one mo blog

In the book of Acts, when Paul is getting ready to leave Asia Minor and head back to Jerusalem, he gathers the church leaders and here is part of what he says:

And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

Acts 20:25-27

I’m just wondering what it would look like if all Christians had this kind of devotion to the word of God and to the people around them. How would our lives be different if we really believed that our families, friends and neighbors blood was in our hands?

Faith Authenticity, Church, Missional

Jenny’s been reading Uprising, by Erwin McManus lately & a couple weeks ago we had a discussion about his chapter on authenticity.  I thought his words were very good & a proper way to conclude this series.

In recent times in our culture we have put an increasing value on authenticity and a decreasing focus on integrity.  This is strongly influenced by a disdain for the pretentious and a longing for anything that is real.  In principle I wholeheartedly embrace the shift, except where authenticity is romanticized.  When calling for authenticity, we need to take seriously the brokenness and sinfulness of the human heart.  If to be authentic means to be who we really are or to express what we really feel, then in most cases I’m going to vote for hypocrisy.  Our prisons are filled with men and women who acted on their feelings and impulses.  If authenticity is about being true to yourself, these individuals should be our models of inspiration.

I think McManus is right, we too often use “authenticity” as this buzzword in churches, but if we were really authentic to ourselves we wouldn’t be very good Christians…or people.  By our nature we are fallen and sinful, “all we like sheep have gone astray”.  If we were truly authentic to that we would be pretty despicable people and not at all who God wants us to be, or who Jesus taught us to be.

I guess what that means to me is while we need to strive for integrity, to become who Jesus wants us to be.  However, we should never forget who we were (and are).  If we forget about our sinful nature we allow pride to set in and we stop striving to be more like Christ.  Worst of all, we keep ourselves from real authentic community where we help each other to overcome our faults.

Honestly, this is a huge challenge to me.  This series has really caused me to look in the mirror and figure out if I’m living up to the standards I’m writing.  If I’m honest with myself the answer is “no”.  There are too many areas in my life that I’m not honest about with myself or my church community.  Too many areas where I have stopped striving to be more and have become stagnant, satisfied with mediocrity.

If I allow myself to be honest and authentic with those that God has put in my life I know I can have a much fuller life, a life much closer to the one Christ wants me to have…and not to be cheesy or anything, but I know you can too.

Just my $.02

The Authenticity Series:

1. “I Hate Church”
2. Emotional Vulnerability
3. Pride
4. Authentic Leadership
5. Putting on the New Man

Faith Authenticity

Sorry it’s taken me so long to get to the next post in this series.  But here it is.  If you’re having trouble tracking where this is coming from I recommend going back and reading the first three parts.  I actually had to do just that before writing part 4.

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In Boy Scouts before you can advance a rank you need to finish all the requirements (merit badges etc.) and then have a Scoutmasters Conference.  In this conference you sit down with your troop’s scoutmaster and discuss if and why you should be allowed to advance.

When I was in 11th grade and had finished all the requirements for the Life badge (the one right before Eagle) I sat down with my Scoutmaster for this conference.  One of the emphasis in the higher ranks is leadership, so my Scoutmaster asked me what I thought made a good leader.  I don’t even remember what I said, it was what I didn’t say that my Scoutmaster picked up on:

“What about leadership by example?” he asked me.

I played some lip service to the idea, and told him I thought it was important.

“So show me.” he responded.

Ouch!

He went on to explain that I was one of the oldest & most looked up to boys in the troop, but that I always came to meetings out of uniform.

I was mad.  I was pissed.  I had just spent a whole summer working at Scout camp.  I wore my uniform more that summer than most scouts wear their whole lives!  He was going to keep me from moving on to Life because I didn’t wear my uniform to a few stinking troop meetings!?

Well, I may have been upset, but the lesson sunk in.

The same lesson is true of our Churches.  If we really want to have an authentic community with authentic relationships it has to start with our Elders & Pastors.

I think this might be the most difficult transformation the Church needs.  But the Church desperately needs it.  People are starving for it.

We have this idea that our leaders need to be so Godly they are almost perfect.  We put our Pastors and Elders on this high pedestal that they rarely can get to.  As a result many leaders, unconsciously or consciously, become reserved and fearful of making mistakes.  They end up setting themselves apart from their congregations afraid that if they were truly honest & authentic with their congregation then someone might discover their flaws.

We need leaders who are not afraid to admit “I am flawed”, “I sin”, and “I need accountability and prayer”.  I’ve heard it said that our pastors and elders need to be our spiritual heroes, and I agree!  But, we need our Pastors and Elders to be heroes to aspire to!  These fake, perfect heroes just turn people away because there is no way that we can be as perfect as they appear.  Plus, by doing this we set our leaders up for failure; at some point in time they will fall off that lofty pedestal.

There’s this church I’ve been to every now and then.  I like it because the pastor is always preaching honesty, authenticity and relationships.  A couple months ago I was there and the pastor opened up to the congregation.  He told us about some very difficult things that have been going on in his family, and he asked us, with tears in his eyes to pray for him and his family.

I sat there and thought, “if God ever calls me to be a pastor or elder, this is the kind of leader I want to be”.

This is such a contrast to the leadership we see in the world every day.  Take our politicians for example.  They make excuses for their mistakes, and never admit to being wrong.  I am so much more impressed when I hear a leader say “I screwed up” than I am when I hear them try to weasel their way out of an awkward situation.  We need more leaders who can admit their mistakes.

I wish our leaders were more like King David.  I mean, there was a guy who made mistakes!  But when God sent someone to confront him about his mistakes he didn’t make excuses, he listened.  Then he tore off his clothes, got down on his face and he repented!  I believe this is why God called David a man after His own heart.

What power is in leadership like that!  It gives me shivers just thinking about it…

This post has turned out to be much more train of thought than I intended.  So I hope you have been able to follow it.  Let me just close by saying:  We don’t need our leaders to be perfect, Jesus already did that for us.  We need our leaders to be examples of the way we should live our lives; in good and in bad.

Just my $.02

The Authenticity Series:

1. “I Hate Church”
2. Emotional Vulnerability
3. Pride
4. Authentic Leadership
5. Putting on the New Man

Faith Authenticity, Church

This authenticity series has proven very educational to me.  I think I’ve learned a lot more from the comments than you’ve learned from me, so I’d like to keep the discussion going:

There is a real problem with perception in this country.  The saying “perception is reality” reigns supreme, and everyone wants to be perceived as perfect…or at least better than the next guy.

Have you seen the latest commercial for the Chevy Equinox?  The Equinox is Chevy’s new compact SUV, and in this commercial they go out of their way to compare this automobile to Lexus’ compact SUV.  They talk at length about how similar the two cars are in size, shape and appearance, then they drop the bomb about how much less the Chevy costs.

Chevy is playing off of the perception problem.  They know that for people who can’t afford a Lexus having a car that looks like a Lexus is the next best thing.  They are appealing to our pride.

We do the same thing in our churches.

We may not be perfect Christians, or even as good as the Jones’, but man do we try to look like them.  We try to sweep our dirt under the rug, and put our skeletons in the closet so that they won’t become public knowledge in our church family.

We trade authentic relationships for our perfect reputations – for our pride.

We trade reality for a lie.

It’s time that we as a body of believers…as a Church Family, woke up and realized that we’re not hurting anyone but ourselves.

First, we don’t fool anyone.  Eventually our church family will know something is up.  We don’t fool visitors who come in and know that we aren’t quite being honest with each other.  We especially don’t fool God.  We only fool ourselves.

Second, and more importantly, we end up hurting ourselves in the long run.  By not being honest with each other we deny our Christian brothers and sisters the opportunity to take care of us, to love us in our distress.  That, in turn, denies us the chance to grow through their love and counsel, and it denies Christ the chance to work through His body.

Is it easy?

No, actually it’s really hard, and sometimes it hurts like Hell.

But if we really, really want to glorify God, if we really want to be part of His body, and if we really want to become more like Him than putting down our pride and being honest with each other isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.

Just my $.02

The Authenticity Series:

Faith Authenticity, Church

Is it possible that the problem of authenticity that I ranted about in “I Hate Church” isn’t a problem with leaders or individuals? Is it a problem that and runs much deeper?  Could it be a problem with the system?  Not the church system, but our social system?

I guess I better explain.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my Granddad lately.  He was a great man, grew up during the depression, fought in World War II, worked a blue collar job after the war to raise his family & volunteered for years with the Boy Scouts.  He loved us very much, and I loved him very much.  There was one thing he wasn’t good at though; being emotionally vulnerable.  It’s not really his fault, I don’t think.  My guess is it was a product of his upbringing.  He was raised in a time when it wasn’t proper for men to be emotionally vulnerable.  They weren’t supposed to talk about their feelings, or fears, or health; it was seen as a weakness.

I remember towards the end of his life, we were celebrating Christmas around the 50th anniversary of VE day.  My dad bought Granddad a commemorative VE coin, and he cried.  It was so memorable because I think it was the most display of emotion I’d ever seen from him.  He started telling stories of the war, stories we had never heard.  We had heard the fun stories, the stories about how he got into trouble.  We never heard the hard stories, stories about war, about friends lost.  It was almost shocking to hear him open up like that.

That’s not to say that through the rest of his life he didn’t have emotions or show them…he did, just in his own way.  He had a look that told you he loved you, or he was proud of you, but he wasn’t very comfortable giving hugs or saying “I love you”.

His generation, until recently led and shaped our country, they also led and shaped our churches.

Fast forward to today where emotional vulnerability and honesty is seen as a sign of strength.  We’ve done a complete one hundred eighty degree turn from when my Grandfather was growing up. 

Maybe I’m wrong here, maybe the history major in me is just looking for an answer to this problem in the past.  But maybe our churches’ haven’t fully let go of the social system our grandfathers and great-grandfathers lived in.  Maybe our churches, in some weird way, still see emotional vulnerability as a weakness.

I’m sure there are other reasons for this authenticity problem, but this one could be huge, and is often overlooked.  Institutions often let go of defining systems much slower than individuals do.

I’m not trying to make a judgment on which system is better, I’m just saying that the way my generation views authenticity is very different from the way it was viewed in previous generations.

Maybe our churches just haven’t caught up yet.

Just my $.02

The Authenticity Series:

1. “I Hate Church”
2. Emotional Vulnerability
3. Pride
4. Authentic Leadership
5. Putting on the New Man

Faith Authenticity, Church