// July 22nd, 2009 // 3 Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS
In August 2005, I packed the last few reminders of our youth room into a various assortment of cardboard boxes. Finally after years of existence in a strip mall in the suburbs of New Orleans, we were going to be moving into a real building. Most of this stuff didn’t make the cut for the new youth room, so I was going to give it all away over the weekend as we said goodbye to the place over the course of several youth services.
I was so busy that week, I never even heard a report of a possible hurricane that was making its way into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, it wasn’t until that Friday that the situation was seriously mentioned in my circles.
My first response was, “Whatever.” I was tired of all the drama every year with hurricane season. I went home and told Jessica about it. She’d heard nothing, of course, because the Lifetime channel isn’t the best place for current, breaking news (nor brilliantly-written, well-acted movies as it were).
Our pastor told us that we’d just hold on to see how the local government officials would treat the situation before we’d make a decision regarding weekend services.
As the weekend progressed, it became increasingly more obvious that we wouldn’t be conducting our final services. Bummer too, because I had some really cool stuff planned and a pretty decent message. It was still frustrating, though. I called up a friend of mine who was a youth pastor in Miami and said, “Thanks a lot, David. This isn’t funny. Why did you have to send that thing our way? I’ve got too much work to do this week to be dealing with another evacuation.”
And, of course, the nation watched how that story played out. For the first week and a half of evacuation, I watched helplessly from my uncle’s condo in Destin, Florida.
Fortunately, I was able to connect with staff within a couple of weeks later and the city allowed us to come in and begin doing relief work. Our old building was trashed, but our new facility ended up being a launching pad for relief workers and supplies to begin pouring in to the city.
As our ministry seemed to increase (We started early in the morning till late at night) and take on new forms, a lot of city-based ministries ceased to exist. It was saddening to call pastors and leaders around the city to ask them to be a part of what we were doing, and to get the response, “Our building was damaged. We can’t do anything right now.”
For the first time ever, there seemed to be an overwhelming opportunity for God to show up in the moment as an answer to desperate prayers, but, unfortunately there were very few local churches were there to be the incarnation of Christ.
I was quickly having my understanding of ministry revolutionized as I walked up the sidewalk past the remains of the worldly possessions of the people in our neighborhoods bringing dinner, or some tips on saving photographs, or a small team of people to gut their houses.
At the time, I was heavily connected to youth pastors across the country and I remember sharing with them something that I thought was pretty mind-boggling at the time:
“If your LCD projector went out this week, if your power was off, if you had no running water, or your building flooded, would your ministry cease to exist? Would you still be a church? How would you function? ”
You see, I think that the Church has become really poor at defining things. For instance, the way we’ve defined “ministry” and “evangelism” and “worship” and the way we’ve quantified those things have ultimately caused us to become a caricature of ourselves.
MEASURING GOD…
I remember, as a Jr. High Pastor, flying out to a conference in California and sitting through a seminar that dared us to be brutally honest and evaluate our ministries. We needed to be goal-specific and to quantify everything that we did. Otherwise, how could we possibly be effective?
When I got back in town, that was exactly what I was going to do. So I scheduled a meeting with my pastor regarding this matter, and he was overjoyed to meet with me at Starbucks to help me answer these important questions.
I asked, “How do we know if we’re effective in evangelism?”
He said, “By how many people show up as opposed to before. Growth.”
I asked, “How do we know if we’re effective in worship?”
He said, “By how many people are engaging during the music.”
I asked, “How do we know we’re being effective in making disciples?”
He said, “If people are coming consistently on the weekends and getting involved in small groups.”
It was reasonable enough to me then. But it’s amazing how the weighted evidence of gatherings and worship sets and excel spread sheets literally floated away overnight with the uninvited visit of Hurricane Katrina.
We were left with two choices essentially: pack a bag with our meager belongings and go somewhere else or find the right way to define the Church.
WE ARE ALL WITNESSES
In Cleveland right now, it’s nothing to cruise around town and find these billboards that pay homage to LeBron James. It is the opinion of many people that LeBron is the best basketball player walking the planet. Regardless of where you stand with that opinion, it’s difficult to argue his ability, especially with the number of times he does something on the court that you’re forced to rewind, put in slow-mo and still ask, “Did he…How did he do that?”
Nike has done something incredibly ingenious in the marketing of LeBron. They’ve unleashed a campaign with LeBron James using the slogan “We are all witnesses.” The line is just pregnant, isn’t it? There is a sense of urgency and expectation. If you’re not there, what will happen? You’ll miss it! You could have been a witness. You could have told the world what you’d seen. But you can’t, because you missed it.
It’s interesting that it’s a multi-million or multi-billion dollar campaign that essentially says, “You were all a part of seeing this.” It’s pretty passive, but at least you’ve got something to tell your grandkids. “Here’s where I was on the planet when LeBron…”
It’s been said that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Before it was sloganized, “The Greatest” said it:
Acts 1:5-8
…in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Pardon me while I rub my goosebumps back into my arm….
Jesus walks the planet in perfection and overturns the works of sin and the enemies of God. He overcomes all evil and even death. And when He rises again, He takes the keys to the Kingdom and He does this:
“It’s not enough that I’ve come to suffer all things and to win out victoriously over all. You will now be my witnesses.”
And when He said that we’d be His witnesses, He wasn’t saying, “You’re going to have a great story to tell your grandkids.” What He actually did was unfathomable. He tossed us the keys to His Kingdom. He called us out of the darkness, out of the role of passive spectator into light. He gave us all authority and power and a mandate to go out to the ends of the earth.
You will be my witnesses.
You will make the invisible reality of me visible.
You will do the works that I have done.
You will do greater things.
The world will take notice.
You will go in my authority and power and share what I’m doing in every crack and crevice on the earth.
That’s huge, scary stuff don’t you think?
So now when we evaluate what we’re doing on this planet with our 70 years, how do we define that? And how do we know God is at work? How do we take what Jesus said explicitly and compare that to the way it looks now?
“There’s a lot more people here than there was.”
“More people engage during worship.”
“There are more small groups.”
“We raised some funds.”
“People raised the their hands.”
Does anyone see the problem here? We’ve sold out or settled somehow. Was this what Jesus promised when He said He was going to send the power His Spirit – the same power that raised Him from the dead?
It’s not even close to the same thing.
You see there was something else that this power was doing.
Acts 4:13-14
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.
You see, when God is at work, the world can’t help but be amazed. When you have no flash, you have no program, you have no building, no worship band, you’re really only left with one thing: your witness. Your story.
And when people looked at those followers of Jesus, what they knew of them and the transformation that was so apparent in front of them absolutely stunned them. They knew they’d been with Jesus. There was such a transformation that even their very speech patterns couldn’t be resolved. “They’re unlearned, how can they speak like this? Where is this authority coming from?”
It unsettled and shook the very religious authority and they couldn’t say, “Yeah whatever” because even the people who were in close proximity were being transformed as well. When they walked through town, people were being healed in their very shadows, because of the One who was overshadowing them.
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of settling.
When God is at work – and I truly believe He’s not lost a step nor an ounce of desire to bring radical transformation into every person’s life – it is going to be so powerfully evident. It will rock a whole community.
There will be amazement. You know why? Because the people won’t be spectators for a big show, but their very lives will be the big show – exalting a real, ever-present, powerful, loving God.
What do you want? What do you desire to truly see? More programs or more God? Another statistic or another God story?
Witness. The term is pregnant – just as full of expectation as it was the day it rolled off the lips of an ambitious, demanding Jesus.
Be careful how you answer that, because God is calling you to act on it. To be His witness.
By the way, He’s the King so it’s not a democracy or anything.
Early this morning I went on a walk – early enough that there wasn’t a lot of traffic to obscure the sounds and smells of nature.
Yesterday I went to my first physical therapy appointment for my knee. Honestly, there was very little actual therapy, just a ton of questions.
