Statistics say that the average Canadian has $22,000 of non-mortgage debt and the average millennial spends more money on gourmet coffee than on saving for retirement. Something is wrong. The 3000-year-old Book of Proverbs, written by Israel’s King Solomon, contains financial wisdom from another era, but its principles are as relevant today as when he wrote them. Three lessons stand out.
There’s probably one passage more than any other that’s usually read at weddings. It’s the great chapter on love from 1 Corinthians 13. It’s an appropriate passage for married couples to reflect on, but it wasn’t written for them. This passage on love was written in a prolonged discussion of church ministry. It shows us how love turns volunteering into ministry and how a lack of love can make serving something less than it was intended to be.
I think we make subconscious value judgments all the time. We decide whether something is worth our time by the impact we feel it makes. The same is true of ministry. We want our lives to count, the question is how? How can you make the most impact in ministry? Let me share four ways I think the Bible answers that question.
I’m on vacation this week - in sunny Richmond Hill - but as we start off the new year, I wanted to look back at the most viewed articles from Out of Neutral. While written primarily for the church family, some posts took on a life of their own and were read more broadly beyond our local setting. In case you missed any of them or wanted to have another read, here are the top ten in descending order.
With 2020 almost drawing to a close, instead of a regular post, I thought I’d share a behind-the-scenes look at the studios where we film our sermons, vlogs, and Sunday School videos. Some people have asked whether I film these at my home. Others have wondered whether I use my phone to record them. If I was relying on my own talents and resources, I probably would. Thankfully, God has provided a great team. They have invested a lot of time and research in getting the right lighting, sound, and picture quality to ensure that what you see online doesn’t distract from the message we’re trying to communicate. Out of gratefulness for them, let me show you what things look like from the other side of the camera.
Once you’ve been reading the New Testament for a while, you run into various lists of spiritual gifts. They can be confusing and intimidating. There are so many of them and people disagree about what some of them mean. It can be hard to understand what your gift might be. One of the ways that the church has responded to the confusion has been with quizzes and assessments. You can go through questionnaires that are designed to predict your spiritual gift (see an example: here). While those may have some value, I think there’s a better way.
Have you ever wondered why others in the church don’t care the way you do? Have you at least noticed that they don’t? If you haven’t felt this yet, before long you probably will. When I first felt this, I didn’t ask the why question; I assumed it. I assumed that other people didn’t care the way I did because they just didn’t care. I assumed that it must be a deficiency in their faith or their passion or something! What I was experiencing was real, but my assumptions about it were all wrong. Let me explain why other Christians don’t care the way that you do.
Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘The pastor should do something about that’? I have. The more you read about the church in Scripture, the more you see that needs to be fixed. There are things that we’re not doing. There are ways that we’re not relating. There are purposes we’re not fulfilling. As a pastor, I feel burdened to evangelize those who are lost, disciple those who are new, counsel those who are struggling, comfort those who are weak, train up our leaders, oversee our office, lead the church in prayer and still devote the bulk of my energy to teaching and preaching God’s Word. The reality is that I often try to do all of those things, but the Bible says that there are a few things a pastor should focus on.
I think we often take for granted the fact that Jesus lived and ministered with a group of twelve disciples. Moses didn’t do that. Neither did David or Elijah. In one sense, the apostles were unique. Jesus was setting apart twelve representatives for the birth of the church, patterned after the twelve tribes of Israel. But the character of the church was forever transformed by the fact that Jesus invested in a small group of disciples rather than just signing a book deal or travelling as a conference speaker. The impact of Jesus’ small group shows us why it’s important that we make time for small group fellowship ourselves.
As the pandemic wears on, there’s a part of us that will begin to call ‘normal’ things that used to feel strange. ‘Doing church’ in pajamas on the sofa may start to feel like the ultimate in Sunday morning spirituality. People who have replaced evening ministry with Netflix may find it hard to go back. Even the isolation that we all struggle with may begin to feel attractive. Meeting people can be awkward, and relationships are often messy, we’ll tell ourselves. As you feel any of those thoughts, remember why fellowship is so essential and what we miss when we don’t invest in it. Let me give four specifics.
