Thoughts on the incarnation

There is no more beautiful story than that of the incarnation. We have trivialized the incarnation into a nice holiday season with presents and fancy trees when the reality was stark and harsh.

The Son of God, the one who was present at the creation of the world, the one who mankind rejected to go their own way, the king of the universe, was willingly sent by the Father to become a baby in a squalid town, Bethlehem, to grow up in a working class home making furniture. Think of that, the one who had made the world, the mountains, the seas, the animals and the sky, who put the galaxies in their place is now sawing tables and chairs.

In becoming a man, in taking on our humanity, everything changed in how we could relate to God for in becoming like us and living with us for a season we could touch, hear, learn from and relate to the unapproachable God. The Apostle John put it this way, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Never again could men and women say, “I cannot understand God” for now they had met and can continue to meet the Lord of the universe through the person of Jesus Christ.

When at thirty years old, Jesus started his ministry he was clear about one thing. The only way to the father, the only way to salvation, the only way to know God was through him. He declared, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me” (John 14:6). There are no alternate routes, there are no other spiritual guides, he and he alone is the route to the Father!

This is not politically correct and never has been. If you read the gospels and the life of Paul you discover it was not well accepted in that day either. For the religious officials in Judea, Jesus could not be the awaited Messiah because he came in poverty and died on a cross in shame. For the Greeks and Romans with all their various “new age” type religions including statues to “unknown God’s” (just to stay on the safe side), a savior who died and rose again was nothing less than foolishness on a grand scale.

In our day, Christianity is vilified and marginalized and alternate spiritual routes are explored and embraced no matter that they contradict one another and have no basis for truth. I am intrigued by how quickly people grab on to numerous alternate spiritual routes that have no validation in history and no internal consistency, but only vague and foggy spiritual language but it is believed as truth while Christianity with its historical grounding, Scriptures and internal consistency is rejected as foolishness.

One of the lies of the evil one is that life is about us. There is another lie: that we can choose our path to God – which is a grand lie indeed since it elevates our wisdom above God’s and allows us to create our own God, our own path and our own spirituality. That is a greater lie than the first one because now life is not only about us but we have the ability to determine its destiny.

If Jesus was trying to create a popular religion he failed miserably. God does not appear as a baby, make furniture, live itinerantly without a home, befriend prostitutes and the sick and the poor and sinners. He does not allow himself to be nailed to a cross so that he can bear our sin on his own body, naked, bleeding, diminished and alone. He would not choose twelve followers who would not qualify for anything other than blue collar work and tell them to change the world (which they did). He would not choose ordinary people like us down through the centuries to keep on changing the world – which he does.

Jesus did not come as a religious guru, or to found a popular religion. He came as the Lord of the Universe, took on our bones and flesh and with truth and grace pointed us to himself as the one who could save us from our sin, give hope to the hopeless, heal the sick and lead us into a relationship with the father – through him. And Jesus and the message of the gospel have been transforming individual lives, one at a time ever since. Not in religion but in relationship.

Anyone who is serious about a relationship with Jesus Christ must confront the claim he made that he is the only way to the father. There are no alternate routes. If he is wrong on that he was not God. If he is right on that he is the only God.

Does your church have a meaningful job description for your senior pastor?

I remember receiving the pastoral job description for a church that I ended up serving in the eighties. Not only was it one that the Apostle Paul could not fulfill but it was a long list of activities rather than a short list of key results. I find that many church boards do not have clarity with their senior leader on what the results of their work should be so they are effectively operating without a meaningful agreed on job description.

With senior staff a list of activities in a job description is not helpful but a short list of expectations is. How they fulfill those expectations is their prerogative. That they fulfill them is not.

In my own role as a senior leader for ReachGlobal I am responsible for fulfilling five expectations. Knowing these five allows me to focus my activities around what is truly important.

1. Expectation one is that I am always developing personally in my personal life and that I have a plan for the year to do so.
2. Expectation two is that I provide strategic direction to ReachGlobal and drive a clear missional agenda.
3. Expectation three is that I build a strong, unified, results oriented leadership team in ReachGlobal.
4. Expectation four is that I develop current and future leaders for the organization.
5. Expectation five is that I mobilize the necessary resources for ReachGlobal to be successful.

If you are in leadership do you know what is necessary for you to be successful. If you supervise others, have you provided clarity on what the expected results are for the work of your staff? If you are a board, have you defined this for your senior leader?

Again, notice that specific activities are not defined but outcomes of the job are. How I achieve these outcomes is not a matter of concern to my supervisor - the EFCA president. That I fulfill them is.

Ten ways that ministry boards undermine themselves

Ministry boards undermine their own work when they ignore the following issues.

1. Board members who disagree with board decisions outside the board.
2. Allowing any one board member to hold up a decision because they have a policy on unanimity.
3. Focusing on day to day management rather than on organizational values, direction and those things they want to accomplish.
4. Learning together as a board.
5. Building agendas around the most important issues.
6. Helping the ministry get to maximum clarity on what spells success.
7. Crowding out prayer because of all the business of the board. Prayer is the business of the board!
8. Ensuring that the ministry has an annual ministry plan that drives the missional agenda.
9. Operating without a board covenant that defines relationships, expectations and procedure for the board.
10. Not living with a culture of expectation that God is going to do something significant through the ministry.

You know your ministry organization is unified and healthy when...

We assume and want to think that our ministries are unified and aligned when in fact they often are not. Why does it matter? Non unified ministries are simply a collection of independent ministries housed under a common name. This is true of many churches where each ministry does their own thing. It is also true of many mission organizations where various divisions or teams or missionaries are going their own way oblivious to a common and unified and aligned vision, mission and strategy. The net result is a dilution of missional effectiveness and organizational confusion along with competition among its parts.

Unified organizations have far greater potential for missional effectiveness because everyone is pulling in the same direction. Here are some of the characteristics of a unified, healthy organization.

One: There is a mission, vision and set of guiding principles that are common to all, that all leaders believe and live out and which their part of the ministries conform to. In other words the ministry has great clarity about who it is and what it is about. In addition, all ministries are on the same page and know what that page is. It is not as common as one might assume, nor easy to clarify what the whole ministry is about and just having these on paper somewhere does not count! 

Two: There is active cooperation, coordination and synergy between leaders across the ministry. This only works when the first characteristic is present. If there is not mission and vision that applies to the whole, the parts will not know how to cooperate and coordinate but are forced to do their own thing. Often in the absence of ministry clarity we try to force cooperation and synergy but it rarely works and usually creates significant frustration. The best glue among leaders and ministries is a common missional agenda that equally applies to all and which all can live out.

Three: All ministry leaders are evangelists for the same missional agenda. In a truly unified and healthy ministry, every key leader is equally passionate about the clearly defined purpose and vision of the ministry. In the organization I lead, ReachGlobal, I knew things had changed when people started telling me that they heard the same story from everyone they talked to along with the same passion.

Four: The senior team representing different ministry divisions sees itself as one united team based on common clarity rather than as representatives of the various ministries they oversee, merely coming to a common meeting table. Many church staff teams, for instance are not a united team based on common clarity but are rather attending a common meeting representing their own clarity. There is a critical difference between these two versions of team and that difference tells you whether the organization is truly united and healthy.

Five: The ministry as a whole and among its parts can point to results that reflect its clarity. The central ministry focus of ReachGlobal, for instance, is to develop, empower and release healthy ReachGlobal staff and healthy national leaders. To the extent that we live that out in each corner of the world where we work we are unified and healthy. To the extent that the ministry parts are focused on different priorities with different results we are not. 

These characteristics are markers of three simple facts about a unified and healthy ministry organization.

There is maximum ministry clarity for the whole that applies equally to each of its parts.

There is alignment by all around that maximum clarity.

There are results by all based on that maximum clarity.

If that is true of your organization, you are truly a unified organization. If it is not you have some work to do, starting with real clarity!

Facing our insecurities and overcoming them

Much personal dysfunction stems from personal insecurities that have not been addressed. For leaders this is particularly important because whatever behaviors stem from those insecurities will impact their staff and even the culture of their organization. Our insecurities certainly impact us as individuals. 

Since no one has perfect Emotional Intelligence, we all struggle at some level with insecurities. Healthy people understand those areas where they tend to be insecure and seek to manage or overcome them. 

How does one recognize insecurities? Since they stem from areas where we feel personally vulnerable, whenever we feel unease or our ego challenged we are probably dealing with an insecurity. If I, for instance, become defensive when challenged, I am most likely dealing with insecurity - the need to be right and the fear of being wrong! So the question I would need to ask is "why do I fear being wrong?" Why does it matter? Because the dysfunction if not addressed shuts down robust dialogue with others, keeps one from receiving input, creates defensiveness and inner turmoil when challenged. 

Think of some of these common dysfunctions:

• Fear of being wrong and a need to be right
• Fear of failure so I am driven to succeed
• Fear of people knowing the real us so we hide our areas of weakness and don't develop deep relationships
• Fear of not having the answer so we don't ask others for help
• Fear of not getting the credit so we downplay the contributions of others and find ways to platform ourselves
• Fear of people rejecting us so we tell people what they want to hear, don't differentiate ourselves or resolve conflict
• Fear of conflict so we gloss over issues rather than resolve them
• Fear of someone doing better than us so we put them down
• Fear of disappointing others so we never say no
• Fear of looking weak so we pretend to be something we are not

There are many more insecurities but the common word is fear! Whenever we have fears we are likely dealing with some kind of insecurity. While fear can be a positive emotion (the house is on fire and I run for my life) fears connected to insecurities are not and bring us pain and cause behaviors that hurt us and hurt others.

There are three questions related to insecurities worth pondering.

1. Where are my areas of fear and what are my insecurities?
2. What lies behind my personal insecurities? What causes them?
3. What can I do to either manage or overcome my insecurities? What behaviors do I need to change or manage? 

Don't underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit and a right understanding of our completeness in Jesus in this equation. He made us the way we are wired. We don't need to fear or prove anything to Him. If that is true, why do we live with fears or need to somehow prove ourselves to others. When we are complete in Jesus we have far less need to live with our insecurities and fears.

Never forget

Every December 4 through January 14 since 2007 I daily read the blog www.reachtj.blogspot.com as a remembrance to the hope we have in Jesus and the grace that he extends so freely to us. The blog is the account of my 42 day hospital stay from which I never should have survived - but God gave my family hope and He extended to me  the grace of an extension of life for which I am eternally grateful. 

The battle between life and death started on December 4 when I entered the hospital unable to breath. They quickly determined that I was in congestive heart failure and had massive pneumonia and a huge pleural effusion (a collection of fluid in the wall of the lung-like having a liter of pop stuck inside your lung wall). What they would not know for a week was that it was MRSA  or Methicyllin resistant staphylococcus aureas- a "super bug" pneumonia. This would lead to septic shock, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, a failed mitral valve in my heart, high fevers that required ice cooling jackets, the shutting down of some of my organs, heartbeats of 220 or higher without the ability to shock my heart back into rhythm - all this while I was in a coma and on a ventilator. On a number of occasions the doctors gathered the family to prepare them for my imminent death.

Amazingly God gave my wife, Mary Ann, hope two days into this ordeal. Two days later was the day that I told her I believed I was going to die. It was the day that they would put me on a ventilator from which I should not have woken up alive. It was the day that I could barely breath as I felt I was drowning in my own fluids. But two days before that day as she sat by me bed she asked Jesus, "How should I pray?" And God replied in an audible voice (to her), "It will be very close, but T.J. will live." A voice of hope when there was no human hope. A voice of hope that she clung to during the next weeks of a life and death struggle. When the doctors gently told the family there was no hope she stood on the hope God had given her. She was a rock of faith as were my sons Jon and Chip who walked through the dark days with her and became men in the process. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the love and perseverance of Mary Ann, Jon and Chip!

Our family experienced amazing grace during and after those days. Our prayer partners came to pray and love on the family. Friends gathered around and sheltered them in their love. And time and again, God gave His grace when it was needed. One night as my youngest sister was standing by my bed angry with God tired and discouraged, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Immediately she knew that it was going to be OK whether I lived or I died. She turned to see who was there but there was no one. She knew she had been touched by God or an angelic being. On another day, a nurse came in tears to Mary Ann and said through tears, "I was just in T.J.'s room and God gave me a vision of him alive and well!"

People often ask me what I remember from my coma. Only one thing. I knew that my lungs were ruined but that God had a set of perfectly healthy lungs for me. That was the Spirit's encouragement to me when I was deeply sick and unable to process what was going on. Another blessing!

Most of all we were blessed through the thousands who prayed for God to do something miraculous and extraordinary. It is the faith and prayers of thousands around the world whom God answered in His sovereignty in choosing to heal my broken heart, clear my lungs, defeat MRSA, septic shock, cool the fevers until the day I walked out of the hospital on January 14, a product of His grace.

God gives us hope in all situations and His grace is with us always. Think back to the situations you have been in where He has shown you His hope and His grace and never forget. Never forget! It is His grace that sustains us day to day, it is His hope that walks with us through the dark nights of the soul that we all experience. Someone asked me, "How do you remember?" One of the ways I remember is to read the blog put up for me daily from December 4 to January 14. It is a month of remembrance for me.  I will follow that practice until I see Jesus face to face and can thank Him in person. 

I am a walking billboard of God's hope and grace. So are you. Never forget. Always live in thanks for His hope and grace. 

http://www.reachtj.blogspot.com/

The object of our anger in sinful situations

Recently I had to struggle with the failure of a Christian leader who I admired and respected. The pain of his actions have impacted numerous people including those who were closest to him. There have been the normal emotions of anger, betrayal, disappointment, grief and amazement at the behavior. These are normal emotions which only time, forgiveness and reconciliation can heal. Fortunately, no act of sin is beyond Jesus's work for us on the cross so I remain hopeful.

It did raise some questions for me, however. How does one respond in such a situation? I know that forgiveness is necessary and the twin roads of accountability and grace are the means to healing. But I was also struck by two other emotions.

The first is that I was angry with sin. Think about the pain in your own life that has been inflicted by others. Then consider the pain that has been inflicted by ourselves to us and to others. Sin is ugly and painful and harmful to all concerned. I hate sin and the more of it I find in my life or see its workings in others the more I hate it. There is nothing good or redeeming or worthwhile about sin. That is why Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice to forgive our deep, innate, wicked sinfulness. 

Anger at sin is an appropriate emotion - perhaps even more than anger at those who perpetuate it. That does not let them off the hook but it is a reminder that the effects of the fall are huge and universal and very personal. I think of the pain my own sin has had on those I love and it makes me sad. 

Then I found myself angry at Satan. He loves sin and the destruction and carnage it brings while God hates sin and died for it. Satan is a master at using sin to destroy relationships, people, ministry, families and whatever he can. This is the point that Paul was making in Ephesians 6. Behind every sinful action is a sinful being whose minions are ever working to hurt and destroy and kill. Especially those who follow Jesus.

Finally I found myself sad for the one who violated trust and those whose trust was violated. I was reminded of the need for spiritual armor and vigilance in my own life. The phrase "there but for the grace of God" became more clear in my own mind. We are all fallen and vulnerable apart from the grace and power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Am I disappointed with my friend? Does he need to confess and make restitution? Are there people who should be angry with his actions? Are there consequences to his actions? All yes. And I have often been disappointed with myself. But my anger is largely focused on sin itself and the one who is the author of sin, Satan. And I am even more aware of the vulnerability of us all, living in a fallen world - the legacy of our first parents, Adam and Eve. And the need we have for Jesus and salvation and the power of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives. I will not throw the first stone in condemnation! I will encourage him toward wholeness.