Principles and practices to guide your ministry's financial decisions

In our current era of fewer resources it becomes even more critical for churches and other ministries to have a grid through which they make financial decisions. All budgets reflect a financial philosophy whether spelled out or not. Having your philosophy defined can help you make key financial decisions and keep your ministry on track toward its intended objectives.

In addition, the answer to increased ministry is not always an increase in dollars or people. It is often doing what we do in a different and more effective and efficient way. A set of financial principles or practices can help define a mindset that sees financial resources through a new set of eyes.

Consider these best practices to guide your financial decisions. And consider taking the time to draft a set for your own ministry.

One, we will teach and model generosity believing that this is the heart of God. We will call people to a life of generosity but will not coerce or manipulate people to give.

Two, we will faithfully and wisely steward what God provides to us for the ministry He has entrusted to us.

Three, we will joyfully and thankfully live within the income that God provides. We will live within our means believing that God gives us what we need in order to accomplish the ministry He has called us to.

Four, we know that we cannot be all things to all people. Thus we will carefully define our mission critical and core ministries and fund those before we start ancillary ministries, no matter how attractive, that are not mission critical. In tight times, we will always come back to funding that which is mission critical.

Five, we value excellence but do not believe that excellence must be expensive. Our ministries will be excellent but as cost effective as possible. We will regularly look for ways to accomplish our mission in the most cost effective way as possible.

Six, we will staff with the best people possible, compensate them fairly and subscribe to a lean staffing philosophy. All key ministry staff will build teams of volunteers so that we are not staff heavy and live out the equipping mandate of Ephesians 4:12.

Seven, before we hire new staff we will always look at the systems, processes, staffing and volunteer resources to determine whether there is a way to increase our ministry capacity without increasing our staff.

Four key church board documents

Church boards have too many documents. Many of them are of no real use because they are written and filed but there are some basic documents that every church board should have. These documents guide the work of the board in significant ways. I would suggest four.


1. Your picture/document that reflects your clarity. As laid out in my book, Leading From The Sandbox, if you cannot explain your ministry philosophy, commitments and desired ends on one piece of paper, in one picture it is too complicated. Whether you use a sandbox, vision frame, ministry table or some other metaphor, this one picture should be able to tell anyone who asks what is truly important to your ministry and it becomes the picture/paradigm/language for explaining who you are to others.


2. Your board covenant that regulates your relationships. Board covenants are a one page document that spell out the relational commitments of board members to one another. Congregations rarely rise above the spiritual and relational commitments of board members so clarifying those commitments and living them out is key to a healthy board and therefore to a healthy church.


3. Your board policies that reflect how you operate as a board. Good boards have thought through the process they use to operate as a board. No healthy group operates without a set of implicit or explicit rules or principles for how they work together. Healthy boards have well written policies that reflect good governance principles, including how decisions are made and what even constitutes board work. These policies lay out the way you operate as a board, is the training manual for new board members and allows you to deal with rogue members should they arise.


4. Your annual ministry plan that reflects where you are going. Whether developed by staff, board or a combination of both, no congregation should be operating without an annual ministry plan which spells out where you are going. That plan then becomes the basis of a ministry assessment annually. It is your directional road map.


Boards should keep their work simple but they do need a set of core documents. These four explain your ministry, regulate your board relationships, board work and church direction.

The dangers of prolonged weariness

Our bodies and minds are made to run sprints and for a time marathons but we cannot be running continuously or for long seasons without hitting a danger zone. Weariness over a long period of time is debilitating to our bodies, our minds, and our souls. 


Weariness to our bodies may seem the most obvious and it can cause complications. After a number of health issues, when my body becomes weary I am more prone to illness so physical weariness is a sign to me that I need to back off. 


Mental weariness is not unlike driving when deeply tired. Responses are slower, reactions are often overreactions, and just as a tired driver becomes dangerous so do tired leaders. When tired, we do not think as sharply, our emotions are not as carefully regulated, and we are more prone to treat others without the care, diplomacy and concern for their well being that is normal. Tired leaders often use and abuse staff, often unintentionally. 


Tired leaders are far more prone to make errors of judgement including overestimating or underestimating responses to decisions that are made. Fatigue fogs judgement.


Of all the areas of fatigue, heart or soul fatigue is the most dangerous because it goes to the core of who we are and if we lose our true north at the heart and soul level, we lose our inner compass and here we are at the most risk. The evil one knows our default switches to deal with heart and soul weariness and we are at our most vulnerable in that place. 


Weariness and fatigue are a plea of our body for rest. We ignore it to our peril and put ourselves at risk if the weariness is prolonged. It is a bad place to be.

Five choices to avoid the dangerous false gods of ministry

Yesterday I wrote on the Dangerous and false ministry Gods of success, recognition, power and money. It generated unusual interest which did not surprise me given the propensity of leaders to allow these false gods to capture them. I hope leaders read it and I suspect that many staff and constituents read it since they are often the first to see their leaders moving down this destructive route.

In my experience, those who walk down this route have five common characteristics: They have neglected their inner life because of their busyness; they start to believe their own press; they stop listening to people they used to listen to and now listen only to those who tell them what they want to hear; they start to divide people into friends, those who agree with them and enemies, those who don't, and finally they have become significantly isolated from others.

In other words, leaders make choices about how they live which can lead them down paths that are exceedingly dangerous to their personal lives, families, relationship with god and ultimately ministry effectiveness. Or, they can embrace lifestyles that will keep them in safe waters. Either way these are leadership choices and not random events of fate.

1. I will modify my schedule so that there is time to think, reflect, spend time with God and time with key life friends. Our schedules are dangerous if not carefully regulated because they squeeze out margin necessary for time with God and for introspection, keep us from deep interactions with others, suck our spiritual lives dry and keep us on the edge of fatigue. 

This is clearly not how Jesus lived and it is clearly not how our physical or spiritual bodies were meant to function well. Only we can make the choice to slow down. With time, one can press deeply into God's word, evaluating our lives against what He wants of us and taking the time to compare our lives against that of Jesus.

2. I will not listen to or believe the press that others give me because while some of it may be true, I know the real me and the real me is much less impressive than the public me. Believing what others say about us is choosing to become delusional about who we really are. We are deeply flawed and broken sinners and the very fact we get caught up with false ministry gods is proof of our brokenness. 

The moment I allow others to put me on a pedestal and I start to believe their words as gospel, I am entering an "alternate reality field" which most of those around us know is not true but which we choose to buy into. Jesus was unimpressed by the accolades of others because He knew how fickle people can be.

3. I will continue to dialogue with those who have been truth tellers to me in the past. There is one caveat here. Those who have been faithful friends in the past will not always press into to a leader who is walking down a destructive path. This is because they intuitively understand that the individual does not really want to hear what they have to say. 

Thus it is incumbent on the leader to proactively ask these faithful friends what they see in their lives today and then to listen. Often they will not like to hear what they will hear but those are the wounds of faithful friends. Again, we make the choice.

4. I will not divide people into camps (friends - those who are loyal and agree with me) and (enemies - those who disagree with me and are therefore no longer loyal). Ironically those who disagree with us when we are walking down these paths are the most faithful friends we could ever have and those who agree with us are usually simply desiring to be on the in with fame and someone important like fans flock to rock stars. It is at this stage that wise leaders are deeply discerning about who their friends really are and who the "groupies" are.

5. I will not isolate myself from friendships, those I am accountable to, those who have spoken into my life faithfully in the past or from those around me.Isolation breeds a skewed view of reality because those who isolate themselves with a leader like this tell them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. Isolation in any walk of life is dangerous. Isolation is particularly dangerous for those chasing false ministry gods.

Why is this so important? Because unchecked, these behaviors lead to what I call a Spiritual Narcissism whose outcomes are sad indeed. 

Dangerous and subtle false ministry gods

Ministry is a funny thing. By definition it is about serving Christ. But, just as the world has many false gods so do those in professional ministry. These gods often take the place of or get in the way of the God we are here to serve. They can creep up on us slowly but once entrenched they become agents of deceit that turn our eyes from the One we serve to ourselves because each of these false ministry gods are ultimately about us. They are not about Jesus.

The false god of success. We want ministry results but those very results when they become our obsession turn our eyes from Jesus to whatever definition of success we are measured by. The church becomes about numbers and programs and not about Jesus. We start to measure our dollars and budgets and not life transformation. Our buildings, facilities, programs, budgets, staff, technology, cutting edge strategies become our gods and lost in our drive for success is the one we serve, Jesus. 

The false god of recognition. Lets be honest. Most of us like recognition and some of us crave it. And ministry is a perfect platform for it because in addition to being somebody, we have the extra benefit of being able to say we do it for Jesus which is considered noble and self sacrificing. Actually, when recognition is our god, it is self aggrandizement and selfishness hiding behind the guise of ministry. The need for recognition from others rather than the smile of Jesus is a false god and one that is dangerously seductive. Whenever our ministry begins to feed our ego we are on dangerous ground.

The false god of power. This is a common false god of those in ministry leadership. It starts innocently enough perhaps - we need to lead. That leadership, however, brings with it power and the ability to control events and people. That power can become an instrument to fuel our false god of recognition and success and it is a great platform to exercise control over others. We can easily enough hide behind our mandate to lead and all the while feed a desire to exercise power over others. Ironically, the one we lead on the behalf of, Jesus, served those He led rather than controlling them. 

The false god of money. Ministry needs a certain amount of funding but that resource can easily become a god that drives us. When we start to pursue ministry funding more than we do Jesus, we substitute our resources for His power and provision. We become proud of our budgets and ability to raise funds and start to rely on our funding more than the One who is the ultimate source of all that we need. If only I had more funds we think, I could do more ministry when in reality if we had more of Jesus and His power we would see more true ministry fruit.

False gods are substitutes for Jesus whether we pursue them in the guise of ministry or in the secular arena. Those in ministry are no less susceptible to the lure of false gods than the rest of society. We simply have a different platform from which to pursue them. More importantly, however, since we do it under the guise of serving Jesus, they are perhaps even more devious and dangerous and harder for us to spot in our own lives. 

The issue of our deepest motivations is one that only we and Jesus can truly know but if we fool ourselves we are chasing something other than the Jesus we think we are serving. The only antidote is staying close to Jesus, constantly staying in tune with the motivations that drive us and surrounding ourselves with people who can speak truth into our lives. And, we need to be constantly aware that we are always in danger of pursuing false gods rather than Jesus. 

No Neutral Ground

In every relationship we have we either contribute positively to the other or negatively. There is never any neutral ground. We either build the other up or diminish them in some way.

Recently we had a long stay in a hotel in Hong Kong. The day before we checked out the maid who did the nightly turn down asked Mary Ann for her email address. Mary Ann had given her dignity and developed a relationship with her during our stay. I wonder how often that happens to a hotel maid? And how easy it would have been to allow her to fade into background of our stay!

We meet people every day who because of their position or lack of status fade into the background. They are all around us but invisible to us. For Christ followers, there is no neutral ground. These are potential sons and daughters of the king, no small matter and our response to them either brings them dignity or diminishes them as the world often does.

Jesus was the master at finding those that the world diminished and giving them attention and dignity. If he were a greeter in one of our churches he would be looking for the loner, the poor, the one burdened by sin and in need of grace and be there talking to them, extending friendship. Jesus would go out of his way to give dignity to the "undignified," and honor to the "dishonored." Do we?

Try this experiment for one week: Look for all the invisible people that surround you. They serve you fast food, make your coffee, clean your office, do your lawn, or check you out of the grocery store. Go out of your way to engage them, thank, them and give them dignity. Taking them for granted is to diminish them. Remember, there is no neutral ground. We either build people up or diminish them.

Best practices for training overseas

Many are engaged in training nationals overseas, something that is a high value in a world where a good theological education is out of the reach of most church leaders. How it is done, however, can make a significant difference in its long term impact. 


In many cases, national pastors from the majority world will attend any training that comes their way. Because that training is often paid for or subsidized and they are hungry for information. The end result, however, is often a grocery list of seminars and training that has no coherence to it and has far less value than we might think it does. And since we train and leave we do not know how effective our time was.


Here are some best practices to consider when involved in overseas training.


1. Before you go, take a class in contextualization so that you understand how to train in a culture that is not your own. Without an understanding of cross-cultural training we often train people to do things our way which is not appropriate in their culture and simply describes a western church model which is not appropriate to them.


2. Think Biblical principles, not specific programs or strategy. Principles are timeless and cross cultures, strategies and programs often do not. Most of us are equipped to teach principles for ministry but we are not equipped to know how they apply those principles in their context.


3. Don't simply teach, create dialogue. The majority world is used to simply taking in whatever is taught to them - it is the school model they grew up in. What we need to do is to help people think, evaluate, plan and apply for their context. This only comes in dialogue.


4. Rather than one off training sessions, consider a plan to train specific groups over a period of years so that you build into a group with intentionality and can see the progress they make. Allow them to make the plan with your input.


5. Always spend a good period of time in group exercises where they are thinking through the application of your teaching to their context together. For instance, if the topic is that of making disciples, have them think about an intentional process that works in their context.


6. Find out what their concerns are. We often have an agenda for what we want to teach but don't ask the group about their concerns and challenges. We are there to serve them so it is important that we understand the issues that are critical for them. 


7. Have someone with you from the local culture who can coach you on where you are communicating well and where you are losing them. 


8. Watch your illustrations, metaphors and examples. Many do not translate into another culture and will not help.


9. Ensure that everything you teach is transferable to others. If it is to complex for your students to pass on it has limited effectiveness even in the group you are teaching.


10. Keep it simple. Complexity is confusing. Simplify complexity so that you communicate what is truly important.

Ministry promises

Organizations make promises. We make them when we hire. We make them when we talk about our organization. We make them when we communicate to our donors. We make them when we talk to our staff. We make them in our policies. If we preach, we make them in our messages. 


Staff members hear those promises whether they are implicit or explicit and they respect us when we keep them and grow cynical when we don't. Above all they expect us to be serious about the promises we make. As they should.


When we say "People are our most valuable asset" but don't develop them, empower them or treat them with dignity and respect our actions do not live up to our promises. If we talk about integrity but leaders do not display it in decisions they make we don't live up to our promises.


One of my deepest fears when we bring new staff into our organization is that they will find themselves in a situation where what we promise in our "sandbox" will not be what they find. In fact, at our recent bi annual leadership team meeting we spent the whole week discussing where we were in living out the promises and commitments of our sandbox (mission, guiding principles, central ministry focus and culture). It was a "check/adjust" to ensure that we deliver on our promises.


Staff do not expect perfection but they do expect that we are consistent in keeping our promises to the best of our ability and where there are gaps working to close them. They need to know that we are serious about becoming who we say we aspire to be.


A simple way to know how well we are doing is to have honest dialogue with staff about how they perceive we are doing. Of course this means that we are able to receive that feedback with appreciation rather than defensiveness. Staff can give a perspective that leaders often do not see.


Think about the promises you or your organization makes implicitly or explicitly and evaluate how you are doing. The good thing is that there is always room for improvement.

Your greatest ministry advantage

It is probably not what you think. It is not strategy, leadership skill, opportunity or execution - and I believe in all of these. It is the power of a prayer team behind you, lifting you and your ministry before the throne of God on a regular basis. 

I don't meet many believers who have a prayer team and that makes me sad. I am convinced that it is those who pray regularly for Mary Ann and me who are responsible for whatever ministry success is seen or advances that are made.

If we truly believe what Paul says in Ephesians six that there are spiritual forces at work behind the scenes to thwart God's work, then it is spiritual weapons we need and prayer is one of the most powerful. 

It is my conviction that every believer needs others who regularly pray for them. It is also my conviction that those of us who are in Christian leadership are foolish to do what we do without a strategic prayer covering for protection against the evil one. And, the greater the press into Satan's territory, the more concerted prayer we need. 

As I travel the globe in ministry leadership, I usually bring a prayer partner with me as part of my team. It is a significant annual expense but that expense is small compared to the benefits.

In our organization we encourage each staff member to develop a small prayer team of trusted and trustworthy friends to pray for personal needs (a group you can share anything with) and a larger team who desire to pray regularly. 

I usually send a monthly prayer update with me calendar so that the teams can pray specifically for the activities that I am engaged in. It is these teams that have prayed me through some very significant times including two life threatening illnesses. 

So convinced am I of the spiritual battle that rages around us, I will not enter into any major ministry initiative, trip or engagement without my prayer teams going there with me. If you don't have one, don't wait long to develop your team.

Helping people learn: Don't tell, ask

Questions are powerful tools in helping others grow. And often underutilized. We are prone to tell others something rather than ask them something. In telling them something we give them valuable information. In asking them questions so that they come to a conclusion themselves we help them to think for themselves, the skill that will help them make good decisions themselves.


We used to do this with our kids at the dinner table. The questions would result in free flow discussions on many topics and both our sons are today deeply inquisitive of life and good thinkers. Sometimes they turned the table on us and asked why we had certain rules, making us think about the why behind the what.


I was talking to a young leader recently about question asking and he made the comment that no one has taught him how to use that skill. I encouraged him that everyone can learn the skill with practice. I also told him that one had to be OK with a bit of silence after asking a question. Be patient and eventually the other party will answer.


Questions are particularly important in helping others understand their own wiring, motivations, strengths and weaknesses. We may not even have the option of telling them these things but through questions and dialogue we can help them uncover their own makeup.


One reason that more leaders do not ask more questions and default to telling is that questions and dialogue take time. Telling is fast and easy. However, while telling is more efficient in the short run is is less effective in the long run since telling rarely helps the other party actually grow. It gives them information but does not build the skill of critical analysis - necessary for growth.


I just finished a week of dialogue with some bright leaders from around the world. Many shared the power of the week because it was based on questions and group dialogue rather than information imparting which they were used to. Several said they would be using the same method with those they oversaw or mentored.


Questions rather than telling also sends a powerful message that you care about the other party. You are implicitly saying to them that you value their perspective, that they have something to contribute to the question at hand and that it is worth exploring the issue together rather than you as the supervisor or leader simply telling them the answer. Telling communicates that you have the answer. Dialogue indicates that we can come up with the answer. There is a big difference.

Insecure Leaders and their impact on others

One of the greatest gifts staff can receive is a secure leader. Unfortunately, in the ministry world there are a great number of insecure leaders. This results in behaviors that can seriously impact those who work for them.


Here are some of the signs of an insecure leader:
-Defensiveness when someone disagrees with them
-A need to be right
-A need to assert their "authority"
-Inability to empower others
-A need to control others
-A need to manage their reputation
-Inability to engage in candid dialogue
-Lack of personal transparency
-An unhealthy need to be liked
-A tendency to marginalize those who they perceive to be threats     to them
-Often threatened by those around them who are more competent than they are 
-An inability to chart a consistent course


All of these descriptors have a negative impact on those who work for insecure leaders. Ironically, insecurity is often hidden by an exaggerated sense of authority and leadership - a facade that hides an insecurity in both areas.


Personal security starts with being OK with who God made me to be - both my strengths and weaknesses. It results in an attitude that says, "I have nothing to prove and nothing to lose." If that is true, I don't have to pretend I am something I am not, I don't need to be right and I value the contributions of others as much as I do mine. It also means that I don't need to compete with others and don't compare myself with others. 


Security is rooted in an understanding that God fashioned me as He chose, is happy with how He made me. Insecurity is rooted in trying to prove to God and others that we have value. Thus insecurity is a theological issue in our lives. It comes out of an incomplete understanding of God and His view of us. Until we resolve this incomplete understanding we will suffer from the pain of insecurity and the need to prove ourselves to God and others. 


For those leaders who struggle from insecurity, and there are many, it is critical that they embark on a journey of personal growth. Most can overcome this deficit and lead from a healthier place. For those who do not, the implications for their leadership are many, and negative. Their behaviors create disempowerment and dishealth for their staff and those around them. If you work for an insecure leader you know exactly what I mean.

The church needs persecution to stay healthy

Persecution is good for the health of the church. In some ways I don't like that but my experience is and church history tells us that when the church is under pressure it sheds its baggage and rises to the occasion in serious faith. It also separates those who are cultural Christians and serious Christ followers. 


Serious Christianity brings persecution because it is a threat to Satan's territory. When the church is not challenged it often becomes stagnant and is no longer a threat to the evil one. The experience of the early church as recorded in Acts is evidence that persecution lights a fire under the church and the church on fire results in persecution.


In China the church under communism flourished. In Iran today, the church under pressure is growing. In Saudi Arabia under extreme pressure, cell groups are springing up. Indian Christians have significant persecution in many parts of their country and the church is growing regularly. 


Contrast that with the relative limited impact the church in the west has today where it is easy to be a believer and where there is little cost associated with following Jesus. When faith is easy, it is also often shallow. When it requires a cost, it goes deep and calls the question as to our sincerity in following our Lord.


There are many parts of the world where suffering for faith is considered a mark of honor. Paul expressed that sentiment when he talked about sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Jesus promised that those who followed him would be subject to persecution and ill treatment. That is why He spoke of taking up His cross and following Him.


I do not pray that the church would be free from persecution. I pray that God would build His church and whatever it takes for that to happen is to the church's advantage. I also believe that it is going to take pressure on the church in the west if it is going to become vibrant again. 

Twenty cows

We live in an amazing world where the black and white world is juxtaposed with the globalized color world. Last evening was a great example. I call it the 20 cow dinner.


Eating with friends in an amazing restaurant overlooking Hong Kong and its amazing harbor and lights I am sitting across from a friend from Kenya who has been attending our leadership meetings of ReachGlobal this week. He travels the world training church leaders. 


I told him I heard that he was getting married and he said yes. I asked when the day was and he said "When I have twenty cows" -the price he hopes to negotiate for his bride who resides in another African country. "How many do you have now?," I asked and he said "three." "How much is a cow?" I asked and he said one hundred dollars. I pulled out a hundred dollars and said now you have four. 


Others did the same and after a couple of texts back to the states we came up with all the cows he needed. He and his bride to be are ecstatic. I was now in for five cows so I informed him that I have a stake in this marriage. I will get invited to the wedding!


He told us that since he was from another country than his bride and both have Skype he suggested to his father in law to be that they negotiate the bride price over Skype. Saves the money of an extra journey. The answer was a big NO. "This is Africa and it must be done face to face by an intermediary.  Technology does not always suffice it seems.


I told him I was glad my wife did not cost me 20 cows since I didn't have that many when I got married. My wife informed me that she is worth more than 20 cows but of course that is a matter of what economy we are negotiating. I didn't really want to pursue that conversation with her since I knew it was not going to end well :).


We laughed, ate, and celebrated with him. And it was the first time I ever bought cows for a bride price.


We live in a colorful world with colorful cultures and colorful people. I am thankful for how God brings us together for friendship and ministry. Heaven is going to be an interesting place when we are all celebrating together. I like 20 cow dinners.

Does your life have focus? Three simple questions.

Every one of us has a call from God on our lives. And no matter what stage of life we are in He wants us to live our lives with purpose, passion and intentionality. Life is precious and it moves quickly. 


Think about this question: What does God want me to accomplish in the next five years? Try to answer that question with three or less descriptors. Focus matters. What does He want you to focus on? Coming to clarity on that one question can make all the difference in our lives.


A second question: How well am I doing in ensuring that my calendar and activity reflect those God given priorities? It is very easy for the urgent to push out the important. Or, for distractions to keep us from focusing on our God given assignment. 


A third question: What do I need to jettison if I am going to accomplish what is truly important. All of us accumulate activities and obligations that over time weigh us down and keep us from focusing on the truly important. It is not a bad thing to let some of it go for a higher calling.


All of us want to leave a legacy. Remember, however that legacies are rarely accidental. They come because we understand God's priorities for our lives and lived them out with intentionality. With that intentionality comes a significant level of joy and satisfaction knowing that we are fulfilling God's calling on our lives.

What is the church and why does it matter?

When you hear the word church what comes to mind? For most of us it is probably a building with a bunch of people, programs, Sunday services, and a full time pastor or staff. Only one of those definitions is actually part of the real definition of church - people. Our common definition of church is very different than what we read about in the New Testament.

In the New Testament the church was a community of Christ followers who gathered regularly for worship and fellowship under defined leadership with Jesus as the head and the goal and whose mission was to grow in Jesus and share the Gospel with those around them. Typically they met in a home and had a bi-vocational pastor. They were about Jesus and people and a God given mission.

We often think of church as about programs but in fact a real church is about Jesus. It is about worshiping Him (not being entertained), following Him (life transformation) and making Him well known (telling others about Him). He is the central focus, the main thing, and the goal of our lives and worship.

It is very easy for both congregations and their leaders to take their eyes off of Jesus who is the focus of the church and put it on ourselves and our programs. It is also easy to define success as how many people come on a weekend which is usually a reshuffling of believers from other churches. In truth, the true definition of success of a church is true spiritual transformation (heart, thinking, priorities and relationships) which will result in growth because others will be impacted by our lives. 

It is instructive to read the book of Acts and see the church through the eyes of Scripture. We often have much more of a cultural definition of church than we do a biblical definition. The danger in this is that we may end up with more cultural Christianity than we do Biblical and Jesus centered Christianity. While church leaders pursue their definition of success many in the congregation long for them to simplify and make Jesus the central focus, the main thing and the goal of our lives and worship. Jesus might to.

Paradigm shifts and the job of leaders

Paradigm shifts are very hard for most people to grasp. It is not that they are necessarily resistant, lack intelligence or don't want better results. The truth is that we see through a lens that is familiar and the unfamiliar is hard to grasp, especially if it requires us to think differently. The challenge is that the familiar will often not take us into the future. The world changes, and as it does the familiar often becomes our enemy, not our friend.


Interestingly, when change around us is rapid, we often cling to the familiar because it provides us with stability when in reality the familiar is destined to keep us from meeting new opportunities in our changing world. Think General Motors or Kodak. While they clung to the familiar the world changed and they were caught unable to catch up. The familiar was their nemesis.


For example, in the world of missions, the familiar is particularly dangerous as many of the traditional models will not carry water in the future. There are major shifts needed if mission agencies are going to meet the needs of a color world. Local churches must also make shifts in how they view missions strategy. In both cases, the familiar is the nemesis of future success.


This does not mean that what we did in the past did not serve us well in the past. It does mean that ministries need to ask the question of what will best serve them in the future. The future will never look like the past so it is reasonable that much of our methodology in the future will be different than in the past. That means a change in the way we think about what we do and how we do it. It is true in business and ministry. 


The challenge is that we are so used to the familiar that we often do not even question our methodologies. In fact, we often don't even think it is necessary to ask questions about our methodologies which is the real danger. And sometimes, those who do ask the questions are seen as irritants because they are messing with the familiar.


Leaders have the responsibility to take the time to consider where ministries need to go to meet the challenges of the future. That takes time, reflection and a lot of questions. No one else will do it for them. Then, they need to help their staff understand the needs of the future and press into needed changes in paradigms that will help them get there. This takes great courage because it requires us to give up the familiar for the unfamiliar.


Helping staff transition to new paradigms is a necessary, time consuming and dialogue rich discipline. Leaders who do not have the courage to position their ministry for success in the future leave their organization in a deeply vulnerable position. Here is what I know. The future is not like the past so we need to ask what old paradigms need to go and what new paradigms need to be embraced. And then, how do we help our staff and organization embrace new ways of thinking.

The greatest compliment and greatest joy

I received the greatest compliment I could get today. It is not that I am a great leader or lead a perfect organization. But as a leader it is what I love to hear. One of our staff just completed his first hard year on the field in missions and told me how much he love being part of our organization. 


What it told me is that we had succeeded in helping him get into his sweet spot. He told me he worked for the greatest leader in the world (not me - his team leader) and that in spite of the challenges, he was so grateful to be part of our organization.


People are the greatest asset we have in ministry. When we treat them well, when we position them right, when we empower them significantly and when we make it possible for them to have significant impact, we create an environment that is designed to help people reach their full potential.


Leaders do a lot of things. One of the most important things they do is to create an environment where staff can flourish. When they flourish we flourish. When they don't we don't.  When they win we win.


I love creating an environment where people can be their best. It is one of the top responsibilities of leaders. What we do is not about us but about how we serve those who work for us. The most important service is creating an environment where people flourish.


I cannot take the credit because we have a great team. But I know that we are on the right track when those who make up our wonderful staff are deeply fulfilled. That makes my heart happy.

Got a situation? Try being candid.

It is an interesting phenomenon. Leadership spin.  Communications or answers to questions that are designed to equivocate or put the best face on something when in reality everyone knows it is not an accurate picture. 


Why cannot leaders simply be candid? Sure there are times when one would not reveal everything because it would hurt others but why not try simple honesty. The irony is that people appreciate transparency and don't appreciate spin. They know and when we choose spin, we lose. 


I suppose we do it for image control but it does not work. We watch public figures spin embarrassing situations and dig deeper and deeper holes until they are forced to come clean. If they had simply been honest in the first place, people would have been forgiving. Image control is pride. Truth is humble. People get the difference between the two.


Scriptures have a lot to say about truth. When Christian leaders are not honest about a situation with their constituents it is not just spin but it is dishonest. And it breeds mistrust. Jesus was refreshingly candid. I have found that the more candid I am as a leader the more trust I get. 


Got a situation? Try being candid. It is what it is and trying to make it something else does not work in the long run. Transparency works a whole lot better than the alternative.

Is there a connection between the lack of spiritual transformation generally and the spiritual lives of Christian leaders?

We talk much about spiritual transformation in the church and the lack of it among many believers. My own observation, however is that there are many lay people who are more concerned about true transformation and intimacy with God then those who lead them.

This may well be why there is a restlessness among many in our congregations for something more authentic in their Christian lives, something they are not getting or hearing from the pulpit. They are less enamored with theological knowledge and more hungry for the transformation and living waters that Jesus promises. Is their hunger a symptom of our own lack of hunger and therefore inability to deliver that living water to them?

I don't believe this is intentional but I do believe it can be dangerous for those of us in professional ministry. It is very easy to substitute our knowledge of all things theological for the hard work of translating that knowledge into our own lives. It is also easy to substitute our engineering of disciplemaking pathways in our churches for the needed transformational pathways in our own lives. In fact, while I believe in disciplemaking pathways, the truly transformed and vital spiritual life of a leader is more powerful than any pathway. You cannot ignore a life that is lived close to Jesus.

Since we cannot lead people to places we have not gone we cannot deliver living water that we are not drinking deeply from. Our enemy is our schedule, the good things we are doing for God (in our minds) and our theological knowledge. That knowledge is an easy but empty substitute for God's work in our own soul. In fact, I am no longer enamored by prodigious knowledge that is not also coupled by a deep hunger for God's transformational presence in one's life.

If our churches are seeing far less transformation than they want to see (as the Reveal study shows) is that possibly a symptom of our own lack of transformation as Christian leaders. It is uncomfortable for me to ask the question but I wonder.

The first and most important work of a Christian leader is to ensure that Jesus is our first love and highest priority. That we are allowing him to do the fundamental work of growth, transformation and stripping away of all things base in our lives. That takes time, introspection and the hard work of following closely after Jesus ourselves. Only then can we truly bring people to the living waters of Jesus.

Five danger zones for leaders that contribute to leadership failure

I have spent a great deal of time lately mulling over the propensity of otherwise good leaders to crash and burn after years of effective leadership. we have examples in Scripture of leaders like King Saul and there are many contemporary examples. But what are the factors and symptoms that most often contribute to good leaders who get themselves into trouble?

One. We neglect our inner life for too long a period of time. This is usually not by design but the busyness of life (leaders are busy) and the demands that are either self imposed or other imposed (and not regulated) cause many leaders to run faster and faster until they are exhausted and the shallowness of a neglected inner life catches up. We can easily rationalize our busyness by thinking that what we are doing we are doing for God but He does not ask us to do anything at the expense of our inner spiritual lives.

Schedule, a fast pace of life fueled by the "importance" of what I am doing are deadly to healthy leaders. Because our outer life is simply a reflection of our inner lives, neglect of the former spells trouble for the latter. The antidote is actually to slow down and do less activity, more introspection and spend more time with God. He does not feed our ego as our activity and other people do but He feeds our tired and hungry hearts. 

Two. We start to believe our own press. People tell us we are good leaders and somewhere along the way we begin to believe that we are better people and leaders than we really are. Our humility erodes and our pride increases until we end up with a highly over inflated view of our leadership, self importance and value to the organization we lead. 

Belief in ourselves, our abilities, when they become over-inflated, cause us to make decisions without adequate input from others (we know the direction, we know the truth north) and even make over-calculations as to the impact of those decisions. After all we have a history of making good calls so this one must be a good one as well. 

The antidote is never to believe the press others give you but to cultivate a thorough and accurate self knowledge that is based on deeply understanding one's wiring, dark side, propensity to sin and the "real truth" about who we are. The more press we get, the more time we need to access who we truly are because the accolades from others are never a true picture of who we really are. It is only a public persona that others see. They see the good but we know the dark side. What we want to maintain is an accurate picture of who we are which is rarely the inflated picture others have of us as leaders. The loss of personal humility is deadly to any leader.

Three. We stop listening to the people who will tell us the truth and start listening to those who tell us what we want to hear. This is a very dangerous place to be. Those who tell us what we want to hear simply stroke our egos and opinions which only works to prove to ourselves what we want to think or hear. It is false knowledge that begins to skew our view of reality. When our view of reality becomes skewed, we see life through a faulty lens which blinds us to the dysfunction in our lives and causes us to make decisions that are based on skewed data. 

Once a leader gets to this stage, they are headed for trouble because they no longer listen to truth tellers, even those who have been truth tellers and counselors in the past. Because they trust their own judgments, they are able to discard those who don't agree with them and seek counsel from those who will agree with them. 

This is complicated by a fourth characteristic. Leaders at this stage often divide people into two camps, those who are for them and those who are against them. After all, with an inflated view of our own self importance and value, those who disagree with us must not understand how God is using us! And in getting in our way they are also getting in God's way. Often those who share opinions or counsel that the leader does not want to hear are marginalized and put into the enemy camp effectively preventing them from ever speaking into their lives again. I have had this happen to me on a number of occasions. 

This becomes a self fulling prophecy of leadership implosion unless it can be halted. The antidote is to surround ourselves with wise, Godly people who have permission to speak into our lives and whose counsel we will never disregard even when it is hard to hear.   The best counselors are those who have had a history of giving us wise counsel in the past, before we were in the place we are today. When leaders crash and burn and others look back they almost always see an individual who has isolated herself or himself, stopped listening to those they used to listen to and increasingly narrowed their list of friends or counselors. 

Fifth, leaders who crash and burn have usually isolated themselves from others. Often this is because they no longer feel they need to be accountable, or are running too fast to stay in relationship, or are unwilling to be transparent in their relationships out of a desire to control their image. This isolation also involves keeping others at arms length so that it is not easy to "reach" them. Often, the knowledge that my opinion may cause them to marginalize me will keep me from speaking up, and the strong personality of an isolated leader can keep me from pressing in.

Image control naturally leads to isolation since transparency is a prerequisite of close relationship and transparency gets in the way of image control. The need to control image is a sign of one who has become isolated and that isolation will eventually hurt them. God designed us for relationship and community and that community keeps us from going in directions that are unhealthy. Isolation removes the protection of deep friendships and community and sets us up for trouble.

All of us need others in our lives who will speak truth, hold us accountable, help us in our journey of faith and give wise counsel. When we cross a line where we are too important or too busy to cultivate those relationships we will find ourselves in dangerous waters. If you are a leader, pay attention to these five characteristics. We are all susceptible to them. They are very dangerous, each of them. In combination they are deadly.

Ask yourself these questions on a regular basis:
1. Am I too busy for my inner life?
2. Am I starting to believe my own press?
3. Have I marginalized people I listened to in the past?
4. Am I dividing people into camps: for me and against me?
5. Am I becoming isolated?

Eleven things your younger leaders need to learn

Those of us who lead at any level are responsible for raising up the next generation of leaders behind us. Frequently we focus on leadership skills. Just as important, if not more, however is the development of the inner life of a leader from which their leadership will emerge.

I would like to suggest that there are eleven practices or disciplines that all leaders must have in order to be effective. If we can help the next generation leaders understand and live out these practices they will be well served. If they don't get these things they will not lead well.

1. The inner life of a leader will determine how good a leader they become. They can have all the skill in the world but if the inner life is not rock solid and continuously paid attention to they will not succeed as a spiritual leader. The hidden discipline of developing the inner life always comes before the public role of leadership.
2. Personal humility is a non-negotiable for good leadership. True humility is clear about what strengths we have as well as our weaknesses and therefore our need for others. Humility serves others while pride serves self. Because spiritual leadership is other focused and Jesus centered it must come from a place of personal humility.
3. Suffering and pain is a major way that God molds great leaders. It is when we are challenged that we grow and the test of a spiritual leader is whether they grow in their faith during hard times or move away from God in disillusionment. There is no way to effective leadership without the molding and forging of hard times. If you are going to lead, expect it and make the most of it.
4. Leaders actively embrace spiritual transformation. God can only use people to bring others closer to Him who are themselves allowing God to transform them. Transformation of their hearts to understand and live out grace. Transformation of their minds to think like Jesus thinks. Transformation of life priorities to align our lives with His and transformation of our relationships to see people as Jesus sees them and love people as Jesus loves them.
5. Our shadow side must be managed. All of us have a shadow side. It is the opposite of our strengths and it is those areas where we struggle with sin or negatively impact others. We cannot eliminate our shadow side but we can manage it by understanding it and modifying our behaviors so that they don't hurt others. Leaders who don't manage their shadow side will never lead well.
6. Emotional intelligence matters and needs to be developed. Healthy EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is one of the most important traits of a leader. It allows them to understand how they are perceived by others, to differ with others while staying relationally connected, hear feedback without defensiveness and negotiate conflict in a healthy manner. Poor EQ is the number one reason that leaders fail.
7. I can only lead from who God made me to be. God can use any personality style to lead and we will never be successful emulating someone else's leadership style. We can learn from others but we can only lead out of our own God given wiring. We must develop a leadership style that is consistent with our personality and wiring rather than emulate others.
8. Leaders live intentional lives. Accidental living does not make for a good leader because it is a life of reaction rather than a proactive life of considered intentionality. Leaders live intentionally so that they accomplish what God wants them to accomplish personally and with others. There is a discipline to a good leader's life that is based on the important things rather than the ancillary things.
9. Leaders are clear about what matters. There are many things that vie for our attention personally and organizationally. Leaders are able to identify what is truly important and not be distracted by the unimportant. They are clear themselves and help those they lead become clear. Clarity of life and mission are marks of a good leader.
10. Leaders live with transparency. The more transparent a leader is about both success and failure with others the more they are followed, respected and lead from authenticity. Authentic lives, where words match action, where we don't pretend to be something we are not and are open about our strengths and weaknesses, failures and accomplishments allows others to see the real us and to lead from a place of authenticity rather than from a place of pretense. 
11. Leaders guard their hearts. Everything in Christian leadership comes down to the heart. When leaders don't guard their hearts (King Saul) they lose their ability to lead. When they do (David) they lead from a place of health and strength. The Psalms say that David led from integrity of heart and skillful hands. Above all else, leaders guard their hearts on a moment by moment and daily basis.

Sex trafficking in the open

I am currently in Hong Kong where I grew up. It is a wonderful city but within blocks of my hotel is a sign for women - on the street - with prices that differ by nationality. Right in the open, in Mongkok. These women have become a commodity, and not only a commodity but valued monetarily by whether they are Thai, from Hong Kong, China or Russia. Oh, there is a free preview to pick your product.


It is an evil devaluation of individuals who are made in God's image. God's heart must be deeply grieved by the "use" of people He created, loves, died for, and meant for relationship with Him. These are someone's daughters, sisters and mothers. They are women that God wants to make daughters of the king. Rather than being loved they are being used as objects of lust an hour at a time.


This is the face of sex trafficking. It is the face of evil. It is the face of lives and dreams destroyed. It is the face of the evil one whose whole MO is to destroy people made in God's image. The question is whether we are pained as Jesus is pained. Whether we are willing to take action when this happens in our neighborhood and city. 


The Lord said through Isaiah:
Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter -
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Isaiah 58:6-8.


Do we have God's heart? 

Do we really comprehend and live out God's grace in our lives?

It is not by accident that the hymn, Amazing Grace is a favorite for so many. It captures so well the essence of what attracted us to Jesus,  redeemed us and it will indeed be something that we will spend eternity trying to comprehend. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9)."


I am convinced that we will never fully understand the full scope of God's grace this side of eternity but that it must be something that we push into daily. The more we understand His grace in our lives, the more content we are in Jesus, the more grace we show others and the more we look like Jesus. He is the essence of grace and it was what made Him the magnet for people that He was.


Understanding grace is a life changer for us and for how we relate to others. Too often we are recipients of God's grace but are not students of what it means to extend that same grace to others. The legalism, conditional acceptance, interpersonal conflict and lack of love even in the church is evidence of the great need for God's people to grow in grace. Knowing truth is not enough for Christ followers. Living out truth with the grace of Christ is what will attract others to us and then to Jesus. Jesus came full of "grace and truth." Do we?


For instance, when I truly understand and live out grace:


-I no longer try to earn God's favor but understand that there is nothing I can do to make Him love me more and there is nothing I can do to make Him love me less. Therefore I can be joyful and content in my daily walk with Him.


-I do not feel the need to play the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of others but rather extend to them the grace God extends to me, pray for them and be patient with their faults as God is with mine. I am slow to judge, quick to think the best and remember how patient and gracious God is with me in my personal growth as I extend that same attitude toward others.


-I am able to forgive myself for my own shortcomings, knowing that God has already done that. My motivation to grown in my obedience is no longer about earning His favor but rather wanting to please Him out of gratitude for His amazing love.


-I forgive others quickly knowing that Jesus extends that gift to me daily. I cannot withhold from others what Jesus has so graciously extended to me. I don't give people what they deserve but what they don't deserve, just as Jesus did not give us what we deserve.


-I no longer look at people the way the world does but know that every individual I encounter has eternal value in His eyes and therefore must in my eyes as well. I go out of my way to love those that others don't love and to give value to those that others forget. 


-I don't display conditional love just as Jesus does not give  me conditional love. Unconditional love is the love of grace and it is an act of our will based on God's unconditional love for me.


-I love to surprise people with grace when they least expect or even deserve it. Just like Jesus with tax collectors, prostitutes, adulterers, lepers, and all those that were considered undeserving and worthy only of judgement. After all, God surprised us with grace when we did not deserve or expect it.


-I am not hard or harsh even when I need to bring correction to a brother or sister. Rather, my motivation is always love that comes out of God's gracious love in my own life. I display toward other the same graciousness that God gives to me daily.


-I love to encourage those who have messed up big time that God is not finished with them yet and that He can redeem their sin and give them hope and a purpose. After all, that is what God did for us. He is the hope for the broken, the guilty, and the hopeless. There is no person and no situation that God cannot redeem so we become evangelists of His hope.


There are many other characteristics of living out a life of grace. One of the most valuable things we can do is to regularly think about all of our relationships, attitudes, words and actions from a filter of God's grace to us. Reading the gospels regularly helps us to capture the secrets of Jesus' grace to inform us of what it means to live a grace filled life.

Creating dissonance for Jesus

Recently I went to the cardiologist for an annual checkup. I had just had an echo cardiogram on my heart which showed it to be completely normal. It was a normal visit until he started looking back over my chart on the computer to events in 2007 and 2008 where my mitral valve had failed when I was deathly ill.

He asked me when I had undergone surgery to fix it and we told him that I had not but that God had healed it when many people from around the world had been praying. He sat there stunned as he read what had happened and compared that to the normal heart in front of him on the echo. He could not reconcile a normal heart with the echo's he saw from my past hospitalization and that without surgery to fix it.

This created dissonance for him. It did not fit his categories. And, it gave us an opportunity to share how God had worked in our lives. 

God loves to create dissonance in the thinking of people and he loves it when we do the same in our actions, attitudes or responses to others. That dissonance between what people expect in the normal course of events and what they experience when it is present causes them to sit up and think! When God intervenes and shows up unexpectedly it creates spiritual dissonance for people and I regularly invite Him to do so. The Holy Spirit has amazing ways of getting peoples attention when He intervenes in the normal course of life. 

We also create dissonance when we as believers simply act like Jesus would. Forgiving when people would expect us to hang on to an offense. Helping when people would expect us to go our own way. Loving those who are usually overlooked. Being generous with those who have a need. Just as Jesus was the expert at doing the unexpected, so we can and should be. It creates dissonance which then leads to questions which leads to the opportunity to share Jesus. 

God's power is beyond anything our world can comprehend and when His finger touched my broken heart it healed. The way of Jesus is beyond anything our world can comprehend and when we simply live like He did we create the same dissonance God does. That dissonance between what is expected and what is demonstrated is God's way of getting peoples attention. 

Invite God to create dissonance in those around you and join Him in doing it yourself by simply living out the life of Jesus.

Evangelicals and the environment

I remember the first "earth day" in the seventies and how the Christians in my circles mocked the idea. I was living in Hong Kong at the time, a relatively poor dirty place at the time that seemed to care little about the environment. Then came earth day where we could think about saving the earth and it was well, not so popular among evangelicals.


Reflecting back on that and the lack of care that we have given the earth and even the lack of a theology of caring for the environment makes me wonder why this has not been a greater topic of concern for Christ followers.


A reading of Genesis one and two reveals that God did not create a shoddy world. In fact, He took his time, used all of His creativity and created the most amazing universe that we are still seeking to understand. And He pronounced it good. As the apex of His creation he created men and women made in His image and gave them the job of looking after "ruling over" His creation. The words "rule over" actually echo the fact that God "rules over" all of creation, including us. 


Given the beauty and care with which God created this world I cannot help but believe that those things that destroy that creation, or poison the fresh water He gave us or that trashes the environment is an affront to him. Clearly He gave us creation to use but not to abuse. When we see beauty why does it give us joy? Because it is an echo of the garden and the way God designed our world. Beauty is a mirror of God.


Evangelicals along the way who have raised their voices for a more responsible use of the resources God has given have often been marginalized and labeled as liberals by others. Why? If God created an amazingly good creation why are those who express concern for that creation treated as pariahs in the evangelical community? 


If one reads the account of the New Creation that is coming, God is going to redeem even creation itself with the New Heavens and New earth, so why should that not be a concern of ours today.


One of the byproducts of our trashing of His creation is the fact that much of our world does not even have clean drinking water. Consider what our lives would be like if we drank dangerous bacteria very day because of a lack of clean water. I write this blog in Bangalore, India, a country that desperately needs clean water supplies.


Concern for the environment should never eclipse our concern for the gospel message which is the ultimate hope for each individual. But it should not meant that we should not care about those things that God cares about. And my read of Genesis one and two is that He cared about the world he handed us to rule over a great deal. If it matters to Him, it matters to me. The first earth day was when God looked at His creation and declared it good. I hope that He can look at our stewardship and declare it good as well. At least what we can control.

The fall and its direct connection to us today

While we don’t think of the fall very often, it changed everything for our world and for our lives. There is a direct connection between every sin we struggle with and every heartache we experience with the fall, when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God.

With the fall, what God had declared to be “good” and “very good” became bad and very bad. It is hard to comprehend the terrible consequences of that act of disobedience for in an instant everything changed. Immediately Adam and Eve lost the innocence of righteousness and realized they were naked and ashamed. Then when God came to commune with them as He did in the garden they hid from Him.

For the first time, they understood and felt guilt. For the first time they were afraid of God. For the first time they experienced relational disconnect as Adam blamed Eve. For the first time they blamed others for their sin: Eve, Satan and Adam, Eve. It was an awful, terrible, cataclysmic day of firsts that has dogged every one of our footsteps down to the present day. No longer would God walk with them in the garden. No longer could they even remain in the garden. For the first time, hardships would enter their lives and they and their offspring would suffer all of the effects of sin: Relational brokenness with God, with one another, disease, death, sorrow, pain, murder, war, bondage, addictions, and all the brokenness that we have experienced firsthand.

Of all the consequences of the image being broken the one most cataclysmic in its implications was the separation of the created with the creator. From friends with God we became enemies of God. Our sin made us objects of His wrath for sin cannot co-exist with absolute righteous holiness. 

From people destined for eternity with Him we now became people destined for eternity without him as well as physical decay and death.  Righteous hearts turned dark. Communion with God became distant where it existed at all. A friendly world turned unfriendly and uncooperative. It was a tsunami shift in every way.

Every heartache we have suffered, every fear, every setback, every funeral we have attended, every sadness we feel, depression we suffer from, sin we struggle with, physical ailment we deal with, emotions we struggle with – it all goes back to the fall. It was in every way a very far fall, a fall so far that it is impossible to adequately describe its impact. It was an eternal fall as people destined for life with God became absolutely separated from God. It was a massive fall as hearts that once embraced God now rejected Him. It was a fearful fall as people who once treated one another with love now used people for their own purposes. A perfect image became a ruined facsimile of its original form.

Yet, God in His love and grace left a residue of His image even in the fall. This includes a knowledge in the hearts of men and women that there is more to life than mere physical existence and a desire to understand what that is. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet on one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Think about that: eternity set in our hearts so that we would look for eternal significance. Yet it is still frustrating because “no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Paul makes a similar point in Romans 1:18-20, that God has indeed made himself known to mankind. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” 

The very magnificence of creation in all of its forms from the galaxies in the skies to the beauty of the depths of the seas clearly demonstrates that there is an eternal hand behind all of creation.

Furthermore, God left in the human heart the capacity, through our choice, and God’s call to respond to Him and to enter into new life with Him. In fact, His intention to come and rescue a world gone terribly wrong was announced at the very time that he pronounced judgment on Satan and Adam and Eve at the fall.

“So the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”

It seems that serpents were forever destined to crawl on the ground as they became a symbol of Satan who had appeared to Eve in the form of a snake. But more important is what God says about the relationship between Satan and the woman and her offspring. There will be enmity between Satan and Eve which is understandable given his part in this terrible event. Eve would never forget the awful event that Satan had enticed her to participate in.

But then God says something more interesting. He will put enmity between Satan’s offspring and hers. But the apex of this verse is the last phrase, “he will crush your head and you will strike his heal.” 

Here God introduces a single male offspring who will eventually come and who will crush the head of Satan once and for all even as Satan strikes his heel. This is the first reference in Scripture to the One who would one day come and defeat Satan. Even on this terrible day that changed all of history, there would be another day that would also change history, the day that a Savior would come and defeat the evil one.

Think about this. From that day forward, Satan knew that he would be defeated by an unknown male offspring of Eve. He lived in eternal fear of who that would be and when that day would come. It is clear he recognized Jesus for who He was when He ministered on earth, which is why Satan tried to entice Him to follow Him in the desert temptations immediately after Jesus’ baptism by John. And, on Good Friday he was ecstatic that God’s Son was crucified! He had won! He had defeated the one who came to defeat him. Little did he count on Resurrection Sunday and on that day he knew he had met his waterloo. He had lost. God had won and all he could do from that day forward was to fight a losing rearguard battle.

All of history from the awful day of the fall has been a story of redemption as God, out of amazing love for rebellious people put in place His divine rescue operation that would climax with the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus and culminate in a New Heavens and New Earth where God and His redeemed will live for all time. 

Where have all the demons gone?

I think demons have abandoned America. After all we are too sophisticated for demons. As proof, how often do you hear them talked about? Or your pastor talk about them? Maybe CS Lewis tricked us with his Screwtape letter stuff. Seriously, where are they? I see them in the majority world but this is with largely uneducated people. We are too educated for such thinking. So either they have abandoned us as irrelevant, or we have banished them as vestiges of a less sophisticated world.


And that is precisely what Satan and his minions desire us to think. They are the foolishness of a past and less sophisticated world, relegated to the silly pictures of the Middle Ages, red skinned martian like figures with pointed ears and tails.


Except, Scripture would have us believe differently. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12). And since Satan and his forces masquerade as agents of light, they are not about to reveal their true identity. 


Satan loves to convince people that he is irrelevant and even non existent in the west. In the rest of the world he loves to make himself evident and a source of fear because his audiences there understand, believe in and live in fear of the spirit world. Satan will use whatever strategy He needs to in order to destroy people and lives, even if that means staying in the background and letting people think he is not there or even not real.


While we live in  a sophisticated society, what that means is that sin has become more sophisticated as well. The wonders of the internet bring us amazing gifts along with secret addictions of pornography. The basis of our society has as many believers wrapped up in materialism as it does non believers - perhaps the ultimate addiction and lie - that happiness is to be found in the abundance of our possessions. Our lone ranger American mentality makes it hard for us to live in community with other believers and our "bootstrap" success definition makes us blind to the injustices around us.


Who do we think is behind the sad fact that Christ followers are so ungenerous with what God has given them? Does it not lie in our own greed, and lack of faith that God will provide if we are as generous with him a he is with us? What wants to keep us in a place of bondage to our pocketbook or credit cards or inflated dreams? My guess is that we keep a lot of demons busy in areas like this.


Unfortunately for us, Satan is alive and well and we are in a daily spiritual battle that we cannot see but which is no less real. All unbiblical thinking, behavior and attitudes are fodder for Satan to  take advantage of. He is there and he is real. But the Lord of the Universe is more powerful which is why Paul tells us to "be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power (Ephesians 6:10)."


Don't be fooled about the realities of the spiritual dynamics around us. They are real but if we live in fellowship of the Spirit we will both recognize them for what they are and be successful in overcoming them.