The Power of Perspective

This is the time of year when I am tempted to become depressed. Each week we see a huge percentage of our congregation leave for the north, knowing we won't see many of them again for 8 months or longer. The numbers dwindle. Offerings taper off. We struggle to make ends meet. It gets harder and harder to attract new people to the church when the dynamics are so drastically changed.

But I guess, as with all things in life, it's just a matter of perspective. What could depress me doesn't have to if I look on the bright side.

We are the most privileged of all pastors. Dan and I have reminded each other many times over the years of how fortunate we are to know so many genuinely good people. Quality people. People who love the Lord and storm the gates of heaven with their prayers. Though many of those people are gone during the summer months, we know that they are not gone from our thoughts, nor are we absent from theirs. They are still praying for us. And many of them enlist their northern church friends to pray for our church. That means the prayers for this church and our ministry are multiplied many times over during the summer. How much more blessed could we be?

We also remind ourselves that we are not "losing" people to our church during the summer months. We have merely sent them out as short-term missionaries. For the past several months God has entrusted them to our care, so we could teach them and feed them and train them (according to His Word and His plan). Now they're off to various parts of the country putting into practice what we've shared. They are missionaries from Zephyrhills, expanding the ministry of this church many times over. What a powerful, influential ministry God has entrusted to us! We know "our people" are going to be a tremendous blessing to their northern churches, and when they return they'll share all the good reports with us. It just doesn't get any better than this.

The summer months teach us anew and afresh to depend on the Lord and to trust Him. We simply have to. Summer keeps us humble. We remember the value of hard work and being faithful in the little things. We never have been ones to prepare LESS just because we were expecting a smaller crowd. We like to think we put the same amount of effort into our ministries no matter how large or small the crowd. But having the smaller numbers reminds us what ministry is all about -- one soul at a time.

Summer also gives us an opportunity to regroup and rest from the hectic winter months. God has given us this time as a great pause -- not from ministry, but from over-activity -- so we can be renewed in our spirits. It's a time to think about people and pray for them. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," the old saying goes. And it really is true. We love our northern friends intensely. And we miss them.

So, though I'm tempted to feel down and look at the struggles ahead, I force myself to see the "Florida Syndrome" from a heavenly perspective. There is so much to praise the Lord for that to do otherwise would be downright sinful.

The Death of American Christianity

These thoughts have been on my mind all week long, but I hesitate to share them. I don't want to be misunderstood and I certainly don't want to offend anyone. But as I look across the church in general, I can't help but lament the state of Christendom in America. Bluntly put, we're dying. And I think I know why.

It's because we see so little Biblical Christianity.

Don't get me wrong. People claim to be Christians. They feel passionately about many things. They understand the fundamentals of the Christian faith; but they're not Biblical Christians. They don't operate from a Biblical world view. Their "feelings" are inconsistent with Scripture and they don't care. Most people today believe what they want to believe and they don't want to be confused with Bible verses! They don't care if their views are inconsistent with the Scriptures.

So, this week I listened to a woman in Bible study passionately defend her position that Terri Shiavo "died 15 years ago" and her life had "no value at all" and she had "no quality of life." The Biblical concepts of all life having value, the purification that comes from suffering, and God's sovereignty meant nothing to this dear friend because she passionately believed that since she wouldn't want to live like that, Terri wouldn't, either. I went from that to a conversation with a former religious leader who explained why he was vehemently against the death penalty, which he felt was completely in harmony with Scripture. I couldn't help pointing out that it was God who instituted the death penalty. But it didn't matter. What he believed was "right" regardless of what the Bible taught.

I wish these were the only two examples.

American Christianity won't die because of persecution from without. It will die from a lack of Biblical understanding from within. Let's face it: When you take away the Bible all you're left with are a lot of really nice ideas and no objective standard of truth at all. Somehow we need to get Christians to be Biblical Christians -- to embrace the Word of God and to immerse themselves in it until it transforms their thinking. Maybe that's why Paul was so insistent that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds in Romans 12:2.

So, this morning I "happened" to read this excerpt from Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines (in Devotional Classics, p.14, 16):

"The word 'disciple' occurs 269 times in the New Testament. 'Christian' is found only three times and was first introduced to refer precisely to the disciples. . . The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ.

"But the point is not merely verbal. What is more important is that the kind of life we see in the earliest church is that of a special type of person. All of the assurances and the benefits offered to humankind in the gospel evidently presuppose such a life and do not make realistic sense apart from it. The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian -- especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God.

"For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership -- either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination or a local church. . . So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional. . . .

"Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God's overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10)."

In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus says we are to make disciples, not "Christians." We are to teach people to obey everything that Jesus has commanded in the Word. Disciples are continually being taught. They have teachable spirits. They spend so much time with their teacher that they begin to think like he does and talk like he does. They adopt his attitudes. And so must we if we are truly disciples of Jesus Christ. It's not enough to simply be grateful for the provision of the cross. It's not enough to have an experience of conversion. If we're not disciples -- if we're not seeking to be Biblical Christians -- do we really have anything at all? Or are we just fooling ourselves?