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More Pastor Than I’ll Ever Be

February 15, 2012 in Missions, Spiritual Growth with 17 Comments

Two years ago I wrote the post below about my buddy, Bishal. Every time I pull up to his slum here in India there is a bit of a pit in my stomach as I’m wondering if he’ll be there. While hardly a day goes by that I don’t pray for him, I know that, as the time passes between my visits, there’s a million things that could happen to him in the world he lives. Today, I found him and all my worries were put to rest. Here’s a pic from today, as well as the post from two years ago.

February 23, 2010

Let me introduce you to Bishal Barik.

This kid grabbed my heart from the moment I met him. Maybe it’s because he’s 8 like my oldest or maybe it’s his contagious smile, but we instantly hit it off. Bishal is a student at the school we’ve started in the Khalpar slum.

His mother abandoned him the day he was born and another family took him in. There were complications with his birth which have left Bishal battling issues with his legs. He walks with a limp and is often in pain after a day of playing outside. He’s in desperate need of physical therapy but obviously that’s just not a reality in his situation. The couple who took him in are both employed and combined make just over one dollar a day.

You’ll have to trust me when I say Bishal is a special kid. When I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up he quickly responded, “I want to be a pastor.” I said, “Why do you want to be a pastor, Bishal?” He said, “Well, because I Iove Jesus.” And boy does he ever! This kid has Jesus written all over him.

Despite his physical hardships and extreme poverty he simply loves anyone and everyone who comes in his path.

His laughter is a sweet sound in a sea of despair.

His kindness is a light in deep darkness.

His joy is a miraculous contradiction in a hopeless slum.

While Bishal dreams of one day being a pastor he doesn’t even realize he’s more pastor than I’ll ever be.

Matthew 22: 37-40
Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”

How can you love God and people better today?

Christian Community Made Simple

February 9, 2012 in Spiritual Growth with 28 Comments

A lot gets written about Christian community these days. How we build it and maintain it seems to be quite the popular topic. I don’t want to over simplify it, but look at Romans 12:15.

” Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”

This statement may be simple, but it’s not easy is it? In fact, the reality is we quite often do the exact opposite.

We mourn another’s joy (jealousy) and we rejoice when someone has reason to mourn (self-righteousness).

And this is why “authentic community” may be a big buzzword in Christian circles, but we’ve got a long way to go if we want it to be a reality.

Your thoughts?

Love To Hate

February 8, 2012 in Leadership, Spiritual Growth with 19 Comments

Almost four years ago I wrote THIS post about my friend, Brad Johnson. The post included an open letter he had written to his church apologizing for the pain his affair had caused his church.

Yesterday, while sitting in my office one of my colleagues asked me a question about “search terms.” They were wondering how people most often find my blog. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at such stats, but I was absolutely shocked to see that almost four years later “Brad Johnson Affair” is still one of the biggest search terms used on Google to find my blog.

I think that’s so sad.

Why is it that we, as Christians, are so fascinated and pre-occupied with other Christians’ public failure?

Why do we LOVE to hate people who have stumbled?

Is it about revenge?

Does it make me feel better about myself?

Does focusing on immorality around me allow me to ignore the immorality in me?

The thing I tend to forget is Scripture is full of people like David and Moses who committed murder and embodied so many other character defects. And yet, God used them. Not only did he use them, they would become the heroes of our faith. The truth is many of the individuals God used throughout Scripture would have NO chance of ever being hired in any of our churches today.

Why don’t we have more leaders in our faith and in churches who have had moral and ethical failures?

Because we love to shoot our own. We love to hate people that have screwed up. We love the sensational scandal.

But let me say this. Giving up on people like Brad Johnson and the hundreds of Christian leaders who fall every year is not a statement on them. It’s a statement on our belief in God’s redeeming work.

Do you believe God can redeem Brad’s life and ministry? Let me ask a more probing question. Do you really WANT God to redeem Brad’s life?

Maybe the reason we don’t have more Brad’s and David’s and Moses’s leading in our churches today is because as a Christian community we’ve slammed the door on God’s redeeming work in the lives of people who have screwed up.

We’ve stopped looking into the eyes of the fallen and speaking redeeming, loving words. We’ve stopped telling them here is who you can become.

Old habits can change.

Old patterns can be rewired.

You can become the person God had in mind when he thought you into existence.

Who have you given up on? Who needs you to believe in them again?

*On a side note. I’m reading Brad’s new book The Four Laws of Forgiveness: How to Forgive Yourself and Others
and it’s blowing me away.

Madonna, Tom Brady, The Super Bowl & Me

February 6, 2012 in Spiritual Growth with 41 Comments

Hope you guys had fun watching the game last night, or at least had fun watching the commercials.

I was really looking forward to watching the halftime show with Madonna, but, unfortunately, missed the whole thing. We had committed to two different parties and used halftime to shuttle to the next one.

Several of my friends said she did an amazing job. Somehow the pop icon, whose now 53, had no wardrobe malfunctions and avoided controversy on almost every level. Maybe 30 years in the business has taught her a thing or two.

I still can’t help feeling sorry for Madonna or really any other public figure/entertainer. Watching Tom Brady walk off the field with his head down in shame made me think that the guy probably thinks he’s only as good as his last game. It’s a tough way to live and you don’t have to have a national platform to fall into this trap.

I’ve got a new book that’s coming out in about 60 days entitled Empty Promises: The Truth About You, Your Desires, and the Lies You’re Believing. In the book I actually have a quote from Madonna from an interview years ago where she said,

I have an iron will, and all my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. . . . I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and think I’m mediocre and uninteresting. . . . My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that’s always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I’ve become Somebody, I still have to prove that I’m Somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.

Do you hear that desperation? I hear it echoing in my own head all the time. You feel like you have to prove yourself again and again and again.

This stems, from what I call in Empty Promises, a “Success-based identity.” This is the assumption that what you do determines who you are. You try to control the opinions and approval of others through your performance and you let what they think of you affect what you think of you. In other words, you tend to gather your self-worth externally. And gathering your self-worth externally is kind of like trying to fill up a lake with a Dixie cup. It’s just never enough.

It’s an addictive cycle that we all have to find freedom from before we inadvertently destroy everything that’s important to us.

You can pre-order your copy of Empty Promises by CLICKING HERE.

Do you ever struggle with the idea that “What you do determines who you are?”

Breaking The Silence

January 25, 2012 in Spiritual Growth with 24 Comments

I believe sometimes you have to forgive someone, not for their sake, but for your freedom.

This past weekend my friend and neighbor, Will, did one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen. He shared with us his story of sexual abuse and how it led to a double life.

I know, statistically, there are hundreds of you who read this blog who have been a victim of a similar devastating and painful act. I have no right to tell you what you should do or how you should handle it, but I’m praying if there’s hidden pain in your life that you can find a safe person to confess that hurt and pain to and possibly begin your process of healing.

I’m sorry you’ve been hurt. I’m sorry you have to live with the consequences of someone else’s sin. However, I think there’s a big difference between living with those consequences in the bitterness of unforgiveness verses the freedom of forgiveness.

We’re all praying for you today!!

Voices In My Head

January 24, 2012 in Leadership, Spiritual Growth with 47 Comments

Like everyone else I go through seasons where I doubt myself and my effectiveness. When you have a public ministry you constantly have people in your ear saying things like…

I wish you preached more like this…

I wish you counseled like this….

I wish you led like….

I wish you interacted like this…

I wish you spent your time like this…

It’s easy to start to doubt and wonder if you should be more this or that. Last week I spent some time with some crazy gifted friends and as I watched them do their thing it made me doubt even further.

I spent an evening with my friend, Steven Furtick, at his church in Charlotte. As I watched him masterfully lead worship and then preach his guts out it made me think….I need that kind of charisma. If I had his charisma I could be so much more effective. That was Wednesday night.

Than on Friday I found myself in a round table conversation with my friends Chris Seay and Len Sweet which was being video taped for a future small group curriculum. The whole time we talked I felt like I needed a dictionary. These guys are not only incredible ministers of the Gospel, but they’re unbelievably smart. I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t understand half of what they were talking about. I honestly walked away wondering if I was even smart enough to be in ministry.

I say all of this not to invoke some kind of sympathy. I’m just letting you know what goes on in my head because I bet these things go on in your head as well. I bet these voices get really loud in you from time to time.

While I won’t argue that lack of character has brought down more good leaders than just about anything, I would say insecurity runs a very close second.

Insecurity can torment the most gifted of leaders. It will make you…

doubt instead of trust

criticize instead of praise

assume the worst instead of the best

talk instead of listen

micromanage instead of empower

control instead of release

In the end it will erode your effectiveness and leave you useless and powerless. Your worst nightmare will become a reality as you look around to discover that, no longer, is anyone following you.

Be yourself. Live your giftedness. Listen to the voice of your Creator which is the only voice that really matters and tell those other voices to shut up.

What does your insecurity look like when it raises its ugly head?

Poisonous Root

January 23, 2012 in Spiritual Growth with 28 Comments

Hebrews 12:15 Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many.

You may be justified in your bitterness, but it still contaminates everything.

You may have every right to not forgive certain people in your life. But you need to know bitterness contaminates everything. It spreads far and wide and deep.

And maybe the most dangerous and destructive thing about bitterness is that it doesn’t remain isolated to the source of bitterness, but spreads to all of your relationships. Left unchecked it will ruin everything that is important to you.

I love what my friends, Mike Foster and Jud Wilhite wrote in Deadly Viper.

You see, when you don’t forgive someone, you let them park in your life forever. These people are like parasites that can suck the life right out of you and allow bitterness to rot you out. If you let these people and their actions haunt your thoughts, emotions, and spirit, you allow them to continually damage not only you, but those around you, too.

Almost everyday I come in contact with people who are allowing unforgiven anger and bitterness from their past to destroy them today. Unknowingly their unwillingness to forgive is impacting their marriage, the way they treat their kids and their attitude toward most everything in life.

I’m not going to pretend like forgiveness is always easy because we all know it isn’t. Some of you have been hurt in ways I can’t imagine. Someone wounded you, or betrayed you or lied to you or maybe cheated you. You’re afraid if you let go of the hurt, they get away with something. And you’re right, to forgive you will pay a high cost. In fact the only thing that will cost you more than forgiveness is not forgiving someone.

I know you want to see them hurt back, but that desire is a weight or burden that actually becomes a part of you. You’ll carry that weight from relationship to relationship, from season to season and if you carry that bitterness and anger around long enough it will choke the joy out of your life.

It costs a lot to forgive. But to not forgive will eventually cost you your heart.

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