THE
TRANSPARENT
CHURCH

Hope.

It’s the wishy-washiest word we have in English.

You: Will you be there tonight at my party?

Your friend: I hope so!

Yeah, right.

You: Will someone beat the Miami Heat this year in the NBA Finals?

Me: I hope so!

Not gonna happen.

When we say hope, we liken it to crossing our fingers and rolling the dice. There’s like, a 51% chance it might happen. But the Bible doesn’t mean that at all. Hope, in the Bible, is confident expectation in a victorious future.

Which is why, out of anything, the apostle Paul prays that you and I would see…this:

 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling”

(Ephesians 1)

What’s he praying? That we would have Biblical hope.

What does that look like? Biblical hope, in a way, means knowing the final score before you watch the game.

What happens if you have recorded that big game you care about (ladies, stay with me) and you find out they win? How does that influence how you watch the game? I’ll tell you how: It changes everything.

Before, when they fumbled on the opening kickoff and went down by 21 at halftime, and time after time they couldn’t get a first down, what would happen to you? You would churn on the inside, fume on the inside, you start getting grumpy and fussing at others and maybe you start overeating and you yell at your wife or your buddy when they ask you a question, and if you’re not careful, you can even come to the point where you turn it off and give up on the whole thing.

And that is exactly what we do in our lives and with the church.

Things aren’t going well!

We’re losing!

There’s fighting on the sidelines!

We should probably just turn it off and find something else to do. Why? Because we don’t know how it ends.

Or do we?

Paul says I pray you never “turn off” church in the middle. He actually prays that God would give us something- the wisdom to be unashamedly hopeful. That’s right. Why would he say wisdom?

Because it’s always wise to bet on a winner.

And if you know what Paul is saying here in Ephesians 1- that no matter how bad it looks, God has predestined his church to triumph, that God will work out all things after the counsel of His will, that God will one day sum up all things in Jesus, than you know, in a sense, the final score, the outcome of the church- it wins, in the end.

That’s why, Martin Luther, the Great Reformer, in his darkest hour, when it seemed like the church in his day was doomed to sin and perversion and abuse of authority, could write:

            And though this world, with devils filled,

            should threaten to undo us,

            we will not fear, for God hath willed

            his truth to triumph through us

What did he know? He knew Ephesians 1, and therefore he could be unashamedly hopeful. He could have in his heart a confident expectation of a victorious future.

See, It’s the hope of His calling. It’s not your voice or mine on the other end of the phone line of history calling into the present, It’s His voice, His power, His calling. And if you will see that, you can be unashamedly hopeful about Jesus’ Church.

It’s fashionable, and quite honestly, easier, to be skeptical, judgmental, and whiny about the church in which God has placed us. As a matter of fact, if you really want reasons to complain about church, just go into ministry. You’ll find more squiggly things squirming out from under the rock of humanity’s heart than in just about any other profession.

And I’m not even talking about my life in ministry, but Paul’s- Paul had innumerable reasons to complain, whine, and quit. I mean, Good Lord, just read the Epistles as they come to you:

Adultery in the church? Check.

Getting drunk during communion? Weak leadership? Grieving the Spirit of God?

Check, check, and check.

Yet, he prays we would be unashamedly hopeful. How can he do this?

Because Paul knows:  the church isn’t my thing, your thing, a denomination’s thing, a committee’s thing, a pastor’s thing, a priest’s thing, or any other person’s thing.

It’s Jesus’ thing.

We, friends, are His church.

And He hath willed his truth to triumph through us.

Let hope rise.

 

Power structures can be difficult things to navigate.

In the church where I function in a leadership capacity, we do our best to be approachable, humble, and available for our members as best we can while training new leaders to do the same.

While we don’t always do it perfectly, one thing we are committed to is being committed to being touchable.

Why? Well, besides the many Biblical reasons that exist, we have personal ones as well.

Years ago, there was an untouchable hierarchy in our church. If you had money, you were in. If you had status, you were in. If you had good looks, you were in (did I mention we briefly had a Ralph Lauren Polo model for our youth pastor? He was actually a great guy- and really, really ridiculously good looking, as they say- but just sort of shoved into the position for reasons other than his wanting to do it).

Early on, I saw favors extended to others I believed I had earned, generosity freely given to others who had done a fraction of the work or accomplished a fraction of the results, and this stung, deeply.

The verbal humiliation in public I experienced from our pastor (He would call me to come to him by yelling out, “Hey, boy!”- and that in front of my wife), combined with his mostly ignoring me otherwise, did hurt. But-

In the end, I came to be unbelievably grateful for the rejection I experienced for a number of reasons, but one reason stood out in particular when the church began to go up in flames:

Those who were closest to the center of the dysfunction paid the deepest price. Multiple other leaders, primarily due to their exposure to toxic ministry culture were eventually divorced from their wives, and their families were shattered.

Those who were closest to the darkness were the ones most deeply affected by it. I don’t know God’s reasons for keeping us at arm’s length from harm’s way, nor his reasons for allowing those other men to be so close to the fallout, but I can see now that what felt like rejection was actually God’s protection for us.

I think of David, in the Bible, as a boy, and the sting he had to feel while his brothers were out at war with the Philistines. David, of course, was left home to take care of the sheep- a menial task at best- while the opportunity for honor and glory for his King, country, and family was reserved for his brothers.

Only, it became clear to him (and to us, the reader of the 1 Samuel narrative), when he was sent one day to the battle camp to bring his brothers food and supplies from home, that what felt like rejection was actually God’s protection. How so?

Look at what had happened to his brothers- they became like the man they followed! King Saul, once a great warrior in his own right, should have been the one answering Goliath’s challenge, but his fear and cowardice had infected the whole army, to the point that none of the men would go out and fight- his brothers included.

In other words, they internalized the spirit of the one they followed.

But David’s heart and life had been protected. How? Because of and through the rejection!

And of course, the ultimate example of the way in which we are delivered through rejection is in the life of our Savior, Jesus.

He was handed over to death- rejected- that we might now receive God’s mercy, rescue, and protection.

I feel an incredible sadness for our friends who were in the “inner circle”, so to speak, who absorbed the punishment given out and whose lives were permanently affected by it. There was a time, later, where my wife and I were called upon to do the same thing, to a certain extent. But I learned this: sometimes, if not most of the time, when we experience legitimate rejection by those who ought to be treating us differently- God is up to something. And in our case, we learned, that what feels like rejection from others can actually be a form of divine protection. If we had been closer to our pastor at that particular point in our lives, there’s no reason to think that we would have ended up any differently than our friends.

If you are experiencing rejection today, don’t quit! What if the pain you are experiencing were actually a shield from something worse, and a sign of something better to come?

 

At the end of the first time the church I worked for imploded (but not the last) (more on that next time), I looked up and was amazed- God had kept Carrie and me through it, and we had come out better on the back end.

That being said…we were changed.

We were changed in a way that no one saw coming but that, in retrospect, we desperately needed.

Without knowing it, we had become permanently disillusioned with the Church.

 

Now, before you think anything else about that statement, let me define what it doesn’t mean.

To be permanently disillusioned does not mean we get to leave a church or any church for something someone has or hasn’t done to us.

To be permanently disillusioned doesn’t mean we rehash hurts over and over in our mind as a way of re-fueling bitterness.

To be permanently disillusioned doesn’t mean we don’t trust any leader, it doesn’t that we refuse to grow close to any more Christians, and it certainly doesn’t mean we don’t obey the Bible when it says we ought to “believe the best”.

So, what does it mean?

Above all others, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated it best. I stumbled across his writings on Christian community in his book, Life Together, and he put it like this:

 

            “The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great  disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are  fortunate, with ourselves.”

 

When I read this, I almost fell over. This is it. This is the first key to surviving in the world of the Church, of Christian community: to become permanently disillusioned- to come to the end of thinking that just because we are Christians, everything is going to always work out the way we think it should or that everybody should act like they’re supposed to. In short, it won’t and they aren’t going to!

I, likely like you, have heard innumerable sermons on what the church “ought to be like” and how it “ought to look”, and no doubt these are good and right on and even necessary- after all, who wants to be a part of something that functions no differently than a country club or the United States government?

Some churches I have been a part of, and maybe the ones you have been a part of, have been amazing at casting vision for the dream of what church ought to be and ought to feel like. And dreams of church are wonderful things, without question. But, be careful which dream you love, and which dream you are more committed to!

Bonhoeffer elaborates brilliantly:

 

“He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest.”

 

When I read these words, I was confronted with the darkness of my own soul and my own failure to love the people in the church more than the dream of the church.

After all, what is the church, if not the people?

How can we love a dream more than reality?

How could a husband love a dream of what his wife was supposed to be more than he just loved her?

How could a wife look at her husband and cease to love him because he wasn’t exactly walking out Ephesians 5?

He couldn’t, she couldn’t, and we shouldn’t.

I saw that the only reason I had become disillusioned was because I had been believing in something that wasn’t real- the “perfect” church.

When I saw that much of the hurt in my heart was due to falling in love with a false vision and a mirage, I was actually freed- and you can be, too, if you will become permanently disillusioned with your illusion.

You can be free in your heart to love and forgive and grow if you will let go of the illusion that somewhere out there, the perfect church exists with the perfect pastor waiting to receive you and love you and nothing will ever, never go wrong, and no one will never, ever leave you or hurt you (by the way, that place does exist- it’s called heaven. And we’re not there yet).

It’s way easier to love the idea of church than it is to love the church itself.

 

Which one are you doing?

 

Which one does Jesus do?

Once upon a time, I had a grandmother.

A Southern Baptist grandmother.

Actually, she was what they called a “Southern-by-God-Baptist” (say it out loud to catch the emphasis).

During the summers, I would go stay with her, and besides her pound cake, this is what I remember most about her:

She would say, over and over again:

Nobody gets away with nothing.

And it’s true, especially in the church world. Over the last 20 years, Carrie and I have learned, truly and deeply, what it meant to know that God sees everything.

I once worked for a pastor I thought was untouchable.

To me, he was the most powerful and most “anointed” person I had ever seen, and the thought that he could or would ever be removed from his secure position was beyond belief- but I was wrong.

We learned that God sees, God knows, and that God will bring every person to account- especially his leaders. God loves his leaders, but he also loves his people, and the justice side of God’s love, though many times apparently slow in forthcoming, will not be delayed forever. After all, it’s His church.

Every time money is used inappropriately, God sees.

Every time someone is treated poorly and made to feel it is their fault alone, God sees.

Every time someone is publicly dishonored or manipulated to keep prying eyes away from asking too many questions, God sees.

And God is able to bring any leader to justice, any church system to justice, and do it in a way that brings Himself glory.

So what can you do if you’re in the middle of a situation where it seems like people are “getting away with it?”

Well, I don’t know everything to do, but I do know what my wife and I did do:

We prayed.

So many nights, I would grab my wife’s hand, and we would begin to pray for our pastor and church. We would pray for God’s blessing on his ministry, on his marriage, on his children, on his finances. We prayed for God to use him and to speak through him, and to keep him from harm as he traveled. We prayed for our church to be made right and to honor God.

Over and over we prayed. We prayed hard-to-get-the-words-out kind of prayers. The kind of prayers that are only prayed because they have to be, because otherwise the bitterness would creep in and the hurt would overwhelm the hope.

I don’t know if you have had to pray prayers like that for years of your life, but it changes you. You learn how to let go, and stop being the judge. You learn that it is better to give grace than receive whatever else it is you think you want from someone. You realize that God, in his infinite wisdom, has given you to the key to freedom- forgiveness through prayer.

And you realize, that if we see something, God has long seen it, and He will put things to rights.

In other words, you will realize, nobody gets away with nothing.

And if you’re in a tough spot today, in your family, on the job, and especially in the church, if you will cling to my grandmother’s hard-earned wisdom (which is really just a colloquial affirmation of the sovereignty of God), what happened to us, just might happen to you:

We were changed in a way that no one saw coming but that we desperately needed.

You see, without knowing it, we had become permanently disillusioned with life, and specifically with the church.

What does that mean?

Well, in true TV-serial-drama-fashion, you’ll find out, next week.

 

I don’t know quite what a person’s first day as a pastor is supposed to be like, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

After a couple of years of living and working out of state, the church I had worked for as a college pastor for 9 years had asked me to come back as the lead pastor.

It had fallen on hard times (again) and was in a lot of pain (again).

But hey! I’m back! It’s me! What could go wrong, right?

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Why am I here?

Why begin a blog?

When my wife and I meet people, and we’re asked to to talk about who we are and what we do, the most frequent comment we hear is:

“How did you guys turn out the way you turned out?”

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