Our lives are a stupid investment.

I would never tell anyone to use their money to invest in something that was sure to fail. Most investments, as in real estate, stocks or other financials are opportunties to multiply your initial investment with a certain amount of risk. Each dollar invested has the potential to increase or decrease. There is no certainty either way. If I was telling people how to invest there would be no reason for me to tell them to place hard earned money into something which was going to be worthless.

But there is a certain investment which is sure to fail and another that is certain to produce growth.

Our lives are an investment in something. As we live our lives minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day we are making an investment of time, energy and resources into something. Paul says there is a way we can invest this ‘commodity’ of life into something that has substance and will produce returns.

“Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that that work is never in vain in the Lord.”- Apostle Paul, I Cor. 15:58.

This verse comes after 57 verses where Paul talks in detail about what is going to happen when believers are resurrected and begin their new life, which has begun now, but will then have its full effect. And at that point everything will be restored to how God intended it to be. And from then on we will exist and experience a reality we have only tasted forever. Forever is a long time.

Our encouragement from Paul is to work hard ALWAYS doing the work of the Lord because that investment will produce substance into eternity. It literally “not empty” Paul says in I Cor. 15:58. That is an investment I can recommend. An investment not of “perishable” things like houses, cars, pleasures, careers, etc. which will fade away with the passing of this age. But the investment of the imperishable things, which will not be destroyed by “moths” and “stolen by thieves.” So to not do the work of the Lord or to put it another way, to invest this life into things that we want is really a stupid investment. Especially in light of what is to come.

The gospel says, Your life is a stupid investment. Invest in the Lord’s work and you will have reward for eternity.Invest in what you want and that is all you get.

I will sacrifice and give of myself for the good of the kingdom. I will say ‘no’ to myself in order to love others more and give more of myself. I will prioritze the kingdom of God in my life over everything else because my life is not important to me. Help me Lord because I want to believe this. Help me to believe your gospel.

Gospel-Centered Church

This week I am beginning a six week series on the church with our people. Here are some of my notes from a study Steve Timmis and Tim Chester put together called “gospel centered Church”. Good stuff.

Church – gospel centered church

The church exists because of the gospel for the gospel.

Mission is the central purpose of the church in the world.

Worship is about your whole life not just a meeting once a week.

Effective gospel ministry is long-term low-key and relational.

Leadership – It is not about getting people to support the churches ministry but about supporting the people of God in their ministry.

Minister – One who serves. Everyone is a minister. Leadership is not about the title you have but what you actually do.

Eph. 4:11-13 – Building the church toward maturity happens through God’s people not by the pastors and teachers. Their role is to serve the body to DO ministry.

Good teaching doesn’t make a church…good bible learning and action make a church.

Church activity is people centered rather than program centered.

People are essential to gospel ministry while buildings are not.

Here are types of people. Children. Singles. The homeless. Senior Citizens, Men, Women, Ethnic Minorities. 2^nd Generation Ethnic Miniorities, The disabled, Marrieds, Married with Children, People in Debt, Single Moms, Widows, College Students, Junior High Students, High School Students, etc. The list is endless…So should we hire a pastor for each group or equip the people in our churches to minister to the people God has already placed in their life.

Sometimes the message of the church can be: Stability. The church is there and on any given day of the week you can know what is going on come rain or shine. But this has a negative impact on MISSION. Becomes problematic.

Mission is the defining purpose of the church, then we will not make mission one activity among many.

The church is defined by the gospel and mutual commitment so we will not complicate things with constitutions, offices, and buildings.

The church is a family not a well-oiled machine.

A church is a community of people who are living out the gospel, so we will not reduce church to attendence to a weekly meeting.

Effective gospel ministry is long-term, low key and relational so we will not organize spectacular ministry events or campaigns.

Worship is a lifestyle not a polished worship set.

Living out the gospel means it’s always about everyone else.

Dear Church, God is the glorious one…

The mount of transfiguration is a key passage in the gospels. It sets apart Christ as the authoritative voice for God’s followers. He is the one we must will listen to, worship and completely submit ourselves. God lifts Jesus up and makes it clear he is the glorious one.

This truth of the gospel, that Jesus is the glorious one, must impact how we conduct church. So many times that we set our churches up to be the glorious one in order to win more people to Christ. If we just have the right programs, or buildings or guitar solo God will be lifted up and people will come. Pastors, in this model, are shepherding less and less and become program maintenance men.

Church evaluation should not be any of these things but how well we point to Christ; the glorious one.

N.T. Wright gives an analogy about the nation of Israel and how they went wrong as God’s people. What they ended up doing was setting up a bunch of mirrors around themselves and admiring the view. They got their eyes off of the glorious one and were impressed with themselves.

The gospel says: God is the glorious one…

…so I do not have to be. I don’t have to pretend I am something I am not or put on a front to people to protect myself. I can be vulnerable and admit my need for the glorious one and others.

…so our church will desire to reveal God’s glory in our everyday life in the gospel not through a once a week performance.

…so our church will decrease the amount of money, time, energy, and leadership put into church gatherings and increase the amount resources we put into everyday life with gospel intentionality.

…so we will commit to making church easily reproducible because it doesn’t take a professionals to conduct the business of church.

…so we understand church will be messy (as in the New Testament) and we will understand we are all in process. Jesus being the only one who is perfect.

Psalm 46:10 – “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

What makes a ‘church’ a ‘church’?

What are the essential ingredients that make up a church?

Chime in and tell me what you think. If you don’t sign it at wordpress let me know via facebook or twitter (@mswaneys).

Thanks.

Think about flowers

God’s provision

Matthew 6:28-33

He cares for the lilies how much more does he care for you?

We only get half the affect of Jesus’ words here if we see those words as the only thing speaking to us about God’s provision. The WORD continues to speak to us in our environment and this is where we get the full affect of Jesus’ teaching.  When we take a walk in the park and consider creation then Jesus words apply to our context. Every time we see a flower, tree or bird we should take notice of it. Notice how still today, as in Jesus’ day, it does not work for its provision but is simply provided for by God. And we remember how much more important we are to God than the environment. It’s as if our environment is a big sign screaming out to us about God’s provision.

God is more interested in developing the part of you that will last forever than he is making you secure. The security or peace as Jesus calls it comes from Him alone. True, abiding peace comes through our daily trust in him. God has provided for us today but not necessarily in the future. But Jesus speaks to that when he says”don’t worry about tomorrow because today has enough worries of its own.” Or in the Lord’s prayer when he says, “give us this day our daily bread.” We are free from having to worry about tomorrow because God’s faithfulness will sustain us today and he helps that eternal part of us, our faith, grow daily as he provides.

Let’s also remember that God provides in ways we might not like or might not expect. But we accept that provision agreeing that his will is better than ours. He knows better and cares more about ourselves than we do. Again it goes back to how much faith do I have in him providing?

It’s important to understand how this section ends and what we are to seek. God does not tell us that our clothes, food, and shelter are not important. But he offers us a choice to seek after those things like the Gentiles who have no faith. Or we can let God provide those things and seek after his kingdom. He is asking us to make the kingdom a priority not a part of our lives.

“Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.”

What would your life be like if you only had to think about today?

What is not trusting God for your provision costing you right now? (peace, rest, ability to love people, etc)

Video from Matt

We taped this video of Matt a few days before his brain surgery and aired it this weekend at our worship services. We pray your heart is challenged and encouraged by

via Video from Matt.

I will build my church

Jesus is very clear who is responsible for building his church.  He is.  The promise Jesus makes is in Matthew 16:18,  “I will build my church.”  There is so much wrapped up in this promise. Here are a couple of things about the promise that I would like to highlight:

First, Jesus builds his church. This is important because it helps us understand his role and our role in his church.  Our role is to be faithful to what God has called us to do and leave the results to him. I do not have to put pressure on myself to build a program or create a pretty church so people will come. My job is to be faithful to the task God has asked of me and leave the results up to him no matter what the outcome might be.

Second, the “will” in “I will build my church”is future and ongoing.  He is building it right now and he will continue to build it until he comes back. Colossians 1:5b-6 says,

“This you have heard before in the work of truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing-as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth…”

So Jesus is building his church through the gospel which is growing day by day throughout the whole world. And these little communities of light or churches are growing because of God not us.

Jesus is the glorious one who will build the church so we do not have to try and manipulate people or perform to create a beautiful church to ‘get’ people. God is the glorious one and we are his bride. Our churches do not have to outperform Hollywood to impress people or compromise the message to get people into church. We just need to be faithful to the task God has asked us to do and participate faithfully with him as he builds his church.

We have to move from the thinking that if we just had this program or if this was just a certain way our church would grow and accept and love those who God brings into our lives. The person in front of you is the one God wants you to love and give yourself to. The results are in his hands and we can be confident that he will build his church.

Lastly, its important we understand Jesus is not just saving individuals but parts for his church. His project or strategy is to build a church who will be a light to the world. We are not simply saved and waiting to die so we can go to heaven. We are saved to be a functional part of a body of believers to reach the world. The church is that community who will show the reality of the kingdom to a lost world.

My Heart is full and I am Thankful

About a week a ago doctors found a large growth on the brain of Matt Chandler from the village church.

He is in surgery today and I thought his blog today was amazing. Here it is:

My Heart is full and I am Thankful.

faux community

“If you want to know about water don’t ask a fish.”

Individualism-  belief in the primary importance of the individual and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence is the water we swim in.

This is the context or setting we find ourselves in in the West, especially in the United States. At an early age we learn to be self-reliant and independent. We believe that if we learn to live this way we will protect ourselves because we will not be dependent on anyone else. If our lives ‘fail’ it will be because we ‘failed.’ We also do not want to be a burden to anyone. My concern here is to introduce you to this ‘water’ you are swimming in and how it might impact how you function in the church.

Worship services in churches have become a sort of corporate individualism where we worship with someone next to us who we may have never seen before and will most likely ever get to know. Have you ever thought how weird it is when someone up front asks you to turn around and greet the people next to you? That’s because it is weird. But it also shows our attempt to retro-fit community into something that by its very nature is not communal but corporate. And we ‘prefer’ these services and pseudo-communities because they let us maintain our individualism. So we choose to stay as individuals, independent from others with the guise of being in community because we show up once a week and meet in a corporate setting.

Steve Timmis makes a great point when he says “our services and churches are really just loose affiliations of ‘me.’ There is no functional ‘we’.” What he means is we do not understand our identity as ‘we’ instead of ‘me’ within the church.

If we are going to think about church biblically we must see ourselves more like a part than an individual. Each of us is a “part of a body” the Apostle Paul says (I Cor. 12).  When each of us is saved we are a part waiting to fit into a body who God is using. We are like a puzzle piece waiting to fit into a body of other believers for mission to the world. Here is another section from I Corinthians where Paul is writing to the early church in Corinth. Here is what Paul says:

“God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body” (I Corinthians 12:18-19).

So a true body (church) operates as a ‘we’ and not loose connections of ‘me’. Functionally, we will strive more and more to live life together and devote ourselves to one another (Romans 12:10).

I actually believe there is a place for worship services in the functional part of local churches but the nature of the service is important to understand. We cannot give people the idea they ‘attend church’ once a week and they are a functional part of the body of Christ. We must start with our churches understanding they are saved to be a part of a body in an intimate way. The worship service should just be a celebration of what God is doing during the entire week in these intimate communities doing the mission of God in their neighborhoods and cities.

grande vanilla Church…no whip.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to host a Pastor from Albania here in the States. In a conversation I asked him what he thought would be some of the challenges facing the American Church. His answer surprised me.  But over the last eight years of pastoral ministry I have found his words to be more and more true.

The Pastor from Albania told me the greatest obstacle in the American church would be ‘choice’. Choice? Really? I was taken off-guard. With everything else that could possibly hinder the church how could ‘choice’ be that important? He went on to explain that in his country, one of the poorest in the world, he does not have  many choices. Take something basic, like shopping for meat in the store. He purchases whatever the store has on that particular day. Sometimes the store has two kinds but usually there is just one. In contrast in here in the United States think about how many different choices of cuts, types and grades of meats we can choose from. Or what about toothpaste? Do we really need hundreds of different kinds of toothpaste?

While choice in an of itself is not wrong living a consumer lifestyle can have a negative impact on our spiritual lives. In our minds we tend to think more choice is better because it ‘frees’ us. But the Albanian Pastor’s point was American’s live with the illusion of control. And our lives and choices are built around our personal preferences on a constant basis. Without even realizing it we operate in a “I get what I want” world down to the smallest minutiae.

And our right to ‘choice’ doesn’t stop in the supermarket but infiltrates how we think about church. ‘Church shopping’ is common phenomena in the American church. Church shopping is when someone shops around for a church that meets their needs. By needs church shoppers mean preferences. They ’shop’ for a church that meets their needs.  Church ’shoppers’ are choosing a  church like shopping for anything else. Isn’t it ironic that people think they have the ability to choose something for their own needs. Almost as though they best know how to meet those needs and need to be in control.

The result of our consumer lifestyle and having access to so many choices is we start to believe we are actually in control of our lives. And our will is what matters. We tend to have a difficult time submitting to someone else’s will. Whether it’s God’s or the leadership in our church we believe we deserve to choose everything. And if we disagree with someone in the church we just move to another church where more of our needs are met.

One of the most beautiful parts of following God is releasing control of our needs to Him and letting him have control. We are not actually letting him but acknowledging that in reality he already has control we are just trying to take his place. He is the only one who can meet our deepest longings and he knows them better than we do. He is the creator and we are the creatures.

The church does not exist to meet your need but to be a light to the world. We all have desires the church should fulfill WHILE we are on mission. Desires like being a part of a body or giving of ourselves to a purposeful community.  But that is not the purpose of the church.  If people lift up those things or other things as the reason why we a part of a church people will continue to ‘church shop’ because no church is designed to meet those needs. The purpose of the church is to be a light to the world. The color of the pews really doesn’t matter that much.

“Not by will but yours be done…” – Jesus, praying to the Father