organic christianity

altars to god or monuments to self?

I ran across this blog entry by Mark Batterson.  I respect him as an author, a pastor of a growing church and a man who is leading my generation of leaders.  I hope this post challenges you as a leader in training.  If you enjoy this post I recommend you check out Mark's book In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, and visit his blog, Evotional.com. 

"Altars to God or Monuments to Self?"
This morning I'm doing a session at the Evolve Conference titled The Secure Leader.  I'm going to use Saul as a case study in insecurity.  Two verses represent two defining moments in his life.

I Samuel 14:35: "And Saul built an altar to God; the first one he had ever built."  So far so good.  Saul is building altars to God.  But fast-forward one chapter.  I Samuel 15:12 says, "Saul went up to Carmel to build a monument to himself." Somewhere between those two verses, Saul stopped building altars to God and started building monuments to himself. There is a fine line between Thy Kingdom Come and My Kingdom Come.  At some point, it was no longer about God.  It was about Saul.

Here are seven habits of secure leaders:

1) Don't play the comparison game. 

No one wins! Comparison either leads to pride or jealousy!

2) Success isn't numbers

Saul got caught up in the numbers game. And David had better stats. Listen, if my children grow up to love God and everything else falls apart I'm successful. But if NCC grows to 50,000 people and I sell 10,000,000 books it means nothing if my family falls apart. Jesus was successful because he poured his life into twelve people!

3) Celebrate your failures.

Insecure people are afraid of failing. Secure people laugh at themselves.  They celebrate failure because it accentuates what God can do inspite of us!

4) Don't panic

Saul panics when his men start scattering so he makes a sacrifice instead of waiting for Samuel. Insecure people get nervous. They give up. Secure leaders hang in there no matter what.

5) Don't get defensive

How you handle criticism will make you or break you.  You need tough skin and a soft heart.  If you're insecure your defense mechanisms will get the best of you.  So instead of leading out of imagination you'll lead out of insecurity.

6) Surround yourself with the right people

Who was Saul's greatest asset? David. But if you are insecure, your greatest asset will become your greatest threat. And it will short-circuit your ability to surround yourself with a great team. And it will limit your influence.

7) Keep building altars to God

God often uses us at our point of insecurity because then He gets all the credit.   I pray for the favor of God as much as anything else because I  want God to do things for me that I cannot do for myself.   And every time we experience God's blessing we need to build an altar.  That's why we named our coffeehouse Ebenezers: hitherto the Lord has helped me.  The blessings of God either turn into pride or praise.

Are you building altars to God or monuments to yourself?

the wardrobe

Reflections of Rick McKinley's early conversion and revelation of the church after many years:

"It was like I had entered C.S. Lewis's warddrobe, full of anticipation, but instead of standing in a magical place of fawns, witches and every kind of possibility I somehow managed to walk through the wardrobe and into a dentist's office.  People sat around reading magazines asking me to calm down, to be quiet, to take a seat.  People say it very nicely, of course, like you would in a dentist's office.  The place was clean, with polite smiles everywhere and sterile smells.  What are you suppose to do in a waiting room except to try to kill the time?  I did a lot of that.  I killed time in college groups.  In church.  In Bible college.  I even have killed time as a pastor. 

But leaning back in my chair one day I realized that the walls of the waiting room were actually paper-thin.  Behind the veil of Western evangelicalism existed an untamed, revolutionary reality.  The world on the other side of the wardrobe did exist.  You just have to tear down the fake walls, kill the fake music, and let yourself go crashing newborn, wide-eyed anticipation out int the world.

And there it is all around you.  The kingdom of God."

I can't agree more whole-heartedly with Rick's description of probably what many of us go through as long-time Christians.  In my pursuit of a more organic view of Christianity I hope I rediscover the adventure of life and church beyond the fake walls we erect in church and our lives.  I hope I can become more like a child as Christ told us to.  Because being all grown-up and having a "mature" view of what church and Christianity should look can really suck from my own experience.  I sometimes desire to unlearn a lot of things I have been taught indirectly and directly by other Christians and just come to God humble, ignorant and hungry for Him to deposit in my spirit the seeds of His kingdom.  In this discovery I feel a bit like Lucy in the Chronicles of Narnia, curious and anxious to see what is beyond the wardrobe.

in heaven

This last week at Generation Unleashed we were so blessed by a great pastor named Joel Stockstill.  Our youth group was touched by the message of the cross that he preached with conviction.  Not only is he the son of a famous minister but he also is a pastor of the largest youth group in America of about 6,000 students.  As a youth pastor I was encouraged by his journey of faith and willingness to not compromise and see God come through miraculously.  At the time of the conference his wife was struggling with cancer and it didn't look good.  But Joel was still full of faith and trust in God.  I was sadly informed last night that his wife passed away at the age of 24.  They had only been married for 3 years and tragedy has hit there family.  I was so impressed by how Joel and his family have been handling this impossible circumstance.  I recommend visiting www.joelstockstill.com to read the posts of how they have been processing through all this.  I hope that when I face impossible situations in my life that I will respond with the same faith and courage as Joel Stockstill has.