It’s a pretty humiliating feeling. Like you’re no one important. Expendable. Nothing noteworthy about yourself. But I also think it’s the truth. Some people have a special talent, skill, or personality that draws them out of the crowd and into the spotlight. Perhaps they are recognized for their intelligence, a unique talent, or incredible physical attractiveness. I think deep down inside, all of us wish we could become that kind of person. Nobody wants to die a nobody. Even in church circles, we have our celebrities. We elevate people who can speak well or have a musical gift. Or if they can write good books or grow a church. Or if they can somehow move us with their testimony. As I make this move to Colorado, I have to admit, part of me wonders if I’ll just fade into the background and become a “nobody” pastor in the middle of some distant small town, and I will live an insignificant life and drift into the shadows. Yet I’m also thinking that you are blessed if everyone perceives you as a nobody. If nobody perceives you as a somebody. That’s because the Bible teaches that only God is somebody, and we are nobodies. Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches…apart from Me you can do nothing.” It’s hard for people who are perceived as somebodies to believe Jesus’ words. If you gain recognition in the eyes of others, you start to believe what they believe about you. When I was younger, people in church often complimented me for my musical talents when it came to playing the piano. Pretty soon, I started to feel that it was unnecessarily defining me. I quickly got tired of people telling me how great I was, partly because I felt…Hey, there’s more to me than just a piano player! But more than that, it was always awkward to respond to their compliments. I appreciated their good intentions, but…well, it’s hard to explain. I soon backed off from playing the piano in public for various reasons, and even to this day, a part of me doesn’t like to do it that often. But there’s also a part of me that likes that...

In case you haven’t heard yet, we are moving to Colorado! I have accepted the opportunity to become the pastor of two small rural churches 15 miles east of Fort Collins. Whenever you announce something like this, everyone wants to hear the details. After all, you don’t do something crazy like leave your home and move your family over a thousand miles away from everyone unless something lucrative has turned up. Well, I’m sorry to say, there’s nothing lucrative to share. We are downsizing quite considerably, and we won’t be making any more money either. There are times when I think about what I’m about to do and my mind starts running…If this isn’t God, Tim, this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. And I believe that is a true statement. For several reasons, however, I do strongly believe God is calling us to these two tiny communities in Colorado. Because of all of this, I kinda feel like an expendable pawn in God’s hand. He’s sovereignly choosing where to place us, and it’s not my place to resist. I trust that He knows what He’s doing, and I want to do my all for Him where He places me. If things don’t turn out for my “good,” that shouldn’t factor into the equation. This should be all about what is good for Christ and His kingdom! I am much closer to accepting this than I was six months ago! The position is bi-vocational, and I hope to continue in the legal video business to supplement my income. If that doesn’t work out, I will have to find additional employment elsewhere. In addition, we will be moving a month before our baby is born, which presents several challenges. But I believe this is God, and because of that, I choose to trust God that He will take care of all the questions and concerns we face. I also have some fears about taking on this responsibility. At times, it feels daunting. Beyond the legitimate concerns I have, there are silly ones too, like: What if I have to immerse someone in baptism who weighs three times as much as me?  How do you do that without the power...

I have always wrestled with this: I know that as Christians, we should help poor people, because it’s the “right thing to do.” Yet, helping the poor is something that everyone feels obligated to do–Christian or not. I often resist focusing in on it, as it often makes Christianity appear to be a “works-based” religion, when I know that salvation comes by God’s grace, not our works. In addition, it seems that in Christian circles, liberal/mainline Christians fixate on helping the poor or other social issues, and as a result sideline what I see as the core of the faith: salvation through Christ from eternal punishment for us sinners and new spiritual rebirth. So it baffled me every time I read in Galatians when Paul recounts how he was appealing to the leaders of the Church to recognize that the Gentiles could also become Christians without having to follow the Law (become circumcised, etc), and at the end how the leaders decide that indeed Paul is right. But according to Paul in Galatians, they give him this one instruction: All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. Why does this keep coming up in Scripture and in Jesus’ words? Why does Jesus tell people to sell all their possessions and give to the poor? Why is this so important? Aren’t we saved by God’s grace, and not by good works, such as this? I would like to throw out something that I’ve been thinking recently: I have been realizing recently that I don’t really trust Jesus to save me from my sins, even though I’ve thought otherwise. I keep coming back to this question: How can I say that I trust Jesus to save me from an eternal hell and wash away all my sins, but I can’t seem to trust Him with the things of this earthly life? It seems to me that giving all our possessions to help the poor isn’t so much about earning our way to heaven, as it is a test to see whether we really do trust Jesus. In actuality, all of us trust in the power of money. We know...

I’ve always said yes. Why? Because not everyone can recall a “crisis” moment of salvation where they can point back and say, “That’s when I became born again.” That’s because humans don’t usually make instantaneous decisions–the vast majority of our decisions come about through various lengthy processes. Unfortunately, I realize more fully today that I have often equated conversion as merely “when a person makes their decision to surrender to Christ,” and that is why I’ve considered the conversion of a soul to sometimes transpire as a process. But that’s because I’ve been one of those Arminians Gone Wild who often finds themselves reducing conversion to the un-supernatural realm of persons merely making a decision. And it’s true, many decisions we make in life are indeed not “crisis” decisions–many happen more as a process. So if we focus on conversion simply as a decision humans make to believe in Jesus, it’s obvious that we will conclude that conversion often happens over time as a process, with no definable crisis moment. Yet, today I’m reminded that conversion isn’t defined by a decision we humans make, so I must qualify my answer. According to the Bible, when we are born again, we become inhabited by the Holy Spirit. This is something God miraculously does–He converts us by giving us His Holy Spirit, we don’t slowly convert ourselves as we make this decision over time. There is no other way to understand God’s part in this process, except that it should occur in a precise moment in time–where at some specific moment, the Holy Spirit inhabits us and we become spiritually reborn. At any point in time, either we have the Holy Spirit or we haven’t received Him yet. There is no “halfway” having the Spirit or being “halfway” alive to God–or God is “in the process of” placing the Holy Spirit inside of me, and He’ll be finished getting Him in there in a couple of weeks. Ha! While we may not be able ourselves to pinpoint the exact moment when God made such a change take place (since there may have been quite a lengthy process in our hearts/minds leading up to the point where we were open to God’s...

That’s kinda the imagery I think of when I consider seeker-driven churches. It’s this mindset that we have to do and spend all we can to convince/attract/appeal to the unchurched to come to church/God. It’s like our theology of free will propels us to do all we can to get people to choose to come to church or to come to God. It’s why in the past, when we didn’t have problems getting people into church, but had plenty difficulty getting them to make a decision for Christ, we Arminians worked hard to make altar calls as dramatic and compelling as possible. And why in the present (since that’s not effective anymore) we are now looking for the next thing that will be effective at getting people to walk in our church doors, because they’re just not coming anymore. I don’t think this mindset is always a bad thing, except that it seems like we Arminians have concluded that the Holy Spirit really isn’t that effective at drawing people to Christ, so we have to use lots of money, talent, professionalism, entertainment to make up the slack. I know what the rebuttal would be: perhaps the Holy Spirit is using these very things to draw people to God? I think in some churches He is, no doubt. But I question this assertion as a given, as I see that church has become simply a business model that has proven to be effective at growing one’s church organization. In other words, GE can grow a successful and profitable business without the Holy Spirit, and churches can do the same thing, if they view themselves as similar to a business like GE. The product is the Gospel. It’s the ultimate product, because it’s of eternal value. It needs to be advertised, which costs a lot of money these days. And the whole point of marketing is to convince people that they really need something that they don’t currently believe they need, so that they’ll buy in. The unchurched are those people who are not yet customers whom we are trying to hook in. Those who are already reached have hopefully become our investors, and we constantly appeal to them to invest...

So now that I laid the groundwork for my disagreements in the last post, I’ll get into the disagreements themselves. In summary, I believe the best way to fulfill the Great Commission isn’t by doing all you can to get the unchurched to show up at church, but rather to get the churched to go out to the unchurched. Andy Stanley says that if your church really is passionate about the Great Commission, everything at your church will be centered around making the unchurched feel at home, rather than making the churched feel at home. While I agree with him that church should not be about keeping churched people happy–and that this is what so many churches do–it is equally wrong to make everything about church for the unchurched. That would be like saying that we are trying to attract as many children into our home as possible who need adoption, but once they get here, we don’t care about them any longer, nor do we care if they feel at home or not. We’re just constantly looking for more children to adopt, so we’re going to make our family as appealing as we can to outside children who have yet to be adopted. This is the problem I see with churches like Andy Stanley’s at North Point or Bill Hybel’s at Willow Creek. In the end, you really can’t be like that. (And I’m guessing their churches in reality aren’t.) You’ve got to acknowledge that we’re not about attracting seekers to Christ, but making disciples of Christ. Part of this process is reaching the lost, obviously. Yet I question how much these “seekers” really are seeking after God, if it requires so much effort and money to get them into our doors. We have moved from trying to reach the lost into trying to attract the lost. What I mean is this: I’m afraid what “seekers” are really seeking after is solutions to the problems in their lives, not God himself. So these churches have determined that they will do all they can and spend all the money they can to convince people that they need to come to church to find the answers to their problems. As...