Confession: it’s easy for me to fall into the trap of defining our success or failure as a church numerically. When attendance is high, I’m high. When it’s low, I can be low.
After being here for a few months and seeing the incredible people that make up The Bridge church, I knew The Bridge was going to grow. Then one day I was reading Luke where Jesus compares his kingdom to a tree, I started praying for The Bridge, and spontaneously picked up the closest piece of paper and drew this picture…
The tree on the left is big with shallow roots. The tree on the right is small with deep roots. A few few observations:
- the tree on the left is easily uprooted
- the tree on the right can withstand seasons of trial
- the tree on the left looks stronger
- the tree on the right is stronger
- the tree on the left won’t produce much fruit because it doesn’t have the root system for adequate nourishment
- the tree on the right will produce much fruit for its size
- lots of people will be impressed with the church on the left
- anyone who knows trees will be more impressed with the church on the right
I’d rather be the one on the right. It’s healthy.
After The Bridge being in a season of very rapid growth, the thing that God has been bringing to my mind the last few days is that our goal isn’t merely church growth – it’s church health. According to the New Testament healthy churches grow, but not all growing churches are healthy.
I’m spending a lot of time thinking about this right now and could use your help. What Biblical values or Scripture passages come to your mind that tell us what a healthy church is?
Incredible worship gathering yesterday as we addressed the doubt statement “Science has proven The Bible is a myth”. Praise Christ for the beauty and design of creation… but even more for his Word. Here’s a link to yesterday’s sermon. And here are a few of the Hubble pics we showed…
And it’s Monday so everyone needs a pick-me-up. I’ve recently been accused of being “intexticated”, but I’d never do this…
One of my heroes in the faith, Matt Chandler, found he had a brain tumor last week. In a very dark time in my life I found Matt’s sermon audio podcasts for his church, The Village Church, and God used his preaching in my life to breathe vivacity in a heart that was “unfeeling like fat” (Psalm 119). I identified with Matt so strongly because he too struggles against having a love-hate relationship with the church but loves Christ-exalting, urgent preaching in light of the eternity into which we will all slip.
Matt has brain surgery this morning and here is his blog post to his church…
The last seven days have been some of the most interesting of my life. I have felt anxiety, fear, sadness and a deep and unmovable joy simultaneously and in deeper ways than I have felt before. I am grateful for this heightened sense of things. Today at 10:45 a.m. CST I will have a good portion of my right frontal lobe removed. I head into that surgery with a heart that is filled with gratitude and hope.
Here are some of the things I am thankful for in no particular order:
- I am thankful for the thousands of you who have prayed and fasted for my health. It has brought far more tears to Lauren’s and my eyes to receive this kind of attention from the Church universal than this tumor has.
- I’m thankful for health insurance because I’m guessing they aren’t doing my five-hour surgery for free!
- I am thankful that I have deep, real friendships at The Village with Michael Bleecker, Josh Patterson, Brian Miller, Chris Chavez and Beau Hughes. They have been such a comfort to me and my family this past week. Pastors should have good friends on their staff. It’s risky but worth the risk.
- I am grateful for the men of God in my life, namely John Piper who taught me to hold my life cheap and to join with Paul in saying “I don’t count my life of any value or as precious to myself if only I might finish my course and complete the work that He gave me to do to testify to the Gospel of the grace of God. I’m nothing, I just have a job. God keep me faithful on the job and then let me drop and go to the reward.” Without this strong view of God’s sovereign will, I’m not sure how you don’t despair in circumstances like mine.
- I am thankful for my wife Lauren. “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.’” “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”
- I am thankful for my children. Audrey the Beautiful, Reid the Valiant and Norah the Joyous. Being a daddy to these three is one of the greatest joys of my life.
- The privilege of seeing and appreciating all of life through the grid of a heightened sense of my own mortality.
- I am thankful for brilliant doctors and surgeons who have been given a real gift by our great God and King to repair things as complex as the brain.
- I am thankful for The Village Church. If there is a place that loves Jesus more, takes sanctification as seriously and wants to see the lost love the great King deeply I am unaware of it. These last seven years have been a spectacular joy!
- More than anything else I am grateful to my King Eternal, my Lord Immortal, for my God invisible. He alone is God. All Glory and Honor, Forever to You O God. I am overwhelmed in these moments by God Himself and the assurance of a future inheritance of a Kingdom that cannot be shaken and where all things are made new (Hebrews 12).
Christ is All,
Matt Chandler
Praying for a hero in the faith, brother in Christ, and co-laborer in the gospel today with a much heavier heart than I thought you could have for someone you’ve never met…
I’m getting ready to be really honest here.
Until about a month ago, when someone said they were “studying” Scripture during their morning devotion I would nod my head meaningfully like I knew what they were talking about but I really had NO IDEA what that looked like whatsoever. Another moment of brute honesty: just reading – while Biblically commanded and invaluable – has been one of the least effective ways for me to encounter and hear from God through the Scriptures. It’s too easy to lapse into your eyes just passing over words you don’t understand and that aren’t sinking into your soul.
I’ve been doing an “inductive study” on Psalm 119 for the last few weeks (about 6 verses per day) and it’s been intensely stirring and spiritually rich. Studying Scripture is simple, Biblically rich, practical, and it works God’s Words into your mind so that you remember them throughout the day.
Try this tomorrow morning:
Pick a short section of Scripture (I’ve been going by the headings in my Bible) and write these three things on a piece of paper or a page in your journal…
- What does it say?
- What does it mean?
- What is God saying to me today?
Under “What does it say?” jot down every minute detail you notice – EVERYTHING, no matter how small. Under “What does it mean?” interpret, in your own words, all of the things the passage says and implies. Finally, under “What is God saying to me today?” write down the thing that hit your heart the most as you worked through the passage. I’ve been spending about 30 minutes on this each day and it’s been incredible.
Sorry for the break in the blog action. I’ve been busy gaining weight spending time with family this holiday.
Wow. The last month has been amazing. To put things in perspective, there are around 40-50 more people per week making it to our worship gathering to hear the Scriptures preached, our Kids’ Ministry classrooms are ALREADY getting full, we’re preparing ourselves for Gift For Christ, and the Doubting your Doubts series has struck a serious chord in a LOT of people leading to gospel-growth.
At staff meeting last night, we all sat around for 30 solid minutes naming off evidences of God’s grace that we have to be thankful for without having to stop and think for a second. God has been sooooo good to us, Bridge Family.
So in celebration of Jesus getting more famous through The Bridge, here are some pics of our first Sunday at the new site from a month ago…
-
- my favorite pic o’ the day
-
- Student Room
-
- for da’ babies
-
- getting ready to lead us to the throne
-
- a little “cozy” in here
-
- the guys who made it happen
-
- Wolverine
I am a huge fan of Sally Lloyd-Jones’ “The Jesus Storybook Bible“. Jana bought this for the Kids’ Ministry last year and we liked it so much that we brought it home every week and read parts of it to each other before bed.
It is not only enchantingly written and illustrated but it absolutely DRIPS with Jesus-centered theology. It does what most adult Study Bibles fail to do: it teaches kids that Jesus is the main character of every part of the Bible.
As an example of the writing, after it tells the story of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God and the Fall that separated mankind from God, she writes…
Well, in another story, it would all be over and that would have been… THE END.
But not in this story.
God loved his children too much to let the story end there. Even though he knew he would suffer, God had a plan– a magnificent dream. One day, he would get his children back. One day, he would make the world their perfect home again. And one day, he would wipe away every tear from their eyes.
You see, no matter what, in spite of everything, God would love his children– with a Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.
And though they would forget him, and run from him, deep in their hearts, God’s children would miss him always, and long for him– lost children yearning for their home.
Before they left the garden, God whispered a promise to Adam and Eve: “It will not always be so! I will come to rescue you! And when I do, I’m going to do battle against the snake. I’ll get rid of the sin and the dark and the sadness you let in here. I’m coming back for you!”
And he would. One day, God himself would come…
Call me a baby… but I wept when I read that to Jana the first time. Our children will hear it someday.
My excitement over this makes me a “ministry geek”.
Here’s the backstory on this. One of my “pace-setters” in ministry that I want to learn from is JD Greear, the pastor of a great church in North Carolina named Summit Church. Pastor Greear hosts a blog that, every Friday, does an “Ask-anything Friday”. The blog gets thousands of hits daily and each Friday receives hundreds of submitted questions. Last Friday my question was selected to be responded to by Pastor Greear!
BY FAR, the hardest thing about the last year at The Bridge has been the relational strain of the church doubling in size (twice as many people we want to spend time with) while my time hasn’t. It feels like my bills doubled and my income stayed the same. That’s not just hard, but painful sometimes. So here was my question…
What is the most important thing for a pastor of a church that’s out-growing the “everyone knows the pastor” phase to do?
I think the most important thing is to, before you get to that phase, develop a culture in the church that leadership is multi-leveled. That comes from teaching on the egalitarian nature of ministry gifts–that each believer is empowered by the Holy Spirit with gifts to minister to the body. I often tell our congregation that according to Ephesians 4:11, when I became a pastor I left “the ministry.” I became an empowerer.
There are small but significant things you can do to inculcate this, like referring to yourself as only “one of the pastors,” or sharing significant stage time with other leaders. You can strategically not show up at certain events so that other leaders can be seen as such. People will whine and moan about this at first, because everybody knows if you (the lead pastor) are not there it doesn’t really count in God’s eyes… but overall, that’s good pain for them to go through and they’ll get used to it.
And, for you, the pastor, you have to get used to having people disappointed with you. If you’re a type-A people pleaser like me, that’s difficult. I have to remind myself that God didn’t call me to please people by meeting all their expectations, but to pastor a church. My assignment is a proactive, not reactive one.
I also found it very important to set a precedent, from the very first week I was pastor, to emphasize to the congregation that the greatest thing I could do for the people was teach the word of God faithfully and creatively each week, and so we would guard viciously my preparation time. From the beginning I’ve never taken calls or emails before 11am, because that is my time in prayer and the word. I could be a wonderful counselor, administrator, phone call answerer, problem solver, etc but if I am not teaching the Word of God with power each Sunday then the church suffers. Flipping that around, if I teach the Word well each Sunday, other things may struggle for a while, but the church will be healthy and other leaders will arise to do those things… or, through faithful preaching, you can grow the size of your congregation to where you can hire someone to do them. Either way, guarding my time in the Word has been a key to developing multiple leaders.
I have also found that developing a culture of sending people out is important in raising up leaders–whether that be out into the community for ministry or somewhere to plant a church or new campus. Real leaders love a challenge and compelling vision. Leaders like to lead, not just follow. They will not be content to be cogs in “your machine”; they will thrive when you are empowering them to see the things that they can lead in the church and community. We at the Summit often emphasize that the best ideas for ministry are in the congregation, not in our offices. Our role as pastors is to inspire and release. I would rather our church be like a group of wild steeds and our staff be like the reins trying to keep all the horses running the same direction than I would our staff be more like the engine driving a car.
Surprisingly to me, considering the size of our church, I feel relatively balanced, and I think that is because of we have a large leadership culture. People in our church really do see a host of pastors, small group leaders, and coaches as every bit as able to minister the Word in the power of the Holy Spirit as I am. I have the freedom now to talk to people comfortably after service, and am able to return most of the phone calls and emails that come to me. That’s in part because people from the church don’t email me as much anymore–because there are multiple leaders they can talk to. That wasn’t always the case. I used to get asked about every question you could think of–from theology to complaints about the church to math word problems (that’s not a joke!).
Tim Keller wrote a great article about churches going through new stages and new demands on the leaders… I’ve read it but don’t have it and don’t know what it’s called. Anyone know?
Here’s another blog on this subject.
OK… I feel like I’ve rambled on… hope this at least plants some good ideas.
Someone visited The Bridge recently and anonymously messaged me with the question I hope every person who ever visits a worship gathering leaves asking…
Hey Pastor Josh. I was wondering what about your God inspires you to follow and pursue him? What do you personally think makes him worth dedicating so much heart and life to?
I don’t know who you are or what has brought you to this question, but I want you to know I’ve been praying for you since you messaged me and pray that you read this with seriousness. Here’s my response:
God – revealed in Scripture and made available to us through The Cross – is the only thing I’ve ever chased that has satisfied the thirst of my soul and given me lasting joy. I don’t pretend to know you, but you are human and made to worship. Whether you know it or not you ARE dedicating heart and life to something in place of God all the time – a counterfeit god. Something occupies the “position of glory” in your heart.
To be very honest and frank with you, at different times in my life I’ve dedicated heart and life to…
- Fame – the love and admiration of peers
- Lust
- Success at work
- A romantic relationship
- Financial betterment
I don’t know what you’ve chased but if you look you’ll see that all of them promise joy. None deliver. They have all left me ruined, hurt, deeply ashamed and hopelessly unfulfilled.
Hope beyond hope – In Scripture we collide with a God so powerful, loving, righteous, and holy that he finally satisfies the hope of our hearts. He gives us joy. David – a dirty sinner like you and me – echoes this in Psalms:
You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forever more. Psalm 16:11
You responded to a one-sentence message I sent you to this effect:
I see he gives you joy, but doesn’t he give pain too?
The Bible doesn’t and I am not equating “comfort” with “joy”. In fact, God promises us that if we are willing to seek joy where it can only be found that discomfort will follow. 2 Timothy 3:12 (written by a man who was beheaded for following Jesus) says…
In fact, anyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
No, seeking God will not eliminate discomfort in your life because we live in a world that is (for now) in rebellion against God. But he will give you joy in the midst of pain and sorrow that sustains you where nothing else will. Again, I don’t know you, but I sense from the tone of your messages that you are in the midst of pain.
Sometimes it feels like God is killing us when he’s actually saving us. Maybe – just maybe – God is painfully removing from you some of the things you’ve trusted and tried to build your happiness upon so that you can finally find the only real, lasting joy that exists. This can only be found by turning away from chasing, trusting, and obeying other things and placing your faith in Jesus – that he was God and took the place that you deserved on the cross because of your sin.
My head is hurting but my heart is on fire after spending the day studying for this week of the Doubting your Doubts series: There can’t be just one true religion.
The issues/worldview series that we do at The Bridge are always A) the most fun for me and B) the most difficult. This Doubting Your Doubts series is no different. While my doubts have usually arisen elsewhere, we talked this week about something that obviously struck home with a lot of people as Grandpastor Rick examined the question “How could a good God allow suffering?”
I saw/read these two things a while ago but both were so Biblical, powerful, and helpful that I saved them. The first is John Piper exalting the cross in this issue and the second is a post by JD Greear on the question.
