Considering Relationships

Since my current sermon series from Genesis includes the idea of relationships, I decided it would be a good time to read Relationships: A Mess Worth Making by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp. Of course, when you take a few months to read a book it is not as fresh in your mind when you come to review it.

The book is not long (under 200 pages), but it does cover quite a bit of territory. The chapters include ones on sin, agendas, worship, obstacles, mercy, time and money and more. They cover that ground, as usual, with lots of Scripture and many examples compiled from years of experience in ministry as well as their personal lives. Thankfully, it does have a Scripture Index (one of my pet peeves is to not have one).

The first chapter talks about their relationship with one another. There have been times when they haven’t got along well. They have struggled through many of these things.  So, they speak from personal experience, not as merely teaching theory.

They begin with the reasons why to invest in relationships. The most important, in my opinion, is that since we are made in God’s image we are made to be in relationship. God Himself has eternally existed in relationship with Himself. The Trinity is a community of love. He made us to bring us into that loving community. But since we rejected the spring of living water, we make our relationships into broken cisterns from which we expect to receive life. Sin, including idolatry, have messed things up.

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Considering the Pastoral Search Process

A book I was reading this morning led to me to think some more of the process of searching for a new pastor, and the fact that it is a process.  If I get around to writing my book on the subject, I’m sure this will get in there.

Though the goal to find a pastor, churches should see the process as just as important as the outcome.  The process is about time, patience and love.

Some churches don’t give the search the proper time to work the process well.  They rush the process instead of seeing it as an important time to understand who they are, where they should probably be going, and how they should probably get there.  What often happens is they look for the guy who has the strengths the previous pastor lacked (if it didn’t end well), or a carbon copy of the previous pastor (if the pastor retired or left unexpectedly in a time of relative peace).  All this takes time, more than you can do in a 2-3 hour meeting once a week (if you’re lucky).  Committees need to invest larger chunks of time to work through these issues, and applicants.  I’d suggest Saturday afternoon or morning meetings- larger blocks of time to pray, think and plan.

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Considering Our Pharisaical Hearts

I’m struggling with my sermon for Sunday.  I’m struggling because I know the sinful, legalistic tendencies of our hearts.  I’m struggling with communicating the truth in such a way as to reveal our idols/substitutes in a more concrete way without establishing “man-made” rules which we use to attack others or exalt ourselves.

In Nehemiah 13, Nehemiah returns from Susa to discover that Israel has broken all the promises and oaths they had made to God.  They were once again becoming like the nations, being assimilated, instead of honoring God with their money, time and relationships.  They were not providing tithes & offerings for the worship of God, they were breaking the Sabbath, and they were taking foreign wives.  They had lost their saltiness.

And so have we.  The Church in America struggles with assimilation- being squeezed into the world’s box, conformed to their values rather than conformed to Christ and His values.  We start to worship self and success.  Here’s a chart I put together to summarize it:

	Love God	Love of Self
Money	Joy in Christ => simplicity + generosity	Covetousness => status symbols + luxuries
Time	Boundaries + balance	Excess to fulfill my agenda
Marriage/Family	Kingdom building + character	Focus on beauty or economic advantage
Church Leadership	Biblical (gospel) principles	Business models (control)

We have a tendency to want to make this clearer so we can better know (we think) if we are being obedient.  This way we can establish our righteousness over our less obedient brothers and sisters.  This permits us to criticize them.  Sometimes they need to be confronted by their own worldliness- but I can’t be the standard by which they are measured.

We also do this so we can play the martyr.  I think of this primarily financially.  We can point to our simplicity- “see what a junky car I drive because I love Jesus”- to show how much more we love Jesus than our brothers.  We aren’t content to say “don’t covet, be generous and keep your treasure in heaven.”  We want to know what that looks like, and we start this Pharisaical process to gain credit instead of relying on Jesus, His work for us, and to work in and thru us.  Or am I the only one whose heart is so twisted by indwelling sin?

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