I grew up identifying with skateboard culture. Remember, I’m old, so this was in the 1980′s. It wasn’t like it is today when you can turn on network television and see the Mountain Dew tour of professional skateboarding as part of mainstream America and everyone knows who Tony Hawk is. It wasn’t mainstream. And that’s one of the things that attracted me.

I’ll be honest and I’ll be the first to tell you that I was never very good at skating. But I loved it nonetheless and I’ve been wondering recently why that was. Why did I love to do something I didn’t excel at? One of my favorite skaters growing up was Lance Mountain because he was good, but he just didn’t seem as competitive as some of the other guys. He seemed to truly love skating for skating’s sake. I watched the Bones Brigade videos (especially Animal Chin) incessantly and they became woven into my psyche (for good and bad!).

Last night I finally had the chance to watch Stacy Peralta‘s documentary: Bones Brigade: An Autobiography. Even if you’re not interested in skateboarding, it’s a great story of finding meaning and belonging in a world that doesn’t seem to want you. That was one of the themes throughout each of the skaters’ recollections: they just didn’t feel like they fit in until they found skateboarding. They weren’t sure about life’s meaning until they found skateboarding. I deeply resonated with that sentiment growing up. I could play sports but I just had no interest in organized sports. In fact, I really didn’t like them. I could do well in school when I tried but it just wasn’t important to me. It wasn’t until I found skateboarding that I really felt like I had found an outlet that not only provided personal growth and expression but community.

Now, many (many) years later, as a Christian, I have a deeper understanding of what I was looking for and I have found more than I ever could have hoped for in Jesus. But I’m left wondering, especially as a pastor; does the way we practice “modern-day North American ‘Christianity’” fulfill those deepest desires that we all try to fill in various ways? We all want to be accepted for who we are and the freedom to express our individuality in community that accepts us. Skateboarding has offered that for countless young people.

But I struggle with the way that so much of our practice of Christianity tends to isolate us from those “who aren’t like us.” We withdraw from culture and build our “Christian” baseball fields, football fields, bowling alleys and tennis courts, believing that we can offer a “safe” alternative to people. Yet, in practice, we’ve asked people to “become like us,” to cross a cultural boundary before they can be part of our community. We use belief to exclude people from community. Yet, Jesus flipped this on its head; he used community to draw people to belief. Christians are the worst about asking people to fit into preconceived notions and become monochrome when we should be the most beautiful of tapestries, made up of all kinds of people who preserve their differences in love instead of water them down in conformity. How is it that skateboarders can practice community and acceptance better than those who have been accepted forever by God?

Bones Brigade: An Autobiography reminded me of a time in life when I truly felt free to be myself and felt completely accepted at the same time by others who were truly being themselves. Now, many years later, I’ve come to realize just how rare that is. May our “version” of Christianity be a better treasure than a skateboard.

Watch a trailer for  Bones Brigade: An Autobiography:

I get to be around a lot of pastors and church planters (yes, I did say that I get to be around them). I love to hear how God is working in different church families throughout the region. I am fascinated by hearing about different church models and approaches to discipleship. I often think of The Church (all local collections of believers living life together) as a beautiful mosaic, or one of those pictures that’s made up of a bunch of tiny pictures. Every church has convictions and every church has a model and how beautiful when we all work together to make, mature and multiply disciples.

But, quite often, when I talk with pastors and church planters, there’s a disturbing trend (a disturbing trend besides “Pastor Fashion,” that is). So many pastors and church planters are simply stressed out. Many of them, though in the infancy phases of their church plants, are already wrestling with burnout. Many are ministering out of obligation and struggling to keep the status quo.

It’s no wonder that so many pastors are so stressed out. After all, we’ve created a culture in which inordinate and unhealthy amounts of pressure are placed on pastors. We’ve adopted the “Three B’s” (Buildings, Butts and Budgets) as measures of success and failure. After all, the church with more people must be doing something right, right? And if that’s the case then we’d better adopt a model of church that gets and keeps people in our main gatherings because that’s where we can count them and make sure they give money to make sure that we excel at the “Three B’s.” Once we adopt the B’s or some variation thereof, we are required to “x” number of people in our main gatherings because our business model, uh, er, I mean ministry model is tied to that baseline number of people. And, much of the pressure of getting and keeping “x” number of people falls on the pastor.

This creates all kinds of false expectations about the role of the pastor and what church should look like. Consider this description of a new book on Amazon: “Churches are defined by the weekend teaching.” Wow, that’s a ton of pressure on 35 minutes-1 hour/week (depending on your pastor’s preaching style). So consider the pressure that the pastor now bears: if I have an “off” week, the entire church is in peril. No wonder so many pastors are so stressed.

A few years ago, I remember listening to a message from Tim Chester. He was talking about something very similar; he found himself talking to a lot of pastors who were wrestling with burnout and saying things like: “I can’t wait for my sabbatical; I can’t wait to get away from all of these stresses.” To this day, I remember Chester responding that he simply didn’t understand such sentiments. He loved ministry and felt like ministry was anything but a burden.

I think I finally have a glimpse of what Chester was talking about. Don’t get me wrong, I could use a sabbatical, but that’s more because I want to write several books than I can’t wait to get away from my church family. For perhaps the first time in my ministry life, I can say that ministry is a joy. I mean, come on; I get to see Jesus change people’s lives! I get to see idols exposed and knocked down. Of course there are difficulties. Of course there are problems and even stresses, but I think I’m finally beginning to understand what Jesus means in Matthew 11:28-30:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

How is it that so many of us and so many pastors feel the Christian life and ministry as a burden? I will labor with all my strength to help the people of Church of the Cross, but their problems are not my burden, they belong to Jesus. It’s not my church, it’s Jesus’ (Matthew 16:18, Ephesians 5:25, etc.) and it’s not up to me to “grow the church,” I’m called to make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20) and to shepherd (1 Peter 5:2) and equip (Ephesians 4:11-13). Ultimately, so many of our pastors are wrestling with burnout because we’ve forced round church in to a square hole. We expect our pastors to be salesmen, PR people, organizers, ralliers, motivational speakers and, above all, business men. That’s a heavy burden. One that we’re not meant to bear.

I wonder how many ministers view ministry as “easy and light”? Not that it’s easy because we don’t care; it’s easy because it’s ultimately Jesus’ burden, it’s Jesus’ church, not ours.

Success or failure in the church should not be measured by buildings, butts and budgets but by transformed lives. But let’s be honest: I’m not going to be invited to speak at a conference because our church contains many people whose lives are being transformed. That’s not sexy but it’s biblical.

It’s no wonder so many pastors are stressed. But it’s insanity to think that we can keep adopting false measures of success and failure and that the church will somehow change.

•  Read Sabbaticals, Burnout, Ministry Models and Missional Communities
• Read Sabbaticals, Burnout, and “Leadership”
  

It seems as though, largely speaking, that American Christians fall broadly into a couple of main categories: those that emphasize doctrine or those that emphasize action. There is, of course, that large group of churches that water down just about everything in order to grow numerically. In fact, there is a very large church in my area in which leaders readily admit that you won’t hear public teaching above a seventh-grade level. They call it their USA Today approach. But those churches are not my point today.

One of the main reasons we hear at Church of the Cross, where I pastor, for Christians leaving our church family is that we don’t have enough “bible study.” These people often go to churches with a lot of classes and that heavily emphasize doctrine. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love to study the Bible, I love to study doctrine and doctrine is fundamental to our faith. If you don’t believe in the Trinity, you’re not a Christian. There are clear boundaries to Christianity and we need to know those boundaries but I’m not convinced that “studying the bible” is the main thing the church should be doing. In fact, our right doctrine should move us to action.

Jesus very clearly says: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Jesus commands that His people make disciples, “teaching them to obey” all that He commanded (Matthew 28:18-20) and James says: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).

Scripture is very clear that right thinking (doctrine) changes our heart (affections) and that this results in action. We are not yet doing it all that well, but I am not interested in pastoring a church of people who want to learn more that they won’t do. If our churches are not putting faith in to action, all the doctrine we study is simply puffing us up (1 Corinthians 8:1).

This is an uncomfortable thing to consider. Lots of people will loudly proclaim, “Yes, but our actions don’t save us! Salvation by grace though faith alone! (Ephesians 2). Fair enough, but I’m not saying that our actions produce faith. I’m saying that our faith should produce actions that ask us to sacrifice and become “good news” to our surrounding culture. James says that if we simply hear the Word without doing it, we are deceived (James 1:22) and that if our faith doesn’t result in works, then it’s not real faith (James 2).

Jesus is not going to be impressed if you can parse your Greek and Hebrew and if you’ve worked out the definitive ordo salutis and if you’ve worked out Infra- vs. Supralapsarianism. Most Christians in America already know enough Scripture that we don’t live. Jesus says that whatever we do for “the least of these” we do for Him (Matthew 25:40).

I’m still not sure what this looks like in Suburban NW Phoenix, but I do know that the church should serve those in need and that, the more we learn, the more we should live. So, at Church of the Cross, we’re not interested in studying the Bible just to study but to become equipped to live on mission. We want to put it in to practice. We want to live it. The question shouldn’t be whether a church emphasizes doctrine or action but whether or not the truth about Jesus is moving people to action. We are really struggling with this as a church family but I am incredibly humbled that there are others who want to see faith put in to action.

As I’m want to do, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about church and church planting. I’ve also just finished reading Hugh Halter’s latest book Sacrilege. Over the years, Halter has been a tremendous source of challenge and encouragement. On one hand, I come from a fairly “traditional” church background in which, though it may not have been explicitly been communicated, we’re expected to be more comfortable around those who already follow Jesus than those who do not; so Halter has pushed many of the buttons I thought I was holding on to. On the other hand, I’ve long had a heart to plant a church in which people at every stage of faith were drawn closer to Jesus, so he has been a breath of fresh air, reminding me that I’m not the only one (I was going to say, “reminding me that I’m not crazy,” but I don’t know Hugh, so for all I know, he could be quite crazy.).

One verse Halter references really stuck out to me (yes, there was much to applaud in the book, but for the sake of this post, I want to ponder this particular verse). Mark 2:17:

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Throughout the book, Halter reminds us that Jesus spent quite a bit of his time and energy connecting with people whom the “religious” or “spiritual” people didn’t think Jesus should be with. In fact, this is the premise introducing Luke 15, which contains one of Jesus’ most famous parables, the Prodigal Sons:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

But Mark 2:17 has really been haunting my thoughts and my prayers lately. In my current situation, I am blessed to have the chance to talk with a lot of pastors and, in particular, church planters. This has caused quite a bit of self-examination lately. I’ve found myself wrestling with the one question a church planter never leaves behind: Is the church we’ve planted the church we initially wanted? It seems that in church culture, we like to swing the pendulums. We either immerse ourselves in “building up Christians” or “reaching out” as though, somehow, these things are mutually exclusive.

In 1 Corinthians 14, when addressing people on the issue of speaking in tongues, Paul assumes that there will be unbelievers present. I wonder how many theologically solid churches also intentionally word and present things in a way in which they assume unbelievers will be present. Do we take time to explain our terms and practices? It seems that many of our church plants err on one side or the other. What has been called “seeker sensitive” or “theologically deep.” But are these things really at odds with one another?

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Are the churches we are planting places where “the sick,” sinners, those who don’t know where else to turn, feel welcomed and loved while also challenged? It’s a fine balance to call sin sin while also loving sinners. Or are the churches we’re planting places where we have a “preview service” so we can appeal to certain Christian sensibilities and get a “core group” of people “on board” so that we can have “respectable numbers?” Pardon my cynicism, but I’m really wrestling through some of these issues.

I am in no way saying that Christians shouldn’t be part of church plants. But, I am saying that I wonder if we don’t sometimes cater our church plants in such a way where we can simply guarantee that we have certain numbers of Christians to present to the people who ask. I want an environment where those who already follow Jesus are challenged to go deeper in their relationship with Jesus and those who don’t yet know Him are not only challenged to follow Him but made to feel both welcomed and challenged until they do so.

I fully realize that I am probably naive, but I don’t understand churches that set the bar so high that only those who already follow Jesus will ever feel comfortable. And even then, only certain types of Christians will have the “right doctrine” to belong to this church. In my own background, this is Reformed Theology, but it can be any number of issues. We are very prone to center our churches around practices and doctrines rather than Jesus. The result is that, in our pursuit of our particular doctrine or practice, we exclude many. We don’t explain what we do, we speak “Christianese” and we simply expect others ti immerse themselves into our culture as quickly as possible.

Are we more concerned with whether the sick find healing (and we all recognize our sickness), or that the healthy find a place to belong? Would it look any different if we continually considered the sick in everything we do? Why do we seem to believe in practice that these things are mutually exclusive?