ministry

3 Year Plan

Frank

This week I started a new job. Actually, it’s the same job, but new employer. I’m proud of the fact that I’m now on my fourth employer in the last 18 months. A brother in my Small Group has me beat though. He’s had four different jobs in the past year!

Despite pretty much having the same job for seven years, I’m now under a three year probationary period with my new employer. That will put me at 10 years professional experience, a magic number if I look for jobs elsewhere. But more importantly it gives me three years to get my act together.

I expect and accept that my professional goals and my spiritual goals will someday diverge. And while I feel the Spirit pulling my heart, I don’t know where that leads. But one thing I do know, is that I want to write. That’s part of the point of this blog- to help me get my thoughts and feelings out there and to get in the habit of writing regularly. I also intend this blog to be more of a ministry than a simple outlet.

With that in mind, this blog is really the second step in a four-part plan. The first step was a failed attempt at an online newsletter linking churches, ministries, and friends with the goal of spiritual unity without any mandate from church leadership. It started out well, but at the time I wasn’t able to follow through and make it consistent.

This is the second step, and I’m a couple of years in. I want and pray for more traffic because I want this blog to be a pebble in the swamp of the internet sending ripples out from it.

The third step I’ve begun with some fits and starts, and that is to put the theme of this ministry, Public Christianity, into practice. So far I’ve steered the lessons and Bible Talks in my small group to be consistent with this and I plan on broader church-wide activities in the future.

The fourth step is the most intimidating and that is to publish. I already have the ideas for multiple books in mind but I need to set a deadline for myself to force me to write something down. So that’s three years from now.

Call it a fleece, if you will. In three years, if I finish my first book and can’t get it published, then I consider that door closed. If it’s published and I receive the same tepid response as this blog, well then I’ll keep plugging at it until it’s clear the effort is futile. If it’s published and creates the ripple I pray it will, then I’ll go forward full-bore. The trick, at the end of my probationary period at work, will be to see if this will balance or conflict with my career. So that will be the biggest leap of faith in three years.

So please pray for me. I don’t know how it will go, or even if it even if it should go at all. I trust the Lord to reveal what he has in store for me and to guide me along the way.

“Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed” (Pr 16:3)

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD‘s purpose that prevails.” (Pr 19:21)

Purpose

Frank

Purpose. It’s become a loaded word in my fellowship of churches. Some of you may recall the debate (still ongoing in my heart) between our “purpose” as Christians and our “mission.” I won’t get into that debate here other than comment that my heart has recently been challenged with a recent run of sermons on this topic. I want to stand up and shout, “our purpose is not to bring people to church!” The topic of evangelism always makes me queasy, because I relate that to “numbers” and “accountability” that were used as abusive, manipulative, incorrect means to the correct end. To me, evangelism isn’t about church invites, or “visitors”, or “cranking.” Instead it is literally about “sharing my faith” with someone else. If they respond, amen! If not, that seed is planted and I trust God to do with it what He pleases.

Sadly, whenever I hear “purpose” or “share your faith” in a sermon, my ears tune out the message and my ego turns on with defensiveness. So it took an outside source to shake this from me. I was listening to a radio sermon last week (if you haven’t read my last post, let me sum it up: if you listen to a radio ministry, support it financially!) and the topic was Purpose. Right away I wanted to listen thinking that this lesson would validate all my feelings on the subject. It didn’t. Instead it reaffirmed the Christian purpose to “seek and save the lost.”

This lesson referenced Philippians 1:12-30 where Paul is referring to being imprisoned for the sake of the Gospel: “Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel… The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice…I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death…If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me…Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel.” (Phil 1:12,18ff,20,22ff,27 emphasis added)

While the context was Paul’s sufferings, his encouragement to the Christians in Philippi was that this suffering can be used to advance the Gospel and therefore to not be discouraged by any hardship. With that in mind, I want to focus on how Paul was evangelistic here. Obviously he couldn’t invite his captors to church, where would they go? Instead he used his circumstance to explain his conviction. This is something we all can do, and is more literally sharing our faith than a simple invite to church.

Something else he points out here that is very important to me. He talks about “Christ being exalted in [his] body,” and, “conducting [our]selves in a manner worthy of the gospel.” Our lives should reflect the gospel of Jesus. Our very lives should be our evangelism. In my wallet I have a business card that reads, “How have I been Christ’s presence today?” I keep it in front of my driver’s license because I consider this my real ID. In this context, evangelism to advance the gospel of Christ is very much my purpose.

Purpose or mission, it’s all really just semantics anyway. The real question is how have you been Christ’s presence today?

Christian Payola

Frank

Today is the final day of the “Air 1 Revolution,” a drive to raise money to cover the station’s operating expenses. Listening to the radio the last couple of days made me feel like Homer Simpson in Missionary: Impossible, who pledges thousands of dollars to PBS to stop the pledge drive so he can get back to his favorite show. When he welshes, he has to flee to a South Pacific island and become a Christian missionary. (Save me Jeebus!) But I digress. I’m not meaning to knock Air 1, it is their choice to be ad-free. I only want to bring to light the challenges faced by Christian radio.

To give perspective, as of this morning they were 68% funded, increasing about a half a percent an hour. Over this hour, they marked off between 30 and 50 supporters committing a dollar a day. Extrapolating gives a total need on the order of $2 Million a year. Where does all this money go?

The obvious answer is advertising and promotions, but these more or less pay for themselves. The less obvious answer is licensing their stations. Back when radio first started to be broadcast in this country, the decision was made to offer this service free to consumers (notice all the “free music” ads on the radio to counter the popularity of outlets like Pandora or iTunes). But that service still costs. The provider has to pay for the license ($2900), the station frequency (auctioned up to tens of thousands), the tower and equipment (hope one exists, otherwise it’s another $600,000) and this is before labor costs, licenses and fees for the music you’re playing, and you can see how this adds up quick! To hammer the point even more, this is for a single station- imagine a nationwide network. (For more information than you would probably ever want, go here.)

So why reference “payola“, the scam of pay-to-play on the radio, in the title of this post? I showed you how tough it is to be a station, now imagine you’re a half-hour preaching ministry. Because of the costs above, oftentimes ministries have to pay these stations to be on the air. Here, the costs are daily, per station, costing hundreds of dollars a single day for a half a sermon to be broadcast nationwide on multiple stations. If it was illegal for music in the 60’s, (and for third-party promoters more recently) why isn’t it illegal on Christian radio? Because the stations mentioned above are non-profit. Worse, they generally operate, like Air 1, with little or no advertising. There’s simply no other way to make up the costs.

You can decide for yourself whether this actually hurts spreading the Gospel. But to put it in real dollars for a listener like you or me, I recently purchased a lesson series from a particular ministry. I also bought the study guide to go along with it. By the time it was all said and done, including shipping, it cost me $90 for an 8 CD set. If I wanted to buy last Sunday’s sermon at my local church, it would cost me a little over a buck.

***edit***
After hopping in my car and turning on the radio, I remembered a couple of points I left out. First off, I’m not against “listener supported radio”. My “Homer Simpson” reaction above is just my human nature. Instead of being flippant, I simply wanted to bring attention to the nature of the business and pray that it would change to enable these ministries to thrive without the stress of wondering how to stay on the air.

Some numbers from Air 1 that I forgot to mention above: For every 100 people listening, only three financially support it. In other words, 97% listen without any personal investment. Also, to run enough ads to cover the cost, they would have to broadcast the equivalent of 78 days worth of advertisements a year. To the station, that’s 78 days they’re not pursuing their ministry.

***update***
Only a couple hours left for Air 1 and they’re now almost at 80%.

You’ve Come a Long Ways, Baby

Frank

Tonight my congregation is hosting a public showing of the movie Fireproof, complete with all the resources available afterword. The movie kicks off the 8-week Marriage Dynamics course that we’ve been offering twice a year the past few years. Meanwhile, we’re a couple of weeks into the Financial Peace workshop done by Dave Ramsey.

Once upon a time, I’d hear criticism of the closed-mindedness of our fellowship of churches and the monopoly we thought we held on spiritual truths. A common statement would be something like, “I hear you guys are only allowed to read books written by other members of your church.” While that was never literally true (at least since I’ve been faithful), there was a point. You didn’t dare bring in another ministry, offer a different point of view, or even reference a pastor/bishop/deacon from another church. Though we isolated ourselves on a spiritual island, my best material as a first-time Bible Talk leader came from sermons I heard on the radio.

In the past few years however, we’ve begun to open ourselves up to the fact that maybe we aren’t the only ones who might know a thing or two about spirituality and discipleship. Congregations have studied The Purpose Driven Life together while leaders studied Leading Life-Changing Small Groups from Willow Creek. The Los Angeles Church of Christ hosted a “Men in White” retreat that spawned men’s purity groups based on Every Man’s Battle. Many congregations have done financial courses through Crown Financial Ministries, and I already mentioned the Marriage Dynamics course that many churches have conducted.

Personally, I’m very encouraged by this despite the present undercurrent that seems to want to keep us on our own spiritual and doctrinal islands. (Cooperation does not have to equal conformity!) I’m a bibliophile, and I’ll suck up any Christian resource I can get my hands on despite whatever theology is behind it. I hope we’re mature enough to discern the truth based on our own Bible study (“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Acts 17:11). And by the looks of these ministries, it appears our spiritual leadership agrees. Amen to that.

Culture War: Ministry

Frank

If you’ve been out shopping this weekend, you’ve undoubtedly seen the bell-ringers for the Salvation Army who’ve become as much a part of the Christmas atmosphere as Courier and Ives and Santa Claus. There was a big flap a couple of years ago when some major retailers stopped allowing the bell-ringers to collect in front of their doors. The ban was in the name of political correctness and the infamous ‘war on Christmas’. It just isn’t the same for the bell-ringers to wish you happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas. But when all the fuss was going on, few made an issue of the little acknowledged, and seemingly little known, fact that the Salvation Army is more than a philanthropic organization, it’s a church.

And that fact makes those kettles even more important in ‘keeping the Christ in Christmas’. Those anonymous bell-ringers shine Christ’s light brighter than I ever could. That’s because as a church, their ministry extends beyond Christmas. Watch the second video- the 1901 San Francisco Earthquake, Third World disaster relief, soup kitchens- these have nothing to do with Christmas the holiday, but have everything to do with spirit of Christmas. What about your own personal ministry? Opportunities abound for charity during the holiday season- Toys for Tots, Angel Trees, Adopt-a-family, hosting Christmas dinners for the needy, serving at soup kitchens- in fact it’s well known that charitable giving and volunteerism increases during the holidays. But what about the rest of the year? The needy that you feed this week will still be needy six months from now. But does your personal ministry reach out then as much as now?

Charity always, ministry to all. That is the spirit of Christmas, and is not limited by a calendar. Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive with no mention of when or how. If you’re giving to the needy this Christmas, or serving in some way, use the opportunity to turn it into something consistent that continues throughout the year.

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ (Acts 20:35)