Category Archives: Healthy church

Church: The power of working together

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“Don’t try this alone.”  –advice on a thousand exercise devices.

Years ago, the Readers Digest ran an article “What good is a tree?”

When the roots of a tree touch, a substance present reduces the competition.  An unknown fungus links together roots of different trees, even of dissimilar species.  A whole forest may be linked together.  If one tree has access to water, another to nutrients, a third to sunlight, the trees find a way to share.

We could all take a lesson from the forest.

When I was a teen, someone set out a small longleaf pine in my grandmother’s yard.  Year after year, it remained a dwarf, refusing to grow. After her death, an uncle who owned the property set out hundreds of trees across the front yard. Suddenly, that lone, dwarfed pine had company and began to prosper.

The Lord knew you and I would be needing help in living for Him in this fallen world. So, when He saved us, He “added us to the body” (see Acts 2:41).

God never intended any of us to live this life in isolation.

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What I wish for the Lord’s Church

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“That He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27).

The Lord wants the best for His Bride. And so does every right-thinking child of His.

Here is my wish list for the church of the 21st century….

One. I wish the church were less of a business and more like a family.

Our Lord looked around at His disciples and followers and said, “Behold, my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brothers and sisters and my mother” (Mark 3:33-35).  The obedient are His family.

I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God.  The local church should be a smaller expression of that larger, forever family.  I wish more of them were.

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Grieving for the Church

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“How many times I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not.  Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matthew 23:37-38).

Almost daily, I hear of churches that are firing their preachers, are engaged in lawsuits, and struggling with inner conflict.  I know a hundred churches that were strong a generation ago but are fighting to survive now.

These are difficult days for churches, which makes these challenging days for church leaders.

If you are not grieving for the church these days, it must be because your mind is on other things.

Let us care for what is happening, and pray for the Lord’s people.

I grieve for the trendy church which is drawing people in from the smaller surrounding congregations and bursting at the seams, but leaving the smaller ones to shrivel and die.  The huge church often cons its members into thinking they are doing something for the kingdom since they are experiencing such growth. Churches can be so self-centered.

I grieve for the church which is having mind-staggering growth but gradually becomes secretive about what it does with the millions of dollars it takes in, protective about the pay it gives its pastor, and dismissive about the questionable personal lives of its leadership.  Churches can be carnal.

I grieve for the smaller church which turns an envious eye at the growing congregations in its community and, desiring to be like the others, dismisses its faithful pastor and worship leaders because “we have to stay current with modern trends.”  Churches can be wrong-headed.

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How many members does your church have?

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A friend said, “Preachers love their large churches.  The bigger the better. But I tell you, when they start giving account for their flock before the Lord, they’re going to wish they’d had a lot fewer members!”

In truth, the Bible puts no prize on the size of anything.  “It doesn’t matter to the Lord whether He saves by the few or by the many,” said Jonathan in I Samuel 14:6.  And he was right.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,” said our Lord (Matthew 13:31).

Not that preachers believe this.   Most of my colleagues in the Lord’s work seem to believe we need bigness in everything, particularly we want lots and lots of members.  The more the better.

The more members you have, the more resources you have: personnel, finances, visibility and influence in the community, denominational respect, etc etc.

At least, that’s the theory.

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The effective pastor: Be the host.

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(This is the first of a series of article on “The Effective Pastor.” )

“…fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:5).

This morning as I had breakfast in the hotel dining room, a tall blonde lady entered the room and called out, “Good morning, everyone.”

I figured she had to be the manager.

She was.

Terri told me later–as I sketched her–she had been on the job just two weeks. “Before, I managed a hotel in Opelika,” a few miles down the interstate.  I complimented her on the way she greeted people. And I told her something.

I work with pastors. And I have to remind some that they are the manager of this enterprise. They are the chief greeter. The mood-setter.  The actual worship leader.

They are the hosts.

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The one question servants are not allowed

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“What would you like me to do for you?” (Luke 18:41)

A servant asks: “What can I do for you?”  “How may I help you?” “Can I do anything for you?”

But there is one question a true servant (as opposed to an employee) is not allowed to ask:

“What’s in it for me?”

My opinion is that the typical church in this country lives by the maxim: “If it doesn’t make us better or look better or feel better, we will not do it.”

What’s in it for our church?

I’m thinking of a little family in dire need of a healthy church and what it could provide for them.  Over the years, a relative who is a pastor made a point of putting them in touch with at least one church in the various communities where they lived. Several of the churches responded well at first, then promptly dropped the family.  Once they learned this family was going to be difficult, that they were not “low hanging fruit” (meaning “easy pickings”) they moved on.  Once they found out this family was complicated and was not ready to join anybody’s church, they had no heart for the game.

The typical church loves to reach people who are reachable, who will fit within their fellowship, and will not require a lot of maintenance or difficult ministry.

The typical church–I am well aware of the dangers of using such a nebulous term, but please allow me the freedom to do so–lives for itself.  The Kingdom of God ends at the edge of the parking lot.

Now, as a pastor of 42 years, I know the problem.

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Reluctant leadership is better than nothing

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“Somebody ought to do something!”

I was second in line at the traffic light. My lane and the one to my right were all turning left onto Dauphin Street in Mobile. The third lane was turning right.

We sat through through three sequences of lights. Meanwhile, the line of cars behind us grew longer and longer.

Clearly, the light was malfunctioning, but only on our side. Traffic from the other directions was receiving the correct sequence of lights. Our light stayed red.

I was traveling home from a revival in Selma, Alabama, and had stopped for a late-morning breakfast at the Cracker Barrel.  After a fairly demanding week with 1500 miles of driving, I was relaxed now and willing to sit there in the traffic without getting impatient.

But not all day.

Finally, I had had enough. The light was not working and the cars in front of me were showing no inclination to move.

So, I got out.

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Can we quit “enjoying the sermon?”

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Can you think of any place in Scripture where someone compliments another on his message?

I can’t think of a one.

Nowhere, to my knowledge, in the Word does anyone say “Peter preached a powerful sermon” or “Paul’s message was well received” or “The Macedonian crowd got a lot out of Titus’ sermon on the Lord’s Day.”

Now, some in the audience did pick up rocks to throw at the preacher on more than one occasion, but those were the rabble, the wicked, the hostile outsiders and not the congregation of the faithful.

I have a suggestion.

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The compliment that insults a pastor

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A few paragraphs from my journal of Tuesday, March 30, 1993. I had been at that church two and a half years…

At 2 pm, I had a visitor. A former church member who will go unnamed here wanted to apologize for his being so critical of me in my first year.  Couldn’t identify why he was, except a certain resistance to authority.

I forgave him.  The pain is that he is a minister of sorts, someone I had a lot of confidence in and did not know he was doing this. He said, “I hear from people in the last month that you have changed.”  Why am I offended by that? I said, “I haven’t.  I’m the same person I was then.” Which is true. 

Reminds me of the pain in (my last church) when people would write and say, ” We love you now, but for your first year here, we hated your guts. You were in our pastor’s pulpit.’ (The previous pastor had stayed only 3 years and had left for another church before they were ready.) And these would be dear people whom I had valued.  They got It off their chest and left me bleeding. 

Anyway, I’m making a real effort to leave it with the Father and to go forward. (end of journal)

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Something to do immediately following a revival

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Fewer churches are having revivals these days, and the loss is considerable.

At the age of 11 I was saved in a revival in a Free Will Baptist Church.  A full decade later I was called to preach in a revival in a Southern Baptist Church.

I believe in revivals.

In my retirement ministry–for lack of a better term–I do a half dozen revivals a year, in most cases beginning on Sunday morning and going through Wednesday night. Often, we’ll start with a churchwide dinner on Saturday night to kick it off.

More and more these days, I suggest to host pastors a couple of things to make the meeting more meaningful and last longer.  See what you think.

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