DownshoreDrift

Danny DeVito Gives Advice on Honesty, Character, and Evangelism

Probably one of the best things I've ever heard on how to relate to people honestly was from the movie, The Big Kahuna (1999) starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito. I saw clips from the movie several years ago and they have stuck with me ever since. The movie takes place in a hotel room and involves three salesmen working in the Midwest. Spacey and DeVito are longtime friends and they have taken on a newcomer, "Bob." Bob is an idealistic Christian and he spends a good bit of his time trying to evangelize people. Spacey calls him on what he is doing and says that he lacks integrity for evangelizing on the job. After a blow-up between Spacey and Bob, DeVito confronts Bob about what honesty and character is.  It is insightful and really spoke to me about my motives in my interactions with people. Do I care for people because of who they are, or because of what I can get from them?

For my more sensitive readers, there is one inappropriate word in the clip spoken in context. Sorry to expose you to that, but I felt that the truth of what was said here far outweighed any offense that may be given.                                                                               

A few years ago, I travelled through Europe. I made a decision, thinking about what DeVito said, to not lay my hands on a conversation and try and steer it in a spiritual direction. I resolved to deal with people as people, not as evangelism projects. It was amazing. In spite of myself, I actually ended up getting into about 10 spiritual conversations with people. On several occasions, I ended up talking to people for hours about life and the conversation inevitably turned to God. I had determined to just be a human being, not a pastor or an evangelist. It was very freeing.

One time, I was hiking along the coast of Italy with a guy and he began comparing me to the guys that he had partied with the night before. He told me that I was much calmer and more peaceful than they were. Why? he asked. That was the perfect opportunity to tell him that my peace came from Christ. I actually decided not to. I just told him that I didn't feel the need to talk all the time - that I was pretty content as I was. I had nothing to prove. Instead of thinking that I had missed an opportunity, I trusted God to do with that conversation what he wanted. We ended up spending the entire day together and we talked a good deal about relationships, life, goals, and the future. He ended up asking me how I knew that my wife was the right one for me and I told him that I prayed and God told me. Intrigued, he asked me all about how I could receive guidance from God in issues like that and I was able to tell him what a relationship with God was like and how it worked. We talked a great deal about knowing God as he asked me question after question. Because I entered a relationship with this guy and saw him as a person instead of a project, God used the whole thing in the way that He wanted and far more came out of it than I ever could have created myself. I have continued to try and minister this way.

I've found it much harder to have relationships with people like this since I've been a pastor. There always seems to be this religious barrier up between me and those outside the church, like they think I'm going to assault them with Bibles or force them under the water against their will in some type of extreme baptism ritual. The fact that as soon as people find out I'm a pastor I see them visibly recoil has probably been the hardest part of being a pastor for me. It is not that I don't want to be rejected. It is that I hate the barriers that artificially seem to go up between me and other people. It takes a while to get them down as I have a lot of work to do to convince people that I am just a normal person desperately in need of God's grace and love just as they are.

When I think about it, DeVito was right on the character issue as well.  We don't really have character until we can admit that we've blown it and that we were wrong about things. It is the regret and the desire to change that puts us in touch with our weaknesses and hopefully, connects us with our true source of life and power, Jesus. IF we humble ourselves and look to Him. I think that so many of us as Christians feel like we have to maintain our own righteousness, so we can never admit a mistake or be real with people who are alienated from God. That makes us look pretty plastic because we aren't fooling anyone. Everyone can clearly see that we are not perfect. Why do we continue with the charade?

The times that God's life and power have flowed through me the most were times that I just cared about people and was myself. Religion always seems to get in the way. Religion teaches us to see people as projects to "win to Christ" or "reach" because religion is all about climbing the ladder to God. We have to show how we're further up the ladder than other people because our identity is based on where we are on the ladder. If we have our doctrine straight and we are in the club, so to speak, we feel better about ourselves, especially in relation to others. This kind of religion kills. But instead of falling into this trap, what if we got our identity from Christ and were free to just take an interest in people for who they were? What if we cared about people because they were made in God's image? All people have desires, dreams, hopes, and fears. They all have families, jobs, and most just want to live a good life and make some small difference in the world. I know that we are all born sinful, but our doctrine of original sin should not cause us to despise people to the point that we do not deal with them as the human beings that they are. Jesus was the holiest man that ever lived - He was God and Man. Yet, He caused prostitutes, tax collectors, and "sinners" to be at ease in His presence. How? I really believe that He treated people with respect and that love flowed through Him. He didn't have to rank Himself on the ladder in relation to others because He knew who His Father was and as a consequence, knew who He was as well. He brought the Kingdom of God with Him and people were drawn to the love and healing that He gave.

So, what I have found is that when I see people as people and not as commodities that I can use for my benefit, then I am much more likely to express the love of Christ to them in a way that speaks to their heart. Often, this happens more effectively when I do not have some grand plan, but rather, when I am just friends with people for the sake of being friends. God seems to move mightily through loving, respectful friendship. If you had to ask me, I never thought I'd get this kind of wisdom from Danny DeVito. He's not a very "religious" source, is he? Who knew? I guess that God teaches us in all kinds of ways if we would just be quiet long enough to listen.

Wilderness Leadership

The era of the “promised land” is over for the mainline church in America. Because we have not been faithful, we find ourselves again in the wilderness, or perhaps, in exile. In either case, the establishment is collapsing and with it, the predictability, security and comfort that has allowed us to be at ease in Zion for several generations. The model of the “king” is no longer appropriate for leadership in today’s church. We need leadership more akin to the “judges” of ancient Israel, who arose out of the community in crisis to lead by the consent of and in concert with the community. And those judges were selected not by caste or class, but by demonstrating the authenticity and therefore the authority that comes from having attended to the inward journey with God.

Edward A. White from "What Kind of Pastor Will Most Likely Empower Laity."

I think that the idea of the "Church in Exile" was intriguing to me in this quote. If we are really in exile, or the Wilderness in relation to our culture, then what does that mean for how we function? For leadership? For cultural engagement? Yes, it appears that Christendom has crumbled. What will replace it and how will we manage a post-Christian America? It is apparent that spiritual leadership in a post-Christian culture must be more focused on God and our walk with Him, than it is on success, results, power, and influence.

The Righteousness of Christ

I write a lot about social justice issues, missions, and reforming culture. But, it is only possible for the Christian to engage in any of that because we have first and foremost been set free from our sin, death, Satan, and Hell by the blood of Jesus and His sacrifice and victory on the Cross and through His resurrection. Because "it is finished" we no longer need to make striving for our own righteousness before God our all consuming focus. We are free to serve God and others!  We can entrust ourselves to God and truly believe that we are righteous with the imputed righteousness of Christ! What a great salvation!

I first ran across Dr. Rod Rosenbladt a few years ago when a friend of mine passed me a little booklet called Christ Alone. It was gold. I happened to see a link to a Dr. Rosenbladt mp3 on The Gospel for those Broken By the Church. I have not listened to this yet, but a couple of excerpts are printed that I found helpful:

If the Ten Commandments were not impossible enough, the preaching of Christian behavior, of Christian ethics, of Christian living, can drive a Christian into despairing unbelief. Not happy unbelief. Tragic, despairing, sad unbelief. (It is not unlike the [unhappy] Christian equivalent of "Jack Mormons" - those who finally admit to themselves and others that they can't live up to the demands of this non-Christian cult's laws, and excuse themselves from the whole sheebang.) A diet of this stuff from pulpit, from curriculum, from a Christian reading list, can do a work on a Christian that is (at least over the long haul) "faith destroying."

He goes on:

Learning Service Under a Better Master

The Christian is a person who recognizes that our real problem is not in achieving freedom but in learning service under a better master. The Christian realizes that every relationship that excludes God becomes oppressive. Recognizing and realizing that, we urgently want to live under the mastery of God.

                                          Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction 

Russell Moore on Spiritual Warfare, the Family, and the Rule of Appetites

Either the prophetic cry regarding our lifestyle choices and pursuit of the American Dream is getting louder, or I am just paying closer attention. As our economy tanks and our culture declines, I think that more and more Christians will begin to consider how we are living. Russell Moore from Southern Seminary takes aim at Southern Baptists' acquiesance to a culture run amok in materialism and hedonism. He hits this topic much harder than I have over the past few weeks as he talks to Southern Baptists about some timely issues. He says, "both left and right in the American mainstream are captive to the ideology that the appetites are to be indulged; the heart wants what it wants, by whatever system will do it most efficiently."  Moore is at his best in this article when he exposes the spiritual warfare that is taking place in our midst and how we have been deceived as we fall in line with the materialistic pursuit of our culture. He aptly points out that our enemy is not flesh and blood.

Moore's only weakness is that he is writing from a middle-class perspective as he critiques families where both parents are working. This is the reality for many families and there is really nothing that can be done about it. Instead of making families who HAVE to do this to survive feel bad, we should help them and support them as they provide for their families. His focus, however, is rightly placed on those families who could easily make it on one income, but choose to put children in day care to pursue a lifestyle of affluence. That action does require some analysis and alternatives need to be considered.

Overall, however, his take on this subject is timely - especially his comments on spiritual warfare. 

If We Want to Follow Jesus . . .

Americans are clustering more and more into cultural, social, economic, religious, and political enclaves according to Bill Bishop in his new book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. Basically, our affluence has led us to the place that most Americans want to live, work, and play with people just like them. The Homogenous Unit Principle that I spoke of a few posts ago, seems to be alive and well in an increasingly multicultural America. But, instead of becoming a melting pot, we look more like a salad bowl of Balkanized special interests. Of course, we have seen this for years with white-flight and the rise of the suburb, but it is now apparently happening across other areas of life and it has profound social, political, and religious implicatoins.

Engaging People "Between the Times"

Eugene Peterson in, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction refers to Paul Tournier's description of being "between the times" when he says that it is when we engage in

the experience of being in between - between the time we leave home and arrive at our destination; between the time we leave adolescence and arrive at adulthood; between the time we leave doubt and arrive at faith. It is like the time when a trapeze artist lets go the bar and hangs in midair, ready to catch another support: it is a time of danger, of expectation, of uncertainty, of excitement, of extraordinary aliveness.

These are the times that people are most open to God, I think. God spoke to Abram and said, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you" Genesis 12:1. God put Abram in a "between the times" moment so he could hear from Him and be transformed, learning to rely only on God. Israel was in that moment both during the Exodus and when they entered the Promised Land. Jesus experienced it in the desert during the temptation when He displayed reliance upon God in overcoming every temptation. This happened before He started His ministry. The Bible seems to make much of these moments and they dominate our literature and film. "Between the times" moments constitute the fabric of all of our great stories.

How can we minister to people during these moments of potential growth and transformation? When people are in college and are getting ready to step into the world, how can we speak into their lives in ways that help draw them to reliance upon God? In 2004, I travelled through Europe and met many college students and young adults who were "between the times" of college and grad school or were about to enter the workforce. They were taking a pilgrimage, so to speak, to discover some things and figure out where they were headed. I got into more natural spiritual conversations with people on that trip than at any point in my life, I think. So many people are just trying to figure out how to live. In April, we were in Rishikesh, India, and there were Westerners everywhere who had come to this holy city on the Ganges looking for enlightenment. They were "between the times" in their lives and were looking for truth and direction. Yet, there were no Christian missionaries there to meet them. The only Christian witness in the entire city was a ministry that we had connected with that was doing work in the villages and with school age children. They were indigenous Indians. But, what if there were Western Christians or Indians there to meet the Westerners who were travelling "between the times" so that we could interact with them and point them to Christ? This is when they are open. It seems that we do not do these things because our ministry to people has become so tied to church growth that we almost think that random encounters are a waste because we cannot see the results. For many, this type of ministry would require a lot of faith. But, I think that it needs to be done.

There are so many other venues where "between the times" ministry can take place: Nursing homes, pre-marital counseling, boot camp for the military, youth ministry, ministry to young couples or young parents, etc. May God lead us into these situations so that we can meet people who are open, even if we receive nothing in return but the joy of seeing people open their hearts to God.  Really, that is all the reward that we should ever seek anyway.

Micah-the-Pastoral-Intern's Book Reviews

We have a brilliant pastoral intern this summer named Micah. He will be a senior in college this year and he is praying about going into vocational ministry. So as a formative experience, we developed a learning internship for him this summer. He has shadowed me to meetings and events and he went with me to the Alan Hirsch conference this past weekend in New Orleans. We've spent a lot of time together, and even though Micah's been a part of our church since he was 13, my respect for his heart for God and intellect has grown exponentially in the few weeks that we have been doing this.

I've given Micah quite a few books to read as the internship has begun and have asked him to write a short reflection on each book. We sit down and talk through it together, exploring different issues that emerge. Initially, we are looking at issues that might frame his perspective on ministry in the 21st Century. Where and how can he most faithfully represent Christ to a dying world?  He has posted his reviews online at http://collegerambling.blogspot.com/ .  You seriously need to check out his reviews from writers like Eugene Peterson, Ron Sider, Bob Roberts, Alan Hirsch, George Grant, Watchmen Nee, and Marty Duren (Micah is going to spend some time at Marty's church in North Georgia this weekend).  Micah will be interning with us through the summer and his experiences and learning have just begun. Keep him in your prayers, especially if you are a part of Gateway and you are reading this.  If you have any advice or encouragement for a young man trying to discern whether or not to enter vocational ministry, I'm sure that it would be appreciated.

Grace and Truth. Stop Everything and Watch This . . .

I have just run across the ministry of Paul Washer, a Southern Baptist evangelist and preacher based out of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. He also travels around the world preaching the gospel. I don't really know who this guy is, but after spending some time watching some of his sermons, I am cut to the heart. I have broken down crying in conviction and praise for God's mercy several times. I want to share two clips with you that contain parts of a couple of messages. If you have any time at all, spend a few minutes reflecting on what he says. If you don't have any time, then stop what you are doing and watch this anyway.

Grace of God:  "Let Me Tell You About My Jesus - He Saved Me."

Truth of Grace:   "What Does God Demand From Us? Everything."

I've preached both of these messages. I have proclaimed God's mercy with all the praise I can muster. I have called others and myself to total sacrifice. But, I have also backed up. I have forgotten God's mercy at times and I have not sacrificed my own life or called others to do the same. There have been times that I have seen this message of Grace and Truth clearly and the fire of it burned through my bones. Then, there have been times that I have been so lukewarm that I have only been fit for spewing. God, have mercy. I am so grateful for His forgiveness and enabling grace that leads me to godliness and calls me to lay down my life in response to God's mercy.

May the true Gospel of Jesus Christ be revived in our hearts - in my heart. May we believe in Jesus for who He is, not who we make Him out to be.

Is It Really That Hard to Know How to Follow Jesus? Or, Why We DON'T Really Need Religious Professionals to Explain God to Us.

Okay, I'm going to take a few swipes at my colleagues in the church business for a moment. I really think that we spend WAAAAY too much time overcomplicating the spiritual life for people. All around us are people who are really struggling with their personal life, their marriages, their jobs, their children, their future, their investment portfolios, how to spend their free time, what so and so said about them at the ball field the other day, how to decide where to spend vacation this year, exactly what color to paint the kitchen, etc., etc. Life can be really hard! So, as ministers, we develop all kinds of "strategies" to help make life more bearable for the average American Christian.  We create classes, manuals, and conferences. We talk about the "Grace Filled Life" or we try and get people to evangelize more. We enroll people in Sunday School or we try and get them to small groups. If we could just get them serving in the church more, or attending the men's pancake breakfast or the next ladies Beth Moore Study. If we could just get people to somehow WANT to learn how to do the spiritual life/church thingy, we'd be ok. I mean, Southern Baptists are declining in membership, right? We need another strategy! Another plan!

Here's one that I found on the blog of a guy named Brant Hanson. First of all, Brant is absolutely hilarious. He is very edgy in his humor, but he really gets you thinking about stuff. He takes on the Discipleship Wheel in a post entitled This Just Brings It Home. Thank You.  Reading his post got me thinking about all of this in light of some of my recent thoughts about where we actually do find solutions to our current malaise. I don't think that it is in church organizational seminars. Here is discipleship wheel that a church put together to help show how a new believer could grow to spiritual maturity:

Wow! Okay. First of all, I am not saying that all diagrams and plans for growth are necessarily wrong, so please save the nasty letter writing campaign that you were about to orchestrate against me. But it does seem like we are encountering a preponderence of strategies and programs all over the place. Secondly, here is an example of a discipleship/small group/education/associate minister somewhere with too much time on his hands, I fear. I know, because I used to be one. Before I became "Senior" pastor of our church, I spent over 5 years as Associate Pastor of Worship and Ministries. It is a former life that I don't think I've ever mentioned on the blog before. One of my jobs was to oversee our ministries and small groups. I was expected to provide training for them that was to be "reproducible." I don't think I understood what reproducible meant. I thought that meant that the training that I was supposed to write could be photocopied, I guess. I became very adept at writing manuals - manuals that no one would ever read. I spent hour upon hour typing out steps, processes, procedures, and fill-in-the-blank training manuals. The little discipleship wheel above could be considered sheer genius for it's simplicity compared to the stuff I put together. For some reason, I believed that if people had to fill in the blank when you were training them, they would then actually pay attention to what you had to say. Apparently, I knew how boring I was so I was trying to find some way to keep people from falling asleep on me. Ugh. I was falling asleep on myself.