I’m on the side of the church, make no mistake. But at a time when the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is under siege from all sides, forces on the INSIDE threaten to do it the greatest damage.

For my money, the two most destructive forces at work within the congregation of the people of God are the wreckers and the sleepers. The bullies and the wimps. The tyrants and the meek little lambs.

A friend told me a little group ran off the pastor from a church where his mother belongs. The man was a terrific minister, he said, and had the support of the congregation, but a few people made life miserable for him and forced him out. When my friend asked his mother why the “good people” in the congregation didn’t rise up and take a stand, she replied:

“Well, someone has to act like a Christian in these things.”

That, I suggest to you, is 50 percent of the problem. Confronting evil doers inside the congregation is seen by many as “acting unChristian.”

In a typical congregation of Christian people, no matter the denomination, you will find some of the nicest people on the planet. They are peaceful and loving, generous and kind-hearted. They like to serve and give, to teach and help. But there is one thing they shy away from above all else:

Confrontation.

To put it bluntly, they wimp out at the very time when the Lord’s church–its ministries, its missions, its outreach, its unity–is under siege.

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“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6)

Everyone has his own opinion on revival, what it means, how to recognize it when it arrives, how to coax it into being, and what to do then.

Here’s mine.

When I was 15 years old, Dad drove my little brother Charlie and me five miles around the highway to get to the back side of our property. Our large, mean, ugly, belligerent (get the idea?) bull had broken out of the pasture and a neighbor had penned him up. Without a truck to haul him in–we were not your typical idea of a prosperous farm family–Charlie and I were going to have to lead him across the fields and through the woods back home.

Dad tied a rope around the bull’s horns and handed me the end. “Charlie, you push. Joe, you lead.”

Oh yeah.

That bull did not want to go anywhere. Pulling on the rope to get him started was something like tugging on a Greyhound bus to start it rolling. To say Charlie was pushing is not exactly right. Getting anywhere close to that animal’s back legs was risking one’s life. But we did the best we could.

After a bit, the bull got the idea and began to trot. Since he was headed in the right direction, we were pleased and ran along beside him.

Then, he decided to leave us behind.

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The sign in front of a Birmingham area repair shop seems to be part of a continuing conversation: “We’re Open. All is Well.”

In last Sunday’s Parade magazine, actress Sela Ward talks about turning 50. (We all should look so good at the half-century mark!) For her birthday bash, her family wrote on the barn: “Sela is turning 50–it’s all good.”

A personalized license plate this morning read: “IBAOK.” We take that to mean the owner is claiming he/she is “A-OK.”

Good for them. It’s great to feel good and good to feel great.

Many a church member will tell you their favorite song in the church hymnal is the uplifting “It is Well With My Soul.”

Come on now.

Let’s be honest here.

All is not well, not in the world, not in this country, and to our great sorrow and ultimate shame, not even in Christendom.

There’s trouble in River City; Houston, we have a problem.

There’s trouble inside the house of God.

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Georgia fans have a right to complain over the penalty their football team was given last Saturday afternoon as their guy scored with about a minute left in the game with our LSU Tigers.

Following the Georgia TD, the fans were ecstatic and the players were jubilant, running around hugging one another.

That’s when the referee threw the flag and penalized Georgia for a weird infraction (only added to the football rules in recent years) known as “excessive celebration.”

This meant the ensuing kickoff to LSU would take place from deep in Georgia territory (can’t recall the exact numbers here, but that’s irrelevant) and would give LSU an extra advantage. If you watched the game, you know what happened: a few plays later, LSU crossed the goal line with a TD of their own, and ended up winning the game.

Incidentally, the LSU team was likewise flagged for excessive celebration. By then, however, the clock had almost wound down, making it meaningless.

Now, LSU fans–responding to their Georgia friends’ complaint that that penalty might have turned the game around–respond that when running back Charles Scott made the final 20 (or so) yard TD run, he could have just as easily have trotted another 20 or 30 yards. It appears no one could have stopped him and he could easily have still been running a week later.

But that does not ease Georgia’s pain. To its credit, the Southeast Conference has issued apologies this week. The commissioner promises to caution their referees not to be over-zealous in enforcing a rule intended to stop taunting.

Some of us had a little fun with the “excessive celebration” thing. On Facebook, I wrote something like: “I think I’ve figured out what happened with that penalty. After all, who are the most phobic on the subject of ‘excessive celebrations?’ Clearly, the referees were Episcopalians! (Or maybe members of some First Baptist churches we know.)” I added, “Anyone smiling?” in an attempt to keep anyone from taking it all too seriously.

Among the interesting comments was this: “We know the referees were not Baptists because in the end zone they were raising both hands.”

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I’m away from home in revival this week. As usual, I brought along a number of books to read, several Bibles, and plenty of notepaper for working on sermons, drawing cartoons, and such. One of the books was a western.

“Lonely on the Mountain” is a “Sackett” novel by the king of westerns, Louis L’Amour. I picked it up somewhere along the way and have been reading it in the cracks of time when my brain needs a rest from heavier matters.

Something about this novel surprised me, and provides an insight into a matter we pastors face in sermon-building and preaching.

It’s a great story, as westerns go. L’Amour in his prime was as good as they come in delivering a tale of the old west. The Sacketts are a fictitious Tennessee mountain clan that has moved west. The various brothers and generations provided L’Amour material for 15 or 20 novels over the decades.

In this story, one of the Sackett brothers sends a cryptic SOS to his family from a remote Canadian village. His kinfolk come a-running. Most of the book details their adventures as they pull together supplies, cross prairies driving a herd, encounter Indians and outlaws, and gradually try to piece together what their brother meant by his plea for help.

The plot thickens, as the saying goes, as it builds toward a climatic showdown. And that’s where the problem with the book arose.

Finally, the rescuers arrive at the Canadian outpost on page 185 of the 194-page book. At this point, I have decided this must be part of a two-volume telling of this tale because there is no way this story can be resolved in the remaining 9 pages.

But it was.

Actually, the story just fizzled out. After building us up and teasing us along, Louis L’Amour punted. In the final 9 pages, the disparate clan members meet up and learn the problem in the village, have their obligatory gun battle, learn the answer to some of the riddles that have puzzled them during their drive west, and close the story.

It was awful.

Clearly, L’Amour got bored with his story and decided to put it out of its misery. His readers be hanged.

What I wish he had done was to lay it aside for a few days or weeks or even longer and work on something else before returning to it.

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[This is a repeat of an article we did in July of 2008. Please feel

timely subject or greater need in our congregations.]

Ask any church leader why America–or the churches in general or a denomination in particular or all Christians–does not (do not) have revival and the answers will usually come out to something like: “We’re not praying,” or “We’re not praying hard enough,” or “This takes prayer and fasting.”

Today, I spent an hour on the internet reading some of the hundreds of websites on the subject of revival. Those that attempt to cover the subject of why we are not experiencing revival usually attribute it to sin, complacency, or prayerlessness.

Maybe they’re right, but it seems to me those answers are missing the point.

The reason we’re not having revival may indeed be that we’re not praying for one. After all, Scripture assures us that “you have not because you ask not.” (James 4:2)

But that just leads to the question of why we’re not praying for revival. The answer, I strongly suggest, is simple: we don’t want a revival. We like things the way they are.

I said it and will stand by it: we do not want revival. The churches don’t, the church members don’t, and very few of the pastors want a genuine Heaven-sent revival.

After all, revival means change, and we don’t want change. We’re too comfortable the way things are at the present.

I used to have an elderly man in my last church who showed up for services from time to time mainly because of his wife. Once when I was visiting in their home, I learned that five years earlier, he had had a heart bypass operation. His wife said, “And pastor, the doctor ordered him to walk several blocks a day, but he won’t do it.”

I tried to shame him a little. After all, the walking was for his own good and might prolong his life. He said, “Preacher, the reason I don’t walk is simple. Walking interferes with my routine.”

His wife scoffed, “What routine! Pastor, he goes to the casino!”

He lived two more years, still spending his days with the slot machines.

That, in a word, is why the great masses of Christians do not pray for nor desire revival: it would interfere with their routine.

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Earlier this year, one of my first sensations on driving the new Camry home from the dealer was how pristine the windshield was. No nicks, no dents, no dried bugs. None of the stuff you get with cars that traveled a few thousand miles across city streets and country highways.

Now, four months and quite a few thousand miles later, that windshield is beginning to look like all the others I’ve stared through and lived with.

There is a way to keep a windshield unflicked (is that a word?). Park it in the garage and leave it there. Never take it outside.

There’s a tiny dent with white paint (the car is a bright red) on one door where some thoughtless person in another car opened a door against it.

It happens. I was expecting it, although I admit I was dreading it.

Real life is this way. If you get out in the world, you get nicked up and dented and even scarred. If you get involved with where people are and attempt to move them to where they ought to be, you will occasionally come home at night with bruises and the occasional black eye and bloody nose.

A friend who left the pastorate to become the director of missions (my former ministry) with the Baptist churches in a Gulf Coast county wrote recently to say no sooner had he unpacked his boxes than he had to mediate a situation between a pastor and a church. The pastor was being forced out and the DOM worked with the church leadership to arrange an appropriate severance package.

I observed that sooner or later, if he does this enough, both sides will turn on him. He was unfair, he was partial to the other side, he is unworthy to call himself a Christian, let alone a minister, he is no friend.

The minister should expect it; don’t be blind-sided; it happens.

The same day the DOM’s note arrived, a pastor in another state emailed asking for prayer. He and his deacon chairman were visiting a wayward deacon who has ended his marriage for another woman in the church, and nothing about this confrontation bodes well.

No one said it was going to be fun.

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She was as poor as anyone in our church. A single parent–probably never married and only recently born into God’s family–she was bringing up three small children without the assistance of any extended family member that I could see. She was a hard worker and impressed all of us by her sincerity, while touching our hearts by her poverty.

That morning, my wife had brought this young mother and her children to church, and now, after the services, was driving them home.

All of a sudden, in the middle of their conversation, without reference to anything they had been talking about or anything in the sermon that day, she said, “Mrs. Margaret, I know I need to start tithing my income to the Lord. I can’t afford it of course. I don’t make enough to get by as it is.”

She was quiet a moment, then said, “But I’ve decided. I’m just going to do it regardless.”

When my wife told me what she had said, all the bells went off inside me. “That’s it!” something said. “That’s what the Christian life is all about! Serving the Lord regardless. Regardless of all the reasons you find not to do it, regardless of what others say, regardless of what you don’t have and regardless of your own fears and doubts. You go forward and do it anyway.”

The more I thought of it, the more I decided we can redefine faith this way: doing the right thing regardless.

THINK OF BARTIMAEUS, the blind beggar of Jericho. (Mark 10 and Luke 18) He hears that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by and he begins to clamor to meet him.

“Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me!”

He’s hollering now. This beggar, who has sat there as long as anyone can remember, always quiet and humble and submissive, now becomes persistent and insistent and loud.

“Jesus! Over here! Son of David, have mercy on me!”

People try to shush him. “Mister, can you hold it down. We are trying to honor our distinguished Friend today and the last thing we need is a blind beggar creating a ruckus.”

But the more they tried to silence him, the louder Bartimaeus called, “Jesus! Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy!”

When the Lord came within earshot, He stopped. “Who is that?” Someone said, “Oh, Lord, we have this blind beggar over here and he’s calling for you.”

“Bring him to me,” the Lord said.

And He healed him. Just like that. Sweet and simple. A complete lack of dramatics. No slapping him on the head, no slaying him in the Spirit. The Lord just said, “All right, be healed.” And he was.

There is faith. You can search Scripture and not find a finer demonstration of faith than the one the blind beggar of Jericho gave us that day: against opposition and discouragement, he called on Jesus until the Lord heard him and answered his prayer.

They could have given Bartimaeus a long list of reasons why he should not call on the Lord that day, such as: you’re dirty, you’re unpresentable, you’re unlearned, you are a beggar, you are not worthy, you don’t know your Bible, you don’t know how to address a person of His eminence, you have no offering to give, nothing in your hand to bring.

All those things were true. But he came to Jesus regardless.

Why don’t you come to Jesus that way? No matter what others say, no matter what kind of discouragement you may receive from your family or friends. Regardless of your fears and without giving in to your doubts.

Use your faith. Do the right thing. Come to Jesus.

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In another city, I dropped in on a church near the hotel for their Sunday morning worship service. The church belonged to a denomination that is unapologetically liberal, so I was not surprised by anything. But there is one thing about such congregations and their leadership that always amazes me.

I’m continually surprised at how thoroughly they leave Jesus out of things.

We use the same Bible, so it’s not like we’re reading from different texts.

We’re working from the same blueprint, so it’s not like we have different architects.

And we all call ourselves Christian.

But how in the world two groups of people who read the same Bible and call themselves disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ can come up with such disparate renditions of the Christian faith is beyond me.

The way I read the Bible, everything there is about Jesus. Not some of it, all of it. Not the major portion, but every blessed thing in there in one way or the other points to Jesus.

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We who are fans only of college or professional football have no idea what it must be like to walk out onto the field at game time.

Growing up, most of us played the game at some level. We’re used to the green expanse stretching before us and the guys on the other team facing us. But there’s one thing we never saw that is a powerful element in the game played by the big boys.

There are a jillion fans sitting all around them.

Think of it. On your field of vision as you exit the locker room is a sliver of green which is the playing field. But filling 90 percent of your eyeballs is a stadium filled with raving, cheering, expectant fans. When the ball is thrown into the air, the backdrop is the fans. When it’s kicked, the player has to pick the ball out of a mural of fans.

That’s the part of the game I cannot imagine. I have little trouble imagining the running, throwing, hitting, blocking, catching parts of the game. But what a difference it must make for a player to be the object of 75 thousand fans, all screaming for him to make it or break it, to catch it or miss it. He’s cheered, he’s booed, he’s a goat, he’s a hero.

I’m thinking of the time Rex Ryan, coach of the NFL’s New York Jets, gave the game ball (signifying their leading role in a victory) to the fans who helped his team to a rare win over the New England Patriots. The previous week, Ryan had sent a voice mail to every season-ticket holder calling on them to “be there and be loud” at the game.

It worked. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady admitted he had trouble being heard when calling signals to his players. At one point, twice in a row the referees threw the penalty flag on Brady’s team for getting out of sync.

Pastors know the difference the congregation makes.

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