Living Water: Lazarus, Come Out!

Chapter Seven of Living Water by Brother Yun: Lazarus, Come Out!

Interesting in that Brother Yun draws the two stories of Mary and Martha together. He points out that in the West He has come across three types of people in the church.

The first is like Martha: busy serving others. They do lots of good things but mostly they are done for the sake of doing those things. As a result they miss Jesus in their midst.

The second is like Mary: sitting at the feet of Jesus.

The third is like Lazarus: dead. Spiritually dead for three or four days. Yet the parables show that Christ can bring the cold dead back to life. What hope there is for the churches of today where there is little or no apparent life or joy!

The Western church is generally like Martha: "You know the truths about God's Word in your head, but you still like to run your own lives." What a condemnation!

But even more: "So many churches and individual believers think they should make their own plans and strategies, then ask God to bless them."

I know that I and my church have been guilty of this recently.

And this is so contrary with what God wants us to do. He wants us to approach Him first and listen to what He has to say instead of arrogantly assuming that He will bless what we want to do because we want to do it.

"All that matters is that Jesus loves you and He wants to be your best friend."

Articles

Two articles came my way today. Each in their own way have given me much to think about.

The first was reported by Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press with the headline of "More Americans say they have no religion." The survey was the American Religious Identification Survey.

This article points out that the number of Americans who say they have no religion is growing and is now at 15%. Roughly 75% identify themselves as Christian and another 10% identify themselves as other (Jewish, Muslim, etc). This is down from 86% in 1990.

There is a downward trend in the number of Americans who say that they are Christians. And remember, just because you call yourself a Christian doesn't mean that you are one.

The second article was in The Christian Science Monitor by Michael Spencer and titled "The coming evangelical collapse."

Mr Spencer expects that within the next ten years there will be a major collapse in evangelicalism in the United States. The main points are that evangelicals have tied themselves too closely to political conservatism in the culture wars. We have also failed to pass on to our young the ability to withstand a cultural onslaught on their faith. They know what they should think but not why.

It pretty much comes down to a widespread ignorance of the Bible. We have failed to become biblically literate. We have failed to use the Bible as a relevant tool in our day to day life.

A couple of good passages from the article:

"American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success."

We miss the boat. From our performance based worship services and corporate style church governance, we have allowed the culture to dictate how we do church. This includes the rise of the modern mega church and the continued fragmentation of denominations.

Mr Spencer also asks the question: Is the coming collapse a bad thing?

I don't think so. First of all I don't necessarily agree with his basic premise that the evangelical church will collapse within the next ten years. But as I have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the corporate church and canned, passive, performance based worship, I have come to the conclusion that radical change is sometimes a desirable thing. And sometimes that radical change is painful to all involved.

And finally, Mr Spencer states:

"We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture."

Amen, brother.

We need to be aware of whose we are and where we are. And I think that all too often we forget that.

Satisfaction

Yesterday was a very satisfying day.

I learned how to use a new computer program (EMail Marketing Professional).
I set up several e-mail lists to use mass e-mail capabilities.
This included both importing an email list and hand entering a bunch of contacts.
I tested the set up.
I developed an email to mail out.
And I sent it out.

I fully realize that there are a whole bunch of "I"s in those sentences as well as this sentence. My point is not to glorify the work that I did. Loralie had to do a lot of work in getting the email list together and check my test emails.

But the whole point of this is that we got something completed that took a bit of effort and we got it done at the appropriate time for what we are trying to accomplish.

And that is very satisfying.

All too often I have a bunch of not quite finished things going on and I just never get around to finishing them.

And the satisfaction of finishing a task is lost.

It takes finishing something like this to remind me of the simple joy in completing a task.

I need to do this more often.

Now I have to get those shelves finished for Ellen...

Debt

I went to church last night.

They gave out numbers on how they were doing with the budget which is not good.

First some background and a disclaimer: I have talked about everything that I am going to mention with the Pastor and leadership of my church. That is the disclaimer.

I hate debt. Debt is wrong. It is not evil, just wrong. We still have our mortgage, but we've paid off our consumer debt. We're still trying to figure out whether or not to pay off the mortgage.

Some background. Our church has $5 million in debt on the building. Last Mothers Day, a marketing presentation was made in place of the sermon on the need to build an addition on to the building in order to "support the ministry." This was a shock to most people in the congregation. Nothing had been said prior to Mother's Day.

Later, around July, prayer started around the whole thing.

Part of the plan was to reduce the debt with 20% of the proceeds going to debt reduction. The goal was somewhere around $3 million.

Roughly $1.4 million has been pledged. Far short of the goal. And blamed on the economy. I happen to believe that God will provide regardless of the economy if it is in his will.

Our payments on the debt run around $20,000 a month.

Interesting. For that is about what we short in offering for February.

I know that if we try to do this in our human abilities we will have human results. And so far the
results seem to be about what the rest of society is experiencing.

Is this God trying to tell us that we would be OK if we pay off the debt? Or is it just me trying to see what I want to see in my humanness?

Humbling

My wife Loralie is a singer/songwriter.

Actually, she is an excellent singer songwriter, but I have to admit that I might be slightly biased. But only very slightly.

She is a member of IndieHeaven, an organization for independent Christian musicians. Indie Heaven has as part of their site (indieheaven.com), Fan Faves where artists can post their songs and then fans can go in and vote for them once a day. Songs move up and down the chart based on the fan votes. Songs stay on the chart for 30 days.

Loralie posted her song "Face of Jesus" last Wednesday. It was up to 10 on the chart as of this morning.

I sent out a total of around 100 emails to people urging them to "vote early and vote often". Most are fans and some are friends and some are both.

The response has truly been amazing and really humbling.
We've heard from our daughter that a friend of hers is voting every day and asked his co-workers to vote also. We've never met the guy. but he is excited about the whole thing.

A lady in a retirement home (I mean "lifestyle enhancement community with a minimum age of 62") who goes to our church said that she was voting every day.

We got an email from a friend saying that his family was casting five votes a day since they have five computers.

Another friend called to say that she and her husband had just voted on their computers. Kind of a couple thing.

We heard from a couple that moved to Florida and had my original e-mail forwarded to them. The wife said that Loralie's song reminded her to forget the busyness of life and focus on what is important. Wow!

And these are just part of it.

My Mom is watching the chart everyday (I am not sure if she has asked the Knit Wits to vote though).

It is really humbling and it is really neat to see how the message spreads and the tribe grows.

Part of the beauty of Fan Faves is that it allows us to connect with Loralie's fans and ask them to do something simple. It engages them with her music and ministry in the absence of a live performance or a new CD.

People want to help and this gives them something concrete and easy to do.

And it also exposes her music to others who may not have heard it before. And some may not know Jesus.

Helping others know Jesus is what it is all about.

Even if we never know who might hear.

I have to go and vote now...

Living Water: The Person God Uses

My copy of Living Water by Brother Yun is getting pretty marked up.

This week it is chapter six: The Person God Uses.

One of things that stood out to me was the statement: "There is so much Christian activity being done in the name of the Lord today that does not have His power or presence at its core."

I totally agree with this statement. There is so much being done in our humanity. When we do human things in human power we get human results. Whether it is a sermon or a meeting or a fundraising campaign, if God is not in it, it will not have Godly results.

The last sentence of the paragraph stood out: "Such "work" is tragic and never produces true fruit for the kingdom of God." I disagree with that statement. I think that it limits God and I think that God will use even our feeble efforts as it suits him. I came to know Christ through a preacher who has been discredited as a false faith healer and called a heretic.

We are also cautioned to let our ministry become an idol. "We can trick ourselves into thinking that everything is alright because the people seem to be blessed by what we have to say." this happens when we lose sight of why we are doing what we are doing and who gets the glory. If we let the "glory" get in our eyes we start to rely on ourselves and not on God.

We are cautioned to remember that we are nothing without God! How different this is from what we are told in the West! We are told to be self sufficient, to get ahead, to get promoted collect the toys and the house and the cars. Rely on yourself.

Not how I want to live. Anymore...

Church and church

A conversation with a friend last week got me thinking. I know, an unusual occurrence, me thinking...

Anyway, we seemed to be having some trouble connecting until we realized that we were operating under different meanings of a key word. After that it became a lot easy to at least understand each others positions.

And that brings us to church. I think that there are two definitions of church that are not necessarily mutually exclusive but can cause a lot of disagreement.

The first definition is the body of believers in Jesus Christ. The second definition is a group of people who meet together to worship usually in a building also called a church.

Frank Viola (no, not that Frankie Viola) in his excellent book Reimagining Church points out that Paul in his letter to the Romans calls the church all those whom God has accepted (Romans 15:7). Thus the church spans denomination and division. We are called into fellowship with all who believe regardless of what label they (or we) may apply.

The church of Christ consist of all believers in Jesus Christ who have accepted the free gift of eternal life granted through his death on the cross for our sins. Period.

Anything else is divisive. This includes denominations. All denominations. Nowhere in scripture is it found that we have to belong to a particular group for eternal salvation.

I am convinced that there are many sitting in a church on Sunday who don't know Christ and are there for the entertainment. The sermon and the music. Yet they talk about being members of a particular church.

Again: membership doesn't save anyone. Neither does worship preferences.

We must recognize that our brothers and sisters are those who believe in Jesus Christ as Savior regardless of what labels are attached to them. Anything else is wrong.

But we also have to be discerning, humble and patient to know who is our brother and sister.