I can't go into specifics because of confidentiality but a recent situation that comes partially under my authority has me contemplating the line between the public and private life of the pastor and whether such a division actually exists.

It has always been my belief that leaders in the church are to be held much more accountable for their actions because of their position. It's certainly a Scriptural concept and one that makes me shudder a little. How that will work in heaven I'm not sure but it's something that God keeps placing in my head, especially as I grapple with sin in my own life.

The pastor will never be perfect, will have their failings. The Apostle Paul had a thorn in his side that continually bugged him and God deliberately didn't remove it. I may exegete that this is because it kept Paul humble but that is speculation.

In my own life I deal with sin, with patterns from the past that keep raising up to try and grab me back into their bondage once more and as much and has hard as I've prayed and as much and as hard as I've fasted and as fervent and as honest and as real I have been with myself God has refused so far to take it away from me.

What are we to surmise from this, how do we reconcile God leaving us vulnerable to temptation while holding us to a higher standard? Is he just mean or is there a higher reason for it?

Someone once said that "Character is who you are in the dark". The real you is the version of yourself who no one meets, no one sees, no one witnesses. If this is the real me, the one in the dark place, then my vulnerability to certain sin is my check and balance and the method of God to help me grow and overcome.

That is the private life of the pastor, the place where we struggle.

The post is really a short treatment of the issue, I can see that it needs more fleshing out over the next few weeks. What are your thoughts about it?

This was a rather large weekend for me. I started off on Friday night where I spoke to a local youth group about, well me. It's been a while since I've just given a flat out testimony of God's work in my life and I found myself sketching out the time from my conversion in my late teens to now and once again marveling at just how good God has been to me.

The results were good, I lifted a little bit of material from my Sunday sermon and challenged them about where they were heading in life (I guess that's standard fare for teenage talks) and specifically challenged them in their Spiritual ambition.

Afterwards I was talking one on one with some of the kids. One girl pulled me aside and asked me the question "How do you hear from God". It was great to be streched by the question. She didn't want a prepacked answer but a reflection of my life with God based on what she heard in the talk. Who said kids today dont listen :)

The questions continued on Sunday when one of the youth leaders passed on questions from their Sunday morning get together. Things like "Why is my school Calvanist, they keep saying everybody has a choice to be saved" which I thought was quite insightful!

I preached Sunday morning and even used some illustrations that I blogged about last week :) I spoke about identity theft and based it loosely around 1 Peter 2:4-10. It was well recieved and made people think which is my number 2 goal in preaching (number 1 being that what I say are words of hope).

The big idea I was trying to hammer home is that are Spiritual Identities are in being God's holy priest. We have been created with a plan in mind and work to do in the world.

I'm going to post the full text later in the week after I format it up.

These thoughts have been circling my head for a little while, it's about our ambition.

I consider myself a very ambitious person, I look for opportunities to develop, grow, excel and climb higher in my corporate position. I've had to do a lot of thinking about how ambition reconciles with ministry because the drivers are not the same.

Sure if I was (still) a Catholic I could seek opportunities to become a bishop (although being able to only move diagonally doesn't really appeal to me) or a cardinal. But as a run of the mill protestant there are not many opportunities to climb the ladder.

There is a school of thought that suggests that we subliminate (push down, bury) our thoughts and feelings such as ambition in the context of ministry but I don't really like that idea much. I feel that God has made me this way for a reason and it can be used for his kingdom if only I could figure out how.

Sublimination also seems to be a counterproductive exercise because that suppressed ambition may express itself in a more unhelpful way down the road.

I've thought that I could apply my ambition to a goal such as winning as many souls as possible but on the face it that always seems so contrived an answer. We should all showing the gospel to people but if I base my ambition on it I will be falsely disappointed if someone does not come into God's family. It's a dangerous thing to base your ambition on something out of your control, after all it is the Holy Spirit that convicts.

The working draft of my thinking lately places ambition as motivation towards effectiveness in the broader sense.

Being effective in ministry to paraphrase Paul (2 Timothy 2ff) is to be a soldier of Christ, to be an athlete striving and to be a farmer working hard each day.

If my ambition is to be redeemed it has to be towards these goals, to be an effective soldier of Christ by listening to my commanding officer at all times, not being distracted by fleeting fads and thoughts. To be an effective athlete I need to be in training each day and to be an effective farmer I need to get up each day and do what needs to be done, not putting off the planting, sowing or reaping until another day.

Source: C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters.

A National Prayer of Repentance

According to an article in the Kansas City Star from January 24, 1996, this prayer delivered by Pastor Joe Wright before the Kansas State House stirred controversy, and one member of the legislative body walked out. Others criticized the prayer. The controversy didn’t end there. Later that year in the Colorado House, Republican representative Mark Paschall angered lawmakers by using the prayer as the invocation. Some members there also walked out in protest. Paul Harvey got a hold of the prayer and read it on his program. He got more requests for copies of it than any other thing he had ever done. Here’s what he prayed:

"Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask Your forgiveness and to seek Your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that's exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values. We confess that: We have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multi-culturalism. We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it a choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem. We have abused power and called it political savvy. We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the airwaves with profanity and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, O God, and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by You, to govern this great state. Grant them Your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of Your will...Amen.

Today I'm thinking about what constitutes a spiritual retreat.

I'm (trying) to write this Sunday mornings sermon and I keep coming up with the same nothing that the last 20 revisions came up with. I think that I really need to get my physical and spiritual batteries recharged and quickly or I am going to continue to slide into trouble.

The problem is every time I've attempted such a venture in the past I either get distracted by something and chase that down or I force the issue so hard that God can not meet me. It's a bit like writers block, the more you push it the harder it is to get the words out.

One of my favorite movies is "Stranger than Fiction". Right now I can identify with the author (sans chain smoking and queen latifa as my personal assistant). I know that there is something there, it is just around the corner. I can feel it's presence just beyond my perception but the harder I reach, the more slippery it becomes.

How do you turn that around? Fasting has worked in the past but my wife doesn't like me doing it. I have a tendency to go to extremes. The last time I fasted I went about 4 days with only a little water and I was a wreck physically. I did however get the answer from God that I was seeking (that is he answered, not he gave me the answer I wanted).

In my sermon I'm going into the area that we can have our spiritual identities stolen if we do not use them, that is, if we are not being the ministers of reconciliation that God calls us to be we will start filling our lives with other things. I feel I've started to fill mine with business and I want it back!

Be Noble and Excellent

There never did and never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in a character which was a stranger to the exercise of resolute self-denial.
Source: Walter Scott

There is something about the Word of God that can make a person just come alive!

Last night I met with two fellow elders of my church and we sat down to open the Scriptures and nut out a theological and ethical issue that has been nagging at us for some time. We were discussing the importance of baptism and it's linkage to church membership.

Nothing heavy :)

Churches of Christ, the denomination I "belong" to has traditionally held to a very strict "no baptism, no membership" policy since it emerged out of the restoration movement. We were taking a fresh look at it because of inter-denominational transfers and trying to reconcile the traditions of other Christian traditions. (I recently wrote a paper on the issue and my college would like me to pursue some post-graduate research on the topic).

All of that is actually beside the point. Before I arrived at the meeting I was still in my morose, disconnected and melancholy but while I was there and engaged with the Word of God I felt alive once more.

The things of God have the ability to excite me even when I am feeling dead in the world, the trick for me is to be motivated to go into the Word when I feel like this which is no easy task.

the things of God excite

(Source)

God has been teaching me a big lesson lately and it's not one I think I'm ready to learn. It's all about time.

A few weeks ago our preaching pastor and I were talking about his workload. He is about to finish up his work with our church and has ramped up his ministry in other areas. At the moment there is an overlap and he asked me the question "How do you fit it all in". I stood their and answered him honestly, "You take the time you would devote to your number 1 priority and divide it over all the lower priorities". By that I meant you steal time from your family and spend it on the other jobs we must do.

Doing this is ok in for a short time because there will be times when we must simply finish a task or put food on the table. Doing this for the long haul is not ok, and I've being doing it for the long haul.

These past few weeks, since answering that question honestly I have been physically, mentally and Spiritually exhausted. I need to take a break but every time I find time something else pops up to fill the newly created gap.

I guess I'm asking you quazi-anonymous people to pray for me. For strength, for wisdom and for endurance.

When I was worship leading this Sunday morning it was a real struggle to do it. There was a mini-revolt from some singers because they didn't like the songs, others were pressuring me to make changes. I prayed for God to lead me as I lead the church but midway during the service I lost my grip on Him and never quite recovered.

I feel empty inside, the tank is dry.

At the moment there are two things keeping me going. The love of my wife and Jesus' promise that the well of living water he has caused to spring up inside me doesn't not diminish but rather overflows from me into the lives of others.

The truth is, I'm still seeing that overflow into other peoples lives. I still see God effectively ministering through me to those who He brings across my path even though I am broken and empty inside.

I am a cracked pot still leaking out his love.

In my last post I mentioned that I was a very busy boy last weekend. We had a Christmas in July where a lot of people from the soup kitchen we run came along.

We were blessed to have many of them visit with us the next Sunday morning, this happend to be a day that I was preaching.

It was a great privellege to have these people who have never darkend the door of a church before to come come and hear me speak about God and the wonderful gift of life he has for us all, and as promised I have published the text of the sermon on the website for you to read and critique.

The message is The Holy Spirit, God within us.

My prayer for it was that it would be words of hope and words of life for those who need it.

Appreciate your feedback.

As I've said before, my church has seriously beefed up it's commitment to the disenfranchised in our community. We run an outreach to prostitutes on the Great Western Highway as well as a soup kitchen to a group of housing commission flats down the road along with various other ministries that offer practical help to people.

I'm not directly involved in either of the major ministry focuses although I do have a great deal of ancillary contact with the ones that have started visiting or attending our church.

This weekend we invited a whole heap of them over to our place to have lunch with us, Christmas in July. Most of these people had never darkened the door of our church before so it was an important time for us and one I was asked to be involved in.

The close contact I was blessed to have with these people from our local community has changed forever my perceptions of the expectations of the needy in our community.

The people I met and had lunch with this Saturday are hungry for hope.

It may seem a little crass of me to say this, but they also had some pretty low expectations. I mean no offence by that statement I'm just trying to be factual. I believe those low expectations are to do with hopelessness.

On the day I was asked to say grace before we started off, no biggy, so I got up to the front of the hall grabbed a mic, introduced myself and welcomed people in and in the pause between welcome and the prayer people clapped. It was so unexpected that I stumbled a bit before saying grace. These wonderful people are so hungry for hope that they received warmly a simple thanks for coming.

It might not seem like much but that alone has had a profound impact on me. I looked around at the faces of the people there, they had all 'made an effort' on their appearance, had scrubbed up a bit but they still looked like people I would move a little to the left or the right to avoid running into if we were facing each other off on the street.

A little later another person thanked me for my 'speech' and had a look in his eye that said 'Please talk to me some more'.

THe best part of the day was I got to dress up like Santa. I hammed it up a lot, and handed out presents to all the people who came along. There were nothing to special, just something to say we cared. But it was a lot like being back in high school, the look in peoples eyes as I pulled the presents out at random were just like the eyes of the people waiting to be picked by the team captains, waiting with expectation hoping not to be overlooked.

It was my privilege the next day (Sunday morning) to be preaching. As I looked into the congregation I saw quite a few people there who came to the Christmas dinner, people who as I said before have never darkened the door of our church. A little hope and love went a long way with them and I was able to tell them more about the hope and love we have in God that makes us want to do it.

Tomorrow I'll post the sermon along with some reflections.