What is real ministry?

How do you answer that question?  If you could choose to serve God in any arena, any job, what would you choose?  What is does “really serving” God look like?

I think we have a disconnect in the church in the UK.  We disconnect our Sunday from our every other day.  We see ministry as what we do in service of church rather than living the rest of our days in service of our Saviour.

In part that’s a problem with some of the terminology we can slip into using in church and in our services.  In part that can be because we fall into a divided secular sacred worldview.  Sometimes it’s because churches and church leaders have given people the impression that the real ministry happens up the front or at church, rather than elsewhere.

And the problem is that we all buy into that wrong way of thinking.  Let me try a thought experiment with you.  Imagine you meet someone new at church, she is full of joy in her Saviour, she loves her bible, and quickly shows Bible teaching gifts with the children and young people.  She is just completing her PGCE and about to start looking for a job for next year.  What would you suggest to her?

All too often I think we steer these people into ministry in the church; become a ministry trainee, or a trainee children’s and families worker, or go and do a gap year at the Oakes or Yorkshire camps.  And there is value in those ministries. 

But what if as a church we instead encouraged her to pursue her teaching career and excel as a teacher for Christ in her school.  Working hard to be the best teacher she can for the glory of God?  What if we committed to ask how her work was and pray for her and her work as a church? Church supporting her in working for Jesus.

Or what about Bob.  Bob has been working as a machinist in a manufacturing company for the last twenty year but it has hit financial trouble and he’s been made redundant.  You know Bob is really gifted at chatting to people, and he’s particularly gifted at sharing about his faith in everyday conversation.  He regularly asked for prayer about work colleagues and their struggles and shared how he had opportunities to share the gospel with them.  And he always has a bevy of blokes at men’s breakfasts and curry nights and guest services.  It strikes you the Bob is a natural evangelist.  And so as he asks you to pray for his what next as regards work what would you suggest to him?

What if as a church we encouraged him to use his evangelists gifts in a new workplace?  What if we committed to pray with him for a workplace where he can be salt and light? And we taught the Bible with Bob’s Monday morning in mind?

Just think about all the places God is sending your church family as his witness this week, not just when they speak openly about him but also as they serve him using their God given gifts for his glory.  How can we help people to switch that mindset, so that Sunday is not disconnected from their work, but prepares them for it? How do we facilitate that in the way we structure the service, the final prayer, the applications we draw?

Whose Authority?

We’ve been working our way through Matthew 21 on Sunday’s.  It’s been helpful to be reminded that as disciples we have only one authority – God’s word.   Amidst all the pressure to compromise and change God’s word stands firm.

Jesus is challenged by the religious leaders about his authority.  What gives him the right to say what he is teaching? What gives him the right to clear the temple? What gives him the right to heal? Jesus answer is to ask them who they say John the Baptist was and where his ministry came from.  Because in the answer to that question is the answer to Jesus identity and authority.

John the Baptist is heaven sent, he is God’s messenger, the warm up act for Jesus, the get ready guy preparing people for the coming of the Lord himself come to his temple.  If they believe John’s ministry was heaven sent then they have to believe Jesus is God the Son and that he has authority even if he is challenging their beliefs and religious norms.

Their non-answer is in itself an answer.  They won’t accept who Jesus is and so they won’t accept his authority.  And in the parables that  follow Jesus warns the religious leaders and all of Israel that if they won’t accept him, if they won’t produce the fruit of repentance and faith they will be rejected.

There is a salutary warning for the church in these verses.  Israel was the stone rejected by the world but on which God built his kingdom.  But it was rejected because it rejected the Messiah.  It failed to continue living by faith and repentance.  It failed to continue to live under God’s authority by his word which would have led them to repentance and faith in Jesus. 

That continues to be a warning for us today.  If we fail to live under Jesus rule and authority, if we fail to produce the fruit of repentance and faith then we may well find ourselves rejected by God, crushed by the stone we have rejected. Jesus is either lord of all or not at all.  We are not at liberty to sidestep his authority or to negate his word.  We’re not at liberty to rename sin or holiness in our own image, or given prevailing social trends.  As his people he is our Lord and King and we sit under his authority and his word or we are in rebellion against him.

Understanding where we live

Where do you live?  I don’t just mean you county, your city, your street, or even your flat or your house.  But where do you live in biblical terms and how does that understanding shape how you live there?

Peter in his letter writes to believers and describes them as exiles even as he writes to them in cities where they have located their houses.  Jesus writes to the church in Pergamum and describes it as “where Satan has his throne.”  There is a sense in which that is true of all believers, we live in a world at war with its creator and Saviour – sometimes that is brutally and painfully obvious, at other times it’s masked, hidden and harder to see but not less true.  Our world is a world that is out of step in what it believes with what God says is true.  It is a world that is increasingly being given over to its own sinful desires as an act of judgment.  A world that is increasingly trying to shrug off those consequences and be self-determinative of right and wrong.

One of the biggest dangers we face is in thinking wrongly about where we live which leads us to try to live without the dissonance that living as an exile creates.  Instead of being different, instead of boldly and confidently proclaiming what God says and teaching what we really believe to be good news we try to accommodate ourselves with our culture.  Instead of being shaped by what God says, instead of accepting Jesus authority and the identity he gives us we find it easier, more comfortable, to accommodate ourselves with the world because we forget that this world isn’t home, that this world is some spiritually neutral Switzerland.

If you are honest with yourself how do you think of where you live?  Where you work?  Is it home or not?  Is it neutral or hostile?  Is it a place at war with God, sin sick and desperate for the loving compassionate grace and mercy of a reconciling Saviour?  A place crying out for Jesus’ people to be Jesus’ people?  To be full of his compassion and love but also of his truth?  And just like Jesus not allowing people to think sin is acceptable to God, but also not allowing them to believe God couldn’t or wouldn’t love them enough to send a rescuer so they can have the joy of knowing God.

Understanding where we live will lead us to speak out, stand out and be different.  To live as the exiles the world so desperately needs us to be as we follow Jesus not just as our Saviour but as our Lord.

Spiritual abuse: what is it?

‘Spiritual abuse’ What is it?  What isn’t it?  How can we tell the difference?  It’s a huge issue that we need to think not just clearly about but biblically about.  There are lots of helpful, and unhelpful things, flying around all adding to a sense of confusion among church members, pastors, elders and other leaders.

And there is no easy blanket answer.  Cases and accusations are complex and all those involved need care and support.  They need helping to assess what has happened, why, as well as their and others motives and perceptions.  They need help in discerning what has been going on at a heart level, as well as hearing how others have perceived their actions and reaction.  We need to help discern what was accidental but hurtful, what was deliberate and deceitful and what was right care but received wrongly.

There are times when pastoral care is hard to receive.  Even when we are rightly and lovingly rebuked for sin, or asked probing questions about our hearts, our loves, our idols, we don’t automatically welcome it with joy, it is only as we weigh it that we see the prayer, care and concern that has gone into those words.   My worry is that in a culture where we have been too slow to recognise abuse, where we have not cared for those wounded by it and where we have allowed abusive leaders to go unchecked and unquestioned and challenged we are not clear on what spiritual abuse is and how to create healthy cultures that protect and care.

But my other worry is that because of those failings, because of current uncertainty, we knee jerk react to that by going to the opposite extreme and calling everything abuse, driving pastors who are not abusers but faithful shepherds out of the ministry because of a wrong understanding of abuse.

But how do we begin to feel our way towards a more biblical definition of these things?

Ezekiel 34 is one among a number of helpful biblical passages in diagnosing spiritual abuse.  It doesn’t say everything but it does provide some helpful diagnostic tools.

It is spiritual abuse when those who should be caring for others only care for themselves(v2).  God rebukes these abusive leaders of Israel because when they should be caring for the flock they are caring for themselves at the expense of the flock.  They eat the curds, clothe themselves in the wool, slaughter the choice animals, in short failing to care for the flock because they are out for themselves.

That’s a helpful diagnostic.  Abuse is when the abuser feeds themselves at the expense of others.  It is when they fleece the flock not feed it.

It is spiritual abuse, and God won’t hold leaders guiltless, when they fail to strengthen the weak(4), heal the ill, bind up the injured, bring back the strays or search for the lost(5).  Abusive leadership is as much about hard pastoral work left undone, as it is offenses committed.  We might use the term neglect, except there seem to be something more nefarious at play in this situation, it is not that the religious leaders are unaware of the injured, sick and lost, more than they just don’t want to do the work.

Maybe this category of deliberate neglect is particular helpful for us to think through.  It’s been seen in Blokes Worth Watching culture, where time is invested in the able and gifted and whole, those who can contribute now and have potential in the future.   At the expense of the care and time given to the weak and needy and marginalised.  But this care for the weak, wounded, lost and ill is what God calls leaders to.

Spiritual abuse rules harshly and brutally(5-6).  It scatters God’s people it doesn’t gather them.   Abusive leadership creates division.  It divides one person from another.  It creates barriers.  It isolates people from others and from fellowship.  It makes people feel alone.  It is graceless and loveless.  

Ezekiel 34 has lots more to say as God openly denounces spiritually abusive leadership and talks about ideal leadership and the deal leader that will come.  It’s not the only passage with something to say about the issue.  But it is a helpful starting point for those of us in leadership teams to examine what we do and why and how we create a church culture where those things don’t happen.  It’s a helpful touchstone for the church to understand what good leadership looks like and how to recognise abusive leadership.  It doesn’t say everything but it is a helpful biblical foundation.

The inadequacy of “I like to think…” theology

I’m sure you’ve heard it. Maybe you have even said it. “I like to think of God as…” Or “I like to think God would…” Oftentimes it’s well meant but ill thought through. In our therapeutic age we are reluctant to leave someone worried or uncertain or sad or grieving, instead we utter sentences like those above aiming to help people feel a bit better, to ameliorate some of the sadness or tension or worry. But here’s the problem, not only are such theological imaginings untrue, but they gradually erode our, and others, belief in the adequacy and inerrancy of scripture. They shrink God down to less than he reveals himself to be.

There are times when life throws up hard things for us to face and to wrestle with scripture over. We miss out, we fail to mature, we will be a spiritual stunted if our response is to forego the wrestling in favour of “I like to think…” theology. Because let’s be honest my heart and yours is so sinful at it’s root that we could twist that “I like to think” theology to make it say anything we want.

As followers of Jesus we live in a world at odds with him. We live in a world at odds with the kingdom and out of step with the compassion and glory and holiness of the king. And that means it will throw up points of tension. There will be times when we feel caught between the kingdom we have been redeemed into and the world we live in now. There will be times when it is hard to work out what God is sovereignly doing, when faith will mean not having an answer, not “liking to think”. But clinging to what we know God’s character, plans and purposes. That is not easy. It is comforting but not comfortable. But truth matters.