Poetry speaks in ways that prose doesn’t. Why is that? Is it the use of extravagant imagery? Is it the rhythm that strikes some chord? Is it the word-form that makes us focus more intently in a search for meaning? I have no idea – possibly all of them combined.

But this poem Mike quoted by Amy Carmichael spoke to me:

Amy Carmichael

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?
- Amy Carmichael, “No Scar?”

How many people grow to fame within the church and act as if they are perfect? We want to follow people who have no flaws – flaws are a sign of weakness; they tell us that you have problems, so who are you to lead us? So some leaders work hard to overcome any such limitations, while others simply try to cover them up. But the greatest of the leaders acknowledge them, shame or no shame; get help if they need it and get on with a life of obedience.

Having flaws as a leader is a two-fold gift: First, it forces you to realize that you are not perfect, no matter what your follows may say. Secondly, it forces you to remember that you must rely on Jesus for your victory. Thirdly, you are not alone – the Master Himself took on flaws in His desire to make us whole. (OK, that’s three-folds there. You’ll have to deal with it.)

But this doesn’t just apply to our church leaders. It applies to us and also to our fellow travelers. If He can bear and acknowledge that brokenness, then we must do no less. As people walk through the church doors and stay a while, we begin to assume that they are now all perfect.

“He’s been in church for 2 years,” we say. “How come he still gets drunk? He’s supposed to be ‘one of us’. Hasn’t he learned anything while he’s been here?”

We need to stop thinking about ourselves as healed and rather think of ourselves as healing. God isn’t finished with us yet.

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The Hardest ‘Q’ Ever

… and the slides are here:

Download (PPT, 794KB)

Further readings on ‘our way’:
Ps 36:1-2 - Sin whispers to the wicked
Matt 7:21 - Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter Heaven
2 Tim 3:1-5a - They have the appearance of godliness, but deny its power
Amos 6:1 - They say, “I don’t need anything”
1 Peter 4:4 - They are surprised that you do not join them
Rev 3:15-17 - The cost of being lukewarm

Further readings on ‘His way’:
Rev 3:20 - Open the door
James 1:2-4 - Count it all joy,…
Matt 22:37-38 - Peter’s epistle summed up

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When you go to an evangelical-minded church, occasionally (or frequently or every Sunday) the preacher there will have an altar call. And how does he conduct it? He says the old ritual lines – ‘every head bowed, every eye closed. This is nobody else’s business – just between you and the Lord – yes, I see those hands…’ and so on.

And what I want to know all of a sudden is, WHY? Why are all the heads bowed? Why are all the eyes closed? And above all, Why is it nobody else’s business?

Shouldn’t everyone SEE who’s coming to the Lord? SEE who’s thrown off the chains? SEE who’s going to join them in Heaven? Isn’t this a time of God’s glory manifesting itself in the salvation and redemption of a sinner?

And shouldn’t those who are raising their hands want to jump up on their chairs and shout, “Woo-ha! I’m saved for all eternity by the Blood of the Lamb!!!!!” ? (Woo-ha is in the Christian dictionary, I’m sure. See the section on “speaking in tongues”.)

And shouldn’t the rest of the church be looking and seeing and clapping and rejoicing over the salvation of someone “once lost, but now found”?

The angels certainly go nuts –

What’s with the eyes closed and doing this in secret? Sure, it makes it easier for the timid to put up their hands. But I have an ugly suspicion that it’s a procedure being followed by the preacher for that very reason – so that he can gain some converts that he may otherwaise not be able to count.

I’ve always sensed that this was a silly or even childish practice. Now I think it through, I think it’s a very dangerous one as well.

We are called to tell the world about Jesus and bring them to Him. Good grief! If we can’t acknowledge Jesus as our Lord and Saviour in church of all places, how can we do it in the World?

Am I missing something here?

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The people I like, I like. But there are people I find it hard to like. The EGRs. The rough. The cynics. The cruel. The selfish. The bitter. The whiners. The broken.

People who are broken are sharp and prickly. They’re difficult. They interrupt conversations, or are opinionated or worse – they disagree with me.

The thing is, though: People who are broken were broken by others who were broken. Broken people break people.

So if broken people break people, who heals people? Healed people do, of course. You didn’t see Jesus going around breaking people – He went in the other direction and healed them (if they’d let Him).

I spoke about this last week in church (shameless self-promotional plug! – To Speak of Grace) as part of our stewardship series, and used a hospital analogy: If I break my arm, I don’t go to the bowling alley, I go where I know I can get help to get better – to a hospital. I don’t go to a philosopher or a witch-doctor, because they can’t help in this situation. Healing comes from a doctor. Similarly, when I need spiritual healing, I go to a spiritual hospital – which the Church is designed to be. The problem is, we’re sick of churches. We keep hearing about how they’re run by people who have not acted in a Godly manner – pastors or priests who have been abusive, or adulterous, or greedy. It’s hard to separate the institution from those who make themselves its figureheads.

But the Church has always been God’s sole design for the spiritual hospital, and it always will be. Pursuing this analogy further, the medical staff is headed up by Jesus, and – for those who can only say, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” – there are ambulances. We are the ambulance. When someone is so lost and broken that they can’t (or won’t or even daren’t) get to church, we are sent out into the world to rescue those broken souls.

Which brings me back to the broken and to my comfort zone.

There are certain people that fit very readily into my comfort zone. Nice people. It’s true for each of us – you too! We’re very good at inviting the people we like to church; in fact, we quite comfortably invite friends who are already going to other churches to come to ours instead, because ours is ‘more alive’, or ‘has better worship music’, or ‘great preaching’. We’re actively pushing them to join us.

If you’re wealthy, or good-looking, or charismatic, or popular then – just like high school – you make the in-crowd. We want you. If you’re not one of those, but you’re useful, or hard-working, or clever then well, OK, we’ll tolerate you.

But if you’re noisy, or over-emotional, or have bad breath, or wear the same clothes all the time, or exhibit some other social lack; if you’re homeless, or an addict, or abusive, or a hooker then would you please stay away? You’ll mess it up for the rest of us. You don’t fit in our comfort zone.

I might expand my comfort zone for old people, or – up to a point – even for noisy tots, but not for you. You’re broken.

The problem is: The ones I don’t want in my comfort zone … are the very people Jesus does want.

The people I think will totally mess up my church … are the ones Jesus says it’s there for.

He hung out with the homeless, the beggars, the prostitutes, the adulterers, the maimed, the forgotten, the side-lined.

The keys to His church were carried by smelly wet lower-class fishermen and by reformed Quisling-style tax-collectors. He accepted water from an adulterous woman and foot washing from a prostitute. He healed lepers and sent them to the temple. He healed blind people, lame people, crippled people, unclean people, demon-possessed people. His admiration was spent on the sacrifice of a widow who gave her last farthing to the temple; on the faith of a soldier of the occupation forces, and on the importunity of a gentile Syro-Phoenician mother.

These aren’t the people who should be getting into the church, right?

Wrong.

They need hospital. They’re broken. And when we deny them access – either actively by saying, “You’re not invited” when they show up at the hospital, or passively by failing to send the ambulance out to invite them – we’re not healing them. And if we’re not healing, we’re allowing the breaking to continue. And if we allow it to continue, we’re one of the breakers. And if we’re one of the breakers, we must still be broken ourselves.

What if we went out to the broken people and urged them to come to church with us – to sit beside us in church – with the same enthusiasm with which we urge our friends to come?

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Again:

Tradition and Institutionalization are the enemies of Creativity; their weapons are comfort and safety – and they foster sloth, conformity, acquisition and control.… and you can quote me on that.

What seems to be taking the place of the relative permanence of denominations are the multisite churches. These

• spread the Gospel and they have a focused approach – a unity – that is stable for a while. They can be dispersed across one or more states – even countries.
• are innovative, creative and malleable – something that denominations cannot be.
• are sustaining tremendous growth because they are young, dynamic and driven.
• often have a very charismatic leader at the helm, who provides energy and vision.

Any single multisite church will die off or dissipate after a few decades as the leader slows down, moves on or passes away; its footprint can be picked up by another multisite, or by some completely new form of church that God may already be moving into place.

Another way that God seems to be working today is in combining efforts across congregations. Traditionally, churches that are already established have been at odds with a new church coming to town. They resent the potential loss of congregants, and I’m sorry to say that the minister is usually leading the way in this thought process. But we are called to unity, not jealousy…

So it was refreshing to see this tweet from Geoff Surratt in late Jaunuary –

Heard through Twitter that NewSpring is coming to Charleston. Glad to hear it, we can use the help reaching the lost in the Low Country.

(@GeoffSurratt is a pastor in a large multistate multisite church called Seacoast based in Charleston, SC; @PerryNoble is the lead pastor of rapidly-growing NewSpring based out of Anderson, SC). This is out of the ordinary – even though it shouldn’t be. We are all in the Body of Christ; we have the same mission in Matt 28; we were all saved by the same Savior.

Different churches reach different people. They’re in different parts of town or the state; they have different leaders who have different skills in reaching out, in speaking, in connecting to others. One church might be blue-collar, another mostly white-collar. One church loves a liturgical service, another a contemporary one.

Could it be – just possibly – that God wants to treat churches as He does people? That he has given them different gifts with the specific intention that those gifts be used to compliment each other?

• A church in a poor part of town provides the opportunity for a (financially) wealthier church to come beside it and receive Grace through sharing finances and also hard work – and thereby to recognize that financial and social privilege is not always the boon that the world makes it out to be (sometimes it can be a terrible impediment).
• A church in India is in a tremendous position to do good for all those around it – it’s at ‘ground zero’, so to speak. It’s poor financially, but what it can buy (food, clothes, buildings) it can obtain locally at a very low cost compared to an American church. A church in the US can’t easily help physically, but it can afford to send money and perhaps a few people to give support and guidance to the fledgling church. The effect on the Indian church could be enormous, and the backwash is pure Grace.

(Interestingly, it’s the multisite church leaders that seem to be setting the pace here – we rarely if ever hear of leaders of denominations traveling overseas to work on ground-setting for church planting. Yet Pete Wilson ( @PeteWilson ), the lead pastor of CrossPoint Church in Nashville, TN is in India as I write this; Perry Noble (@PerryNoble) was in Kenya last year.)

So I see this as part of God’s way forward for us. The missionary part we’ve been doing for a while – but the connection of multiple disparate churches in the same town – that’s so rare it can be thought of as new, and I see that aspect growing in the coming decade.

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Praise Christian Fellowship

• Only 2/3rds of last week’s number in the sanctuary today because of the long weekend – a shame, because they missed a great service.
• Some glorious worship through music – our worship leaders are completely awesome – Lindsey was up today.
• Jenn has a real passion for the situation in Haiti and gave a great impromptu talk before we took up a collection.
• $2,500 – Un. Be. Lievable!
• The usually ‘got-it-all-together’ worship leader had a complete melt-down between the impact of the collection for Haiti and the anticipation of the song she was about to lead (“I See the Lord”). Which started the congregation wondering “why?”; which led to softer hearts and paying way more attention to the pain in Haiti and the worship we were in the middle of. A totally God-induced moment that resulted in (a) the other worship singers reaching out to support her and stepping up to help lead worship; (b) the congregation empathizing and singing with more of a heart for worship than ever and (c) a lot of damp faces, including one or two of the teens.
• It took Tom a while to compose himself after the music worship before he could begin his sermon. He filled in a lot of the questions on the fast that we were about to start, then went on to talk about the sanctity of Life. Good stuff.
• Lots of people took hour-long slots for prayer this coming week during the fast. Too bad the fast started on a Sunday with so few people there – I’d have loved to see the whole week covered in prayer. Maybe next year!
• Great post-service huddle – more ministry leaders joining us today to review the service – lots of warm support for Lindsey.
• I absolutely loved watching God detonate in the middle of the worship like that. My eyeballs are still leaking a bit!
• And totally love the people who pulled it all together. This place is awesome.

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• Hey @NewSpring…10 years ago today there were 115 people who gathered for our first worship service! We had NO IDEA that God would do…
• …All that HE has done! And…the best is yet to come! Can’t wait until tomorrow!!!

Perry & Lucretia Noble

I passed the tweets on to my small group, and Pastor Ryan replied with this question – “What will we be shaking our heads at in disbelief at what God has done 10 years from now?!”

That got me thinking…

1. The rapture?
2. That there are now 1,043 people in our small group?

…or perhaps…

3. That our church (Praise Christian Fellowship, in Barkhamsted, CT) now has an average of 1,043 attendees, 85% of whom are striving to go deeper with the Lord, and who invited the other 15% so they can step into eternity also?
4. That we’ve run out of chairs 5 times over because members keep inviting friends?
5. That we have so many new believers that we have to rethink the way we disciple?
6. That, as we look back at 2010, we’ll be amazed at how ignorant, naïve, weak and foolish we were – but we stepped up to the mark anyway, took the risk and lived for Jesus – and it led to the hardest, most exciting and most glorious life-changing decade of our lives, totally dedicated to and utterly vindicated by Christ?

… or perhaps …

7. We’ll be shaking our heads about how life seems to be getting fuller and fuller, and that we can’t wait to see what He has next in His plan.

The best is yet to come. Always! Can’t wait.

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Getting into mischief

- and thinking about how often I am my own trouble. I’m an expert at causing all sorts of issues for myself, mostly because I ignore what is right in my quest for almost anything else. And yet, at the end of the day, when I realize how I’ve messed up yet again; when I’ve managed to prove to myself yet again that I can rocket off the straight and narrow path at a moment’s notice; when I recognize that I’m drowning – I am deeply grateful there is help at hand.

The danger, of course, is that we can take this help for granted. How are YOU doing?

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Found this clip about what we’ve already got as Christians:

I think that just about says it all…

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Oops – that was pride slipping in there. Maybe I’m not quite perfect.

In which case, I’ve also just told a lie. (Gack!)

Oh, like you’ve never fibbed before. (Uh-oh, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say. I’m getting in deep here.)

OK, I’m not perfect. There. I’ve admitted it. (Phew! That wasn’t too hard.)

So I can’t be all that bad. (Arggh! Pride again! It just snuck up on me!)

If I had been made perfect, I’m wondering what the implications would be…

1. Being perfect, I would never sin – never hurt anybody, always do the right thing.
2. Therefore being perfect, I would have no personal understanding of what sin is.
3. Therefore being perfect, I would never have a sense of wrong-doing.
4. Therefore being perfect, I would never be aware of my separation from God.
5. Therefore being perfect, I would never understand the power of sin.
6. Therefore being perfect, I may experience sympathy, but would never experience empathy; and any compassion would be academic and patronizing.
7. Being made perfect would have removed my free will, because I would be able to do nothing but perfect things.
8. Therefore being perfect, I would never have the chance to fail. I would never have the opportunity to succeed despite myself.
9. Therefore being perfect, I would never be stretched. I would never grow.
10. Therefore (also from #8) being perfect, when God told me to do something and I did it, there would be no just reward because there was no chance I’d do the job badly or fail to do it at all.
11. Therefore being perfect, I would never experience humiliation, shame or contrition; but I would also never experience forgiveness, rebirth, reward, praise and grace.
12. Being perfect, God’s righteous perfection wouldn’t astound me, terrify me or shatter my complacency because – hey lookee! Me too!
13. In fact, being perfect, I would be self-contained, so I would have no reason to reach for God.

On the other hand:

1. Since I’m not perfect, eternal damnation is not my guaranteed end.
2. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection took compassion on me.
3. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection chose to redeem me.
4. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection perfected me.
5. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection adopted me.
6. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection uses me (yes – Because, not Despite).
7. Since I am far, far from perfection, I have a great many chances to blow it completely… Ah, but when I get it right the angels go nuts and God Himself says, “Well done!”

And that last is really where I’m headed here. Amongst other reasons, I was made imperfect in order that God could give me a piece of His action – a task that He wanted completed. And each time I fulfill a task in obedience to His design, I – Mr. Imperfect – get the pat on the back from the Everlasting King of Glory.

And that, I think, is a pretty good trade-off.

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