Below is a recent sermon from the Rev. Paul Burns, who is pastor of our sister church, Priestlake Presbyterian Church (USA) in Nashville, TN.

August 10, 2008

Matthew 14:22-33

Genesis 37:1-28

Jacob does not do his son Joseph any favors by loving him above his brothers. He seals his fate, by giving him a physical reminder of his preferential love: a fancy robe. Every time his brothers saw Joseph in this robe, they were reminded that their father loved him more, and they hated him for it.

But Joseph doesn’t help his case much either. Perhaps he is naïve or just plain ignorant of his position of privilege in the family. But he has this dream where it appears that his brothers will bow down to him. A prudent person would keep that kind of dream to himself, but not Joseph. He adds fuel to his brothers’ fire by telling them.

And if that isn’t enough, when he has a second dream where it appears that even his father and mother will bow to him, he tells them again. Even after his brothers berated him for telling the first dream, he tells the second dream. This kid is asking for it. And, yes, he gets it. You heard the story.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard someone say, “I don’t believe in organized religion.” It seems to be a growing sentiment here in America, even in the Bible belt. People have been turned off by the Church. I’m not telling you something you don’t know.

Every church in country is trying to address this very problem. I can’t tell you I’m going to give you the magic answer either.

So what’s the problem?

Let’s look again at Joseph. Joseph is loved by his father and he knows it. He wears his coat proudly. Nothing wrong with that. But it alienates his brothers. To make it worse he perhaps unwittingly proclaims his superior position by sharing the dreams where they all bow down to him.

The church can be like Joseph. We know God loves us. God has chosen the church. The church is the bride of Christ. We are special blessed and favored.

I remember a pastor I worked with at the hospital for a summer. Anytime I asked him how he was doing he would answer, “Blessed and highly favored!” Nothing wrong with saying that, but it does lead a person to wonder who he is favored over. To be favored, means that there are others who are less favored or not favored at all. In Presbyterian terms, to be chosen seems to mean that there are those who are not chosen.

Recently it was reported that Presbyterians have the highest per capita income of any other denomination. It would seem that we have been blessed and highly favored. There’s nothing wrong with having good income, but if we say that God has blessed us in this way, it may seem that it means that God has withheld blessing from others.

If we say we are chosen by God or we are saved by God’s grace, then it would be easy for a person not in the church to draw the conclusion that God has withheld grace from them. And just like Joseph’s brothers those outside the church become alienated. We wear our salvation proudly, like Joseph’s coat. Nothing wrong with it. But people could get the wrong idea.

Joseph’s dream of superiority is another problem that the church must safeguard against. The church has a long history of domination. It has strayed and continues to stray from the model of Christ of servant leadership. It can become very apparent by how we do evangelism. We stride into the communities of the “unchurched”, a word that has replaced the antiquated word “heathen”, and we seek to enlighten people with the light of Christ.

Now, we don’t do anything wrong. In fact, we are trying to do what Christ chose us to do. But something gets lost in perception. It’s easy to come off as “look how special I am”. I’m blessed and highly favored, how about you?

And what about people whose lives are marked by tragedy and poverty? Do they feel blessed and highly favored? Many people look at the church’s lack of action, they see churches that are only about self-help and not about serving the poor, and they say what good is the church? And like Joseph’s brothers they are angry, and they can either direct their anger towards the Father for his preferential love or they can hate the one with the fancy coat on. It’s easier to hate the one with the coat.

And so many people in the world do not like the church. And I’ll be honest. Some times I don’t like the church either. We seem to cause more problems than we solve sometimes. A lot gets lost in perception. What we must recognize to live as a chosen one, is what it means to be chosen. To be chosen, does not mean superiority or domination. It means humility and service. God puts the church and each one in it in the position to serve others.

We are not here to be bowed down to. We are here to do the bowing down. Joseph finally realizes this. As Joseph had risen to the heights of leadership in the Egyptian government, his brothers had become very poor. They came to him to seek his forgiveness for the evil they had done to him. And his brothers fell down before him just like the dream. Joseph wept and said these words, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear, I will provide for you and your little ones.”

He did not make his brothers feel less than him. And he did not raise himself up. “Am I in the place of God?” he said. In other words, we are all less compared to God. He received them with love and kindness and pledged to provide for them.

In the end, while Joseph may have been preferred by his earthly father, his heavenly Father loves them all. He chose all 12 brothers to be the first of Israel. Each brother represents an equally chosen tribe of Israel. And God promises that all of the tribes, even the lost will be returned and restored. Each of them shall receive a fancy coat.

Let us remember, that we are here to serve others. And let us remember that the people we serve are in no way inferior to us, they are not less or more loved by God. They are no less or more chosen than we are. And in the end, all God’s chosen shall be returned and restored. Let us receive people with love and kindness. Let us not wear our salvation as an emblem of achievement or favored-ness. But let our salvation be seen in the way we live.

Below is an article I came across today that I thought was pertinent for us as we continue to seek God’s will and formulate our strategic plan.

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How Responding to People’s Needs Hurts the Church

by Elizabeth I. Steele

Defining the church’s ministry by responding to people’s needs is a common notion; but, because of the blurred line between want and need, no matter how much we speak of needs or perceived needs, it puts the church in the position of being defined not by its faith or history but by people’s wants. This trivializes the church, its mission, and its outreach. It eviscerates the heart of the church’s message and cuts the church off from its identity as the people of Christ. But the attitudes engendered in people who come to congregations expecting the church to make meeting their needs (or, more likely, their wants) a priority also harms the church. Simply put, when we say the church is to meet people’s needs, many people personalize that message. They hear, “If I go to church, those folk will take care of me.” In selling the church as a place where people’s needs are met, we draw people for whom there is, at least in their perception, an implied promise that if they come to the church it will provide them with what they think they need. The measurement of a congregation then becomes personal: “Is it meeting my needs?”

These needs are not limited to the basic needs of food, safety, and shelter. In all but the poorest congregations, members tend to meet those needs on their own. More often people turn to the church for emotional and spiritual well-being. They envision the church providing what they think they need to ensure contentment and satisfaction. Their confusion between needs and wants means their attitude often becomes not “Is this congregation meeting my needs?” but “Is this congregation giving me what I want?” They come believing the church will have as its priority, in terms of time and effort, taking care of whatever they feel is important. They require the church to respond to them personally. They believe it is the church’s job to listen to them, act on their ideas, and support their beliefs. Other aspects of the congregation’s life, other things it might be doing, are strictly secondary to the parts that impact them directly. So, if their concern is children’s ministry, they aren’t interested in outreach to singles or empty-nesters. If their interest is in traditional music, contemporary hymns or a praise service will be deemed unimportant. At best, they will treat such activities with disinterest. At worst, they will see such endeavors as detractions from their concern that should therefore be eliminated.

What happens when these people feel their needs are not being met? That is, what occurs when they do not get what they want? They believe the church is letting them down. It is failing to do as promised, which they see as a breach of contract. In response, they may leave, or they may challenge whatever is happening and whoever is in charge until the promised care-taking and attention are provided.

A Sense of Entitlement

Jesus said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). He also said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 14:24). Christian faith has always been about giving, not receiving. Those who expect the church to respond to their needs—no matter what—frequently have little interest in doing for others. They came to be cared for, so they see being asked to help others as changing the rules. The signs of declining commitment noted by many pastors—lower rates of worship attendance, pledging, and other forms of participation—indicate this emphasis on receiving. So do the requests, ranging from minor to impossible, that people feel free to make of congregations and the often extreme reactions they have when a congregation does not do as they desire. The underlying thinking appears to be this: The church is supposed to care for my needs, so I can ask whatever I desire of the church. It does not matter whether or not the congregation knows me, nor does the difficulty of my request matter. I do not need to cooperate or be flexible. It is the congregation’s duty to respond, giving me what I want the way I want it.

A Source of Disruption

Churches include people who are not only troublesome and disruptive but who also feel free to attack, diminish, and destroy church leaders, including and especially pastors. A portion of the blame for such disruptive conflict must rest with the needs definition of ministry. As mentioned above, when people believe the church is to care for their needs and it is not doing so, they feel free to become increasingly disruptive until they get what they want. The same expectations for personal response are applied to church leadership: If I believe the congregation is to care for my needs, then so are the congregation’s leaders. They are to visit me when I want to be visited and stay away when I don’t. They are to share my concerns and interests, make sure the kinds of programs I want are available when I want them, and design worship to include the kind of music I like. The expectations are even greater for pastors: Pastors should preach sermons I approve of. Their prayers should be neither too long nor too short and should cover the topics I consider important. They should be available whenever I want them.

No one can meet such expectations for every member of the congregation. Sooner or later the congregational leadership will disappoint someone. When that happens, the disappointment is again treated as a breach of contract. The church is failing to do what it is supposed to do and the disappointed member feels free to challenge the guilty leaders until they capitulate.

Misplaced Loyalties

One of the ironies is that, while some pastors are attacked no matter how much they do, others are defended despite misconduct. Indeed, there are almost always members strongly championing their pastor even in the face of extensive evidence of egregious misconduct. Part of this is the natural denial of grief. When misconduct is first discovered, it is hard to believe. As the evidence mounts, however, the support continues. Because the needs mentality encourages people to measure pastors by what they personally receive, it encourages such misplaced support. Just as it does not matter what a pastor is doing for others if my needs are not being met, so it does not matter what a pastor is doing to others if my needs are being met. Misconduct thus becomes unimportant when it does not affect me directly.

Changing Our Language

“Need” is an elastic term. Many congregational ministries could be placed under it. If the needs aren’t physical, they are emotional or spiritual. The problem with the idea of ministry as responding to people’s needs is not in what congregations do but in how people come to think about the church. It reduces the church to a service provider whose clients/recipients are free to complain whenever they are dissatisfied. Lost is the idea of people being and becoming the church. Lost is the understanding of the church as a community of faith whose members struggle together to draw closer to God and to express that closeness in how they live and interact with the world.

To counter this, a shift in thinking is called for, and this shift must be reflected in our language. There are other, richer ways of speaking about ministry and mission than just talking about needs. Congregations that move beyond that language find that their self-understanding expands. As a denominational representative, I worked with one congregation that had been through a disastrous two-year pastorate. As we talked, I asked them who benefited from their existence and how. They answered solely in terms of trying to respond to community needs—providing a preschool to help young families, and helping the homeless who came to their door. We then spoke of what tied them together as a church. They spoke of shared bonds of fellowship and growing together in faith, of the importance of worship in their lives. The word “need” was never mentioned. I pointed out they had just described two different kinds of pastors, and that pastors whose primary emphasis was responding to community needs used their time differently than those whose primary concern was nurturing a community of faith. As we reflected on the priorities of a pastor focused on needs, one of the congregants spoke up, “That’s what we just got rid of,” he said. From this conversation and others, the congregation came to realize that the center of their life was not to respond to community needs but to be a community of faith. They changed their self-description and pastoral expectations. They still have the preschool and feed the homeless, but now they do it as an expression of their life as a community of faith.

Looking at spiritual gifts is another way to move beyond the “needs” mentality because it reminds people that they have much to give. One congregation I worked with as an interim pastor had a twelve-week new members’ class. From the very first session, new members were asked how they would share their gifts. At the last session they were not only asked to fill out a financial pledge card but also to complete a spiritual gifts inventory and describe where and how they would be involved in the life of the congregation. The whole twelve-week program was designed to remind them that they were becoming participants in the church, not just recipients of it.

Reclaiming the language of call is another way to inspire a new awareness of purpose. As an interim minister, I often introduce congregations to Fredrick Buechner’s comment, “The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” The wonder is how much this quote changes congregations’ understanding of mission. They stop trying to duplicate what another congregation does well and begin to consider what they can do. They stop looking for someone to tell them what to do and start generating ideas themselves. Best of all, ministry moves from being something they are supposed to do to being a celebration of their own call.

Adapted from “How Responding to People’s Needs Hurts the Church“ from the Spring 2008 issue of Congregations magazine.

SCRIPTURE READING:

James 4:1-17 (The Message translation)

Get Serious

1 Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. 2 You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it. You wouldn’t think of just asking God for it, would you? 3 And why not? Because you know you’d be asking for what you have no right to. You’re spoiled children, each wanting your own way. 4 You’re cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. 5 And do you suppose God doesn’t care? The proverb has it that “he’s a fiercely jealous lover.” 6 And what he gives in love is far better than anything else you’ll find. It’s common knowledge that “God goes against the willful proud; God gives grace to the willing humble.” 7 So let God work his will in you. Yell a loud no to the Devil and watch him scamper. 8 Say a quiet yes to God and he’ll be there in no time. Quit dabbling in sin. Purify your inner life. Quit playing the field. 9 Hit bottom, and cry your eyes out. The fun and games are over. Get serious, really serious. 10 Get down on your knees before the Master; it’s the only way you’ll get on your feet. 11 Don’t bad-mouth each other, friends. It’s God’s Word, his Message, his Royal Rule, that takes a beating in that kind of talk. You’re supposed to be honoring the Message, not writing graffiti all over it. 12 God is in charge of deciding human destiny. Who do you think you are to meddle in the destiny of others?

Nothing but a Wisp of Fog

13 And now I have a word for you who brashly announce, “Today—at the latest, tomorrow—we’re off to such and such a city for the year. We’re going to start a business and make a lot of money.” 14 You don’t know the first thing about tomorrow. You’re nothing but a wisp of fog, catching a brief bit of sun before disappearing. 15 Instead, make it a habit to say, “If the Master wills it and we’re still alive, we’ll do this or that.” 16 As it is, you are full of your grandiose selves. All such vaunting self-importance is evil. 17 In fact, if you know the right thing to do and don’t do it, that, for you, is evil.

MEDITATION

The other day while cleaning house, I had a revelation. Our souls are like my house – they attract dirt and grim constantly. How does this ugly stuff keep coming back? No matter how often I clean, the dust comes bake and the tumbleweeds of Borzoi fur still collect in the corners. Sometimes I wonder is it worth it. Would it be too bad of a thing to just let it go …to give up or coast. But then there is always within me that within a weeks time can’t stand it any longer and I break down and clean house.  For our souls, resentment is like that dust and grim and dog hair tumbleweeds.. You may have thought you dealt with a conflict and bad feelings by ignoring it …it will take care of itself. Then you see someone ‘ya haven’t seen for a while and unforgiveness and resentment come back like a magnet to your soul. Selfishness, anger, irritability, cutting responses that can shut out people comes rolling out of us.

In church we have conflicts. As mentioned in the first part of the letter of James, the church is not perfect; it is a hospital for sinners. But you would think we could keep the infection down in the hospital; does it in real life? Where do the conflicts come from? It’s not because you’re a Republican and she’s a Democrat. It’s not the issues that stand between you. Look at the first part of chapter four. “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?” The problem we have with each other is on the inside.

Even if we are following Jesus, we still will find ourselves attracted to or victims of the moral, physical and spiritual dirt and grim of the world, the very world in which we have been sent to share God’s message of love. When it comes to times of conflict, if we are not attentive and mindful of keeping God in the center of what is happening, we revert back to old ways. As the tag line on someone’s email reminded me lately: “Christian aren’t perfect, just forgiven” and God working hard to reconciling all the relationships involved. Thus is why we pray to God as our Lord taught us: “Lead us away from temptation, deliver us from evil.”

The temptation to fall into evil ways, or go counter to God’s desire for our life, is overwhelming if we do not stay focused on God and the way of life God is offering to us in our daily living. Our default, as James mentions a couple chapters back when it comes to equality and recognizing we all are created equal in the image of God, when times get rough is to go into survive and thrive mode. We will seek control and manipulate, we will want to people please than God please, and we will not be able to make commitments and sustain meaningful relationships. So we may find ourselves going from job to job always putting the fault and the blame on someone else. Or we may find ourselves going through a series of relationships because we don’t have the ability to commit and experience intimacy. It is the pattern of coasting. We coast in our relationships, we coast in our careers, we coast in our faith. We can’t allow these patterns to be established! It is why this is hard work. Discipleship, God’s Way in Christ Jesus is not for the faint of hearts or for those who are looking for cheap grace. God’s Way is not a lifestyle; it is Life itself if we really want it. And that is where our personal relationship Jesus comes in.

Do you know what Jesus does? Jesus breaks the power of that pattern in your life. When you come to God, the power of that pattern has been broken. But now it is our responsibility to replace those old patterns and responses with new patterns and responses. Shifting from a self-centered lifestyle to a God-centered way of life takes a lifetime of daily habits. Do you not take a bath more than once a week? Do not cleanse at least your hands more than once a day? With the dirt that clings to my soul it is a daily process of work to keep clean. Undeniably, when Michael Jordan retired he was the best basketball players. Someone once said to him, “Michael, I wish I could shoot like you.” He looked over and said, “No you don’t. If you did, you would be out here on the court 12 hours a day practicing.” We are called to practice our faith – faith and works – loving God with all our heart, mind, and strength, and others as we love our very self. And we are also called as a community in Christ to hold each other accountable to that great command. As the motto from the ancient Aesop’s fable goes, “United we stand, divide we fall.”[1] So it is with the Body of Christ.

Brothers and sisters, whenever you see water, remember your baptismal vows and live them every moment of your life. . . especially in times of difficulty and crises, in times when you just want to give up and play dirty. That is not the way of God, that is the way of death and destruction…not only for others, but also your own very self.

[1] The Four Oxen and the Lion

SCRIPTURE: James 3:1-18 (The Message translation)

 When You Open Your Mouth

1 Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. 2 And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you’d have a perfect person, in perfect control of life. 3 A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. 4 A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. 5 A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it! It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. 6 A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell. 7 This is scary: You can tame a tiger, 8 but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. 9 With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. 10 Curses and blessings out of the same mouth! My friends, this can’t go on. 11 A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? 12 Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?

Live Well, Live Wisely

13 Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here’s what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. 14 Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn’t wisdom. 15 It’s the furthest thing from wisdom—it’s animal cunning, devilish conniving. 16 Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats. 17 Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. 18 You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.

MEDITATION

The Christians in James’ congregation had problems trying to live out this moral law to love our neighbor as ourselves. Specifically, James listed three problems that his church had as they tried to live out this moral law of love. What does it mean to you’re your neighbor as yourself and you do not care take of the widows and orphans? Christians neglected the widows and orphans; Christian people did not care of the widows and orphans in their midst. We find the same problem in the book of Acts; that is, people were not taking care of the homeless and hurting people in the book of Acts. And so James said, “Religion which is pure and undefiled is this: it is to care for widows and orphans in their suffering and to remain unstained from the world.”

A second problem that James noticed, as his people were trying to live out the moral law of loving your neighbor was yourself, was this: The Christians in his congregation were showing favoritism to rich people who were coming into the church. The richer Christians were ignoring the poorer Christians and were not being generous at all to the poor. One Christian said, “I have faith,” and the next Christian said, “Well, I have charitable love.” So James finally said, “Faith without works of charity is dead, just as a body without a soul is dead, so faith without works of love is dead.” You cannot separate faith from charitable love.

There was third problem that James noticed in his congregation. You are to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the royal law, the perfect law, the law of love. But what does this mean in terms of the tongue? This theme is found in chapters one, three and four. It is one of the most dominant themes in the book of James.

I would like for you to try an experiment with me.  We are going to exercise choice, make a decision and then watch the power of our words cause a physical reaction … thousands of neural circuits will be engaged as we do this.Repeat after me… “I love you.” Now repeat my words again… “I hate you.”Do you see? — We are entrusted with a great power here. We are given a gift that can create or destroy. We can build up or tear down with this gift. Do you remember that one of the strongest warnings Jesus ever issued has to do with the matter of how we use our speech?  Listen carefully: “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter…”  Matt. 12:36 Why is this issue so important to Jesus, and to his brother James?  The fact is, our power of speech is very close to the issue of our being created in the image of God.  Word is powerful.  It is by the power of the Word that God created the universe.  When God said, “Let there be…” there was!  It is the Word become flesh that brought us salvation.  The author of the letter to the Hebrews says, The Word of God is living and powerful — it is sharper than any two edged sword.”  [Heb. 4:12] We can draw people to the love of God with our speech or we can turn them off.  We can set the course of a child’s life with a careless word and turn a young person around with a positive nourishing word. Brothers and sisters, as we are called to participate in God’s mission of the world, our words are powerful tools in God’s hands as God creates, redeems, and reconciles all things to God’s self.  

Remember, when words spew out of our mouths with out great thought or care it is like trying to get the toothpaste back into the tube after it has spewed all over the bathroom sink. Be mindful, and listen to God to who gives us words, especially in the most stressful and anxious times, and let us not be quick to speak out so we may be more creative in the Spirit of God than destructive and contrary to God’s desire.

THE READING (James 2, The Message translation)

The Royal Rule of Love

1 My dear friends, don’t let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, Christ-originated faith. 2 If a man enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags comes in right after him, 3 and you say to the man in the suit, “Sit here, sir; this is the best seat in the house!” and either ignore the street person or say, “Better sit here in the back row,” 4 haven’t you segregated God’s children and proved that you are judges who can’t be trusted? 5 Listen, dear friends. Isn’t it clear by now that God operates quite differently? He chose the world’s down-and-out as the kingdom’s first citizens, with full rights and privileges. This kingdom is promised to anyone who loves God. 6 And here you are abusing these same citizens! Isn’t it the high and mighty who exploit you, who use the courts to rob you blind? 7 Aren’t they the ones who scorn the new name—”Christian”—used in your baptisms? 8 You do well when you complete the Royal Rule of the Scriptures: “Love others as you love yourself.” 9 But if you play up to these so-called important people, you go against the Rule and stand convicted by it. 10 You can’t pick and choose in these things, specializing in keeping one or two things in God’s law and ignoring others. 11 The same God who said, “Don’t commit adultery,” also said, “Don’t murder.” If you don’t commit adultery but go ahead and murder, do you think your non-adultery will cancel out your murder? No, you’re a murderer, period. 12 Talk and act like a person expecting to be judged by the Rule that sets us free. 13 For if you refuse to act kindly, you can hardly expect to be treated kindly. Kind mercy wins over harsh judgment every time.

Faith in Action

14 Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? 15 For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved 16 and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? 17 Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense? 18 I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, “Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I’ll handle the works department.” Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove. 19 Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? 20 Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands? 21 Wasn’t our ancestor Abraham “made right with God by works” when he placed his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? 22 Isn’t it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are “works of faith”? 23 The full meaning of “believe” in the Scripture sentence, “Abraham believed God and was set right with God,” includes his action. It’s that mesh of believing and acting that got Abraham named “God’s friend.” 24 Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works? 25 The same with Rahab, the Jericho harlot. Wasn’t her action in hiding God’s spies and helping them escape—that seamless unity of believing and doing—what counted with God? 26 The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse.

MEDITATION

As we celebrated our country’s Independence Day this past Friday, and I was working on today’s meditation illuminated by the brilliance of fireworks, I thought about James’ teaching on the Royal Rule of Love and the first few lines of our Declaration of Independence from English rule. This document influenced of Abraham Lincoln, who viewed the Declaration as an ideal for which the nation should strive, especially as expressed in Jefferson’s famous preamble: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” By the way, of the 56 signers, a quarter of them were active Presbyterians, including John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minster and president of Princeton, all responding out of our Christian tradition’s understanding of humanity and democracy.  

The first evident truth our Declaration brings forth is that God created all men, or people, equal. As a country, we have been struggling with this, as seen in our history around civil rights for women and anyone who is not a white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant land-holding man. The philosophy that backs this statement of the Declaration even to this day has a hard time being lived out by “We the People”. There seems to be something in our human nature, perhaps the desire to survive and thrive, that we sometimes forget all people were created equally in the image of God, as Genesis teaches. In fact, the whole Bible shows how humanity has struggled with this reality of God’s design and desire. This is what is at the heart of James’ letter today, and rooted in Jesus’ Royal Rule of the Scripture, the Rule of Love…Love God with all your heart, mind and strength, and loves others as you love yourself…and show it.

In his autobiography, Mahatma Gandhi wrote that during his student days he read the Gospels seriously and considered converting to Christianity…he was drawn by the unconditional love and God’s desire for relationship. He believed that in the teachings of Jesus he could find the solution to the caste system that was dividing the people of India. So one Sunday he decided to attend services at a nearby church and talk to the minister about becoming a Christian. When he entered the sanctuary, however, the usher refused to give him a seat and suggested that he go worship with his own people. Gandhi left the church and never returned. “If Christians have caste differences also,” he said, “I might as well remain a Hindu.”

Some of you may be thinking, “Great history lesson, Pastor, but what does this all mean for me?” It means we all have a few question to ask ourselves about what we believe and what we do with our lives’ how does our beliefs (core values and understandings) reflect in our lives, and our lives reflect what we believe. First, what does it mean to “love” as James teaches, as Jesus teaches? What do you call it when you more than like someone, when you deeply respect and honor them, value them with every bit of your being, and willing to back them up or even put yourself in harms way to protect them? How do you show someone you respect, honor, value, and got there back no matter what? Would you do this just for anybody or are you selective? According to James, if we claim to follow Jesus and claim our name as a Christian, do we get to chose who we respect, honor, value, and advocate for out of God’s love? Can we profess our faith in God with our lips alone and not follow it up with what we do, and vice versa?

The answer to that last question I think was well demonstrated once by an old Scottish fisherman. He painted the word “faith” on one oar of his boat and “works” on the other. He was asked his reason for this. In answer, he slipped the oar with “faith” into the water and rowed. The boat, of course, made a very tight circle. Returning to the dock, the boatman then said, “Now, let’s try ‘works’ without ‘faith’ and see what happens. The oar marked “works” was put in place and the boatman began rowing with just the “works” oar. Again the boat went into a tight circle but in the opposite direction. When the boatman again returned to the wharf, he interpreted his experiment in these strong and convincing words, “You see, to make a passage across the lake, one needs both oars working simultaneously in order to keep the boat in a straight and narrow way. If one does not have the use of both oars they make no progress across the lake nor as a Christian.

Intro to the Reading (from The Message):

When Christin believers gather in churches, everything that can go wrong sooner or later does. Outsiders, on observing this, conclude that there is nothing to the religion business except, perhaps, business - and dishonest business at that. Insiders see it differently. Just as a hospital collects the sick under one roof and labels them as such, the church collects sinners. Many of the the people outside the hospital are every bit as sick as the ones inside, but their illnesses are either undiagnosed or disguised. It’s similar with sinners outside the church. So Christian churches are not, as a rule, model communities of good behavior. They are, rather, places where human misbehavior is brought out in the open, faced, and dealt with. The letter of James shows one of the church’s early pastors skillfully going about his work of confronting, diagnosing, and dealing with areas of disbelief and misbehavior that had turned up in congregations committed to his care. Deep and living wisdom is on display here, wisdom both rare and essential. Wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that; it is skill in living. For, what good is truth if we don’t know how to live it? What good is an intention if we can’t sustain it? According to church traditions, James carried the nickname “Old Camel Knees” because of thick calluses built up on his knees from many years of determined prayer. The prayers is foundational to the wisdom. Prayer is always foundational to wisdom.

Scripture Reading: James 1

 1I, James, am a slave of God and the Master Jesus, writing to the twelve tribes scattered to Kingdom Come: Hello! 

 2-4Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

 5-8If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.

 9-11When down-and-outers get a break, cheer! And when the arrogant rich are brought down to size, cheer! Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don’t ever count on it. You know that as soon as the sun rises, pouring down its scorching heat, the flower withers. Its petals wilt and, before you know it, that beautiful face is a barren stem. Well, that’s a picture of the “prosperous life.” At the very moment everyone is looking on in admiration, it fades away to nothing.

 12Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.

 13-15Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.

 16-18So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

19-21Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

22-24Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

 25But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

 26-27Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

The Meditation:

This letter was written by James, the brother of Jesus, when the Christians were being persecuted under Saul, who would then become Paul, and when there was a great famine throughout the Roman Empire. The ‘religious piety’  we read in the first chapter has been used in the past in ways to manipulate Christians, and for some of us today it may point to the very reasons why we might love Jesus, but hate organized religion.

With that said, there is still a word for us to hear from James. . . God can still redeem this letter for our lives and faith journey today. His piety may seem extreme to us, but what can we learn from his man’s perspective of prayers and his caring for the least of society? Start with the question one of my colleagues asked over lunch this past week: “If all the churches in the world were to burn down tonight and the religion was condemned or outlawed, would here still be a Church? Would there still be followers of Jesus? Why?  [Faith is more about people and relationships…at the root of all the lists of sins found in the Torah – about relationships…mercy, justice, compassion, hospitality, and humility in all our interactions with creation.]

One of the greatest ways we can reflect God’s passion for life giving relationships is to share the one invaluable thing God has given us in life…time. All of our time is limited – we are born and we know we will physically die (and pay taxes). It is what we do with our time that will bring joy not only to ourselves, but to others and to the heart of God. One of the ways we give of our time is by listening…and that can be down right difficult. Have you ever listened to someone but their words went in one ear and out the other?

In the first section of our reading from James, the underlying loving word is for us to Listen…even in times of great pressure and high anxiety. James says that even in the worst of times God is there working to redeem the situation and reconcile it to God’s very self. . . and if God is love, as the Apostle John says in his letter, then we can take comfort that God is there to help. And if we need help, James says open that line of communication up. . . send God a prayer text message or spiritual email (PRAY). Then don’t give up listening for God’s response. . . remember, God speaks to us in thousands of ways…many times through the loving relationships we have with others (take the time to look, listen, and talk). Don’t let fear master you because history has show that those who are overwhelmed with fear tend to make choices that in the end destroy relationships. Listening and prayer is at the heart of this religion James is writing about. “Lead with your ears and flow up with your actions.”

For James, the Christian religion that he understands and that God nurtures is a practical art of listening deeply to God’s heart then responding…and if we are interested in knowing where God’s heart is, look to Jesus, or even the core teachings of Judaism found in the first five books of the Bible. God’s heart points toward relationships, and living our daily lives in ways that shows that we care, our hearts, are also where God’s heart is, which may including thinking about our relationship with creation, our relationship with those who are marginalized in society, our relationship with the economics…in all of our relationships, how can we show mercy, justice (sound ethical decisions), compassion, hospitality and humility?

Church planting is hard, many pastors would say. But it’s where much of the church growth is happening in America at a time when most churches are dying.

Fri, Apr. 25, 2008 Posted: 13:30:24 PM EST

Church planting is hard, many pastors would say. But it’s where much of the church growth is happening in America at a time when most churches are dying.

“Two-thirds of all churches in America are plateaued and declining,” said Pastor Rick Warren after speaking Thursday to thousands of church planters at the Exponential Conference in Orlando, “and if it weren’t for the growth that’s taking place in church plants and megachurches, Christianity would be declining.”

Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif., says the growth in church plants and megachurches has helped keep the Christian population in the United States from dropping.

His comments come as the latest statistics from the Southern Baptist Convention, of which his church is a part of, show baptisms have dropped for the third straight year in 2007 and total membership dipped. Some say membership has plateaued and is on a trend toward decline unless change happens within the 16-million member denomination. Southern Baptists are now being seen as one among many major Protestant groups that are declining.

News of the denomination’s decline was released during the April 21-24 Exponential Conference where over 2,700 church planters and leaders attended to analyze the DNA of successful reproducing churches. The annual conference has been touted as the “mother of all church planting conferences”

Today, church planting has reached an all-time high with approximately 4,000 new churches planted every year in the United States, according to the “State of Church Planting USA” study. Church plants are also starting out with larger crowds with hundreds joining the first worship service, and the survival and success rate of church plants is at 68 percent.

One of the biggest trends in church planting today is the multiple venue church, or the multi-site church. The idea is that one church meets in multiple locations which are fed video satellite preaching from the main church campus.

Dave Ferguson, pastor of Community Christian Church, is expanding outreach and already transitioning from a multi-site church to a “poly-site” church – reproducing different kinds of campuses to reach different kinds of people – where the mission becomes the priority rather than just reproducing the same church, he said.

While some believe the large church trend will soon die out, Warren says the next generation of churches is going to be even bigger.

“They’re going to be far larger than the boomer generation of churches because they’re not limited to one campus anymore,” he said in an interview featured on the Exponential Conference Web site.

Warren’s Saddleback has planted over 40 independent “daughter churches” in Southern California and it recently launched a multi-site initiative with a goal of 10 campuses by the year 2010. According to Saddleback’s multi-site church blog, its new campuses in Corona and Irvine drew 490 and nearly 2,000 attendants, respectively, to the first service.

“Reproduction is the mark of health,” Warren commented.

Meanwhile, Alan Hirsch, co-founder of Shapevine and the founding director of Forge Mission Training Network which focuses on developing missional leaders in western contexts, believes church plants in America need to adopt a more missionary stance.

“I think here in America, I think church planting is still very bonded to church growth methodology and ideas,” Australian-born Hirsch said in an interview featured on MondayMorningInsight, a Web site for pastors and church leaders.

“It (America) hasn’t really thought through … the nature of the church as a mission agency. We simply have to adopt a missionary stance in relationship to our culture,” he continued. “We’ve got to break the monopoly that church growth thinking has over our mindset. Because unless we do that we’ll never become a truly missionary agency.”

The Exponential Conference featured other well-known speakers, including Tim Keller, founding and lead pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian; Ed Stetzer, former church planter and director of Lifeway Research; and Andy Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Community Church.

Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter

The pastor of Europe’s largest evangelical church gave advice on how to revive Christianity and the Church in the United States Tuesday evening during a Q&A session based on questions submitted by American Christians.

Thu, Apr. 24, 2008 Posted: 09:57:29 AM EST

The pastor of Europe’s largest evangelical church gave advice on how to revive Christianity and the Church in the United States Tuesday evening during a Q&A session based on questions submitted by American Christians.

Sunday Adelaja, founding pastor to the 30,000-member God’s Embassy Church in Kiev, Ukraine, was the featured guest of a teleconference hosted by Strang Communications, the publisher of Charisma and Ministry Today magazines.

God’s Embassy Church boasts more than two million converts and 600 church plants worldwide.

During the Q&A, Adelaja emphasized how the Church should not be pulpit-focused, but rather concentrate on how to reveal Jesus Christ to people if they want to experience growth.

The Nigerian-born Christian leader used his own church as example, saying that his church first experienced massive growth after four fruitless years when he started to go out and fed the poor and took care of the drug addicts and alcoholics in Ukraine.

He also encouraged every single church member to influence and impact the culture for God.

“Do not let your people get comfortable with sitting down in the pews,” Adelaja advised a pastor who submitted a question during the teleconference. “You have to literally push them out of the pews and strengthen them so they can go out there and invade the darkness of the world because they are the light of the world.

“You have to really keep on pushing them to believe in themselves that they can change the world for God.”

The influential European pastor said that the mayor of Kiev, the chief justice of Ukraine, and the prime minister of the country all come from his church.

Adelaja was also critical of U.S. churches, saying they were a “far cry” from real churches and that this generation of Americans have not seen the real church yet.

“The way things are now in America, the way we do church is kind of like a program,” Adelaja observed. “We are doing church as a club. We are trying to make people feel good, to entertain them, or try to keep them. So because of that concern – we don’t want them to go or to lose them – we kind of try to suit them.

“We are pleasing men instead of pleasing God,” the megachurch pastor continued. “I think we need to change our focus and our focus has to be ‘what is the heartbeat of God?’ ‘What does God desire?’ ‘Does He really want me to just make these people happy and keep them here forever until they die or I die? Or is it better for me to fire them up and encourage them to go and live their life truly for God and for kingdom?’”

Adelaja also diagnosed American Christians as egocentric and said that they need to be taught that the focus of their life is not themselves, but God. Adelaja said that as long as pastors teach that the purpose of believing in God is for them to be blessed then people will never influence their culture.

Earlier this year, Adelaja released his latest book, ChurchShift, which broke Amazon.com’s top 10 Bestsellers list. ChurchShift’s mission is to spark a revolution in American culture with the goal of reforming 10,000 U.S. churches so that they will in turn reform American society.

Adelaja grew up a poor orphan in Nigeria and was raised in a Christian home by his grandmother. He did not own a pair of shoes until he was 12 years old and had to earn a living from the age of six. Through the prayers of his Christian grandmother, Adelaja gave his life to Christ at 19 years of age. He traveled to the Soviet Union to study journalism on a scholarship and later founded Embassy of God Church after the Soviet Union was dismantled.

The Embassy of God Church is the largest church in all of Europe with some 100,000 total members, including those from all its satellite locations. Although Adelaja is African, white Europeans make up 99 percent of his church. The church has planted more than 600 churches in more than 45 countries, including 20 churches in the United States.

Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter

Was moved by this… Hope it will touch you, too. (Even the most cliche truths are still truths.) Blessings to you, Pam’la

Tue, Apr. 08, 2008 Posted: 15:19:18 PM EST

Non-Christians are more receptive to the Gospel today than at any point in recent American history, according to one research team.

“We are seeing a new level of curiosity among those who are seeking out religion – and we rejoice that people are willing to hear about Jesus,” said Sam S. Rainer III, who heads Rainer Research.

While Rainer said he finds the increased receptivity among non-believers encouraging, the problem lies with churches not being able to connect with them and the culture.

“Christians and non-Christians intermingle socially every day, at work, the ballpark, and in the grocery store. But we’ve lost a sense of urgency in sharing the story of Jesus Christ,” he told The Christian Post. “We rush home from work in our cars, pull in the garage by the push of the button, and disappear in our homes to watch two hours of TV, only to get up and do it all over again. We’ll stand for hours in line to purchase a Nintendo Wii, but we cringe at crossing the street to get to know our neighbors.

“Believers, me included, need to do a better job at building a sense of community in our own neighborhoods,” he added.

But there are churches that have contextualized the timeless message of the Gospel to the culture and are connecting successfully with their communities, Rainer noted.

“Nothing excites me more as a pastor and researcher than hearing about churches that connect with their communities and unashamedly proclaim the name of Christ in a way people can understand,” he said.

Ryan Bolger, assistant professor of church in contemporary culture in Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Intercultural Studies and co-author of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Communities in Postmodern Cultures, has found many churches that are expressing their faith in ways that resonate with those in the 21st century. And they go beyond outreaches and trendy worship that only aim to draw people to church services.

“Donald McGavran … said a person shouldn’t have to change cultures to find God,” Bolger said, referring to a former Fuller professor. “A person’s difficulty with the Christian faith is often sociological, not theological.”

After five years of research on emerging churches, Bolger discovered places that were expressing the Christian faith in cultural forms that made sense to a population that has become more urban. Churches that have been able to connect with their communities were more relational, focused on practices and less institutional, he found.

Such churches incorporated aspects of people’s daily lives – whether it’s ipods, art or music – into their worship to “weave together the sacred and the secular,” he said in a recent interview featured on Fuller’s Web site. Along with creativity, these emerging churches have refocused on the life of Jesus as a model way to live. Thus, inviting the outsider in, hospitality, forgiving, peacemaking and praying together daily are central, Bolger pointed out.

“It’s not extra, it’s not an outreach. It’s actually the Gospel. So it’s something they have to get right,” he said, noting that the emerging churches look to express faith in the workplace, neighborhoods and in everyday activity and are not necessarily looking for ways to bring people to church services.

“The reason they do that is to ground their faith in the practices of everyday so it’s not a detached other worldly only faith, but it’s something that connects to their everyday,” said Bolger.

Lillian Kwon
Christian Post Reporter