A Model Missing Pieces

When I was a kid, I liked to put together model cars. Every once in a while I would get a model kit and find out I had key pieces missing and couldn’t put the model together the way it was meant to go together. Inevitably I would try to do the best I could and I would manage to glue some semblance of that particular model together. But…

The other day a friend called to tell me that he and his wife were filling in as interim pastors for a few months with a small congregation. He shared that the “church” was down to about 25 folks who still gathered at that building. He shared how other denominations were also struggling to have enough pastors to handle the vacancies in so many churches. Interim pastors and full time pastors are in short supply!

I shared with him that after nearly 40 years of active ministry and the majority of that in “pastoral ministry” and having been out of the Sunday Saddle for about 3 years, I had come to some conclusions: 1.) We’re out of pastors because the church has not been focussing on discipleship; 2.) We’re out of pastors because we are asking too much of pastors; 3.) Pastors expect way too much of themselves and too much of the people they are supposed to shepherd; 3.) Denominations and local expressions of the Body of Christ – The “Church”, are focused on world methods instead of Biblical models. The focus has been taken off of discipleship and placed squarely on “developing leaders”. Jesus incidentally called us to GO and MAKE DISCIPLES… not “leaders”. There are all kinds of goofy things happening with “leadership development” within the “church” in an effort to fix the problems, but most of those efforts appear to not have a lasting affect except where there is a strong personality… and even that may produce results that are anti-bible; 4.) We are not making disciples unless the people we pastor (lead) are willing to follow our programs.

Bottom line is, we are dealing with attempting to put together something with some critical parts missing. This isn’t a recent problem… it’s actually been happening for quite awhile.

I grew up in “church” or should I say, “attending church” with the model where everything pretty much revolved around the gathering at the building we called “the church” and was led by many at the time because the members had a high value of involvement. From Sunday School teachers to elders, deacons, deaconesses, a choir, a band, and the pastors, there were many ways to be involved with the many gatherings that happened. Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, midweek service and other things sprinkled in, it was a social and spiritual structure centered around that particular church and denomination. I look back on that time with some fondness, but also with some sense that there was something missing and developing within that structure that was off. As I grew up and moved into ministry within another gathering of folks, I drew on that rich history and heritage of being taught the scriptures from an early age. And then I began to attempt to pastor and ultimately recreate many of the methods and models I learned in those gatherings. Some things very good and some things… well… frustrating. One common problem is that we tend to think, “bigger is better” and the model was always get more butts in the seats and get that tithe up, so that there was money enough to get bigger and better. This model became more dependent on the talented and entrusted to the pastor to set the mission/vision and I followed that model in pastoral ministry as I felt I was “called” to do so. I tried to do just as I had learned from many who taught and trained me for “ministry” and just as they had been taught and trained for “ministry”. Looking back, I can see that things were already missing some critical pieces, but we still put things together the best we could.

That model used to kind of work, but it seems that the proverbial wheels are falling off the bus.

We have gatherings of people who have attended “church” for years, but have no real knowledge of scripture or an understanding of how they fit into the Body. They have been taught to follow the pastor’s “vision” and fill in the empty spots wherever needed, so that “ministry” can continue. The standard is high and many large congregations prefer to hire the smart ones to do the work and produce the results. If they don’t do well, then they are classified as not having the “right stuff” or some other such excuse. Sadly, I am responsible for that as much as those I am referring to. It’s a systemic problem with how we interpret “church” and our commission. It’s probably the number one problem in the lives of Christians… the “we’re not smart enough to understand what the Bible says and how to be a Christian, so we will let the professionals do it.”

So my question is, what if we aren’t called to make bigger gatherings as much as we are called to make disciples? What if some of us can only make one disciple at a time? What if we still have a whole lot of “issues” going on in our lives? Can we still make disciples?

I was told by a ministry leader once, that to entrust the interpretation of scripture to unlearned Christians was dangerous… that they needed some Bible College before they could really understand how to interpret scripture. Hmmm… did Jesus really call us to such a complicated task?

Seriously, that kind of thinking is really at the core of most Christian “Leaders” whether they want to admit it or not. I’ve run into it countless times and modeled it in ministry myself too many times to count. I had people who wanted to start a Bible Study but who didn’t seem smart enough or perhaps didn’t act “Christian enough”, in my estimation, to lead in any way within the church. I grieve now over my own actions and decisions to foster an incomplete model of Jesus’ ability to supply everything that is lacking.

So what’s the solution? As many substance abuse recovery programs say, in helping to address the addiction with their members, FIRST, YOU MUST ADMIT YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. Admit that according to the evidence, there is something missing in our attempts to go and make disciples. SECOND, quit thinking that if you just try harder and preach better, or try that latest program or subscribe to the latest “talking head”, that it will change. THIRD, ask the Holy Spirit to show you how to make disciples that also make disciples.

There’s much more to say here, but my opening illustration just keeps saying it to me over and over. We’re missing some key parts and we need to return to the Source and get the complete model, even if it puts us out of a job or we lose a paycheck. There are some things missing and we need the Lord of the Church to open our eyes to the simplicity and wholeness (holiness) of His Church and not think that bigger is always better, or that we can show God how it’s done.

What do you think?

Critical Life Lessons

I originally started this post in 2021 but only recently returned to it to add some additional thoughts, over 2 years later.

A lot has happened since I last made an entry here. As I begin to type out some thoughts, I am thinking about how much writing actually helps me to process thoughts and evaluate how to walk out this life with Jesus. Even though it’s so helpful to me, I don’t do it. I tend to put it off as a luxury I cannot afford. Time to process a few critical life lessons. They may be helpful to others, but I’m just processing these things by typing them out to help me think and pray… a little like praying out loud, but with the ability to go back and consider what was said.

Critical Life Lesson #1 – Give yourself permission to create and make time to do it.

For me, writing is essential. It releases so many pent up thoughts. But the lesson isn’t that we all need to write (although I think there’s some powerful reasons to journal), but that there are things we all should do in our lives that we oftentimes relegate to the unimportant or too extravagant to allow myself to do. Music is another such example. Too many people started an instrument in their younger years but no longer play or even consider learning another. Whether it’s music or some other creative ability, we often hide behind the excuses of “I’m not that good at it” or “I just don’t have the time or money to do it”.

Critical Life Lesson #2 – Jesus loves and values me regardless of if I am a pastor or not.

This could arguably the number 1 critical life lesson, but I’m listing these as I process in no particular order.

Pastoring is something I am called to do. I am uniquely equipped for the calling. I see that even more, now, after being out of the “Sunday Saddle” for some time now. The emphasis in the current denominational structure I was a part of is on “leadership” – making better leaders. So we have people in leadership who don’t necessarily have a pastoral gifting or a desire for it.

Stepping out of the official role as a pastor in a local gathering of believers, has taught me something I didn’t know I had even lost in the process of being a pastor for so long; a deep understanding that I am valued by God regardless of if I am a pastor – or if I am performing on a weekly basis. Some may bristle at the word “performing” but there is a certain level of performing involved, even if we don’t mean to. I talked with a fellow “retired” pastor recently and sad to say, whether we want to admit it or not, there is a certain level of “performance” related to pastoring and he shared with me that he didn’t miss the weekly pressure to produce a sermon. Attendees at a weekly worship service will often have some opinion whether the worship was good or the sermon was good. Therefore, whether we like it or not, there is some performing that has crept into our expectations of the Sunday gathering. I am happy to say that Jesus loves me and loves you, as well, whether you think you are worthy or not.

Critical Life Lesson #3 – We’re far too enamored with not forsaking the gathering together by meeting on Sunday, while ignoring our commission.

Since I have been out of the weekly Sunday gathering due to a number of reasons I won’t go into right now, I have realized that we, the gathering of believers in a local congregation, put far more emphasis on being diligent to gather on Sunday, while ignoring the need to reach out to others during the week. If we see one another on Sunday, that’s enough. If you’re not there on Sunday, that’s on you. That actually has been one of the most grievous of things to realize and that I have been a part of that problem.

Instead of seeing my not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as an exclusively Sunday event, I now am making a point to try to have lunch with or meet with those who may need some fellowship. While a spiritual component of a “prayer meeting” or a “bible study” is what we often gravitate towards, if it’s something other than Sunday, the reality is, there are plenty of folks who just need a listening ear and a willingness to just be… no performance… no fake smiling. Scripture says, Wherever two or three are gathered together in My name…

Tuning Up – Moving Beyond the Dissonance

Have you ever listened to a band or orchestra tuning right before the performance? I added a video from YouTube so you have an idea of what I’m talking about.

There’s kind of a calming dissonance… I mean it sounds good, but it doesn’t… all at the same time. I woke up today thinking about this. All the instruments are attempting to tune to the same note and also warm up a bit once they have it. It’s a sound that I enjoy, but as a percussionist (drummer) I only like it, because I know what’s coming after the tuning.

I remember in Jr High Band, that our class would often start out with the Band Director tuning the band. He would call out what note he wanted them all to play and then signal to them to hit it all at the same time. This was generally boring for the drummers, but occasionally, he would have us play a roll and sustain the roll while they played their note. He could hear one instrument out of tune. He would call out a particular instrument, that wasn’t quite on key, and call out the player by name and have them adjust. Then he would check again. The whole band would begin again to tune to the one note. Once the Band Teacher/Director was satisfied that we were all in tune (I was in the percussion section and there wasn’t a lot of tuning going on for us), then we would get with playing the songs in front of us.

A thought hit me this morning… maybe a God breathed word to me… see if this bears witness with you.

We have been in pro-longed season of tuning up. There’s been a lot of dissonance…

dissonance

noun

dis·​so·​nance | \ ˈdi-sə-nən(t)s \

Definition of dissonance

1a: lack of agreement the dissonance between the truth and what people want to believe especially : inconsistency between the beliefs one holds or between one’s actions and one’s beliefs — compare COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

b: an instance of such inconsistency or disagreement the mingling of bitter comedy and stark tragedy produces sharp dissonances— F. B. Millett

2: a mingling of sounds that strike the ear harshly : a mingling of discordant sounds especially, music : a clashing or unresolved musical interval or chord

 

We’re all playing what we believe to be the note, that our Director is telling us, but we are just tuning and there are adjustments needed and adjustments being made. The band members have to listen to each other, but it’s largely a free for all – each one attempting to tune to the rest of the band member’s instruments, but this is not music.

Here’s the point: The tuning is NOT the song we are to play; it’s only the preparation to play the piece the Director has chosen.

The dissonance, the lack of agreement between the truth and what people want to believe, has caused people to play something other than the note we are to play… we’re searching for that right note, but unless we come into tune with the Conductor, we’re gonna have to keep tuning. And I’m talking about the Church, as a whole, that continues to fight for their ideas and preferences, rather than hear the Director calling them to come into tune with what He is preparing us to play. It seems we have been tuning for a long time… It’s time for the Church to realize the Master Conductor has a piece for us to play, and it just might sound different than us tuning up and doing our own thing. The time for tuning is coming to a close and it’s time to ready ourselves to play the piece He has set before us.

I said earlier that as a drummer that I enjoyed the tuning only because I knew what was coming after we tuned – we got to play! I still enjoy hearing the orchestra or band tune up. It gets me anticipating that something is about to happen – and for us, the Church, something is about to happen! Let’s look to the author and finisher of our faith – our Conductor – and watch Him give us the cues to play the piece He has selected.

Exalting Junk Over Exalting The Best

My childhood friend passed in early January 2018. When I flew out to attend the memorial service, and be a support to the family, the family surprised me the day before I was going to fly home, by giving me my friends hi-hat cymbals. Since I am a drummer who regularly plays, this was a huge gift; to receive something my friend played, and to also receive such a high quality set of cymbals.

When I was playing them with my kit for the first time yesterday morning, I was reflecting on the difference between the much lower quality hi-hat cymbals I had been playing, and the higher quality cymbals that my friend’s family blessed me with. The new hi-hats sounded crisper, had a better bounce for the stick, and were more responsive to the pedal. It was during one of those moments that the Lord spoke something so powerful to me: He said, “Kenny, this is like what I did for you. I gave you my best blessings in My Son. It was in His dying, that you inherited ALL I have given – ALL the heavenly blessings.” He went on to say, “But many times what you do could be compared to having received the higher quality cymbals, but taking those off your kit to play the lower quality cymbals – an act that both dishonors the gift and the gift giver – not to mention exalting something of such a low quality in comparison. Exalting junk over exalting the best.”

This was quite a download… it was rocking me and consuming my thoughts as I played. Sometimes it amazes me the God can speak in the middle of something so thought consuming and physically demanding as playing a drum kit with a band, and still speak and minister to me, without it detracting one bit from playing – in fact – even enhancing my playing.

But He wasn’t done. When I began to share with the church about this, giving them the background of the gift I had received, and what it meant to me, I was super emotional. So emotional I was having a difficult time sharing the meat of what God had spoken to me. When I finally got to the place of sharing the “meat” of what He said to me, some other words came, regarding the brand and the series of cymbal – Zildjian K Series Mastersound. “Mastersound” in our case, I said, is meant to be played by the Master and too often we are being “played” by the enemy of our souls, when we accept the temporal stuff in this life in exchange for the Eternal Riches God has given to us in the life of His Son, Jesus Christ. We exalt junk over exalting the best He has given us.

This was a profoundly moving experience, that I believe I will remember every time I play those cymbals. What a wonderful gift to receive – a gift that reminds me of my friend, Dale and a gift that reminds me of my Friend, Jesus.

Minimal Thoughts On The Minimum Wage Battle

It’s been a long time since I have posted any thoughts here on my blog, but today seemed like a good day to dive back into the fray. The ongoing battle for “wage justice” and making a “livable wage” caused me to want to add my thoughts to the mix of information on the inter webs. Admittedly the Los Angeles City Council wanting to raise the minimum wage in that city to $15.00 an hour, and the labor unions that originally supported the idea, and now want to be exempted from the law, fed into my desire to comment and should cause everyone to pause and consider what’s going on.

There apparently are a fair amount of people wanting to raise the minimum wage; whether from our federal government, or within city jurisdictions, the governing bodies can tell businesses what they have to pay, as the bare minimum for their labor force. If you were a business owner, would you want someone else deciding how much you have to pay your employees? And if they (governing authorities) can tell you what to pay, how long before they also tell businesses what they can charge for their products and services?

As a young boy, I understood simple economics. If it costs more to produce something, then the costs to purchase goes up. Labor costs are a significant portion of the costs to produce a good or a service. It’s simple if you think about it; but apparently we have lost the ability to think through the consequences of our actions… even if it seems to make sense on the surface.

You can want a higher minimum wage, but you need to know the cost of what you want to purchase will go up, because all labor costs will go up and prices will have to go up to compensate the increases. They claimed it didn’t in Seattle, but they’re lying. I’ve been there and it’s expensive. If you live there, you probably had a raise in pay at your job, because incrementally everything has to adjust upward. If you can make $12.00 an hour to flip burgers, then driving delivery truck must go up as well… after all, we can’t have an entry level job pay the same as a skilled position, can we?

But my pay check is bigger! Yep. And your rent will go up, and your taxes will go up, and that new car price will go up… and on and on.

So here we go again… if I get a raise at my minimum per hour job, then I will make more money and be able to spend more and get ahead!

Perhaps it’s that kind of thinking that keeps you at a minimum pay job? You just do not possess the ability to think through the process of simple economics, and that will always make you susceptible to the government using you as a pawn to accomplish controlling you and others to make you think the government can save you and provide for you.

Has anyone considered what happens when the government runs out of people willing to work to support those who won’t? There are countless examples around the world. Let’s wake up, people!

Just my minimal thoughts on the minimum wage battle.

The Bigger They Are…

I grew up hearing the quote, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall”. While there may be some truth to that quote, I’ve discovered a more accurate quote. It’s important to note here, that I have some experience at falling, as I have in my lifetime fallen from a variety of heights, tripped, and slipped on various surfaces, and at nearly six feet in height, some would say that I qualify for the quote as stated. I know when I was younger, one of my more memorable falls was when I fell flat on my back onto the 40′ flatbed of my semi-trailer, from about 8′ up on a load I was tarping at the time. I know I fell really “hard”, but it honestly didn’t hurt that much when I was in my twenties. So if it didn’t hurt that much, how “hard” could it really be?

What I have found out recently while slipping on some ice while stepping out of my pick up at the Walmart parking lot, and managing to trip over my own pant leg this morning somehow (I’m still trying to figure that out), that it’s not so much “the bigger they are”, as “the older they are”.

Yep, that’s right, I want to suggest that we change that age old adage from “The bigger they are, the harder they fall” to “The older they are, the harder they fall.”

Yes, I know some of you will want to argue this point by addressing that the older we are the more susceptible we are to injury, but isn’t that what a hard fall is about? I ached from both of my recent falls and I can’t help but think we’ve been lied to all these years; the falls are definitely felt more as we age and therefore are HARDER! So here’s to changing that inaccuracy of information fed to young people everywhere. After all, a five foot nothing 85 year old grandmother falling is much harder than a 16 year old falling. If you doubt what I’m saying, go to your local skate park and watch how many times big you people fall and seem to think it’s funny.

Advice To Salesmen #1

I get to deal with a lot of sales people. Today I encountered two sales people. One of them made several mistakes that inspired this first installment of advice to salesmen (applicable also to sales ladies as well).

#1 – watch your language. I don’t care how your client talks or how you think they talk, do not assume that your language is more persuasive if you use expletives. You are a professional, or at least it would be nice if you could act like it, when you’re selling your line(s) of product. You are not strengthening your pitch when you assume your client is more convinced by four letter words.

I know some of my subscribers may be wondering why I’m blogging on this subject. Well, it’s a necessary subject that you may want to add your own advice to salesmen in your comments. I’ll return to my regular entries soon.

HOLD!!!

Scripture – Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. 

Observation – As the writer reviews the superiority and finality of the sacrifice of Jesus, the conclusion is that we be unwavering in our hope in Him because we are believing in a faithful God who will do what He has promised. 

Application – Applying this verse and the concepts contained in this portion is easy to spiritualize without making it a true part of what is practiced. It’s easy to say “My hope is in Him” but it’s quite another to live it out; especially when I encounter life challenges – sickness, disease, marital problems, parenting struggles, financial problems, and any other trials that attempt to question my faith and hope in if God is really there. 

It’s one thing to say my hope is in Him, but quite another to live it out when I am under full assault. But that is something that, by His grace, He has been teaching me. And that is what caught my attention this morning as I read – that holding fast is not something I just read; it is something that is actively applied in the face of whatever adversity I may face. 

I am thankful that as I have been faced with many of those struggles, that God has helped me to continually put my hope in Him in a very real way. Not seeking my own answers or to run away, but to walk with Him into and through it all.

Prayer – Father, thank You for being faithful to walk through these life challenges with me. I pray for Your continued presence and wisdom to guide me and be my strength. Help me to instruct and encourage others, so they will not grow weary and give up. 

Why the Church Needs More Spiritual Entrepreneurs, Not Shepherds by Carey Nieuwhof – ChurchLeaders.com – Christian Leadership Blogs, Articles, Videos, How To’s, and Free Resources

Great article! I so relate to this!

Why the Church Needs More Spiritual Entrepreneurs, Not Shepherds by Carey Nieuwhof – ChurchLeaders.com – Christian Leadership Blogs, Articles, Videos, How To’s, and Free Resources.

Deanna Ramsay: 4000 Strangers Sang For Me…

Deanna Ramsay: 4000 Strangers Sang For Me….