Leaving our preferences at the cross

I have been engaged in a pretty interesting discussion on Google+ centered around my prior post, Can We Just be Friends? It has been interesting because it gets to the very fine line between unity in spite of differences and unity in spite of heresy and sin. I think we are so used to division being "business as usual" in the church that suggestions that pehaps that division is not only not normal but even unacceptable are met with some pretty strong disagreement. We grew up in the church, whether as kids or as adults, just assuming that some people go to one kind of church and others go somewhere different and that is just normal and perhaps even healthy.

In comes a very interesing post from Michael Young, What I’ve Learned in Organic Church: The Difference Between Brotherhood and Buddyhood (this includes Sisterhood) that looks at the difference between brotherhood and buddyhood:

This is the difference in brotherhood and buddyhood. Brotherhood goes to the cross, dies to self in order to see the Lord’s goals are met. Buddyhood simply wishes to see others that I prefer to hang out with met. I’m not saying that we don’t become buddies in the church. We do. But it’s beyond that…much beyond.span>

I so get that. I think we all naturally gravitate toward those we feel the most affinity for. It is rampant in certain parts of the church, like in the Reformed wing where some Christians will drive very long distances just to meet with other Reformed Christians where they are most comfortable. Charismatics like charismatic churches. Presbyterians like Presbyterian churches. We get uncomfortable and ill at ease about change and differences to our religious routine that we end up just running in the same circles, reading the same books and blogs and doing things the same way because it is what we know and what we like.

As Michael puts it,

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this. But if organic church is to work, we must take our relationship preferences to the cross. We must let them die and allow the Lord to resurrect them.

We can’t make church work the way we want it to. We can’t meet around the fact that we are all into rock music, working out, sports, outdoor activities, hunting, fishing, surfing, or a long list of other things. We have to meet around the Lord Jesus Christ and our common bond to see His eternal purpose seen on the earth; that He would have a place to dwell, a temple made up of brothers and sisters in Christ. Without that, we become just another club. And the church of Jesus Christ is not a club. It’s something much deeper, much more grand, much more precious, and holds much more responsibility.

Taking our preferences to the cross and letting them die there. That sounds great but man is that hard! One of the hardest things about seeking a deeper sense of community is the inherent danger that when you let people in to your little world they are likely to make a mess and you might find that you don't like them or agree with them very much. On the other hand in our natural state we were enemies of God, sinners in open rebellion against Him and yet He still sent His Son to die for the sins of His elect and adopted us into His family. If He did that for us I guess we can learn to get along in spite of our differences and quirks and annoying habits!

Big Book Giveaway!

Check out this great book giveway going on now!

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Irony Alert!

A quick political diversion...

In the upcoming South Carolina primary two Roman Catholics will be vying for the “Evangelical vote” while many of those same evangelicals are rejecting the one remaining viable candidate who actually is an evangelical because he is insufficiently committed to preemptive warfare...

Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows…

More on The Church of Middle-Class American Virtues

Try to think of this without bias:

When you think of the word “Christian”, what image comes to mind?

Do you see a happy, smiley family in their “Sunday best” sitting in a pew, listening attentively to a sermon? That is the picture the culture paints for us, Ned Flanders on a massive scale.

Now ask yourself:

What image do you think the word “Christian” brought to mind for people in the first century?

Hopefully you are not getting the same image but with nice togas and sandals instead of suits and dresses!

Christians in the first century were outcasts and social misfits. They were on the outside of the culture, not seeking political victory but just survival while proclaiming Christ, a message that they knew full well would place the life of a new believer in peril. The matters that concern us today would be bewildering to a first century Christian. Politics? Budgets? What in the world are you talking about?! Of course not all Christians, even in the first century, were destitute outcasts. Certainly some Christians were well-to-do but those who were seemed content to give away their wealth, even to the point of selling their lands and houses:

There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet. (Acts 4:34-37 ESV)

Can you imagine that?! Imagine the wealthiest Christian in your assembly deciding to sell his home and land to give to the neediest Christians in that church assembly. It is really unthinkable and no one would even consider that to be an issue. Now can you imagine a pastor telling his congregation boldly that the home owners sitting in the pews needed to sell their house to give to the needy families in the church? He would be looking for a new job right quick. We have a hard enough time getting people to put a couple of bucks in the plate that will mostly go to benefit themselves. In the first century it apparently was pretty common place to make those sorts of demands in a culture where the Gospel call came with the equivalent of a social/cultural/economic death sentence. Picking up your cross and following Him might mean picking up an actual cross with your name on it!

This is the same atmosphere that the Anabaptists encountered for many years. Someone who left the dominant "church", whether Catholic or Protestant, to follow the simpler way of the Anabaptists was likely forfeiting their cultural status, their property and tragically too often their lives. This was common knowledge. When I think of ministers struggling to put together a 45 minute sermon to “preach” for the upcoming Sunday, I wonder what they would have done in the 1st century or the 16th century when you were proclaiming a message that people knew could lead to their imprisonment, torture and death. “Come join us and probably be burned at the stake” is not the sort of message you put on a door hangar or a flyer you hand out at parades. It might not be a message a church growth expert would recommend but that was the message that the apostles and the Anabaptists preached and is still preached by many missionaries in the hard places of the world today. In some crazy way, that message drew in people who were willing to give it all away for the sake of the Gospel. What happened?

The Gospel we preach today, in “Christian America” and the rest of the West doesn’t really have the same urgency does it? In a culture where people are assumed “Christian until proven otherwise”, changing churches has little impact and having your name on a church registry is synonymous with being a Christian and getting out of hell. The message we preach is mostly one that calls on people to come to church, a message with little in the way of sacrifice. Don’t want to give up your wealth? You don’t need to, all you need to do is put a token amount in the plate! Don’t want to be involved in a community of believers? No need, we just ask that you come forward once so we can accept you into the church with a chorus of “Amen!” and then just show up regularly! Worried about witnessing and sharing your faith with others? Not a problem, we have professionals to do that!

We like our Christianity clean, neat and tidy. We like to count our victories in elections and membership numbers, not in tears and blood and dirt and even death. No one is asking us to sacrifice very much and we sure aren’t volunteering to do so.

Christians, we are called to impact the world by the basin, not the ballot box. We will not win a single soul to Christ by outlawing abortion (something I think should be outlawed) or by defeating “gay marriage”. We will not see people change or experience revival in the church by proclaiming a cultural message of middle-class morality and virtue. The Gospel we have been preaching is precariously close to being “another gospel” like the one Paul warned about. Sure it might be theologically airtight but in terms of changed lives it falls woefully short because it changes attitudes rather than changing lives. It is great at making immoral non-religious hypocrites into moral religious hypocrites. In other words it is great at filling churches with people who have middle-class American virtues who vote the right way but little else. We need to get back to the old time Gospel and I don’t mean the Gospel preached in America in the 1950’s. I mean the life changing Gospel that commands people to repent and follow Christ and that comes along with a promise of hardship and trouble in this life. It might not preach well from a pulpit but it is desperately needed in the church, starting right at my own doorstep.

Can We Just Be Friends?

Back in the day when I was in high school and still dating, that phrase or some variation of it was the kiss of death. You were basically saying "I don't want to date you anymore but I don't hate you. Please go away." It indicates an unwillingness to be committed to another person. Within the church it is often viewed the same way. Just being friends is really not good enough. Christians "commit" to one local church, one group of "like minded" individuals Christians united together more by a shared set of values and secondary doctrines than by community and geography. Drive around a suburb in the Midwest or South on Sunday and you will see minivans full of families in their Sunday best, all driving in different directions heading off to "their church", passing other Christians who live near them and other churches that are close to them in favor of the church that is just to their liking. But when the Bible speaks of the church, especially in Paul's epistles, it seems to be directed at all Christians in a particular geographic area (the church in Ephesus, the churches of Galatia) rather than individual local churches as we understand it.

We have been going to a couple of more traditional local churches while trying to figure out what to do, one a super conservative Mennonite church on Sunday evenings and the other a pretty vanilla evangelical church on Sunday morning. We go to that one because it is the closest "church" to us and I just am sick to my stomach when I think about all of the neighbors around our area who drive past one another and half a dozen churches to get to their preferred venue each Sunday. Where we go on Sunday mornings is about a mile from our house (which is a big deal given how sparse the population is around us!) and most of the people who attend live right around us. It is probably not a group I would naturally gravitate to but it is the closest gathering of Christians to us and that is where we go because getting to know and form relationships with our neighbors trumps my discomfort at doctrinal imprecision.

In a lot of ways, this gathering is like so many others we have known over the years. A pretty old population with a scattering of younger families.The facility has capacity for a much larger crowd but turmoil over the years has led to lots of people looking for greener pastures at other churches, notably a large evangelical "magnet" church about half an hour away that draws a very large crowd with high production value meetings. I get it. When you get fed up with the strife of a small church, a large gathering where you can be anonymous has a lot of appeal. This turmoil has happened several times in recent years coupled with some not great hiring decisions and the result is a lot of empty pews with simply heinous bright orange upholstery (they are comfy though!). The pews on one half of the room yesterday, pews that would easily hold 60-70 people, had maybe 4-5 people. So you can imagine the reaction to a family with 8 kids showing up!

The pastor of this group is brand new, I think we attended on one of his first Sundays. This is his first "pastoral calling", prior to this he worked a regular secular job and he is a bit nervous in general and still kind of feeling his way around. I remember that feeling well. It is intimidating and a bit overwhelming to come into a new church with all of the pressure that our church culture places on the pastor (a pressure that I and others willingly and eagerly accepted for sure). He has mentioned he and I getting together for coffee or something this week and I am looking forward to getting to know him outside of "church". We had the chance to speak yesterday during a shared meal with the church after the morning gathering and the topic of "membership" came up.

I am sure it is pretty clear that I have no use for formal church membership. I am hoping it is not a major sticking point as it is in so many other local churches. I am also going to try to not "win" an argument about why I think it is unbiblical and unhealthy but rather to reinforce my desire to be of service to fellow believers in whatever way I can without being required to enter into an extra-biblical tradition. This is a group that certainly can use some help, with an aged population that seems to me, as an outsider coming in, very plateaued spiritually. The open question becomes whether someone who is not a formal member of that church can teach and minister there or not.

A lot of Christians assume that someone who declines to become a "member" of a local church is either anti-authority or afraid of commitment. I suppose those pat answers are easier to handle than grappling with the very real problems with a dogmatic insistence on a formal church membership, not least of which is the utter absence in command or example from Scriptures. I certainly am not "anti-authority" so much as I am concerned with artificial, unscriptural and damaging manmade authority structures being applied to the church. I am also not averse to commitment but I am averse to commitment that excludes others or making an extra-biblical tradition a condition for full fellowship within the Body. Formal church membership divides believers in a geographic area into "my church" and "not my church". I don't care how you parse it or how many annual Easter prayer breakfasts you hold, the net result of formalizing church membership is division. The local church where you place your membership is "your church" and every other gathering of believers is not.

The reasoning that accompanies demands for formal church membership are on pretty shaky foundations, many based far more in pragmatism than Scripture. For example, I have often seem it said that it is unfair to the elders to not have formal membership commitments and covenants because it makes it impossible to know who they are responsible to care for. Set aside for a moment the idea that elders need a list to know who they should be caring for. What is implicit in that idea is that an individual elder is not an elder in the church, he is only an elder of his church. So as an elder I would only be responsible for those people who were also members of my church. Taking that further, an elder would be responsible for someone who lives half an hour away that they see for a couple of hours a week "at church" but not for a Christian who lives around the corner from them. I doubt anyone would come right out and say that but functionally that is how we seem to operate. When I read in the Scriptures I am not sure that is how it worked. When Paul called the elders of the church in Ephesus to come to him, was he calling the elders of individual local churches or all of the men in Ephesus who were recognized by the church as elders? The latter seems more in keeping with the full witness of the New Testament.

So we will see. Our ultimate goal is a more "organic" community sort of fellowship that not only goes beyond Sunday morning meetings but perhaps even eschews them entirely in favor of a more full-time community. Until that comes to fruition or at least starts taking shape, we find ourselves regularly in more traditional settings. For all of the frustration that accompanies the traditional church setting, they are also (to paraphrase the apocryphal statement of Willie Sutton) where the Christians are. Not every Christian is found in a traditional church setting and not everyone (or even a majority) of those in a traditional church setting are Christians but it remains the case even our our rapidly changing post-Christendom culture that Sunday mornings are still the overwhelmingly dominant venue for the church to gather. In the year that we have lived in this area we have met lots of Christians from a pretty diverse spectrum of the church. Far from being a bad thing, this has given us deeper roots in the Christian community all around us and that can only be helpful in finding fellowship, edification and encouragement for ministry. The adventure continues....

Revisiting Christians and the sword

A couple of years ago in January of 2010 I did a series on Christians and the sword, a look at the Scriptural basis for non-resistance versus a limited use of the sword for self-defense and/or service in a military. I still find it ironic and more than a little troubling that of all the things I have written, many intentionally controversial, perhaps no other topic has received such a heated response as the suggestion that Christians shouldn't kill others in the defense of self or property or at the demand of the nation they live in.

My position coming into this series was quite different from my past positions and if anything I have grown even more firm in my stance on this contentious issue. Throughout Christian history there is a definite and often tragic linkage between Christians and the state. To an extent we see that still today, especially in the West where the church and the state are in an uneasy state of co-dependence that sees many Christians willing and often eager to use violence to defend life or property or in the service of their nation to defend a certain "way of life" that is deemed more precious than the life of another.

I would welcome your interaction. Am I overstating the case? Oversimplifying it? As you read and interact, please keep in mind that what I am concerned with primarily is the Scriptural position, not hypothetical "yeah but..." statements. To clarify further, I would classify my position as non-resistance, contrasted with those who see our mission as including societal peacemaking changes through demonstrations or political action. Here is the series...

The state, the sword and Christians


Can Christians take up the sword? - Intro


Can Christians take up the sword? - The pro-sword view


Can Christians take up the sword? - The anti-sword view


Can Christians take up the sword? - Conclusion

The Church of Middle-Class American Virtue

Rick Santorum, the 2011 iteration of Mike Huckabee and Pat Robertson, is the "social conservative" of the day. He is supposed to support the readily identifiable Christian values of being anti-abortion and anti-"gay marriage". In the eyes of many evangelicals, he is the champion of social conservative values, even making the list of the top 25 most influential evangelicals although he is a Roman Catholic. It has made me wonder, not so much about Santorum but the idea of one political philosophy being considered the "Christian" philosophy. Are the values of "social conservatives" Christian values or are they middle-class America virtues (and if you don't understand that there is a difference between the two, we have a bigger issue)

According to his campaign website, Rick is pro-life:

Rick Santorum not only believes but cherishes the ideal of a culture of life.

Amen to that. Of course on his page he also seems not only willing but rather eager to attack Iran for developing weapons that we have possessed for over 65 years and have used twice on a civilian population...

Would work with Israel to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat immediately; and developing a potential plan for military action if needed

Would work with Israel to determine the proper military response needed to stabilize the region, protect our allies and protect this country – including the authorization of targeted airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities

Eliminate the threat "immediately". Military action. Military response. Targeted airstrikes.

I guess a "culture of life" only applies to Americans and Israelis.

I understand the geo-political situation in the Middle East, probably more so now than at any other time in my life. I certainly don't draw an equivalence between the democratically elected representative government of the United States and the nutjobs running Iran. I am merely suggesting that eagerness to bomb yet another Middle Eastern country because of the perceived threat of possibly developing a nuclear weapon is not only the same rationale that led to the invasion of Iraq and the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, it is in no way a Christian value. A middle class, "America (and Israel) first" value? Yes. The values one would develop from following Christ? No.

In the same way, while I think that lower taxes and generally less regulation is healthier for the economy and less government is better than more, those are not "Christian" values. A lot of people believe in those ideals and are not believers in any sense of the word including many Republicans politicians (Mitt Romney for example). Conversely a fair number of believers are of the opinion, incorrectly in my mind, that more government is best and that higher taxes on the "rich" is "fair". While we would disagree on the specifics the reality is that our comprehensive political positions are not uniquely "Christian values".

This is not just to pick on Rick Santorum. He is just the latest iteration of the political social conservative that  supposedly espouse and epitomize "Christian" values, a values system that is nothing more than religiously based economic and moral conservatism dressed up in churchy language. Supporting the "right" of a woman to kill her unborn child is clearly antithetical to the Gospel and the Biblical belief of imago dei, that all humans are created in the image of God. So is the idea of killing for country, for national "security", to defend Israel, etc. With the new found fervor over Rick Santorum, especially among social conservatives who believe he is "our guy", lets be cautious and remember that neither political party has a corner of "Christian values".

The first martyr of the Radical Reformation

Today, January 5th, marks the 485th  anniversary of the first martyr of the “Radical Reformation” on 1/5/1527. Felix Manz was executed by drowning in Lake Zurich, the first of a tragically large number of dissenters to be martyred by Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. We often think of the martyrs of the reformation era as men and women murdered by Roman Catholic authorities (i.e. Foxes Book of Martyrs) but the ugly truth is that often it was professing Christians murdering fellow believers over issues of doctrine.

Episodes like the martyring of Felix Manz are disquieting because we place such a reverence on the Reformation era and the Reformers. Men like Calvin, Luther and Zwingli are some of the heroes of the faith because of their deep and voluminous writings. Their writings are unmatched for depth and being simply exhaustive. Nevertheless, men like Zwingli and Calvin are redeemed sinners the same as any of Christian and are as flawed as any man. Love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), writing a great treatise on theology doesn’t. Zwingli reportendly wrote this regarding Manz two days before his death: "The Anabaptist, who should already have been sent to the devil , disturbs the peace of the pious people. But I believe, the ax will settle it." . My point here is not to burn the Reformers in effigy but instead to remember the courageous death of a fellow believer who paid for his conviction with his own life in a manner that is worthy of any of the great martyrs of faith.

We can dance around this all we like. Technically, Manz was executed by drowning because he broke the law (i.e. was baptizing people) but make no mistake. This was a theological issue being settled by the sword far more than a civil legal issue. He was murdered for questioning the doctrine of infant bapstism as a holdover from Rome. These were the charges brought against him:

"because contrary to Christian order and custom he had become involved in Anabaptism, had accepted it, taught others, and become a leader and beginner of these things because he confessed having said that he wanted to gather those who wanted to accept Christ and follow Him, and unite himself with them through baptism, and let the rest live according to their faith, so that he and his followers separated themselves from the Christian Church and were about to raise up and prepare a sect of their own under the guise of a Christian meeting and church; because he had condemned capital punishment, and in order to increase his following had boasted of certain revelations from the Pauline Epistles. But since such doctrine is harmful to the unified usage of all Christendom, and leads to offense, insurrection, and sedition against the government, to the shattering of the common peace, brotherly love, and civil cooperation and to all evil, Manz shall be delivered to the executioner, who shall tie his hands, put him into a boat, take him to the lower hut, there strip his bound hands down over his knees, place a stick between his knees and arms, and thus push him into the water and let him perish in the water; thereby he shall have atoned to the law and justice. . . . His property shall also be confiscated by my lords."

“Harmful to the unified usage of all Christendom”? I don’t think drowning dissenters was what Jesus had in mind when He prayed for unity among His people in John 17: 21 . I especially like the part where they confiscate his property. Felix Manz was not a violent revolutionary like the men at Muenster. All he sought was “to bring together those who were willing to accept Christ, obey the Word, and follow in His footsteps, to unite with these by baptism, and to leave the rest in their present conviction”. The crime of Felix Manz was shaking up the religious order of things, kind of like another group about 1500 years earlier (see Acts 4: 13-21). By refusing to baptize infants and insisting on baptizing willing adults, Manz was imprisoned several times, threatened with death and ultimately executed by drowning.

What Felix Manz was promoting is the basic belief of thousands of churches and millions of Christians in America, i.e. the baptism of believers and the voluntary association of Christians in the church. Try to imagine if the city council in Louisville decreed it illegal to refuse to baptize infants under penalty of death and further try to imagine if “Christian” ministers in Louisville stood silently while this went on. Manz may have been the first martyr among the Anabaptists but he was hardly the last. We need to remember those who were slaughtered by other “Christians” when we remember the Reformation era.

How I wish we had more Christians today who had the force of conviction of men like Felix Manz, men willing to abandon all for the truth and who had the courage of conviction to stand up for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of real persecution, men who were unsatisfied with the “halfway” measures of the magisterial Reformers and sought a full restitution of the Biblical pattern for the church.

Ephesians 4:11. It is not all about you.

Alan linked back to one of my favorite posts he has written, a post looking at a non-traditional but very Biblical look at one of the most familiar and I think most misapplied Scriptures in all of the New Testament, Ephesians 4:11.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,(Eph 4:11)

Traditionally we are taught that this, sometimes called the "five-fold ministry", is primarily about the "offices" in the church, esp. the office of pastor. It is particularly important for that purpose because in those translations that use the term "pastor", like the KJV, this is the only place it appears. Odd since pastors are such a focal point in the church. Anyway, Alan writes in the conclusion of his post, And he gave… (Ephesians 4:11) :

Taking all of this evidence together, I believe that Ephesians 4:11 was not intended as a list of specially gifted individuals who alone can equip the church for service. Instead, I believe that Ephesians 4:11 represents a sample of gifted individuals, much like we see in Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, and 1 Corinthians 12:28-30, none of which include all of the gifts because they are all meant as samples of spiritual gifts.

Just as Jesus gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers to the church to equip us for works of service, he also gives servants, helpers, givers, exhorters, healers, tongues speakers, and tongues interpreters (and ALL believers) to the church to equip us for works of service. The church is equipped for works of service and the church is built up toward maturity in Christ when every member of the church exercises the gifts given by Jesus through the Holy Spirit for the benefit of all.

I love it! Focusing on just the "specially gifted" in the church with faith in a theological "trickle down effect" has proven catastrophic for centuries. I love Arthur Laffer, just now when it comes to ecclesiology. Every person in the church has something to contribute and teach to others in the church, not just a few at "the top".

Just like the so-called "pastoral epistles" are not really aimed exclusively at pastors in general and certainly not vocational ministers in particular, when Ephesians 4:11 is read in context it is not about pastors or "leaders" at all. It is about the entire church, working together and edifying one another, becoming mature together.

Free Audio Book

As usual Christian Audio has a free offering for January and this one is a good one. This month you can download J.I. Packer's Knowing God for free. I read through Knowing God a few years ago (actually 2005 according to Amazon so more than a few years ago!) and it was one of the best, most formative books I have ever read. I was thinking the other day that I need to reread it but now I can listen to it while doing something else, like blogging!

Home Educating Family Magazine Giveaway

Home Educating Family is giving away some free subscriptions to their magazine, 6,000 Facebook Fan Giveaway!. If you are a homeschooling family, you should check it out and enter!

Back burner to us might be front burner to God

Jeremy Myers has a guest post on Will Rochow's blog, Rethinking Faith and Church, that is worth your time. His post, Back Burner Ministry, rings true for a lot of Christians I am guessing and for a lot of different reasons. Here is some of what Jeremy wrote:

Most followers of Jesus eventually feel like they have been "put on the back burner." I suspect Moses felt like this while he was tending sheep for 40 years in the desert. Most of the prophets felt this way when they did their best to speak the Word of God, and only got mocked, jeered, and imprisoned in return. I'm pretty sure Saul (Paul) felt this way also after his conversion when he spent 14 years in Tarsus.

Maybe you are in a similar situation. You are in the boondocks. In the sticks. You feel like you are a nobody.

Sometimes we think this is because God is punishing us, but this is usually not the case. Most often, God puts us in such situations so we can mature and prepare for the next stage of ministry God has for us.

I think we are all to one extent or another caught up in the performance/celebrity mentality. We think that God is mostly or specially working through the famous preachers like John Piper or the big name ministries like Samaritans Purse. What can I possibly be doing in my little corner of the world doing some insignificant work of ministry? Struggling and praying and laboring to build one measly orphanage in Haiti? Pshaw! Leave it to the big boys, they know what they are doing. Just pay, pray and stay out of the way!

I understand what Jeremy says because I sometimes (oftentimes?) feel that what I am doing in ministry seems awfully unimportant. No one is inviting me to speak at a conference and publishers are not competing for my next book and every time I post on my blog those two things become less likely! I also think Jeremy makes several important points. God works in mysterious ways but we also know that He works in upside-down ways. In the Kingdom doesn't it seem that the older sister faithfully praying over her prayer list at home is at least as crucial as the famous preacher intoning an eloquent and well thought out corporate prayer in front of an audience of thousands? Is the sister praying for and crying with a hurting young woman at a crisis pregnancy center not doing the work of God just as much as the president of a national pro-life organization on CNN? The brother who is visiting prisoners in some out of the way prison is doing God's will as much as Chuck Colson. We have let the world define what is or is not important in the Kingdom and that makes no sense at all. I am like so many others in seeing more and more that God is at work in the little ministries, in the one-on-one relationships, in the "hopeless" causes at least as much as he is in the ministries with the slick marketing campaigns looking for your donation at the end of the year.

In the Kingdom there are no unimportant ministries even if the church treats some like they are, even inadvertently. I believe God delights in the ministry of the weak, the foolish, the uneducated, the flawed, the unpolished, the shoe-string budget. If you are a Christian, He is using you and no matter how He uses you it is important to Him so it should be important to us. Thanks to Will and Jeremy for this important reminder to start the new year. I encourage every Christian to seek out ways to serve God by serving others this year. Don't wait for someone else to do it and for crying out loud don't wait for some other person to give you permission or deem you qualified!