God's Plan for Churches and Pastors

Ephesians 4:11-15
It’s often said, rightly I think, that we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes.

Today, with Philip and Amy, and with you, the people of Saint Peter Lutheran Church, I want to share with you what I have learned from what may be the biggest failure of my nearly 32 years of pastoral ministry.

It’s a failure I have really only lately begun to see clearly, even though it should have been obvious to me and I should have addressed it a long time ago.

I can only ask God to forgive me for my past blindness and pray that you, Philip, and you, the people Saint Peter, will be spared having to fail yourselves to learn this lesson.

It’s a lesson which, if we will only be open to it, God gives to us repeatedly in His Word.

Let me bore you with a little background. Ann, Philip, and I went to our first parish in northwest Ohio when Phil was one day shy of his third birthday. I was nearly thirty-one, a newly certified and minted pastor and raring to go.

Within two months, our second child, Sarah, was born. At the time of Sarah's birth, our church had eleven people in hospitals scattered in an arc from Fort Wayne, Indiana up into Ann Arbor, Michigan. For people who aren’t from Texas, that’s a lot of territory. I visited all eleven people three times in five days!

But I was bound to prove myself. I wouldn’t have articulated it in this way, but I was going to be Super Pastor. Preacher on the spot. I was everywhere, doing everything. I decided that I would do the church’s ministry.

You know, a pastor can get a lot of compliments when they do everything. And I was getting them.

But within a few months, as I was visiting the parishioner of another congregation whose pastor asked me to drop by for a visit and prayer, I became ill and was rushed from the cardiac care unit where I was visiting, and sent to the hospital ER.

It turned out to be a stress reaction. My body was revolting against my ego.

Now, I don’t tell that story to prompt Phil to avoid stress or to advise the congregation to take it easy on my son. Doctors tell us that a certain amount of stress is good for us. They call it eustress and it prompts us to do our best, using all of the gifts God has given to us to God’s glory.

What I am saying is that my stress reaction was caused in large part by the fact that I was so bent on being Super Pastor that I neglected fulfilling the actual call God had given to me as a pastor, a minister of Word and Sacrament.

That was my failure. And it’s one that, to greater and lesser degrees, I have replicated more than a few times through the years.

What makes it such an epic fail is that by playing at Super Pastor, I was denying the whole congregation the opportunity to do the things that Christ might have been calling them to do. I thought I was doing the work of God. But really, I was so insecure about being a pastor, that I pulled out all the stops to prove myself to people, not to glorify God.

Now, we all know about do-nothing pastors. They think that justification by grace through faith in Christ is God’s license to sit around and do nothing. They practice a cheap grace and reason that since God loves them, they can do and not do whatever they please.

As I’ve told you many times, Philip, anyone who has been called to be a leader gains credibility as a leader as they make deposits of service, love, work, and faithfulness. The call to pastoral leadership is from Christ. Whether God makes our call to serve a congregation all that’s intended to be depends on whether we earn credibility from our deposits of service, love, work, and faithfulness, into the life of the community and the congregation we serve.

My mistake as a new pastor is that I was flailingly busy without thinking about what my true call from God was. I was missing the mark and the people I led, impressed though they may have been, were not being led as God intended for me to lead them.

Philip, don’t make this mistake.

Saint Peter, don’t let Philip drift into this mistake.

If you want this congregation to be all that God intends for it to be and if you want the partnership between congregation and pastor into which Philip is officially installed today to be what God wants, you must clearly understand your calls as pastor and congregation.

Our lesson from Ephesians 4:11-15 helps us to see what our calls as pastors and congregations are.

Please look at verse 11: “And he [that is, Christ Himself] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds [the word in the original Greek here is ποιμένας and we translate it as pastors]...”

Christ has established this office of pastor. Christ has made you a pastor of His Church, Philip. Christ has given you a pastor, people of Saint Peter. For those who think that Christ is long ago and far away, the calling of a pastor who personally trusts in Christ and views the Bible as the living Word of God by a congregation that has the same beliefs, is proof that Christ is very alive and at work!

And He will keep being at work in their life and work as congregation and pastor if they understand what Christ has called them to do. Take a look at verse 12, please: “[Christ gave pastors] to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…”

Your mission as pastor of Saint Peter Lutheran Church, Philip, is to equip the people to be the Church.

That means empowering them, living alongside of them, teaching them, training them, and inspiring them to do the ministry.

It doesn’t mean that you’re to be the minister.

It means, to paraphrase the Augsburg Confession, that basic statement of Lutheran Christian belief, rightly teaching, preaching, and living the Gospel, the Word of God, and rightly administering the sacraments, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

The Church doesn’t need Super Pastors.

Christ doesn’t call anyone to be a Super Pastor.

Christ has called you, Philip, to work as a servant leader, teacher, preacher, comforter of the bereaved and the sick, and trainer so that the whole congregation can do ministry.

A strong tenet of Lutheran belief revolves around the priesthood of all believers explained in 1 Peter 2:9. Speaking to all Christians--laypeople and pastors, Peter says: “...you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

The whole Church--laypeople and pastors--is called to tell the world about and to live out its faith in Jesus.

And your call, Philip, isn’t to do the ministries that God has called and empowered the people of your congregation to do, but to equip them, first by being a model, to do those ministries.

Our lesson from Ephesians then tells us what the goal of this equipping is.

Verse 13: “until we all [congregations and pastors] attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…”

Do you all remember the sense of accomplishment, maybe relief, you felt the first time you rode a bike without training wheels or tied your shoes?

Or graduated from the sixth grade, then high school, maybe college, even grad school?

Or on your first day of a paid, honest-to-goodness W2-worthy job?

Or when you got a raise or promotion?

Beyond the money or the compliments that come from meeting such milestones, there is a deep-down sense of fulfillment that comes from them all. They make us feel like we’re growing up, like we're moving forward.

It’s a fundamental truth of life that we’re either growing or we’re dying; there’s no middle ground.

No responsible father keeps tying his kid’s shoe when the kid is thirty-five.

No good mom takes her daughter’s tests or fills in for her at work.

Super Parents like these would rob their kids of growth and fulfillment.

Just so, God wants us to grow in our faith into the fullness of Christ, living, in Luther’s phrase, as little Christs: people who love God and others passionately, people who can help others know Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, and people who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can help others know the Word of God and apply it.

Your call, Philip, isn’t to be the token Christian who does all of this.

Your call is to multiply the impact the crucified and risen Jesus can have on every life by equipping the people of Saint Peter and yourself to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…”

If you focus on that, I promise that you’ll have more than enough work to do!

You’ll forgo having everyone think of you as Super Pastor. But you will sense God telling you, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

And people of Saint Peter, if you will allow yourself to be equipped for the life of ministry to which every believer in Jesus is called, you will know the joy and the fulfillment of living in sync with God, of growing up and knowing more of His blessings, and, most importantly, knowing Jesus Christ Himself.

Saint Peter, Amy, and Philip, I pray God’s blessings as you take your journey of faith in Christ together.

[This was shared during the installation of Philip Daniels as pastor of Saint Peter Lutheran Church in Walburg, Texas.]

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Churches Aren't About the Pastors

They're about Christ's people being the Church. (HT: John Schroeder for linking to Mark D. Roberts' post.)

Will You Stand Up or Just Watch?

A more literal translation of the original Greek in Luke 23:35, part of yesterday's Gospel lesson, reads like this:

And the people stood beholding. And also the rulers scoffed, saying, "Others he saved; let him save himself, if this man is the Christ, the Chosen One of God."

The verse comes as part of Luke's account of Jesus' crucifixion. It describes two groups: the people (in Greek, the laos, from which we get the English word laity) and the rulers (in Greek, the archontes, or the first ones), which can be translated as leaders. "The rulers" in this passage is not a reference to the civil rulers, the foreign Roman conquerors, but to the religious leaders. They were the Temple leaders of God's chosen people, the Jews.

The "actions" of each group interest me.

The people stand and watch as a man who has committed no crime is subjected to execution at the hands of the Gentile Romans. The people may have been horrified by what they saw, but they did nothing.

I think it's safe to say that they actually relish their lack of religious power or influence. These things enable them to hide behind a feigned ignorance about Jesus. Their ignorance must be fake because even one of the hardened criminals being executed next to Jesus can see that Jesus is the King. He understands that Jesus will somehow live on beyond death, confesses his sins to Jesus, and professing faith in Jesus as the King of kings, asks to be remembered in Jesus' kingdom. The people simply could not have been ignorant about Who Jesus is.

But the people know that if they confess their sins and profess faith in Christ, crosses might await them, too. They'd rather save their necks and forgo being part of Jesus' eternal kingdom than be with Jesus in paradise. Taking a stand is too risky for them, too inconvenient.

The other group in the verse is the leaders. One thing especially interests me about their words. There is an intrinsic confession of faith in Jesus' power: "Others he saved." They acknowledge the reports about Jesus to be true. They knew that Jesus had saved some from death (like Jairus' daughter and his friend, Lazarus), saved others from demon possession, saved some from blindness, saved some from execution, saved others from disease, saved still others from social shunning. In other words, they acknowledged all of the saving deeds that pointed to Jesus as the long anticipated Christ (Messiah or Anointed One or King), but refused to bow down to Him.

The leaders knew Who Jesus was, but instead of welcoming Him or trusting the witness about Him in God's Word--what we Christians know as the Old Testament portion of our Bibles, they wanted Jesus dead. They loved their own power and position more than they loved God. In fact, they had replaced God's Word with their own teaching. When God showed up in the flesh, He threatened them.

In the days of the Reformation, Martin Luther pointed out that the leaders of the sixteenth century Church had arrogated powers to themselves that didn't belong to them. Through an elaborate legalistic system, they stood between the God revealed in Christ and the laity. They tried to keep the people from reading the Bible. They changed the liturgy, usually spoken in a language only elites could understand, from a means of praising and interacting with God, to an object of terror, grim obligation, superstition, and extortion.

Luther, in many ways, sought to tear down the walls between the God revealed in Christ and the people. He pointed to passages like 1 Peter 2:9-10, to say that "ordinary" Christian laypeople had a priesthood. (A priest is a person who advocates for God before people and advocates for people before God.)

This, of course, is a liberating notion. Historians like Rodney Stark and Alvin J. Schmidt have shown that this teaching that all believers are equal in the sight of God, each with their own ministries, played a central role in the development of the Enlightenment, the idea of the individual, the modern democracy, and market capitalism.

But the priesthood of all believers also carries with it responsibility. Christian laypeople who know Jesus as Messiah and King can no longer dodge either His Lordship over their lives or their responsibilities as priests. Peter says that the priesthood of all believers has a purpose; God makes us priests "in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).

In Lutheran circles, this means that while pastors have certain functions--our confessions speak of the pastor's ministry of "Word and Sacrament," it doesn't alter the fact that all Christians are privileged to have their own relationship with Jesus Christ. It doesn't alter the fact that they are called to know the Word of God for themselves. It doesn't alter the fact they're called to grow and mature in their faith and that they have their own ministries.

Today, many of the elites in my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in the name of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call, "cheap grace," are telling us that people don't need Christ for salvation, that repentance is unnecessary, that the Word of God is only one source of authority in the lives of Christians and the Church (rather than the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice), and that if you accept the Bible's teachings that sexual intimacy is to be confined to heterosexual marriage, you're guilty of sin.

The question before laypeople in the ELCA is simple: Will you accept these false teachings and ignore your duties as priests of God, or will you lay claim to your God-given role and trust in Christ alone? Will you seek to reform our denominational body?

Today, in modern North America, no Christian leader can order your crucifixion. So, the only things impeding any ELCA layperson from praying and working to bring our denomination back under the Lordship of Jesus Christ are indifference, laziness, or complicity with false teaching.

ELCA Lutherans: Our denomination is in error. Will you stand up for Jesus or will you just watch?

If you're intent on doing more than watching, why not take the following initial steps?

• Pray that God will bring reform and renewal to the ELCA
• Get involved in a group Bible study in your church
• Go to the Lutheran CORE web site and see for yourself if what you find there doesn't make sense and square with what Lutherans believe about Christian faith (Lutheran CORE is a group committed to reform and renewal in North American Lutheranism, whether one is committed to remaining in the ELCA or to being part of new bodies, such as Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ or The North American Lutheran Church)
• Read The Book of Concord, containing the basic confessional affirmations of Lutheran Christianity
• You might also want to read a book of essays written mostly by Lutheran laypeople and clergy called, By What Authority?: Confronting Churches Who No Longer Believe Their Own Message
• Ask God what He might want you to do as part of your own ministry

[UPDATE: The verification words that popped up when I posted the link to this piece over on Facebook were: "On Lummox." They don't quite have the ring of, "Onward, Christian soldiers," but when spoken to a spectating denomination, might, I guess, have the same basic meaning.]

The Christian's Ministry is in the World

Just this past Monday night, a group of us at Saint Matthew were talking about how the Church is too institutionalized and how Christians, especially pastors, believe that church members are "in ministry" only when they're engaged with some church activity.

But being a Christian doesn't mean being a "prop" (whether by that you mean an instrument that holds an object up or an object on a stage) of the institutional Church. The Church exists, in part, to empower and encourage believers in Jesus to go into the world to do their ministries at their jobs, their homes, and the places where they encounter people socially.

John Schroeder talks about this topic convincingly here.

Look here.

Called to Be a Priest...Yeah, You!

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, yesterday.]

Hebrews 5:1-10
One of my favorite passages in Scripture, on which Martin Luther used prominently in the development of our Lutheran tradition's "priesthood of all believers," is First Peter 2:9-10. It says of we believers in Christ: “...you are...a royal priesthood...in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Beautiful language, but what exactly does it mean for you and me to be part of “a royal priesthood”?

Before his retirement, William Harkey worked in marketing by day. But his real job, as is true of all believers in Jesus Christ, was to be a priest. In a wonderful book called How to Share Good News Without Being Obnoxious About It, Harkey tells about a time when he was living in the Chicago suburbs.

Two doors away was a neighbor who, he said, “was icy. I was friendly. A curt ‘Hi’ was all I could ever get out of him. One day, I noticed him in his backyard, practicing his golf swing. It was almost professional. It was beautiful.”

Harkey says that he himself had always been a terrible golfer. Here was a chance to connect with his neighbor! He strolled toward his fence and asked if the neighbor could give him a few tips on his swing.

“In a matter of minutes,” Harkey says, “he was coaching me like a club pro. Within weeks, we were teeing off together. Around Christmas time [they had become such good friends]…” Harkey says, they were talking about faith issues and his belief in Christ.

Bill Harkey was acting as a priest. He genuinely, authentically befriended someone and that friendship led he and his friend to genuinely, authentically share their ideas of and experiences with God together. Harkey was even able to talk with his friend about Christ.

Are you living out your call to be a priest in your everyday life?

Our second lesson for today, from Hebrews, which points us to Jesus as our great high priest, reminds us of what makes a priest a priest.

A priest, first of all has a purpose. Our Bible lesson says that, “Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.”

Back in Old Testament times, priests at the temple in Jerusalem offered sacrifices for the people’s sins. They recognized, as Paul would put it in the New Testament, that "the wages of sin is death." Knowing that sin deserves death, the priests would offer stand-ins--sheep for those who could afford them, doves or even cereal offerings for those who were poorer. These stand-ins took the punishment for the sins of people who wanted to renounce their sins and turn back to God.

These days, as I mentioned last Sunday, we don’t need such sacrifices. Jesus was our stand-in when He died on the cross. All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ have forgiveness of sin, God’s presence and power in their lives today, and life forever with God.

Our priesthood involves representing God to others and representing others to God. That’s why we’re involved in so many of the ministries of service and love here at Saint Matthew.

Being priests may also entail taking the time to befriend and value crabby neighbors, allowing them, through us, to experience the friendship and love of God. We do all this because we’re priests with a purpose. Our purpose is to connect God and people in the Name of Jesus.

A second thing that makes a priest a priest is sympathy. A priest, our lesson tells us, “is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness.”

That phrase, deal gently, translates a single word from the New Testament Greek, metriopatheo. It has the idea of laying aside our own emotions in order to feel what other people feel, to put ourselves in the other person's shoes. This is what Jesus does for us. It's what He calls us to do for others. And Hebrews mentions two groups of people with whom we are especially to make the effort to deal gently: the ignorant, those are folks who wander haplessly into sin, and the wayward, those who sin despite knowing better.

Of course, as Christians we can’t mince words about what God calls righteousness and what God calls sin. Jesus tells us that we have a sacred obligation to exercise what’s called “the office of the keys,” conferring God’s forgiveness on the repentant, withholding if from those who don’t repent. “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says, “and God in heaven will allow whatever you allow on earth. But he will not allow anything that you don't allow.”*

Priests know though, as Paul writes in the New Testament, that it’s the kindness of God that leads to repentance. We follow a Savior of Whom this same book of Hebrews says, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus went to a cross for us because of His sympathy for us. We’re to display that same sympathy for others.

Pastor Gerald Mann says that sometimes the mission of the Church is to clean up the rotten reputation given to God by Christians. I don't know why it is that Christians so readily fall into self-righteousness, looking down their noses on others. But it's wrong. One of the few bumper stickers I would ever consider putting on my car is the one that says, "Christians Aren't Perfect; Just Forgiven."

Christ endured the cross so that He could sit at the right hand of the Father and when our prayer requests come to heaven, He can turn to Him and say, "It's okay, Father. She's with Me. He's one of My own." Christ, our high priest, shows us sympathy.

I had totally bungled things. A member of another pastor’s congregation, a person I’d experienced as credible and levelheaded, had spoken to me with complaints about the pastor. He said that his opinions were also those of others. I was just out of seminary and didn’t have any sense. (As opposed to my status today: twenty-five years out of seminary and still no sense.) I went to the pastor to tell him what this person had said, not divulging the person’s name.

Without intending it, I conveyed the idea that there was widespread disaffection among the people of that church. Yes, I was trying to be helpful. But I think that I was also feeding my ego, playing the role of Superman.

Within hours, the pastor had composed a letter asking the congregation to tell him, since there was widespread unhappiness with his ministry, if it were time for him to go. I was shocked! When he read this letter to me over the phone, I put down the receiver and ran to his office.

I asked him, “Would it help you to know who was saying all of these things about you?” He said that it would and when he learned the person’s identity, he laughed and said, “He was born with a lemon in his mouth and a list of grievances as long as your arm.” He tore up the letter.

Then, he and I went to talk with his wife. You see, he had called her immediately after speaking with me and she was furious with me, sure that I was part of some cabal to run her husband out of the ministry. I apologized profusely (and genuinely) for the heartbreak I’d caused them both.

You might rightly have expected them to keep me at arm’s length forevermore. But they completely forgave me. They remain good friends. They have sympathetic spirits. They know all about what it’s like to be human and so they don’t hold grudges. Their demenor reflects Jesus, our great high priest, who knows exactly what it’s like to be human and is willing to be the advocate and Savior for all who turn from sin and turn to Him.

A third thing that makes a priest a priest is call. Our lesson tells us that a priest “does not presume to take this honor, but takes it only when called by God” and points out, “Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’”

In gratitude to our Lord, you and I are called to use our lives to glorify God. People who dedicate themselves to this call lead useful lives, lives that point others to God for help and hope, lives through which God gives help and hope to people. That’s why the leadership provided by our servanthood team this year has been so important. They’ve held up the central importance of our call to be priests of Jesus Christ!

At our last Church Council meeting, we set a new date for our congregational Friend Day. It’s a time when you and I will bring the non-churchgoing neighbors and friends we’ve invited to be with us to worship God and hear the Good News that we all can be made new when we turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ.

Friend Day will be on May 2. It’s not too early to begin praying about who you will invite to be with us on that day.

And it’s never too early to claim your role in Christ’s priesthood of all believers. We can claim that role because, in Christ, we have a purpose, because we have sympathy for other sinners who need the forgiveness and grace of Christ as much as we do, and because we have a call from God. Amen

*This rendering of the passage is from the Contemporary English Version (CEV).