the reluctant leader

God is Holy, Sin is Costly, Idolatry is Offensive

I read Leviticus on my recent Manila to Nashville flight and tweeted a 140 character summary. Now, a few weeks later, I'm not sitting in the Atlanta airport about to board My Delta flight to South Africa. Here's my quick summary of the twenty-seven chapters in Leviticus employing more that 140 characters.

1. GOD IS HOLY. Holiness is not something God does. It is not a list of religious rules. He is holy. It is his nature. What he does flows from who he is.

2. SIN IS COSTLY. It is impossible to exaggerate this point. The whole book of Leviticus, from start to finish, lays out the cost of covering sin: the blood of bulls, birds and lambs. If temporarily covering sin was that costly, what about the cost of forgiving sin forever?

3. IDOLATRY IS OFFENSIVE. Maybe not to our culture and our community, but idolatry is offensive to God.

4. WORSHIP IS AWESOME. Ultimately, the book of Leviticus is about worship. And the worship in Leviticus is not to be taken lightly. Worship is awesome because the God we worship is awesome. If our worship is anything but awesome, maybe we are not really worshipping the only true God.

Misguided Attempts at Personal Holiness

From dress codes to movie bans to hair length regulations, our religious world is rife with sincere but misguided attempts at personal holiness. Do we really think holiness is about external behavior, human effort, and religious rules? Apparently we do. Even though the Bible teaches the exact opposite.

Old Testament leaders were supposed to tell all the people to "be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy." (Leviticus 19:2) My quick comments on that verse...

1. BE HOLY... The Bible tells us to be holy, not to act holy. Holiness is a state of being. It is something we are, not something we do. Internal not external. Being not doing. Fish swim because they are fish. Birds fly because they are birds. Christians avoid sin because they are holy. Swimming does not make one a fish. Acting holy does not make one a Christian.

2. BECAUSE I AM HOLY... We are to be holy because of who God is, not because of who we are or who we want to become. When the motivation for our holiness is to win God's favor, relieve our guilt, or impress our pastor, it is not real holiness. Real holiness is God-centered not man-centered. It is about Him, not about us.

So, what am I trying to say? The same thing the Old Testament leaders constantly said: whether you have long hair or no hair, whether you watch or boycott movies, whether you wear a suit or shorts to church, you should be holy because God is holy.

Making Disciples or Gathering Crowds (& Celebrating the Insignificant)

I don't want to rain on anyone's post-Easter parade, but while I am happy for record-setting Easter Sunday crowds, I am afraid we might be celebrating the insignificant.

If that is indeed what we are doing, we would not be the first disciples to miss the point. When the original twelve expressed their misplaced excitement about casting out demons, Jesus told them they were celebrating the wrong thing. (Luke 10)

A basic leadership principle says that whatever leaders celebrate, followers will try to duplicate. If we celebrate big crowds, people who respect us will strive to make big crowds happen.

I am not anti-crowd, unless that crowd in in an airport. I prefer a crowded church to an empty one. But knowing the size of the crowd does not tell me enough to know if it should be celebrated.

We are called to make disciples, not to gather crowds. So before we celebrate a big number, we must ask ourselves if we have a plan to translate that crowd into disciples. If Easter has come and gone and we are not already executing and evaluating a plan to get church visitors in a discipleship process, then celebrating record numbers is missing the point.

Maybe we are confused about the task. It is not our job to build a church, and Jesus is no longer making disciples. If we attempt to do his job (building the church), he does not automatically switch and do our job (making disciples). If we focus on making disciples, Jesus will take those disciples and build a church that will cause hell major headaches.

If my job is building a church, then I might celebrate a record Easter crowd. Maybe. But, since my job is making disciples, I probably should evaluate how I am planning to get that Easter crowd involved in a discipleship process by establishing foundations, equipping them for ministry and empowering them to make disciples.

Faith is a Journey

While preparing for my Easter sermon, I read John 20 over and over and over. Finally, I decided not to try to convince my audience to believe in the resurrection of Christ, but to talk about the journey of faith. For some the faith journey is quick. Others take it slowly. Most are somewhere between fast and slow.

John 20 pictures three different individual paces in the faith journey: John, Mary Magdalene, and Thomas.

John - Immediate faith, with little understanding. Mary was first at the empty tomb, then John, then Peter. (John 20:1-9) All three saw the same scene. Mary believed the wrong thing. Peter was still processing. John "saw and believed" immediately. No questions. No doubts. Just faith. Immediate faith. Most faith journeys are not like John's. Most take a bit more time.

Mary Magdalene - second look faith, after a personal encounter with Jesus. Mary saw the same thing John saw. Yet she did not immediately believe Jesus was resurrected. She believed someone took his body. That seemed more logical. Then she saw the resurrected Jesus and thought he was the gardener. She asked the "gardener" if he knew where they had taken the body. Jesus called her name, "Mary" and she  recognized Him. Sometimes Jesus is right in front of us and we don't recognize Him. But when He calls our name, we realize He is alive and near. 

Thomas - eventual faith, after carefully examining the evidence. It was a week later before Thomas believed. Everyone else was on board, but he needed more evidence. He needed to see and touch. He had seen miracles for three years, but he needed more evidence before he would accept the resurrection. Finally when Jesus walked though a wall and showed Thomas his nail-scared hands, Thomas believed. Maybe that is what it takes for some, to see the evidence of his suffering on our behalf, then we believe.

It does not matter if you are like John and believe immediately with little evidence, or like Thomas needing more evidence, as long as you believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not the pace of our faith that matters, it is the object of our faith.

Discipleship is about helping people no matter where they are on the faith journey.