The Glass House
Reason 10: Disobedience
Disobedience is about not following instructions.
Getting off on the wrong track. The bible lays out fairly simple
guidelines for our conduct, for our purpose as followers of
Christ. When we follow those guidelines, we align ourselves with
Christ and operate within God's perfect will as opposed to His
permissive will. In God's perfect will, Lot lived a great
distance from Sodom, from sin. In God's permissive will, Lot exercised
his own judgment and moved first closer to the city, likely for the sake
of convenience, and, ultimately, into the city. In God’s perfect will, we trust Him
completely—even when we cannot see or know the outcome of those
choices. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac [Gen 22] is an example of
his acting within God’s perfect will. Sarah arranging a hook-up
between Abraham and the concubine Hagar [Gen 16:3] to "help God out," to
speed God's promise along since God was obviously dragging His feet or
was too weak to bring forth His own promise to Abraham, is an example
of Abraham acting within God’s permissive will. God allows us
free choice—even though He knows what the end result of our choices will
be. That sounds like a contradiction, but it’s really not. You know, if
your six-year old stays up late watching monster movies, that he’ll end
up having nightmares. But maybe you let him make that choice—operating
within your permissive will. He gets to exercise his choice, his free
will, even though you are older and wiser and the scope of your vision
is much greater than that of a six-year old. You already know what the
end result will be—him climbing into your bed in the middle of the
night, but you let him decide, anyway, and, hopefully, he learns a
lesson.
I’m quite sure your church would grow exponentially if you moved
closer to God’s perfect will and stopped struggling within His
permissive will. As discussed in previous installments, some
churches do not need to exist at all. They have no appreciable
impact on their community, no identifiable goals for that
community. They are tiny commuter congregations—a handful of
folk driving across town to the church on Sunday only to drive
away, the community having no real clue what the church’s
purpose is. But, because that church is sitting there, on that
block, other ministries—who will impact that
community—may choose not to build in that area because they
assume your church is actually doing something, which, of course, it is
not. So, not only are
you letting God down by being more of a social club than a
church, but you’re actually impeding the work of the Gospel by
taking up space.
I had this barber back home who wouldn’t let you hang around the
barbershop. After you got your haircut, get out. He was adamant
about it. One Saturday there was a game on TV, and after my cut,
I took a seat. Nate asked me, “What are you doing?” I said,
“Watching the rest of the quarter.” “Aw, no, the hell you
ain’t!” Nate explained to me that people passing by won’t know
that I’ve already gotten my haircut. What they’ll see is a bunch
of guys in chairs, and they’ll keep going down the block to
Ricky’s. People will see me sitting there and assume there'll be a very
long wait for a haircut. Similarly, your church, sitting there, doing
nothing, may be standing in the way of ministries who are
in tune with God’s purpose, who will evangelize the
community and who will contribute to it.
Not all of our pastors are actually called to be pastors.
The pastorate requires a special anointing and a pastor’s heart.
A pastor is kind, gentle. A pastor is knowable, reachable. A
pastor is involved, is committed. Too many of our pastors are
high and lifted up, jockeying for slots at bigger churches,
competing among one another for the largest head count. Some of
these guys are incredible preachers, fiery orators, gifted
teachers. Which would make them terrific evangelists. We should
not appoint evangelists as pastors: the two serve different
functions within the Body of Christ. Just because a guy puts on
a good show on Sunday doesn’t make him a pastor. Your pastor may
not be the best preacher in town, but he’s there when you’re
sick. When you’re hurting. When you need him to be around.
Meanwhile, Pastor Bling Bling puts on a better Sunday show, but
during the week he’s fairly scarce. He lives in a much nicer
house, but you are rarely if ever invited there. He’s aloof,
withdrawn. He is often more authoritarian and less gracious.
This guy is a pastor only because you people appointed him. God
didn’t appoint him. Or, if God did, this man has wandered off
the path. God would never appoint a knucklehead over His
people. We select the knuckleheads, we vote them in, because we
are out of step with God's plan. Like the children of Israel, we are
operating within God permissive will--we want a king--and not trusting
in His perfect will--the shepherd boy David. When we behave this way, we
usually get exactly what we deserve.
Hard-Headed: The instructions were simple: (1) keep running, (2) don’t look back.
Disobedience is about not following instructions.
The first part of
operating within God’s perfect will is to stop lying.
Stop lying to each other, stop lying to ourselves and to God.
Denial is a lie. Looking the other way is a lie. Honesty is very
tough because honesty strikes at the very essence of our being:
at our ego. Just as it’s hard for many of us to bend a knee in
submission to God, it’s even harder for us to admit unpleasant
things about ourselves. Far too many of our churches are simply
gong through the motions on Sunday morning. Running in circles,
existing only to pay the pastor’s salary.
We don’t spend time with God. We don’t keep family devotions. We
live our lives exactly the way people who do not know Christ
live theirs. In fact, as Bishop T.D. Jakes pointed out, many of them
are more Christ-like by nature than we are by practice. Most of
us, this pastor included, tend to operate within the permissive
will of God. Operating within His perfect will usually requires
a greater sacrifice than many of us can offer. It’s not so much
that we’re selfish as it is we’re
afraid.
We have stuff. We like our stuff. We like our friends. We like
our way of doing things. A church operating in God’s perfect
will must follow God where He leads—even if He is leading you to
either chew, spit, or get out of the way. Pastor
Benjamin Reynolds once
said, “The church, in order to call herself the church, ought to
DO SOMETHING.” And your church should be doing something,
or it should get out of denial about it’s being a church. Facing
the harsh reality that maybe your church doesn’t need to exist
any longer, or that your church has lost favor with God because
it is operating so much in God’s permissive will that its
effectiveness as a church has been compromised. That it is, in
fact, a pillar of salt.
So many of our churches are struggling to stay afloat, they end
up acting like Sarah or like Lot’s daughters, coming up with one
Lucy Ricardo hair-brained scheme after another to wring more
money out of the shrinking congregation, one more gimmick to
trick people into coming to a place they obviously have no
interest in: a church that has zero footprint and zero impact on
their community. In this we become like Lot’s daughters, having
grown up in a vague awareness of God but not knowing God and
obviously not trusting God enough to wait on Him, to follow His
path. Instead, we come up with one embarrassing carnival show
after another, struggling to pay the bills.
Accepting
that your church needs to hand off its mission to another
ministry is a terribly hard thing to do. It stinks of failure,
and none of us want to ever admit failure. Other small churches
use, as an excuse for struggling on, the notion of “keeping our
unique identity,” rather than fold their ten folk into a more
productive ministry. I know of no scriptural foundation for
“church identity” or sacrificing effective work in order to
maintain it. A church’s “unique identity” is often a euphemism
for pride, for ego. Beloved, the church is not this club you and
your pals go to on Sunday. The church is a body of believers. In
that perspective, any bible-believing church is just as much
your church as the one you’re struggling to maintain.
Moreover, this “unique identity” nonsense is also code for
keeping people out. It makes a virtue of cowardice as your
“unique identity” excuses you from having to talk to your
neighbor who may not look or sound like you, who
may not worship the way you do. Here in Ourtown, a huge problem
is that there really isn’t a specific “hood” anywhere. The
entire city is a tossed salad of diverse groups, with Latinos
becoming the dominant minority. Thus, many of our churches are
located in poorer neighborhoods because the real estate is
cheaper there, but our churches weren’t planted with a mind to
evangelize the neighborhood: most black churches here have no
idea who their neighbors are. They just got a good deal on the
land.
This is not biblical church-planting. You plant an orchid in the
desert, it’s going to die. You plant a black church in a Latino
neighborhood, without even trying to talk to your Latino
neighbors, it becomes fair to characterize your efforts as
selfish. You started this church because a group of you got fed
up with your previous pastor and split the church. You gave no
thought whatsoever to the people actually living in this
neighborhood, your motive for starting that church was to have
your own way and stick it to your former pastor. God can’t
possibly breathe on that.
Cornered.
But you’re here, now, on this corner,
among these people. And you’re struggling to attain church
growth. Well, the formula is simple: you’ve got to stop lying.
You’ve got to get out of denial. You’ve got to move your church
from God’s permissive will and closer to His perfect will. That
will require a reorienting of your thinking. Your unique
identity? Forget about it. It has no value in the Kingdom of
God. Your customs, your music, your way of doing things—like Isaac, all of
our cultural accretions need to be laid upon the altar. You want your church to
grow? You need to risk it all, like Abraham, risking your entire
future on God’s perfect will. You need to start acting like a
church and less like a social club.
Instead
of trying to snatch more Church Folk from other churches, our
mission should be to make disciples of men [Matthew 28:19-20], to introduce people to Jesus Christ,
to set aside cultural
differences and silly “unique identities” and throw open our
doors to the community we are actually located within.
If you would honor God, move toward God, toward His perfect
will, taking a sober, vigilant, hard look at the community your
church is located in, and then earnestly attempt to meet the
needs of the people living there, pouring yourself and the love
of Jesus Christ into their lives, your little church would, in
short order, be standing room only.
The closer we move toward God’s perfect will, the more the
church will prosper. Moves in that direction will require
faith. Faith cannot happen without trust. Trust often entails
sacrifice. Which isn’t to suggest the African American church
needs to stop being the African American church. I believe we
can maintain our cultural identity but also expand upon it;
enriching our own experience by adding the richness of others.
At the very least, we need a stern, sober look in the mirror:
what are we doing? What is our purpose? What is God’s purpose
for His church, and where do we fit in it? If we are unwilling
to examine ourselves daily [2 Cor 13:5], we have no right to
even call ourselves the church. But if we’re willing to overcome
our fear, we can find our way out of our stubborn disobedience
and back into the perfect will of God.
When that happens, the church will start growing.
Christopher J. Priest
17 August 2008
editor@praisenet.org
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