Adds Up
A powerful general principle in the spiritual life is this: everything adds up. Everything counts, and moves us in one direction or another, including small things. It isn’t generally the big things of our lives that play the largest role in shaping who we are, but all of the small things that add up over the course of our lifetimes. All of things we put into our minds add up. All of the decisions we make about our time add up, and on the other side of all of them, we become the kind of person that is naturally the sum of all of those things, because everything adds up.
In his book, Falling for God
Once outside, the little girl begins to giggle with delight as the snow comes down. She says, “Look grandpa, the snow is making crumbs and bubbles.”
When he asks her what she means by crumbs and bubbles, she explains, “The bubbles are falling against your face, Grandpa, and turn to water. But the crumbs land on your overcoat. They don’t melt and you can brush them off. Watch."
Safed marvels at the way the small child put the words together to describe her new experiences. They spend the day enjoying the crumbs and bubbles until the cold sends them inside to thaw out by their fireplace.
The next morning he awakens and notices how quiet everything has become. There is no movement outside, no noise from trains, cars, or footsteps. He looks out the window and observes that the snow has fallen in great drifts and brought the entire town to a hault.
Then he remembers the cute words of his granddaughter and how she described the crumbs and bubbles of snow, which have now piled up in such great drifts that they can stop a powerful train.
Then he unpacks the parable and says, “I considered that it is even so with many things in life that are small in themselves, but when multiplied they become habits that people cannot break, or grievances that rend friendships asunder, even as great drifts are made of bubbles and crumbs of snow.”
Snowflakes add up to make snowdrifts, just as the things we allow our minds to dwell on and the decisions we make about our time add up to make a person- either a person whose character is very significantly like that of Jesus, or a person whose character isn’t; they add up making me the kind of person that I want to be, or to something less.
C.S. Lewis also describes this well. He says in Mere Christianity
Everything adds up, and this is one of the core ideas of understanding spiritual formation, because we are, always, being formed into some kind of person. This is true whether we know it or not, and living as a disciple of Jesus is largely about learning to recognize this and pay attention to it.
Why You Should STOP Trying to Support Your Ministries with Prayer
A recent article in the newspaper of my denomination's local conference was advertising an upcoming Prayer Leader's Summit, which appears to be a very good event. I'm certainly thankful that it's happening and the leadership I serve under is putting it on. Therefore, I don't want this blog post to come across as belittling this prayer conference and others like it; it's certainly a good thing whenever people involved in doing "God stuff" can be intentional about talking to him about it. So now that you understand I'm in favor of it... One sentence in the article caught my attention because it represents what I've come to believe is a mistake about how we usually look at the relationship between prayer and ministry: "This Summit is not about praying for the Conference as a whole. Instead, it's about encouraging and equipping prayer leaders to support their local ministries." Innocent enough, right? I'll see if I can explain my picky-ness with the wording. I've been involved in church all of my life, and in church leadership all of my adult life, and have used phrases myself to describe prayer in ways similar to the newspaper quotation above. We often say things like, "this needs to be covered in prayer," or such-and-such is done on "a foundation of prayer," or as the article said, that a particular "ministry is supported by prayer." We say such things for good reasons, because we are involved in doing a multitude of kinds of things for others, and we realize that if we try to do them only according to our own abilities rather than dependently on God's ability, the results will be limited to what we can accomplish by ourselves. We all know ourselves far too well to get very excited about that. We certainly want to welcome God into these things that we're doing. We serve others, care for the sick and the poor, lead worship services and Bible studies, etc., and all of these things are ministries that have to be based on, supported by, and enabled by prayer. But what if that's wrong? What if it's the other way around? What if prayer is the ministry and all of the things we do for others are the supporting and enabling forces? What if prayer is where God and we really get things done, and the ways that we serve others are just how we can come along for the ride? This is a lesson I began learning a while ago, but still have lived into very little. If I can really start to think this way, I will certainly approach ministry differently than I do by habit. It would lead to a way of ministry with much less pressure on me and those around me. My title indicates that I am Pastor of Discipleship in a large church, but how in the world am I supposed to help a large congregation of people connect with God? It's an intimidating job description, and I can't do it. But, if prayer is the ministry rather than the activities, I can pray. Then I can act, doing things for others that will support and be a part of what happens when I pray. This helps something become practical that we talk about a lot but have difficulty enacting: rather than leaving results up to me, they are left in the much abler hands of God. When I pray, I become more aligned with who God is. I become more who he wants me to be in the world. That simply matters more than all of the other kinds of things we do. It is where things get done, and it is how God's kingdom comes. It is ministry. Then, when I work and act by serving others, caring for the sick and the poor, leading worship services and Bible studies, etc., I'm simply jumping in on the work God is doing in the world (or putting my hand on the load God is carrying). So while the aim of the newspaper article is more than admirable, this one sentence reinforces our misconception that prayer and ministry are separate things. We need to stop trying to support our ministries with prayer. Instead pray, then find ways to be a part of what begins to happen.
Scripture Plaques You Won't Find at the Christian Bookstore, #7
[This post is one of a series of potential Christian plaques that we would never find at a Christian bookstore. See the rest of the list here.]
I'm including this one minus the usual sarcasm. Your church's next evangelism campaign may be much healthier if everyone dwells on this for a while (also see this passage in my previous post, "Is Leadership Overrated?"):
You Spend Eight Months of Your Life Opening Junk Mail
Our church is studying John Ortberg's book, The Me I Want to Be
In Ephesians 5, Paul instructs, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” Or, I appreciate how some of the older translations say it, encouraging us to “redeem the time.”
Obviously Paul understood that, in his day, redeeming the time was an important part of people learning to live wisely. If it was important then, it is at least as important today. While it has always been a key element of living wisely, perhaps the need has never been more urgent than it is for us today, and all of the signs in our world point to this urgency continuing to become more and more pressing.
Consider these facts that James Bryan Smith shares in his book which our Apprentice Groups study, The Good and Beautiful God
. He says that, in a lifetime, an average person spends:
. He says that, in a lifetime, an average person spends:- six months at traffic lights
- eight months opening junk mail
- one year searching through desk clutter
- two years trying to call people who are not in
- three years in meetings
- five years waiting in lines
In a single day an average American will
- commute 45 minutes
- be interrupted 73 times
- receive 600 advertising messages
- watch 4 hours of television
We must learn to redeem the time!
There is quite a bit of overlap between how disciples of Jesus through the centuries have arranged their lives in respect to their time, and how they have arranged them in respect to their minds. Time is always passing. We can neither slow it down nor speed it up. It just is what it is, without respect to what we think about it. Sometimes we feel like time is on our side, and other times it’s a fierce enemy, like for the old basketball coach who said that his teams never lost a single game, they only ran out of time. It’s similar with our minds, because as time is always passing, our minds are always absorbing the things that we put into them, whether those things be helpful or destructive. Paul urged Christians to be transformed by the renewint of their minds, because he understood that the kind of people that you and I are becoming is largely the outcome of how we think. If we “set our minds on things above,” and think great thoughts over the course of our lives, our habits of thinking will play tremendous roles in determining the character that is in us when we come to our last days. And it’s the same with our time.
I’ll invite you to do a mental exercise with me to illustrate. Take a moment and bring to mind a person that you have greatly admired. It may be someone you have known personally, or perhaps you only admired them from a distance, but bring to mind someone whose quality of character has inspired you.
Have someone in mind? Now bring to mind someone as unlike that person as you can think of. Again, it may be someone you have known well or not, but think of someone whose life and character is to you the epitome of being un-admirable. You may even feel a knot rise up in your stomach at these thoughts.
Now, think of the lives that these two people led which either developed them into very admirable or un-admirable people. Two things that are surely differences between them are the ways that they thought and what they did with the 24 hours per day that each of them were given. The un-admirable person in your mind surely had long patterns of thinking un-admirable thoughts, and this led them to use their time in un-admirable ways. And just as surely, the admirable person in your mind took Paul’s advice when he said in Philippians 4, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Then, these patterns of thinking led them to use the time that they were given in ways that made them into people who were true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, and praiseworthy, because we really do become what we think.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, paid a lot of attention to these things. He was extremely careful, even highly meticulous with his time, keeping records of what he did hour by hour, and recording the activities of his days in his journals. He lived in such a watchful way over his own time, because he understood the role that what we do with our time has in shaping who we become.
Wesley talked often about “redeeming the time.” He said, “[Save] all the time you can for the best purposes; buying up every fleeting moment out of the hands of sin and Satan.”
And I love this quote from him: “Redeem the time. Improve the present moment. Buy up every opportunity of growing in grace, or of doing good. Let not the thought of receiving more grace tomorrow make you negligent of today.”