Striking Directly
Some time ago, I started to write about a book that is inspiring my ideas and ideals of church planting. It's been about 4 months so I might as well get around to all that writing I promised.
A great passage that I highlighted reads:
"The special operation often finds its peculiar advantage in targeting the enemy's most heavily defended positions - striking directly at his confident strength and dignity" (To Dare & To Conquer. Leebaert, pg. 22).
Starting a church is an intensely spiritual enterprise. So why is so much time and energy so often spent on strategizing how to do it all on our own? One book I read, and benefited from reading, spent a few pages saying basically, "You better have a calling from God or you shouldn't even get started," but then devoted the entirety of the rest of the book to raising money, gathering your team, doing marketing / evangelism, and managing your Sunday morning meetings. I believe the Holy Spirit could inspire any of those efforts. But come on! You know what the author is really saying. Below the surface is the assumption that if we're "called" then God must want us to put a great plan together and start working our network so we can buy LCD projectors and burgundy, velour offering bags.
I wrote in the introduction to my thoughts from this book (back in October) that I am no longer interested in making my living as a pastor - I want to raise the dead. I want to enter a place that has been "enemy territory" for a long time and start leading people out. Isn't this the mission Jesus was launching in Luke 4:18-19? I don't think we'll be able to develop a strategy to do that. It has nothing to do with organizing or business models or market research. I just don't believe God wants to give birth to a calling inside of me so that I can go on to manage it (or manipulate it) with my own ingenuity. Uzzah figured out what happens when you try to put your human hand on God's glory.
I'm a long way away from being able to develop an exhaustive "how to raise the dead" list, but one possibly-overlooked weapon to turn death into life does come to mind.
Repentance & Forgiveness
As Jesus was being wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, he cried out, "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." As Jesus gave up his life for the salvation of others, "...graves were opened; and many bodies of saints who had fallen asleep were raised."
When we feel the call to start a church what if we started pleading the cause of the community before the Lord? What if instead of doing market research and probing our connections for "start up capital," we started repenting for the way we (not other, nameless Christians who had it all wrong, but me... and you... us) have misrepresented Jesus to the people around us. This is my notion of targeting enemy held territory. This is what I think of when I read the words, "...striking directly at his confident strength and dignity." I imagine graves opening and the "dead" coming out and into the light as a result of a group of people spreading that news.
We've made a big mistake in trying to introduce people to God. We've made Him look religious and cold, but He isn't. We're asking God to forgive us for misrepresenting Him to you. I've seen people accept that as some actual Good News from the church.
Scott Bane
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Reader Comments (4)
Scott, you make some great points and I am looking forward to this discussion. I read a book a few years ago that I have in a sense forgotten. It is by a guy named Ed Silvoso, and it is called "That none should perish: How to reach Entire cities for Christ through Prayer Evangelism." It inspired me for a season to seek God like you mentioned and was apart of a movement that prayed first! What would it look like if we pleaded and presented ourselves as living sacrifices. Time will tell...
Thanks for the comment, Tom. I remember that book too. A guy we know in Kansas City recently said, "Serving is not new anymore. We've got a lot of people serving - which is great - but now we need to teach the serving people how to pray." We blow it when we start over emphasizing one and excluding the other, don't you think?
For sure man! There has got to be a healthy balance all around. It is too easy to get sidetracked and then thrown off base. Prayer is the glue that holds it all together. Someone I heard a long time ago said that prayer is like the canon ball being shot from the canon. Fasting is the igniter that pushes it out. I think prayer and fasting is a forgotten part of many churches today.
It is so much easier to blame and judge others, but so much more beneficial to repent and ask forgiveness for ourselves! So many times I have prayed for God to show someone their shortfalls and inturn have been shown where I need to repent and ask forgiveness!