In his book, Craddock on the Craft of Preaching, he says, “One should not preach any one particular way all the time because you can’t win all the races with the same horse.”  He goes on to explore this premise with much greater depth of thought as to why different forms are important.  He encourages, “in thinking of the structure of a sermon, it is very important to think of the shape of the gospel.”  Not only the big gospel, but the good news that is present in whatever passage we are preaching.  One of my issues with using big idea preaching all the time is that sometimes there just isn’t one big idea.  By limiting our explanation of the Scripture we may limit what the Spirit is able to say to the minds and hearts of the listeners.  Increasingly I try to be faithful to the form and purpose of an entire passage when I preach–sometimes this leads to one big idea and other times it leads away from that.

I don’t claim to be a preaching expert, but here are a few approaches that have worked well for me.  I’d love to hear what works for you.

Reaching the Destination

Sometimes in studying a passage the ending of the sermon seems clear almost immediately.  When this is the case I write that part of the sermon first (well, I outline it, I don’t manuscript sermons) and then work backwards, unpacking how to best help people arrive at the destination.  I used to do this with mazes.  Instead of beginning at the beginning, I started at the end and worked backwards.  Then, when I got stuck I’d go to the beginning because I had a clearer picture of how to get to the end.  I’ve found when the destination is the most clear part of the sermon it works in a similar way.

Two (or more) in One

There are some passages that lend themselves to multiple points that aren’t directly related.  There are a few options when this happens.  One is to pick one of the points and ignore the others.  A second is to preach multiple weeks on the same passage.  A third approach, and one I’ve used a few times now, is just to talk about everything that’s there without trying to weave it together with a concocted theme 0r by using three words that start with “p”.  When I do this I’m up front with people and tell them that the passage has led me to share a few things that aren’t directly related–other than the fact that they’re found in the same passage.  The response has been positive when I’ve done this and it’s interesting because talking to people it’s as though they heard entirely different sermons.

The Story

One of the things Craddock spends time on is honoring the form of the Scripture being used.  “Biblical preaching asks not only what the text says but how it says it.”  This is something I’ve tried with narrative passages.  I have enjoyed it, but it does take a lot of work.  It’s not a formula you can plug things into quickly.  It is very different from most other forms of preaching because the sermon takes the form of a story more than a lecture.  This doesn’t mean you need to write a novel and share it as a sermon–it could be multiple stories strung together or parables or even a more direct sermon with a well thought out subtext.  I like this because it is challenging.  You have to think very carefully about how it all fits together and what is really being communicated.

Republican (Conservative) Christianity

This is what I grew up with.  I literally didn’t think you could be a Christian and a Democrat until sometime in high school.  There was one man at the local Christian college who was a professed Democrat and it blew my mind.  Republican values are deeply engrained in many Evangelical churches—especially those comprised primarily of Baby Boomers.

Republican Christians believe (with actions if not official positions) that the United States is or was a Christian nation and that our nation has experienced freedom and financial blessing because of our connection to God.  Because we are God’s nation little we do globally is ever viewed negatively—especially if we have a Republican President.  This also leads to fights for outward signs of devotion to God by our nation like monuments to the Ten Commandments outside courthouses and sanctioned prayer in public schools.

If you are familiar with Republican Christianity you have no trouble articulating the majority views on all the issues I mentioned at the beginning.  Abortion is murder and must be stopped.  Homosexuality is sinful and should not be practiced by Christians.  Immigration (other than the legal kind) is breaking the law, period.  Any movement on this issue is in relation to adjusting laws.  Environmental concerns are overblown and not a big deal.  Capital punishment is a just punishment for certain crimes.  War is unfortunately necessary to maintain our freedom and to flourish as a nation.  Patriotism is expected—it is wrong not to be fiercely loyal to the United States.

Republican Christianity tends to focus on traditionally-defined morality, legal justice, and personal and national freedom.

If you think I’m being critical of Republican Christians, you’re right, but it’s not because I’m a Democratic Christian.

Democratic (Liberal) Christianity

My exposure to Democratic Christianity increased exponentially when I became a pastor in a Mainline denomination.  I had read about this brand of Christianity and had a little exposure to it, but getting involved in the life of the denomination plunged me into it headlong.  All the issues that I had assumed had one Christian response in my younger days (the Republican one) were turned on their head.  The answers to all the difficult issues were nearly the opposite of what I was accustomed to.

Democratic Christianity seems much gentler and Christlike that Republican Christianity on the surface.  Many of the positions of Democratic Christians claim to be rooted in a deep understanding of the love of God—hard to argue with that.  However, the specific nature and outworking of this love are deeply tied to specific positions on specific socio-political issues.

In regard to the issues mentioned at the beginning, the perspective of Democratic Christians is opposite of Republican Christians on almost every point.  Abortion is a difficult issue, but women should have authority over their own bodies.  Homosexuality is something that should be celebrated as love in the same way as heterosexuality.  This is articulated with the phrase “open and affirming.”  Immigration is messed up and we need to get laws changed.  We are messing up the environment worse by the day and if we don’t do something soon there will be huge consequences.  Capital punishment is murder and is wrong.  War is almost always wrong and any military action taken by the United States is viewed with suspicion.  Patriotism is dangerous.

Democratic Christianity focuses as morality as tolerance (but really acceptance, not tolerance), the poor and marginalized, and environmentalism.

Christian Christianity

While the focus on love by Democratic Christians seems more palatable than the focus on strict morality and national religion (at least to me) both sides suffer from a deep defect.  In both Republican and Democratic Christianity important words like justice, love, acceptance, and morality are defined in socio-political ways that may or may not fit with the biblical description of these same words.  And while there are good things about both Republican and Democratic Christianity (they are trying to come from Scripture after all), the approach of both are deeply flawed in the same way.

Political Christianity, whether Republican or Democratic, assumes the truth of certain political positions and then finds ways to affirm these positions through Scripture and theology.  Often the assumption of these social positions is not stated, so both sides appear to be approaching Scripture honestly.  But for each side their worldview is predominantly shaped by the presupposition of the truth of positions on certain issues rather than an honest pursuit of biblical truth wherever that leads.

Aside: It is worth making a couple points here to acknowledge the complexity of this issue.  First, we all have presuppositions we bring to our reading of Scripture.  No one is a tabula rasa, so there will never be a perfect biblical interpretation.  Second, there are principles of biblical interpretation that naturally come into play here.  How much does historical context come into our interpretation?  Is there a redemptive trend on a given issue?  What does it mean for the Bible to be inerrant or infallible or even authoritative?  Even if issues are approached apolitically the conclusions of Christians will vary. 

The foundational problem with religious Christianity, from either side, is that it is driven by a political worldview rather than a biblical one.  The very fact that we understand and can picture Republican and Democratic Christians only affirms the depth of the problem.  Political Christianity serves to quarantine certain views on issues—they are not open to challenge or real discussion.  Can you imagine a Republican Christian exploring the impact of biblical hospitality and the theology of the stranger on the issue of immigration?  Can you imagine a Democratic Christian rethinking their view on abortion in light of the theology of the imago dei and God’s sacrificial love for all people?  But these issues have already been decided by a worldview based outside the authority of Scripture.  Even when views are taken that reflect Scripture is often more because the Bible does support a socio-political position than because the view is rooted biblically.

I’m not pretending to have answers to all these issues—what I’m saying is that we all need to look in the mirror and ask whether our worldview is more driven by current American politics or by deeply seeking God’s wisdom through Scripture and the Spirit.  We are supposed to be aliens and strangers here, not Republicans and Democrats.

Sunday we had a homeless man walk into the sanctuary.  This isn’t a strange occurrence at Mountair.  A significant percentage of our congregation is either homeless or a couple bad days away from it.  What was different was the state this guy was in.  He staggered in, barely able to stand, and collapsed into the back pew.  When we sang he stood, waving his arms in the air–at least until he toppled back onto the pew.  When we prayed he spoke loudly–his words too slurred to be sure if he was talking to God or someone else.  He was very dirty and you could smell him from the other side of the room.  People could have responded to him as a problem or a man created in God’s image.  The response of our people to this man blew me away.

After the service I was by the front door and two people (one of them a man in his 80s) came toward me with their arms around him to make sure he didn’t fall.  We got him to sit down in one of the chairs in the entryway.  As I greeted the people who were leaving and watched, these two were joined by a few others.  By the time I could make my way over to see how I could help they had filled a bag of food for him from the food bank, discovered that he was in a lot of pain, and assured him that we’d help him however we could.

Once I got there, those who had been helping slowly trickled out.  They had acted like Jesus toward this man–a man many people would have done everything in their power to avoid (shoot, I would have done everything in my power to avoid him for a large part of my life).  As incredible as this was, I wasn’t done being amazed.

A woman who lives down the street from the church, and has faced more than her fair share of pain, remained with me, trying to discern what his broken and jumbled sentences meant.  When we got him in my car to take him to the hospital she came along, placing food in his hand and moving it to his mouth because he couldn’t remember it was there.  When he became belligerent and demanded that we not take him to the hospital she continually reassured him that we were trying to help.  (We did return to the church and called the police/paramedics to come help him since he seemed more willing to go with that option.)  When we returned to the church she got his boot off and wrapped his foot in a warm towel.  When the paramedics were taking him out on a stretcher and he was scared she gently touched his cheek and assured him it would be okay.  I learned something about being a pastor from her in that hour.

I’ve read recently about a lot of hatred, spiritual abuse, and overall lack of love in churches.  Pointing these things out needs to be done.  I think it’s also worth pointing out the times when Jesus’ love and his way show up in the life of the church.  I was thankful to have a front row seat for that on Sunday.

Lately I fear I’m breaking my promise to myself.  The longer I’m a pastor the more reality catches up with me and I start to wonder if I’m headed toward pessimism and eternal discouragement.  Things haven’t broken the way I pictured them when I was 25.

Was I wrong to have that optimistic zeal or am I wrong for letting it fade?  I think the answer is yes to both.  Let me explain.

Sometimes ego wears a zeal mask.

In retrospect my optimistic zeal that day at Perkins was really a complex mixture of trust in God, pride in myself, hope, arrogance, and faith.  I truly did believe God was capable of doing great things, but I also thought my answers to the tough questions were superior to everyone else’s.  The things I wanted to see happen in the world were things that fit with God’s will as revealed in Scripture, but I believed they hadn’t happened because no one had approached them with the passion, vision, and insight I was.  This is a tough thing to admit because I know how bad it sounds, but I kind of doubt I’m the only one who’s been there.

This is still a struggle for me today.  However, as the Spirit continues to do the good work of transformation in me I see more clearly when my thoughts and actions are borne of a godly optimistic zeal and when they are just my ego wearing a zeal mask.  As the Spirit helps me to progressively put the ego to death I find some of the things God gives me passion for are different than the things I was thinking.  Turns out God’s not as passionate about people knowing what I do as I am.

This isn’t my story, I just think it is.

One of the things that impresses me about many of the godly people in the Bible is their clarity about being a part of God’s story.  Take Mary as an example.  An angel comes and tells her that she will conceive a child as a virgin, before she is married, in a culture where being found out for having sex before marriage could ruin your life, let alone actually getting pregnant.  Shortly after the angel delivers the news Mary visits Elizabeth and breaks out in song.

Her song is one of praise to God for the great things he has done for her.  You mean like ruining her life?  But Mary didn’t see it that way.  Whatever difficulty God’s work would create in her life she understood that the story wasn’t about her, it was God’s story, and she had been given the chance to be the one woman in history who would carry the Son of God.  She knew God had been at work since the beginning of humanity and that his work would not finish with her death.  I never would have said it, but that day at Perkins I only thought about God’s work in the context of my life.  I’m learning to celebrate the fact that it’s his story, I just play whatever part he gives me.  Success isn’t me changing the world—it’s him changing it through all of his people.

When small isn’t small.

Deeply related to the first two, as God helps me to grow in maturity I’m learning that the things that appear small to me are not small to him.  In Luke 15:7 Jesus says there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.  But I want the 5,000 from Pentecost.

Shortly after I came to Mountair God gave me the privilege of being involved in the life of someone he was saving.  She had a pretty checkered past and was deeply involved in Wicca.  But through dreams and the movement of the Holy Spirit God was powerfully drawing her to him.  I came alongside what God was already doing and walked with her through her exploration, conversion, baptism, growth, and dealing with overwhelming attacks from Satan.  Today this woman has a solid faith that has led her to direct others toward Jesus and help some move toward leaving homelessness.  That is only one person, but it is not small.  At 25 I think I would have said it was.

Another thing I have the chance to do at Mountair is sit and visit with people who are near the end of their lives and have failing bodies.  One woman I went to see regularly had difficulty seeing and couldn’t hear unless you yelled.  One time after sitting with her and trying futilely to communicate for about an hour I felt the Spirit clearly say to me, “now that’s ministry.”  Nothing about that would lead to changing the world, in my mind it was nearly useless, in God’s it was priceless.

In a different context Paul once asked if he should seek human approval or God’s.  Some of my optimistic zeal has been fueled by the desire to please people much more than God.  This led me to see things that were huge to God as tiny.  He’s changing my vision, even if it’s slow.

God is still crazy.

Francis Chan is well known for saying if someone only had the New Testament and then saw American Christianity they’d be extremely confused and disappointed.  We claim to serve the same God who created all that is, parted the Red Sea, saved a man from lions, became a human himself, sat and ate with outcasts, healed the sick, raised the dead, and offered himself as a sacrifice for humanity.  We don’t serve a different God now, do we?  If anything we might expect to see more crazy stuff happen since God lives among us and in us through the Holy Spirit now.

But our God often looks pretty tame.  Our God likes it when people sit in cushy chairs and gorge themselves on teaching they don’t plan on living.  Our God prefers that we send a few dollars to some poor kid in Africa without ever touching the homeless teenager who lives on the streets of our city.  Our God is pleased that we can buy large cars and houses since we’ve generously given away ten percent of our earnings.  Our God really just wants us to be happy and pampered.  Our God would never make us uncomfortable (other than when the pastor HAS to talk about sex in church).

I’ve shared a number of ways that God has deconstructed my 25 year old zeal, but there was some of it that was good—and I fear losing that part.  Too often what coming to grips with reality really means is not expecting too much of God.  It means settling for prayers we can answer without God’s help or that are so general we’ll never know if they’re answered.  We explain that God did great things when he was establishing his Church but he doesn’t need to now that we have churches on every other corner.  Our churches are known more for their worship experience than encounters with God or life transformation.

My optimistic zeal needed to be reshaped by God, but we need to spend more time giving reality a reality check.  God is not done.  God is not boring.  God has given us his Spirit to work for redemption and reconciliation in our world until the return of Christ.  We should be optimistic if we rely on him.  We should have zeal—for prayer, for the poor, for salvation, for hope, for healing, for chains of bondage being broken, for a fully-functioning body with Christ as its head.  We have way too little optimistic zeal these days.  I pray that God strips away our egos and our desire to star in our own stories, but I also pray that he preserves the optimistic zeal we once had.

This is a problem.  Jesus told his disciples to go and make disciples–those were his final instructions.  Is Jesus boring?  I’ve come to firmly believe that changing the tone of the conversation on this topic is essential to the future of the church.  But why do people think discipleship is so boring?  Here’s five reasons.

1. People don’t know what discipleship is.

I frequently hear people refer to discipleship as an item on a list with evangelism, justice, community service, small groups, and a myriad of other “Christian” things.  But Jesus didn’t tell his disciples to make evangelists, service workers, volunteers, parents, and leaders–he knew if they really made disciples all of these things would be covered.  Discipleship is the umbrella under which all of the Christian life resides–or it should be.  Saying discipleship is one thing on the list is like saying being healthy is important but so is exercising and not eating fast food.  We don’t have a cohesive picture of all of life as a Christian because we’ve reduced the thing that is supposed to cover it all to learning more.

2.  People don’t have a good paradigm for pursuing it.

This is deeply related to the first point.  We often think things we don’t really understand are boring.  Ask people to define discipleship in ten seconds or less and most people will struggle.  People have a vague, and often truncated, idea of what it is but they lack clarity.  It’s hard to be passionate about pursuing something that isn’t clear to you.  When a pastor stands up and delivers a murky, generalized vision it doesn’t create momentum and movement.  But if he gives clear, God-given vision it can do that in a heartbeat.  God gave us His direction through Jesus–we are supposed to make disciples.  What we lack is the kind of clarity that helps that happen.

I believe two words provide a definition/paradigm that is clear enough to give motivation and momentum–unique conformity.  All those who claim to follow Christ are called to conform to Jesus and His way.  At the same time, we are all created to be unique and our discipleship comes through our uniqueness, it doesn’t wash it away.  Paul even tells us that the church is supposed to be like a body–each part is unique or the body doesn’t function right.  Unique conformity is easy to understand, and to share with others, but you can pursue it your entire life without arriving or wearing it out.  Imagine if all Christians understood the call to be uniquely conforming to Christ and churches facilitated that movement!

3.  People haven’t tried it.

Because people don’t understand, many Christians haven’t really tried discipleship.  They’ve tried church services, Bible studies, small groups, community service and more (all great parts of discipleship if they’re understood that way), but they haven’t tried discipleship.  Discipleship is an all-in, all the time, holistic life devoted to Jesus.  Unique conformity touches every part of who you are and how God is working in and through you.  But our truncated view of discipleship has led many people to dabble in religion without going all in.  Like putting your feet in the ocean isn’t the same as body surfing, participating in some Christian activities is not the same as discipleship.  No wonder people think it’s boring.

Turn It Around

We’ve allowed the greatest adventure of life to become a subject we’d rather avoid.  We need to make discipleship exciting again.  Being a disciple of Jesus shouldn’t be boring, and if it seems that way to us we need to get clarity on what it is and actually try it.

I’m changing my tune.  Not necessarily on all the things I said above, but at least on Tim Tebow as a representative of Jesus to the world.  Here’s why.

It began when I saw this video of Tim being “miked up” during a recent game.

I would have been cussing after some of those hits.  When he knelt down he was actually praying.  He prayed for God’s help in the game but also prayed for God to be glorified win or lose.  I was struck by his authenticity, humility, and sincerity.

I heard 1 Peter 2:12 being fulfilled through my radio and TV.  (“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”)

I listen to sports talk radio regularly when I’m in the car and I often catch some ESPN programming at the gym.  At the beginning of Tebow-mania most commentators, both local and national, gave a glib shot out to Tebow being a “good guy” and then went on to criticize him for a whole host of things—football related and otherwise.  Yet in the last week nearly everyone I hear has changed their tune.  Though many still doubt his football abilities (I’m still there too), person after person is lauding his attitude, humility, sacrifice, and character—and you can tell they mean it.  All that Tebowing, building hospitals, visiting sick children, and proclaiming his allegiance to Jesus is real and people see it.  He’s won over some voracious critics and made them more favorably disposed to Jesus and Christianity in the process.  I don’t know if they’re praising God yet, but maybe some are.

I saw faithful presence.

This is a term I was introduced to in James Davison Hunter’s book “To Change the World.”  It refers to Christians living their lives as a unified vocation to the Lord rather than a series of fragmented pieces devoted to different gods.  He rightly calls Christians to be faithfully present in whatever venue they find themselves.  Tim Tebow is doing that in the NFL.  In an environment of pride, arrogance, fame, money, materialism, and sex, Tebow is being a faithful representative of Jesus.  It’s impressive.

So yeah, I’m praying for Tim.  I’m praying that God sustains him in an environment full of temptation.  I’m praying he continues to be a model of faithful presence for believers and a light to those who don’t believe.  And, given the results I see, I wouldn’t be surprised if God continues to “strengthen the work of his hands.”

The reaction to this video has been outrage and anger.  The comments on a variety of sites are primarily full of people leveraging jokes about the weight of the primary perpetrator and talking about what they’d do to him if they were in the game.  This reaction points out a toxic problem endemic of our society–a mixture of a lack of grace and propensity for violence.

I didn’t read through all the comments (I don’t need to spend six hours doing that–I’d go crazy), but I didn’t come across one that expressed any sentiment of grace for the offenders–even grace paired with justice or punishment.  This is what we usually do with others, just not with ourselves.  We look at the dastardly deeds of others and judge their character and integrity and then condemn them.  A boy who commits some hard fouls in a basketball game is worthy of being “beat to death” because he is “lazy and worthless”.  However, the very people who judge this boy engage in personal attacks that amount to bullying and verbal violence to express their judgement.  My guess is that if you asked them they would say those harsh and often horrible words are not indicative of their overall character.  I do the same thing too often.  I have good reasons for my shortcomings but others do not.

Not only do we lack grace, but we are drawn to violence.  I wonder if that isn’t part of the reason this video is so popular.  We celebrate violence in football, MMA, and to deal with bullies.  We fight bullying with bullying.  We fight violence with violence.  All of this serves to do nothing but increase the bullying and violence.  It’s true from elementary school to the interaction of nations.  It’s almost like there’s destruction programmed into our DNA.

The only answer to our lack of grace and love of violence is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He is the one who offers grace where it is not deserved.  When we receive that it can lead to us doing the same.  He is the one who faced bullying and violence with love and forgiveness.  Only in his power can we do the same and end the escalation of these destructive things.

Following Jesus is about receiving His love, grace, and mercy, but that doesn’t make our obedience irrelevant.  A few things that play into this.

Is obedience to Jesus restrictive or freeing?

In my teenage years I saw Jesus’ teaching and the other commands of Scripture as prohibitions that kept me from having fun.  I wasn’t supposed to “go too far” with my girlfriend, use the kind of language everyone else did, or think of myself first.  Obeying Jesus was restrictive.  As the Holy Spirit has helped me to mature (at least a little) I’ve come to more clearly see that obedience is freedom, not bondage.  When I obey the teaching of Jesus I have deeper relationships, a more fulfilling life, and I don’t have to be worried about someone finding out my secrets.

I’ve experienced this in the last couple weeks.  My wife and I are planning to begin a workout and nutrition plan we’ve done in the past again in a couple days.  This is something that has benefited not only our bodies, but our relationships, as we have more energy and the joy of knowing we’re being good stewards of our health.  As I looked ahead to this I decided to throw good nutrition and exercise out the window for the couple weeks around Christmas and the New Year.  I’ve felt sluggish, uninspired, tired, and disconnected from God.  When I have self-control (a fruit of the Spirit) and am a good steward of my health I feel liberated; when I don’t I feel in bondage.

When we look negatively at obedience to Jesus we are making the inherent assumption that He doesn’t want what’s best for us–He just wants us chained to some arbitrary rules.  That assumptions belies how little we think of his grace, mercy, and love.

Is our relationship with God one-sided?

An aversion to obeying Jesus also betrays a very one-sided love.  We want God to show us love and mercy and for Him to bless us with things, but we are not so enthusiastic about showing Him love in return.  In a human relationship this would be characterized as using someone, not love.  A person who seeks to take from another all the time without any mutuality is a leech, not a lover.

We talk often about a relationship with God, but in reality this relationship is often much more transactional than relational.  We bite the bullet and obey God more than we disobey Him and then He gives us the things we want or at least doesn’t punish us.  That is not a relationship, it is a transaction.  In a relationship of love both parties work tirelessly to express their love to the other.  Even the commands of God are an expression of love because they will lead to the best for us, our neighbors, and the world.  I want to love God deeply and express that clearly.  After all, He’s loved me first.

Are we willing to love God in the way He says He feels loved?

One of the things I love about my daughter is that she doesn’t make you guess what makes her feel loved.  Often when I go in to say good night to her she turns her back to me and says, “Please rub my back Daddy.”  In many cases she is good at vocalizing the things that make her feel love, cherished, and cared for.  I am happy to oblige her requests because I love her deeply and long to make her happy and for her to know my love.

In John 14 Jesus explicitly says that we show we love Him by obeying Him.  Certainly this is not the only way our love for God is expressed, but Jesus says it’s one of the ways.  If we truly love Jesus then obedience becomes a wonderful opportunity to express to Him how much we love Him.  Like rubbing my daughter’s back it is not an obligation but a joy.  It is a significant paradigm shift to see obedience to Jesus as an expression of love rather than a moral obligation.

As we look ahead to 2012 and are inundated with articles, sermons, and blog posts about resolutions, I was struck by the importance of her posture toward me when we “wrestle” for the way I think about my approach to another year.  It has everything to do with being disciples of Jesus.

She can’t toss and spin herself.

Ayla loves to spin around on her own, but the things she’s able to do alone don’t compare to what she can do when she lets me provide the power for her acrobatics.  The same is true for us with God.  I spend a lot of time thinking about the things I need to do and how to accomplish them.  I forget easily that what I can accomplish is nothing compared to what God can do with me if I submit to Him.

She’s not in control.

When Ayla comes to “wrestle” she has some idea of what we’ll be doing, but she doesn’t determine exactly what she’ll be doing.  She can ask me to do the things she enjoys the most, but has to rely on my willingness to do those things if they’re going to happen.  Similarly, when we submit our will to God’s and ask Him to work through us we give up the ability to determine what will happen.  We can guess that it will involve using our spiritual gifts and abilities, working for redemption and reconciliation, and growth in our conformity to Christ, but the specifics are likely to be quite different than we expect.  In prayer we can ask God for things and listen to what He wants for us, but we don’t get to determine exactly what happens.

She has to trust me.

Ayla comes to me because I take care of her as we’re “wrestling.”  I don’t drop her, insist on doing things she doesn’t like, or keep going for ten minutes after she asks me to stop.  She trusts that I want to have fun with her in the same way she wants to have fun with me.  She also trusts that I love her and want to protect her.  For us to really be disciples of Jesus we have to trust God too–especially when we face difficulty or God asks us to do things that don’t make sense.  There are times when life and God’s direction don’t make sense and we have to trust that he loves us and stays with us.

It looks a little crazy to other people.

Ayla and I have been doing this for at least three years without injury (okay, without significant injury).  Despite that, when we start wrestling my wife often leaves the room or covers her eyes.  Our wrestling looks a little crazy to her and to some others who have witnessed it.  When we throw ourselves on the will and way of God the things we do and don’t do will sometimes look pretty crazy to others.  Many of them won’t serve to advance our careers, build our bank accounts, or make us comfortable.

As you look ahead to 2012, what would it look like to let God toss you around a little bit?

Our church

Number 1: Hire a person, not a job description.

There are a number of things we believe are important in order for us to move toward God’s future for the church.  We’ve outlined five areas we believe we need to address (vision implementation, community missionary, pastoral care, family ministry, and leadership development) but we’ve resisted the urge to get too specific on the details of what it looks like to pursue each one.  Our approach is to find a person/people who have a passion and ability to function well in these areas and then let them have the most prominent say in what we actually do.  We want to maximize the strengths of the person we hire, not handcuff them with a job description that doesn’t fit their gifts and abilities.

Number Two: Behavior is more important than intention.

Thanks to my friend Christopher Hooper (@xchristopher) who introduced me to the well known idea of behavioral interviewing.  For those who have interviewed and especially people in Human Services, I’m sure this is a well-known concept, but learning about it has been helpful for me.  It makes sense that the best predictor of how someone will function is to look at what they’ve done in the past.  It’s easy for someone to talk a good game, but more important that they’ve shown they can play a good game.  This doesn’t mean a person can’t change, but like I said before, we don’t have time to try out someone who hasn’t shown previously ability in certain areas.

Number Three: Compatibility with the Lead Pastor

In the next two years the person we hire and I will be working together extremely closely to develop the ministry through the Spirit’s power.  Our board chairman has reminded me over and over that one of the most important components of success will be my ability to work together well with the new person.  This doesn’t mean we have to be best friends, but it does mean we need alignment on values, beliefs, and philosophy of ministry.  We also need to be able to complement each other’s gifts.

Number Four: Understanding of the environment.

I don’t mean someone who can explain a carbon footprint, I mean someone who comes in understanding how to minister in the environment Mountair finds itself in.  This means knowing the differences between faithful ministry in an urban context instead of a suburban one.  It means knowing how to relate to people across all the ethnic, socio-economic, and generational lines that can be so difficult to navigate.  It means being able to love the long-time members of the church and be passionate about reaching the community in innovative ways at the same time.

Number Five: Character over competency

This is nothing new either, but the last thing we need is someone who is immensely gifted but ungodly.  I’ll take someone who stumbles through a sermon but is an example of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus over a captivating orator any day.  Of course we hope to find someone who has great character and competency, but we’re also trying to keep them in the right perspective.

These are five of the important principles we’re working from.  What else have you found helpful in your experience?