Tom Cannon writes about church life that may not have evident bells and whistles, but which is a vehicle through which grace is mediated over the long haul.
For all those pastors and churches who plodding for God.

A very brief taste:

The schlepping church is frequently dull, often goofy and almost always a step (or a lot more) behind cultural trends. But to paraphrase George Bailey the schlepping church has done most of the working and paying and living and dying in Christ’s Kingdom. Always has.

Read the whole thing here.

Bonnie Gray writes about three unexpected ways to make God known, in a post published at Catalyst Space.
So often stress causes us to try harder, rather than rest more in God.
Wouldn’t it be something to have a reputation as a person whose ambition is to rest in God?

1) MAKE GOD KNOWN BY PRESENCE, NOT PROJECT
When we come into contact with stress, our natural response is to push through. We don’t want to be in need or fail to meet others’ expectations, especially our own. We beat ourselves up for not trusting God.
But, God offers us a different response: Rest. Kindness. Comfort.
Instead of being harder on us, Jesus whispers – “Come to me, all those who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
We often hold ourselves back from God, when we’re most weary. Ironically, those are the times we need God’s comforting presence the most. When we make space to confide in God, we can offer that space in return to others — instead of trying to fix them or their problems. We give them what God offers us: space to be real and rest.
We stop making ministry project focused. We become ministry by making God known by our presence.

2) MAKE GOD KNOWN BY NURTURING YOUR HEART RATHER THAN IGNORING IT
When Jesus was surrounded by pressing needs, Scriptures tell us – “Jesus would often slip away to the wilderness for prayer.” Luke 5:16
Jesus took time to rest because nurturing his soul with his Father was more important than what He could do.
Putting our hearts first—letting Jesus love us— leads us on the journey of becoming known by Him.
As leaders, we need to take time to feed our souls. We need spiritual whitespace. Whitespace is the space on a page left unmarked in the world of art and design. Without whitespace, a composition goes from being fine art to commercialization.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s poeima — poetry translated as “workmanship” — created in Christ Jesus to do good works.”
Is our leadership more like art or cluttered advertisement?
It’s easier to perform—to improve ourselves—rather than rest when it comes to our own lives. Nurturing our souls is a dare to believe the outrageous: we were created for beauty. What if our brokenness revealed more about God’s love for us than our efforts to cover it up?

3. MAKE GOD KNOWN BY YOUR AMBITION TO REST
Rest sounds inactive, doesn’t it? I was surprised to find that rest is one of only three ambitions that God explicitly calls out in the Bible. The other two are preaching the gospel and pleasing God. (Rom.15:20, 2 Cor.5:9)
“We urge you, brethren, to excel still more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet (restful) life.” 1 Thess. 4:10–11
Turns out hesuchazo—the Greek word used for quiet and rest—is as important as preaching the gospel and pleasing God. The more I’m able to enjoy rest, the more others will see God’s life in me. When my soul is at rest, I am free to please God right where I am.
I’ve always centered my thinking on pleasing God and preaching the gospel through what I did. But God suddenly put a big spotlight on hesuchazo. God was asking me to excel—“still more”—by making it my ambition to lead a quiet and restful life.
We were never made to only do ministry as maintenance. God makes Himself known through us when we are fully alive with rest: creative, engaged with community, and renewed by a sense of adventure.
As people of faith in a stressed-crazed world, where everyone is trying to be known, we make God radically known by our ambition to rest. As leaders in ministry, we serve at the front lines in the battlefield of everyday life.

Read the whole post at Catalyst Space.

John Piper writes in appreciation about J.I. Packer’s determination to finish at full pace.
Whatever that pace may be.
This is not an invitation to recklessly overdoing it, or to impose your insecurities on others whose work then becomes enabling you to do what you really can’t.
It’s about committment to freedom.
An excerpt.

This week J.I. Packer turned 88. He has written a book on aging. It’s titled, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging. At age 68 I found it riveting. It made me want to live “flat out” to the end. That was his goal. You could call it “Don’t Waste Your Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties.” It’s worth reading at any age.
He is not naïve. He is 88! There is no romantic idealization for the final years of this life. It will be hard. “Aging,” he says, “is not for wimps.” Some may paint a rosy picture of life after seventy. Even John Wesley, Packer observes, said that at eighty-five “the only sign of deterioration that he could see in himself was that he could not run as fast as he used to.” With characteristic understatement Packer says: “With all due deference to that wonderful, seemingly tireless little man, we may reasonably suspect that he was overlooking some things.”
Nevertheless Packer realizes that:

“the assumption that was general in my youth, that only a small minority would be fit and active after about seventy, has become a thing of the past. Churches, society, and seniors themselves are still adjusting to the likelihood that most Christians who hit seventy still have before them at least a decade in which some form of active service for Christ remains practicable.”

So, what shall we do with these final years? Packer notes that “the image of running was central to Paul’s understanding of his own life [1 Corinthians 9:24–27; Galatians 2:2; Philippians 2:16], and I urge now that it ought to be the central focus in the minds and hearts of all aging Christians, who know and feel that their bodies are slowing down.”
And how should we run? “My contention is . . . that, so far as our bodily health allows, we should aim to be found running the last lap of the race of our Christian life, as we would say, flat out.” “The challenge that faces us is . . . to cultivate the maximum zeal for the closing phase of our earthly lives.”

Read the whole piece at Desiring God.

MGPC consciously seeks to nurture its life as a Multi-Generational church.
Mike Lee has a post expanding on these six strengths of a multi-generational church.

Strengths of the Multi-Generational Church

1. Multi-generational churches remind people that the gospel is for all who will repent and believe.
2. Multi-generational churches remind us that no one age group has the advantage over the others when it comes to worship.
3. Multi-generational churches learn the differences between preference/tradition and doctrine from Scripture.
4. Multi-generational churches teach people humility.
5. Multi-generational churches give a healthy picture of the entire body of Christ.
6. Multi-generational churches minister to all folks throughout the seasons of life.

Read a bit more on each of these headings here.

William Taylor, Rector of St Helen’s Bishopsgate speaks about the singular necessity of sitting at Jesus’ feet in discipleship and ministry.
Those who preach and those who hear must share the conviction that we must sit at Jesus’ feet and be fed.

Good words from Graham Nicholson at the Hawthorn Presbyterian Church blog on the danger of reducing response to rules.

An excerpt:

When the heart is focused on keeping rules as rules and not as a response to God or his grace, it is necessarily focused on one’s self and is blinded to true holiness. Jesus showed how true this is when he pointed out that those who were concerned for clean hands were simultaneously wickedly twisting their man-made rules for personal profit and ignoring the 5th Commandment [see Mk 7:9-13].
It is sometimes frustrating that it all seems so vague! We want precision and clarity! We want rules to keep and measure our progress! But while precision and clarity can be helpful, the great danger is that Christianity becomes little more than keeping a set of rules, and nothing of the heart. It happens — and more than we might like to admit.

Read the whole post here.

My feed-reader is filling up with a variety of reflections on Lent.
I’m among those who are not practitioners.
This piece by Sarah Condon at Mockingbird is very constructive in reminding us that Christian devotion must focus on what Christ has done, not on efforts to emulate that which he alone could do.

An excerpt:

What Jesus did in the desert and what we attempt to do at Lent are almost wholly unrelated.
I would argue that Lent is not about us giving something up. In fact, it is not about our actions at all. Lent is a moment when we watch Jesus from afar. We are on the other side of the desert, watching him deny himself, bearing witness to his teachings and miracles, observing the disciples failing to stay awake, knowing that the agony of the cross is close at hand. Lent is not sad because we can’t eat carbs. Lent is sad because we are forced to watch the slow, deliberate movement of our Savior from his ministry to his cross. And it reminds us of our sin and our powerlessness over it.
We were not in the desert for 40 days fending off the devil and all manner of temptation. Jesus was. For us. Because we are sinners. And as such, we would have taken all the devil offered.

Read the rest here.

I seem to be getting back into writing articles for our local newspaper, The Border Watch.
This one was published today, with the editor titling it ‘Easter A Season To Focus On God’.
Maybe I’ll start working on titles as well.
Next week I’ve got some ideas arising from a story about a man who turned a first-class plane ticket into 300 free lunches.

Anyway:

Years and years ago, I was approached in a supermarket aisle by a lady who was clearly unhappy. She came up waving a can of fish toward me, and mentioned that the product was never on special at this time of year. Satisfied that she’d shared her annoyance with someone she purposefully strode off toward the checkout, can clasped firmly in her hand. I doubt I was the only one who heard about the situation.
Some of you may have guessed what was going on, others might be mystified. The time of year was Lent.
Lent is a time of forty days that lead up to Easter. That’s why it begins on different Wednesdays (Ash Wednesday) each year. Now, my own tradition doesn’t generally observe the season of Lent, but many other Christians do.
Generally observance involves actions of worship, prayer, sorrow for sin, charity, and self-denial. These take place in church and personal settings. It’s also why the lady in question was eating fish.
The custom seems to be inspired by a desire to mark and remember the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism. The Bible recounts the faithful resistance to temptation that Jesus demonstrated during that time.
Sometimes such observances can become about us. I can’t remember how far into Lent my encounter with the lady in the supermarket took place, but denying yourself meat and getting aggravated about the price of tinned fish isn’t exactly the spirit of Jesus that we’re meant to focus on.
I was recently reminded how the benefit of such times is not found in us trying to be like Jesus, but in remembering how different Jesus is from each of us.
Jesus didn’t grudge his time in the wilderness or see it as a burden. He willingly endured the time spent there on our behalf.
Jesus was tempted to receive physical sustenance, personal security, and power in relationships apart from God. He rejected these and trusted in God for their provision.
Christians acknowledge that we give in to these sorts of temptations all the time. We don’t need forty days to realise it, any twenty-four hours will usually do.
So, if you see Christians preparing for Easter in any variety of ways, hopefully they’re focussing on the difference between themselves and Jesus, the fact that Jesus is the only faithful and obedient one, the unique one who is qualified to redeem God’s people. As each of us reflects on our own inadequacies, a season such as this enables us to focus on the one who God sent to be so much more than merely adequate on our behalf on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

A helpful article on ministering to folk whose spiritual lives seem to be constant struggle.

If you’ve been in ministry long enough, you’ll find yourself helping someone whose problems never seem to abate. You repeatedly remind them of the gospel and of who they are in Christ. For a while, they seem to find some peace and then, like the returning winter cold that leaves arthritic joints swollen and aching, their struggles flare up again. They stumble and fall. Perhaps you’ve grown weary and frustrated of having to help them up time and time again.
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Helping those whose lives are marred with scars and who wobble forward with weak legs in their Christian journey is part of what it means to be in community in the Body of Christ.

Read the whole piece here.

I’ve got to confess that sometimes I have no idea where these articles are going to end up.
This ended up as a complete rewrite of the second half.
The Border Watch decided to give me a sub-title this week: Life Unexpected – Faith Offers A Pathway Through Pain.

A taxi driver in Britain thought he was securing a solid 2.00am fare when three passengers engaged him for a trip from Brighton to London. Having agreed on the fee for the 75 kilometer trip the driver dropped one passenger off, then another at a second location, before being told the third passenger was sleeping and would pay the total upon arrival at their destination. However, when they arrived, the driver found his third passenger was a dressed store mannequin.
The taxi company and other drivers think it’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to one of their drivers. The driver in question probably doesn’t appreciate the joke. I hope they let him keep the mannequin.
People find themselves at points in life where their situation doesn’t match up with their expectation. Sometimes we’ll even say it out loud: “I never expected it to be like this.”
Every new season of life tosses up situations that we simply underestimate until we encounter them. Sometimes unexpected events overwhelm us when we’re already stretched to breaking point.
Most of the time in individual life, or in wider society, we reach a point where we say “How did it come to this?” The answer is usually “Because this is the direction you’ve been following.”
Life is the constant adjustment to progress that brings us to situations that are never exactly how we anticipated they would be. If we can’t or won’t adjust, relationships suffer, we’ll find ourselves looking back more than forward, and the future will not be inviting.
One aspect of being a follower of Jesus is that he lets those who follow him know exactly how things will go.
He told his disciples that just as the civic and social leaders of his time rejected him, so those who followed him would experience the same treatment by the same groups.
Before he ever carried a physical cross he told his disciples that following him would involve experiences in life that would reflect, in all sorts of ways, alienation and rejection.
His followers experienced that rejection for centuries, often bereft of rights and recognition, treated like aliens and strangers among their own. In some parts of the world they still are. But this was just as Jesus had said it would be. It never occurred that they should say “I never expected it to be like this”. While it was painful, threatening, and they felt marginalised and vulnerable, it could never be said to be unexpected.
What made the difference? Christians never stand anywhere that Jesus has not already stood. And more than that, he promised that he continues to be present with them as they follow him.
We don’t follow Jesus in the expectation that life will be devoid of pain or problems, or that we will know peace and acceptance here and now. We follow Jesus confident that he leads us through pain or problems to a peace and acceptance that lasts forever.

Elisabeth Elliot died on June 15 at the age of 88.
Search around the internet; there are tributes of all types all over the place.
My favourite quote from doing some research today.
From Shadow Of The Almighty:
“One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.”

This week’s Border Watch piece is a reflection on the lives of Elisabeth and Jim Elliot, Elisabeth having died during the last week.
The paper titled this ‘Lives Sacrificed To Help Strangers’.

The story is more amazing than any work of fiction. Elisabeth and Jim Elliot were newly married in 1953. They had spent their five-year engagement as missionaries on either side of the Andes in different parts of Ecuador. Part of their engagement promise was to learn the Ecuadorian Quichua language before their marriage. They entered this new season of life with a plan to begin a missionary work among the elusive and violent Ecuadorian tribe known as the Auca a word from a local dialect that means ‘savage’.
The Elliots and their colleagues knew the dangers of this undertaking; others who had tried to contact this tribe had been killed. Tragically, Jim Elliot and four others were speared to death by the Aucas.
Widowed Elisabeth, along with her ten-month-old daughter Valerie, continued working among another group in Ecuador. After a time she encountered two women from the Auca peoples. Those two women lived with Elliot for a year, and through that contact she would eventually move to, and live with, the Auca tribe for two years.
In that time the seeds were sown for a work that would help see the tribe renounce their violence. They are now more properly known as the Huoroni.
Elizabeth Elliot realised the dream she shared with her late husband, working among those who had taken his life in brutal fashion.
Eventually she would leave Ecuador and return to the United States where another life of writing and speaking would follow. She died during the last week aged 88, some 62 years after Jim’s death (Elizabeth had remarried, been widowed and remarried again).
Though separated for so much of their lives, their shared beliefs were as one.
Jim’s philosophy of life was “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
Elisabeth would write “One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.”
The vast majority of us will never have experiences such as these in our lives. We will never find ourselves speared to death trying to help a group of strangers; we will never find ourselves living among those responsible for the death of our beloved, helping them learn the way of peace.
Is there anything we can learn, those of us who live less remarkable and more secure lives?
They lived for eternity.
Jesus said “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.”
The Elliots were in Ecuador seeking to live among people renowned for murder because their lives did not belong to them. Instead, they knew they had received a gift from God that was worth more than anything they could secure for themselves. Personal health, wealth, security, long life or fame were not their goals. Their aim was to serve a people group numbered in the hundreds, in obscurity, at the end of the earth.
Following Jesus is not about personal fulfilment. It’s about sharing what we’ve received with those who need it most.

“A man can’t be always defending the truth; there must be a time to feed on it.”
C.S. Lewis, Reflections On The Psalms, pg 7.

Sandra McCracken and Sara Groves perform McCracken’s song Dynamite (from her album Desire Like Dynamite).
Here’s what McCracken has to say during the song:

“Some friends and I went on a pilgrimage to meet Wendell Berry one afternoon and had a conversation with him about life, life living in a city, what does a sustainable life look like, what does the word sustainable mean … all these kinds of conversations. Out of that came a few things that he directed us towards. One was where does the water in your area come from, and your energy?
I remember hearing the quote from Jonathan Edwards years ago, and it came up as I was exploring these themes, that we are shaped by our greatest desires. So we are free to choose, but we are always a slave to our greatest desire. As we’re motivated, as our life … we make small decisions through the course of the day, or we’re formed by habits. At the same time, at the base of those habits, is what we love. And so looking honestly at that is important work. It’s often hard work just staying awake, or becoming awake to it, and then being able to walk out a thoughtful life in regard to what we love.”

Following Jesus and seeking platforms are compatible.

Jesus is fame-shy. Jesus seemed drawn not to the spotlight but from it. Disciples and friends had to search. He wasn’t tweeting. His blog lay unattended. His email responses were not immediate. Where they often found him was alone and in desolate places praying (Luke 5:16). In fact, it seems that just when Jesus was at the right place at the right time, and the opportunity to advance his work through greater celebrity called out to him, he intentionally allowed the call to go to voicemail and disappeared for a while (John 6:15).
Jesus would have driven any publicist and congregation mad. In fact, after he did something great, Jesus often asked that no one say anything about it.

Zack Eswine, The Imperfect Pastor, Crossway, 2015, 60.

The Lord Jesus has borne the burden of judgment for the Christian’s sins.
Then Jesus calls on his people to bear each other’s burdens.
From Daniel Hyde, in a post at Ligonier:

…since we in the new covenant are all priests of the Lord who can approach Him with boldness and confidence in prayer (Heb. 4:16), we are called by the Lord to bear one another’s burdens: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:1–2).
How do we bear one another’s burdens? There are several ways. First, we do so by praying for each other, taking each other’s burdens into the presence of God. Second, we do it by coming alongside our brothers and sisters to help them through trials or difficult seasons in their lives. Third, we do it by stepping into their shoes, taking difficulties away from them, and bearing them in their place.

Read the whole post at Ligonier.

Stuart McAllister of Ravi Zacharias Ministries reflects on a story from a collection by Tolstoy:

In a certain home town there lived a cobbler, Martin Avdeitch by name. He lived in a small basement room whose one window looked out onto the street, and all he could see were the feet of people passing by. But since there was hardly a pair of boots that had not been in his hands at one time for repair, Martin recognized each person by his shoes. Day after day, he would work in his shop, watching boots pass by. One day he found himself consumed with the hope of a dream that he would find the Lord’s feet outside his window. Instead, he found a lingering pair of worn boots belonging to an old soldier. Though at first disappointed, Martin realized the old man might be hungry and invited him inside to a warm fire and some tea. He had other visitors that evening, and though sadly none were Christ, he let them in also. Sitting down at the end of day, Martin heard a voice whisper his name as he read the words: “I was hungry and you gave me meat; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in. Inasmuch as you did for the least of these, you did unto me.”(1)

Every Christmas, our family reads the story of Martin the Cobbler as an aid to our celebration. Tolstoy’s words offer something of a creative attempt to capture the wonder of a God who comes near and helps us picture the gift of Christ among us in accessible terms. Notably, the story was originally titled, Where God Is, Love Is.

The Christian story that informs the Christian calendar gives its followers time and opportunity to remember the coming of Christ in a specific context—in Bethlehem, in the Nativity, in the first Christmas. But it also presents repeated opportunities and reminders to prepare for the coming of Christ again and again. Like Martin eagerly waiting at the window, the Christian worldview is one that asks of every day of every year: How will Christ come near today? Will I wait for him? Am I ready for him? Am I even expecting to find him? We are reminded to keep watch, to be prepared, and to continually ready our hearts and minds for the one who is already near. At the same time, the Christian story would also have us to remember how unexpectedly Christ at times appears—as a baby in Bethlehem, a man on a cross, as a woman in need.

In the book of Titus, we read that “the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all people.” How and where will grace show up this week? In order to stay alert to the rich possibilities, perhaps we need to keep before us the radical thought of all that God has offered: a Christ child who comes down to us, a redeemer willing to die for us, a God willing to redefine what is near—all so that we might be where God is. Christianity is not an escape system for us to avoid reality, to live above it, or to be able to redefine it. Christianity is a way that leads the world to grasp what reality is and, by God’s grace and help, to navigate through it to our eternal home in God’s presence.

The story God has given indeed feeds the hungry, takes in the stranger, and orients the resident alien who is ever-looking homeward. The focus of Christ’s coming is the message of Immanuel—God is with us. The focus of Christ’s earthly ministry is the declaration of the cross—God is for us. And the focus of Christ’s resurrection is the promise of a future and his imminent return—God will bring us safely home. Until then, God is among us, even when it seems most unlikely.

source

Zack Eswine writes about that moment when you realise you need something that God knows you need all along:

This pastoral paradigm was bringing us face-to-face with an old joke in Christian circles. “Pray for anything except patience,” the joke suggests. “You don’t want to see what God will give you if you ask for that. Praying for patience is dangerous.”
I’ve laughed and told this joke. Now I think the joke is on me. I never realised how the joke mistakenly presumes that one can follow Jesus without patience. It also assumes that God will not bother with patience in our lives unless we ask for it.

The Imperfect Pastor, Zack Eswine, Crossway, 2015, page 124.

From an article by William Willimon on pastoral ministry and change titled Why Leaders Are A Pain:

The promise of all bogus religion is the promise of a peaceful life without pain. That’s also the subtext of lots of sermons I hear and some of the ones I preach: pain is avoidable, and here’s my formula for living and loving without discomfort. To which Jesus might respond: What about the word cross do you not get?
Some of the best service that pastors offer arises when we dare to prod, preach, and pray a congregation toward the painful reality it has been avoiding. Yet how many of us went into the ministry in order to hurt people? We enjoy thinking of ourselves as peacemakers and reconcilers.
Jesus Christ embodied truth as well as love, and there’s no way to work for him without also being willing to put people in pain in Jesus’ name.

Read the whole post here.

Another article for our local paper.

I spent most of Wednesday positioning myself near windows so I could see the rain falling. And, as boring as it is supposed to sound, hopefully I’ll be able to watch grass growing over the next couple of weeks.
Once upon a time rainy days were times to be dreaded, hours of lost opportunity. Now the sound of water running down the roof brings a feeling of reassurance about the continuity of life.
The thought of being eager to see grass, or any other plants for that matter, growing was far from my mind. It seemed to invoke the though of more time lost pushing the mower through a thick rich matt of ankle high kikuyu that had only been cut a week ago.
Now the thought of walking on grass and not hearing it crackle underfoot is an enticing prospect.
Time and circumstances can change perspectives.
Sometimes it takes a long dry summer to change your mind about a rainy day and lush grass.
But why should time and circumstances change our perspectives?
When you think about it, a half-year of parched surroundings only helps me to appreciate what I should have appreciated all along. It really brings me no credit to realise what I really should have known the whole time.
It would be better to develop the same appreciation without being forced to. It would be better if the appreciation grew from within instead of being mandated from outside.
In the thirteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel there is a troubling account involving some people who asked Jesus about his opinion of some people who had been subject to an atrocity. It seemed that the questioners were motivated to reflect on the tragedy in terms of what it might mean for themselves.
Sometimes we might do the same. We hear that something bad has happened to someone and we think about why that might have happened to them; we also think about what we might change about ourselves in order to avoid a similar occurrence.
There’s nothing really wrong with this in itself. It is good to learn positive lessons from other’s negative experiences.
It’s only problematic when this is the only way we learn about ourselves.
Surely our life and destiny are more important than to only think about it at times of bad news and funerals?
Jesus answers his questioners in a way that confounds their desires to exercise control in the situation, and, in effect, turns the question around on them.
The questioners wanted to know why the others had died, and what they could learn from that.
Jesus asks the questioners why are they still alive, and what could they learn from that.
It’s a harder question. The answer is not so obvious. It takes time to work out.
The weeks leading up to Easter serve many Christians as an intentional time to ponder issues such as what our continued years of life really mean, in this life and beyond.
These weeks of introspection culminate in Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, events in which God answers the question ‘What is my only hope in life and in death?’ by the death and resurrection of Jesus.