In God We Trust

Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. You will either hate one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other” (Luke 16:13). It sounds like Jesus is drawing a line in the sand. We expect our choices for master to be God and Satan. We can love God and worship him or we can be devoted to Satan, but we must choose one. The two are obviously incompatible. It is a reasonable choice to be asked to make. After all, you can’t play for both teams! We understand that choice. In fact we often live our lives and make decisions as if this was the choice Jesus set before us. Each day I wake up and decide to serve God and spit in the devil’s eye. Easy choice. I’m on God’s team!

However, there is a problem with our assumption. Jesus did not say our choice for master is between God and Satan, he said, “You will either serve God or MONEY!”

Now wait just a minute. That is a little more complicated. You see, when I got up this morning – after spitting in the devil’s eye – I got ready for work, earned a fair wage, paid my bills, did a little shopping for some necessities, ate my dinner, enjoyed a little entertainment and went to bed. Tomorrow I’ll do much the same. Whom was I serving? Was that about God or the money I earned? Was I really serving God or a way of life I have chosen and become comfortable living? The choice suddenly seems much more complicated.

Jesus understands that his primary competition for the human heart is not Satan, but the love of money, the stuff it buys, and the false sense of security it brings. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” Fifteen percent of Jesus’ recorded teachings were about money and possessions. That is double what he said about heaven and hell combined! Jesus’ understanding of the threat money and possessions present to his claim on the human heart are obvious by how much he talked about it. Why did Jesus talk about money so much? Not because he needed it, but because he knows the threat it presents to those he loves. We are always tempted to place our trust in our money. Wall Street and our 401K are what secure our future when we trust money. Jesus knows this is short-term thinking and a trap for those who would misplace their trust. He promises something more secure than Wall Street. What he offers yields a return that extends throughout eternity.

“In God We Trust” has been printed on United States currency since the Civil War. More than an expression of Judeo-Christian heritage, this statement is a reminder to every person who touches United States currency that the money we hold should not hold us. Join us for a three-week series exploring what Jesus had to say about money and faith beginning Sunday, April 7, at 9:30 and 11.

Live, Run, Finish Well

Six months ago today my friend, Jared Bynum died in a terrible accident. I have been asked by many to provide the text of his funeral service in printed form. Today seemed like the appropriate day to do so. As you read this, may the memory of Jared's life and faith inspire you in your pursuit of God.

Celebrating the Life of JARED CHARLES BYNUM

It’s my privilege, on behalf of Kelly and Jared’s entire family, to welcome you here today. It is the desire of this family – and I believe it would be Jared’s as well – that this be a celebration of life, because Jared loved life to the fullest. He lived a full and abundant life. And so today we gather and we give thanks. We give thanks for the life of Jared, and while we grieve the loss, we come together to share that grief, and divide it among the hundreds of people who are here today.

On the stage beside me, you see evidence of life – a life that was lived to the fullest. And there are no regrets when we live our life in a way that honors Christ and seeks to glorify Him through the way we love other people. And so as we gather for this time of worship, we do so with a sense of loss and grief, but we also do this with a great sense of joy and thanksgiving. And we bring all of those emotions, even those in conflict, together in one place, and we set them at the feet of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who loves us -- who loves Jared, and Whom Jared loved – and we seek to worship and honor Him. Will you pray with me?

Lord God, we pray that You would meet us in our grief, and that You, Holy Spirit, would bring comfort in the midst of our sadness. We thank you for the joy of life. We thank you for the privilege we have to share life together, and what a gift it is. And we ask You to forgive us that we so often forget. We take it for granted and we live moment-to-moment, always looking for the next moment, and never fully enjoying the one that You have given us in the present. And so today as we’re reminded of that truth, we seek to turn our hearts and our lives toward the greater reality that we have been created for more than time, but for eternity. And we pray as we come before You today, with this mixture of emotions, that You would meet us in this place, that You would comfort, that You would magnify the joy of life, and that You would give us the hope of eternity. We thank You for the life of Jared Bynum, for the way it speaks and will continue to speak. And we pray, Father, in the midst of this time of worship, the name of the Savior that he knew and loved would be exalted. And we pray in His name, Amen.

Many of you know and have commented how much Jared loved music. One of Jared’s favorite songs is Awake, My Soul, by Mumford and Son, and there’s a lyric in that song that says, “Where you invest your love, you invest your life.” I think that’s true, and I know Jared believed that to be true. But that lyric wasn’t original to Mumford and Son. Jesus said it first, a long time ago. He said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And if you want to know what a man loves, you should inspect how he invested his life.

Jared invested his life in several things. Kelly, he invested in you. The whole city knows now what a terrible waitress you were. So I’m really glad the law thing’s working out for you! Jared and I spoke a number of times – and he spoke of his deep, deep love for you, and as someone who has a job that often requires me to hear husbands and wives complain about one another, I can tell you what a refreshing experience that was. But he also loved his family. While I didn’t have the privilege of knowing you well, I feel like I know a lot about your story, because Jared spoke so highly of you. He loved you. He loved his friends, as is evident by what has already been shared, and by the turnout here today. Many of us feel like Jared invested something in us. If you had a conversation with him, he was fully engaged and you felt like he was investing in you.

Jared also invested in the things of God. Jared was a good man. At a stage of life when most people are completely free to be totally self-indulgent, Jared lived his life fully, but he still had time to share his talent, and his treasures to make this world a better place. He lived to fulfill the prayer of Jesus that heaven might just come a little closer to earth. I’d only been here a few months in the spring of 2009 when Jared and Kelly came to Southside. They immediately jumped in. Jared put his musical talent to use playing guitar in our worship service. Jared and Kelli sang in the choir, participated in an Easter program. I really began to know Jared on a much more personal level last summer when I’d invited him to be part of a men’s Bible study to be held early on Friday mornings. When I sent him the invitation, he replied with an email that was several clicks long. This very long e-mail contained all the reasons he couldn’t participate. He was giving me great excuses. I went back and found that email and I read it, and at the very bottom, after he listed all the reasons that he really couldn’t be a part of this men’s Bible study on Friday mornings, he wrote, and I quote, “Your proposal comes at a period when I’ve been seeking the Lord’s guidance more than ever. All this is to say, ‘I’m in.’”

Jared also served here at Southside as part of our Building Committee, using his skills as an engineer to help us re-engineer our atrium roof. That project will begin construction in the first few days of November. And so even though Jared was only at Southside for a few years, his fingerprints have been left as evidence of his love for his Lord and for his church. Because he and Kelly traveled so much on the weekends, Jared would often find me and say, “I must be the worst church member you have,” and to keep him humble, I would say, “Yes, you are.” Then I would correct him and assure him that wasn’t true. You see, there are many people who are part of churches or organizations or their companies for decades and decades and decades, and never really leave any kind of lasting contribution. Jared did so much in such a short period of time, and it’s a reminder to me, to all of us, that we should never confuse the quantity of life with the quality of life. You should never sacrifice quality for quantity. Because our impact is not measured in days and weeks and months and years, but in the way we invest our lives and the way we love others.

In the summer of 2011, we had a number of students at the church whose families were not going to be able to pay to send them to camp. The economy was bad, people had lost their jobs. I mentioned this at the end of a worship service. Jared and Kelly left church, found an ATM, withdrew enough money to pay for one student, and came back to find me to give me the cash. They said, “We want to make sure that one of those kids goes to camp.” Because of their generosity a student they would never know was able to go and experience something that had obviously made a difference in Jared’s life.

He loved people. He invested in people even if he didn’t know them. The influence of Jared’s life was not, nor should it have been, isolated to inside the walls of his church. When Southside launched a partnership with Julia Landon Middle School to provide mentors for at-risk students, Jared and Kelly were among the first to sign up. Just a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of sitting with Jared, for what I now know was the last time, as we were waiting to be assigned our students for the new year. While we were sitting there, people were recounting stories of their experiences as mentors. Jared spent the previous two years mentoring the same student through seventh grade and eighth grade. Jared told the story about how hard that first year was, that this student would come and have lunch and it would be a very awkward and long lunch because the kid just wouldn’t talk. I mean, that’s really saying something because Jared could always get somebody to talk. So the boy was quiet, stand-offish, but Jared was persistent. He never gave up on that kid. And so the second year came around and Jared signed up again and went back and had the same student. And Jared told this story – he sat in the room waiting for his student to come in, and when the student walked in, the student said, “You came back!”

“You came back!” I don’t know this for certain, but my guess is that Jared was the first adult male that had ever come back for this boy. In that first year, while Jared would have never known it, I think this kid was trying him out, to see if he would come back. And Jared did come back. And it was in that second year that Jared was able to have his biggest impact on the life of that child.

I am most honored today to announce that we are beginning the Jared Bynum College Scholarship Fund that will be used to help students who complete the mentoring program at Landon and go on to finish high school in four years and are accepted to college. It will help them go to college and achieve their dreams. If you’d like to participate in that, you can do it through the church -- just write “Jared Bynum” in the memo line. We’ll be establishing that fund, and the first of these students is scheduled to graduate in 2014. I can think of no better lasting legacy for Jared than that every year one of those kids is reminded that there are people who come back.

“You came back” is a great phrase that captures much of what could be said of Jared. He did not easily give up – not in a marathon, not in life, and not on people. It would be interesting to me if I could be inside your heads to find out what you think about stories like these. My guess is that for some here it would be something like, “Well, whatever happens after this life, Jared has surely earned something good.” While that makes logical sense, I have to tell you that Jared would disagree. You see, Jared’s kindness, his generosity were not an effort to earn God’s favor. Jared and I talked often about issues of faith, and he believed that his life was evidence of the grace that he had received from his Savior, Jesus Christ. Jared would not have told you, “I’m a good man.” He would have told you, “I’m a forgiven man.”

For some, “religion” and “church” is about earning something, but for those of us who share Jared’s belief, we know that service in life is really an expression of gratitude for the grace we’ve already received. Perhaps you are sitting here today and asking yourself the question, “How could such a terrible thing happen to such a good person?” And I would be less than honest if I didn’t say those thoughts cross all of our minds.

I’d like to share with you a story from the Bible. It can be found in the Gospel of John, chapter 11. And it’s the story of a family, two sisters and a brother – Mary, Martha and Lazarus. These were some of Jesus’ closest friends. The man, Lazarus, fell ill. Mary and Martha knew exactly what they needed to do. They needed to get Jesus there because Jesus could fix these problems. They had seen and experienced that themselves, and so they sent word to Jesus that their brother was sick. Jesus said something very odd when he heard the news. He said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory, so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” And then we’re reminded that Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet … yet – even though He loved them – yet when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was two more days. Lazarus died and Jesus showed up four days later. He even missed his friend’s funeral. And so it was only natural, and one would only expect that the sisters would respond with questions. Martha goes out to meet him, and Mary shortly after, and they both make this statement: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

And it may be tempting for us to ask the question, “Where was Jesus on Sunday morning? Where is God in the middle of our loss? How can you face this tragedy and believe what was sung earlier, that our God is in control?” It’s only natural that we’d ask those questions. And it’s okay to ask them. Even Jesus’ best friends asked those questions. “Where were you? If you had only been here …” Can I tell you that He was right there Sunday morning. That He had never left Jared’s side. In the beauty of a sunrise, God was present even in the midst of the darkest tragedy.

So Mary comes out, and upon seeing Mary’s grief, we’re given the shortest verse in the entire New Testament – you all can go back to work with a Bible trivia question, and this is it -- these two simple words stand out in this story, and it’s just this … that “Jesus wept.” Jesus wept. I find that very odd because Jesus knew that He was getting ready to raise Lazarus from the dead. He knew that! So He couldn’t have been weeping because His friend was dead, because He knew what was about to come. Why did he cry? It couldn’t have been because of the grief of Mary and Martha because He knew that Mary and Martha were getting ready to experience unbelievable joy as their brother comes back to life.

And so it couldn’t have been because of the grief of Mary and Martha, so why did Jesus cry? I believe it’s because of the human condition. It’s because this is never how it was supposed to be. Parents were never supposed to bury their children. There was never supposed to be this kind of tragedy and this kind of pain in the world. That was never God’s intention. And Jesus understands and meets us in the middle of our grief and in the middle of the darkest tragedies and He shares your grief and He weeps your tears with you because this is never how it was intended to be. And even those among us who may not share Jared’s faith know deep down inside some-thing feels terribly wrong about this situation. And it’s because our hearts were created for eternity. And so Jesus weeps with us in the middle of our grief.

And so what is God’s answer? How do these two things coexist? The fact that this is not God’s intention and yet we sing and believe that our God is in control? How do they coexist? And the answer is that those two opposite truths meet at the cross of Jesus Christ, where through His death He was beginning the process of making all things new. And this is not how it will always be. There will not always be death and tragedy. There is something better coming. And there was evidence of that on the third day after Jesus’ crucifixion, when He rose from the dead, and we are told that He was the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, that there is hope for something better, that God will have His way, and He is in control.

It’s interesting to me that on Easter Sunday morning, after experiencing the grief of losing Jesus whom she loved so much, Mary – this same Mary – went to the tomb to prepare His body. And on that first Easter Sunday morning she got there and Jesus was alive! And Mary said, “You came back!” Because that’s what a resurrected life does. That’s what someone who has been transformed by the power of resurrection as found in Jesus Christ does. They come back! And it began with Jesus Christ, and it’s because of His resurrection that everything changed. It changed for Mary in this story and it changed for Jared and it can change for you and me. It’s because of Jesus’ resurrection that Jared was able to live a full and abundant life, the same abundant life that Jesus had promised. It’s because of his faith in Christ that we know Jared is living even freer today, and an even more abundant life today in God’s presence.

See, some might be tempted to think, “Poor Jared, he was cheated out of so much.” And you might be tempted to have pity for him and feel sorry for him, but you would be wrong. See, I don’t think that’s the case at all. And after talking to his family, I don’t even think they think that that’s the case. And I don’t think Jared would believe that’s the case, because Jared lived well. And for that we can rejoice and give thanks, because after all, Jared was made to meet his Maker. You were made to meet your Maker. How true! And Jared has accomplished that purpose … not because of his death, but because of his life.

Jesus once said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it to the fullest.” Jared believed that, and that is what you all loved about him. For some, faith in Christ is only about what happens when we die. But that’s not what Jesus taught, and that’s not what Jared believed. St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” Jared brought glory to God through the life he lived, and he met his Maker both in this life and now beyond it. And the invitation stands for all of us to awaken our souls to life. And the question is left for us to answer, “What about us? Are we, are you, am I living a full and abundant life?” So you can engage in all kinds of activities and you can travel the world and you can run races and never experience a full and abundant life because the emptiness will always be there. Jared did not have that emptiness. And that’s the kind of life that comes when we fully understand and know that Jesus Christ is not merely hope after death, but He is the source of life itself. And He’s made it available to all of us … abundant and eternal life through Jesus Christ. And my prayer for you – and Jared’s prayer for you, I believe – is that you would allow your soul to awaken to that reality.

I believe it’s Jared’s life that has spoken to you today, but really the voice that you’re hearing is the voice of God as He speaks through the life that Jared lived. And I believe if Jared could say three things to us today, they might just be this …

Number one, Live! Live. Stop just existing and begin to truly live the full and abundant life for which you were created to live.

Run! The course that God has set out before you will sometimes be difficult and hard and long, and it’s a challenge, and there are times you will want to give up. But it is in the middle of the challenges and the struggles of the race that you discover that God has created you for a purpose and will sustain you to the finish line.

And finish well. There are people running beside you. Love them while you have the chance. Because unlike a race that is measured in kilometers where the finish line is clearly marked, you never know just how soon your race will end. So run in a way that you finish strong, wherever the finish line may be.

In 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verses 6-8, Paul says this, “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” In God’s great faithfulness, He extends the same invitation to all of us … to live, to run, and to finish well.

Kelly, family, I know there is a lot to grieve, but I also know that you know there is much to celebrate. He lived well and he finished strong. Will you pray with me …

Father, we thank You for the testimony of life that we have seen in Jared Bynum, not just in this hour, but across a lifetime. And I pray that his life challenges us to live, to run, and to finish well. Father, we thank You for the gift of life, and we pray that after today we would hold it with greater reverence, to understand how sacred each and every moment is. I pray, Holy Spirit, that Your comfort would be with all of the hearts that are breaking today, and that even in the midst of the grief You will remind us of the hope – the hope of resurrection – that You are a God Who comes back. Thank You … thank You for that truth. Thank You for the privilege of being able to live in that reality. For it’s in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.


Gary Lee Webber
Southside Baptist Church
Jacksonville, Florida
October 11, 2012

The Invitation of Easter

Each year Christians around the world set aside a week to reflect on the death of a first-century peasant Jewish carpenter known as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, like thousands of other citizens of the ancient Roman world, was executed by the authorities with a technique known as crucifixion. Today, the cross is universally recognized as a symbol of Jesus’ followers and the church established in his name. The question seems obvious: How does the death of one man launch a global movement that continues even two thousand years after his death? What was special about this Roman execution as opposed to the thousands of others like it? How does an instrument of torture (a cross) become a symbol of one of the world’s great religions?

The answer is found in what happened after the death of Jesus. We are told in the New Testament as well as in other first century literature, that the followers of Jesus claimed he was miraculously raised from the dead on the third day following his execution. To validate this claim, they pointed to an empty tomb and several encounters they claimed to have with their resurrected Lord. The truth of their claim was a topic of great debate in the first century. That debate continues. If Jesus was, in fact, raised from the dead, it explains why the death of one first-century peasant matters two thousand years later. If, however, Jesus was not raised from the dead, then his death on the cross should matter no more or less than any of the thousands who died the same way. The Apostle Paul said, “... if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith ... And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile ... If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:12-19 NIV). In other words, if the resurrection didn’t happen, we are wasting our time! If Easter is nothing more than a nice story or an annual tradition, all the claims of the New Testament and the Church are worth little more than the paper on which they are printed.

There are some, many of whom may identify themselves as Christians, who see the resurrection as nothing more than a beautiful symbol or story of God’s triumph over evil. While they may not believe Jesus literally came back from the dead, they celebrate Easter as a tradition of their hope in God. They, along with others, argue that Jesus is remembered not because he was raised from the dead, but because he was a great moral teacher, perhaps even a prophet of God. They do not, however, accept that his death on the cross serves as any universal means of salvation, much less that he was literally resurrected from the dead. C.S. Lewis once famously argued, “That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – or else he would be the Devil of Hell.” (Mere Christianity, pg. 52)

As people around the world observe the celebration of Easter, it becomes an annual invitation to wrestle with the one foundational claim of the Christian faith … Did Jesus come back to life? If he did, then everything he claimed about himself and his offer of salvation is true. If he did not, then nothing else he said matters. Whatever our religious background, such a radical claim deserves our consideration.

The Tough Sayings of Jesus

When my children were small and first learning to communicate, we would remind them to use their words. Rather than simply grunting or crying, we would encourage them express their wants, needs and feelings using words and phases we could understand. Their words weren't perfect. Their grammar was terrible, but we knew they needed to practice communicating if they were going to be successful in life. (They all know how to communicate now and sometimes we wish we had never given them that advice!)

Jesus used his words, but his words were more than simple communication. John tells us that Jesus was "the word made flesh" (John 1:1). The same words that spoke the light into being and formed the stars took on flesh and walked on the very earth he spoke into existence. Jesus didn't just speak words, he was, and is the eternal Word. Jesus used his words to heal. Like when he spoke to the lame man at the pool of Bethesda, "Get up!, pick up your mat and walk" (John 5:6). Jesus used his words to speak comfort; "Your brother will rise again," he told Martha as she grieved at her Lazarus's grave (John 11:23). Jesus used his words to forgive and correct; "Has no one condemned you? Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:10-11). The words of Jesus have been the most scrutinized words in all of human history. For two thousand years, scholars and skeptics, saints and satirists have studied the words Jesus. For many, his words offer comfort. For some, they are the source of pain. For everyone, they present a challenge and an invitation.

The challenging words of Jesus are found in statements like, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Does Jesus really intend us to believe that he is the exclusive way to God? Other difficult passages include, "If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out" (Matthew 5:29), and "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear" (Matthew 6:25). These words sound impractical if not radical. These passages were difficult for Jesus' original audience and have been baffling audiences for generations since. Sometimes Jesus' words are difficult to understand, and sometimes they are difficult because we understand them all too well.

The difficult sayings of Jesus are also an invitation. They invite us to consider a God who's ways are not our ways and who's thoughts are not our thoughts. If we could understand God, he would cease to be God. Therefore, it stands to reason that we wouldn't understand all of Jesus' words. If we could, He would just be another great teacher or philosopher. But Jesus was much more than that. Jesus was the very Word made flesh.

As we approach Easter, let us consider some of the tough sayings of Jesus. I believe each difficult saying is an invitation to live a life more in tune with the one who designed life. Every time we wrestle with a difficult saying of Jesus, we are fighting for a better way to live. I pray you'll join us each Sunday for The Tough Sayings of Jesus. I also hope you will spend the days between now and Easter reading the Gospels for yourself. Make your own list of tough sayings and discover how God may be inviting you to a better way to live.

Grace and Peace,
Gary

Christmas-Music-Inoculitus

One of the hazards of church music is what I call Christmas-Music-Inoculitus. It is a common problem for those who sing in church choirs, direct music, lead worship or play an instrument in church. It starts in August as choir directors break out Christmas anthems for the choir to rehearse. At first there is a subtle warm feeling as the music of Christmas stirs the heart weary of a long hot summer. By September, the songs are beginning to find their way into the heads of the exposed who find themselves singing Christmas songs as they wander through the grocery store. This, of course, elicits stares of disbelief from fellow shoppers. In October the symptoms are beginning to wear down the infected just about the time retailers are setting up the first Christmas trees. By November the choir is sounding good, but the pleasant feelings of the Christmas songs are being replaced by numbness that culminates in December in a full blown case of Christmas-Music-Inoculitus.

Choirs are not the only people who suffer from Christmas-Music–Inoculitus. Unsuspecting shoppers begin to show symptoms as Christmas carols are played in every store. The tragedy of this terrible disease is an inability to comprehend the lyrics of the songs. As the melody infects the brain, the lyrics fall on deaf ears and the message of the music of Christmas is little more than background music for The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. By December 25th all we want for Christmas is a silent night free from Christmas music.
Music has been part of the Christmas story since Mary first raised her voice in the Magnificat (see Luke 1:46-56). On the night of Jesus’ birth the angels themselves burst out in song (Luke 2:13-14). Even those wise guys from the east bowed down and worshipped at the feet of Jesus (Matthew 2:11). The Music of Christmas is more than beautiful melodies. When describing the birth of Jesus, John said, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). Jesus is the Word. He is the Lyric of Life. It is fitting that music would surround the events of his arrival. Humans aren’t often good with words. We use them to praise God in one breath and curse each other with the next (James 3:10). But the Music of Christmas is different. At Christmas God Himself provided the lyrics for the melody that had long haunted the heart of humanity. Like the song that stays on the tip of your tongue, but eludes definition, man wandered the earth seeking the lyrics to a song we could only hear in the faintest corner of our hearts. On the night Jesus was born, the Music of Christmas burst out from heaven and filled the earth. He is the Word, He is the melody. The long lonely silence has ended.

This Christmas, I invite you to listen past the noise. Tune out the tired melodies and clever lyrics and listen … Ringing down from heaven is the song the angels first sang, “Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” That is a song no heart ever grows tired of hearing.

Excellence in Ministry

The elusive goal of excellence in ministry can be challenging to define and therefore, difficult to achieve. In their book Resurrecting Excellence: Shaping Faithful Christian Ministry, Gregory Jones and Kevin Armstrong write, “’Excellence’ is too often interpreted as the capacity to come out ahead, to exercise strength at the expense of weakness – indeed, to leave encumbered weakness behind. Such interpretation has crept into the church without any adaptation or translation into Christian terms, leading even pastors we would characterize as excellent feeling frustrated.”  The subjective nature of measuring “excellence” is complicated by the many definitions of “ministry.” The meaning of both words can be wide and varied rendering the phrase impotent apart from clear a definition.

For some, excellence can be defined and measured by a set of objective metrics: How many people were in church this week? How does that compare to last week, last year? How much money was collected this week, last week, last year? Some may recall attending a church with a “score board” in the foyer or perhaps in the front of the sanctuary. These boards listed the attendance and offering numbers for all to see. While not as common today, such boards were an attempt to define and measure excellence in ministry. By “ministry,” of course, one would mean the ministry of corporate worship. These score boards were unable to measure what may or may not have been done for the poor, the widows, and the orphans.  They were limited to one narrow definition of excellence in one specific context of ministry.

Ministry for the Christian must be defined in broader terms than corporate worship alone. Paul advises Christians in Colossae that “whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”  He goes on to say, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”  Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century Carmelite monk, adhered to Paul’s advice. Spending most of his life washing dishes in a French monastery, Brother Lawrence understood ministry in the broadest terms possible: “That we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”  We hear in this quote a strand familiar in the biblical witness. Ministry is defined as service to God and others, and excellence is defined not by an outward measurement, but by the inward condition of the heart.  The life of a Christian becomes their ministry as more and more of their thoughts, routines, actions, and reactions are surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Eugene Peterson captures this idea in his paraphrase of Romans 12:1: “So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.”

The Church should measure excellence in ministry by the lives of individual Christians who reflect the image of the only truly excellent One, Jesus Christ. This means, while our definition of ministry is broadened to include each member of our church along with every aspect of his or her life, our target for defining excellence is narrowed to the life of Jesus Christ. Jones and Armstrong discuss this view of excellence in ministry “as it is patterned in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we focused on ‘resurrecting excellence’ in order to place the primary accent on the hope and new life of Easter. The image also reminds us of the perennial call to discover in God’s excellence a vocation for the life-giving character of Christian discipleship and, more particularly, the vocation of pastoral ministry.”  This definition invites pastors, individual Christians, and congregations to pursue an excellence not measured by the masses, but by the individual lives and stories of people being transformed by the resurrecting power of Jesus Christ.

In 2008, I moved to Florida to serve as senior pastor of Southside Baptist Church in Jacksonville. I was greeted by a congregation that had experienced a fifty percent decline in attendance over the previous three years. Morale was low and numeric growth was not only an expectation, but a necessity for survival. Those expectations were not all external, however. My personal expectation for the growth of Southside was fueled by a drive to succeed. Success meant more people and bigger revenues, a common definition of excellence in many ministry environments. Such goals, however, may or may not always equate to ministry excellence as defined through the lens of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. There was no shortage of programs, books, conferences, and seminars to offer assistance with situations like those we faced at Southside.  The more I read, the more I felt driven towards a success I believed ran counter to the basic teachings of Jesus.

To battle my unhealthy preoccupation with a flawed scorecard that threatened to reinforce a poor definition of ministry excellence, I implemented a “numbers fast.”  We simply stopped reporting the weekly attendance for worship and Sunday school as well as the week’s offering total.  Not only did we stop publishing these numbers to the congregation, we stopped presenting them to the staff, and I no longer spent my Mondays evaluating the previous day’s scorecard.  This was a bit like weaning an addict from his drug of choice.  The congregation, staff, and I were all equally uncomfortable, yet agreed such a season would help change our focus.

In the absence of the old scorecard, several good things began to happen.  First, morale began to improve.  Regardless of steady weekly growth and many truly excellent examples of ministry, there was always the reality we still had not made it back to previous numeric heights. With the removal of the old scorecard, we were able to eliminate the weekly reminder of the church’s recent decline. People began to focus on the positive direction in which we were moving as reflected in stories of individual ministry successes.  The numbers fast also forced our leadership team to concentrate exclusively on individuals, their stories, and the real time impact our ministry environments were having. The weekly pressure to show increased attendance was replaced by a desire to seek excellence in every ministry environment. We filled the vacuum left by the old scorecard by implementing the Natural Church Development (NCD) Health Survey developed by Christian Schwarz and Church Smart Resources.   The NCD gave us a new scorecard rating the health of eight key areas of church life. Once we identified our area of greatest weakness, we were able to focus efforts on improving the health of that specific area. We have followed this process for four years. Although the numbers fast officially ended in December of 2009, we find little interest in old scorekeeping that reinforces a flawed definition of ministry excellence. We have instead seen the benefit of focusing on the health of our church and striving for ministry excellence as exemplified in the person of Jesus Christ. The leadership team of Southside Baptist Church is dedicated to excellence in ministry by a commitment to creating and sustaining a healthy church.  As we have concentrated on church health, God has been faithful to bring both spiritual and numeric growth. Christian Schwarz describes how church growth occurs “all by itself” as leaders shift focus away from church growth toward church health:

There are many churches that are interested in growth … They are happy with any kind of growth, whether it is human or divinely generated, whether it occurs as the fruit of their own energy investment or “all by itself.”  However, this difference is of utmost spiritual and strategic importance ... We can, in fact, experience growth by constantly increasing the human energy that we invest into the church.  The problem with this kind of growth is that it doesn’t have any sustainable power.  As soon as we reduce our energy investment ... there is the danger that the whole ministry will begin to stagnate.  In order to experience ongoing growth, this approach demands a constant increase of our energy investment. 

Schwartz goes on to argue that church leaders who focus on excellence through church health rather than church growth not only achieve growth, but a sustainable growth that doesn’t leave the bodies of exhausted ministers, pastors, and lay leaders in its wake.

This journey toward ministry excellence has not only benefited the church, but has been a crucial element in my spiritual formation and development as a pastor. Brian Williams addresses issues of pastoral formation in his book, The Potter’s Rib: “Our habits and ways of being and thinking are set deep within us … Digging new channels of thought and new avenues of response and reaction cost no little toil and consume no little time. This requires the slow care of inside affairs that is of the essence of substantive formation.”  By accepting a position requiring numeric growth for survival, I was confronted with my own limitations and flawed definition of successful ministry. “New channels” would have to be dug if I was to achieve an excellence reflecting the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The problems I was called to solve became the tools for God’s work in me. Would I depend on my own limited abilities or would I instead focus on the sufficiency of Christ? The challenges I faced in my new position became an intersection in my own spiritual journey requiring faith and a greater commitment to my own spiritual formation and professional development. While my instincts kept telling me to reach outside and work harder to achieve success, God was inviting me inward to a deeper level of intimacy and a greater dependence than I had previously known.

Excellence in pastoral ministry begins with a personal understanding of the inner workings of Christ in the pastor’s private life. The pastor is a child of God before he is anything else. Greater self-awareness is augmented by an ongoing commitment to professional formation which is then reflected in the practice of excellent ministry.  This organic approach to excellence is echoed in Timothy Geoffrion’s book, The Spirit-Led Leader:

Excellent leaders are more than masters at achieving results; they have outstanding personal attributes as well. These qualities are often summed up as personal character, a distinguishing mark of the highest level of leadership. Many students of leadership believe that what is even more important is the source of these attributes: a vital spiritual life. ... Followers want to experience the wisdom of leaders in their relationship with them, and not just hear it from them or read about it.  

As a congregation sees and experiences the integrated excellence of their leader they are provided a model for their own Christian formation. This is the basis of the bold invitation Paul extends to his followers to “follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”  This seemingly arrogant statement is actually an invitation every pastor seeking ministry excellence should be able to extend to his or her congregation.

Excellence as defined by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and reflected in the lives of faithful Christians is then magnified through the ministry and influence of the local church. As the church serves and loves the broken, individuals are healed and drawn to the source of this excellent ministry which is Jesus Himself. This helix of life, death, and resurrection has been propelling the church through two thousand years of history. While the results of ministry excellence may be demonstrated through numeric growth, it is better reflected through the stories of individuals as they experience the personal transformation of the resurrection. These stories can be found in what Jones and Armstrong call “intersections,”  places “we often otherwise turn into false alternatives – youth and age, strength and weakness, joy and suffering, abundance and sacrifice, tragedy and hope, community and solitude, church and world. Churches that live in these intersections are likely to manifest a commitment to resurrecting excellence ...”    

Southside Baptist Church found itself at just such an “intersection” several years ago as a growing number of Burmese refugees, known as the Karen (Kuh-ren´) people , began attending. Attracted to Southside by after-school tutoring and English as a Second Language programs, the Karen population at Southside quickly grew from a couple of families to several dozen people. The church was without a pastor and experiencing steady decline, and many feared the increasing number of refugees would further alienate the few American guests finding their way into worship. The congregation was divided between those who believed the church should continue to minister to the Karen and those who believed the church was not healthy enough to do so.

By the time of my arrival as Senior Pastor in October of 2008, there were approximately thirty Karen attending worship. A Karen language worship service was started and the Karen children were mainstreamed into American Sunday school classes. Rather than seeing the Karen people as an obstacle to the church’s survival, a dedicated group of leaders prayerfully began to see the church’s ministry to them as a source for unity and healing. Projects like food and clothing drives drew American church members together. Families were encouraged to sponsor newly arriving Karen in order to assist with their transition to life in America. Furniture was regularly needed by the Karen and donated by Americans. As the economy began to falter, jobs became scarce and many Karen were suddenly unemployed. Special offerings were collected to assist their families even as many Americans were themselves facing unemployment.

By the summer of 2012 more than two hundred Karen were worshipping at Southside Baptist Church. The American congregation had also doubled in size and together they officially launched the Southside Karen Baptist Church. What was once the false alternative of ministering to a group of refugees or rescuing a declining urban church became an intersection in which excellence was discovered and reciprocal salvation experienced. Again, Jones and Armstrong:

There is a paradox to the excellence we commend, a both/and rather than an either/or. We affirm that the Christian life can be both awful and beautiful, both tragic and hopeful, both joined with the saints and engaged with the world. Resurrecting excellence is cultivated by Christians and their communities who determinedly live at these intersections and are willing to be interrupted by the people, sacraments, and Christian practiced that remind us of the “breadth and length and height and depth” of Christ’s love for the world. 

Another opportunity to enter into a ministry intersection occurred when a church three miles from Southside was about to close. This small congregation had been without a pastor for many months and no longer had the money to pay the utility bill. The Paul Avenue Baptist Church was started by Southside in the late 1940s in a bedroom community known as Larsen. Built to offer affordable housing for soldiers returning from World War II, today Larsen is home to many low-income families. This community is literally and figuratively on “the other side of the tracks” from Southside’s campus in the wealthy historic district of San Marco.

The members of Southside welcomed the members of Paul Avenue into their family and began the work of transforming the Paul Avenue campus into what has become known as the Larsen Outreach Center (LOC). Today, members of Southside from Larsen, along with other members of the church, coordinate a worship service at the LOC on the third Sunday evening of each month. After worship, neighbors are offered boxes of food designed to provide a family of four a four-day supply of food for only four dollars.  Within the first few months of this effort, eighty-six boxes of food were distributed to more than fifty different families. Many families come each month and at least two people have made professions of faith in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Attendance in the monthly worship service has grown steadily so that by the fifth month the small sanctuary was filled to capacity. A Spanish-speaking congregation was started on Sunday mornings to minister to the Hispanic members of the Larsen community. By the end of its first year of existence, Igelsia Cristiana de Jacksonville averaged forty people in attendance.

What was once a dying church is now a vibrant part of its community. The LOC is touching the lives of neighbors, but it is also impacting many people at Southside who never knew this neighborhood existed. By serving in the Larsen community, people are given the opportunity to be the hands and feet of Christ to “the least of these.” This ministry experience serves to grow the Kingdom by welcoming new members in and growing existing members as they exercise their faith through service.

Since 2008 Southside Baptist Church has successfully launched two new churches, created an outreach center in a low-income neighborhood, and re-established a vision for ministry in their own community. Attendance has more than doubled and the church is no longer facing financial insolvency. The dramatic growth at Southside Baptist Church is not, however, what makes these stories examples of ministry excellence. The growth is the result of ministry excellence that began to take place long before the numbers reflected any change. As individuals embraced the call of Christ to practice a sacrificial love, they became agents for excellent ministry in and through this local body of believers. The personal spiritual development of individual Christians then contributed to the overall health of the church, which in turn became a more accurate reflection of the excellent God we serve. This principle may be magnified through programming, reflected in statistics, exemplified in leadership, but finds its origins in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Armstrong, L. Gregory and Kevin R. Jones Resurrecting Excellence: Shaping Faithful Christian Ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006.

Geoffrion, Timothy C. The Spirit-Led Leader: Nine Leadership Practices and Soul Principles. Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 2005.

Lawrence, Brother. The Practice of the Presence of God (Hendrickson Classics). Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005

Peterson, Eugene H. The Message, large print numbered ed.. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress Publishing Group, 2007.

Phan, Zoya. Undaunted: My Struggle for Freedom and Survival in Burma. 1st Free Press hardcover ed. New York: Free Press, 2010.

Schwarz, Christian. Color Your World with Natural Church Development. St. Charles, IL: Churchsmart Resources, 2005.

Schwarz, Christian A. Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches. St. Charles, IL: Churchsmart Resources, 1996.

Sider, Ronald J. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity. New ed. Lanham, MD: Thomas Nelson, 2005.

Williams, Brian A. The Potter's Rib: Mentoring for Pastoral Formation. Grand Rapids, MI: Regent College Publishing, 2005.

BOLD Generosity

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. “ Acts 2:44 & 45

One of the defining characteristics of the early church was their bold generosity. We read in Acts how believers “held everything in common” and “sold property" in order to meet the needs of others. While some have tried to read political or economic theory into these verses, I believe the early church was motivated by something far more practical ... FAMILY.

Healthy families don’t argue over who owns the couch or the dining room table. There is no “mine and yours"; there is simply “ours.” Early Christians viewed one another as members of the same family. Imagine a father coming home to his family and telling his five-year-old daughter she can’t eat because the food in the pantry belongs to him, or a mother denying her infant a place to sleep because he hasn’t paid the rent. Absurd!

Families have a basic understanding that what they have is shared. When my children were small, the word “share” was used a lot. There were times Sheri and I would hear the dreaded word “MINE!” screamed from some far corner of the house and we would know a basic principle of living together as a family had been violated. Someone was unwilling to share.

Unfortunately, not many churches identify themselves as families today. As a result we are losing a defining characteristic of the early church. The Bold generosity of the first church was attractive to those who were watching. We read in Acts 2:47 that the citizens of Jerusalem looked on these early Christians with great favor and that “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
Generosity attracts people. Look how we are drawn to stories of lavish generosity in the news and through popular entertainment. These stories make us gasp and inspire us. We WANT people to be generous ... especially toward us.

Having spent my entire career working for non-profit organizations, I have witnessed acts of generosity that have taken my breath away. As the pastor of Southside Baptist Church, I have had church members quietly approach me with money they want to share with someone they know in our fellowship who is in need. There have been sacrifices made by seniors on fixed incomes so a teenager could go on a mission trip, single moms who faithfully tithe so the ministry of the church can continue to impact our city, generous business owners who have shared meager profits in a difficult economy. Every time I see it, I think of that first church and thank God I’m part of a congregation that still understands that before the church is anything else, we are a family. What we have is ours to share.

Bold generosity is a sign of bold faith. I believe the world is still attracted to that kind of generosity and faith. May Southside always seek to be a family who understands God’s Bold generosity toward us through His Son Jesus. May we boldly share the message of His love and boldly demonstrate His generosity to a world in need.