As many of you know, I was a member of the North Alabama Conference (United Methodists) for 8 years by being a member of two of their churches during that time. During that time, I heard many sentiments expressed about the current struggles for Methodists. Methodists moaned that they were a minority in the land of Southern Baptists. They didn’t moan just because they were a minority, but because they continue to be a shrinking minority. This means less congregants, which means less churches and less money to do everything they want to do. That is definitely a frustrating thing to go through. The current bishop, Will Willimon, believes that a large part of the problem is poor leadership. While I can agree that there is a problem w/poor leadership (and I think this can be said for all denominations to a smaller or larger degree), the agreement stops there. Because how he measures leadership is different from me. For him, the best way to tell if a church has spiritual vitality is by looking at church attendance numbers. Click here to read his words on that matter. This idea is also mentioned in this other article. Here’s another. To those who would say it’s not about the numbers, he would disagree in yet another article. My response? While I disagree with the bishop, that doesn’t make him a bad person–it just makes him pretty much like so many other modern church leaders out there. I think we would all do ourselves a favor if we remembered that the same Jesus that said, “You will know them by their fruit,” (but clearly isn’t talking about numbers there) also said, “Many will come to me saying, Lord, Lord did we not do these many great things?” And Jesus says that He will say, I never knew you.” I think we are on dangerous grounds when we think we can judge a ministry by quantitative measurements. If we do that, Jesus’ ministry ended up a failure. He kept turning away crowds and could have had a much grander church than what was left when He died on the cross. Oftentimes, a church is dwindling in size because it is indeed not...

The Son of God didn’t need to come in order that people who are hungry could have food. There’s already plenty of food on earth, and people could be fed without Him having to leave His heavenly throne. He did, however, instruct us to feed the hungry. The Son of God didn’t need to come in order to give people money who were in poverty. If so, He did a poor job fulfilling His mission. The poor Guy (pardon the pun) had no money of His own. He did, however, instruct us to take care of the poor and give them money. But if the Son of God had never come to save humanity from our sins, we would all still be lost and eternally separated from God. That was the reason why He needed to come. Jesus did, in fact, perform “social” acts of justice. But these “social” acts of Jesus were done in the context of declaring that the Savior of the World had come. Not just as acts of social justice. For example, when Jesus would heal people, He often told them their sins were forgiven, and they would be healed. In one instance, Jesus tells a paralyzed man that his sins are forgiven. The leaders get upset at Him for claiming to have such authority. So Jesus proves it to them by telling the guy to rise up and walk. It’s no different today. Today, we declare a Gospel that itself declares that Jesus is the only Son of God, and that only He is worthy of worship. That all other gods and religions are just man-made. And just like back then, today’s leaders (even within supposed “Christianity”) object. These proponents of a social gospel get upset: “How dare you claim that He has such authority! What narrow-mindedness! Jesus was about loving the poor and feeding the hungry–THAT is the gospel.” Case in point: Audra and I met a lady several months back in Alabama who left her denomination, and the last straw for her was the that denomination’s response in the relief effort in Haiti. According to her, churches were encouraged to provide much-needed packages for the survivors of the earthquake. However, they weren’t...

A few days ago, I was reflecting on the period of my life beginning when I knew I needed to step out in faith and resign at my former church and ending at the point where we moved to Colorado. And a thought came to me. Surprise, surprise… I felt like that was a very difficult, yet exciting period of my life. Yet, when I look at the circumstances, they weren’t really mind-blowingly difficult compared to what people face all the time in their lives. It was actually pretty mild, if you look at it objectively (although that’s hard for me to do, since I was the one who experienced it). That made me feel kind of bad. How would I have handled a much greater crisis? Something that could be genuinely labeled a crisis? But then I continued thinking about it. You know, it was like I had a taste of having to trust God during a relatively minor unsettling time. It was just a taste. Kinda like a vaccine. You know what I’m talking about. When they give you a vaccine, they give you a taste of the virus or whatever in order to trigger antibodies to build up in your body so that the full-blown virus won’t be able to overcome you if you come into contact with it later in life. And then it dawned on me…faith is the antibody. For some odd reason, my faith in God has intensified greatly over the past period of my life–disproportionately, I would add, to the circumstances. It’s like a little hardship came my way–and I reached down deep, and found God, and a whole bunch of faith was released. And so now I feel I have all these antibodies in my system disproportionate to the injection of the vaccine’s virus. That leads me to believe that there’s very good reason for all these antibodies. I’m going to need every single one of them. God knew that, and gave me a vaccine so that I would be prepared for what lies ahead. The task set before me right now–without the type of faith I have in God right now, I’d be turning to this or that to grow...

The past month, the leadership team at our church has been going through a time of praying and seeking God as to how He wants us to move forward as a church. It’s been exciting to see God working in all our lives. I see with eyes of faith what our church is capable of in the power of the Holy Spirit. In earthly terms, many people would probably dismiss us. We are small in number, and we don’t have anything “exceptional” or “noteworthy” going on. To put it plainly, if our churches explode in numerical growth in the next couple of years, there is nothing to put your finger on to say why it happened. It would have to be a move of God’s Spirit–like the stuff you read about in the Bible. And I guess that’s what I feel I’m being tested to believe can happen. I’m tired of standing around while people try to play the church game. I’m frustrated that so many church leaders can be simply concerned with church growth, and then put a spiritual spin on it, to make it look like it’s a “God thing.” Or that leaders can feel confident they can achieve a successful church by following this method or that one. I don’t want that to happen here. Yet, I’m tempted like everyone else. That’s when I need to go deep, and test if I’m for real or not. I know myself and I know my church. We aren’t anything special. I’m not a gifted preacher; we don’t pride in ourselves in being talented at anything. Of course, we really don’t know these things yet, as we’ve not explored them. But I’m also not so sure that trying to explore them is the way to go. Deep down inside, I want to set up an experiment. An experiment where a church puts their entire faith on God and Scripture–on the power of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit. And then prove that all this modern thinking about successful churches is bogus. And more importantly, prove that we can be, and must be faithful to God, and that He is a faithful God himself. I want us to return to...

If you’ve asked that question, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I often ask myself that question, too. You see, I’ve always believed the Gospel, and I’ve always taught it, too. I’ve always felt it’s the most important issue in all of life. But something has changed recently. I can’t stop thinking about it, talking about it, appreciating it, longing for more of it. What has happened exactly? I think part of the reason is that I hadn’t heard it expounded on for such a long time. The things that I’ve written in my blog on the Gospel–those things haven’t been taught to me for quite some time. Perhaps some of you read my blog, and think–“Well, duh. You’re not saying anything new here, Tim. We all know this about the Gospel and have moved on from this a long time ago. This is milk, not meat” Well for me, it’s new all over again. New in a way that it’s never been like before. This is the closest I’ve ever been to what it must feel like for someone who has lived all their lives as a non-believer, and then 30 years later, they come to faith in Christ for the first time, and what a dramatic change it brings–eyes opened, joy floods, a new mind in Christ, etc. Those aren’t just words or phrases to me right now. Sure, I’ve heard songs that sing about it, and I’ve even expounded on it myself in lessons to the youth when I was the youth pastor–but I’ve recently realized in a new way that everyone needs to have the Gospel preached to them–even ministers like me. I am convinced there is something that happens on a spiritual level (something I can’t quite explain right now) when one chooses to submit oneself to the preaching of the Gospel. But you can’t do that unless it is preached to you and you come literally face-to-face with it. It’s one thing to preach the Gospel to someone else, it’s another thing to have it preached to you and for you to soak it in. This is one of my greatest fears of becoming a pastor–I can’t let myself preach the Gospel week after...

One thing I’ve heard quite a bit is that statistics show that 3 out of 4 new church start-ups in America fail. How can this be? Where did the power of God go? This statistic sounds totally pathetic to me. I’m sure there are several reasons for such a statistic. However, I fear many of those reasons boil down to simply a lack of faith in the power of God. Do we truly realize that we can trust in the same power that created the entire universe, supernaturally healed diseases, parted the Red Sea, and raised Christ from the dead? Did we not start up this church because He called us to do it? Are we not building a church in His name with His power for His glory? That is, if you really do believe God created the universe, supernaturally heals, parted the Red sea, and literally rose Christ from the dead. Do you believe it? Do you believe we have that same Spirit inside of us, and that this same Spirit is at work in the world? Then what can stop us? What is stopping 3 out of 4 churches from carrying out Christ’s mission? Wasn’t Paul convinced that neither height nor depth nor… and didn’t Jesus say that nothing could stop His church–not even the gates of hell? What has happened? Has God suddenly faced the reality that His power, though strong enough for back then, isn’t a match for our modern world? Here’s what I’m afraid that statistic really means: three out of four new church start-ups end up folding because they cannot financially sustain what they think it takes to grow a church. That’s right–it’s all about not having enough money. It’s too bad God doesn’t have enough money to fund His mission. The church had to be marketed and advertised, the pastor had to be paid, a building had to be rented or purchased, utilities had to be paid, and and support staff had to be supported financially as well (i.e. worship leader, youth pastor, etc). So if the church is unable to get enough people to start attending and give so that these financial issues are covered, God won’t be able to...