A Night In Tunisia

Moving Forward In Ministry

Embracing someone else’s dream requires a revelation from God. Such revelations are readily available, but the trick is we have to ask God for them. We have to want to understand someone, want to see our role in the vision God has given them. Threatened with death by the maniac Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel sought out three Hebrew nobles—Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah—and the three of them prayed to God to reveal Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and its meaning to them. See, Nebuchadnezzar had been given a vision from God but had forgotten it by the time he woke up. He called the wisest men in Babylon together and demanded they tell him what his dream was and what it had meant. Behaviorally, this sounds a lot like many pastors I’ve met here: arrogant, irrational and lost. They’ve lost sight of the vision and their own purpose in God and, rather than seek God for themselves, they’re looking for somebody to tell them who they are and what they should do. Searching for people with God’s anointing whom they can exploit [Daniel Chapters 1-3].

Daniel went to the king's captain and told him he could interpret the dream (see Daniel 2:24). The captain rushed Daniel to King Nebuchadnezzar. After saying that God had shown him the dream, Daniel described the image the king had seen. The image's head was made of gold, his breast and arms of silver, his belly and thighs of brass, his legs of iron, and his feet of part iron and part clay. Daniel said that a great stone struck the image's feet and broke them. Then the stone grew and filled the whole earth. (See Daniel 2:2835.)

Interpreting the dream, Daniel told the king, "Thou art this head of gold" (Daniel 2:38). Then he said an inferior kingdom, represented by the silver, would arise after Nebuchadnezzar's. A third kingdom would then rule the world, followed by a fourth. This last kingdom would be divided, like the feet of iron and clay: part strong and part weak. During the reign of these kings, God would set up a kingdom that would destroy all other kingdoms and stand forever. (See Daniel 2:3645.)

When Daniel was finished, King Nebuchadnezzar fell down before him and said, "Of a truth ... your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets" (Daniel 2:47; see also Daniel 2:46).

The king made Daniel a ruler in Babylon, gave him many gifts, and made him the chief over all the wise men. At Daniel's request, the king also made Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego rulers. (See Daniel 2:4849.)

Nebuchadnezzar was grateful to Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar lavished Daniel with gifts and gave him a big promotion. But the record also shows Nebuchadnezzar had no respect for Daniel. He still called him Belteshazzar—the pagan name Nebuchadnezzar imposed on the prophet when he was taken into captivity. And, despite the fact the three Hebrew nobles Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were close friends of Daniel’s, Nebuchadnezzar still ordered their deaths when they refused to bow before Nebuchadnezzar’s idol. Daniel was faithful. Daniel was invested. Daniel was sent to the king by God Himself. And, even though Nebuchadnezzar recognized that anointing [2:46-47], he still exploited Daniel's gifts and anointing while not having much respect for who he was.

The people whose dreams I’ve invested in

tend to fall into two categories: people who visit this site, look around for eight seconds and take off, and people who never visit at all. And it amazes me that someone, that anyone—let alone someone in whose dream I’ve invested life and breath and heartbeats—could come to this place online and not realize the height and depth and breadth of this ministry. How ignorant does someone have to be to arrive at this place, to look around—not even read anything, just look around—and not see God’s hand at work here, and further not be supportive of it in any way?

Most pastors here define themselves by a competitive distinction, by head count and resources. Most are simply not sophisticated enough, on any level, to embrace the Internet in any real sense. Literally none, that I am aware of, are actively trying to develop this frontier, with its limitless potential to literally go into all the world and preach the Gospel. Most of these men patronize me to whatever extent they feel comfortable, while continuing to raid cupboards and missing the whole reason God sent me to them. And none, absolutely none, are invested in any meaningful way in helping me achieve my goals.

If the PraiseNet were a church, we’d be ten times the size of the largest black church here. If you wanna do head count, there it is. But, pastoring this ministry is a lot like being a general in the Tunisian army: your rank is simply not recognized here. My pastorate, now nearly ten years old, is simply not recognized here. Because I have no storefront, no folding chairs, no ten folks I’m bleeding dry for the rent money. And the Internet is simply too esoteric for the narrow scope of the vision here. They just don’t get it. These men remind me of these kindly church mothers who, standing to address the congregation, refuse to use a microphone, “Oh, I don’t need that mess. Y’All can hear me, right?” No, mother, we can’t. Because your ignorant self refuses to use the mic the deacon is holding for you. Because you’d rather continue to live there in your shoebox, in 1965, than to use the tools God has graciously and divinely provided for you.

The support this ministry sees comes from Austin, Texas. From California. From Tennessee. From New York. From Minnesota. Nothing, not a single thing, from the city this ministry was founded to support. Nothing but impatience and eye rolling as they wait for me to get done with the PraiseNet so I can design their bake sale flyer.

I remember spending four years

in the studio developing my wife’s music career. Recording and re-recording and writing and producing and packaging and shopping her to producers and labels and all of that. Toward the end, I took off a few weeks to produce guide tracks for a new band I wanted to start, and asked for her help. She agreed to help, but was hardly gracious about it. She was impatient, fidgety, distracted, providing a kind of minimal hand-wave of support while she anxiously and impatiently waited for me to resume mixing her album. Four years. Long nights. Setting aside my own goals, my own vision, to invest in hers. And when it was my turn, that’s what I got.

All of which sounds a lot like bellyaching. “Woe is me.” But, truthfully, it is always a blessing to have truth revealed. Many if not most of us spend our lives in some level of denial. Many if not most of us spend our lives giving far more than we ever get. Running in circles and not achieving goals because we’re so busy feeding the kids, working, ripping and running to choir rehearsal or usher’s practice or what have you.

But God gave us dreams. Dreams are wonderful. Dynamic. Purposeful. Inspiring. Dreams light up the night and make our toes tingle, get our hearts going and blood pumping. So real we can taste them. But then we turn around and make a critical error, putting weight to the opinions of others, giving others power over our dreams. Dreams come from God. Inspiration, in agreement with scripture, is God-breathed. You can expect 9 out of 10 if not 10 out of 10 people you share your dreams with to pour water on them. To undercut your enthusiasm and drain energy from your excitement. Why? Because it’s not their dream—it’s yours. It is, by definition, only for you. And, beloved, that needs to be enough. You can’t shop around for a bunch of people to agree with you or to see what you see or feel what you feel. If anything, this exile here in Babylon has sharpened my sense of spiritual discernment in recognizing I am, in fact, Tunisian. My language is foreign and my ways are unknown here. These folks don’t understand me. They offer friendship without respect and a kind of gilded slavery to their own goals while returning almost no energy to mine. Most relationships I have here are, at the end of the day, intrinsically unhealthy because the blood flow is not in both directions. Life drains almost entirely toward them, nothing coming back this way.

Experience teaches us who we can share our dreams with and who we can’t. The shame is not that most pastors here exist inside their own snow globe of 1960’s esthetics, but that, to my experience, none of these men want to be more than that. The real shame is not their ignorance so much as their lack of awareness of it. It is the rare black pastor I’ve met here who has any intellectual curiosity whatsoever. I mean, zero. They’ve arrived. They are who they are. They learn nothing. They are available to learn nothing. And they mock and fear things they do not understand.

Moving forward in your ministry, following your dream,

is almost always a lonely path. Those who succeed usually have two things in common: (1) people laughed at them and (2) they didn’t care. You need thick skin and a strong back. You will walk up steep hills carrying the entire load on your own while your “friends” and even your family heckle you from the sidelines. But keep going. Don’t slow down, Don’t look back. Don’t look at their faces. Don’t listen to their voices.

And if you are blessed enough to meet some schmuck like me along the way, someone willing to help you carry that load, at least have enough God in you to recognize His man when He sends him to you.

Christopher J. Priest
23 January 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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Ways And Means

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I had lunch with a friend the other day who, as she always does, continued to twist my arm trying to convince me to join her church. Now, I’m going to be careful because she tends to browse through here every now and then, but it is worth noting that I’ve been affiliated with her church, in one capacity or another, for fifteen years. So much so that the notion of her (a) referring to it as “her” church and (b) twisting my arm to join it just amuses me to no end. It goes completely without question or challenge that I’ve been an integral party of that ministry for nearly one-third of my life now. Her major complaint seems to be that I am not there on Sundays. “Well,” I asked, “What would I do there on Sundays? What purpose would that serve?” They already have a bunch of preachers. A bunch of musicians and singers. A bunch of deacons and ushers and dancers and administrative staff and people who run the vacuum after service is over. How would my physically being there on Sunday be anything but redundant. “You accomplish a great deal simply by being there,” she replied. Which is a good point. Here’s mine:

For those of us with a calling on our lives, simply being there is not enough. We need to be where we are sent. I spend, on average, between 30 and 50 hours per week involved with "her" church. God has not directed me to be there Sunday mornings. “You don’t have to always be down front,” my friend admonished, “you could come and just sit.” Just sit. First of all, even at my own church, I am rarely down front. My co-pastor and I are busy, from the moment we get there. Second, it would never occur to me to ask her pastor to leave his pulpit Sunday morning to come watch me perform my ministry and just sit. Because, while he’s just sitting, the work God has ordained for his hands is not being accomp-lished. Sure, his just being there would, I suppose, somehow be pleasing to me and others I serve with, but it would be both selfish and impractical, and it would ultimately violate the covenant this pastor has made with God. “God has granted me these gifts,” Gospel soul singer Adrianne Archie said in our interview. “For me to not use them would be irresponsible.”

I'm a pastor —something else my friend disagrees with, as I’ve recently dis-solved the remnants our downtown ministry. “You’re not a pastor,” she said, as if an airline captain stops being a pilot between flights. As if, every single day, she couldn’t see with her own eyes, hold in her own hands, evidence of God’s anointing and the effective work I do at “her” church. It’s dangerous to go around demoting God’s generals. You tempt God by calling Him a liar, which is why I give honor to even the most patently ridiculous and brazenly un-Christlike “pastors,” because it is simply not my place to say that they are not. I’ve been pastoring for over thirty years. Sunday is a work day. As God gives me the occasional Sunday off, it is my great pleasure to visit with others—to go and sit in any one of the hundreds of churches here. But those days off are few and far between. Simply being there is not enough. If you have the call, you have to be where you are needed, where you are called to. You have to be effective.

As a professional writer (which I’m sure she doubts as well), I’ve learned that, in order to be a good editor, you have to be an at least mediocre writer. In order to recognize good writing, you yourself must, on some level, be capable of it. Otherwise you just hire your buddies and publish a bunch of bad stuff. The same is true of Christian ministry. In order to recognize anointing, you yourself need to experience it. Your relationship with God (or lack thereof) will ultimately tell on you.

Many of us are simply too ignorant of the ways and means of God to recognize anointing when we see it; when it walks through the door, when it sits down at its instrument or clears its throat. I tremble in awe at the mere sight of so many of you, the anointing of God being so evident and so obviously upon you. I don’t need to guess. I don’t need to see your credentials. I don't need no 3D glasses. I can see it with my eyes, hear it with my ears, hold it in my hands: God’s anointing, the ways and means of God. Meanwhile, I myself am routinely dismissed, most regularly by my own people: received in the time-honored half-assed, slipshod Persian Bazaar fashion: the orchestration of deaf mutes who neither see nor recognize the anointing of God at work, or who in fact do see it but are either jealous of it or convicted by it.

When that stops happening, then, sure, maybe I’d consider becoming a “member” of “her” church. But, as long as that’s going on, I’ve got much better things to do with my Sundays. This is the lesson of Luke 10:6, our biblical obligation to not go and “just sit” somewhere where your anointing is not recognized. God never called you to cool your heels, to be irresponsible with the gifts He’s given you or, for that matter, to allow other people—even those with the best of intentions—to tell you who or what you are. Sunday is a work day. Saddle up.

Familiarity & Contempt

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"Familiarity Breeds Contempt"
This saying has its origins in one of Aesop’s fables:

When first the Fox saw the Lion he was terribly frightened, and ran away and hid himself in the wood. Next time however he came near the King of Beasts he stopped at a safe distance and watched him pass by. The third time they came near one another the Fox went straight up to the Lion and passed the time of day with him, asking him how his family were, and when he should have the pleasure of seeing him again; then turning his tail, he parted from the Lion without much ceremony.

"Familiarity Breeds Contempt"

The lesson is that the fear of something, fascination and awe, is reduced through getting to know it better. Matthew 13:57: “But Jesus said unto them, “a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.”” This verse is explained by a poster at http://www.phrases.org.uk: “there is the problem of a prophet being without honour in his home town - that people who know you well are not so inclined to recognise the exceptional in you”. I can really relate to this – when I play guitar to somebody for the first time, they are usually impressed (I won’t go as far as to say they’re in awe), but when I play to somebody who hears me play all the time, like my uncle or my brother, it’s nothing exceptional. In the same way, I have a friend who’s quite well known, and he’ll have people come up to him and go, “oh! You’re so and so from so and so aren’t you!” but to me, he’s just Craig.

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