News Flash! This just in… In a shocking reversal of public opinion, somebody thinks something’s wrong with the church.
Here’s a blast from the past from an old B.C. Cartoon. Picture the anthill, and the Dad ant poking his head out the top. His teenaged son is coming back from the movies.
Dad: “How was the disaster movie, son?”
Son: “A disaster.”
Son: “Why do they make so many disaster movies, Dad?”
Dad: “So when Armageddon comes, we can all go back to sleep and say we’ve seen it already.”
I can see a 2009 update:
Dad: “How was the disaster movie, son?”
Son: “A disaster.”
Son: “I thought we’d see a bunch of explosions, death and mayhem.”
Pick your spot – inside the church or outside. Mainline, sideline, or no-line. House churches and megachurches. Political and “news” organizations. Cultural elitists and preachers. Gay rights advocates and Fred Phelps. Everybody seems to converge on one common opinion:
Emma Thompson drops by our church from time to time. And yesterday, she prophesied.
No, not the actress. Emma and her twin sister Annie are the eight-year-old daughters of my friend and our communications pastor, Todd.
So get the scene. Our entire church foyer/fellowship area is covered with Christmas decorations. We’re getting ready for a big night of volunteers showing up to decorate the building for the holidays. The office staff is scattered out into the various rooms that have their names on the door. And in comes Todd, Emma and Annie bouncing behind.
Mary, our receptionist, is friendly territory for the twins. She often visits with them while they’re waiting for their dad to finish a meeting or project. She’s also learned that it’s good to offer them something to do to occupy them on days they don’t have homework or something.
Emma is loaded with questions. What’s all this? What are they going to do with it? When? The usual 8-year-old excited kind of stuff. Laughing and chattering away.
Mary says to Annie and her sister, “I have something y’all can do to help us.”
I haven’t said anything about the current political scene for a variety of reasons, but this scares me. I haven’t seen fawning like this since I escorted W. A. Criswell into a Baptist pastors’ meeting.
Something’s wrong when the same people who want to make sure terrorists get equal time and a “fair and balanced perspective” do this kind of drooling. And something is even more wrong when the people whose vocation is to report the facts and to ask the tough question lose their calling to a thrill running up their leg.
Good grief, Chris, have some dignity.
But this isn’t about politics or the press so much as it is about healthy leadership. I’ve seen the same kind of crap surrounding pastors, business leaders, and celebrity-types who never had to give an account to anybody for how they influenced people.
When leaders create or inherit an environment where nobody asks the tough questions, they are setting themselves and their organization (or nation) up for their own demise.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand (actually there are a few), it’s jealous, insecure, or bitter preachers. Neurotic crybabies or arrogant kingdom builders, God help them and us when they’re forced to face their own “stuff.”
Imagine my surprise when I discovered I was one.
A few months ago, my son Joel wrote about a former pastor he had met who now owns a smoke shop. He got burned by a church experience, and I guess he decided to keep the fire going.
I fired off a riff about ministry, and found myself using a compelling phrase to describe our calling – The Relentless Pursuit of the Glory of God.
That term kept resonating in my spirit.
Later the same night, I heard about a new church plant not far away, whose first two Sundays had doubled anything my church plant had done back in the day.
Jealous.
Couldn’t help it. Well, maybe I could help it, but I didn’t want to.
We were going through a difficult season at the time, and here was some guy (actually a great guy) rocking and rolling on his church’s honeymoon.
As I went to bed, feeling sorry for myself for all our troubles and stresses, that original phrase kept coming back. The Relentless Pursuit of the Glory of God. The Lord was reminding me of what ministry – and life – is all about.
News Flash! This just in… In a shocking reversal of public opinion, somebody thinks something’s wrong with the church.
