The difference between honoring the call and simply volunteering
Instead of shamelessly stealing this, I’m linking to the blog I found it on.
The short version: It’s a heart thing. I’ve got work to do on my heart, and that starts with being deliberate about changing the way I look at things. I’m going to start trying to honor my call, rather than just fulfill my commitments. How about you?
Good read. Lots of noise again about Rick Warren and his allegedly compromising his Christian beliefs.
I really like some of the statements about people failing to check the facts, but my favorite quote is this one:
Our culture has accepted two huge lies: The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear them or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.
I missed the original hoopla, but I believe the negative response falls into the category of a failure to “Seek 1st to understand…”
Why are we all in such a hurry to judge, that we don’t first take the time to gather enough evidence to understand what happened?
The binary number system, made of two digits, o and 1, is the very basis for the computing power sitting in front of you, whether you’re reading this on your desktop or your smartphone. I’m only smart enough with the binary number system to be able to laugh at the math-geek t-shirts that say “1 + 1 = 10”, and to be thankful that we don’t have to be able to actually use the binary system to make our computers and smartphones work. But I do understand that binary as it applies to computers has to do with switching, either something is on or it is off. There’s no in-between.
A lot of my studying lately has led me to a frustrating realization that too many Christians, from pew-sitters to theological heavy hitters, are living in a binary, either-or world. It seems that no matter what the issue, there appears to be two sides, with a crisp, clean dividing line that separates them, and no room for people like me to either straddle the line, or more preferably to live on the line, exploiting the opportunity to embrace the best of both poles.
I think this polarized, yes/no, left/right, on/off attitude is a byproduct of the world we live in (Aaaughhhh! He just said the church is influenced by the world–may it never be!).
OK, some of these are recognizably false dichotomies (at least to me), while others might just get me branded as a heretic for even presenting them as anything other than truth/lie. But the truth in many of these seeming opposites is that there is great opportunity to have a “yes, and” relationship!
I like the editorial in the recent Leadership Journal by Drew Dyck, where he speaks of Clark Blakeman’s desire for “Biblical Symmetry.” Why can’t we preach the gospel AND do acts of compassion in our community? I personally know of a great man of God who makes those who are curiously seeking something, maybe not even specifically Jesus, feel right at home, all the while preaching powerful, doctrinally sound, messages that in no way compromise the Gospel.
Are there absolutes in Scripture? Absolutely! But not everything is. Is there a better way? Is there an opportunity to find a beautiful, complex, multiplying tension between the two poles that in fact creates something more powerful than either extreme?
Still ruminating (what an excellent word! Look it up, especially the etymology, or verse 2 here) on the conference from last week. While some might write it off as heightened awareness (what our family calls the Red Volkswagen Syndrome-right after we bought a red VW Beetle, we saw red VW Beetles everywhere) I’m going to take the risk of being labeled hyper-spiritual and claim that I see signs of God moving in the area of compassionate Christianity.
It starts with the fact that even before I knew about the conference last week, God was making me painfully aware of both a persistent and growing problem, and an obvious, Biblical solution. The problem is what I will inadequately describe as the growing irrelevance to our world, at least from society’s perspective. We don’t have anything to offer to society–that they can see. If you have no clue that you’re “lost”, why would you be looking for “salvation?” Studies of postmodern worldviews (we’re there, might as well stop fighting it, and learn to function in it) indicate that people today aren’t near as interested in what you think as they are in what you do. So a church that expounds flawless theology, but doesn’t show any signs of making a real difference by living out love, doesn’t mean much to them.
Which brings me to my solution–OK, it’s certainly not my solution, it’s Jesus’ solution, but I can now see it–the Church needs to start loving! How radical is that?!
Which gets me back to the point: As this thought was starting to form in my own mind and studies, my wife pops up, out of the blue, and asks if I want to go to Baton Rouge, in two weeks. Pretty random, but sure! If nothing else, Louisiana in February has to be warmer than Alaska in February. That’s when she told me about the Greater Things Conference. “Hmm, kinda ties in with what I’ve been thinking on anyway. It’ll be cool to get together with a handful of other folks thinking on the same thing.” Fast forward two weeks, with over a thousand folks all in Baton Rouge in response to a call from God to love people through concrete, life-changing means!
We arrived home Friday night, and I received my first issue of the Leadership Journal. It’s the Outreach Issue! Then Sunday morning in worship, a team of college students from Central Bible College in Springfield are visiting to do ministry during their spring break, and they put on a powerful drama about Jesus helping break the bondage of addiction, abuse, and other hurts. Coincidence? Only if you don’t believe that God has a plan!
I’m excited–God’s moving, and his people are getting on board! And, at the same time, we get to help those people who our world is running over, or casting aside. You know, the ones Jesus kept loving on while the religious leaders were teaching theology?
I’m going to keep ruminating on what this means in my life, how I walk it out. But our communities need us, and we can’t keep hiding in our Christian enclaves, waiting for Jesus to come. He just might be waiting to come until we’ve brought more citizens into his Kingdom!
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth. -1 John 3:17-18
It’s been a great week here in Baton Rouge at the Greater Things Conference. Time to reflect, and then to look ahead.
First, it’s been nice to be away from Alaska for a week. I have to say I’m not ready to go back to snow and cold. It’s been nice to be outside in shirtsleeves. Driving on dry pavement has been an adjustment… the locals probably don’t get my gentle braking, and they sure don’t understand my extended following distance!
More important than my break from the snow and cold was the conference itself. I think I heard a number of over 800 registered participants came from all over the country (we even met a pastor from Hillsong Church in Sidney, Australia there!) to talk about what the Church can do to love our communities in the real, practical ways that Jesus loved the people and communities he walked among in his ministry. There’s a real recognition among a significant group of Church leaders that the lack of relevance the Church has in the world today is because we are focused a lot more on giving the world theology than we are in showing the world compassion. This conference was a concrete step by those leaders to try to change that focus. There’s way too much to try to recap, so I won’t. If you’re interested, the leaders are setting up a website to launch Feb 29, designed to share all the resources and workshops from the conference, as well as to provide a connection point for the interchange of ideas to reach our communities, at www.hopeoutpost.com.
While I won’t recap the conference, I want to share some of the very real indicators of the problem:
Need:
Christine Caine made a painful, but real point in her presentation: “People suffer daily around the world because our hearts are unchanged.” She said that what she terms as the “ordinary heart” is primarily concerned with the immediacy of our own lives. She had another awesome quote that cuts to the quick: “The Church has confused compassion with emotion.” We might look at the numbers above and say “oh, that’s tragic” but what are we doing about it?
Now for the “vision” part of this post: What am I going to do next? If all I do is go to a conference, and then go back to my life, I need to be slapped in the back of the head for being stupid–I could have been more effective by taking what I spent on the trip and giving it instead to the local food bank. If I want to invest that money, so that it delivers a bigger value, I need to take what I learned here and make a difference. Much to my frustration, God didn’t give me a new job and a clear direction during this trip, but he did give me a burden that I’m not going to let go of. Instead, I’m going to continue to pray when I get back home, that he’ll show me where he wants me to go to work. But the old way isn’t good enough anymore. Stay tuned for the changes in our lives…
In the meantime, I’ll ask you: Do those numbers, or other examples of poverty, homelessness, hunger, abuse, or injustice tug at your heart at all? Enough to make you compassionate, or just emotional?
First, I just discovered that the settings on Facebook that allow this blog to post in FB were set so that it posted on my page only, so most of you probably haven’t read the past several days’ posts. To summarize: I have moved to a new blog host, away from the Google-based Blogger site (starting to separate myself from Google due to my disapproval of their privacy policies).
Second: I’m in Baton Rouge, LA, where Kelli and I are attending the Greater Things Conference, a gathering of some great Church leaders with a heart for loving our community and world. Last night we heard from Joyce Meyer as the keynote speaker. Today was filled with some AWESOME speakers, including Mark Batterson from National Community Church and Christine Caine, leader of the A21 Campaign to fight human trafficking (YES, it’s a huge problem–did you know that there are more slaves in the world today than there have been at any other time in human history?!). Joshua Dubois, Special Assistant to the President and Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships spoke about how the Church can work with the government to eradicate hunger in our communities. Also heard from Miles McPherson, a former NFL player-turned pastor, and a phenomenal speaker.
Tonight was topped off with Matthew and Tommy Barnett, two pillars in the Church, who are changing their communities, and changing the world. Matthew Barnett leads the Los Angeles Dream Center, an example of what the Church can do when it sets its heart on loving the community, not preaching and judging the community.
In between all the speakers we attended workshops on how the Church can practically get involved in serving the community. I’m excited, but also concerned. Right now, I’m ready to take on the world, but I could very easily fall back into my rut when I get back home. I’m praying that God keeps the burden real in the future that feels like a 50# weight laying on my chest right now. You have my permission, and even my encouragement, to challenge me in the weeks ahead to find out what I’ve done with what I’ve learned this week. Because I don’t want to follow the pattern of too many churches and Christians in our country today–developing a lot of head knowledge, but not having any impact on the world.
Woke up this morning to beautiful sunshine and 73 degrees! Saw a little of Baton Rouge, but mainly sat in the sun this afternoon, before heading to the conference this evening. Healing Place Church has done a great job so far hosting the Greater Things Conference.
Joyce Meyer ws the keynote speaker, and she did a great job pointing out the fact that too many Christians and churches are falling down in the “love” department. We go about saying we love one another, when our actions look more like we have a “Do Not Disturb” sign hung around our neck. We are too busy waiting for the Lord to tell us what our ministry is while walking past real needs we can meet every day. She cited some statistics that drove the point home that if the Church in the US would start acting to fill the needs of others, there would be a lot less need in our country, going on to make a point that I’ve cited here several times: We’ve let the government take over our job. The government is not anointed to take care of the poor, the widow, the sick and the marginalized, the church is. And we need to quit waiting for something big to happen someday and start doing the small things that are right in front of us today. We don’t need a committee or a prayer meeting before we can get started.
We just need to put on love, every day, as deliberately as we put on clothes.
What if there was a way to add $17.6 BILLION per year to provide health care for the uninsured in America…with no tax increase, no federal deficit increase?
A few weeks ago I asked the question “How much would you give to help your neighbor?”. I didn’t get much response, but that may have been because folks were afraid I was going to ask for monetary gifts.
I’ve been thinking a lot about health care lately. I’m not a fan of the bill passed by Congress earlier this year. But I’m also not a fan of junking everything and starting over. There’s too many people in real need, and I know some of them. More than 3/4 of the uninsured in America are members of working families who cannot access health care, either because their employer doesn’t offer health insurance, or the costs are too high.
To recap a key point from my blog a few weeks ago: Americans are giving people. The whole world knows this! We give BILLIONS every year in response to needs, be it natural disaster relief, charitable contributions to third world countries, etc.
As the recent election indicated, many Americans are also tired of the government telling them what to do. I contend that the reason the government has assumed this role, is we, the people, have stopped voluntarily helping each other to the extent we used to. I’ve got some theories as to why, but they’re not germane to this discussion. The point is, we’ve got neighbors in need, and we can do something about it.
So, here’s my hair-brained idea: If every tax-filing entity in the US (that’s 144 million individuals/families, and 2.5 million corporations) were to voluntarily give $10 per month, that would provide $17.6 billion per year to health care for the uninsured. $10 per month! Even for my high-school daughter working part time jobs, that’s do-able.
If we, the people, were to inject $17.6 billion into health care for the uninsured, I believe we’d make a big dent. Would we solve it? Probably not. But it’s a start. And just like any of the big issues facing our nation/world today, there’s no single or easy fix. We’ve got to start chipping away at it.
What if…? Thoughts?
Americans are giving people. Look at the response of Americans in response to recent natural disasters:
*Hurricane Katrina, Rita, Wilma (2005): $5.3 billion ($4.3 B from individuals)
*SE Asia Tsunami (2004): $1.8 billion
*Haiti Earthquake (2010): $1.4 billion
In response to the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes, 63% of US households made some sort of monetary contribution to the relief effort. 36% of that group gave between $26 and $99; 33% gave more than $100.
In 2004, the US gave a total of $248.5 billion dollars; 75% of that came from individuals.
So how much would you GIVE to help your neighbor in need? Could your household spare $100 over the course of 1 year? That’s less than $10 a month. I think few of us would have a hard time handing $8.33 to our neighbor each month, if they really needed it.
Thoughts?
Seriously, I’m NOT going to ask you for money, and I’m not setting up some sort of Ponzi scheme. I’d be interested in some feedback. Help me out here. How much would you FREELY GIVE to your neighbor, if it would make his or her life substantially better?
Seek-1st 