I’ve been thinking about churches recently – reading a lot about church leadership, following some of the great leaders’ blogs and twitters, thinking about how churches start and about how they come to an end. I suppose there are some that shut down by being called to do so, just as they started up. But I can’t think of any offhand, and most die a long, painful, lingering death.

There are so many reasons for a church’s death – occasionally, people in a rural setting simply aren’t there anymore when the whole town shuts down; in an urban setting, sometimes the neighborhood becomes commercial or industrial and houses are pulled down and replaced with a mall or a factory. But mostly, I suspect, the church simply fails to listen, obey and fulfill its mission – to go into the world and make disciples. When it doesn’t do that, it lets Christ down; He pulls the plug.

A couple of days ago, I was thinking about the parable of the talents ¹. We always think of it being applied to individuals, but I started wondering if it could be applied to a church. Do churches fit into this pattern? I think so.

Here’s the précis: Some fit the 1-talent mold: they’re holding a great gift, but they’re clueless about what to do with it. They don’t want to risk losing what they have, so they bury the chance for success. Some fit the 2-talent mold: they take the risk and they find expansion happens, even though their situation isn’t ideal – they used what they were given to great effect. Then there are some that are 5-talent churches: they’re in an ideal position – they have the geography and the population, the leadership is just right and they act on it. They experience tremendous growth – in evangelism, in discipleship, in missions, in spiritual vitality.

Let me flesh that out after the Scripture:

There are churches that have been ‘doing church’ for so long it has become a habit, rather than a mission. New people aren’t searched for, or even delighted in when they arrive – they’re tolerated, and that only if they stay inside the boundaries that the church currently maintains. But the most terrifying thing of all is change. For these institutions, any change at all is anathema – someone in the congregation will object: “It’s not the way we do things here!” – so if change is suggested by anyone foolish enough to risk it, the suggestion is quickly squashed. Things that annoy people may cause them to leave, and 1-talent churches are too small and frail to be able to afford someone leaving. However, people must leave in the end, and as the oldest of the congregation are carried out, the congregation dwindles slowly into dust…and their talent is taken from them – they buried it, quite literally, in their coffins.

Then there are the 2-talent churches that really ‘get’ their mission, but may be positioned away from the big population centers and so don’t get the huge numbers of people that the mega-churches do. But they get to work anyway, and they apply creativity to their situation where they are; they embrace change as not just inevitable but also useful. They listen to the Word and the Spirit; they do some things with future growth in mind; they steal ideas and look at how ‘big’ churches model innovation – and they connect to the culture around themselves and in so doing reach others…and their 2 talents become 4.

Finally there are the 5-talent churches. Mega-churches have gotten a bad rap these days, but I have to wonder how much of this is fueled by jealousy or belief that it happened by some sleight-of-hand. Ministry shouldn’t be a competition; it should be a partnership. This is a race we’re all in, not as competitors but as a relay team. God forbid we should decide that other churches are ‘the enemy’ – hasn’t Satan won then? Isn’t that exactly what he wants? Get us to fighting against each other and we won’t have time to bring people to Christ.

The 5-talent church has the highest strengths, but also the greatest responsibilities. So many of these churches are in high-population areas, and for them, the following holds true:

• Big business thrives in the big cities; big business seeks out and draws in high-performers and makes them live in proximity.
• High performers (Christian or not) want to excel – at maximizing income, fame, influence or anything else they see as their target. So they move to the cities.
• Some high-performers are great leaders; all great leaders are high-performers. The city holds many great leaders.
• Some great leaders are Christians, go to church, and become involved in their church’s missions.
• A church, like every other endeavor, grows fastest under great leadership.
• A church can only grow when it reaches out.
• Churches can grow fastest and largest where there is the highest population to reach out to – in the cities.
• Cities hold the densest population of broken people – some on the streets, some going there, some lost in other ways.
• Christ seeks to heal, to comfort, to meet needs and to draw others to Himself.
• Christ uses the church to do this.
• The Spirit will guide the obedient church into developing ministries to fulfill Christ’s desire.
• Big lostness requires a big response, which in turn requires big resources. The Spirit (an infinite resource Himself!) can marshal those resources through organizations willing to obey sacrificially.

Christ has always put a premium on healing the lost and broken – unfortunately His church has often felt they were a nuisance. 2-talent churches – and 5-talent churches even more – must and do put themselves in the role of the Samaritan rather than the priest or the Levite².

The only real difference in our parable between the servant who got 2 talents and the one that was given 5 talents is that their master favored the latter – presumably because he recognized higher potential – there was something greater that the 5-talent servant was capable of. The only difference between a 2-talent church and a 5-talent church is that the 5-talent church has similarly been granted access to greater resources – planted in a city, perhaps, rather than a rural area. There is no difference in the effort each put in – both doubled the original talents entrusted to them.

And the reward for each was identical. The master said, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

We may not be called to be a 5-talent church – but that better not stop us from being a 2-talent church. When the Master in question is God, entering into His joy is beyond understanding!

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I was watching the pre-show about THE NINES the other day, and watching the viewer counter. At one point it rose to 310 simultaneous viewers. Not bad as an indicator of an event that only began to be publicized 6 weeks earlier! Here’s some other info:

• The schedule assumes 9 hours of transmission – there’s 8.62 hours of raw footage already. I must say I’m a little surprised, since there are some 75 speakers, and who ever heard of anybody that ever got up into a pulpit to speak for less than the allotted time! My guess would have been for 75*9/60 = 11.25 hours – but they’ve got the files.
• Some 7,000 people have signed up to watch. And if I’m any indication, that only includes the signer-uppers, not all the additional people who are going to show up by invitation to watch.
• There will be some live cut-ins at the top and bottom of each hour – sounds like the Catalyst conference is going to do some advertising then.
• There is no schedule for the day yet – they may push one out during the day. This is a bit disappointing – while I want to find new people to listen to, I’d also like to know when people I’ve heard of (but never actually heard) will be on.
• It will be pushed at streaming quality (500 Kbps), not at satellite quality for most people.
• Recordings will be posted after the conference.

I’ll probably be blogging the conference here at Praise Christian Fellowship in CT – let me know in the comments if you’d like to join us.

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Tempted recently? Yeah, me too. Doesn’t matter what we’re tempted about – stealing, gossiping, lust, cheating on a test, cheating on your taxes, cheating on your spouse – it always seems to start the same way, doesn’t it? ‘Go ahead,’ this voice says. ‘Everybody does it. You’re a schmuck for holding back. What’s the harm? You’re not hurting anybody. It’s just a little thing really – so ordinary. It’s easy – nobody will know. Who’s going to find out? You deserve it. They deserve it.’

I mean, there’s a list of these encouragements … you know them by heart … they apply to everybody … and THEY DON’T EVER CHANGE. Ever. You could add a couple more that I’ve left off, but it’s a standing list.

So why do we have such a hard time with them? Why haven’t we figured out how to get past them and move on? Why haven’t they become so old that they are as hackneyed in reality as they sound on paper?

Why haven’t we gotten to the point where we just say, ‘Shut up!’ to the little voice that says them all the time?

A good salesman works hard at selling his product. He creates a desire in the customer – he sells the ‘sizzle’ – in order to get to the end result, the commit. He invests hard in the first to bring off the second. And make no mistake about it: the Tempter is a very, very good salesman.

Society has moved from a rigid ‘Thou-shalt-not’ set of values to a permissive one, and while I think that we prefer (for the most part) to not be living in the Victorian Age, I also think it’s true that we tend to be very easy on ourselves. Good at forgiving ourselves any little indiscretion. Skillful at justifying ourselves.

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So we do it. Whatever ‘it’ was. But, this was a one-two whammy – a sucker-punch. We were set up. All the time he was saying that litany of things, and moving us to the ‘sale’, he was anticipating the payoff. Commit the sin, the crime, the indiscretion and then it’s no more ‘yeah, go on – do it’. Now you hear him scream – ‘Look what you did!!!! You’re in for it now! Don’t you feel rotten? How could you have <insert sin here> like that?’ Oh, the glee in that voice. He stands before the throne of God and points the finger at … you. His primary role as the Accuser is in full play now. You are condemned by your own actions – what could be more wonderful to him?

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Well, there is one thing more wonderful: Thing is, it’s not just a one-two. There’s a three as well. And the saddest part of all is that we do the third part to ourselves (talk about being set up!). Because – especially if this is the second or third or ‘nth’ time we’ve done this – if it’s a habit, for instance – we say to ourselves, ‘I can’t believe I’ve done that again! What a worm! I can’t bring this to God – I’ve already done that and asked for forgiveness – I know I don’t deserve to be forgiven again. And anyway, I’m too ashamed to bring it in front of Him – to admit it – to confess it – to ask again for forgiveness.’

And this is the Accuser’s coup de grace – the cherry on the top. He didn’t work the sizzle for this – just the accusing bit would have been enough – this is a freebie that we hand him: We deny full and free access to God to ourself. This is neither God’s doing, nor that of the Father of Lies – it’s all us!

Here’s what one small book near the back of the Bible has to say about forgiveness:

Here are some essential facts that we must keep in mind when we reach this point:

1. God is big. Very, very, very big. Infinite. Don’t put Him in that box you’ve built for Him, ‘cause there’s no way He’ll fit. If you could put the entire universe into the box – you still couldn’t fit God in.
2. God hates sin. Very, very, very much. Yes He does – no denying it. We’d be dead if the message stopped here, but we can only fully live if we understand this. You see: until you ‘get’ that He hates sin, you’ll never ‘get’ what His love cost Him – so you’ll never ‘get’ the fullness of His love.
3. Standing in front of God, we are a Nothing. A small, infinitesimal zero. Less than a dust bunny by comparison. Slave to our own ego.
4. So here we are: nobodies – slaves in the worst meaning of the word (the way Paul used the word – bound by the habits and chains of our own perversions) – and sinners, standing guilty in front of an infinitely good God who hates sin.
5. Gulp.
6. And yet God loves us. Very, very, very much. Infinite love from an infinite Being. Love that works out a way to get dust-bunnies washed clean of their own filth. A love that does insane things – like sending His only Son to be killed by a bunch of slaves so that those very slaves themselves might not just live, but be adopted . Now let’s be honest – that’s insane.

So what does all this mean? God understands the bit about temptation; He understands about sin; He even understands about repeated, devastating, perverted, habitual sin. He’s seen it all. He’s seen you do it.

And He still loves you more than you love yourself. Like I said – insane.

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In the face of all this love blazing down from Heaven … we need to understand this little point:

For as long as we decide that our sin is too big for God to forgive;

for as long as we decide that God is too small to forgive our sin;

for as long as we are so sublimely arrogant as to believe that we make the choice about coming or not coming to God –

we will stay disconnected from God; sin will be our master, and we will remain blind.

And the Accuser will win a much more permanent prize.

The point is not all the sin.

The point isn’t that we should stop sinning (we can’t).

The point isn’t even that we should at least try to stop sinning (we should).

The point is that there is something far better than sin that we can spend our time – our lives – thinking about.

The Glory of His Grace is so overwhelming, and His love is so all-consuming that when we think about it in its proper perspective we have no time for petty things like self-esteem, self-worth or worry about sin.

Listen: you are eternal; you are immortal; you should reflect His transcendent beauty; you are a prince or princess, the child of Almighty God … and you’re wasting your time thinking about sin?

Get over it. You’re far, far, far too valuable to be focused on that junk.

Get in front of God and unload that guilt. While I’m certainly not encouraging more sin (shades of Romans 6:1!), I will point out the mathematically obvious – that the person who commits a thousand sins in a thousand days and confesses each one immediately is a far cleaner and more useful person to God than the one who commits one sin and can’t confess it for a thousand days.

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Not for the first time, I was struck by this passage as I read it the other morning. It’s like a smushed-down version of the essence of the Gospel – Paul’s packed all the vital bits in. Lookit – as Christians:

Now that’s worth meditating on for a week or two!

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God’s plan is always the best – but it feels as if sometimes we’ve got to get pushed through a fence before we’re on the right track.

Abram was called by God into a new direction (Gen 12:1-4). At 75 – at a time when most of us are long settled down into retirement – he was called from a comfortable path living in his father’s house to a completely new land. By the end of his life, Abram would agree that God’s plan for him was great (Gen 24:1). But in order to get there, Abram had to get pushed through a fence to get to the other side.

Jacob was a momma’s boy – preferred to cook and stay with the tents rather than go out to hunt (Gen 25:28-29). He conned his brother Esau out of the birthright, then stole Esau’s blessing (Gen 27). He ran away and walked a very different path from the one he started out on, but he had to get pushed through the fence to get to the real blessing.

Joseph was daddy’s favorite and knew it. He had a good life, although he was a spoiled show-off who ratted on his brothers at every possible opportunity (Gen 37:2-3) – so much so that they hated him to the point of deciding to murder him. Through the fence, his path had him sold into slavery down in Egypt, where in one step he moved from being an imprisoned slave to the top man in the country. When he got to the end of his life he thought God’s plan was great (Gen 50:20). But what a fence he was pushed through!

Moses was brought up like a prince (Ex 2:10) – the best education, the best food, the best of everything. His path took a sudden turn at 40 when he killed a man and ran away (Ex 2:12-15); then another swerve when he encountered God in the wilderness (Ex 3). At the end of his life he would say that God’s plan was the best, but it was a strange path to get there – through the fence.

Rahab was on a foul path – she started out as a prostitute in a terrible culture, and was desperate to leave it – when she risked everything to help the Israelite spies (Josh 2:1-6). She didn’t have to be pushed through a fence – she ran at it full speed, head first! Her old path should have led to her death as a citizen of Jericho (Josh 6:21), or death for being a prostitute; instead, her new path led her to redemption, marriage, wealth and inclusion into the blood-line that resulted in the birth of David and ultimately the Messiah (Matt 1:5).

Ruth thought she was on a pretty good path, marrying a man from Israel – until he died, along with his brother and his father. Then she could have stayed safe with her own people, but instead traveled back to Israel with her mother-in-law (Ruth 1:16), both of them hopeless widows … and on the other side of that fence married Rahab’s son Boaz.

Ruth’s great-grandson David was a shepherd who started on a quiet life in the fields until God pushed him through some fences – the fight with Goliath (1 Sam 17:50); the subsequent flight from an increasingly insane Saul (starts at 1 Sam 18:8) – until Saul’s death and events subsequent to that redirected his path into the palace.

Over in the New Testament, James and John had a fairly steady life as fishermen; then, like the other disciples, they met Jesus and everything changed. Pushed through the fence (of leaving their livelihood – Matt 4:21-22), they began following Jesus round the country and eventually across the world.

Paul had a wonderful path ahead of him as a highly-educated Pharisee who was also a Roman citizen; brilliant connections and prospects. Then he was pushed through the fence on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3ff). He traveled throughout the Mediterranean basin; founded church after church; wrote a third of the New Testament. He was also beaten, stoned, imprisoned, shipwrecked, left for dead, hated, opposed at every turn. He would say that it was a great path to be on (Acts 20:24).

Time and again, when God gets hold of people in the Bible, they encounter this pattern to their lives: they start out walking along one path, then they encounter God and suddenly there’s a right-turn into and straight through a fence and onto a new and improved path – one that they would never have considered (or even thought possible) before that encounter. And not just in the Bible – God works that way today as well. Moving toward the fence is probably the scariest thing in life, but upon breaking through you find the fence was really there to pen you in; you’ve broken out of the boundary that was containing you. That’s the thing – there’s a great life that God wants to give us over there, far better than the one we’ve got right now – and usually (perhaps ALWAYS) He has to force us to take the gift. Sort of “Break us to make us” kind of thing.

Oh, that we could all know that Divine push straight through the fence.

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I’ve been reading Justin Phillips’ excellent book, C. S. Lewis in a Time of War whenever I go out to eat. (It’s exactly right for that purpose – deep enough and not too deep. I don’t like biographies as a general rule, but I like to read about WWII in the UK so the one balances the other. The WWII thing is probably something about the David-and-Goliath courage: the secretary walking over piles of rubble to get to work and then saying, “I’m terribly sorry I’m 2 hours late, but my street was blitzed last night.” But I digress…)

As Lewis gets into his series of BBC broadcasts in the Spring of 1944 titled Beyond Personality he notes that,

“God has no history – He is too real to have one.”

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