Before You Make Your Next Big Move

One of my most important jobs as a pastor is to help people find a good church when they move. Here’s why:

These are some of my recent conversations. One couple was going to move to Europe. He was going first, and she was going to follow later. They said, “Can you recommend a good church?”  I told them they needed to find an evangelical church (ideally reformed) that was welcoming, focused on outreach (a key indicator of health), and able to ground people in the gospel.

I asked them if they had found housing yet.  He said they had something temporary. We agreed that was good because the church shouldn’t be too far away (otherwise their participation would be limited). So we came up with a game plan. We agreed to look for good churches together and then they would look for more permanent housing.

Then I had this conversation with my brother-in-law. He mentioned that his daughter and son-in-law lived in Boston. It’s been a terrible winter—one of the worst ever. It’s also incredibly expensive. They thought of moving because of the cold and expense. But they had decided to stay because they had found a warm, energetic, evangelical church where they had gotten connected with friends, and were able to serve and grow in Christ.

And then I remembered  a young couple in another church years ago. They were building their young family on Jesus, and the Word in a vibrant community of faith. They were fairly young believers. He was offered a job with more money in a city a couple of hours away. Two years later they came back. They said they missed the church, hadn’t been able to connect well, and it was more valuable for them to have a good church, take a pay cut then to become spiritually apathetic.

This week I saw a news story in NPR News. The article was how often high achieving students from  low income families living in small towns often don’t apply to elite colleges.  However, the article focused on an exception to the rule. It mentioned Kristen Perez who grew up in the small town of Celina, Texas. Most of the community were migrant workers.

The family actually hosted a small Pentecostal church out of their home. It was Spanish language Pentecostal. Kristen’s father would lead worship on his red electric guitar. Kristen played bass and her sister played the drums. Her mother, Sandy, sat on the front row.

While many low-income families would never think of applying to an elite college, Kristen was an exception. She applied to and was accepted at Dartmouth College. With scholarships, she will only pay around $5,000. But here is the last line of the article, “The first thing Sandy Perez did when she heard her daughter had been accepted was to look up churches in the area for Kristen to attend. She found one!”

Three cheers for Sandy. She knows over the long haul what will be more important than going to a prestigious school is continuing to  grow in Christ and making him lord of every aspect of your life. The Lord never intended for us to “go it alone.”  He died partly to create a community of people focused on Himself and His Word. It’s one of God’s gifts to help us keep first things first in our lives. When you think you might make a move, stop by my office or call and let’s help you find a good church first.

Listening to the News and Reading the Bible

One famous theologian said that in one hand he read the newspaper and in the other he read his Bible. I feel a bit like that (even though newspaper reading has fallen out of fashion). I’m always interested in the news, but in recent months I’ve become almost manic. The tragic events happening in the Middle East and Nigeria have captured the world’s attention and my own.

And then this is also the 100 year anniversary of World War 1. Recently, I began to realize that I barely understood the events that led to World War 1. I began reading Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. She described how hubris, human pride, vanity, self-pity in the hearts of  Kaisers, Presidents, ordinary people was at the heart of the events that unfolded in August, 1914. She talked about a world that was filled with the philosophy of Nietzsche and Hegel and motivated by ideas of human grandeur, nationalistic ambition, and wounded pride.

Today, I saw a report on CNN where a Russian hell’s angel said that he loved Putin so much because finally the country had a president that they could be proud of, a president who would deal with the national shame of having declined as a superpower.  He said some of his Hell’s Angels had gone to the Ukrainian front to fight with the rebels and that some of them had died. He was described as having almost religious devotion for Putin. His comments were  tinged with the same wounded pride and self-pity that people in Germany felt in the 1930’s when Hitler promised to return the country’s grandeur.

As I reflected on all this--particularly the atrocities of ISIS, I felt like the Psalmist when he cursed his enemies and asked the Lord to vindicate His name and bring justice and judgment on them. And on the other hand, I could also hear the whisper of doubt coming into my own heart, “Lord where are you? How can you let these things go on?” I’m glad that the Psalmist gives vent to all our emotions while continually bringing us back to the Lord.

As I reflected further, I was sobered by the fact that the roots of the same sins that lead people to warfare and murder are in my own heart—everyone’s heart. We all have roots of self-pity, envy, anger, lust, and sloth where we basically just want to live safe, comfortable lives.  In short, I could see that we all have disordered loves that are a disease of the heart, and that these disordered loves if allowed to grow will make themselves public in our lives.

But then  I thought I’m a pastor. I have to give people the good news of the gospel. It’s Thursday and Sunday is coming. If you are a pastor, Sunday is always coming. So I needed to keep my footing for both of us. Here is what helped me:

1. There is no such thing as “the good guys and the bad guys”. Jesus when talking to the disciples said, “If you who are evil know how to give good gifts, how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” Such audacity! He called them “evil”, and by inference all of us. But I accept the Lord’s verdict. If he could call the disciples “evil”, then certainly I am as evil as well. This actually brings a lot of hope. It saves us from my judgmentalism, comparisons and pride. We can’t look at any group of people--no matter their race, their political affiliation, their religion or their sin and smugly declare that they are the bad ones and we are the good ones. We can also have the same hope of salvation for them that we have for ourselves.  The doctrine of original sin and the cross levels us all.
2. As for the question, “Where is God in the midst of these atrocities”, what we do know is that God has not let himself off the hook. He has entered into human suffering in the person of Christ--who was tempted and tried more than any of us can know--and yet he was without sin. He has also said that ultimately everything that is sad will become untrue. Romans 8 (where we are at present) says that in the end all will be be for good, nothing can separate from his love and the best is yet to be.
   Reading Romans, the Book of Revelation and the Psalms have been good medicine. I know who ultimately wins, and I find that the Biblical authors struggled with the same questions but found their trust in God (see in particular Psalm 73). I also reminded myself that it was time to seriously read Augustine’s City of God which was written at the time when Rome was being sacked by the barbarians. While Rome falls, he sees the enduring kingdom of God.
3. Get on with the business of preaching the gospel and planting churches. That was the thrust of a recent Gospel Coalition article that took up some of the same questions. The article reminded the readers of Paul preaching the gospel in the first century. While he was preaching the gospel, the Roman and Jewish war took place between 63 and 73 AD. At the end, Rome raised Jerusalem to the ground (just as Jesus prophesied). Shortly after there was the beginning of the great persecutions under Nero, and Diocletian.
   So what did Paul do--he endured everything to preach the gospel and to plant churches. So I got up and worked on the next sermon, contacted my best church planting friend to get together so we could think more clearly how the gospel can be multiplied in our city through church planting, and began to pray how we could better support our brothers and sisters who are paying for their testimony for Jesus at the cost of their blood.

What It Means To Be A World Christian

Let me share with you two or three events of the past week. I was talking with a couple of young members of the church who were asking, “What does God want to do with my life.” Specifically, both people had experience in universities, and on mission assignments that changed their view of the world and vocation. One person had gone on a mission trip to China and wondered what it meant for their future vocational plans. Another person was wondering if they should pursue “full-time Christian ministry.” Their stories highlight the need that all of us have to be world Christians, i.e. people who know that loving God means loving the world. But the question is, “How do you go about it?” Let me provide a few suggestions:

1. Be curious and informed about the world we live in and use it as an opportunity to pray. I’m a news addict. I regularly listen to CNN, the BBC, read the New York Times, Taipei Times, Christianity Today, the Gospel Coalition, and more. If I listen unreflectively and unprayerfully, it’s just information in and out. If I’m not careful, I can become jaded.
   
   You can be hearing about a terrorist attack in Europe which can be followed with a happy commercial about some hair product (not that I need any of those!). You can easily detach yourself from the pain of the world, and internally be saying, “Thank God I am not living there, but just sitting in the comfort and quiet of my living room.”
   
   It can also be depressing as almost all the news is bad. Good news doesn’t sell. You don’t hear commentators reveling in the goodness of God’s creation. You never see a headline that says, “Today, billions of people will receive food, water, sunshine, and love from a bountiful, gracious God.” We seldom struggle with the problem of “Why is there so much good?” In all my years as a pastor, no one has ever asked me that question. On the other hand, many people ask, “Why is there so much evil?”
   
   So how should we respond to the news stream. We should be informed about the world. We should have more than one source about what is happening in the world than a secular news provider, and it should lead us to prayer, repentance, and a daily commitment to love God and people. As our mind is shaped, we can also interact and influence other people in a positive way to help them to shape their minds more Biblically.
   
   Let me encourage all of you to download one app. It is “The Gospel Coalition.” It is Biblically solid, and will help you to think through the big issues of our time. It takes up big issues like “How should we understand and relate to Islam, abortion, racism, same-sex marriage, etc.” In addition, it addresses many practical issues such as, “How do you forgive someone or a group of people where you been seriously damaged?” (that was one of today’s articles).
    

2. Use these resources as a prayer guide. Instead of just mindlessly absorbing information, begin to pray for the world. Someone once said that they used the newspaper to encourage them to pray for many of the hot spots of the world, that the Lord would bring his peace and redemption into the stories reported.
    

3. Ask the Lord what he wants you to do. For most of us, we need to realize that the will of God is loving people in the place we find ourselves. There is a sense in which all of us are called to be missionaries, i.e. to the people we interact on a daily basis. Our approach needs to be wise, prayerful, and provocative (remember the messages from 1 Peter).  For some additional help, you may want to read Paul Miller’s “A Praying Life” and the sequel to it on the book of Ruth which focuses on learning to love.
   
   Along the way, you may want to consider going on a mission trip, supporting a missionary, or an organization that cares for children around the world.  You never know where the prayer and love journey may take you. I can’t tell you how much  mission trips in my life to Mexico, Turkey, India, and Yugoslavia impacted my own life. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said (and I paraphrase), “You don’t know the path of discipleship. All you know is at the end there is joy.” Also reflect on the quotation above that the Christian life is  so much more than carefully trying to avoid sin, but courageously and actively doing God’s will. We need to give up our small ambitions, and realize as we are learning in Romans 6 that we have been taken out of the realm of Adam and brought into the realm of Christ. It’s large and spacious and means that all of us are called to be adventurous world Christians. So go and live large!