Pastors: Develop a Discerning Community

(Garage scene from "A Beautiful Mind")

I've attended, even led, church planning meetings where we got together and "brainstormed" about what we should do. We stormed the gates of hell with our brains. We assaulted the darkness using our collective cognitive abilities. We layered the walls with ideas on paper, looking like John Nash's garage in "A Beautiful Mind."

I don't do this any more. 

The Presence-Driven Church is not a "brainstorming committee." It is a Discerning Community.

Imagine the Apostle Paul at a brainstorming meeting. The ideas are pouring forth. But Paul doesn't participate. Someone asks, "Why not?" Paul responds, "Why, since we have the mind of Christ?" (See here.)

The human brain is the craziest, most beautiful, impressive thing in the entire universe as we know it. The human mind is, no doubt, awesome. But the mind of Christ is more impressive. God doesn't even need a brain to have a mind. (God is a non-physical being. Note: there are people walking the earth who believe that "mind" somehow "emerged" from non-mental physical matter, thus falling in love with the idea that from nothing you can get something.)

God has ideas, correct? Our task is not to come up with ideas, but to discern the mind of Christ, and his already-existing ideas. 

This means developing people who are excellent discerners of the voice of God. These will be people who spend much time with God, are not "too busy to pray," and are not church people who come out of the woodwork "to vote." 

Discerning communities eliminate the word "vote." The language becomes, "What do you hear God saying to us?"

This challenges the "let's figure this out ourselves" mentality prevalent in American churches. This is the upside-down hermeneutic, which says, instead of us exegeting the mind of God, God exegetes us.  

For how to grow into a discerning community see:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (John Piippo)

Pursuing God Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups (Ruth Barton) 

Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life (Henri Nouwen)

Abortion Rights - The Right to Kill Unborn Children

(Monroe)

(I have to keep this ball in play. This is the other side.)

An article in the New York Times is titled "The Gathering Threat to Abortion Rights." 

Abortion rights: the legal permission to kill unborn children. 

Abortion rights: the right to kill your babies.  

The right to kill a person.

I am not being dramatic. That is the issue, and why it is so controversial. 

If the unborn child is not a "person" (like Peter Singer claims), then killing the inborn life form is not killing a person. Who would then care, except irrational mothers who believe the entity within them was their child?

But, if the inborn life form is a person, at every stage of its existence, then abortion is murder. 

This is why I, and many others, are scandalized by abortion. This seems to be why Eminem confessed, and cried for forgiveness.

This is why women (and occasional men, like Eminem) Linda and I meet, who have had abortions, grieve over their choice to terminate the life of their child. This is why they think, years later, of how old their child would be now? Of who they would be, had they not been euthanized?

The threat to every person's right to life. That should make us emotional. 

And rational.

For the reasoning, see "Abortion: A Logical Argument."

To go deep, please read Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice, by Francis Beckwith.

***
My two books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

I'm now working on #3 - How God Changes the Human Heart.

Power and Presence Renewal Conference in New Jersey

EAST COAST ... We're coming your way! New Jersey, November 8-9-10 Power and Presence Renewal Conference HSRM leaders will be speaking at Power and Presence , a renewal conference in New Jersey sponsored by Central New Jersey pastors. Join us and be revived, refilled, challenged and empowered! Click View More for meeting locations and schedule. Free event! View More

Clay Ford and I will be speaking at this conference!

Afraid to Let the Holy Spirit Move?

(Somewhere in Ohio)

This Sunday morning one of our men took me aside and said, "This is beautiful, because it is not scripted. The Holy Spirit is allowed to move." More like the early church in the book of Acts, right? 

Sadly, there are church "services" that are programmed, timed, and scripted. Former Charisma Magazine editor Lee Grady expresses his concern about this in his article "Don't Be Afraid to Let the Holy Spirit Move."

Grady writes:

"If your church allows this kind of freedom for ministry, you are blessed—because many pastors today are afraid to allow the Holy Spirit to move. We've put the Spirit in a box. We have a long list of seeker-friendly rules these days, telling us that: 
1) American churchgoers only want a 60-minute church experience;
2) the only "cool" way to do church is to offer three songs, a short TED Talk and video announcements on a big screen and 
3) altar calls or extended prayer times will scare people away."

This is sad, because people need the reality of God's power, which cannot be programmed or managed or contained.

Grady gives seven things we can do to encourage the freedom of the Spirit in our churches. Click here to read them. 

Expect the Supernatural

Monroe County Court House

What a beautiful, empowering service we had this morning at Redeemer with Chris Bajkiewicz. Now it's late Sunday afternoon, and I am filled with expectancy. Expecting what? Expecting God. The supernatural. The Christian life is a  supernatural life (unless you're into entmytholgisierung).  

When Linda and I lived in East Lansing we met a woman whose marriage was failing. She began to receive counsel from us. We shared the gospel with her. She was a chemist, a very intelligent scientist. But religiously, she was a blank slate, barely knowing what a Bible was. Then she had a supernatural vision.

She called in the morning. She shared how she awoke in the middle of the night. Before her, in her bedroom, she saw a lamb, and a cross with blood on it. The lamb, she said, was pure white. She watched this vision, like someone viewing a hologram, for thirty minutes. She insisted she was awake the entire time. 

It shook her deeply. It opened her up spiritually. After this event, she wanted to hear more about Jesus.

As I am praying and reflecting tonight, I am filled with expectation for what this week will bring. I am looking forward to God's supernatural activity in my life, and in my church family. 

Dallas Willard asks, "Can a normal person like me really be capable of having the same kinds of experiences as did Elijah or Paul? Who am I to put myself in the place of these great ones? Who am I even to suppose that God might guide me or speak to me, much less that my experience should be like that of Moses or Elisha? Such questions may seem to honor the greatness of God, but in fact they contradict what God has taught about himself in the Bible and in the person of Christ. God’s greatness is precisely what allows him to pay close attention to me or anyone and everyone else, as he chooses. God’s greatness is shown in his ability to work within anyone." (Willard, Hearing God Through the Year: A 365-Day Devotional, p. 44)

Willard suggests reading and meditating on these words of the apostle Paul. Take them to heart. I'm writing them on a card and carrying them with me this week. 

Now to him who is able to do 

immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, 

according to his power that is at work within us, 

to him be glory in the church 

and in Christ Jesus 

throughout all generations, 

for ever and ever! 

Ephesians 3: 20-21

Expect.

***

I write about hearing God and God's supernatural presence in my two books.

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (Jan. 2018)

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

TELECONFERENCE FOR PASTORS: How Do We Lead Our People in These Politically Turbulent Times?

For pastors and Christian leaders.

To prepare, please read these two posts.

Some Guidelines for Civil Discourse

JESUS-FOLLOWING & POLITICS

How to Lead Your Church

I share how I view pastoral leadership in my book Leading the Presence-Driven Church. 

Letter to a Grieving Divorcee

Monroe County

I wrote a friend of ours whose divorce was finalized. Linda and I meet so many people in this situation that I thought I'd post it here, with appropriate changes.

BTW - "amicable divorce" is an oxymoron, like "Microsoft Works."


***
Hi _____, I'm glad you called. Some of my thoughts are... (if they don't fit please forgive me)...

• The finalization of a divorce, no matter how bad the marriage was, is like lowering a dead body in a grave and burying it. Divorce is the death of hopes and dreams a husband and wife had when they stood before God and pledged their love and fidelity, "until death do us part." The idea was never "until the marriage dies."
• The God-given, emotional response to death (the final loss of something precious) is grief. You are now experiencing grief, a word that covers a range of emotions. In the aftermath of death, grief remains.
• Grieving can do its work if one has a community that absorbs the grief. Linda and I (and others) are part of that community, for you. 
• Jesus knows grief. He is "a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." "He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" - Isaiah 53:3.
• Continue to dwell in Him. Before Jesus went to the cross, he instructed His disciples: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you... If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him." (John 14:18, 23) The Jesus said, "Abide in Me, and I in you." (John 15:4)
• We are promised that, as we live an abiding life in him, our lives will bear much fruit. Even for the grieving person who abides in Christ, God continues to bear lasting fruit in and through them. This remains true for you.
• Finally, any real or perceived condemnation you feel coming from others who wonder about your divorce is not from God. All of us are in the same boat here. We've all sinned and fallen short of God's glory. All our sin and failure has been crucified with Christ. Now, sin and death no longer rule, but Grace Rules. Where Grace Rules (and Law no longer does), no condemnation can come against us. Therefore, I bless you today with the freedom we share, because Christ reigns in our lives.

Love,

John (and Linda)

Chris Bajkiewicz Preaches at Redeemer - Oct. 13

(Lori and Chris Bajkiewicz)

CHRIS BAJKIEWICZ and his wife LORI are medical  missionaries to Mexico, Latin America, and beyond. 

Chris will preach tomorrow morning at Redeemer, Sunday, October 13.

10:30 AM

Jesus' Disciples Were Teenagers (Craig Keener)