We have returned from The Navigators’ 2:7 Series Jubilee Conference in Frisco, Texas. Thanks to you all who prayed for this trip! There’s much to be thankful for: it was a soul-stirring time, we connected with a lot of old friends, we had uneventful travel, AND a blizzard that dropped a foot of snow in our area came and went while we were gone!

Here’s another thought from Friday’s talk by Mike Treneer, International President of The Navigators from 2005 – 2015. He said:

The world longs for love, for joy, for peace,…. Sound familiar? Through the Holy Spirit, we have the resources the world needs. We just have to get close enough to people for them to smell the fragrance of Jesus.

Mike illustrated his point by telling this story that supports what I’ve written before about Holy Moments and “ministering grace and love” as one type of fruitfulness. Mike said:

I was on a flight, and as I went to the back of the plane, the flight attendants were talking with one another in the galley area. One of them said, “There he is!” And I thought, “What have I done now?” The flight attendant explained: “You are different from most passengers. You were attentive and aware of us.” 

Mike said it was a decision he made years ago. 

This is my space. If you come into it, you should experience the Kingdom of God.

This gives new meaning to what I wrote in my first book, Join the Adventure: the first two steps to living missionally are just to “be there” and “pay attention.” There’s power, even in that.

In the Messiah, in Christ, God leads us from place to place in one perpetual victory parade. Through us, he brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. (2 Corinthians 2.14, MSG)

We are still at The Navigators’ 2:7 Jubilee Conference in Frisco, Texas. It’s been a great time of seeing old friends, making new ones, and celebrating the 50-year anniversary of The Navigators’ disciple-making tool, the 2:7 series, sometimes called the In God’s Family series. The original developer, my friend Navigator Ron Oertli who is now in his 80s, is here.

Friday night, Mike Treneer, International President of The Navigators from 2005 – 2015, spoke to us about Missional Living that advances the gospel in a fallen and chaotic world. Here’s a highlight: he said something like…

Do you get discouraged that we’re not farther along? Remember the weeds in the field. “An enemy has done this…Don’t pull the weeds!” We’re not called to mess with the weeds. God wants us to work on the wheat. – Mike Treneer

Why do we get upset about the fallenness and chaos of the world? We should expect that and not get derailed by it. In the meantime, continue with what God has asked us to do: make disciples.

And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?” He said to them, “An enemy has done this.” So the servants said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he said, “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest…” (Matthew 13.27 – 30, ESV)

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… (Matthew 28.18, 19, ESV)

I’m writing from The Navigators’ 2:7 Jubilee Conference in Frisco, Texas, near Dallas.

Here’s a quick thought from Thursday night’s talk from Mutua Mahiaini, International President of The Navigators. Mutua said something like:

Many people think that being a disciple of Jesus is a matter of being nice. It’s nice to be nice, but being a disciple is more than that. Discipleship includes mission. That’s why you don’t find the Great Commission after it was given in Matthew 28. The apostles just assumed it was part of discipleship – part of following Jesus.

Mutua went on to quote from Howard Snyder’s Liberating the Church:

Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy, and truth. Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world.

Mutua went on to remind us that the church at Philippi did very well, and Paul hadn’t even been there very long. But, as Mutua put it, “He left behind local believers carrying the gospel into the normal pathways of life.”

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. (Philippians 1.27, ESV)

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. (Philippians 2.14 – 16, ESV)

I often pray while riding my exercise bike, and I must confess there are times when I think, “Is this doing any good? Just ‘thinking of certain things’ here in my house?” 

Then I (re)read Matthew 6.6:

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6.6, ESV)

Sounds like a promise to me! And it’s one for which I meet the conditions!

You do not have because you do not ask. (James 4.2, ESV)

P.S. June and I leave this morning, February 6, for the 2:7 Jubilee Conference in Frisco, Texas, returning Sunday morning, February 9. We’d appreciate your prayers! I look forward to sharing highlights of that time with you.

Here’s one more lesson from the John 2 story of Jesus changing the water to wine. It’s a possible application, one that I wouldn’t fight to the death for, but it made sense in a discussion I had recently had with a friend who feels responsible for the moral behavior of his adult grandchildren. It’s not the first such conversation I’ve had with people I respect on what to do about grandchildren, say, living with someone out of wedlock.

It’s not a hypothetical: we and many of our friends have family members not living as we think Jesus would have them live. June and I have chosen to live by principles:

• Our responsibility is to love them where they are and as they are.
• They don’t work for us!
• I am not responsible to God for others’ behavior.

It’s this last that I believe the water to wine story speaks to. My friend mentioned in the first paragraph didn’t want to fund hotel rooms for a family reunion that would be occupied by grandchildren “shacking up.” He said, “Am I not responsible, especially if it’s my money?”

I can’t dictate to others what to do (he doesn’t work for me either!), but I did notice that Jesus made A LOT of wine at that wedding. Probably more than they needed. And if it was a big wedding party, and people then are anything like people now, isn’t it possible that someone got drunk on Jesus’ wine? 

To apply my friend’s logic, Jesus would have said, “I’d like to help you, but I can’t be a party to someone’s abusing alcohol.” To put it into modern-day terms, “I’d like to help you since you’ve gone over budget, but I can’t, you see. I can’t use my money that way.” So I get to save money and attempt to make myself look holy in the process.

When my personal purity becomes an excuse not to help someone, I think I’m on the wrong track. Jesus was clear on that in the story of the Good Samaritan. And, I think, indirectly, in his being willing to make wine for a wedding.

So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14.12, NKJV)

[The conclusion of the story of the Good Samaritan: Jesus asked, ] “What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?” “The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded. Jesus said, “Go and do the same.” (Luke 10.36, 37, MSG)

I wrote earlier that distraction is one way Satan has derailed the church from its mission. Here’s a version of distraction that also contributes, I believe, to mental health issues among pastors and pastor burnout. 

The problem is that pastors, along with the congregations that hired them, think the pastors are supposed to do everything. Is someone in the hospital, for example? Visiting them is the pastor’s job. Ditto the shut-ins. That’s what we hired the pastor for! 

But that attitude ignores all the “one anothers” in the Bible. We are to care for one another (1 Corinthians 12.21-26), encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5.11, Hebrews 3.13), teach one another (Romans 15.14), and stand with one another in mission (Philippians 1.27). If the pastors do all that, they are depriving the members of their chance to serve, the pastors are wearing themselves out, and they are NOT doing their job of equipping the members to be on mission. 

A friend of mine, a Navigator-trained disciple-maker offered to help a pastor disciple the men of the church. The pastor told my friend, “If anyone in this church teaches the men, it will be me.” I heard a pastor say in a sermon, “My job is to feed the sheep; your job is to serve the sheep by, for example, keeping the nursery on Sunday morning.”

As a result of attitudes and practices like these, the mission effectiveness of churches goes way down.

I need to emphasize that pastors can’t change course by themselves. As Neil Hudson writes in Imagine Church, the pastors need to “renegotiate the contract” from pastor-shepherd to pastor-equipper. A young pastor I was working with came to that conclusion even before he read the book! But he had read the original directive:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ… (Ephesians 4.11, 12, ESV)

I recently read a summary of a new book on spiritual warfare and among the quotes was this paragraph with a great start and, in my opinion, a weak finish:

Satan hates the church and is continually seeking to destroy it (Rev 12:13–17). He tries to find means to derail the church from its mission. This attempted destruction can be done through hypocrisy, false teaching, and persecution (Acts 5:1–11; 1 Tim 1:18–20; Rev 2:9–10, 13; 3:9). [Emphasis mine]

[I’m withholding identification of the book because I haven’t read it, and maybe my concern is addressed elsewhere.]

How does Satan “derail the church from its mission?” These authors say “through hypocrisy, false teaching, and persecution.” How about distraction? We see this clearly in Acts 6 with the widows. And what the apostles would not be distracted from was teaching the word publicly and from house to house:

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables…We will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” (Acts 5.42, 6.1, 2…4, NIV)

Today’s pastors are distracted by myriad duties associated with “running a church.” Few are able to implement Paul’s basic instruction to Pastor Timothy:

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.1, 2, NIV)

Once at a meeting where I was encouraging the staff of a church in some basic spiritual disciplines, one staffer astutely observed, “We’re so busy doing the business of the church that we don’t have time for the business of the church!”

There are other means Satan uses to derail the church from its mission, and I’ll address them over the next few days.

(A Parable about being distracted by busyness)
And as the king passed, he cried to the king and said, “Your servant went out into the midst of the battle, and behold, a soldier turned and brought a man to me and said, “Guard this man; if by any means he is missing, your life shall be for his life, or else you shall pay a talent of silver.” And as your servant was busy here and there, he was gone. (1 Kings 20.39, 40, ESV)

Today is a special day, not because it’s Groundhog Day or Super Bowl Sunday. It’s a day, the like of which comes around only once every thousand years or so. As a math guy, I like numbers, and unless you’re afflicted with aibohphobia*, you might like this too!

02/02/2020

It’s a palindromic date, reading the same front to back as back to front…no matter what culture you’re in!

Americans, for reasons I’ve never understood, do month/day/year. Europeans follow a logical progression: day/month/year. So today is palindromic in both the US and Europe. But that happens from time to time.

What makes this one even more special is that it’s palindromic for those who write year/month/day, as they do in Asia or the way I sometimes name files: YYYYMMDD so that the computer alphabetizes them chronologically.

2020/02/02

So enjoy the day…and the game. There’s no particular spiritual significance to this that I know of, but it’s OK just to enjoy numbers, isn’t it?

This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118.24, ESV)

One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. (Romans 14.5, NKJV)

*aibohphobia is the (unofficial) word for “an irrational fear of palindromes”

I’m well aware that the older we get, the more of our friends we expect to bury. I saw a friend of mine last year at a memorial service, and he said he had been to 20 memorials so far in 2019! Still, it’s always a shock.

I heard from my cousin on my mother’s side the other day. Steve is about six months older than I, and I’ve seen him only once since we were children. He wanted to send me a school textbook that belonged to my mother, but as part of the message, he added, “I am doing well but the holidays were rough without my wife of 53 years. Diane passed away in July from a blood clot after knee surgery. She is very much missed but God must of had a better plan for her. I’ll meet her again one day.”

I expressed my condolences and added, “Gives one pause since my second knee surgery is scheduled for May!”

Then just a few days later I received an invitation to a memorial service for the wife of a local, older friend who is active in men’s ministry. I had just received a message from him a little over a week ago, and his wife was copied on the email. Now she’s gone.

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4.13 – 18, NIV, emphasis mine)