A mile wide and an inch deep

Why is it that churches in our culture are often correctly described as a mile wide and an inch deep? Here’s the reason…

We have failed to understand the significance of the fact there were two entirely different groups of people in Jesus’ ministry. There were the large crowds of people. And there was the small group of disciples.

Jesus loved the crowds. He healed them, and he sent them home well fed! But most of his time was spent on the disciples. Why? Because he wanted to transform the crowds into disciples. And the only way to do it was to invest in the small group whom he was discipling to reach the large numbers.

Jesus did not make the same demands of the crowds that he made of the disciples. The disciples were commanded to leave everything behind -- job, security, family and reputation -- just to follow Jesus wherever he went. The crowds were local folk who just turned up wherever he was, got healed and fed, and then went back to their ordinary lives -- for the most part largely unchanged.

Jesus didn’t study the demographics, create a trendy church brand, open a hipster coffee shop in the foyer, and sit back waiting to pull in the numbers. He invested the bulk of his life discipling a small group of men (and even allowing a group of women into his inner circle).

Why is it that in church today we so often have exactly the opposite strategy? We love to create big churches where many are entertained, but few are equipped. People come and go, untrained, untaught and undiscipled. Instead, we should be working with small groups of disciples, teaching and training them to create spiritual families who will go out, plant churches and create more disciples. Crowds will disperse in a moment. Families last for a lifetime.

We will have crowds -- if we can move in miracles and gifts of healing in the way Jesus did. Failing that, we may still attract crowds with a world-class preacher, a state of the art building, millions of dollars of sound equipment and professionally-crafted programs for every age group. But even if we do, and I am not saying this is in itself wrong, the crowds will never form the foundation of our church, any more than they formed the foundation of his church.

Jesus reached out to the crowds in compassion, but he chose to build his church on the much smaller foundation of those willing to give up everything to follow him.  In the dark days after his crucifixion, the crowds had gone, but the family, with only one exception, remained. And it was on the foundation of that family, after Pentecost, that he built his church.

Jesus knew the only way in the long run to reach the crowds was by establishing a base of committed disciples who would multiply his own ministry in the world once he was gone. Otherwise all they would be left with was the memory of a massive signs and wonders movement based on the ministry of a man no now longer among them. Successful Christian leaders are always training others for the day they will no longer be there. That’s why men like Calvin, Luther, Wesley and Booth left movements behind them. They did not invest in the size of their own pulpits, but in the men and women following them.

The crowds came and went and did their own thing. They were there for Jesus to meet their needs, and then they went home.  And a lot of churches are like that today.

Is our church just another crowd, or is it a band of disciples committed by covenant to follow Jesus no matter where he leads? You can create a buzz with a crowd. But to extend the kingdom, you need disciples.

We live in a society full of broken relationships and looking desperately for family. The church should be the answer to that cry. It is a tragedy when people come looking for community, but find only another crowd.

Let me leave this thought with you.

If we don’t preach discipleship, it’s because we don’t want to pay the cost. But let me suggest this. The price is worth paying! Why? For this reason alone: discipleship is the only way to draw close to Jesus. The crowds were on the fringe of the meetings. The disciples were at the heart. Do you want to be close to him? Do you want to be the one close enough to touch the hem of his garment? Do you want to be close enough for him to touch you?

There’s a simple answer. Become a disciple.

You’ll never regret it.

Jumping off a cliff again

One night many years ago, I had decided to get down on one knee and ask Elaine to marry me. I was convinced it was God’s will, and I knew she would accept. Yet at the last moment, I had a sudden and very real sensation I was about to jump off a cliff. I did jump, and I have never regretted it. Apart from my decision to follow Christ, it was the best call I have ever made in my life.

But the problem with God is that he seems inclined to find more cliffs for us to jump off. Just when we’ve finished congratulating ourselves on our last apparently great step of faith, we find ourselves, like it or not, back at the edge again.

And so it is with Elaine and I. Most sensible people my age are thinking how to stay in their secure jobs as long as they can to pad their retirement fund. But for me, it’s the cliff again. I found myself last week announcing to our church that next year, we will lay down our leadership (and my job) to pursue a wider call of God. We can’t do what God is calling us to do and look after a local church at the same time. Our financial plan is spelled faith, as it always has been.

This is why we are doing such a crazy thing. The things we feel called to do -- raising up young leaders, mentoring couples, preaching and teaching, writing books -- all boil down to one thing: leaving a legacy.

One of the biggest problems with Christian leadership is the tendency of leaders to build their ministry around themselves. When they retire, die, or (God forbid) suffer a moral failure, everything disappears overnight. Yet Jesus taught us to build around others, not around ourselves. He devoted himself to developing a small group of disciples, rather than accumulating a large number of church members. Disciples carry the heart and values of those who have gone before them, and take it to the next generation.

Our highest and most strategic task as leaders is not to build large churches around our own gift, but to invest in those young men and women who will transmit the values we believe in to the next generation. In the world, people are taught to make their boss look good. Christian leaders should be taught to make their followers look good. Or as a friend of mine put it, success is successors. The greatest joy of a parent is to see their kids excel.

It’s a very sad thing when leaders lose their edge as they grow older. Age should bring wisdom, but it can also bring an unwanted kind of conservatism -- the unwillingness to risk or take up a challenge. As much as young leaders need to seek out the wisdom of experience, older leaders need to recharge their batteries by spending time around people half their age or less. The benefits of wisdom and experience are meant to give us a platform to find higher cliffs to jump off, not slide into a world of safety nets.

Jesus risked everything right up until the last minute. The cross did not look like a very good career move. It turned out to be the best call he ever made.

He left behind no megachurch, no media empire, no stack of best-selling motivational books. What he did leave behind was something far more valuable -- disciples who would carry on his work. At the cross, he looked like a failure. But when the Holy Spirit fell just a few weeks later, the seeds he sowed in that small group of disciples sprang quickly up, and his kingdom has been advancing ever since.

At 63 years of age, let me give you a piece of advice. Give everything you’ve ever learned in God away to those half your age. Then find a cliff and start jumping again.

When the fog clears

One day in 1872, a ship crossing the Atlantic from England to Canada was caught in a dense fog off the banks of Newfoundland. Captain Dutton had been on the bridge for twenty-two hours without a break. An elderly passenger came up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and told him he had to be in Quebec by Wednesday. It was now Saturday. The captain said it was impossible. The passenger said that in that case God would have to find him some other means of transportation because he had never missed an engagement in over fifty years. The passenger’s name was George Muller.

Mr Muller suggested he and the captain go down to the chart room to pray. The captain wondered what kind of lunatic asylum the man had come from.  “Don’t you know how dense the fog is?” The reply came back, “My eye is not on the fog, but on the living God who controls every circumstance of my life.”

Down in the chart room, Muller got down on his knees and prayed a very simple prayer the captain thought was more appropriate for a child. Yet when he finished, the captain himself felt he ought to pray. Muller put his hand on the captain’s shoulder and told him not to. “First, you don’t believe God will answer; and second, he already has. Get up Captain, open the door and you will find the fog has gone.” Muller reached his appointment on time. And the encounter changed the captain’s life.

At 93 years of age, Muller was still looking after two thousand orphans from his base in Bristol, as well as supporting missionaries and Christian efforts all over the world. He never once asked for money. His secret was what he told the captain: “I have known my Lord for forty-seven years, and there has never been a single day that I have failed to gain an audience with the king.”

Muller had learned a secret from Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:18: “We fix our eyes not on the things that are seen but the things that are unseen.” Two words for seeing are used. The first (“fix our eyes”) is skopeo, from which we get the words scope, microscope and telescope. The second (“seen”) is the ordinary word for unaided natural vision. What is right in front of us can be seen by the natural eye. But spiritual vision sees what cannot be seen any other way. There is a difference between shooting by natural eyesight, and shooting using the scope of a high-powered rifle. There is a difference between looking at an unidentifiable smear on a piece of glass, and examining it under the microscope. There is a difference between going outside at night and gazing at the stars, and examining those stars through the most powerful telescope on earth.

Two men stood side by side on the ship’s bridge. One saw himself in Quebec on Wednesday, the other saw only the fog in front of him. By the grace of God, the fog disappeared that day not only from the waters of the Atlantic. It also disappeared from the life of the captain.

Don’t expect God to clear the fog just to make life easier for you. Don’t expect him to do nothing more than facilitate your personal agenda. Muller knew the will of God for his life because long before he had submitted his life to the Lord.

When you walk in obedience to God’s will, God is committed to fulfilling that will in your life. In other words, he will always clear the fog to get you to the place he wants you to be.

Have some fog in front of you right now? You know what to do. Seek an audience with the King.

A pile of stones will help you

A number of years ago, in the middle of a massive challenge, I drove out to the waterfront to a place I often pray. In that place, I cried out a prayer of utter desperation that God would deliver me and my family from a very threatening situation. And I asked him to do it by the end of that month. Well before the month ended, we had two miraculous interventions which saved our family and our church from untold grief. I often remember how God met me there. But the Bible teaches us there is more to remembering than just thinking about what happened in the past.

The question we have to face in crisis is not the reality of God’s sovereignty, or his love or faithfulness toward us. The question is what our response will be to what we are going through. Will we respond with a trust which opens the way for God to do whatever he wants with us? Or will we respond in bitterness or anger, which will close the door on his work in our lives? Or will we be so filled with fear we will panic and make foolish decisions? Much of this depends on how well we have learned to see the hand of God in our lives. And we learn through remembering!

God told Moses to instruct the Israelites to recite the story of their deliverance from Egypt to each generation so they would never forget the mighty works and faithfulness of God. When they first left Egypt, Moses said this: “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place” (Exodus 13:3). And when they were about to enter the Promised Land forty years later, he repeated his message: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 5:15).

The Hebrew verb for “remember” (zakar), used in these passages, means a remembering which results in action. For God to remember his covenant means he will act on his covenant promises to save his people: “I will not spurn them... but I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers” (Leviticus 26:44-45). For you and I to remember the commandments means that we commit to obey the commandments: “So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God” (Numbers 15:40).

Twenty-five years ago, we had friends called Martin and Cindy who were experiencing severe financial testing. Reading their Bible, they found God’s people being commanded to remember the past acts of God in their lives. And so they decided to put a stone into a jar on their dining room table every time God provided for them. The jar, which eventually filled up, reminded them of God’s faithfulness. A few months ago, I had lunch with Martin and Cindy and found out they still have a jar on their table -- and it is full.

Remembering the great works of God and his acts of faithfulness gave the Israelites a framework or perspective. It showed them how to understand their hardships and battles from a place of faith, not fear. The same God who had delivered in the last battle would rescue them again.

Can you remember how God has met you in the past? Can you remember how he was faithful when you had lost hope? Can you ask him to do the same for you again? Can you cast yourself on his great mercy? Or, in the words of my son-in-law Josh, can you learn to collapse into his will?

A good Biblical memory will serve you well. You have it. Use it!

Collapsing into his will

Last weekend I co-led a conference designed for younger men which I call the Challenge. This is the eighth Challenge event I have led in Canada and the UK over the last few years. Over eighty men shared in fellowship, tears, love, teaching and even a baptismal service in the frigid waters of an adjacent river. That made me pine for the Presbyterian mode of baptism by sprinkling I was raised in!

Every one of the men comes with an assignment describing a challenge he has faced over the last year, and how God has helped him through it. Then I get as many as possible of them to share, which leads into prayer for those still experiencing the type of challenge described in the assignment. The result has been a massive impact on mens’ lives which again and again has left me in amazement.

My son-in-law Josh walked into the conference centre and dropped his assignment into my lap. It was a minor miracle that he made it, as his wife (our daughter Katie) is eight months pregnant with their second child, and experiencing some complications. In addition, he was trying to meet a deadline for his MA thesis, and look for a job. But Josh and Katie decided his meeting with God took priority. How much of a priority do you make meeting with God? Just a thought.

In his assignment, Josh talked about how the magnitude of the financial challenges facing them as a family had begun to rob him of his peace with God. He had begun to learn how God increases our capacity to receive peace not in spite of, but through times of pain and tears. And he shared how the Lord was drawing him to become “greedy” for his presence, for the tremendous riches of love flowing from the throne of grace.

He shared how in the process of drawing near to God, the Lord had exposed areas of rebellion in his life. He shared his discovery that fighting God’s ways was in the end pointless. And he shared that as their bank account got lower day by day, he made a critical strategic decision: to collapse into God’s will.

I think that is a remarkable and profound statement for anyone, let alone a young man, to make. We can fight God’s will through disobedience. We can ignore God’s will through apathy. We can pay lip service to God’s will through religious exercises. Or we can collapse into his will through radical obedience.

The statement reminded me of the prophetic words spoken by Moses shortly before he died: “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27). We often use these words in funeral services, but in context they are about life, not death. They are about the God who rides through the heavens to help his people (verse 26), and who thrusts the enemy out before them (verse 27). They are about a people “saved by the Lord, the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph” (verse 29).

The time of crisis is not a time to rush out and do all sorts of things on your own initiative and in your own wisdom. The time of crisis is not a time in which your disobedience, apathy or religious exercises will help you.

The time of crisis is the time to collapse into God’s will. And if you’re a wise person, you might even learn to collapse into it before the crisis comes.

When I was at university, we used to challenge each other to a “trust exercise,” in which one guy had to fall backward, not knowing whether the other guy would catch him or not. Most of the guys were not Christians, and the results were interesting. But God is not like that. God is all-powerful and he is all-merciful. His arms are underneath you, not so much to sustain you in death as to strengthen you in life.

Try collapsing into his will today. Those results will be interesting too.