The Norm in the Harvest

Sitting in church this morning I watched a pastor do a great job. A Cinderella story. The former pastor left, they asked this guy who was heading overseas to fill in, and “bang,” hired and turned a good church of thousands with a huge staff into a very good church.

I was reading that the seed that fell on the good soil brought forth fruit with patience. Just looking at the imagery of the bearing of fruit, from planting the seed to reaping, you know it takes time and patience. We want quick results and success. I see now it’s unrealistic. Stories like the one above make “instant” look easy, but it’s not the norm? Given that fruitlessness is not an option, and burying our pound is not smiled upon, do we have the patience to bear fruit? It seems to me that many begin with the intent to bear fruit for Christ, but the need to work and be patient and keep focused leads to giving up and conforming and defining a norm that is not so “idealistic.” God will always love us, so we can let it slide and concentrate on fellowship, Bible study and worship.

Here we are knocking on several doors following the Lord, sensing that we’re doing what He wants, but not seeing easy fruit. Things are coming, but slowly. And just at the time I was reading about bearing fruit with patience, I read Hebrews 5:8, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”

Surely Jesus should have been cut some slack, but He wasn’t. The more I read the Gospels, I realize how little we have of what Jesus did. We know little of His 1st year of ministry before He chose the 12. We know nothing of what it was like to walk everyday waiting on the Spirit for the next day’s marching orders. I don’t think the Son had an “easy” button. He had tons of opposition and even His disciples did not appear to glow brightly as He approached the cross. Jesus had to suffer normal life.

Slow progress of hearts being shaped by waiting on and seeking for God seem to be the true picture. It seems that whether it was Jesus or Moses or David or Abraham or Paul, a “heart” had to be forged in the heat of striving for God. The night before Jesus chose the 12 he isolated Himself and prayed all night. That wasn’t for show. It was sincere as He, humanly, knew how important this decision was and how vital the need. And like Jesus, in this progress forward, we need to stay in the heat of the forge. We need to be focused on the harvest and accomplishing the will of the Father and being ambassadors of Christ in order for the process to be completed. Only in following Christ in this way, staying in the harvest, choosing hunger, crying out, doing anything and everything He points us to, will we see the fruit He promises. How many have given up too quickly?

So what is the difference between someone in the harvest enduring slow progress and the happy drifting believer? As Jesus says to His disciples in the beatitudes, “happy is he who chooses to not be happy (unengaged in our call as disciples to reach the lost).”

One chooses to keep striving to hear Christ’s voice in His harvest. One is compelled by the sense that we must reach out and make disciples. One walks willingly into the fire where passion and duty and privilege and compassion and love and joy melt together into one love and heart for Christ. One willingly chooses to suffer the loss of all things for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, to be like Him and share in His sufferings. One senses that necessity is laid him, where if he doesn’t share the Gospel he’ll be wrecked within, and he is driven to become a slave to all, that he might win the more. These two people are very different people. One seems happy and the other restless. One day, one will laugh, the other will weep.

One goes slowly, suffering as a good soldier, knowing not to get entangled in civilian pursuits since he lives to satisfy the one who enlisted him. One goes slowly, knowing that he will not be acceptable unless he competes according to the rules. One goes slowly, knowing that it is the hard working farmer who will be rewarded.

The testimony of great men is that the way to accomplishment is the hard road. I could wish for the instant success story, but since suffering is the norm and fruit comes with patience, I’ll pray that the Lord gives me the works as long as He’s in it.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Morpheous said, “Do you want the red pill or the blue pill.”

David said, “Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage and He will strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.”

Jesus said, “Follow Me.”

Sharpening an Old Tool for the Harvest

I'm probably speaking as an "Old Guy" here. I know relational ministry is very important and always has been and is today, especially in this i-generation. I know that preaching gets elevated, sometimes, to an extreme, but God does say it's important. Timothy was charged to Preach the Word. It’s DTS's motto & I still get Goosebumps when I read the charge to Timothy.

I've been told my preaching is good, but I don't even hear that anymore. After slugging it out in two dying churches and wanting to make disciples in the harvest who make disciples who make disciples, I want preaching to be more than I've been able to make it. When the workers come out of the fields into the clearing (church on Sunday) I want to be able to encourage and strengthen and motivate and put a tool into their hands that they can use immediately, something that will make a difference for them the minute they leave the clearing and reenter the fields. But here's the thing, I want it all to be the Word itself. If they are going to find strength in the message, they have to find it in the Word. They have to know simply how to Open the Word and find that tool. They have to See it in the Word to pass it on to the next generation of disciples. It is my responsibility to encourage and equip them with the Word so they can equip themselves with the same truth from the Word.

I know you're lost, but here's what I mean.

So I heard a good message on a vital subject that had lots of energy and some funny lines. Here's the thing, it was supposed to be an exposition of a passage, but it really wasn't. It was a vague explanation of the passage at best, but did use certain words to springboard to the speaker's theme. Now if you called this a topical message, that would be better, but even there, I think it should be explaining a passage from the Word. Here's my malfunction.

How will a disciple go back to that passage and reconstruct what the guy preached? It was a good message on a vital topic, but the disciple can't do that. Most of it came from the mind of the speaker. If the exposition wasn't close and logically and thoughtfully developed, the disciple's ability to understand the Word and dig it out for himself isn't developed. He's not being equipped. He's not seeing the Word as critical to his life and walk as a disciple. When he thinks, "I need that truth," he'll have to go to a pod cast, not the Word, to get it.

I say this because I think we have a genetic fault that keeps us weak in the harvest. Rather than people being strong in the Word, they are trained to rely on secondary sources, to get their spiritual nourishment from the contemporary "voice" and not from the Word. The emerging church criticizes the seeker church and the seeker church criticizes the traditional church, but they all did/are doing it. And everyone is and has struggled with reproducing a reproducing disciple. It's not the Word, it's what Stanley, or Swindoll, or Lucado says from the Word. Now, the names have changed to Driscoll, or Chan or Bell or whoever. I haven't listened to these guys so I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong. I'm saying that if we are making disciples and equipping disciples to make them strong and reproducing in the harvest, they need to be able to take the passage we're preaching and reconstruct the message from the Word itself. This teaches them to understand and handle the Word. They need to be captivated by what God said and go to His Page, not ours.

Preaching will be here until Christ returns. It was the preferred tool of Jesus. It was the last charge that Paul gave to Timothy before he died. Preaching is vital for the harvest, for equipping and encouragement and strengthening and arming the harvesters, but the fully equipped disciple, in the heat of the battle needs to rally with the Word, not with my ideas. He should go to the Bible, to His Father, to His Savior, to the Spirit. He should go to the Word.

Mark 2:2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even about the door; and he was preaching the word to them.

November 2010

Thanks for praying for us this past month. Since our last update, we had our neighbors over for an Oktoberfest. It was a good time with good food and we had a good opportunity to talk to the girl across the street. We also held some discussion evenings for some of the people we had contacted doing the survey. No one showed. So, as Edison said, now we know what doesn't work. Rather than being discouraged, I sense the Lord's preparing us. When He's ready, He'll open doors. For now, we're seeking Him and getting ideas.

We took some time off doing the survey of our target area around election time. We figured that since we were getting irritated by calls and knocks at the door, we'd just be asking for trouble. In the meantime we, but mostly me, have been filling out questionnaires to become part of the Acts 29 church planting network. This would provide us with good "idea" resources and some advising.

Then, realizing that someday, we actually might hold services and will need to have people trained in working with kids, I contacted the local Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) office. It's been almost 30 years since I worked with CEF in Dallas and what an education I got. I don't think I've ever sweat as much teaching adults as I did doing a birthday party for Jesus in a Baptist church or when I did the Bible lesson for a 10-day day-camp for BEE. I will be scarred until the resurrection from those two things. But, actually, I never learned so much, and my CEF training was a huge part of the work I did in 2 church plants in Germany.

Laura and I went to a one-day seminar for beginning Good News Clubs in public schools in our area. It was the classic, standard, simple, brilliant CEF training and method. Of course, CEF is old school for a lot of people, but as someone who has set up the children's work in 2 churches, you can't ask for a better foundation. Most people don't have a clue how to teach kids, much less lead a person to Christ, much much less, lead a child to Christ. Once again, I got sold and excited, especially at the possibility of doing this in an elementary school in our target area. Since I've done this before and have already been scarred (and scared) I have, like, no fears or hesitations. Pray that we get a team of people together to do this. We need at least four people to go through this training and get background checks. Pray, too, that through this, we can begin to have some impact on the lives of lost people in our community.

One of my challenges is "experimenting" in plain sight. If you do something in private and let every-one know when you have the finished product, that's great. If you "fail," who knows? But working, trying, failing, regrouping, "publicly" is another test of faith and following. I think of Paul saying, "We have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for the sake of Christ." Well, that doesn't "sound" bad only because we weren't standing beside Paul, ducking eggs. Now, years later, Paul is a hero, and so it was all worth it. But what compelled the real-time Paul to live like that? Love and forgiveness. This hit me as I was going over the story of Jesus' foot anointing by the sinful woman. Imagine the embarrassing spectacle she made of herself, going into a Pharisee's house. In total humiliation, standing behind Jesus, crying so hard that she could wash his feet with her tears. Jesus says simply, she did this because she realized how much she was forgiven, therefore she loved much. So there's Paul's secret. Unfit to be called an apostle because he persecuted the church of God, he was a slave of Christ and a slave to all that he might save men with His Savior's message. Two common words for worship mean " to kiss the feet" and "to work." Really, they are the same thing. One is adoration in gratefulness. The other is service in gratefulness. Jesus even told Satan they were one thing, the natural cause and effect.

So why bother getting messy publicly, in the harvest, walking by foolish faith? Forgiveness and Love and Gratefulness and Worship are the only reasons I can come up with. On a bad day it is raw obedience, but normally, it is because He saved me and I didn't deserve it, and neither does my neighbor, so in worship to my Savior, I've got to tell him of Him.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, this will be one of our first where everyone is scattered. As I write this, Gary, Helena, kiddies, Alisa and Janae are all together in England staying with Gary's parents & other assorted Witheralls. But for Thanksgiving it will be Helena &Co. and Janae in Germany. Alisa, and whoever she delivers, will be in Atlanta. Greg and friend will be visiting us the Monday before Thanksgiving, so we'll do a Kachikis thing here with Greg & friend and my Mom and then for real Thanksgiving, for the first time in 7 years we will be with her family. We'll drive to Memphis and enjoy ourselves with Laura's sister, Sally, and her two nieces, Maeve and Aislinn. Confusion? No, it's really just preparation for Christmas.

Pray for us, for faithfulness and encouragement. This month the "Ravens" didn't fly in, so we'll probably be hearing from GMAC soon. Pray for all of us as we reach out to our neighbors. Jeff and Michelle and the Kachikises will each be trying a "white elephant" neighbor party. Pray that the Lord will bless our contacts with neighbors and with people we'll be meeting doing the survey. Pray that the Lord would open the door for us to work with CEF in one of our local elementary schools. Pray, too, that we would find some space to begin youth work in the community. And pray for some funding. Not only our expenses, but if we begin doing the clubs in the elementary school, it will mean needing to buy materials and "stuff." If you can and want to, anything made payable to "New Song Community Church" is tax deductible.

Hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

In Christ, Dan & Laura

A New Tool for the Harvest

Yesterday in praying I was asking for opportunities to share the Gospel. I feel that that is "on" for me, at least once a day until I die, just to keep in practice.

One of the difficulties I have as a professional holy person (pastor) is having enough opportunities, especially long ones. The Lord has blessed me using the EE presentation but that's hard to do in all situations. Thinking about my next round of doing the survey in our target area, I've told the Lord that if I feel the person I'm talking to is open, I'll let'em have it.

So the Spirit gave me the idea to take all the stuff rolling around in my head and make a short 3-5 minute presentation. To get a new tool for the harvest. I've still got EE and the other presentations, but I need, according to the Lord, a new tool. So I worked on it.

Yesterday I got my hair cut. Last time I couldn’t kick up a conversation with the "haircutter" to save my life. Once she knew I was "religious" she shut up. So I was praying I'd have an opportunity. At first it didn't look good, but when she asked what I did, I said I was a pastor and she asked, "What's the difference between a minister, a priest and a pastor?" I gave her a very missional answer and pulled out my new tool, and launched into the presentation.

Now, getting your haircut isn't the best venue for a deep talk. The electric clippers she used must have been dull because every time she ran it up my head she almost pushed me off the chair. There were moments when I couldn't hear what was coming out of my mouth. Then the phone rang twice and everything went on hold until she came back. But in all the confusion and abuse to my head, she heard more of what God wanted her to know than she has in a long time. As I left and gave her my card and a "Knowing God Personally," she thanked me.

It's not the kind of venue I would have liked, but it's what the Lord provided.

"Hungering," I think, is Jesus' way of saying “applying ourselves deeply” to see people coming to Faith in Him on this earth. It brings with it a persistence and a need and necessity to revise and revisit and reinvent for the particular setting and culture and for the particular person.

Well, anyway, it/He drove me to come up with another tool for the Harvest and I can’t wait to try it again.

Sweetness in the Harvest

Lots of things are moving slowly.  Today I had 3 interesting little connections with people, one of which might have been from the Lord to produce an idea for our work here.

Going slowly can be bitter and frustrating, bringing us into doubt.  I guess that’s what the shield of Faith is for, to keep us from caving in to doubt.  We know the Word is true and we need not waver regarding God’s call or His faithfulness.  He works and is working.

But yesterday in Proverbs I found another thing to help in this time of slow work and formation, Hunger.

I read a one year Bible, which is inspired, because the Bible is inspired, but the verse selections for the day are not inspired.  Especially reading Proverbs, the randomness of the choice makes you wonder, but today it hit me.  The Proverb hit me not only because of where we are, but because it echoed something from the Sermon on the Mount and because it was in German.  Etwas kompliziert, gell?

Proverbs 27:7 says, “A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, But to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.”

In the German and the Hebrew the word “loath” means to trod under foot.

What the Spirit touched me with, was to keep hungry to follow Christ in the harvest and to see people saved and to make disciples who will make disciples.  That hunger keeps every provision of God visible, noted and precious.  That hunger makes everything that might seem slow and doubtful and bitter, sweet and encouraging.

A good weekend of ideas.  Forms filled out, 3 interesting conversations, a new idea for a discipleship cell and a proverb randomly put into a German One-Year Bible on a day I needed it.  Good encouragement to a hungry heart in the Harvest.

Digging Deeper

The Lord has really been pressing hard on some issues lately, just between me and Him. It's funny because they really don't matter. Ask a thousand people if these issues are issues, and they'd let me off the hook. But He and I know better. What's interesting to me is the progression in this. I was fasting, but that has served its purpose and now that that got established, He's shown me it's not needed. In fact, if I do it any more it'll be empty. This "issue" is on, and it is the real sacrifice (actually it’s a cluster of things).

The call to discipleship is as deep as you want to make it. Hendricks used to use the illustration of a mine. If all you want to do is stroll and find the occasional nugget, that works. But if you want to go deeper you'll find more, but then, that's more work and sacrifice and commitment and exertion and pain and labor and the searching might be more frustrating. You might even doubt the worth of the endeavor, especially if others are not doing it.

Jesus said that calling Him Lord is silly if we don't obey. I don't think He's talking about morality as obedience. It is following Him in a particular way, in the harvest. There are three things…very easy on the surface. You come to Him, hear His words and do them. Makes for a good sermon outline. Three points and they're right on the surface.

Living with Him…hearing His voice, knowing His Heart, wanting to give and sacrifice and follow? Loving Him enough to want to make His will and desires our will and desires? Following, dying, giving that others might live?

Hearing His words. I've got to admit, my time in the Sermon on the Mount gets more convicting as I go on. That stuff about the blind leading the blind, the flawed disciple maker, the log in the eye. That's hard on me - giving up my rights, being meek, hungry, sad, willing to show mercy like my Father, for Him and the Kingdom and the Harvest. That sort of takes my breath away. I want Him, but I'm not sure I want His words. But I do really.

And doing them. If they were passive morality I'd be fine. But there is action and a mission and a training that is completely voluntary. If I don't do what He says, no one will know or care.

He is like a wise man building a house who dug deep until he found rock. It doesn't give a depth. I would like some specs here. A foot? A yard? What if it's 26 feet or more? Didn't matter, the rock was the goal, the foundation was the purpose and he worked and worked and worked.

In the middle of all the things that we are hoping for, to see the Lord glorify His name, and reach the lost and make disciples, He came to a place with me and said, "Now it’s time for this." I knew it was coming and He set me up beautifully. What a great teacher and Lord. And I see it as the best gift I've received this year. He handed me a shovel and told me to go for it.

The Mechanics of Faith

So why is God invisible? I'm sure there are a thousand reasons, but the one that strikes me is so that we can exercise faith, or the lack there of. All of us drive slower on the freeway when there's a cop at the side of the road.

Don't you wish God would just give us orders. When you work for someone they give you orders and your job is dependent on obedience. "Hey, Joe, go into the men's room and wipe down the toilet, the urinal and the sink. Then mop the floor." The boss doesn't wait around for someone to be moved by the spirit or to feel responsible. And he doesn't care if Joe "has that gift or passion." An order is an order.

So, what does Jesus command? And aren't you glad He's not here telling us what to do. We have the option, because He's invisible (as good as not being here) to not do stuff. We can take Jesus' commands and work them down to the easiest religious level…morality. We obey in that we don't fornicate or cheat on our taxes or lie (boldly) and go to church. All of this is passive morality and somehow it must make Jesus very, very happy.

What if Jesus just said to us, "Within the next week, I want you to go to one of your neighbors and explain my Gospel?" First, we'd have our medication adjusted. Second, we'd be happy we're not charismatic and therefore don't hear or trust voices. Third, we'd pray that He'd go back to being invisible and silent.

The reality is, the command is there. We don't hear because the obedience is from faith. If He audibly commanded, more of us would do it, but out of compulsion and duty. In this life, we obey from faith and love, that is, worshiping Him in spirit and in truth.

I'm writing this to me, so don't feel the need to be convicted. I do stuff with my neighbors and I led one to Christ last year, but I know I get balled up in indecision and resistance. I would almost be relieved if Jesus just became visible in my office and said, "Dan, next time you see Joe and Mary, ask them if you could come over and talk for an hour on Thursday night. Just lay out a very simple version of what I'm doing." I would love that audible command. Jesus being invisible leaves it too much up to me and my faith and my love and my obedience. But as I was praying, I was thinking (and I "think" He put it there), "If you were an insurance salesman or a missionary raising support, once you had a lead, you'd move in and make an appointment. So why don't you do that here?" I thought (still thinking) that that was a great idea, and then it hit me it might be a command, but then I rationalized, "Hey, that "command" was always there for the last 2 years" and then I got convicted and felt bad and stopped thinking and watched TV. That killed it! But God was waiting for me this morning and started up where He left off last night.

Jesus marveled at the centurion whose slave was dying (Matt 8). "But just say the word…for I am a man set under authority with soldiers under me and I say to one, "Go" and he goes…. This story is actually similar to the official with the dying son who came to Jesus on His second visit to Cana. That man "believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went his way." But in Matthew 8 Jesus marvels and says, "Not even in Israel have I found such faith." So what was the difference? I think it was because the centurion expressed the essence and mechanics of faith, that is, you are under your master's authority, you hear your master's word, and you just do it. The centurion knew Jesus was a master, that He had servants, He could say the word and it would be done.

Jesus said, "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord' and do not do what I tell you?" We say obedience, but I think this is really faith. This explains the story Jesus told the 12 when they said, "increase our faith." Luke 17:5-10  So this is faith?

The command to make disciples and reach out to the perishing are the "hard way" and we are commanded to resist the easy way and choose the narrow gate and hard way. Life here on earth is not for our convenience and comfort. If the Lord wants us to have those, that's His department. We are to labor hard in the fields. If we are happy with a Christianity that makes no waves, that looks like morality and reading an old book, that serves coffee and Christian rock on Sunday, that doesn't get into the way of the perishing with the bold love and sacrifice of Christ, we are fooling ourselves. We deny Him. And sending a check and ignoring our neighbor is still an act of cowardice and a lack of faith.

Jesus is invisible, but will He find faith on earth or just our church culture? I hope that He finds faith in me, today and this week, reaching out, daring to share. I don't want to have to have Him sitting at the side of the road with a radar gun to make me walk in the Spirit and believe His word and commands and that the reality of this life is really, really true. The mechanics of faith take the words of the master and transform them into action. His word becomes our command, just as if He was standing next to us, instead of invisibly living in us.  Why can’t we “see” this?