4 ways for pastors to navigate the church through the new America

Protests, riots, bitter hatred, and the intolerance of tolerance—get used to it—it’s the new America.

America is increasingly dividing. There’s a deep chasm between ideologies and worldviews. Moral relativism and subjective truth are now part of the new norms. 

If we’re honest, we all have opinions. Everyone reads a story through the lens of their beliefs.

The point? We’re living in a new America, but the problem is with the church—stick with me.

If the church is to exist and thrive in the new America, it must be about Christ’s business—it must be seeking to help rescue the lost, hurting, and rebellious. However, the church sees culture as the problem—sticking its head in the sand like an ostrich.

 Let me give you four ways to navigate through the waters of post-Christian America.

1. Social media

Social media is not going away—it’s here to stay. So, I’ll give you a big tip—don’t “like” the click-bait! Click bait is an article designed to “wow” a person in the hopes that he or she will click on it, and read it. Be careful about what you click, and especially, which posts that you respond, or “like”.

As a leader, everyone watches you. Especially on social media. When you “like” an article that blasts and shames the very people that your church is attempting to reach—how does that help?

For example, if you truly cared about LGBTQ people and their eternal welfare, should you post condemning statements or share articles that “prove” your point? Look, if you’re a pastor, you have a biblical view—stick to it—but love the lost.

We must remember, unbelievers are “blinded” by the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4), they’re “sons of disobedience” and fooled by “the prince of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). Satan has an evil scheme (Ephesians 6:11). So, let’s be wise.

Use social media as a tool. Use it to interact with non-believers. Join an LGBTQ page. Read their stories, pray for them, get to know them. 

This leads to point number two.

2. Be intentional

In the new America people gravitate more towards like-minded people. This is a product of social media and media bias. Facebook utilizes algorithms to suggest that you like and follow people exactly like you. The main stream media has an agenda—whether it is conservative or liberal.

So, what happens when you only follow people who are just like you? Wait before you respond.

Do you know why I love new believers?

Because they have tons of lost friends! Sadly, the longer you’ve been a Christian, the less and less unchurched friends you’ll have—it’s a fact. We must lead our people to be intentional. Allow for uncomfortable conversations. If you want to reach the lost, you must go to the lost—be intentional.

3. Gospel-focus

Next. To navigate the new America, pastors must remain gospel-focused. Don’t take sides with any political entity—Jesus is Lord, that’s as political as it gets!

I don’t know about you, but I’m tried and true, thoroughly American—but not at the expense of losing my identity in Christ. The Apostle Paul penned the words, we’re to be “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Why is that significant? Because Paul was a citizen of the most powerful empire in the world—Rome.

Yet, Paul realized that nationality, ethnicity, and gender can get in the way of serving Christ (Galatians 3:28). We’re called to be “ministers of reconciliation”—as God speaks through us (2 Corinthians 5:18–19). Do not lose focus.

4. Unity

Lastly, to navigate a severely and deeply divided America—pastors must be unifiers. 

Things around us are chaotic—storms, marches, hatred, shootings, and diseases. But we know that Jesus is the “same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

We’re called to bring unity to a broken world. Let’s lay aside our agendas, our nationalistic pride, our isolationism, and our self-righteousness. Let us humbly serve Christ. Let us bring unity to brokenness.

 Let us be people of the gospel.

We exist for such a time as this.

Source: Matthew Fretwell 

 Matt Fretwell is married, has three daughters, is an author, pastor, east coast director of New Breed Church Planting, and founder of Planting RVA, in Richmond, Va. Matt writes for Church Planter Magazine and is pursuing his doctorate at Southeastern. 

Today's Mission Moment: Dr. Phil and Becky Davis

Today at First Wesleyan Church in Gastonia we shared our first Missions Moment to focus on a partnership with a ministry couple who serve in our Global Ministry.

Today’s focus was for: Dr. Phil and Becky Davis

Phil and Becky Davis are long-term missionaries with Global Partners, serving since 1998—first in Suriname in South America, and then in Belgium. Their current assignment takes them to the Philippines to teach at Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary in Manila. This seminary provides a graduate-level education to pastors from various denominations throughout Asia and the Pacific. The Davises’ purpose in ministry is to “equip his people for works of service” by providing theological education and leadership development.

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up (Ephesians 4:11-12 NIV).

Here is the most recent prayer request:

Thank you for your prayers regarding our Papua New Guinea leaders. Andy and Ninde are in communication with the seminary about studying here. Please pray that sufficient financial resources will be made available for them (both from the PNG and Global Partners sides).

Becky and I would covet your prayers, as well, for the courses we're teaching in the upcoming Spring semester. Becky will be teaching a course on worship and theology again this year, and I will be teaching a couple of courses on ethics and the current postmodern condition and its effects on Asian culture(s).

Plans continue to move forward for teaching in an unnamed country. Becky will accompany me, and she will be doing some teaching, as well. Pray for safety and effectiveness when we go.

Finally, I'm writing a book on postmodern culture and how it affects the church. I offer a story of how the culture changed in the West and how it impacts us all. The intended audience are pastors and lay people in the Church. Your prayers for the writing would be most appreciated.

Thanks for being a part of this ministry. Greetings, once again, from the Philippines!

Preparing for Worship

It is recorded at the beginning of chapter five of Ecclesiastes that we should guard our steps as we go to the house of God and listen instead of offering the sacrifice of fools who don’t even know they are being foolish (Eccl 5:1).

Understanding the necessity of individually preparing for gathered worship is radically different than expecting our worship leaders to generate our worship for us when we get there. We sing our songs as an act of worship, not to create it.

It’s not enough to sing “Your praise will ever be on my lips” on Sunday if I’m not living it on Monday. So if we aren’t prepared on Sunday to respond to God’s countless blessings that occurred all week, how could our worship leaders possibly lead enough songs to prepare us?

Richard Foster wrote, “Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit. Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals. We can use all the right methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until His Spirit touches our spirit.”[1]

Norma de Waal Malefyt and Howard Vanderwell offer some suggestions to help us prepare for worship. It requires:

1.   Internal preparation of heart: Each worshiper carries the responsibility for personal preparation of his/her heart. If God calls us to worship him “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), then we must constantly ask questions about the state of our spirit and readiness of our hearts.

2.   Pre-arrival preparation: We can learn from the Jews who believe the Sabbath begins at sundown the evening before. So our Saturday night and Sunday morning activities before we gather have a formative affect, positively or negatively, on our readiness for worship.

3.   Pre-service preparation: That short period of time between our arrival at church and the beginning of the worship service is also critical. How we interact with others reminds us that we are here as part of a body. Intentionally quieting our spirits before the service begins will also enable us to set distractions aside and again focus our corporate attention on God.[2]

And since worship does not start when we enter the worship service, it should not stop when we leave. So with that understanding, I would recommend a fourth suggestion to add to the previous three.

4.   Post-service continuation: Worship should continue as we leave the service. It can happen in our homes, at our schools and through our work. It can’t be contained in a single location, context, culture, style, artistic expression or vehicle of communication. So it doesn’t matter how good our worship is when we gather, it is incomplete until it continues when we scatter. Post-service worship then leads us in a continuous circle back to step 1.

Worship begins in our hearts, not on our lips.

[1] Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1978).

[2] Malefyt, Norma deWaal and Howard Vanderwell, Database online. Available from worship.calvin.edu.

Source:  David Manner

Dr. David W. Manner serves as the Associate Executive Director for Kansas-Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists with responsibilities in the areas of Worship, Leadership and Administration

A Case for Christian Magnanimity

In case you hadn’t heard, Mike Pence went to see Hamilton last week, and it turns out that the people who star in Hamilton and buy tickets for Hamilton are not a natural constituency for Donald Trump. 

What this says about Broadway and Main Street, or Red States and Blue States, I’ll leave for others to dissect.

And whether lecturing the Vice President-Elect was an act of courageous resistance or blinkered rudeness is not what this post is about.

Instead, I want to talk about an old fashioned word: magnanimity.

What is magnanimity? Merriam-Webster defines it as “loftiness of spirit enabling one to bear trouble calmly, to disdain meanness and pettiness,

 and to display a noble generosity.”

In other words, view Mike Pence’s response to Hamilton-gate (and not so much Donald Trump’s tweets).

 I understand there is a time to fight, a time to stand your ground, a time            to give as good as you get. But this was not one of those times. We must    not confuse personal pique with national security. In fact, for most of us,    most of the time, we would do well to take Pence’s approach: minimize        our own offendedness and praise what we can, even in those who oppose us.

In September 1775, and in again in September 1787, the founding father   John Witherspoon preached a sermon to the senior class at Princeton titled “Christian Magnanimity.” He listed five principles of magnanimity:

1. To attempt great and difficult things.
2. To aspire after great and valuable possessions.
3. To encounter dangers with resolution.
4. To struggle against difficulties with perseverance.
5. To bear sufferings with fortitude and patience.

This last point shapes the way we use the word today. The magnanimous person does not bear petty grudges, does not wallow in self-pity, does not demand penance, does not advertise his suffering and does not stoop to   settle every score. In an age where everyone is scrambling to be more aggrieved than everyone else, where we think nothing of retweeting praise  and retweeting insults (to prove our aggrieved status), where apologies are routinely demanded and offendedness is next to godliness, surely we have much to learn about magnanimity.

It’s not only the right thing to do. It’s the smart thing to do. While we 
certainly want to stand up to real physical violence and insist on all the
 rights accorded us by God and by the laws of the land, when it comes
 to insults, rudeness and social media scrappiness, killing them with 
kindness is usually the way to go. Whatever you think of the commentary
 from the cast of Hamilton, the post-play lecturing is apt to look brave 
when the President-elect demands an apology, and rudely self-important
 when the Vice President-elect says the show was terrific. We would do
 well to be more like David pardoning Shimei than the sons of Zeruiah 
looking for the next enemy to execute. Magnanimity is often its own reward.

Pastors, parents, politicians, pundits, Internet pugilists—where can we 
show the sort of Christian magnanimity our world needs but rarely 
displays? For bearing burdens, eschewing meanness and setting an 
example of noble generosity is not simply the way to win friends and 
influence people. It is the way of the cross. And the way of the One 
who hung there saying,

 “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”


Source:  Kevin DeYoung

Kevin is the Senior Pastor at University Reformed Church (RCA) in East Lansing, Michigan, right across the street from Michigan State University.       He has been the pastor there since 2004.

If You Are Not Chasing Jesus, Then You Are Chasing Death

There are many things in this world that constantly pull and beg for our attention, our heart, our worship and our souls. The battle for our heart that takes place each and every day is an active one and one that begs to be acknowledged if one seeks any chance of keeping themselves one a straight and narrow path. Why? Because if we don’t learn to put up our guard as Christians, the enemy will seek every opportunity it can to steal, kill and destroy our hearts (John 10:10).

If the opposite of good is bad, the opposite of life is death and the opposite of light is darkness, then anything opposing the grace and truth of Jesus is not only dead and bad but dark as well. Darkness is an enemy that although has already been defeated, yearns to poke and tempt followers of Jesus each and every day. It’s an opponent that we must be willing to fight on a daily basis, choosing to pick up our crosses and die to ourselves so that the impeccable strength and hope of Christ may rise up and dwell within us (Luke 9:23).

When we pursue after the hope of Jesus, we are pursuing life to the fullest extent—the only true experience of life that really exists. But when we pursue after anything contrary to that of God’s Word, we set ourselves up for failure, a failure where we’d be ultimately be pursuing death, and sometimes without even knowing it. Don’t be tricked into thinking that the many temptations of this world can offer anything remotely close to the fulfillment and peace of Jesus. Because they can’t, and they never will be able to live up God’s intrinsic and bewildering design for humanity.

The battle for your heart

• Movies
• Music
• Advertisements
• Fame
• Materialism
• Money
• Television commercials
• Billboards
• Magazines
• Social media
• etc.

All of these things, although not always bad, can be used to tempt and persuade you to chase after something other than a life in Christ. Sometimes the temptation is obvious and in your face, but other times it may be packaged and disguised as something that can be justified because of emotion and feeling. Regardless of what or who is tempting you, the reality and importance of needing to guard our hearts remain the same. We live in a world where Jesus will never be accepted because he was never meant to be (John 14:7).

If we’re not chasing Jesus, then we’re ultimately chasing death. Let us choose to pick up our crosses daily, pursue after the hope of Jesus, and dedicate our lives to making much of Him and nothing of ourselves.

Source:  Jarrid Wilson

Spiritual Growth Must be Intentional

“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose”

(Philippians 2:12b-13 NIV).

Growth in the human soul requires a commitment to grow. A person must want to grow, decide to grow, and make an effort to grow.

Spiritual growth begins with a decision. It doesn’t have to be a complex decision, but it does have to be sincere. When Jesus’ followers decided to choose his way, they didn’t understand all the implications of their decision.

They simply expressed a desire to follow him, and that was the beginning of an exciting journey of the soul. Jesus took that simple but sincere decision and built on it.

In Philippians 2:12b-13, Paul offers insight into spiritual growth while speaking to people who already believe: “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (NIV).

Notice that it says “work out” — not “work on” — your salvation. There is nothing you can do to save yourself spiritually; Christ took care of that by his life, death, and Resurrection. The important thing to note is that God has a part in our growth — but so do we. We must make an intentional effort to grow.

Source: Daily Hope by Pastor Rick Warren

LIVE IN PEACE AND HOLINESS

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14

As we see in Hebrews chapter twelve, once we “keep our eyes fixed on Jesus,” we will be aware of how we should then live. Now the writer teaches us about the value of peace and holiness. It is difficult to live in peace with others until you have made your peace with God.

Pastor Haik Hovsepian in Iran (who was martyred in January 1994) once preached on the topic “Salvation or Religion.” It was a very powerful message that goes through five differences between religion and salvation in Christ. Thousands of his tapes on this topic have been distributed in Iran.

One of the people who recently got hold of this tape is a Quran reciter. He has a very powerful voice and many times he has been invited to recite the Quran in different mosques in Iran. He also passionately recited about the life of the Imams (Muhammad’s descendants), who have died in mourning ceremonies in order to make people cry. He used to be a very religious person himself.

When he got hold of the tape with the sermon of Haik, he realized that through religion he cannot be saved. He was in captivity of some immoral sins such as alcohol abuse and adultery. He was a very high-tempered and depressed person too. When he heard about the difference between religion and the salvation of Jesus, the Spirit of God spoke to his heart. He was so moved by the message that he listened to the tape a few more times. Every time he listened to this tape, he felt even more convinced that he needed the salvation of Jesus, until he finally gave his life to the Lord.

Then he was not only liberated from the captivity of his sins, but also from the captivity of the religion with which he was identifying. There was an extraordinary joy and happiness in his face after this experience. In the past, he wore black shirts, as his job was to make people in the mosques cry. But after experiencing Jesus in his life, even his shirts changed to lighter colors! He is now using his voice to sing for the Lord and shares about Jesus wherever he goes.

Being a well-known person among Muslim religious leaders and other people, one evening the secret police knocked at his door. Two weeks later, they released him from prison on bail until his trial time. He had to borrow half of that money from his relatives. As he lost his job as a Quran reciter, he does not have any source of income, so it is difficult for him to live and to pay the money back to his family. But he is trying to live at peace with all people and show God’s holiness in his life. Praise God for the faith of this brother and for his steadfastness in following Jesus.

Source: Standing Strong in the Storm - Devotional