The Pilgrim Pastor

I have a growing interest in Gospel Tracts.  You know the little booklets or small flyers that tell the world about Jesus one leaflet at a time.  I am posting this to announce that I have begun to produce them.  My first Gospel “Mini-Tract” is entitled “Final Exam.”  It is a super condensed version of a story that I sometimes tell of my having passed the wrong test with flying colors and as a result got an “F” on a final paper.

Thankfully the professor allowed me to retake the exam.  Unlike that exam, though, we don’t get a “do-over” in this life.  God has so abundantly showered us with the love of His Son and we get one chance in life to choose Him.  The key question to the exam of life is not how much money did you amass, how much material wealth did you collect, how many credentials adorned your walls, but simply: what did you do with Jesus?

We all must consider that question and if you would like a tool for asking that question to others, you can visit my website (www.chrissurber.com) to link to www.printmytract.com to purchase these tracts at a very low cost.  I don’t make any money off of these; the cost is for printing alone, my reward is being used of God to bring people into the Kingdom of God, as is yours!

Pilgrim Pastor… looking for every way possible to share the Gospel with a dying world…

(This and other Gospel Tracts will soon be available at Cypress Chapel Christian Church) 

I once preached a sermon about our need to communicate in loving ways with one another “within” the Church.  My premise was that to the extent that we are Jesus to one another, the world will see that we look like Him and be attracted to Him.  To the extent that we look like just another “club” in the community and continue to “club” one another with our harsh words, they will be un-attracted to the Church and consequently they will be un-attracted to Jesus since we are His ambassadors.

The whole time I preached the sermon a certain woman was not so discreetly pointing to a certain person in the church!  She actually had the audacity to make a pointing finger and sort of hide it close to her chest so that I could see and know who she “knew” really needed that sermon!

Friends, maybe it’s not the other guy who needs to change; not the other guy who God would transform today.  Perhaps it’s me.  Perhaps it’s you.  It’s probably all of us!  By our lack of love for one another we actually do harm to the Gospel message.  When we so flippantly fail to love one another we rob the Gospel of its “teeth.” 

Jesus says that “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35 NASB) That means that we who call ourselves followers of the Master of Mercy must be willing to honestly and actively love one another if we are ever going to be able to reach our community and the world in His name.

Pilgrim Pastor… asking God for the supernatural power to love the unlovely… even if it’s me.  

Tonight the family and I ended up at a certain store which carries everything from baby chicks, toys, to riding lawn mowers, and clothes.  The specific store doesn’t really matter, but I suspect that if the general management knew how difficult it was for us to make a purchase, they would think it does matter! When we checked out at the register the clerk was able to scan every item with no problems except for one item.

Now, this one item is probably the most important item; at least to my three year old superhero.  He found the shirt on the rack, picked it out, and asked for it, and said “all-wight!”when I said that he could get it.  Apparently the bar code wouldn’t scan properly due to a recent update of the system of some sort.  The clerk tried two or three times and different ways to enter this code and that other code, but she just couldn’t scan it in.  She called a front line supervisor who said, “I’m sure the system will be updated in a couple of days.  Try coming back after the weekend and but it then.” Really?!

Christina & I were really surprised by this.  I have never been to a store where I had to work this hard to make a purchase!  I had money in hand and they wouldn’t take it for the shirt!  There was even a price tag on it.  Christina said “well can’t you just put in the price and override the system or something.” (Silly her, thinking that a store would want to sell its goods for a profit…) The answer was no.  Come back in a couple of days!

After getting the store manager involved, the clerk was finally able to make the sale through some kind of system trickery or tomfoolery or mystical retail sales enchantment or something – very much to my superhero’s liking.  This experience got me thinking though; the local church can be just the same way.  We don’t have anything to sell but we do offer “spiritual goods” and the sign is not always blinking “open” on our spiritual store front is it?

A stranger asks for help and we say, “come back tomorrow, I’m busy.”  An obviously downtrodden fellow believer walks past us on the way out of the door and we say to ourselves, “ah… maybe next Sunday I’ll ask how they are doing.” We over hear a man in the convenient store telling the clerk, whom he apparently speaks to frequently, about his personal struggles, we feel the Holy Spirit leading us to offer to pray for him, to share the Gospel with him, but we say “well,the line is long and it would be embarrassing and besides, I’m late for work;maybe next time.”

Friends, there may not be a next time.  I performed a funeral for a woman today who I had no reason to suspect would pass from this life into eternity only a few days ago.  She was elderly and had health concerns but it came quickly, as it almost always seems to do.  We are not promised tomorrow.  The sale – in this case the free gift of Christ love – must be made now. 

“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27 KJV) Speaking of a certain greedy man who thought he would store up treasure for himself, Jesus says, “But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'” (Luke 12:20 NIV)

We only get one time through this life and we are not promised tomorrow.  “This is the day theLORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalms 118:24 NIV)  This moment is all that we have.  Let us live it for Christ completely! 

Not so blessed are the loose-tongued, for they shall trample the hearts of many…

It occurs to me that a lot of what I do as a follower of Jesus is to clean up the broken pieces of which are left behind in the lives of people by other followers of Jesus. Christina and I met a woman on a plane last year whose face turned from a gleeful smile to a noticeable frown after she asked me what I did for aliving.  “I’m a Pastor” I said.  “Ohhh…” was the sound she made...

After we talked for a while she told me that the kind of Christianity I was talking about – you know, Bible-stuff, striving to look like Jesus, sound like Jesus, love likeJesus – was not what she had experienced in her religious upbringing or in her experience with professed Christians.  She said that most Christians she knew were overly opinionated, holy-only-on-Sunday, and not very Christ-like.  Sadly, it wasn’t that difficult to believe her.

It strikes me that many of us, dare I say, most of us, are entirely too freewheeling with our opinions and far too reserved with the love and truth of Christ.  Jesus did not say “Blessed are the belligerent for they shall get their point across.”  He said blessed are the poor in spirit (humble), blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (sincere), blessed are the merciful (like Jesus), and so on.

It seems that the more outrageous, egregious, hurtful, unhelpful, or outrageous an opinion it is – the more compelled we feel to share it! Of late, Christina and I have been taking slow steps of late to make healthier and as we see it, more responsible choices with things like what we eat or don’t eat and how we spend our time as a family.  In particular, for health reasons and humane treatment of animals, we have begun eating only cage free eggs.  This is one step on our present journey to be and become more centered as a family.

Now, just in case that phrase leaves you in utter bewilderment, as it has to most people I have mentioned this too, a cage free egg is the “slightly” more expensive product of a chicken that was raised outside of the incredibly small cages that most production farm chickens live in. 

In telling my “cage free” story here I know I run the serious risk of incurring more of the bewildered looks and comments such as “What the heck is a cage free egg?  What difference does it make?  It’s just a chicken?! Why on earth would you spend twice as much on those eggs? What’s the point?”

Here’s the point: Why have I quickly learned not to share about my eating of cage free eggs with other followers of Jesus?  In telling this story to other Christians, I have incurred everything from sarcastic comments to obvious disgust!  And I am a Pastor! 

When I choose to eat cage free eggs I am not calling into question your choice not to.  In fact, in all fairness, my choice to eat cage free eggs doesn’t have anything to do with you.  Likewise, your choice not to do so doesn’t have anything to do with me.  For all I care, you are welcome to guzzle a dozen of them raw, straight from a blender, every morning like Rocky Balboa training to fight Apollo Creed! 

My point here has very little to do with our eating of Cage free eggs.  I don’t even care very much about eggs.  As a follower of Jesus, in fact, I am much more concerned with our routine inability (unwillingness) to speak in a way that honors Christ more than our own opinions.

When we trample others in the name of speaking the truth, we look a lot more like Judas than Jesus. We betray Christ when we trample unbelievers with our opinions, rather than showering them with the love of Jesus! I don’t care about what kind of eggs you do or do not eat.  I really don’t. I do care what we look like to the world.  I do care how we present Christ.  The truth of the Gospel is best served on a platter of love.

I do pray for all of us who proclaim Jesus to learn to cage our opinions and set free the love of Jesus.  How? Here’s a place to start:

When we are not sure what to say: don’t. 

“When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. “ (Proverbs 10:19 NIV)

“A man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor, but a man of understanding holds his tongue.” (Proverbs 11:12 NIV)

“Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of thewise brings healing.” (Proverbs 12:18 NIV)

Friends, we are never going to be perfect.  That’s why God saves by grace.  But that is no excuse for allowing our tongues to rule us.  Only a fool does nothing because he cannot do everything. let us be mindful of what we say and how we say it. 

As followers of Jesus let’s make every attempt to have our words put Christ on display! “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” (Colossians 4:6 NIV)

Perhaps eggs and the Gospel should be cage free and our opinions should be caged.

Sincerely,

Pilgrim Pastor, holding my tongue on the journey...  

So, I took my two youngest sons to an “Easter Egg Drop,” which was put on by a local start up church. I would describe “AX Church” is a modern paradigm Emergent or Missional Church, though I’m not sure that is how they would describe themselves.  I know their lead pastor, whom I referred to in a conversation with him today as just another average ordinary everyday radical. 

I first met Cameron a couple of years ago during the earliest part of their church planting experience.  In the time since, they have built a core group, held worship meetings which rival the attendance of most local well established churches in the area, and had some very successful and widely attended community events. While their methodology is quite different from that of the church I serve, I pray for them regularly and ask God to work through them.  They are, for the most part, a young bunch of Jesus followers whose hearts are in the right place and put their money, time,and energy where their mouth is.

Today, as I held my sons hands in a crowd of perhaps 5 or 6 thousand people, watching the Easter Bunny descend in a helicopter onto a field at alocal elementary school – proceeding to dump thousands of plastic eggs – I was struck at the sheer size of what this local church plant, led by an early twenty something young man, armed only with the love of Christ, had done.  Then I asked myself, “Self,” that’s what I say during internal dialogue... “Self, what exactly have they done?” 

The Pharisee in me wants to be skeptical of what they have done and even some of the other things they are doing. There is a part of me that says, “How does this honor Christ?  What does this have to do with the resurrection?  To what extent is this directly ministry and to what extent will this facilitate future ministry?”  For a fellow church leader and follower ofJesus, I think those are fair questions.

To be fair though, some would, and probably have, asked the same questions of my use of Christian comedy.  While the comedy is clean, often about church topics, and some of the comedians I occasionally present do give a positive Christian testimony, the same questions apply.  Does everything we do as a church have to be directly evangelistic and worshipful?  Is everything my church does God-honoring? In what manner does coffee hour honor God, for example?  

AX Church did collect several hundred names of people to whom they can later send invitations to worship events. They did offer a great witness of a church loving a community.  They did sacrifice a great amount of time, money, and energy to make this thing happen with no strings attached.  They told the community – nearly half of it in fact – “come have a good time on us.  We love God and guess what, we love you too.” 

My question to myself is “Self,” remember that’s how I address myself during internal dialogue… “Self, what have you and the rest of the more established – institutional– churches done lately to shower that kind of witness on nearly 50% of our immediate area?”  Self didn’t have an answer. 

I’m reminded of the story of a certain woman criticizing the great Preacher D.L. Moody with regard to his method of evangelism.  His response was to ask her what method she used.  She replied, “Well I don’t do evangelism.”  His reply: “Then I like my way better than your way of not doing it.”

While we may differ with regard to our methods and manner of doing church, I like AX Church’s way of doing evangelism much better than the countless ways that many more well established churches in our area are presently failing to do it all.  I’m going to continue to pray for my radical brothers and sisters in Christ and trust that God has great things in store for them.  I’m asking God for favor in turning their crowds into groups of disciples; thier events into souls for the kingdom.

I’m hopeful that as this church matures, God will use these radicals to challenge the institutional, establishment, more traditional, churches to step out into traffic once in a while and risk our reputations and comfort for Jesus Christ as well.

The Pilgrim Pastor 

Looking Like Jesus on this journey means loving this homeless man as much I love myself... 

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:36-40 NIV)

Sincerely,

The Pilgim Pastor, struggling with what it means to imitate my savior.  Christ-Like love sees the need, not the cause. 

I like being known as a good person.  I really do. I am constantly working hard to deflate the ego of the 10 foot tall bulletproof Marine who lurks somewhere deep within me.  Churches like being known as “good churches” too, don’t they?  I mean what church member doesn’t like to be a part of a place known for its beautiful edifice, its smiling pastor, or its wonderful luncheons? Who could blame them, right? 

We all like to be a part of places, own things, or attend church in buildings which are known for being good.  But what is a good church anyway?  I met a man not long ago who asked me “whatis good preaching anyway?”  He doesn’t go to church or have a particularly profound Christian faith.  His question was pretty honest and fair.  My answer: “Good preaching is that which adequately articulates the worth of God.”  Surely there is more to it, but that kind of sums up the essentials I think. 

What about church? What is a good church?  Is Church a place, a thing, or just a building? 

In Matthew 16:18, speaking of Peter’s declaration that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus says, “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not over power it.” (NASB)  Jesus promise is that He will build (is building) His Church upon the truth that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah,the Savior of the World, through whom we have peace with God, reconciliation with one another, and eternal life.

The Greek word translated Church in this instance is “εκκλησι
α,” ekklesia.  In its most literal rendering it means “the called people” or “those who are called out or assembled.”  The Church is made up of those who are called out of this world by the grace of God to be assembled together in one body – the Church. 

Church is not a place.  Church is not a thing.  Church is not a building.  The Church is a gathering of people who have been called by God to collectively engage in worship, spiritual growth, and evangelism.  A cycle of knowing, growing, and showing the worth of God. The primary mission of the Church is to make disciples and then… make more disciples! It’s pretty simple really.  That is, when we make Church about being the called out ones.

We gather together to know God, grow in our knowledge of and dependence upon God, and then we show the world the power of God in us through the active tense proclamation of the Gospel – in word and deed.  Church is a verb!  Church is the present tense activity of God in us displaying His worth.  Church is a verb.  

These are often dismal days in the life of the Church in our land.  We pray for revival and God tells us to get up out of our buildings and imitate Christ!  We pray for God to provide the means necessaryto upkeep our aging buildings and God tells us to get out of our buildings and win our communities to Christ!  To quote the late Evangelist Leonard Ravenhill, “Revival tarries because we tarry.”

We are not all called personally to be evangelists, however,we are “called out” collectively to proclaim the Gospel plainly, unashamedly,and to focus on being disciples and making more disciples.  Church is a verb.  How can God use you today to actively proclaim His worth?

Here are some practical ways to share your faith:

1.      http://www.evangelismcoach.org/2008/10-practical-ways-of-sharing-your-faith/

2.      http://www.gospeltractsociety.org/(I have begun a personal campaign of sharing tracts)

3.      Pray fervently that God would open a door for evangelismand be sensitive to recognize when that door opens and courageous enough to gothrough it.

4.      http://www.ptl.org/sharing/92ways.php

5.      http://christianity.about.com/od/practicaltools/a/shareyourfaith.htm