Idolatry in the church

Posted on 8 July, 2009 by Daniel

No, I’m not talking about gold crosses, smells, bells, or icons of saints. I’m taking about the idolatry that is “Any time we take a GOOD thing and make it a GOD thing that’s a BAD thing”.

I was listening to a good message this morning by Mark Driscoll on Idolatry. He was speaking to pastors and church leaders but starts with some great foundation which applies to anyone who wants to follow God. You can get it here

It confirms my growing belief that the problem we face is not so much the sin and idolatry in the world, but the sin and idolatry in the church at large…. And the problem we face in our church is often not the sin and idolatry in the church people, but the sin and idolatry in ME. Can I get an Amen/Ouch to that?

For any leaders/aspiring leaders in the church, here’s a quick summary of some specific idols and related heart-questions he covers:

  1. Attendance: Does your joy change when attendance is up or down?
  2. Gift: Do you feel God needs you and uses you because you’re so skilled, thinking “God you’re so smart that you picked me and you use me because I’m a good tool in your hand”
  3. Truth: Do you think you’re more righteous than a simple Christian who doesn’t know or understand much. Reading books and overlooking humility.
  4. Fruit: Do you point to your success as evidence of God’s approval of you
  5. Tradition: What traditions are you upholding that are thwarting the forward progress of the gospel?
  6. Method: Do you worship your method as your mediator?
  7. Office: Are you motivated primarily by God’s glory or your title?
  8. Success: Is winning what motivates you at the deepest level?
  9. Ministry: Do you use the pressure of ministry to make you walk with God, or do you walk with God because you love him.
  10. Innovation: Does it matter to you that your ministry be considered unique?
  11. Leader: Who do you want to be like/your church to be like?

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What makes people successful?

Posted on 7 July, 2009 by Daniel

Really good, punchy 3 minutes of wisdom:

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God is… Love – OnePrayer

Posted on 1 July, 2009 by Daniel

Throughout June our church was participating in an international initiative called OnePrayer. I think about 2000 churches were participating or something, but basically any participating church could upload a video sermon on the theme “God is…” and we then showed different ones from different churches in the 4 weeks.

The ones we used were “God is for you”, “God is able”, “God is love”, and “God is waiting”. Here’s the “God is love” message from lifechurch.tv. We had lots of great feedback about this one.

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Your battle to build

Posted on 29 June, 2009 by Daniel

This year has been one of pressure. If you haven’t faced any yet then consider yourself blessed. Most people I know have been facing some serious challenges.

As a church, even last year as we were gathering and praying as elders, we felt calling us to enlarge and expand with an opposite spirit to the world. That this would be one of the greatest times for us as church, but that it would have nothing to do with our abilities and strengths, but all down to God’s power at work in us.

Well, that’s the power we need right now. There is a battle, but we know Jesus has won the victory. Check out this promo for the series we’re launching this Sunday. It’s going to be powerful – check it out in services or get the download from our website at http://www.everynation.co.uk

If there’s one couple who know about battling to build something in simple obedience to God’s instruction – against all the odds – it’s Wolfi and Ali, senior pastors of our church. Expect some great truths and great encouragement.

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Some great leadership thoughts

Posted on 7 May, 2009 by Daniel

Catalyst TV: Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel from Catalyst on Vimeo.

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How attractive are we?

Posted on 24 March, 2009 by Daniel

Started re-reading “Whatever happened to worship” by A.W. Tozer this morning. So many good things stood out. Here’s one of them…

If we are led by the Spirit of God and if we show forth the love of God this world needs, we become the ‘winsome saints’

The strange and wonderful thing about it is that truly winsome and loving saints do not even know about their attractiveness. The great saints of past years did not know they were great saints. If someone had told them, they would not have believed it, but those around them knew that Jesus was living his life in them.

We can make this whole ‘being a witness’  thing pretty complicated, but essentially it really is about Jesus living his life in us, and us being led by his Spirit.

Our goal is therefore not to ‘live a life which is attractive to people’. Our goal is to be led by him. The by-product of that is a life which is attractive – whether we realize it or not.

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Failure is not Fatal

Posted on 23 March, 2009 by Daniel

 

Some of our church staff team went to a seminar on “Pastoring and Innovation” last week which was run by Bobby Gruenewald from Lifechurch.tv. He shared several good and helpful thoughts on how churches can innovate and become better at what they’re called to do.

One great thought was to embrace a culture of failure. If we’re going to achieve anything great then failure along the way is inevitable. We need to give people room to fail, as in many cases failure is the first step towards success.

John Maxwell puts it like this in his book Failing Forward:

“The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.”

The most important thing is really not whether we fail or not. It’s how we respond when we do fail.

Our tendency is often to let our failures define us. Our enemy would love nothing better to keep us in that moment and mindset for the rest of our lives. However, failure doesn’t have to be fatal. We serve a God who is never taken by surprise, is always faithful and never fails.

The question is simply this: Will we learn from failure, use it as an opportunity to reinforce our dependency on God, and find ways to grow because of it?

The Bible puts it like this:

“for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again….” – Prov 24:16

Feeling a failure? It’s time to rise again.

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At the end of myself is where God begins

Posted on 17 March, 2009 by Daniel

Preached a message last Sunday on ‘How to be strong’. You can get it from our download browser if you want to listen. Main theme was looking at how God works differently from the world. We looked at Gideon – you can read the story in Judges 6 and 7.

Funny thing is how God seems to be so deliberate about working every message I preach through me before I deliver it. So I started last week feeling weaker and more unqualified then I’ve ever felt in my life, and ended up feeling stronger than I’ve ever felt.

How can you be strong? I don’t really have 5 keys to how you can experience God’s strength. I tend to try to make the world simpler that that. The central thought for me was simply this:

Contrary to what the world may suggest, “coming to the end of myself” isn’t a bad thing. In fact – in God – at the end of myself is exactly the right place to be, because at the end of myself is where God begins.

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What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable.

Posted on 16 March, 2009 by Daniel


And we wonder why people turn to caffeine before they turn to God….

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What’s the competitive advantage?

Posted on 24 February, 2009 by Daniel

Here’s a thought:

Communicating the gospel in a postmodern context can make us feel forced to compete with the entertainment industry. You might be able to compete if you have millions of dollars and that level of expertise. Most of us don’t. We have only one advantage that neither Hollywood nor MTV has. We have the presence and power of the living God!

Why in the world would we eliminate God’s power from our core strategy and actually move to a deficit rather than to an advantage?

unfairI’m a creative, thinker, imaginer, dreamer, engineer, problem-solver, strategizer,  architect, designer type person. These elements of my character over the years have had a tendency to drive me crazy. What can start off as a simple desire to “be the best we can be” can lead to the traps of perfectionism and self-reliance.

There are many things that I can do well in my own strength. The funny thing is that even when these things turn out really well, they can end up ultimately not taking me – or the things I lead – any closer to where they need to be.

All this has increasingly led me – painfully sometimes – to this one conclusion: When all is said and done, there is only thing that really makes the difference…..and that is my readiness to surrender it all to God. And when it comes down to it, He is not only the only competitive advantage that we have. He’s the only one we need.

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Community or Cause?

Posted on 24 February, 2009 by Daniel

There’s been much talk in recent times about community. In a world seeking to define what community really is, and a sense that something has been lost in the modern individualized and bust western culture. In the world of modern technology, from chat rooms, forums, social networking sites and the blogosphere which have all created their own forms of community.

Little wonder that the church, too, has been seeking to grapple with understanding what  community is. More and more churches are coming back to what is in many ways a more accurate understanding of what church really is. Church as it is seen in the Bible: When it wasn’t a building, it wasn’t a set of programmes, and didn’t require masses of money just to be maintained. It was the people, living real life together, in pursuit of Jesus.

I wonder though, if maybe all this talk about community can lead to us mistaking what it is we’re here to do. Our mission is not to create community. Our mission is to show the love of God and share the good news of how we can find relationship with him through Jesus Christ.

Churches throughout history have died because they have turned into social gathering places and communities which are no different to any other you might find in the world. People find friendships and a sympathetic ear for their problems, but ultimately nobody is ever changed and the love of God and the good news of Jesus Christ is never shared with the world. Consequently these little communities stay little. They get insular, introverted and weird, and eventually they die – either through petty relational issues, or through old age.

Relationship is really important. We need to share love without conditions or pre-requisites. Indeed Jesus said that is was through our love for one another that people would know that we are his disciples, and it was through the world observing how Christians related to one another and lived their lives that they came to be called Christians in the first place. Love in action produces ears which are willing to listen.

However we must never forget that the thing which ultimately satisfies our soul, sets us free, and restores us to the relationship with God that we need is not community itself. It is Christ. Interestingly real community is only really found where Christ is central anyway. It’s only when I am fulfilled in God that I am free to love people in the selfless way that true community requires. As I read in a book by Mark Driscoll, “Community is an effect of mission, not an effective mission”

There’s a great article here you might want to check out for more: Cause driven church – Erwin McManus

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Shaken or Surrounded?

Posted on 19 February, 2009 by Daniel

Thought for the day from Psalm 125:

Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem so the Lord surrounds his people both now and evermore. – Psalm 125:1-2

There’s a lot of things we can put our trust in which will ultimately let us down and leave us shaken. There’s a lot of things around that’ll shake us if we let them.

It was comforting this morning for me to be reminded that if we put our trust in God – and not ourselves or anything else around us – then we will be able to stand firm and endure no matter what comes along. Also comforting to know that God is the one who surrounds us.

I think all of us can find ourselves being shaken sometimes. More common for me is to not necessarily be shaken, but just generally a bit squashed and weighed down. There’s a release that comes when I come back to getting my perspective right, centring my hope and my trust back on God, and remembering that he is the one who surrounds me.

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From Sanddodgers to Snowdodgers

Posted on 5 February, 2009 by Daniel

Some of you may have seen the sanddodgers T-shirt I sometimes wear. Sanddodgers = some friends of mine from university who drove a clapped out Saab to the Gambia to raise money for charity.

Well they’re at it again – in the snow this time. Check out www.snowdodgers.co.uk for more info and if you would life to give or support in any way.

Here’s an interview from the London news about their last effort:

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Stepping out during the storms

Posted on 27 January, 2009 by Daniel

imageI spoke on ‘Stepping out during the storms’ last Sunday. As a church we’ve been  feeling God calling us to expand this year – even though the world and many of the things we see would suggest we should do the opposite. Many people I know are facing a lot of storms at the moment, so I just wanted to take the opportunity to speak into the reality of that situation.

 

We looked at Peter stepping out of the boat and walking on the water to Jesus. (Matthew 14:22-33) What on earth made him do that? You can download it from our website (or listen here) and I hope that it’ll help you in your current situation. I hit a few main points so it went a bit longer than I normally would. If you can’t handle 38 minutes there’s always the summary slides.

If you’re more the one-point type of person or you don’t have the time to download anything then keep reading for my 30 second, 1 point answer to “How come Peter stepped out of the boat”.

Here it is….be prepared to be completely underwhelmed by it’s theological complexity….

Peter stepped out regardless of the storm because his desire to be with Jesus was greater than his desire for anything else. 

That’s it. Simple, huh?

Too often worry about our own plans, fears, failings, or personal comforts. As you look at the life of Peter you don’t see much of the leadership qualities we admire and value. You don’t get the impression that he had burning sense of ambition or desire for status. You don’t find a guy that was that educated. He probably wasn’t even the greatest church leader.

In fact the only quality he seems to possess is an overwhelming desire to follow Jesus anywhere. As he stepped out – time after time – in obedience to Jesus’ call, he discovered friendship with God and he was used for amazing things. Check out the book of Acts to see what happened when Peter stepped out in the power of the Holy Spirit: 3000 people getting saved and added to the church following one preach, sick people getting healed, people getting raised from the dead, Churches being established and growing.

Don’t worry about things you can’t figure out, about your comforts or fears. Just love Jesus more than anything else. Desire Jesus and follow his voice. Even if you mess up you’ll discover that Jesus rescues you, and you’ll discover what the disciples found when they were with Jesus – peace in the middle of the storm

As G.K.Chesterton said…

Let your religion be less theory and more love affair

Wise words indeed.

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Passion – Problems, People, Positions, or Processes

Posted on 22 January, 2009 by Daniel

Just been listening to a great podcast by Andy Stanley on “High Performance Teams”  and spent some time thinking about how that applies to me and the team I lead in the west congregation of our church. (Funny the things I’ll do to take a break over lunchtime!).

Here’s my thought for the day. It comes from these reflections  combined with the emphasis I feel from God this year to “prioritize people not just programmes or process”.

Passion is produced by problems which need solving and people who need helping. Therefore, in an effective organization, positions and processes only exist to solve problems and serve people.

I guess it’s the year of the ‘P’s.

edit: If you’re interested, you can download Andy’s message here or view all podcasts here

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