I'm woken up easily 6 out of 7 days. It can take something as simple as hearing faint footsteps of people upstairs to a change in lighting in my room. On the 7th day, Sunday night to Monday morning, I'm unconcious because, of course, I was probably exhausted from Sunday festivities. I usually sleep pretty well if I'm completely drained of energy.
The biggest problem though is my ability to fall asleep. For whatever reason, I have trouble getting to sleep often because of the things that weigh on my mind. My congregation knows pretty well by now that Sunday mornings are tough for me because I don't sleep well on Saturday nights. Some of those nights I don't sleep at all; I just kind of roll around in my bed.
Hard to sleep; easy to wake. That's been the story of my time as a pastor. It's not all terrible though, I get a good amount of sleep most of the time. You do have to remember that I am someone who needs more sleep than the 7 or 8 that people average. Well, I shouldn't say "need"; I prefer 9 hours to 9 and a half hours.
My alarm is usually the radio. But having mentioned that I can be awoken by different things, one thing that's been waking me up on occasion has been some sort of spiritual burden to pray.
In the last couple years, I've found times where at some point during the day, I feel a physical weight to pray for someone or something. It's like an alarm. I'll use the example of the passing of my grandma almost 2 years ago. During that Saturday, something started weighing heavily on me. I had the most eerie feeling that something was going to happen, and that it was going to hurt my family. Later that night at youth group, I get a text that something is wrong. I knew what happened even before I confirmed it with my family. When I got home and my mom confirmed with me that my grandma had indeed passed, it didn't stop me from being filled with grief; but for some reason, I knew it had happened even before I spoke with my mom.
This year, there was an instance where there was one night I was about to go to sleep. I suddenly felt a very odd physical feeling that alarmed me of a friend who was going through a difficult time with regards to that body part. Again, it moved me into prayer.
These types of instances have been happening to me for a while now. I wanted to write it down because I've been in a rather dry season for myself lately. My spiritual life has felt like it's dried up, but I had managed to get by because of the reminder that I still have tasks to do, which can be both a good and bad thing I guess. My life has been teetering on this for roughly 4 or 5 months. It's the tiredness that's caught up to me.
And yet, God has still been giving me affection for the people in my life. More nights than not, I have difficulty praying because in the desert, everything feels bland. So God has gently reminded me of my mortality and how little control I really have over my life. Way to kick me while I'm down right? Haha. But in doing so, coupled with putting these prayer alarms into me, I'm being told that there's still work to do and people to love.
I think for the first time in a little over 2 years, I'm actually experiencing the "labor" part of the work I'm called to.
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Set Apart
What we don't talk enough about is a Christian's journey in sanctification, being set apart, holy, like Christ.
Coming back from my ordination retreat this past week, I've been putting more thought into this whole journey of sanctification for a Christian's life. It's clear that, for the person, the core of what we hear in the Gospel is reconciliation, redemption, restoration unto God - use whatever fancy word you like, but what's important is beneath what is truly going on.
In our sessions at the retreat, we talked about the Holy Spirit in one, and then sanctification in the other. The two topics are closely related because we know that the Holy Spirit is the helper Jesus sent to help us, protect us, preserve us, teach us, etc. However, in talking about sanctification, we fell into a bit of a trap, I felt, about how we can cooperate and partner with the Spirit to help us in our journey of sanctification. Though our speaker emphasized it's not about a checklist or something of the sort, in our group discussions, we couldn't escape that concept of having markers to help us gauge where we're at. Eventually, it felt like we just needed to work harder and harder - gotta do more, and gotta try more. Needless to say, I felt a little chapped.
Staying quiet for most of the discussion, my cohort leader finally turned to me and asked me to speak up about how I deal with and teach sanctification for myself and for the community I'm in. I knew what I wanted to say, I just wasn't able to articulate it well enough for my group to get the best sense of everything I wanted to relay. Good thing I was speaking amongst a group of pastors, so I think they eventually understood because I looked at them at one point and they were all intently listening.
When we look at our Gospel, how often do we stress that it's the power of grace that sets us free? The Bible teaches, and so do we, that our salvation is not earned, it's gifted. However, when we come to sanctification, why do we find ourselves back to that "earning" mentality? Have to pray more, have to read more, have to go to church more, have to serve more. So many of these things we're supposed to invest more time and energy into just so we can become more like Christ. Don't get me wrong, it's important; but don't we ever feel overwhelmed?
Jesus said that no one can come to him unless the Father draws them to him. Our salvation takes place when God reveals himself to us, drawing us close to him so we can feel his boundless love and then respond in faith. For me, sanctification works in a similar way. I can't count how many times in my life where I've been told, whether by myself or others, to try harder and do this or do that, just to come away feeling so distant from Christ. Yet, on the other hand, sometimes when I feel compelled to be drawn in by the Spirit because of something, good or bad, that I feel so much more "sanctified" than I ever have through doing stuff.
The experiences where Christ calls me to just let go, to lay myself down at his feet, release any joy or pain I have, I've always come away from those so much stronger and so much more faithful. There's just something about being near to Christ that contributes to my journey of sanctification so much more than trying to do more. By being near Christ, because of his grace that draws me in, he fills me up in order that I may empty myself for his service again.
Sanctification means to be holy, to be set apart for God. We are called to be holy because God, himself, is holy. If salvation is a gift of grace, I don't see why sanctiication would differ so much from it. My sanctification will never be dependent on what I do or how much I try, it'll always be primarily coming back to the well that doesn't run dry. The reason I can get up with renewed faith and strengthened hope is because of Jesus pulling me closer and closer to him, letting myself go and allowing him to do so, in order that I may experience the great love that he has for me.
Coming back from my ordination retreat this past week, I've been putting more thought into this whole journey of sanctification for a Christian's life. It's clear that, for the person, the core of what we hear in the Gospel is reconciliation, redemption, restoration unto God - use whatever fancy word you like, but what's important is beneath what is truly going on.
In our sessions at the retreat, we talked about the Holy Spirit in one, and then sanctification in the other. The two topics are closely related because we know that the Holy Spirit is the helper Jesus sent to help us, protect us, preserve us, teach us, etc. However, in talking about sanctification, we fell into a bit of a trap, I felt, about how we can cooperate and partner with the Spirit to help us in our journey of sanctification. Though our speaker emphasized it's not about a checklist or something of the sort, in our group discussions, we couldn't escape that concept of having markers to help us gauge where we're at. Eventually, it felt like we just needed to work harder and harder - gotta do more, and gotta try more. Needless to say, I felt a little chapped.
Staying quiet for most of the discussion, my cohort leader finally turned to me and asked me to speak up about how I deal with and teach sanctification for myself and for the community I'm in. I knew what I wanted to say, I just wasn't able to articulate it well enough for my group to get the best sense of everything I wanted to relay. Good thing I was speaking amongst a group of pastors, so I think they eventually understood because I looked at them at one point and they were all intently listening.
When we look at our Gospel, how often do we stress that it's the power of grace that sets us free? The Bible teaches, and so do we, that our salvation is not earned, it's gifted. However, when we come to sanctification, why do we find ourselves back to that "earning" mentality? Have to pray more, have to read more, have to go to church more, have to serve more. So many of these things we're supposed to invest more time and energy into just so we can become more like Christ. Don't get me wrong, it's important; but don't we ever feel overwhelmed?
Jesus said that no one can come to him unless the Father draws them to him. Our salvation takes place when God reveals himself to us, drawing us close to him so we can feel his boundless love and then respond in faith. For me, sanctification works in a similar way. I can't count how many times in my life where I've been told, whether by myself or others, to try harder and do this or do that, just to come away feeling so distant from Christ. Yet, on the other hand, sometimes when I feel compelled to be drawn in by the Spirit because of something, good or bad, that I feel so much more "sanctified" than I ever have through doing stuff.
The experiences where Christ calls me to just let go, to lay myself down at his feet, release any joy or pain I have, I've always come away from those so much stronger and so much more faithful. There's just something about being near to Christ that contributes to my journey of sanctification so much more than trying to do more. By being near Christ, because of his grace that draws me in, he fills me up in order that I may empty myself for his service again.
Sanctification means to be holy, to be set apart for God. We are called to be holy because God, himself, is holy. If salvation is a gift of grace, I don't see why sanctiication would differ so much from it. My sanctification will never be dependent on what I do or how much I try, it'll always be primarily coming back to the well that doesn't run dry. The reason I can get up with renewed faith and strengthened hope is because of Jesus pulling me closer and closer to him, letting myself go and allowing him to do so, in order that I may experience the great love that he has for me.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Are We Doing Too Much?
At a glance of the title, and knowing where I'm going, you can already get a sense that the question is redundant.
I had a conversation with a mother today; she's new to our church, only having attended for a couple months, mainly to find a place for her son. There have been an influx of Koreans into our community, it seems, and this mother is among them. Though her family is an interesting case because she married a Chinese man, so she still has that connection to the Chinese culture.
In getting to know her, she's slowly begun to open up to me about why she started attending Newbern with her son. For several weeks, all she ever revealed was that she wants her son to find a Chinese church where he'd enjoy attending.
After service today, I sat down to see how they were doing, and she finally opened up more of what she's been looking for. Through her broken English, I did what I could to understand and allow her to speak; but one thing was very clear to me from everything she said. When she first mentioned it, her concerns about churches in Vancouver instantly gripped me tightly.
From her point of view, she essentially thinks churches seem to be trying to do too much. Everything feels very overwhelming, to a point of having so many programs that really push people to be here, be there, be everywhere. The mom told me that she really just wants a place where she can worship freely and experience fellowship the way it should be done. In her humility, she said she prefers simple and doesn't like the unbelievable amount of program/activity. She continued to say that in her search for a church, big and small, she felt very strongly about the lack of God's presence in many of the church communities.
By this point, I'm completely encaptivated by what she's saying. So I decided to take a step further and ask her why she's kept coming to our church with her son. After stumbling on her words, what I heard was basically that God wants them to be here. For a pastor, there aren't many other words I would rather hear than those that she had spoken.
In 5-10 short minutes, I felt incredibly humbled and challenged to review what I've been doing at Newbern. Do I tend to focus so much on programs that I completely forget about the presence of God in all my ministries? In being asked this question, I am determined to help this mother and her son find what they are looking for. But I can't help but think that there is a lot of truth to what she said. Not out of poor intention, but so many churches are so keen on trying to revive their church that they will resort to so many programs just to attract attendance. When we camp around building programs, people leave when programs leave. If we camp around Christ and his presence, lives are changed and Christ goes with us where we go. So much to dwell on.
The fact that her son said that he enjoys being here already brings me great joy. She helped me understand that her current goal is ultimately to find her son a church where he can belong, and then to find one for herself. In some ways, I hurt for her that she better understands and prefers Korean, but we're unable to provide that for her. So in seeing her sacrifice to break cultural barriers in order for her son to be in touch with the Chinese side of his heritage is very heartwarming to me. I need to do what I can to help her in her journey as well.
While this mother and son have been finding joy and a willingness to be at Newbern, they are actually the ones who are blessing us with their desire to be here.
I had a conversation with a mother today; she's new to our church, only having attended for a couple months, mainly to find a place for her son. There have been an influx of Koreans into our community, it seems, and this mother is among them. Though her family is an interesting case because she married a Chinese man, so she still has that connection to the Chinese culture.
In getting to know her, she's slowly begun to open up to me about why she started attending Newbern with her son. For several weeks, all she ever revealed was that she wants her son to find a Chinese church where he'd enjoy attending.
After service today, I sat down to see how they were doing, and she finally opened up more of what she's been looking for. Through her broken English, I did what I could to understand and allow her to speak; but one thing was very clear to me from everything she said. When she first mentioned it, her concerns about churches in Vancouver instantly gripped me tightly.
From her point of view, she essentially thinks churches seem to be trying to do too much. Everything feels very overwhelming, to a point of having so many programs that really push people to be here, be there, be everywhere. The mom told me that she really just wants a place where she can worship freely and experience fellowship the way it should be done. In her humility, she said she prefers simple and doesn't like the unbelievable amount of program/activity. She continued to say that in her search for a church, big and small, she felt very strongly about the lack of God's presence in many of the church communities.
By this point, I'm completely encaptivated by what she's saying. So I decided to take a step further and ask her why she's kept coming to our church with her son. After stumbling on her words, what I heard was basically that God wants them to be here. For a pastor, there aren't many other words I would rather hear than those that she had spoken.
In 5-10 short minutes, I felt incredibly humbled and challenged to review what I've been doing at Newbern. Do I tend to focus so much on programs that I completely forget about the presence of God in all my ministries? In being asked this question, I am determined to help this mother and her son find what they are looking for. But I can't help but think that there is a lot of truth to what she said. Not out of poor intention, but so many churches are so keen on trying to revive their church that they will resort to so many programs just to attract attendance. When we camp around building programs, people leave when programs leave. If we camp around Christ and his presence, lives are changed and Christ goes with us where we go. So much to dwell on.
The fact that her son said that he enjoys being here already brings me great joy. She helped me understand that her current goal is ultimately to find her son a church where he can belong, and then to find one for herself. In some ways, I hurt for her that she better understands and prefers Korean, but we're unable to provide that for her. So in seeing her sacrifice to break cultural barriers in order for her son to be in touch with the Chinese side of his heritage is very heartwarming to me. I need to do what I can to help her in her journey as well.
While this mother and son have been finding joy and a willingness to be at Newbern, they are actually the ones who are blessing us with their desire to be here.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Honor
Recently, I hit a spot where I was put in my place in a very good way. There are very few times I can recall where I felt so undeservedly honored to a point where I couldn't really bear it.
I went to our middle-aged fellowship gathering (don't know what else to call them, haha) at one of the senior couples' home. When I got there, I was just making my rounds saying hello to everyone when I got to the man of the house, an original founding member of the church I pastor at, and an incredibly wise man.
He asked me if I could spare a few minutes of time with him because he wanted to know how I studied during my devotion time. I was glad to have the chance to share, but I quickly realized that he didn't really ask me what he wanted to ask me. So I get brought into his study room, and I'm blown away by the amount of books and bibles laying around, from shelves to tables, much like a scholar and deeply devoted man would. He started pointing out a little bit of what he did, how he tackled the Word of the Lord, and I was so blown away at how devoted and faithful he had been all these years. I saw commentaries, dictionaries, maps, shelves of notes, teaching material, etc. My initial thoughts were that I could learn from this man, he's got wisdom of generations stored up in his house.
And then the moment came. He turns to me and asks, "Can you give me advice on how I can do a better job in studying the Word?"
Picture an 80 something year old man, essentially bowing down, and asking his 25 year old pastor on advice on how to study the Bible better. I can count on one hand how many moments in my life where I'm so caught off guard by something that I am literally left speechless, unable to open my mouth even if I wanted to. This situation added to that number.
I stood there with a dumbfounded smile on my face, not able to come up with anything to say, because I'm thinking to myself that I should be learning from this man. But instead, he has the grace and humility to ask me on how to do better in studying God's word. Needless to say, I felt embarrassed; I wish I was half the man this guy was in diligence and faithfulness to studying the Word.
Sheepishly, I confessed to him that I think I really should be learning from him, but he asked again. Looking at his anticipation of my response, I simply couldn't offer him anything that I thought would enrich his studying. This man has traveled the world, served tirelessly for years, studies with fire, and is asking me, some dork, who grew up in Edmonton and could barely keep a conversation moving, on how to better study the Bible. Honestly, what can I even say?
My response is irrelevant because I've already been put in my place. Humbled doesn't even begin to describe the honor that I felt that he would ask me. For a while I'd been concerned that I can't make a difference in the lives of those who are beyond my experience and stage in life, but God just really has a way to show me how he's going to use me however he pleases.
It's been a few days and I'm still not over the fact that this happened. I can't help but to praise God for giving me the opportunity to know this man and to learn from his example of humility. What do you even say to that?
I went to our middle-aged fellowship gathering (don't know what else to call them, haha) at one of the senior couples' home. When I got there, I was just making my rounds saying hello to everyone when I got to the man of the house, an original founding member of the church I pastor at, and an incredibly wise man.
He asked me if I could spare a few minutes of time with him because he wanted to know how I studied during my devotion time. I was glad to have the chance to share, but I quickly realized that he didn't really ask me what he wanted to ask me. So I get brought into his study room, and I'm blown away by the amount of books and bibles laying around, from shelves to tables, much like a scholar and deeply devoted man would. He started pointing out a little bit of what he did, how he tackled the Word of the Lord, and I was so blown away at how devoted and faithful he had been all these years. I saw commentaries, dictionaries, maps, shelves of notes, teaching material, etc. My initial thoughts were that I could learn from this man, he's got wisdom of generations stored up in his house.
And then the moment came. He turns to me and asks, "Can you give me advice on how I can do a better job in studying the Word?"
Picture an 80 something year old man, essentially bowing down, and asking his 25 year old pastor on advice on how to study the Bible better. I can count on one hand how many moments in my life where I'm so caught off guard by something that I am literally left speechless, unable to open my mouth even if I wanted to. This situation added to that number.
I stood there with a dumbfounded smile on my face, not able to come up with anything to say, because I'm thinking to myself that I should be learning from this man. But instead, he has the grace and humility to ask me on how to do better in studying God's word. Needless to say, I felt embarrassed; I wish I was half the man this guy was in diligence and faithfulness to studying the Word.
Sheepishly, I confessed to him that I think I really should be learning from him, but he asked again. Looking at his anticipation of my response, I simply couldn't offer him anything that I thought would enrich his studying. This man has traveled the world, served tirelessly for years, studies with fire, and is asking me, some dork, who grew up in Edmonton and could barely keep a conversation moving, on how to better study the Bible. Honestly, what can I even say?
My response is irrelevant because I've already been put in my place. Humbled doesn't even begin to describe the honor that I felt that he would ask me. For a while I'd been concerned that I can't make a difference in the lives of those who are beyond my experience and stage in life, but God just really has a way to show me how he's going to use me however he pleases.
It's been a few days and I'm still not over the fact that this happened. I can't help but to praise God for giving me the opportunity to know this man and to learn from his example of humility. What do you even say to that?
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Vapor
Two nights in a row, I'm reminded of how fragile life is and how quickly we come and go. We're not as invincible as we try to be.
"Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." James 4:14 (ESV)
For the Christ follower, "to die is gain" right? If that's so, and if I truly believe it, then death shouldn't be all scary like people make it out to be. What has begun to concern me more is what precedes that phrase in the well known Philippians passage.
"To live is Christ." When standing before the face of death, especially these last two evenings, I'm becoming more convicted that we, ones who call ourselves Christians, do an awful job at living the way Christ has called us to. We're too concerned about our own comfort and safety that we'd rather not cause any trouble, fearing that we might get hated on or something - because we're totally unaware and surprised that people don't like us to begin with, right?
When will we rise up as the Church to bring hope to the broken hearted? We lose good people everyday. I can't help but think that the people who are affected by such loss will only be able to find peace in Christ. I've been praying for revival, for the Holy Spirit to be blowing the winds of a resurgence, and for the sails of the church to catch this wind. There's been no other time that I've been alive where a need for Christ has been so strong. The world's been preaching a message of false hope and false salvation long enough. I want to be part of what Christ is doing in this city and this country; I firmly believe I'm no longer content to just sit quietly in my space and let people wander aimlessly with no real hope in their lives.
Our lives are way too short and fragile to just casually waste away.
"Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." James 4:14 (ESV)
For the Christ follower, "to die is gain" right? If that's so, and if I truly believe it, then death shouldn't be all scary like people make it out to be. What has begun to concern me more is what precedes that phrase in the well known Philippians passage.
"To live is Christ." When standing before the face of death, especially these last two evenings, I'm becoming more convicted that we, ones who call ourselves Christians, do an awful job at living the way Christ has called us to. We're too concerned about our own comfort and safety that we'd rather not cause any trouble, fearing that we might get hated on or something - because we're totally unaware and surprised that people don't like us to begin with, right?
When will we rise up as the Church to bring hope to the broken hearted? We lose good people everyday. I can't help but think that the people who are affected by such loss will only be able to find peace in Christ. I've been praying for revival, for the Holy Spirit to be blowing the winds of a resurgence, and for the sails of the church to catch this wind. There's been no other time that I've been alive where a need for Christ has been so strong. The world's been preaching a message of false hope and false salvation long enough. I want to be part of what Christ is doing in this city and this country; I firmly believe I'm no longer content to just sit quietly in my space and let people wander aimlessly with no real hope in their lives.
Our lives are way too short and fragile to just casually waste away.
Friday, May 20, 2016
Deeper
A big personal challenge of mine that I'm being called upon is to go deeper into my relationship with God. I don't want to say I've stagnated, because I've still had to learn to depend on God in new ways in the last couple of years, but that has never lead me to going deeper into knowing Christ.
"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?" (Luke 9:23-25)
This passage has long been one of my all time favorites. It's a reminder to me that everyday I need to surrender myself, all of me, to the will of God - much like how Jesus had to do it when he was praying in the garden. I've always said that everything I have is from God, so I give it all back to him. We all know that anyone can say that, but it's never completely true. So I need to learn to surrender more and more of myself. It's a tug-of-war because I'm always holding on to some piece of everything. I'll be scared that if I let go of control in some way, that I'll be lead somewhere I don't want to be.
This means death to self. It makes total sense, but is so difficult to do. If I rely on myself and my own power to grow and go places, I'm depending on the very strength and power that has lead me to living a life of sin, and hoping that I get closer to Jesus with it. You don't mix poison with poison and get clean water.
Fact of the matter is, if I want to go deeper, I have to be willing to let go. Unity in Christ leads to holiness, and I don't make progress if there are always little things I'm holding onto.
A challenge I wake up to, every morning.
"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?" (Luke 9:23-25)
This passage has long been one of my all time favorites. It's a reminder to me that everyday I need to surrender myself, all of me, to the will of God - much like how Jesus had to do it when he was praying in the garden. I've always said that everything I have is from God, so I give it all back to him. We all know that anyone can say that, but it's never completely true. So I need to learn to surrender more and more of myself. It's a tug-of-war because I'm always holding on to some piece of everything. I'll be scared that if I let go of control in some way, that I'll be lead somewhere I don't want to be.
This means death to self. It makes total sense, but is so difficult to do. If I rely on myself and my own power to grow and go places, I'm depending on the very strength and power that has lead me to living a life of sin, and hoping that I get closer to Jesus with it. You don't mix poison with poison and get clean water.
Fact of the matter is, if I want to go deeper, I have to be willing to let go. Unity in Christ leads to holiness, and I don't make progress if there are always little things I'm holding onto.
A challenge I wake up to, every morning.
Monday, April 4, 2016
When It Kicks In
Over the last several months, I've personally experienced a lot of growth in terms of the way my life is evolving and unfolding. I owe much of this change to the vision seeking that I mention a lot about in the latter half of 2015.
As church life gets busier and busier, my mind is also getting busier and busier with the way I think about how to approach church. I think it all started when I heard a guest speaker talk about church growth. The comment he made was that it's easy if you want a big church. All you have to do is have the right programs and the right marketing, and people will come. Make everything look pretty, and your church will grow in size.
Such a comment put me into a bit of a deep search about what it means for a church to grow. And throughout the following months, I kept coming back to the idea that disciples of Jesus are to make disciples of Jesus. In order to make a disciple, we have to know what a disciple is and how to be one.
And then I fell into a bit of a struggle in finding that a lot of our modern churches don't really do a good job at explaining what a disciple is and how they're made. If we don't even know how to be a disciple of Jesus ourselves, we can't go make more of us. So this has been a big reason of why I've been preaching the book of Philippians. Very few places in the Bible show us what an authentic and true follower of Jesus looks like in the way that Philippians does.
My struggle didn't stop there. I thought to myself that another reason why we don't seem to be good at making disciples is because we don't even know what makes a disciple. It may sound a little weird at first, but the common theme these days is to get people to accept Jesus into their hearts - this will make them a disciple. Really? All of our methods, those of which include raising up your hand, walking up the aisle, saying a prayer, to ask Jesus into our lives, these are what makes us disciples of Jesus? I've witnessed so many people do that, some even go as far as being baptized, but their lives look nothing like that of a Christ follower.
It makes me think: has this person really met Jesus? Or is he/she just going through the motions? Do they do all these actions just because it's what they've been doing all along? I've expressed to a few people recently, partly because it's weighed heavily on my heart, that I find it really hard to believe that someone can encounter the Jesus described to us in the Bible and not be radically changed.
To cut to the chase: our evangelism methods suck. We try too hard to make it all about "the decision" to put up your hand and to pray some kind of prayer that I'm still trying to find in the Bible that we're told to pray. The closest I've come is all of "repent and be baptized" in Acts. Still nothing on a prayer about accepting Jesus into your heart.
What lead to "repent and be baptized" is what we actually miss out on and what we need to focus on. We need to be able to present a full picture and story of the gospel of Jesus. We're good at the "believe in Jesus so you'll have eternal life!" But that's not the full picture. And unfortunately, we've tried to sell our entire faith on that one statement.
I feel so strongly about this because in a few instances over the last while, I've asked for an explanation of the Gospel and salvation told to me, and all I proceeded to see were blank stares. People who've allegedly grown up in the church, know all the Bible stories, know everything you'd expect them to know, but don't actually know the Gospel. This is what living in a post-Christian society has done to us.
It was amazing, actually. In one of these instances of a failure to explain the gospel of Jesus, I then changed my original plans and decided to explain the Gospel to the best of my ability. Some time in the middle of my explanation of the Gospel, I saw it. I visibly saw the relevance of Jesus take form in the faces of the people I was telling it to. It was a surreal moment for me, when the reality of the Gospel kicked in and suddenly came to life. Even though these two people had been taught all of these different things growing up, I think for the first time in their lives Jesus became real to them. One of them even confessed afterward, about how they were taught all these things growing up, but they didn't know what the Gospel truly was until that moment.
So I'm really thankful for this experience. It's tragic that pastors and leaders try to give people something other than Jesus for the very thing Jesus is trying to do in their lives. I think a lot of what we'll be needing to do is to restore the Gospel into the lives of our churches.
I would go through lengths again if only I can see more people come to the realization of what the Gospel means to them.
As church life gets busier and busier, my mind is also getting busier and busier with the way I think about how to approach church. I think it all started when I heard a guest speaker talk about church growth. The comment he made was that it's easy if you want a big church. All you have to do is have the right programs and the right marketing, and people will come. Make everything look pretty, and your church will grow in size.
Such a comment put me into a bit of a deep search about what it means for a church to grow. And throughout the following months, I kept coming back to the idea that disciples of Jesus are to make disciples of Jesus. In order to make a disciple, we have to know what a disciple is and how to be one.
And then I fell into a bit of a struggle in finding that a lot of our modern churches don't really do a good job at explaining what a disciple is and how they're made. If we don't even know how to be a disciple of Jesus ourselves, we can't go make more of us. So this has been a big reason of why I've been preaching the book of Philippians. Very few places in the Bible show us what an authentic and true follower of Jesus looks like in the way that Philippians does.
My struggle didn't stop there. I thought to myself that another reason why we don't seem to be good at making disciples is because we don't even know what makes a disciple. It may sound a little weird at first, but the common theme these days is to get people to accept Jesus into their hearts - this will make them a disciple. Really? All of our methods, those of which include raising up your hand, walking up the aisle, saying a prayer, to ask Jesus into our lives, these are what makes us disciples of Jesus? I've witnessed so many people do that, some even go as far as being baptized, but their lives look nothing like that of a Christ follower.
It makes me think: has this person really met Jesus? Or is he/she just going through the motions? Do they do all these actions just because it's what they've been doing all along? I've expressed to a few people recently, partly because it's weighed heavily on my heart, that I find it really hard to believe that someone can encounter the Jesus described to us in the Bible and not be radically changed.
To cut to the chase: our evangelism methods suck. We try too hard to make it all about "the decision" to put up your hand and to pray some kind of prayer that I'm still trying to find in the Bible that we're told to pray. The closest I've come is all of "repent and be baptized" in Acts. Still nothing on a prayer about accepting Jesus into your heart.
What lead to "repent and be baptized" is what we actually miss out on and what we need to focus on. We need to be able to present a full picture and story of the gospel of Jesus. We're good at the "believe in Jesus so you'll have eternal life!" But that's not the full picture. And unfortunately, we've tried to sell our entire faith on that one statement.
I feel so strongly about this because in a few instances over the last while, I've asked for an explanation of the Gospel and salvation told to me, and all I proceeded to see were blank stares. People who've allegedly grown up in the church, know all the Bible stories, know everything you'd expect them to know, but don't actually know the Gospel. This is what living in a post-Christian society has done to us.
It was amazing, actually. In one of these instances of a failure to explain the gospel of Jesus, I then changed my original plans and decided to explain the Gospel to the best of my ability. Some time in the middle of my explanation of the Gospel, I saw it. I visibly saw the relevance of Jesus take form in the faces of the people I was telling it to. It was a surreal moment for me, when the reality of the Gospel kicked in and suddenly came to life. Even though these two people had been taught all of these different things growing up, I think for the first time in their lives Jesus became real to them. One of them even confessed afterward, about how they were taught all these things growing up, but they didn't know what the Gospel truly was until that moment.
So I'm really thankful for this experience. It's tragic that pastors and leaders try to give people something other than Jesus for the very thing Jesus is trying to do in their lives. I think a lot of what we'll be needing to do is to restore the Gospel into the lives of our churches.
I would go through lengths again if only I can see more people come to the realization of what the Gospel means to them.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Great Heights
Few times I write about the good and great things about my life and job on here. I should probably do it more, so people don't think I'm completely depressed. LOL.
Well, as you'd expect me to be mentioning, I had the great privilege of baptizing my first two members this past Sunday into the church. Since I'd only ever been involved with helping in one other baptism in my life, I was bound to screw up some things this time as I was on my own. But I reminded myself that this was about the 2 youth that I was going to baptize, so it didn't matter so much about the little not-so-relevant details I may have missed.
Having spent the last 2 months doing the baptism class with these 2 teens, I spent a lot of time getting to know them a little better. The best thing about the whole process was to see their eagerness and willingness to try and to learn. It was cool to see them begin to learn how to process their salvation in a way that they can describe it because everyone tells it in their own unique way. I know that I'm a little nerdy, so the way I teach certain doctrines or other Christian-ese things may be a little complicated, but the 2 of them were right there with me.
Finally being able to dunk them in the tank on Sunday brought a tremendous sense of joy and honor for me. The image of a shepherd baptizing one of their sheep is such a cool sight to see. I was asked recently if only pastors are allowed to baptize people. I thought about it for a while, and never saw anywhere in the Bible that says it must be a pastor. I could be wrong, but to me, the person who baptizes you should be someone who has walked alongside you in your spiritual journey and has helped you along the way. So seeing myself in this kind of a situation from a broad perspective means that I must've done something to put myself there. It was a very humbling experience.
All in all, these types of scenarios are worth all the difficult times and hard work I have to put in to get there. I often tell people one of my greatest passions is to be able to walk alongside people in their lives, and baptism is a symbol that I've been given an opportunity to do just that. So I'm left here being incredibly glad and thankful that God gave me the privilege to play a role in someone else's life.
Well, as you'd expect me to be mentioning, I had the great privilege of baptizing my first two members this past Sunday into the church. Since I'd only ever been involved with helping in one other baptism in my life, I was bound to screw up some things this time as I was on my own. But I reminded myself that this was about the 2 youth that I was going to baptize, so it didn't matter so much about the little not-so-relevant details I may have missed.
Having spent the last 2 months doing the baptism class with these 2 teens, I spent a lot of time getting to know them a little better. The best thing about the whole process was to see their eagerness and willingness to try and to learn. It was cool to see them begin to learn how to process their salvation in a way that they can describe it because everyone tells it in their own unique way. I know that I'm a little nerdy, so the way I teach certain doctrines or other Christian-ese things may be a little complicated, but the 2 of them were right there with me.
Finally being able to dunk them in the tank on Sunday brought a tremendous sense of joy and honor for me. The image of a shepherd baptizing one of their sheep is such a cool sight to see. I was asked recently if only pastors are allowed to baptize people. I thought about it for a while, and never saw anywhere in the Bible that says it must be a pastor. I could be wrong, but to me, the person who baptizes you should be someone who has walked alongside you in your spiritual journey and has helped you along the way. So seeing myself in this kind of a situation from a broad perspective means that I must've done something to put myself there. It was a very humbling experience.
All in all, these types of scenarios are worth all the difficult times and hard work I have to put in to get there. I often tell people one of my greatest passions is to be able to walk alongside people in their lives, and baptism is a symbol that I've been given an opportunity to do just that. So I'm left here being incredibly glad and thankful that God gave me the privilege to play a role in someone else's life.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
To Love
August 9, 2008 -
What's happened since then? I entered into the UofA, dropped out of the UofA, answered God's calling into full-time ministry, moved to Calgary, interned in Saskatchewan, moved to Vancouver, began pastoring my own congregation. Each of these events were hugely significant events in my life.
However, when I look back at my life in its entirety, nothing comes close to this event that I described in the post. People often have defining moments/times in their lives, and this one is amongst the biggest ones for me. Back in January of this year, I wrote about not knowing how to love. That was part true, but I also left out a part that relates to this relationship I built with these twins. The complete and total truth was that I was afraid to love because of the knowledge that eventually I'd have to let people go. In having to let the twins go the first time, it destroyed my ability and willingness to give myself in to loving people.
As God allowed it, I recently reconnected with these two, and I got to meet up with them. A lot of times, you don't realize how much you miss people until you get to see them again. Even in just a short few hours today, I'm reminded of what they mean to me. Of course, I can't really look at our relationship the same way anymore because they're grown up. But I can confidently say that these two taught me how to love. I don't know anyone else in my life that I have this type of affection for, which represent it in a way as if they were my very own children.
This was then.
Now, I remember how much I cared about them and what I learned about what it means to love someone. I think that until/if I have my own children, I won't ever view someone the same way as I viewed these twins. I think a big part of being able to see them again today, I have closure in knowing that they'll be fine as humans on their own. The next step for me will be learning in how to fully let them go. I know that the first time I had to leave them, the pain scarred me. But I feel good about knowing now that I have to have faith that they'll be fine even if I never see them again. Although, it would bring no greater joy for me to be able to hang out with them some more in the near future.
My feelings for them today don't differ too much from how I felt when I wrote that post. Except the difference now is that I'm not writing it in sorrow or bitterness, I'm writing it with joy. And it reads so differently.
Hopefully, my grammar and articulation has gotten better over the 8 years. LOL
I found this entry that I wrote for a different blog that I had back in 2008. Hard to believe it's been 8 years; it's felt like an eternity.Okay, first of all if you look at what time it is right now, it is shortly passed 6:30 here in Vancouver on a Saturday morning and you might be wondering, "wow you're stupid to be up so early on saturday." Well thing is, I couldn't sleep very much last night because I kept thinking about camp and how much I'm gonna miss it.
I've been hit pretty hard about something yesterday when camp ended, it just stuck with me in my mind and kept coming back over and over again throughout the rest of the day and even till now. It works as a bit of a story followed by an explanation...
Camp has finally ended and we've gone to say goodbye to most of the children and began cleaning up for the final time. There are always kids that like to hang around even after camp because they live close and they love to be with us. I had met and created an amazing relationship with a set of twins called Rachel and Sarah over the course of the summer and I've spent alot of time with them getting to know them. So we were donated slurpees by one of the kids mom and Blair told us to stop what we were doing and to go grab a slurpee first. The twins usually stay behind with us because their sister is a street leader here and they have to wait for her. I don't teach these 2 girls bible or any class so I usually got to know them during rec or after camp. Most of the "bonding" came after camp because thats when we were more alone and the place was more quiet.
So anyways, we were walking to macs and Sarah was with me almost the entire time there and when we almost got there, I said to her, "man I'm really looking forward to this slurpee." It was a hot day okay. So there's a slight pause and with her arms around me she laughs a bit, looks at me and says,I look forward to seeing you again.
This hit me SO hard at first, I didn't know what to say and all I could come up with was "aww, me too." But throughout the rest of the day, this phrase kept coming back to me again and again and it made me so mad that all I had to respond with was 3 stinkin lousy words.
I quickly came to realize the amount of love I had for Sarah and Rachel that I just want to bring them back to Edmonton with me so badly. They've become like part of my family throughout the summer and we've spent alot of valuable time together hanging out during camp and even afterwards when I'm supposed to be cleaning. I was pretty devastated when I finally came to admitting that I could quite possibly never see them again. There's alot to what I was feeling during this time and I guess I won't put it on here because it'll probably sound real cheesy, so lets get to my point.
Through my relationship with Rachel and Sarah and what Sarah said to me on our way to macs, I came to experience God's love at a much higher scale. God let me experience what it was like to have so much love for someone that you refuse to want to let them go. It's really hard for me to put this into words because the feeling is so great, the only word I can use to describe it is indescribable. Surreal is what it really is and I'm so amazed that God has allowed me to know what it's like to an extent.
So while I was laying on my bed thinking about this stuff throughout the night, I came up with the best way to interpret what I'm saying. It's like taking a measuring tape and trying to measure the amount of love God has, and when we first become followers of Jesus, we would put the tape down and start pulling it out to bring the tape out. Of course when we start, we know that it'll take a while to get to the point where God's love is based on all the stories we here and all that other stuff. So you would pull and pull and pull on the measuring tape unwinding it. And soon, after 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, you realize.. "Wow, I'm still pulling and it hasn't stopped." And as you're pulling, you look back at the amount of measuring tape that is pulled out and you think, "man, there's just no end to what God's love is like." And even throughout the course of pulling all that measuring tape, there may be moments where you pulled really slow, and moments where you pull really fast. But in the end, you're still at where you're at in realizing how much love God has for us and that's what matters.
No matter where we are, or how long our measuring tape is to knowing how much love God has for us, we should recognize that, yeah there's a whole lot of measuring tape behind us, but we should focus on how much more there is in front of us and that we should pursue making this roll of measuring tape as long as we can. There really is no way we can completely measure how much God's love is because no matter how large you already think it is, it can only become bigger with time and more experience.
So through Rachel and Sarah, I was able to experience something absolutely amazing and I would not trade this feeling or experience for anything worth any amount of money or anything else. I am so glad that God has helped me come to see this and I know for sure that there's alot more from where this came from.
Love you two! It was definitely hardest to let you two go.
What's happened since then? I entered into the UofA, dropped out of the UofA, answered God's calling into full-time ministry, moved to Calgary, interned in Saskatchewan, moved to Vancouver, began pastoring my own congregation. Each of these events were hugely significant events in my life.
However, when I look back at my life in its entirety, nothing comes close to this event that I described in the post. People often have defining moments/times in their lives, and this one is amongst the biggest ones for me. Back in January of this year, I wrote about not knowing how to love. That was part true, but I also left out a part that relates to this relationship I built with these twins. The complete and total truth was that I was afraid to love because of the knowledge that eventually I'd have to let people go. In having to let the twins go the first time, it destroyed my ability and willingness to give myself in to loving people.
As God allowed it, I recently reconnected with these two, and I got to meet up with them. A lot of times, you don't realize how much you miss people until you get to see them again. Even in just a short few hours today, I'm reminded of what they mean to me. Of course, I can't really look at our relationship the same way anymore because they're grown up. But I can confidently say that these two taught me how to love. I don't know anyone else in my life that I have this type of affection for, which represent it in a way as if they were my very own children.
This was then.
Now, I remember how much I cared about them and what I learned about what it means to love someone. I think that until/if I have my own children, I won't ever view someone the same way as I viewed these twins. I think a big part of being able to see them again today, I have closure in knowing that they'll be fine as humans on their own. The next step for me will be learning in how to fully let them go. I know that the first time I had to leave them, the pain scarred me. But I feel good about knowing now that I have to have faith that they'll be fine even if I never see them again. Although, it would bring no greater joy for me to be able to hang out with them some more in the near future.
My feelings for them today don't differ too much from how I felt when I wrote that post. Except the difference now is that I'm not writing it in sorrow or bitterness, I'm writing it with joy. And it reads so differently.
Hopefully, my grammar and articulation has gotten better over the 8 years. LOL
Monday, March 7, 2016
Point of Limit
Last week, I had the great privilege of attending the Multiply Conference held by the C2C Network over at Westside Church. It was two full days of messages and sermon-like workshops where many pastors who had been part of a church planting experience shared about some important things they wanted church pastors and leaders to know.
The big names, of course, were Francis Chan and Jeff Vanderstelt. I was really excited to listen to the two of them speak live, and they did not disappoint. I took so much away from not only these two, but from the rest of the speakers as well. The different speakers all came from a different background of church planting and from different areas of the world.
I don't think there has ever been a two day period where I learned anywhere near as much as I did during this conference. There was so much to take in that in I felt, in some ways, over-stimulated. There was no way I was able to absorb and digest everything before needing to turn my attention to the next speaker.
One thing in particular I learned was from a pastor named Larry Osborne. I knew of his name prior to the conference, but I didn't know what to expect from him. He spoke twice, and I was far and away the most convicted from listening to him speak. He said one thing that really sticks to my mind.
We as pastors are the shepherd of the church who are the flock. When making disciples, we have to love and meet each person at their limitation. So often when we talk about discipleship, it's about training leaders and equipping people to play a part in the church. Larry separated this idea into discipleship and leadership. He said that discipleship is about helping people take the next step of obedience to Christ; leadership is to help people take the next step in sacrifice for Christ.
Having heard that, I couldn't help but look at myself and seeing my frustrations at church come from joining discipleship and leadership together. If you ask me, discipleship is the hard one. Because you have followers at the front lines, the mid lines, and the back lines, you have to meet each one at the point they seemingly cap out at, and allow them to take that next step. This means that if you have someone in the backline, you're not to get them straight to the front, it won't work.
This was so incredibly convicting because I'm guilty of wanting everyone to jump straight to the front. And when I see some of my members seemingly stay stuck in the back, I get upset because I count them as immature spiritually and unwilling to step to the front. For that, I have to apologize because I simply wasn't aware that there should be a distinction between disciple making and leadership training.
Then, the challenge for me is now to be able to meet each member at their point of limit and then love them at that point. This is tough, but it makes sense to me because that's where Christ meets us. Even a step further, Christ not only meets us at our best, he meets us at our worst. And since God himself is the great shepherd, I need to learn how to be able to do this, to engage people wherever they're at and help them take that next step in obedience.
I can't wait until the recordings from the conference get released so I can go back to listen to them again!
The big names, of course, were Francis Chan and Jeff Vanderstelt. I was really excited to listen to the two of them speak live, and they did not disappoint. I took so much away from not only these two, but from the rest of the speakers as well. The different speakers all came from a different background of church planting and from different areas of the world.
I don't think there has ever been a two day period where I learned anywhere near as much as I did during this conference. There was so much to take in that in I felt, in some ways, over-stimulated. There was no way I was able to absorb and digest everything before needing to turn my attention to the next speaker.
One thing in particular I learned was from a pastor named Larry Osborne. I knew of his name prior to the conference, but I didn't know what to expect from him. He spoke twice, and I was far and away the most convicted from listening to him speak. He said one thing that really sticks to my mind.
We as pastors are the shepherd of the church who are the flock. When making disciples, we have to love and meet each person at their limitation. So often when we talk about discipleship, it's about training leaders and equipping people to play a part in the church. Larry separated this idea into discipleship and leadership. He said that discipleship is about helping people take the next step of obedience to Christ; leadership is to help people take the next step in sacrifice for Christ.
Having heard that, I couldn't help but look at myself and seeing my frustrations at church come from joining discipleship and leadership together. If you ask me, discipleship is the hard one. Because you have followers at the front lines, the mid lines, and the back lines, you have to meet each one at the point they seemingly cap out at, and allow them to take that next step. This means that if you have someone in the backline, you're not to get them straight to the front, it won't work.
This was so incredibly convicting because I'm guilty of wanting everyone to jump straight to the front. And when I see some of my members seemingly stay stuck in the back, I get upset because I count them as immature spiritually and unwilling to step to the front. For that, I have to apologize because I simply wasn't aware that there should be a distinction between disciple making and leadership training.
Then, the challenge for me is now to be able to meet each member at their point of limit and then love them at that point. This is tough, but it makes sense to me because that's where Christ meets us. Even a step further, Christ not only meets us at our best, he meets us at our worst. And since God himself is the great shepherd, I need to learn how to be able to do this, to engage people wherever they're at and help them take that next step in obedience.
I can't wait until the recordings from the conference get released so I can go back to listen to them again!
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
The Message: The Pastor
A neat little reminder I had today after a long chat with my senior pastor, I'm challenged and encouraged about what it means to give a good message wherever I speak.
Ps Isaac had actually told me this before, but I heard it in a fresh new way today after talking about some really deep challenges and burdens that we both share. One of the biggest lessons Ps Isaac said that he learned from a mentor was about what a good sermon is like. It's a simple lesson and one a lot of people already know, but it becomes very relevant for those that are in positions of leadership.
As a pastor, no matter how much time you spend on preparing for your message, the second you stand up onto the stage, the sermon is already delivered by how your audience views you and the person you are. The way that you live your life and how you pour into other people's lives will often determine the power that comes from the words you speak.
I love how this applies not only to preaching, but also to so many other "stage front" type scenarios as well. You can spend 60 hours a week studying and preparing a message, or practicing a set list, but if you get up on that stage and do not represent what you say, your message is practically useless.
So much of my time is spent trying to make sure I'm saying all the right things or not making any mistakes, I often overlook the fact that it's all empty words if I don't practice what I preach. Most of the impact I'm going to make is not on the pulpit. It's really hard for me to see if I've made any real difference since being here, but I know it's not up to me to decide. All I can really do is live the life that I want my church to live, so at the very least, I owe it to these people that even through the garbage I deal with, I remain faithful to what I'm called.
Ps Isaac had actually told me this before, but I heard it in a fresh new way today after talking about some really deep challenges and burdens that we both share. One of the biggest lessons Ps Isaac said that he learned from a mentor was about what a good sermon is like. It's a simple lesson and one a lot of people already know, but it becomes very relevant for those that are in positions of leadership.
As a pastor, no matter how much time you spend on preparing for your message, the second you stand up onto the stage, the sermon is already delivered by how your audience views you and the person you are. The way that you live your life and how you pour into other people's lives will often determine the power that comes from the words you speak.
I love how this applies not only to preaching, but also to so many other "stage front" type scenarios as well. You can spend 60 hours a week studying and preparing a message, or practicing a set list, but if you get up on that stage and do not represent what you say, your message is practically useless.
So much of my time is spent trying to make sure I'm saying all the right things or not making any mistakes, I often overlook the fact that it's all empty words if I don't practice what I preach. Most of the impact I'm going to make is not on the pulpit. It's really hard for me to see if I've made any real difference since being here, but I know it's not up to me to decide. All I can really do is live the life that I want my church to live, so at the very least, I owe it to these people that even through the garbage I deal with, I remain faithful to what I'm called.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
The Hurt of Helping People
We often find ourselves at different points of our lives presented with different opportunities to help people who are in need. The society, the media, and publicity often paints the idea of helping people as this pretty sight that is supposed to make you "feel good" about what you're doing. The helper always says something about realizing the privileges that he/she has and how it's so nice to be able to give back.
Given the situation and how recent this has been placed at my doorstep, it would be inappropriate for me to go too into detail about it, so I'm going to remain vague about describing this experience I've had.
About mid-January, so a little over a month ago, I received a call from someone who was in desperate need of money. Due to the nature of the situation and the relationship, I think 99.9% of people would've dismissed it and turned down the opportunity to help. However, it was placed on my heart that we're supposed to help give to the poor and needy. After receiving the call, I explored what options we had to be able to help. There was an immediate sense of rejection all around; so while I understood why, it still upset me that we would have to be so guarded.
I felt the need to help this person, so I decided to act on my own accord because I can't sit here knowing that this could be a chance for someone to come to know Christ. So, as I am no Bill Gates in terms of financial stature, it pained me to know I'd be giving away a substantial amount of money not being 100% confident that it was going where I presumed it should be going.
What irks me even more is that after having given this person the money, I was essentially told that it wasn't a good idea to have done it. I'm fine with being careful and being measured in our approach to helping people, but when we try to assume so much control over the situation in order to act, it makes it seem so self-righteous. I mean, I guess money is important to a lot of people, perhaps even too important, but to have it to a point where we basically lord it over people and use it as power, you can count me out. I'm so thankful that God's helped me understand that money really isn't all-powerful like so many people make it out to be. Some people are more attached to their money than to their own lives.
The saddest thing is that people deceive themselves into thinking that by working hard and earning their money, they reserve the right to keep it and display it as a trophy to show people what they've done.
So from my point of view, I see so many people and so many areas of need, but where do our resources go? "Let's help ourselves first, and whatever we have left we'll give to others." That's where I see our money going. Tragedy. Then, when someone wants to actually do something for another in need, you have to grind through layers and layers of pathetic policies and politics just to get a "no."
Helping people doesn't need to be so difficult. There's no need to have a thorough audit of the situation just to make sure we're 100% confident that the aid is used appropriately. I'm not saying that we should just blindly throw away our money, but that is the ballpark I'm playing in. We're given resources so we can return it and put it to use, not to glorify ourselves. Nobody's going to come up to you and tell you, "Wow! You're such a great budgeter/planner! Our money had an efficiency rating of 100% for 2015!"
When the person called again last week, I felt sick to even have to think about whether or not it's worth the trouble to go through the process in trying to help this individual out again, just to get turned down from my request. If from getting to know this person I got the sense that the situation was a fraud, I'd have no problem saying no. But it's because it isn't that now I have to take all these ridiculous steps for myself before I even consider helping her on my own because that's what I'm told to do.
I'm just hoping that the hurt of helping people won't outweigh the cause of helping people. If it does, I'll know that I'll be on my knees for forgiveness.
Given the situation and how recent this has been placed at my doorstep, it would be inappropriate for me to go too into detail about it, so I'm going to remain vague about describing this experience I've had.
About mid-January, so a little over a month ago, I received a call from someone who was in desperate need of money. Due to the nature of the situation and the relationship, I think 99.9% of people would've dismissed it and turned down the opportunity to help. However, it was placed on my heart that we're supposed to help give to the poor and needy. After receiving the call, I explored what options we had to be able to help. There was an immediate sense of rejection all around; so while I understood why, it still upset me that we would have to be so guarded.
I felt the need to help this person, so I decided to act on my own accord because I can't sit here knowing that this could be a chance for someone to come to know Christ. So, as I am no Bill Gates in terms of financial stature, it pained me to know I'd be giving away a substantial amount of money not being 100% confident that it was going where I presumed it should be going.
What irks me even more is that after having given this person the money, I was essentially told that it wasn't a good idea to have done it. I'm fine with being careful and being measured in our approach to helping people, but when we try to assume so much control over the situation in order to act, it makes it seem so self-righteous. I mean, I guess money is important to a lot of people, perhaps even too important, but to have it to a point where we basically lord it over people and use it as power, you can count me out. I'm so thankful that God's helped me understand that money really isn't all-powerful like so many people make it out to be. Some people are more attached to their money than to their own lives.
The saddest thing is that people deceive themselves into thinking that by working hard and earning their money, they reserve the right to keep it and display it as a trophy to show people what they've done.
So from my point of view, I see so many people and so many areas of need, but where do our resources go? "Let's help ourselves first, and whatever we have left we'll give to others." That's where I see our money going. Tragedy. Then, when someone wants to actually do something for another in need, you have to grind through layers and layers of pathetic policies and politics just to get a "no."
Helping people doesn't need to be so difficult. There's no need to have a thorough audit of the situation just to make sure we're 100% confident that the aid is used appropriately. I'm not saying that we should just blindly throw away our money, but that is the ballpark I'm playing in. We're given resources so we can return it and put it to use, not to glorify ourselves. Nobody's going to come up to you and tell you, "Wow! You're such a great budgeter/planner! Our money had an efficiency rating of 100% for 2015!"
When the person called again last week, I felt sick to even have to think about whether or not it's worth the trouble to go through the process in trying to help this individual out again, just to get turned down from my request. If from getting to know this person I got the sense that the situation was a fraud, I'd have no problem saying no. But it's because it isn't that now I have to take all these ridiculous steps for myself before I even consider helping her on my own because that's what I'm told to do.
I'm just hoping that the hurt of helping people won't outweigh the cause of helping people. If it does, I'll know that I'll be on my knees for forgiveness.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Quarter Century
A big thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes, and an even bigger thanks to those who have made an impact on my life up to this point. I think people often take for granted the turning of 25. Not everyone gets to turn the quarter century, so it makes me even more grateful for the years I have had. I'm glad that my parents taught me to be thankful, and it has come a long way in teaching me humility to know that every day I can wake up is because God has allowed me to. I will admit, though, that I haven't been very good at being thankful as of late, but these last few days have allowed me to re-align myself a bit.
I've hit another minor road bump over the last month-ish, lacking motivation and feeling lazy; but the difference I feel this time is that I know how to get out of it, I just have to do it. Easier said than done, of course. Haha.
Things have really picked up, and will continue to get busier as we're well underway in February. On top of sermon prep, I have to teach baptism class (which is an absolute joy and privilege), and also try to manage the Sunday school class I was teaching before. And then, I've also picked up several extra-curricular things on my plate, so I'm spending more time out and about. This will make me more tired, but in some ways I hope it refreshes me and keeps my life from going stale. We all know that when I get too comfortable, I get complacent and start to become ineffective.
One other thing I've been thinking about for a few months now is the unfolding and evolving of my call in ministry. You probably read in my last few posts, me mentioning that I'm trying to discover something or I'm looking for something. When I look back at my calling into ministry, I often told people that God told me to become a pastor. So when I got here, it sort of marked a finish line in one sense - I've gotten to where God directed me to go. I would tell people I don't really know what's next; maybe what I was supposed to do was just stay at a church and that was it.
However, I'm starting to see my calling evolve, or rather, unfold a little more. In one previous post, I talked about being a pastor not only in Newbern, but that there needed to be a universal aspect to doing church, and how I would lead/serve on a more universal scale. I'm starting to think this could be the start of a new revelation for me in terms of a focus area for my ministry.
And in the last few weeks, what's gone on during my days have reinforced this idea. A lot of my thoughts and studies have drifted to a broader sense of being a church that is on the move and isn't restricted to a building and its programs. So far, I have no idea how the zeroing in on this aspect of church life can manifest itself in a tangible and practical way of my life, but I suspect that I will find out in the near future. It may take a couple years, but I think this is a direction I am headed.
You can even see how in my sermons I'm starting to emphasize a church in motion, a church moving with purpose. So maybe the unfolding of this calling is already starting to take shape. Haha. As it says in Ephesians 4, it's all about equipping the saints to have unity of mind, unity in Christ, and unity in motion.
I've had the privilege to reach the quarter century mark. Let's see if I can manage another.
I've hit another minor road bump over the last month-ish, lacking motivation and feeling lazy; but the difference I feel this time is that I know how to get out of it, I just have to do it. Easier said than done, of course. Haha.
Things have really picked up, and will continue to get busier as we're well underway in February. On top of sermon prep, I have to teach baptism class (which is an absolute joy and privilege), and also try to manage the Sunday school class I was teaching before. And then, I've also picked up several extra-curricular things on my plate, so I'm spending more time out and about. This will make me more tired, but in some ways I hope it refreshes me and keeps my life from going stale. We all know that when I get too comfortable, I get complacent and start to become ineffective.
One other thing I've been thinking about for a few months now is the unfolding and evolving of my call in ministry. You probably read in my last few posts, me mentioning that I'm trying to discover something or I'm looking for something. When I look back at my calling into ministry, I often told people that God told me to become a pastor. So when I got here, it sort of marked a finish line in one sense - I've gotten to where God directed me to go. I would tell people I don't really know what's next; maybe what I was supposed to do was just stay at a church and that was it.
However, I'm starting to see my calling evolve, or rather, unfold a little more. In one previous post, I talked about being a pastor not only in Newbern, but that there needed to be a universal aspect to doing church, and how I would lead/serve on a more universal scale. I'm starting to think this could be the start of a new revelation for me in terms of a focus area for my ministry.
And in the last few weeks, what's gone on during my days have reinforced this idea. A lot of my thoughts and studies have drifted to a broader sense of being a church that is on the move and isn't restricted to a building and its programs. So far, I have no idea how the zeroing in on this aspect of church life can manifest itself in a tangible and practical way of my life, but I suspect that I will find out in the near future. It may take a couple years, but I think this is a direction I am headed.
You can even see how in my sermons I'm starting to emphasize a church in motion, a church moving with purpose. So maybe the unfolding of this calling is already starting to take shape. Haha. As it says in Ephesians 4, it's all about equipping the saints to have unity of mind, unity in Christ, and unity in motion.
I've had the privilege to reach the quarter century mark. Let's see if I can manage another.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Church Culture
Up to this point in my life, I've had the privilege of serving in some capacity in 5 different churches - Newbern being the 5th. Even though Newbern looks a lot like a couple of the other churches I've done ministry at, this experience has been totally new to me.
Before I get into it, I can't believe I just deleted the entire post I had written up so that I could write about church culture. I had spent the last half an hour writing on something else, but toward the end of it, I found that I had gravitated to talking about culture; and so it wasn't even related to the original topic anymore. I know it doesn't mean anything for you who are reading this, but it means a ton to me. Haha.
So, not only is it that it is I who technically heads up this gig at Newbern which makes it a different experience, I'm discovering what a drastically different church culture this is compared to what I'm used to. Now, in all honesty, I probably can't give you an accurate description of any of the cultures at my previous churches, given that it's been at least a few years since I've served regularly at them. But I've never felt like I had to put in so much effort to learning what the current state of the congregation is like. In other words, integration with me and my ministry into the churches were never too difficult. At Newbern, though, it's been a different experience.
For a while, I thought a lot of what I could improve on was a focus on me needing to cater to a smaller church. Two churches I've served at, CCBC and Assiniboia Alliance, are what most people would call small churches, but I didn't have too much trouble learning about the approach needed to minister to them. What I needed to do to get accustomed was pretty clear, albeit I had some awesome mentors and leaders who really spent time to help me learn about the group.
But even in the short time I've been at Newbern, I felt something wasn't quite right with what I was doing. The reception to many things I introduced or tested the waters with wasn't as smooth as what I thought it might be. So much of the uneasiness that I've felt, I think, actually comes from this lack of response or reception.
I'll be honest, I've never spent enough time at any church outside of NEAC to know what this lack of response would feel like. The closest I've come was spending 2 years at SGAC in Calgary, but I was in more of a supportive role than a lead.
And so while I thought much of what wasn't working was due to the small size of Newbern, I'm realizing that a lot of it also has to do with the culture and where the group is at spiritually. I want to credit CCBC and Assiniboia Alliance because while their group is very similar to Newbern, but they have some incredibly mature and godly people in that church. So maybe I let that predisposition affect the way I approached ministry here at Newbern, simply assuming that there would be a maturity level that is similar to that of CCBC's and Assiniboia Alliance's when I was there.
Comparing churches is the last things I should be doing, but it's a natural tendency to do it and it's also difficult for someone like me because I don't have much to draw on given my limited experience. So more often than not, I'll look to see how something was done elsewhere and try it out where I currently am. It's a mistake I make all the time. By doing so, my first 16 months at Newbern haven't been the greatest months I've seen in terms of my work and results. While it's not bad to consider what's been done elsewhere to implement it here, it becomes bad when I assume it will yield a similar result.
I feel bad for my group in Newbern because I made a bunch of assumptions without putting more emphasis on getting to know them better before I really started making a push for a bunch of things. I just kind of assumed that I'd have everything to work with, when that really isn't the case. Given confidentiality, I can't say much more, but I know I have work to do.
So I've kind of taken a fresh approach and mindset. It's hard to picture, given how small my group is, but I might need to prepare for it to get even smaller before it can grow again. I'm really not interested in putting a good program in so that the numbers will increase to make me look successful. I want to make disciples. And I know that some people won't like the things I say or do, some who might have been here for years even. In some ways, then, to put it frankly, I feel like I'm in a bit of a weeding process. I just hope that I'm thorough with it and don't let laziness or a half-assed job come back to bite me.
My prayer is that with this year, I can help Newbern redefine church culture. It's not just about being a group of friends anymore. We can be friends, but what are we doing in the world around us?
Before I get into it, I can't believe I just deleted the entire post I had written up so that I could write about church culture. I had spent the last half an hour writing on something else, but toward the end of it, I found that I had gravitated to talking about culture; and so it wasn't even related to the original topic anymore. I know it doesn't mean anything for you who are reading this, but it means a ton to me. Haha.
So, not only is it that it is I who technically heads up this gig at Newbern which makes it a different experience, I'm discovering what a drastically different church culture this is compared to what I'm used to. Now, in all honesty, I probably can't give you an accurate description of any of the cultures at my previous churches, given that it's been at least a few years since I've served regularly at them. But I've never felt like I had to put in so much effort to learning what the current state of the congregation is like. In other words, integration with me and my ministry into the churches were never too difficult. At Newbern, though, it's been a different experience.
For a while, I thought a lot of what I could improve on was a focus on me needing to cater to a smaller church. Two churches I've served at, CCBC and Assiniboia Alliance, are what most people would call small churches, but I didn't have too much trouble learning about the approach needed to minister to them. What I needed to do to get accustomed was pretty clear, albeit I had some awesome mentors and leaders who really spent time to help me learn about the group.
But even in the short time I've been at Newbern, I felt something wasn't quite right with what I was doing. The reception to many things I introduced or tested the waters with wasn't as smooth as what I thought it might be. So much of the uneasiness that I've felt, I think, actually comes from this lack of response or reception.
I'll be honest, I've never spent enough time at any church outside of NEAC to know what this lack of response would feel like. The closest I've come was spending 2 years at SGAC in Calgary, but I was in more of a supportive role than a lead.
And so while I thought much of what wasn't working was due to the small size of Newbern, I'm realizing that a lot of it also has to do with the culture and where the group is at spiritually. I want to credit CCBC and Assiniboia Alliance because while their group is very similar to Newbern, but they have some incredibly mature and godly people in that church. So maybe I let that predisposition affect the way I approached ministry here at Newbern, simply assuming that there would be a maturity level that is similar to that of CCBC's and Assiniboia Alliance's when I was there.
Comparing churches is the last things I should be doing, but it's a natural tendency to do it and it's also difficult for someone like me because I don't have much to draw on given my limited experience. So more often than not, I'll look to see how something was done elsewhere and try it out where I currently am. It's a mistake I make all the time. By doing so, my first 16 months at Newbern haven't been the greatest months I've seen in terms of my work and results. While it's not bad to consider what's been done elsewhere to implement it here, it becomes bad when I assume it will yield a similar result.
I feel bad for my group in Newbern because I made a bunch of assumptions without putting more emphasis on getting to know them better before I really started making a push for a bunch of things. I just kind of assumed that I'd have everything to work with, when that really isn't the case. Given confidentiality, I can't say much more, but I know I have work to do.
So I've kind of taken a fresh approach and mindset. It's hard to picture, given how small my group is, but I might need to prepare for it to get even smaller before it can grow again. I'm really not interested in putting a good program in so that the numbers will increase to make me look successful. I want to make disciples. And I know that some people won't like the things I say or do, some who might have been here for years even. In some ways, then, to put it frankly, I feel like I'm in a bit of a weeding process. I just hope that I'm thorough with it and don't let laziness or a half-assed job come back to bite me.
My prayer is that with this year, I can help Newbern redefine church culture. It's not just about being a group of friends anymore. We can be friends, but what are we doing in the world around us?
Monday, January 25, 2016
Between the Lines
January, thus far, has been a rather strange month. To me, it's seemed like it's gone by really fast, yet really slow at the same time. You must be wondering and inclined to ask, "how is that so?" Well, let me tell you exactly how it is so: I have no idea!
Yeah, as we enter into the last week of the month, I can look back and definitely say that it's been a very interesting one, to say the least.
On the 17th, my church celebrated its 40th year via an oversized banquet of 450-500 people. A lot of people wondered how a church of less than 150 could hold a banquet that's triple the size of the regular attendance - I've wondered the same. I know it ended up being a lot of family members and friends of church members, previous members, previous staff, etc. So when you think about it, it's not too hard to pull so many people into the dinner. As you would've expected, it was structured very traditionally with MC's and a set program for the dinner.
I must confess that I really didn't enjoy it very much. It's terrible for the English pastor to be saying that, but it's just how I felt. I was rather uncomfortable the entire evening, but I think from a neutral point of view, it wasn't all that bad. I know a lot of people enjoyed the evening quite a bit, so I want to support them in that. Before you bring out your pitchforks, I'm never one to really enjoy high profile large gatherings, so regardless of how it went, the chances of me liking this one was pretty slim too. I'm introverted, so all my energy is usually drained before the food even hits the table. On top of being overwhelmed by everything, there's just often way too much superficiality between the interactions of people. In many ways, it becomes more about putting on a good show to be displayed for everyone to see.
However, you can also just say that I'm really bad at celebrating.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed my parents being down here though. My mom and dad have this subtle but caring way of showing me that I still have a lot to learn and a long way to go in learning how to be independent. I never really need to observe them for more than a couple minutes to be reminded that I really don't have my stuff together. But, that's just what parents do, and I appreciate it more often than not. Maybe one day I can be this example for my children too. But as is the point of this thought, I still have a long way to go.
After kicking off a new series this month, I get to take a break from preaching this Sunday. I've really enjoyed reading and studying the first couple weeks of the month. In the three messages I've preached, I've yet to preach through all that I'd planned to. If I did, I would've gone on for an hour or longer. It goes to show that I've submerged myself into the Word, and I'm seeing how it's helped me piece things together. Having a week off here will be good, but I'm excited to get right back at it in February.
It's been a very mixed January for me. I've wanted to be happy and excited, motivated and driven, but I am always finding things that hold me down. All I can really do is keep going, and see where I end up a month from now.
Yeah, as we enter into the last week of the month, I can look back and definitely say that it's been a very interesting one, to say the least.
On the 17th, my church celebrated its 40th year via an oversized banquet of 450-500 people. A lot of people wondered how a church of less than 150 could hold a banquet that's triple the size of the regular attendance - I've wondered the same. I know it ended up being a lot of family members and friends of church members, previous members, previous staff, etc. So when you think about it, it's not too hard to pull so many people into the dinner. As you would've expected, it was structured very traditionally with MC's and a set program for the dinner.
I must confess that I really didn't enjoy it very much. It's terrible for the English pastor to be saying that, but it's just how I felt. I was rather uncomfortable the entire evening, but I think from a neutral point of view, it wasn't all that bad. I know a lot of people enjoyed the evening quite a bit, so I want to support them in that. Before you bring out your pitchforks, I'm never one to really enjoy high profile large gatherings, so regardless of how it went, the chances of me liking this one was pretty slim too. I'm introverted, so all my energy is usually drained before the food even hits the table. On top of being overwhelmed by everything, there's just often way too much superficiality between the interactions of people. In many ways, it becomes more about putting on a good show to be displayed for everyone to see.
However, you can also just say that I'm really bad at celebrating.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed my parents being down here though. My mom and dad have this subtle but caring way of showing me that I still have a lot to learn and a long way to go in learning how to be independent. I never really need to observe them for more than a couple minutes to be reminded that I really don't have my stuff together. But, that's just what parents do, and I appreciate it more often than not. Maybe one day I can be this example for my children too. But as is the point of this thought, I still have a long way to go.
After kicking off a new series this month, I get to take a break from preaching this Sunday. I've really enjoyed reading and studying the first couple weeks of the month. In the three messages I've preached, I've yet to preach through all that I'd planned to. If I did, I would've gone on for an hour or longer. It goes to show that I've submerged myself into the Word, and I'm seeing how it's helped me piece things together. Having a week off here will be good, but I'm excited to get right back at it in February.
It's been a very mixed January for me. I've wanted to be happy and excited, motivated and driven, but I am always finding things that hold me down. All I can really do is keep going, and see where I end up a month from now.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Of Conviction
It's taken me a while to get to writing this post because I wanted to be able to re-count and draw from the several experiences that I've had to be able to express the importance of conviction in a way that I want.
To me, one of the most powerful tools, launch pads, spring boards, or whatever you want to call it, is conviction. Conviction, however you want to define it, has the ability to change lives so dramatically; I've seen how it steers the course of a life with full intent and purpose.
Where I am now really is a story of conviction. I often feel so blessed because conviction is not something man made, but it comes from the Spirit. I can see so many periods in my life where I was washed with waves of conviction, which has lead me to where I am today.
In the latter half of high school, I started gaining some really strong convictions for the church. I stumbled upon some of my old journal entries and blog posts from high school, and I actually come away amazed at how I was able to articulate such thoughts at that age. I've always said that I'm not good at articulating things consicely and precisely, but some of those pieces that I wrote still pack such a powerful message. This stage of conviction, I think, was what lead some of my mentors to seeing my call to ministry. When I look at it now, I can see it too. It doesn't just come naturally that I conceive an idea into my brain that we need to be a lot more serious about doing church - it's rather quite supernatural, in fact. I know I ran away from it a good bit, but if anything, the convictions only became stronger until I had to answer to it.
More recently, I'm beginning to grow this passion of looking at the Church from a broarder view than that of a single local body. In studying and learning, the Spirit has been placing on my heart an attention toward the growth of the Church, not just a church. So I started to try diving a little deeper to see where this is taking me. Even in what has only been a couple months, there have been several road blocks, but I'm seeing this image come back to me more and more.
A little strange, but one avenue that I looked briefly at was church planting. Or, to generalize it a little more, building a church from the ground up. There are two central messages that have stuck with me, and really should stick with any church for that matter. The first is disciple making. If you're not making disciples, you're not really doing church. The second is the need for the Bible to hold together everything that the church does. These two things are pinnacle to what Jesus teaches, but so many churches don't resemble them in any way. I don't want to start a church or plant a church just because I'm frustrated with how the current state of churches are, but at every point of a church's life, we have to try to find out where the two pillars are. If there are things we're currently doing that don't involve or work toward disciple making and/or biblical truth, I'd argue that you have no purpose doing them.
So it's a little funny that my path in life intersects the path of Newbern right at the 40 year mark. I don't think these convictions are by mistake, because I feel the need to be asking these things to my church as we move forward. Honestly, I don't know how much impact I'll have on this church. But if I leave here without having done everything with the purpose to make disciples and to know the word of God, then I will not have had the full impact that I could have had. It will also mean that I've run away from this tremendous conviction of building a church that I've had over the last few months.
Again, conviction is so powerful because it's supernatural. I just see this fear and doubt that covers so many people so that they aren't able to pursue conviction the way it's meant to be. You hear people say every now and then, "If it's in God's plans, it will come to you eventually." I'm sorry, but where in the Bible does it tell us to just sit here and wait for God's plan to come to us? We're not called to be infants who just lay here and wait for people to come feed us. Being the Church requires us to be active and on the move. Lots of people can't settle at a church because it doesn't give them what they want. How about we start with the one we're at and work together to become the church that we are taught to be?
"Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:33)
To me, one of the most powerful tools, launch pads, spring boards, or whatever you want to call it, is conviction. Conviction, however you want to define it, has the ability to change lives so dramatically; I've seen how it steers the course of a life with full intent and purpose.
Where I am now really is a story of conviction. I often feel so blessed because conviction is not something man made, but it comes from the Spirit. I can see so many periods in my life where I was washed with waves of conviction, which has lead me to where I am today.
In the latter half of high school, I started gaining some really strong convictions for the church. I stumbled upon some of my old journal entries and blog posts from high school, and I actually come away amazed at how I was able to articulate such thoughts at that age. I've always said that I'm not good at articulating things consicely and precisely, but some of those pieces that I wrote still pack such a powerful message. This stage of conviction, I think, was what lead some of my mentors to seeing my call to ministry. When I look at it now, I can see it too. It doesn't just come naturally that I conceive an idea into my brain that we need to be a lot more serious about doing church - it's rather quite supernatural, in fact. I know I ran away from it a good bit, but if anything, the convictions only became stronger until I had to answer to it.
More recently, I'm beginning to grow this passion of looking at the Church from a broarder view than that of a single local body. In studying and learning, the Spirit has been placing on my heart an attention toward the growth of the Church, not just a church. So I started to try diving a little deeper to see where this is taking me. Even in what has only been a couple months, there have been several road blocks, but I'm seeing this image come back to me more and more.
A little strange, but one avenue that I looked briefly at was church planting. Or, to generalize it a little more, building a church from the ground up. There are two central messages that have stuck with me, and really should stick with any church for that matter. The first is disciple making. If you're not making disciples, you're not really doing church. The second is the need for the Bible to hold together everything that the church does. These two things are pinnacle to what Jesus teaches, but so many churches don't resemble them in any way. I don't want to start a church or plant a church just because I'm frustrated with how the current state of churches are, but at every point of a church's life, we have to try to find out where the two pillars are. If there are things we're currently doing that don't involve or work toward disciple making and/or biblical truth, I'd argue that you have no purpose doing them.
So it's a little funny that my path in life intersects the path of Newbern right at the 40 year mark. I don't think these convictions are by mistake, because I feel the need to be asking these things to my church as we move forward. Honestly, I don't know how much impact I'll have on this church. But if I leave here without having done everything with the purpose to make disciples and to know the word of God, then I will not have had the full impact that I could have had. It will also mean that I've run away from this tremendous conviction of building a church that I've had over the last few months.
Again, conviction is so powerful because it's supernatural. I just see this fear and doubt that covers so many people so that they aren't able to pursue conviction the way it's meant to be. You hear people say every now and then, "If it's in God's plans, it will come to you eventually." I'm sorry, but where in the Bible does it tell us to just sit here and wait for God's plan to come to us? We're not called to be infants who just lay here and wait for people to come feed us. Being the Church requires us to be active and on the move. Lots of people can't settle at a church because it doesn't give them what they want. How about we start with the one we're at and work together to become the church that we are taught to be?
"Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:33)
Friday, January 1, 2016
Love
Happy New Years, wherever you are. BC is one of the last places to turn the year, so I feel pretty good about posting at the right time.
Over the last two months, I wrote a lot of unfinished, broken, blurry, and clouded thoughts on my blog. It was something I wanted to try because I was curious to see how well I could articulate these deep convictions that I've had. As I read over them, they're pretty confusing. With the new year, however, I have one final post left that I will finish and then that'll be it. This post is a bit of a precursor to that final topic that I will write about.
Another thing is that I will slowly be moving on from this little blog that I've had since I graduated high school. It's been fun to document my life a little bit on this thing, but I think I'm needing to move on. I'm still leaving everything up here, because it's basically a record for me to refer back to if I ever need it. I'm not sure when I'll completely stop posting, but it'll get there eventually.
So, I don't really know who all reads my blog, but if you do, good on ya.
I don't talk too much about my personal devotion time very much because it's... well, personal. However, I think I've reached an interesting overlap of how my ministry has gone recently and how my own personal journey has developed in the last couple months. I'll start from the top.
In a lot of my personal studies lately, I'm learning a lot about love. I read through, not in great depth, the gospel of Matthew, and the book of Acts. I've read through 1 Timothy several times, and I've also been studying Philippians. From reading these books that differ so much from each other, I'm seeing a lot of how love is expressed in so many different ways. I am seeing it from the Father's angle, from Jesus' POV, from Paul's, from the people that are being ministered to, from the Church, etc. From the tiny and minute details to the grand purposes, I'm learning a lot from how love is expressed in each aspect. And also having preached 1 John throughout eight weeks this past summer, some of the things still hang around in my mind.
What I've found that seems to be evident in every form of love I'm seeing is suffering. In the Bible, love is all about pouring yourself out for the good of someone or something else. It's a sense of surrendering yourself and kneeling down to get lower than what it is that you "love." We see God reducing himself as a king and ruler, we see Jesus serving and healing those that are in need and surrendering to the Father's will, we see Paul come within the face of death several times; all of this seems to be for one cause. And that cause is love. Even the most popular Bible verse of all time, John 3:16, speaks on a love that is married to sacrifice and suffering - the two make one.
This facet of love stands out so much to me because I've had so many sleepless nights over weeks and weeks for being hard on myself and being frustrated with my life. I've been so discouraged by the fact that my natural tendencies are to tell myself that I'm not good enough to make a difference. Truth is: I'm not. Apart from God, I don't make a difference. Day after day, I wonder why God has put me on this path of ministry and not something else. I'm not doubting my calling nor can I see myself doing anything else, but it's just the perspective that I'm looking at life with and it's a tremendous struggle.
As a pastor, I love what I get to do. I get to hang out with people, get to know them, build relationships, and share Christ. However, what we're too good at doing is only focusing on things that we need to "fix." I went for lunch with a church member a few weeks back and she asked me if I ever stop to look at what I've done. The question almost broke me, because of the painful truth and realization that I don't stop to admire or celebrate what's been done. It's like fixing leaks while it's pouring rain. You plug one hole, then you move onto the next and hope the first one doesn't burst again. We more often than not are looking at the brokenness in the world and in our lives, and we have to try to offer encouragement and healing. So it's a lot like a doctor in how they are seeing patients and just needing to prescribe something to them hoping that it makes them feel better. Being faced with so much brokenness and pouring yourself out to try to address it is so incredibly taxing.
So much of my attention and focus has been on what needs to be done that I just become miserable. I'd talk about how I'm super enjoying what's going on with my life, and I honestly am a lot of times; but for some reason I still go to sleep feeling broken more often than not. In looking deep within myself and trying to see what my problem was, I thought that I just didn't love anymore, or that I wasn't capable of loving.
Everything became meticulous and all my relationships were pretentious. Where is the love in my life? A lot of times, in talking to people, it's a matter of minutes before my frustrations would start to show. I know this, and I don't like it. I start to get tired really fast and really easy, and it makes me just want to go home and lay down on my bed. These feelings all feel so familiar. It is a sense of darkness that is very appealing to me, and I want to be there.
It's a tough go because this affects how I do things practically. If someone even shows an ounce of love for me, I become guarded. I absolutely hate that I do this. This is one of the few times where I say "hate" and I mean it to the full extent. I'm so scared that if I let myself go, accept the love and maybe even reciprocate it, that I just have to suffer again and end up in the darkness that can trap me.
This applies to everything. It can be family love, romantic love, friendship love, Church love, anything. I'm so afraid to allow myself to give into love because of the amount of pain that I might have to endure just to hope that something comes out of it. Being the person that I am, I find excuses and other dumb reasons for why I don't want to engage in something because of the fear of being hurt.
However, I got to the end of John's gospel. After Jesus is risen, I see him standing on the coast, frying up some fish. Jesus then says to his disciples after they spent a night out catching fish, "Come, and have breakfast." The disciples realize it's Jesus and they are overflown with joy. I can imagine the smile that Jesus had on his face, and the overwhelming peace that the disciples felt in knowing that their risen Lord and saviour just invited them to eat.
I can't wait for the day where I can wake up and have Jesus look at me and say, "Hey bud, let's eat."
After seeing how much suffering and pain was involved in loving people, I became so scared to love and be loved. But I'm so glad that Christ's love is relentless and unbreakable. He loves me and suffered for me so much more than anything I could ever know, so I'm praying that I won't be afraid to love anymore. Jesus promises that the reward we'll get will far outweigh anything we go through on earth. So much so that what we're experiencing now won't even claim a moment in our thoughts in the age to come. I honestly can't wait for that.
I think what lies behind what I've been searching for recently is the ability to love. I don't know what's coming for me in 2016, but I don't want to run from it. I came to realize that I may have just run from an opportunity that could've been because of the fear of loving that I have, and I don't want to make this mistake anymore. The ability to love people is the greatest privilege we could ever have, and I don't want to waste anymore time with it.
So for myself, as a personal note, I have a lot that I need to learn when it comes to love. I know this isn't exactly the type of new year's post you'd expect, but this is real.
Over the last two months, I wrote a lot of unfinished, broken, blurry, and clouded thoughts on my blog. It was something I wanted to try because I was curious to see how well I could articulate these deep convictions that I've had. As I read over them, they're pretty confusing. With the new year, however, I have one final post left that I will finish and then that'll be it. This post is a bit of a precursor to that final topic that I will write about.
Another thing is that I will slowly be moving on from this little blog that I've had since I graduated high school. It's been fun to document my life a little bit on this thing, but I think I'm needing to move on. I'm still leaving everything up here, because it's basically a record for me to refer back to if I ever need it. I'm not sure when I'll completely stop posting, but it'll get there eventually.
So, I don't really know who all reads my blog, but if you do, good on ya.
I don't talk too much about my personal devotion time very much because it's... well, personal. However, I think I've reached an interesting overlap of how my ministry has gone recently and how my own personal journey has developed in the last couple months. I'll start from the top.
In a lot of my personal studies lately, I'm learning a lot about love. I read through, not in great depth, the gospel of Matthew, and the book of Acts. I've read through 1 Timothy several times, and I've also been studying Philippians. From reading these books that differ so much from each other, I'm seeing a lot of how love is expressed in so many different ways. I am seeing it from the Father's angle, from Jesus' POV, from Paul's, from the people that are being ministered to, from the Church, etc. From the tiny and minute details to the grand purposes, I'm learning a lot from how love is expressed in each aspect. And also having preached 1 John throughout eight weeks this past summer, some of the things still hang around in my mind.
What I've found that seems to be evident in every form of love I'm seeing is suffering. In the Bible, love is all about pouring yourself out for the good of someone or something else. It's a sense of surrendering yourself and kneeling down to get lower than what it is that you "love." We see God reducing himself as a king and ruler, we see Jesus serving and healing those that are in need and surrendering to the Father's will, we see Paul come within the face of death several times; all of this seems to be for one cause. And that cause is love. Even the most popular Bible verse of all time, John 3:16, speaks on a love that is married to sacrifice and suffering - the two make one.
This facet of love stands out so much to me because I've had so many sleepless nights over weeks and weeks for being hard on myself and being frustrated with my life. I've been so discouraged by the fact that my natural tendencies are to tell myself that I'm not good enough to make a difference. Truth is: I'm not. Apart from God, I don't make a difference. Day after day, I wonder why God has put me on this path of ministry and not something else. I'm not doubting my calling nor can I see myself doing anything else, but it's just the perspective that I'm looking at life with and it's a tremendous struggle.
As a pastor, I love what I get to do. I get to hang out with people, get to know them, build relationships, and share Christ. However, what we're too good at doing is only focusing on things that we need to "fix." I went for lunch with a church member a few weeks back and she asked me if I ever stop to look at what I've done. The question almost broke me, because of the painful truth and realization that I don't stop to admire or celebrate what's been done. It's like fixing leaks while it's pouring rain. You plug one hole, then you move onto the next and hope the first one doesn't burst again. We more often than not are looking at the brokenness in the world and in our lives, and we have to try to offer encouragement and healing. So it's a lot like a doctor in how they are seeing patients and just needing to prescribe something to them hoping that it makes them feel better. Being faced with so much brokenness and pouring yourself out to try to address it is so incredibly taxing.
So much of my attention and focus has been on what needs to be done that I just become miserable. I'd talk about how I'm super enjoying what's going on with my life, and I honestly am a lot of times; but for some reason I still go to sleep feeling broken more often than not. In looking deep within myself and trying to see what my problem was, I thought that I just didn't love anymore, or that I wasn't capable of loving.
Everything became meticulous and all my relationships were pretentious. Where is the love in my life? A lot of times, in talking to people, it's a matter of minutes before my frustrations would start to show. I know this, and I don't like it. I start to get tired really fast and really easy, and it makes me just want to go home and lay down on my bed. These feelings all feel so familiar. It is a sense of darkness that is very appealing to me, and I want to be there.
It's a tough go because this affects how I do things practically. If someone even shows an ounce of love for me, I become guarded. I absolutely hate that I do this. This is one of the few times where I say "hate" and I mean it to the full extent. I'm so scared that if I let myself go, accept the love and maybe even reciprocate it, that I just have to suffer again and end up in the darkness that can trap me.
This applies to everything. It can be family love, romantic love, friendship love, Church love, anything. I'm so afraid to allow myself to give into love because of the amount of pain that I might have to endure just to hope that something comes out of it. Being the person that I am, I find excuses and other dumb reasons for why I don't want to engage in something because of the fear of being hurt.
However, I got to the end of John's gospel. After Jesus is risen, I see him standing on the coast, frying up some fish. Jesus then says to his disciples after they spent a night out catching fish, "Come, and have breakfast." The disciples realize it's Jesus and they are overflown with joy. I can imagine the smile that Jesus had on his face, and the overwhelming peace that the disciples felt in knowing that their risen Lord and saviour just invited them to eat.
I can't wait for the day where I can wake up and have Jesus look at me and say, "Hey bud, let's eat."
After seeing how much suffering and pain was involved in loving people, I became so scared to love and be loved. But I'm so glad that Christ's love is relentless and unbreakable. He loves me and suffered for me so much more than anything I could ever know, so I'm praying that I won't be afraid to love anymore. Jesus promises that the reward we'll get will far outweigh anything we go through on earth. So much so that what we're experiencing now won't even claim a moment in our thoughts in the age to come. I honestly can't wait for that.
I think what lies behind what I've been searching for recently is the ability to love. I don't know what's coming for me in 2016, but I don't want to run from it. I came to realize that I may have just run from an opportunity that could've been because of the fear of loving that I have, and I don't want to make this mistake anymore. The ability to love people is the greatest privilege we could ever have, and I don't want to waste anymore time with it.
So for myself, as a personal note, I have a lot that I need to learn when it comes to love. I know this isn't exactly the type of new year's post you'd expect, but this is real.
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