Pooped Pastors

Deconstructing Moralism

Tullian Tchividjian August 22 2011 - 2 Comments

A lot of conversation has been happening with regard to the nature of the gospel and it’s role in sanctification. First, Kevin DeYoung and I engaged in a healthy dialogue about this a few months ago (see here, here, here, and here) and then over at the Reformation 21 blog this week Bill Evans and Sean Lucas have had a healthy dialogue about this (see here, here, here, and here). I have intentionally stayed out of the most recent conversation because I’ve already said in many ways what I would say again if I weighed in.

Without addressing all of the important details, nuances, and perspectives, the simple fact is that if someone is giving short-shrift to the necessity of obeying biblical imperatives, it’s because they are not glorying in the indicatives of the gospel. Their problem is not first and foremost that they aren’t giving full-throat to the imperatives. It’s that they’re not giving full-throat to the indicatives. I’ve never met anyone who revels in the gospel of grace who then doesn’t want to obey God. It’s a phantom fear (see this brilliantly creative post).

Matt Richard describes well how naturally we take it upon ourselves to reign the gospel in when we fear too much of it will result in lawlessness:

I have found that as Christians we many times attribute ‘lawlessness’ to the preaching of the Gospel. Somewhere in our thinking we rationalize that if the Gospel is presented as “too free, too unconditional or that Jesus fulfills the law for us” that the result will be lax morality, loose living and lawlessness. It is as if we believe that the freeing message of the Gospel actually produces, encourages and grants people a license to sin. Because of this rationalization we find ourselves strapping, holding and attaching restrictions to the Gospel so that we might prevent or limit lawlessness. In other words, the Gospel is placed into bondage due to our rationalization and reaction to lawlessness.

Actually, both the Bible and daily experience demonstrates that disobedience and moral laxity happens not when we think too much of grace, but when we think too little of it (Rom. 6:1-4). Grace is not the enemy of radical obedience–it is its fuel! That’s all I have to say about that.

There is, however, something specific that has come up in the conversation that I do want to address. It’s the idea that since our culture is relativistic, licentious, and morally lax, is preaching grace what this culture really needs? Or, to put it another way, is preaching the gospel of grace really the means by which God will save licentious people? I mean, surely God doesn’t think that the saving solution for the immoral and rebellious is his free grace? That doesn’t make sense. It seems backwards, counter-intuitive. Given our restraint-free cultural context, what does make sense to me is that preachers in our day should be very wary of talking about grace at all. That’s the last thing lawless people need to hear. Surely they’ll take advantage of it and get worse, not better. After all, it would seem logical to me that the only way to “save” licentious people is to show them more rules, intensify my exhortations to behave.

Well, besides the fact that the Bible makes it clear that the power which saves even the worst rule-breaking sinner is the gospel (Romans 1:16), and not the law (Romans 7:13-24), there’s another reason why preaching the gospel of free grace is both necessary and effective (counter-intuitive as it may seem) even at a time when moral laxity reigns supreme: moralism is what most people outside and inside the church think Christianity is all about—rules and standards and behavior and cleaning yourself up.

Millions of people, both inside and outside the church, believe that the essential message of Christianity is, “If you behave, then you belong.” The reason they come to that conclusion is because many of us preachers have led them to believe that. We’ve led them to believe that God is most interested in people becoming good instead of people coming to terms with how bad they really are so that they’ll fix their eyes on Christ “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). From a human standpoint, this is precisely why many people outside the church reject Christianity and why many people inside the church conk out: they’re just not good enough to get it done over the long haul. (Then there are those who ignore the gospel because they’ve deceived themselves into believing that they really are making it, when in reality they’re not.)

In his article “Preaching in a Post-modern Climate”, Tim Keller makes this point brilliantly:

Some claim that to constantly be striking a ‘note of grace, grace, grace’ in our sermons is not helpful in our culture today. The objection goes like this: “Surely Phariseeism and moralism is not a problem in our culture today. Rather, our problem is license and antinomianism. People lack a sense of right or wrong. It is ‘carrying coal to Newcastle’ to talk about grace all the time to postmodern people.” But I don’t believe that’s the case. Unless you point to the ‘good news’ of grace, people won’t even be able to bear the ‘bad news’ of God’s judgment. Also, unless you critique moralism, many irreligious people won’t know the difference between moralism and what you’re offering. The way to get antinomians to move away from lawlessness is to distinguish the gospel from legalism. Why? Because modern and post-modern people have been rejecting Christianity for years thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. Non-Christians will always automatically hear gospel presentations as appeals to become moral and religious, unless in your preaching you use the good news of grace to deconstruct legalism. Only if you show them there’s a difference–that what they really rejected wasn’t real Christianity at all–will they even begin to consider Christianity.

As I’ve pointed out before, in Romans 6:1-4 the Apostle Paul answers antinomianism (lawlessness) not with law but with more gospel! I imagine it would have been tempting for Paul (as it often is with us when dealing with licentious people) to put the brakes on grace and give the law in this passage, but instead he gives more grace—grace upon grace. Paul knows that licentious people aren’t those who believe the gospel of God’s free grace too much, but too little. “The ultimate antidote to antinomianism”, writes Mike Horton, “is not more imperatives, but the realization that the gospel swallows the tyranny as well as the guilt of sin.”

The fact is, that the only way licentious people start to obey is when they get a taste of God’s radical, unconditional acceptance of sinners. It was the kindness of the Lord that led you to repentance (Romans 2:4). What makes you think that same kindness which flows supremely from the gospel of free grace won’t lead others to repentance?

Here’s a great scene from Les Miserables illustrating how powerful the radicality of grace is in melting hard, undeserving, law-breaking hearts.

Posted in Read, Tullian Tchividjian by: Tullian Tchividjian •

The long walk home

Lea Clower August 15 2011 - No Comment

The war was over and he had lost. He was tired, wounded, but most of all ashamed. It was the wrong war, and his Dad had asked him not to go and his Mother wept as he angrily left. Oh he fought hard, did everything his drill instructor had taught him, he had watched those who seemed so successful as warriors and tried with all his might to be just like them, but…it just didn’t work out the way he thought it would. The fight was exhilarating but exhausting because he had to hide so much fear. The weapons were unbelievable but very complicated and he wasn’t very smart. Plus they were for killing people, even though they were bad people and needed to be killed, a little of him died every time one of them died. In the darkness of the nights, on guard duty or even trying to sleep, the haunting whispers of home, a compassionate father and loving mother, would bring an almost overwhelming sadness and regret. But, his pride…his pride, his manhood, his way must not be questioned. He couldn’t be wrong. They couldn’t be right. He was going to prove to them and to everyone else that “he had what it takes.” He was going to show them, even though he knew how scared he was, how weak he felt, how ashamed of himself he was. But no matter how many times he did succeed, it was never enough to make up for the few times he fell short. The demons of failure, no matter how few, were always louder, deeper, more painful than the voice of success, acceptance, and courage in the face of fear. The noise in his head was like the roar at the foot of Niagara Falls, and it was sewage, not beautiful, refreshing water crashing down on him…beating him, laughing at him, threatening to sweep him away in a torrent of darkness and despair.

But now the war was over. He, and all those like him, began either their walk to the grave, the bottle, the drugs, or the lucky few, the walk home. He tried the grave, and as he stood looking over the edge, he was too much a coward to jump. He tried the bottle, but the temporary relief from the pain was always followed by a hangover and consequences that multiplied the pain, so that he drank again and again, until the pain got greater than the pleasure. Drugs, legal or illegal, only brought fog. The fog hid the pain, dulled the senses, counterfeited ecstasy, but there was always the day after. The damn sun came up, or the rains poured, but tomorrow was now today and the demons raged on.

Home? Why not go home? No. They wouldn’t understand. They would join the chorus of the demons, laughing at “doing it my way”, ridiculing the failures, shaming me for my choices, telling me “I told you so!” No, home wasn’t a safe place…but maybe, just maybe, the long walk home would give me time to clean myself up, be all that I could be, straighten up and fly right, and if that failed, I would just live in the valley across the hill from home and smell the smoke from the home fires and smell the smells of childhood and find a little peace in the cave of failures. So near home, but not worthy to go home.

The walk home was long. No one offered him a ride, except some circuit riding preacher, but he was too dirty to ride with the religious man who sat so straight, so rigid, and had all the answers. The ride would have been nice, but it was only so the preacher could tell me what I already knew, and give him another story of a lost soul he had saved. No, I’ll walk, I smell too bad anyway, and there wasn’t enough Bible soap to clean me up.

The days, maybe they were weeks, one foot in front of the other. Alone, dirty, ragged, ashamed, and beaten. A “dead man walking”. Then I recognized that last hill before home, but the creek was dry, so I couldn’t clean up. I would have changed clothes, but the smelly rags were all I had. I would have given anything to shave and wash my hair. The dirt matted my beard and hair so thickly that a week’s worth of washing wouldn’t begin to make me clean, anyway. Oh, that last hill before home. Should I stay on this side, where the mud and filth were so familiar, even comfortable compared to the threat of saying “I’m sorry, I was wrong” and then being laughed at and kicked back out and over the hill. Maybe I’ll just stay on this side, and smell supper cooking, not ask for any, not eat any, even though I’m starving. It’s just so hard being a failure in everyone’s eyes, especially my own.

In that quiet few minutes between sundown with birds chirping and the crickets, frogs talking in the darkness, I heard His voice. He was singing, just like the days of my childhood, when I was “innocent” though not perfect, When I was His and I knew it. Before my fall. My rebellion. My rage. My way. When I trusted Him and followed Him even when I wasn’t sure He knew what He was doing, something in my heart said “Trust Him, He loves you.” Could it be He was still singing that same song? That song that was just for me, his son.

What harm could it be? Take a peek over the hill. Don’t let Him see you, if it’s even him or some cruel joke my mind is playing on me. Maybe I’m having delusions…but then again maybe not. I’ve got to look, just in case it’s Him.

Now from the crest of the hill, behind and in the midst of a horrible thorn bush, I look. It’s almost dark, so it’s hard to see. My shame is so great that my eyes almost won’t let me see, but it is Him. It is my Father. He is singing my song. He is “calling me home” by singing the song He sang when I was a child. Only now, he was singing with tears flowing down his cheeks. Could it be that the really misses me, and isn’t mad at me? Could it be that He won’t say “I told you so, you stupid kid.” Could it be that He loved me enough to let me go, find my own way…no matter how destructive to me or painful to Him, and that he has been singing with tears all these years hoping I would hear Him and know I was loved. Know that I could come home! Know that He was “a safe place of peace and rest not anger and reproach.”

……..so many questions, so much fear, so much disgust, so much shame. The demons told me not to go, but I thought, “What have I got to lose? If he rejects me, tells me to get out of His sight, I deserve it. It will only confirm what I already ‘know’ about myself. But maybe, just maybe He’ll hug me?” So with more fear than in any battle of the war, over the hill I went to see if He really loved me or was it just too much to hope for. If the Gospel is true for outsiders, maybe it’s true for sons.

Well, what do you think? Is it true for you?

It was for me. I came home, and He was so glad, the tears of waiting and singing became tears of joy, forgiveness, and thanksgiving. “Son, my son, I have missed you so much.”

PS Come home. He told me to tell you, it is true for you, too!

Posted in Lea Clower, Read by: Lea Clower •

Fallen Shorter

Zach Van Dyke August 10 2011 - No Comment

I was sitting outside in the almost unbearable heat and humidity of Acapulco, Mexico trying to have a discussion with teenagers about Romans 3 after a long day of construction at Casa Hogar, a home where children live whose families cannot afford to take care of them. I was mostly trying to lead this discussion because it felt like what I was supposed to do as the youth pastor, but really I just wanted to get out of heat and go to bed.

To avoid much thought or effort on my part, I simply read the passage and asked the students to go around and share what stood out to them. As the students went around the circle, I heard the typical, superficial “Christian” goody-goody answers, which was fine with me because it meant I didn’t have to really engage in the discussion and I could just respond the same…without thought.

Then Hannah spoke up. I didn’t know Hannah very well and when she was a student in my ministry, she didn’t participate much. Now she was a college student who decided to come along with her high school sister on the trip. And my guess is, she spent the last year living the college life as portrayed in the movies.

Hannah said, “That part about ‘all have sinned’ stood out to me.”

What?! No one says that. That’s too obvious for even the most superficial of Christians.

Suddenly, I was completed engaged in the discussion. I wanted to know why that stood out to her.

With the faintest signs of tears, Hannah responded, “Because it means everyone has messed up like me and that makes me feel better. It gives me hope.”

I saw two reactions to Hannah from my group; empathy or condescension.

The ones who reacted with condescension really bothered me.

Who did they think they were?

I didn’t say anything because although somewhat fired up, I was still hot and tired…and hot and tired won out.

Then in the middle of the night, I woke up and realized that my empathic response had oozed with condescension.

Although I was moved with compassion for Hannah and her realization that everyone messes up, not just her, as she spoke up, I still believed she must had fallen shorter of the glory of God than I had for that verse to jump out at her.

I was reminded of the story in John 8 where the adulterous woman is brought before Jesus by the Pharisees. Asking Jesus if she should be stoned according to the Law of Moses, Jesus replies “He who is without sin should cast the first stone.”

One by one the Pharisees retreat, dropping and leaving their stones.

I’ve never thought of the Pharisees as empathic, but here it appears that they have empathized with this adulterous woman. They have come to the conclusion that they too have sin. That they too have fallen short.

But unlike the woman who stays at the feet of Jesus, in no way trying to make amends for her sin, they give her a final condescending glance as they walk off being convicted of their sin, they know that they will make a promise never to do that which they have been convicted of again. That they will offer whatever sacrifice is necessary to atone for their sin. They will set up any accountability necessary to keep them from being like her again.

Yet they missed the true Atonement saying, “Has no one condemned you? Nor do I condemn. Go and sin no more.”

So glad it’s all about grace.

Posted in Read, Zach Van Dyke by: Zach Van Dyke •

How Not to Take a Sabbatical

Tom Wood August 01 2011 - No Comment

According dictionary.com a Sabbatical is any extended period of leave from one’s customary work, especially for rest, to acquire new skills or training, etc.

In the Older Testament the idea of taking time off for Sabbath resting every seven years is found in their agriculture (the fields were to have a land Sabbath every seven years in order to rejuvenate and regain its strength), debt was cancelled every seven years and also in the release of indentured slaves (they were to be released on the seventh year). It seems that the idea of those in ministry needing some type of Sabbatical every seven years might be a good thing!

I have never taken a Sabbatical. I “Mastered the Divine” in 1984, and with my denomination’s blessing went out and planted a church. After that season, I went to plant another church. Neither pastorate offered nor did I ask for an extended period of leave for rest or training. And besides, raising three young kids made taking an extended period of leave out of the question. So I have worked steady for last twenty-seven years. Eleven years ago, I took on a new role with an established church planting and seminary ministry. Within three years they closed their doors. There was never an opportunity for an extended period of leave with them!

It was at the Pooped Pastor’s conference that I first heard Dan Allender talk about becoming president of Mars Hill Grad School. He said he did not want to be the President, but no one else would do it. I remembered then I have always wanted to be President of something again (I was president of my senior class in high school, but since then, well churches do not have Presidents), so I began Church Multiplication Ministries and became President! One would think that being President I would be able to take a Sabbatical whenever I wanted. Wrong. Launching a new ministry, working to get clients, taking care of clients, and being responsible for payroll to the employees does not allow for much margin for extended leave.

However, since this is the seventh year of CMM, our Board of Directors approved a six-week sabbatical, beginning in mid June and ending July 31 (I love our Board and they will get extra credit in heaven for their service and for allowing me to take a Sabbatical). According to the “Sabbatical Coach”, sabbaticals are taken for one of four reasons:

1. Exploring Self and Purpose- re-evaluate life purpose and meaning.
2. Changing Track- knowing your current career is ending you look for way to pursue a new way of life.
3. Rejuvenation—because you see your work as a vocation and are driven, prone to overwork, and a sabbatical is a way to find rest and renewal.
4. Escape—an opportunity to experience autonomy, freedom and adventure away from work and regular responsibilities.

Perhaps you are so pooped that you are thinking about leaving the pastoral life. Perhaps you need to explore your calling again. Or maybe it’s to change tracks and move into another role. Steve told the entire gathering of ministers in his denomination, just after he left his last pastorate, “Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, I am not a pastor anymore!” But his role with Key Life has multiplied his wisdom, teaching and leadership! Your ‘poopedness’ may be the sign its time for an extended leave.

For me, I wasn’t looking for myself. I already know who I am. I know my strengths as well as my weaknesses—and my calling and my position in Christ. The Gospel of Grace is continually working itself in me daily. I wasn’t thinking at all about changing tracks.

William Gladstone said, “He is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is wiser still who, from among the things he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.”

CMM is doing incredible stuff for empowering leaders to multiply gospel-saturated churches and church planting networks. In fact, we are encouraging leaders to not simply start a church…but to start a church-planting network!

I didn’t want to escape (Ok, maybe a little). Rejuvenation was my aim. I am a workaholic. That is not a virtue it’s a sin! It is non-gospel living. It is believing the lie of the serpent that I cannot trust the good will of God and I must take matters into my own hands (to quote Luther). I knew I needed to find rest and renewal in the Gospel.

Here are some suggestions for how not to take a Sabbatical designed for Rest and Renewal. No matter how much you love your family, do not plan a multi-family vacation in one house with siblings, nieces, nephews, kids, grandkids, in-laws, and planned time with their grandparents. There is no rest and rejuvenation to be found.
I would also suggest that you do not spend four days finishing a writing project with a due date. If you are smart, you will not sneak in a three-day assessment of church planting candidates. Even though I love church planters, and love being with men and women who want to become missionaries to our nation, it does not lend itself to the margin needed. You would probably already surmise that preaching for friends who are on vacation also is not really taking “leave from one’s customary work, especially for rest”. That should be a no brainer! And one other thing: do not promise your wife you will not answer email or texts (or maybe you should promise her) but don’t’ take your computer or iPhone with you!

I hope that if you are in or past your seventh year of ministry life and haven’t taken an extended leave, that you will look for the opportunity to take some form of Sabbatical that you will approach your adjudicatory and ask. Be smarter than me! Believe the Gospel and take a real Sabbatical! Jesus is the True Sabbath rest for your life. If you have taken a Sabbatical, I’d love for you to share with others your successes and advice!

Posted in Read, Tom Wood by: Tom Wood •

Distractive Stories

Dan Allender July 25 2011 - 1 Comment

I am currently in a maelstrom. The details of the story can’t be told, but it involves the heartache of being caught in a family drama of dementia-driven paranoia and complex decisions attenuated by divided loyalties and fear. I am an only son, an only child. And the winds ripped me out of bed at 4 AM as if I had been sucked up into a tornado.

I couldn’t fall back to sleep and so I rose to the promise of a new morning. What I knew to the depths of my soul and toes is that I needed to pray. I brewed a pot of coffee and as it percolated I turned on my computer that is set to the home page of MSNBC. As I stood waiting for my early morning inoculation to reality, I began to read what I discovered to be another form of inoculation—the daily stories of tragedy that litter the first page of the website. Today it is the horror of a gunmen killing 84 children in Norway. And the political imbroglio of the chess match over extending the debt ceiling.

I would be horrified if what I write trivializes either story. The death of 84 innocent children by what appears to be a right-wing Christian is beyond heartbreaking. The darkness is palpable in the first inklings of what occurred on that island. In a far different way, the war over philosophy and implementation of the American dream is deeply disconcerting. As I read both articles in the time it took to pour my first cup of coffee, I found that my focus and attention was far from what awakened me. And oddly, my soul no longer felt the necessity to breathe prayer; instead, I was lost in the dark stories of others.

I know people (in fact I do but I am also referring to myself) who watch the news every night for little more than confirmation their lives are not as bad as they could be. I am aware these people, including me, watch for more than this motive, but why would anyone watch a nightly national or local news cast when the information can be attained on-line, often with more information and analysis?

Simply said, it is for many a ritual of rubber-necking—a staring at the accident we pass, perhaps to pray for those harmed, but also to thank God we were not caught in the web of disaster this time. It is an axiom in the news industry—if it bleeds, it leads. And with the phenomena of the 24-hour news cycle, the same news has to be played again and again, with a few salient facts or ‘firsts’ discovered due to the investigative, or intrusive storytelling of the news.

Nightly news is located in 30 minute drive-bys, but CNN and Fox news is a commitment to build a portable amphitheatre around the death of a 4-year old girl whose mother fails to tell authorities for 31 days that she had disappeared. I know the story—the story as told by the media, influenced by the career aspirations of the prosecutor and the defense attorney, the pundits, and the reporters who search for any detail that might add something new to the endless cycle of repetition. This story is a tragedy, but why did it take our national attention for over two-years? It was reported that one pundit gained 30% market share by returning to this story ad nauseam. Is that fact true? Or is it another story embedded in a story that is hidden as fact that may or may not be true, but turns the process into falling down a rabbit hole into a deranged world where truth is optional and appearance is all that matters.

It is human tragedy sold as soap. The news is seldom about the complex texture of truth; it is merely a product that some purveyor is offering to gain market share. But far more troubling than the underbelly of market capitalism, the news is a look into the human condition that distracts us from having to look at our own plight. Might it be vicarious suffering to help distract us from our own? Or perhaps, it is as much watching others suffer the darkness of the human condition to remind us that we are living far better lives.

We may have trouble with our kids and thought about sending them to Siberia, but always said with a smile and a congenial laugh. Why are we drawn to family comedies, films, and novels that portray a family far more bizarre and broken than our own? Our family loves the Chevy Chase Christmas and Summer Vacation movies. It makes our holidays and trips seem normal. And why would we be drawn to the Royal Tannenbaums? Their brokenness is darker than ours (perhaps) and yet redemption comes for them—might it still come for us?

We need stories as much as our bodies need the sustenance of bread and wine. And we are daily inundated by stories that are not ours that are an antidote and a distraction from either our suffering or the absence of mystery and wildness.

For generations we have been intrigued by the oddity of the circus, the wild animals, the erotic and sequined riders, and the sketchy, vagabond handlers. We may even wonder if there is a vet who couldn’t finish school who is in a triangulated relationship with the owner’s wife. The Circus is a three-ringed narrative that for a few bucks one can visit to relieve the tedium of a ‘normal’ life.

I know people who read fiction for the same reason. A novel, however, takes much longer than a half-hour news broadcast to digest. A novel must be far more than a point of comparison or a passing accident; it must intrigue, unnerve us to tears and make us howl with the laughter of recognition. It must fill us with life to hold our attention over many hours. Fill us with life—why is it that so often, it is the stories of others that holds my attention, whether it is in the form of the evening news, or a good film or compelling novel?

Fill me with life Jesus. Fill me with your life, Jesus. It was that plea that broke the spell of MSNBC. The coffee had already begun to turn tepid in my cup when I heard the cry rise within me. I was lost to my story, captured by the distraction of other stories and lost to the One whose story is life.

I tore away from the news and entered my heartache through the morning prayer of John Eldredge. I have used this plea many times over the years and yet I was stopped this time by a simple phrase. He writes:

“You alone are Life, and you have become my life. I renounce all other gods, all idols, and I give you the place in my heart and in my life that you truly deserve. I confess here and now that it is all about you, God, and not about me. You are the Hero of this story, and I belong to you.”

This story? What Story? The answer is simple: all stories. But I am not part of all stories even if the news gives me the possibility of being nearly omnipresent. And if I subscribe to one of the pundits of the left or right, I can come presumptively close to being omniscient. But what I can never come close to encountering no matter how many stories I read, see, or hear—I can never be omnipotent, let alone omnipresent or omniscient. I am not God. I am barely the human I was meant to be. But far more, than which story, it is Jesus who is the hero of every story, most particularly my own.

Prayer is an invitation not merely for God to join our story, calamity or maelstrom. It is as well an orienting that positions us to see that our story as the unfolding of his drama, his life for us. I am not simply the son who must figure out what to do. He is the hero who is living and breathing in this story and inviting me to join him for the sake of righteousness. I don’t know what to do. He does. I don’t know what he wants, but I get to listen. Ponder. Ask. Submit. Learn. Suffer. Grow. Grieve and celebrate. I get to participate and watch. Unlike the stories on the news or in novels, I get to both stand back and watch the unfolding of the drama and jump in to the maelstrom and feel the dark winds whip at my face.

I know for certain by how this story is unfolding I will not be the hero, the one to rescue another. I may not be rescued as I desire, let alone help those I wish desperately to save. But no matter how it progresses as I turn the next page, I never have been nor will I ever be the true hero. Jesus is my life; he is my breath, and my salvation—then, now, and soon.

It seemed like such an enormous decision to pray rather than submit to the distractive allure of other stories. Once the extraction occurred, it seemed so obvious and good. My heart was alive and ready to make a series of phone calls that could easily take hours. But I heard Jesus ask a simple question: Do you like your computer’s start up page? I nearly fell off the couch. You mean do I want my computer to boot MSNBC every time I click on the internet? Oh, my. I mean I am open to take you seriously this morning because I am desperate, but as the course of my life? I don’t know. I should know. I know the right answer, but my distractions are what buffer me from the cold, dark stories that often blow through my life.

I changed my homepage to http://www.biblegateway.com.

Posted in Dan Allender, Read by: Dan Allender •

Pastoral Mistakes and the Sovereignty of God – If You’re Not Dead You’ll Make Mistakes!

Pete Alwinson July 11 2011 - No Comment

It’s axiomatic that all pastors, at times, make mistakes. Are all mistakes sins? How do my mistakes and the Sovereignty of God go together? Let’s think together about this; it might help us stay in the game as ministers.

So, a young pastor is struggling to provide for his wife and small children. His salary has been reduced because of the recent years of financial turmoil in the U.S. and his congregation’s giving is half of what it was. His book allowance, travel, professional development and hospitality budget have vanished along with the church credit card. His work load is up, his salary and perks down. He’s struggling not to be motivated by his earnings, but it’s hard for a guy not to be motivated by potential reward! But, he’s got an ace up his sleeve, he thinks: he’s got $10,000 in a savings account thanks to previous years of frugality. Instead of dipping into the 10 k to pay his mortgage, he decides to make a risky investment of this money to make a cool half million…and loses it all. His wife is angry, and now, not only does he have to deal with his mortgage, he has to get a second job to buy food and pay other bills, thus keeping him from spending time with his children who he dearly loves. Now, he clearly made a mistake. He shouldn’t have made that investment.

Was the investment not only a mistake but a sin?

Pastors nearly all struggle to hire and or call staff that fit into a well rounded team. So Bill hires Mark as his assistant pastor after doing whatever “due diligence” he possibly can. It only takes a few weeks for Bill to see that Mark was not all that he thought Mark would be, but like most pastors he’s an optimist and does all he can, devoting more and more time to Mark to bring him up to speed in his position. Some progress is made, but Mark cannot be motivated enough and never really produces, but builds a support network as all staff do, and when it’s clear to Bill that it’s not going to work out and Mark has to leave, Bill has a fiasco on his hands because Mark’s supporters think he’s great.

Was hiring Mark not only a mistake but a sin?

I think I’ve come to see that pastors are mortal, like everyone else even though we think an M.Div means we’re really “Masters of Divinity”! Like all fallen people, we have finite intellectual, emotional and decision making equipment and we do make mistakes in judgment. We err. We make bad decisions. The young pastor above made a mistake for sure. He could also have sinned in that greed could have gotten ahold of him and motivated the investment. He might not have gotten any sound counseling from godly Christians before he made the investment. He also might have been simply tricked by a smooth salesman. Pastor Bill above made a mistake most probably in hiring Mark. Did he do all he could to find out about Mark? Did he check references? Was Bill just too overwhelmed with his own workload to do a thorough search for a staff member? Did Bill’s optimism cause him mistakenly to ignore the few red flag warnings that popped up during the interview process?

Anyone reading these fictitious case stories can find logical responses to what I’ve written and shoot holes in them for sure. But my main point in all of this…is, that…

What helps me as a pastor is to see that not all of my mistakes as a pastor are sins. There is it seems to me, warrant in making a distinction between making a mistake and sinning. I have made many mistakes in ministry, and if I view them all as sins then my guilt is overwhelming because I have sinned against Jesus and His church! That’s tough to handle. If all of my mistakes are sins then I want out of the ministry because there is no room for me to be human. We make mistakes in listening to people’s stories in counseling, in hiring staff, in confronting someone in sin, in planning a program and in a thousand other ways. We’re GPs and there is no way we were trained for the broad range of duties that we as pastors have every week. There is absolutely no way we pastors can do our work without making mistakes…it’s too big, too grand…to overwhelming. I’m not the Lord of the Church, and mistakes help me remember that!

Some theologians might well say that because God is sovereign, we really can make no mistakes because God’s will is predetermined. They might say there is no such thing as a mistake because God’s sovereignty over rules our actions in every case. But, can we talk? Surely, I have made ministerial mistakes and so have you. Not all of these mistakes are sins. It helps me to be able to say, “I made a mistake” and not impugn the Sovereignty of God. Check it out:

Proverbs 16:1-9 (ESV)
1 The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the LORD. 2 All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit. 3 Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established. 4 The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. 5 Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished. 6 By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the LORD one turns away from evil. 7 When a man’s ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. 8 Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. 9 The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.

Charles Bridges on this text says:

A fine description of the Sovereign government of God! Inscrutable indeed is the mystery, how he accomplishes his fixed purpose by free-willed agents. Man without his free will is a machine. God without his unchangeable purpose ceases to be God. (Mal. 3:6). As rational agents we think, consult, act freely. As dependent agents, the Lord exercises his own power in permitting, overruling or furthering our acts. Thus man proposes; God disposes. Man devises; the Lord directeth. He orders our will, without, infringing our liberty, or disturbing our responsibility. For while we act as we please, we must be answerable. We observe this supremacy, in directing, not only an important end, but every step towards it; not only the great events, but every turn; not only in his own people, but in every child of man .

I like what Bridges says, but he leaves out the clarification that we really are not free-willed agents this side of the Fall, but sin bound agents, and fallen agents. We can only do what our nature dictates.

William George Jordan said some interesting things way back in 1909 about mistakes:

“There are only two classes of people who never make mistakes-they are the dead and the unborn.”
“An oyster never makes a mistake-it has not the mind that would permit it to forsake an instinct.”
“Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom, the assessments we pay on our stock of experience, the raw material of error to be transformed into higher living. Without them there would be no individual growth, no progress, no conquest. Mistakes are the knots, the tangles, the broken threads, the dropped stitches in the web of our living.”
“Mistakes are always a part of learning. The real dignity of life consists in cultivating a fine attitude towards our own mistakes and those of others. It is the fine tolerance of a fine soul.”
“Let us thank God when a mistake shows us the weak link in the chain of our living.”
“Omnipotence cannot change the past, so why should we try? Our duty is to compel that past to vitalize our future with new courage and purpose, making it a larger, greater future than would have been possible without the past that has so grieved us. If we can get real, fine, appetizing dividends from our mistakes they prove themselves not losses but-wise investments.”
“Musing over the dreams of youth, the golden hopes that have not blossomed into deeds, is a dangerous mental dissipation.”

The Gospel changes everything…certainly our sins and especially our mistakes! Thank God for Christ! My mistakes are not fatal, God is not surprised, and Romans 8:28 is true.

Some conclusions I would draw in talking to people who make mistakes…and to ourselves as pastors:

Well, there it is. I’m going to go and lick my wounds from some recent mistakes. But I’m still in the game, and I hope you are too.

Strength and Courage!

Pete Alwinson

Posted in Pete Alwinson, Read by: Pete Alwinson •

Too Good To Be True

Tullian Tchividjian July 05 2011 - No Comment

Having concluded a fourteen week sermon series on the book of James the week before (you can access that entire series for free here), I began a new six-week sermon series this past Sunday entitled “Pictures of Grace.” We’re going back to the Gospels and looking at various events in the life and ministry of Jesus where the shocking, counter-intuitive nature of amazing grace is on display. Each week we’ll look intently at how Jesus wrecks people with his grace, turning everything that makes sense in our conditional world upside-down.

I began the series by pointing out that there’s nothing more difficult for us to get our minds around than the unconditional grace of God; it offends our deepest sensibilities. A conditional world is much safer than an unconditional world because a conditional world keeps us in control, it’s formulaic–do certain things and certain things are guaranteed to happen. We understand conditions. Conditionality makes sense. Unconditionality on the other hand is incomprehensible to us. We are so conditioned against unconditionality–we are told in a thousand different ways that accomplishment precedes acceptance; that achievement precedes approval.

Society demands two way love. Everything’s conditional: if you achieve only then will you receive meaning, security, respect, love and so on. But grace, as Paul Zahl points out, is one way love: “Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.”

Like Job’s friends, we naturally conclude that good people get good stuff and bad people get bad stuff. The idea that bad people get good stuff is thickly counter-intuitive. It seems terribly unfair. It offends our sense of justice. Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace– “don’t take it too far; keep it balanced.” The truth is, however, that a “yes grace but” posture is the kind of posture that perpetuates slavery in our lives and in the church. Grace is radically unbalanced. It has no “but”: it’s unconditional, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and undomesticated. As Doug Wilson put it recently, “Grace is wild. Grace unsettles everything. Grace overflows the banks. Grace messes up your hair. Grace is not tame. In fact, unless we are making the devout nervous, we are not preaching grace as we ought.”

With this in mind I decided to begin with Luke 7:36-50. This is the famous account of the sinful woman (most likely a prostitute) barging into a party of religious leaders and washing the feet of Jesus with her tears of repentance. I pointed out that two rescues are happening in this passage: the obvious rescue of the immoral person but also the rescue of the moral person.

Normally when we think of people in need of God’s rescuing grace, we think of the unrighteous and the immoral. But what’s fascinating to me is that throughout the Bible, it’s the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person; it’s the prostitute who gets grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. What we see in this story is that God’s grace wrecks and then rescues, not only the promiscuous but the pious. The Pharisee in this story can’t understand what Jesus is doing by allowing this woman to touch him because he assumes that God is for the clean and competent. But Jesus here shows him that God is for the unclean and incompetent and that when measured against God’s perfect holiness we’re all unclean and incompetent. Jesus shows him that the gospel isn’t for winners, but losers: it’s for the weak and messed up person, not the strong and mighty person. It’s not for the well-behaved, but the dead.

Remember: Jesus came not to effect a moral reformation but a mortal resurrection (moral reformations can, and have, taken place throughout history without Jesus. But only Jesus can raise the dead, over and over and over again). As Gerhard Forde put it, “Christianity is not the move from vice to virtue, but rather the move from virtue to grace.”

Wrecking every religious category he had, Jesus tells the Pharisee that he has a lot to learn from the prostitute, not the other way around.

The prostitute on the other hand walks into a party of religious people and falls at the feet of Jesus without any care as to what others are thinking and saying. She’s at the end of herself. More than wanting to avoid an uncomfortable situation, she wanted to be clean–she needed to be forgiven. She was acutely aware of her guilt and shame. She knew she needed help. She understood at a profound level that God’s grace doesn’t demand that you get clean before you come to Jesus. Rather, our only hope for getting clean is to come to Jesus. Only in the Gospel does love precede loveliness. Everywhere else loveliness precedes love.

I closed the sermon by recalling a story that Rod Rosenbladt told me when we were together at the recent Gospel Coalition conference in Chicago. It’s a story about a middle-aged woman who needed help from her pastor.

She went to her pastor and said, “Pastor, you know that I had an abortion a number of years ago?” “Yes,” the Pastor replied. “Well, I need to talk to you about the man I’ve since met.” “Alright,” replied the Pastor.

“Well, we met a while back, and started dating and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. Then things got more serious between us and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. A while later we got engaged and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. Then we got married and I thought, I really need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. So I needed to talk to someone, Pastor, and you’re it.”

The Pastor replied, “You know, we have a service for this. Let’s go through that together.” So they did – a service of confession and absolution.

When they were finished, she said to him, “Now I think I have the courage to tell my new husband about my abortion. Thanks, Pastor.”

And the Pastor replied to her, “What abortion?”

What the Pharisee, the prostitute, and everyone in between, need to remember every day is that Christ offers forgiveness full and free from both our self-righteous goodness and our unrighteous badness. This is the hardest thing for us to believe as Christians. We think it’s a mark of spiritual maturity to hang onto our guilt and shame. We’ve sickly concluded that the worse we feel, the better we actually are. The declaration of Psalm 103:12 is the most difficult for us to grasp and embrace: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” Or, as Corrie ten Boom once said, “God takes our sins—the past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing allowed.’” This seems too good to be true…it can’t be that simple, that easy, that real!

It is true! No strings attached. No but’s. No conditions. No need for balance. If you are a Christian, you are right now under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ. Your pardon is full and final. In Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re clean. It is finished.

What abortion?

Posted in Read, Tullian Tchividjian by: Tullian Tchividjian •

Her name is Jenny…

Lea Clower June 20 2011 - 3 Comments

…but we call her “Lucy”. (Her favorite bedtime story was “Lucille, ladies don’t eat their hats!”)

My wife, Jeane, and I had two wonderful little boys, but the love I should have had immediately at their births just didn’t show up until I had already done a lot of damage. Then Jeff was born, January 24, 1974. In those days, the “new thing” called Lamaze was popular. It included classes where the husband and wife prepared for the birth of a child together. I was going to be in the delivery room helping my wife breathe, rubbing her tummy and her shoulders and back. Being a real support and part of something which I would never have volunteered for in my life…but then it happened, the miracle of birth. WOW! What an incredible experience. The Lord has made women so amazing and men such wimps. Ladies, I’m sorry it hurts so much, but I’m so grateful that the Lord has given you a joy that makes you forget the pain.

For me, the instant love that a father should have, every dream of being the dad I ought to be…all of it came together in that magnificent moment. Jeffery Robert Clower, named for my two best friends who went through the hell of Navy flight school with me, opened my heart to loving a son the way a father should love a son, and I was undone.

Twelve short days later, Jeff was dead…coarctation of the lower aorta, ie. a birth defect in his heart which they now correct quite easily with surgery. We weren’t Christians, but I believed there was a god, so he either punished me by “killing” my son, or didn’t care enough to save his life. Angry, drunk, bitter, and selfish, I swore we would have no more children. Jeane got pregnant again right away, I told her how stupid she was, that she knew I didn’t want any more children, and I was furious…like I didn’t have anything to do with her getting pregnant. She miscarried 3 months later, and tried to go to the hospital without me, because she knew how glad I would be. And I was glad and told her so.

Three months later during a near mental break down, Jeane was “visited” by the Lord in such a powerful way that she began following Him and loving me in a way I’d never been loved before. One year later, while in the North Atlantic, flying A-7’s off the USS John F. Kennedy day and night, and hiding a Bible under my Playboy magazines, the Lord “visited” me. He “said,” with incredible love, not anger or spitefulness, “Lea, I’m in charge. You many not understand what I’m doing, but I don’t make mistakes.”

The next morning I sent Jeane a telegram that said simply, “I want to be baptized with our next child.” Well, I was home for only three weeks and then back to the Mediterranean for a six month deployment. Guess what, Jeane got pregnant in that short three weeks and our daughter Jenny was born when I got back home and we were baptized together. I was there when Jenny was born, but we were so scared. We had already had one baby die and Jeane’s labor and delivery did not go well, but when Jennifer Jeane Clower “popped out” everything was OK. At least until she found herself growing up in the home of an angry…not drinking, but not changing alcoholic.

Her first of many major traumas occurred when she was 3 years old. I won’t tell you who or what happened, but it damaged her for the rest of her life, and it began a life of multiple traumas and poor choices. Jennifer is now 34 with a mixed raced daughter who we “helped” raise for 7 years until Jenny’s oldest brother and his wife and three children legally adopted her. The “father” of the child is not involved at all which is a good thing…he was already married when he “went after” our daughter. Therefore, Jenny has no husband, she has schizophrenia and limitless “issues” and is now currently enrolled in a residential mental health facility in hopes that she can some day live on her own.

Now remember, Jenny is the only child we had as Christians…prayed for from conception to completion…and she is God’s “gift” to us. So, if God is charge and if God answers prayer, then Jenny is God’s perfect answer. Just as she was and is…beautiful, gifted, traumatized, diseased, dysfunctional, and ill. My problem is that I prayed to God and “knew” what that perfect little girl was going to add to our family. Sometimes I feel like AA has taught me more about the Christian life and the Father than I learned in the church. A “want to have” has become a “have to have”, and therefore “my expectation” becomes the road to disappointment and resentment. “Life is what happens when you’re planning something else!” “You want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

Conclusion…God is teaching me to love my child the way He loves me….with the disappointments, narcissism, dysfunctions, disease, disorders, failures, repeating/doing the same old things expecting different results, pain, heartache, sense of failure, exhaustion… when do I get to rest, you never stop being a parent…this is part of the supernatural life…OMG…what have I prayed for?

In the world’s words, the name Jennifer is Welsh in origin and means “fair and smooth, white waves” and is the root for the name “Guinevere” from King Arthur fame. In a Christian bookstore you’ll find a book mark, at least we did, that said Jennifer means “the servant of the Lord is gentle” or “a gift from God”. And Jenny has been all of those things at one time or another, and still is on a good day, but her schizophrenia, for the most part, has stolen much of that from her and us.

Then the Lord visits me again, the way we visit Jenny in her new “home” with other mentally ill patients, and He says again, “Lea, I’m in charge. You many not understand what I’m doing, but I don’t make mistakes.” I don’t like the school the Father has sent us to, as we learn to cope, love, and encourage the way He does, but I wanted a few of you to know about us because some of you are dealing with a very similar situation…with a child, spouse, parent, or….and we understand. It’s been the “best of times and the worst of times” but the Father still shows up.

I have to remind myself that what I once thought as a trite, the Christian phrase has become part of my limited, part-time sanity… “Regret looks back… Worry looks around… Fear looks forward… Faith looks up!” …and I’ve got a real crook in my neck, and sometimes I don’t see the rainbow, only the clouds.

God bless you guys,
Lea

PS NAMI’s “Family to Family” program has been more help or almost as much help as prayer.

Posted in Lea Clower, Read by: Lea Clower •

Peter Pan/Jesus

Zach Van Dyke June 13 2011 - No Comment

When I was a kid, I wanted to be Peter Pan.

I can remember spending hours pretending to be in Never-Never Land with the lost boys playing pranks on pirates and Indians….and let’s not forget the girls…Wendy, Tinkerbell, Tiger Lily and the mermaids…oh, the mermaids.

Still to this day if any version of Peter Pan is on TV, my morning, afternoon or evening is shot.

If I’m honest, there are days now I wish I could fly away to Never-Never Land. A whole lot of days.

Why is that?

I’ve been in counseling long enough to know when I need to be curious about something and longing to be a pre-pubescent boy who wears green tights and plays with fairies is definitely something of which to be curious.

So here I go…

Why do I want to be Peter Pan?

Because I want freedom from wanting to be Jesus.

Wait…what?!

Yep. That’s my response.

I’ve been a youth pastor for 4 years now and up until this point, I didn’t really see a problem with wanting to be Jesus for others. Wasn’t that my job description? Isn’t that what people expect from those in ministry?

Aren’t I called to be Jesus for teenagers struggling with sexual identity, gossip and self-righteousness (just to name a few)?

Of course.

But after 4 years I still don’t understand the intricacies of sexual identity and often feel confused after a student opens up to me about what is going on in his or her heart sexually.

Gossip annoys me, of course, but not enough to really care about it because at least the struggle isn’t sexual.

And self-righteousness makes me wish people dead. Truly, totally, eaten by a crocodile and left as excrement on the ocean floor, dead.

So to be Jesus is exhausting for me.

Jesus offers unconditional love and forgiveness and my love and forgiveness is conditional (see previous statement about self-righteous people).

Jesus offers profound understanding and empathy and my understanding and empathy are quite pedestrian.

And I know this…and you know this…We aren’t Jesus! I know.

But come on, be honest…if you are a religious professional like me…even knowing this, you still want to be Jesus.

So why do I want to be Jesus?

Because Jesus didn’t need to repent.

As long as I am busy fixing things in others, I don’t have to face what is broken in me.

Yep. That’s why I want to be Peter Pan…plus remember the flying, the pirates, and let’s not forget the girls!

Maybe you, like me, need to stop and repent for the reasons you took the job.

Who knew being curious about a ridiculous longing would lead to repentance. I am once again surprised by Him and…

So glad it’s all about grace.

Zach

Posted in Read, Zach Van Dyke by: Zach Van Dyke •

Being Dangerous!

Tom Wood June 06 2011 - No Comment

What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?
I suspect it was very illegal and even your mother doesn’t know.

Who do you think of when you think of a dangerous person?
Besides Steve Brown or Dan Allender.

Who do you think was the most dangerous person who has ever lived?

Why do we equate danger with evil?

I would like to suggest that what is championed today in most churches is a neutered Christianity. Many pastors, church leaders and members are encouraged to be very nice to others, to our neighbors, and to our critics. Our missional endeavors are outreaches to ‘bless the city’, not to cause a stir. Wouldn’t you agree?

In Acts 19, the church planting pastor Paul went to Ephesus, in what is present day Turkey. (I hope to get there one day). It was a commercial center of the day, filled with trade, bars, businesses, and one of the largest theaters in world. They boasted a large library as well as hosting a regional bank. Ephesus was the marketplace for all of Asia…a world renowned city and melting pot of many cultures. It was a cosmopolitan city, filled with artists, musicians, poets, and actors. People came to Ephesus to use the city for business, to get rich, for sex, to buy and sell slaves and make a life for themselves. It was capital of the world’s slave trade until 100 AD.

But it was most famous for the large Temple to Artemis—“One of the Seven Wonders of the World”—Artemis was a fertility goddess and prostitutes worked out of that temple—it was an economic engine; think of the tourists, the food, lodging, and souvenirs (Artemis carvings & statues)…all the visiting worshipers spent loads of cash in the city.
In addition to the Temple, sorcery was very much a part of the life in Ephesus. The practice of black arts and magicians who were famous for writing Ephesians’ letters—where they cast spells and charms for everything (offering safety, barrenness, business success, love potions).

Ephesus also had its orthodox, traditional religious people, with a small Jewish synagogue. It seemed to pose no danger to the Temple of Artemis or the way of life in such a world class city.

But the Gospel was slowly being shared by Paul and his companions. He wasn’t holding large evangelistic campaigns, but he was teaching the gospel to people. And people’s lives were being radically changed by the Gospel. In fact an outpouring of God’s work was so dramatic, that a significant number of people turned away from the black arts, and the worship of Artemis to Jesus Christ.

And a business owner felt it. The guy made little statues, for the souvenir shops around the Temple. He was a businessman making a good life. and obviously what Paul was doing made a dent in his bottom line.

So he gathered the other business owners and sex traffickers together and said:

“Men, you know we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that man-made gods are no gods at all. There is a Danger not only to our trade…but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited and the goddess herself will be robbed of her divine majesty.”

As Luke the historian unfolds the continued work of Jesus in the world, wherever the work of the Gospel goes, it is opposed. Wherever you see Kingdom advancement, Evil counterattacks. Whether its through persecution, racism, criticism, violent threats, attacks, money/corruption, or false teaching… Paul said he lived in danger!

But here, the businessman Demetrius, says this is dangerous! This man Demetrius hit it. The Gospel intends to transform societies. To release the enslaved. To heal the wounded. To dethrone idols. To show the Glory of God as the greatest thing in the universe.

Here is the call—it’s a call to Dangerous Christianity. The Gospel is dangerous! Indeed, our freedom is scandalous, as it confronts and transforms lives—making us a danger!

Will you go there?

Missionary Jim Elliot, who was killed by the very people he had gone to tell the Gospel story wrote in his journal, “Father make me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to a decision. Let me not be a mile post on a single road. Make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.”

So what was the most dangerous thing you have done?

I’ve known all kinds of men and women who were leaders, emerging leaders, key leaders, who put their lives into the shredder. Wasted it. The acted dangerously stupid. Some were pooped because they no longer had a fight in them. Some were angry. Some were exhausted and looked for a weird way to find comfort.

Sometimes it was a moment mistake, but all leadership leverage was gone. Sometimes they just jumped into it and shredded their lives…lost all influence with their spouse, kids, people in marketplace, friends, employees…gone. They were a danger, but the wrong kind of danger. However, there is a gospel Danger and I invite you to find it.