Is Christ Enough?

February 6, 2010 Leave a comment

This year I have been doing a lot of reflecting on life. I’m 35 years old and by this point, nearly all of my friends from high school and college have settled in their lives. Most of us have families, careers and a life trajectory that will probably not change too drastically over the next few decades.

This is also the age where some hard realizations begin to set in. Despite having success in one form or another, everyone realizes that certain things will probably not come to pass. Some of the dreams you had ten or fifteen years ago will never become a reality.You realize you are getting older and it’s time to let go of the “what ifs” and “might have beens.” You may never have the job, notoriety, family situation, body, business or whatever else you thought would make you truly happy.

I have a question for you. What makes you truly satisfied and happy in life? What is the real source of your joy? For many Christians, the real answer is, “Christ, and _____.” We fill in the blank with all kinds of things: children (and their performance in school or sports), a career, our ideal image of the perfect husband or wife, church involvement, positions or titles or degrees, financial success, and a hundred other things. We would never admit this, and we certainly don’t mean for this to happen, but it’s there all the same.

God is helping me to see that Christ is truly enough. For many years I have trusted Christ as my Savior, but I haven’t always looked to him as my Lord and the source of my true contentment. For a long time I looked to my ministry/career as my source of real joy. As long as that was going well and people liked what I was doing, all was well. But whenever I was criticized or people didn’t respond as positively as I’d hoped, I felt discouraged and depressed. But that’s what happens when you try to find joy in temporary things.

By God’s grace, I am learning to let go of my expectation that my career, other people, material possessions, or my performance in life will bring real contentment. I work hard and do my best to make a positive contribution in my job and in other areas of life. But those roles, titles and positions of influence will eventually fade, and I don’t want my joy to fade with them. Rather, I want my joy to be based on something that doesn’t fade away.

I may or may not be a sought-after worship leader or speaker. I may or may not be the most popular professor. I may or may not be famous, have books published, or be “the man.” I have limited control over those things anyway. There are many Christian leaders today whose sense of self-worth and self-identity is very closely tied to their perceived “success” in ministry. My heart breaks for them because it is a dark place to live and I don’t want to go there again. Ministry can become its own form of idolatry if we’re not careful.

I pray that you would understand one thing: Christ is enough for you. He is enough for your strength, contentment, self-worth, satisfaction, and joy. He has called you to serve in whatever you’re doing, but don’t look to external measurement of “success” to measure your worth. Your worth as a person–and your deepest joy–comes from knowing that Christ loves you deeply as his uniquely created child…without condition.

The writer who has helped me explore these things more than anyone else is Henri Nouwen. Earlier this week I took part of an afternoon and re-read In the Name of Jesus, the single book (besides the Bible) that has influenced my thinking more than any other. I just started a newer book of his called Spiritual Direction. I would highly recommend his works to any Christian who wants to grow in their love of Jesus.

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Letter #4: To My Son Ben

January 5, 2010 Leave a comment

For the last several months I’ve been reflecting on the fact that I turned 35 this year.  It seems like a “halfway point” of sorts, and I’ve decided to spend the next year thanking 100 people who have made a real difference in my life.  I also plan to post each letter on my internet blog (www.sacredstones.net) because I want to publicly share how each person has influenced my life.  You might even call this a “reverse eulogy”—why wait until someone’s gone to tell them what they mean to you?

The order of the letters is not necessarily important.  At times I may skip between family, friends, teachers, pastors and others who will receive letters.  The important thing is that you’ve made a big difference in my life.

This is letter #4.

January 3, 2010

Dear Ben,

This is the perhaps the strangest of these letters I’ll write.  In fact, I put the project on hold for several months because I just wasn’t sure how to approach yours. I wanted to write your letter on your first day of kindergarten, but missed the opportunity.  So here I am, early in the morning, writing the second of two letters—the first I read to you on Christmas morning, and a second one you will hopefully read years into the future. Read more of this post

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Further Thoughts About Online Church

December 13, 2009 Leave a comment

As a follow-up to my previous post describing my experience with the online service at Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, I wanted to share a few random thoughts:

Most Christians today still hold the mindset that we have to attend church in a physical location on Sunday morning. But this mindset has been challenged over the last couple of decades with mid-week worship (i.e. Willow Creek), Saturday night services, home groups, and now online church. Online church is simply one more addition to the growing number of alternative to traditional Sunday morning worship. Or is it? Is there something fundamentally different about attending an online service?

Yes and no. Probably the most notable difference (from a worship standpoint) is that you can’t participate in congregational singing while sitting at home. On the other hand,  it’s also possible to sit in a sanctuary with 1,000 people and not participate either. In fact, you can pretty much do everything “alone” at a physical service if you want to. It is entirely possible to walk into church and not speak to anyone, sing, or participate in any other way. It is not difficult, especially at a large church, to come to a service and leave without speaking to a single person. My point is this: if your main criticism of online church is the fact that people experience at home alone in front of their computers, this solitude isn’t necessarily corrected just by being in a church building with others on Sunday morning. Attending a physical megachurch service doesn’t guarantee that you have any real relationships.

I would make the same case for communion. In most evangelical churches, communion is not really a corporate activity. We pass trays, we each take bread and juice, and it’s a very individualized thing. There is not much that is truly “communal” about it. That’s why I like celebrating communion in a fashion where you interact with people or have to get out of your seat.

What about the fact that Central doesn’t celebrate communion weekly? This seems pretty radical for a Restoration Movement church. I confess I don’t know why they don’t celebrate it weekly, but I assume they have good reasons for doing so. The New Testament doesn’t command weekly communion, but it was the practice of early Christians to do it weekly. I don’t think a person’s faith lives or dies by weekly communion. I prefer it weekly, and that’s what I have done my whole life, but there is no biblical command to do it weekly. Read more of this post

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A Visit to “The Journey” Church (St. Louis)

November 1, 2009 2 Comments

thejourneyI had the past couple of Sundays off from my normal church responsibilities and took the opportunity to visit a couple of area churches. Last weekend I visited The Merge, a church plant led by a couple of friends and colleagues, Scott and Lisa Womble. That was a great experience (I’ll post about the visit soon). This morning while my wife was working (she unfortunately has to work Sunday morning once in a while), my son Ben and I visited The Journey, on Kingshighway near Hwy. 44 in St. Louis. We visited the 11:15 a.m. service at the main Tower Grove campus.

I wanted to visit The Journey because I’d heard some exciting things about their ministry. It’s a relatively new church plant with multiple locations in St. Louis.  Lead pastor Darren Patrick founded The Journey in 2002, and the church is part of the Acts 29 church planting network.

On my way to the church I drove right past it because the building (a former Catholic church) blends so well into the neighborhood. On my way back around the block I noticed where all the people were headed and followed suit.  We had to park a block away because of the number of cars parked on the street around the church (definitely a good sign).

The sanctuary was about two-thirds full when we came in, but was almost full later in the service. The congregation consisted of what appeared to be people in their 20′s and 30′s. The worship songs were familiar to me (except for one or two) and the worship band did a great job with the music (which was very guitar-driven but with more of an acoustic feel). I would guess there were about 300 people there.

After the music came the Scripture reading from 1 John 3.1-10.  I found this interesting because in most evangelical churches, the preacher reads the Scripture as part of the sermon. I liked having it read separately before the sermon–this somehow conveys a bit more authority and seriousness of Scripture. The women who read Scripture concluded it with a firm “the word of the Lord” (a nice touch that reminds us it’s God’s Word). Another interesting touch was the repeated reference to page numbers in the pew Bible, which was the ESV translation. This is the first church I’ve seen use the ESV for pew Bibles (score!). Nice touch.

Lead pastor Darren Patrick delivered a great sermon on dealing with sin in our lives. I believe it was about 45 min. long. He is a great communicator and has a very down-to-earth style. He has a gift for combining great biblical content with very practical application. He is very easy to listen to, which I consider a great compliment to any teacher or preacher. The sermon ended with several application questions for personal reflection.

I really enjoyed the communion time. One of the leaders/pastors gave a few brief instructions, they we were directed to come to the front, where several people held a loaf of bread a cup of juice.Ben and I stood up to get in the line closest to us. I tore a piece from the loaf, dipped it in the juice, and headed back to my seat. I loved taking communion this way.

The only real discernible difference between what I normally experience as part of a Restoration Movement church, and the Journey is that they didn’t offer a traditional “invitation” at the conclusion of the sermon. People were instead invited to talk to a church leader or pastor after the service. I assume if someone wants to become a Christian they would take the initiative to speak with someone from the church. Or perhaps there is something I missed. This approach seems fine because the process for someone coming to faith can happen a variety of ways. Church history tells us this much. The traditional “invitation” time is an innovation that has been around less than 200 years. There’s nothing wrong with it, of course; it’s just one approach among many that Christians throughout history have used.

The thing that impressed me the most about The Journey was the seriousness with which they approached worship. You hear a lot these days about young adults (and the Gen-X crowd) being turned off by traditional Christianity, but the worship I experienced this morning took a serious, hard-hitting approach to God, the Bible, and the need for obedience. Mr. Patrick’s sermon didn’t pull any punches.

In my view, the contemporary evangelical church has misread this generation (which is my generation). We aren’t looking for a church that soft-sells the Christian faith or portrays it as an easy road. On the contrary, young (and young-ish) people are drawn to a faith that is deep, meaningful and doesn’t pretend to offer easy answers to life’s pressing problems. They are looking for connection, meaning, and a transcendent connection with God. This partly explains why people are increasingly drawn to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. While The Journey is still solidly evangelical, this group of believers seems to be doing something right in reaching a generation that has basically lost interest in traditional Christianity. Surely there is something we can all learn from this.

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Letter #3: To My Brother Don

August 11, 2009 Leave a comment

For the last several months I’ve been reflecting on the fact that I turn 35 this year.  It seems like a “halfway point” of sorts, and I’ve decided to spend the next year thanking 100 people who have made a real difference in my life.  An average of two letters a week for nearly 52 weeks.  I also plan to post each letter on my blog because I want to publicly share how each person has influenced my life.  You might even call this a “reverse eulogy”—why wait until someone’s gone to tell them what they mean to you?

The order of the letters is not necessarily important.  At times I may skip between family, friends, teachers, pastors and others who will receive letters.  The important thing is that you’ve made a big difference in my life.

This is letter #3.

August 2, 2009

Dear Donnie,

Most people know you simply as “Don,” but in our family we still call you “Donnie.”  When I was little I called you “Bubby,” but I guess that would be a little embarrassing now.

Happy Birthday!  You’ve now been alive for ___ decades (I’ll leave it to you to divulge the specific number to others).  I wanted to wish you a very happy birthday and say thank you for being a terrific older brother who has been a real blessing in my life.

I have so many great memories from when we were kids.  Like the home movie of you feeding me corn on cob. Bottle rocket wars with the Phares kids next door.  The time you made me lie to Mom and Dad about how I got the injury to my forehead.  (Did you really think they would believe that a soccer ball would make the same kind of marks as a furnace vent?)  Sleeping outside in the lawn chairs.  Getting in trouble for laughing at the dinner table.  The cheeseburger on the stereo.  Moving into your old bedroom the day you left for college.  And later on, the time we did the revival together at Rick Mosher’s church, and how I’ve always given you a hard time because you were paid $75 more than me since you were the preacher and I was the worship leader.  (I’m still waiting for my $37.50.)

It’s hard to imagine what my life would be like without your influence.  As a kid and a young man I always seemed to follow in your footsteps—being involved at church, Bible Bowl, church camp, SLCC, going into ministry—I always saw how you gave your life to God, and it made it easy for me to follow your lead.  All my life you’ve been an example, and I’ve looked to you for guidance on ministry, marriage, parenthood, faith, and many other things.  I suppose it will be true for the rest of my life.

All my life, people have mistaken me for you because we look alike.  But I’ve always considered it a compliment because of who you are.  Others know you as a great professor, Dad, husband, minister, or teacher.  But I think of you as a great brother and friend.  Thank you for godly character and consistent Christian example through the years.  God has richly blessed my life through you, and I will always be proud to be known as your little brother.

Kent

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Mind Your Worship (Part 2)

August 4, 2009 Leave a comment

bibleInfo003In the last post I mentioned Romans 12.1-2 and how Paul emphasizes the mind in the process of worship. This brings to mind the importance of what we’re feeding our minds. The mind is like a muscle that we must exercise if we want to see growth. Our bodies become flabby, tired and lazy if we don’t give them regular exercise. The same thing happens to our minds. And there are many Christians out there with flabby minds!

First, we must put good things into our minds. This includes God’s Word, good books that stimulate and stretch our thinking, good teaching and conversation, and other things that will help our minds grow strong and healthy. For example, this week I’m looking forward to meeting with a mentor (a minister from an area church) who helps me grow in my devotion to Jesus. I meet with him periodically to challenge my thinking and keep me accountable. This is good for both my mind and my soul. (But maybe not my body, since we always eat at Cracker Barrell!)

Second, we have to keep the bad stuff out of our minds. There is an immense amount of potentially negative input that can go into our minds on a daily basis. We are surrounded by media all the time that subtly (and not-so-subtly) affects our thinking. We wouldn’t dream of eating candy bars all day and expect to stay trim and healthy, yet we fill our minds with the equivalent of junk food every day and don’t give it a second thought.

If the key to worship is the mind, we need to really pay attention to what we’re putting in, and what we’re keeping out.

Filed under Leadership, Life, Personal Growth, Uncategorized, Worship

Mind Your Worship (Part 1)

August 3, 2009 Leave a comment

ama_brain_stroke_lev20_thebraineffectsstroke_01What is the key to worship? It’s not having the right style of music, the right technology, the right worship leader, or any number of things that rightly deserve some attention. I believe the key to godly worship begins with the mind. Paul says in Romans 12.1-2: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

They key to worship here lies with the transformation of the mind, literally a “metamorphosis” of the mind. Worship begins not with our emotions or environment, but with the state of our minds. This puts an incredible amount of pressure on us to be in right frame of mind, both during the week and when we worship corporately. While it’s true that a number of factors will affect the quality of corporate worship — including the ability of the worship leader, music, volume, lighting, temperature, culture, and about 1,000 other things — the most significant piece of the puzzle is the mind of worshiper.

If you come into church with a bad attitude, you will not be able to worship no matter how great the service. If you come into church with the right attitude, you will be able to worship even if it’s a terrible service. The burden of responsibility rests of you and I — not the worship leader, the music or other factors — and our attitude of worship. Put another way, the worship leader can lead people to God’s throne, but he or she can’t make them worship.

If you really want to have a great worship experience this next weekend, read your Bible all week, pray for the pastors and worship team, and come to church with a great attitude. You will be amazed at the difference it will make.

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You Can’t Facebook Your Way in the Church

July 28, 2009 2 Comments

icon_facebookI really enjoy being on Facebook. Apparently so do millions of other people around the world, since it’s a huge social network tool that has grown exponentially over the last few years. And what’s not to like? You can reconnect with old friends, find new ones and communicate with all them easily.

But aside from the convenience and all the technological hoo-ha, what’s really the attraction behind Facebook? The answer is simple: you are in complete control of the relational experience. You choose what information to present about yourself. You choose what pics to upload. You choose what friends to “request” and which ones to ignore. You choose your status updates and whether to comment on your friends’ updates. There are no irritating interruptions on Facebook because you can ignore everything, or just log out completely.

On Facebook, you completely control the image you present to people, along with how and when you interact with them. This approach to relationships works fine on the internet, but in other realms of life it leaves something to be desired.

We have a lot of people Facebooking their way in the church.

One of the biggest barriers to developing real community with others is our need for “image management.” We are too concerned about how we appear to others, and are afraid to get real with people. We’re afraid to confess that we have real problems in life and might appear less than perfect. Real Christians aren’t supposed to have problems, right?

We want our yards to be perfectly mowed, our houses in the right neighborhood, our kids perfectly behaved and our images expertly managed. But the problem is that it isn’t really the truth about us. If we were all honest, we would admit our fears, doubts, sins, failures and shortcomings. And then many of us would begin to find healing and hope within the context of a trusting, loving community of people.

We can’t be an authentic follower of Jesus and maintain “control over our relational experience,” either with Jesus or with his people. Being a Christian means giving up control of my life and turning it over to Jesus. Real relationships in the church are messy, inconvenient, sometimes irritating, but always part of the deal.

I’m not talking about a church program, I’m talking about having enough of Jesus’ love in our hearts to talk to that new guy or help that woman in need. It’s an attitude of being firmly planted in our community of God’s people where we share life with others, much like the Christians in Acts 2.

I admit I have often fallen short of this ideal. But I’m asking God to bring change in my heart. Let it begin with me.

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Thoughts on Personal Growth

July 23, 2009 Leave a comment

The boy observes cultivation of a young plant.I’m doing something a little different this year. Normally I have taken some time over Christmas break (between semesters) to reflect over the past year and think through goals for the coming year. But I’ve changed the timing of this to reflect the school year, and am trying to go through the process in the summer. This more naturally reflects the ebb and flow of my life these days. At the moment I’m thinking through specific goals over the next year in relation to various areas of my life. But I’m also thinking through where I want to be by the time I’m 40, which will happen in July 2014. I’ve never really considered thinking about goals five years away, but I keep coming back to the saying, “If you aim at nothing you’ll hit it every time.”

Most people never think of terms of how they want to grow as a person. They have no set plan to help guide them. I have news for you: growth in your life rarely happens automatically. In fact, the normal state of life is to be stagnant. Experience can be greatly overrated. Only evaluated experience means anything. You may hear, “So and so has 20 years experience in their job.” They may have 20 years’ experience, or they may have had 1 years’ worth of experience 20 times. It all depends whether they have grown from what they’ve experienced.

I am really amazed at how many people go through life and make no effort at learning or growing. I take a book with me everywhere I go and often listen to teaching and sermon material while driving or jogging. There is no reason for being stagnant in your mental and spiritual growth even with a busy schedule. Case in point: a couple of weeks ago I went to the DMV to renew the license plate for my truck. You can always count on waiting at least 45 minutes here. I went in, took a number and sat down. There were at least 30 people ahead of me, and as I looked around the room, not one single person was reading a book! They were all sitting there, looking around impatiently, staring at the ceiling or playing with their phone. What a colossal waste of precious time. I was happy to sit there for a little while and get some reading done. You can easily read and learn in those little pockets of time each day.

Personal growth does not happen automatically. Stagnation, however, does. If you want to grow and learn, you have to be intentional about it. We all have 24 hours a day — the question is, what are you doing with those hours?

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The Best Decision I Made This Year

July 22, 2009 3 Comments

bibleHere is a snippet from a fantastic article by Mark Batterson, from the Catalyst online magazine. The article is called “The Best Decision I Made This Year.” The “decision” was to read through the Bible this year.

“One of the common complaints people make when leaving a church is this: I’m not being fed.  As a preacher, my goal is to nourish our congregation via a well-rounded diet of sermons. And I try to preach every sermon like it’s my last, but let me push back.  My kids learned to feed themselves when they were toddlers.  If you’re not being fed, that’s your fault.  I’m afraid we’ve unintentionally fostered a subtle form of spiritual codependency in our churches.  It is so easy to let others take responsibility for what should be our responsibility. So we let our pastors study the Bible for us.  Here’s a news flash: the Bible was unchained from the pulpit nearly five hundred years ago during an era of history called the Middle Ages.

If you are relying on a preacher to be fed, I fear for you.  Listening to a sermon is second-hand knowledge.  It is learning based on someone else’s words or experiences. A sermon is no replacement for first-hand knowledge.  You’ve got to see it and hear it and experience it for yourself.  It’s not enough to hear the truth. You have to own it. Or more accurately, it has to own you. Honestly, I’d rather have people hear one word from the Lord than a thousand of my sermons.  And that happens when you open your Bible and start reading.”

Great stuff. Thanks, Mark!

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