Where is your Cross? Luke 14:25-27

When Church Fails You

Being in the pastoral ministry for sometimes now, I and my wife have known and seen many potentially wonderful people walk out of the church, shutting the door behind them forever. Memories of these individuals, though as old as a quarter of a century, still remain fresh in our minds and at times wonder and wish that there was something we could have done better to avoid their departure from the church. Yes, in hindsight, we could have done something different. But then, we were young and inexperienced pioneering pastors struggling to raise a new church to stand on its feet. Like Paul to the Thessalonians and Corinthians, we never wanted to be a burden to the church and thus worked hard on many odd jobs, not only to provide for our family but also for the needs of the church such as paying rent and other utilities so that we could also present them the example of sacrificial service in God's kingdom. As indigenous church planters in a heathen society without any missions or supporters behind; it was a staggering task. But by choice, we took up the challenge of becoming bi-vocational pastors. Because of the bi-vocational nature of our ministry, we could not give as much time as we wished to the needs of many of the believers; yet the call of God for the pastoral ministry was so clear and we could not convince ourselves to abandon the church when we faced many difficult situations. The difficulties arising from the lack of finances, ill health and persecution were not as challenging as arising from a disgruntled church member. Whenever a church member demonstrated the traits of disgruntle, as inexperienced as we were, we would spend more time with such members, try to pray more, try to reason with and always hoped for a miracle that someday he/she would understand the grace of God in Christ Jesus. More often than not, we failed to convince such members to appreciate the grace of God; concepts like forgiveness, consideration, understanding, love and sacrifice failed to make sense. In our failures to minister to them, often we questioned our own intelligence thinking whether we are delusional in attempting to Pastor a people that does not contribute anything toward our welfare. Instead of the church taking care of our material needs, we had to work hard to meet the needs of the church and yet these members would manage to find reasons to complain and murmur about one thing or the other in the church. By serving the church freely, we thought the church members would see the kind of sacrifices we were making, the kind of unconditional love we demonstrated toward them by bringing them to Christ, being there with them in times of happiness and sorrow, and teaching them to become the kind of people God wants them to be. The Bible says that the one who labors for the gospel must eat from the gospel and the pastors and teachers of God's word are to be paid better. But we were doing it all freely and yet these church members always managed to find something wrong either with the church or with the leadership and decided to walk away from it. We hardly forget these members who have walked out of the church; a great sense of loss from all sides remains in our psyche. By God's grace, a few years ago, we were able to handover the leadership of this church to our fellow pastor, knowing that the church is now self-reliant, able to feed its shepherd and is birthing many new churches. 

Nearly four years ago, after we moved to Korea, we took over the leadership of our current International Church, and of course the church is not able to pay us the required pastoral salary and thus our bi-vocational nature of ministry continues. Just like in the past, it is our desire that some of our members would see the kind of commitment it requires to be a follower of Christ from our example. If we are followers of Christ, then, we are called to serve and not to be served; we are called to give than to receive. Our contract with the church is limited to our Sunday preaching and we can say "Why bother for Bible studies, counseling, visitation and so forth; just go for Sunday sermon because that is all the church requires of us". But no, we are called by God to minister regardless of whether we are paid for it or not. We are to lay down our lives for the cause of the kingdom of God and his people. When we see a fellow believer encouraged, a backslidden returned, a sinner saved as a result of our ministry; this becomes our greatest reward in this world. And, in fact, we are grateful to the Lord for the growth of our International Church and the commitment of many volunteers. We are grateful for our worship team, serving team, ushers and Sunday school teachers. All of them are doing what they do freely and for the cause of the kingdom of God. Many of them invest their own money, time and talents into what they do. Some of them have been doing it cheerfully for many many years. It is wonderful to see that from a handful of members, today we are numbering into many scores who join us every Sunday for worship and fellowship.

But along with the growth comes the challenge of practicing our Christianity. We have people from many nations, cultures and languages. There is going to be confusion, miscommunication and misunderstanding. With such diversity, an international church can have the greatest potential for either healing or hurting one another. Our spirituality is going to be tested severely. If we don't take our personal discipleship very seriously, we are going to find so many reasons to complain and murmur about our church, about our leaders, and about any and everything. If we allow our feelings to dictate our decision making process, its going to steal our joy and peace that God has freely given to us. It's going to rob us of the love of God that he poured in our hearts. And if we don't take preventative actions, we may eventually either walk away from the church or make others to leave the church altogether. 

Therefore, brothers and sisters, as a fellow believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, I urge you to fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Listen to his words and consider the price of discipleship he has laid out for us to pay. Let us pick up our cross daily and let us ask God to pour out divine love in our hearts, let us ask God to give us the joy of the Holy Spirit, let us ask God to give us the peace that surpasses all our understanding. Let us ask God to give us patience, kindness, and goodness so that we can tolerate members who are difficult to deal with; love the unlovable. Let us ask God to give us faithfulness, meekness and self-control so that we continue to grow in the knowledge of God in bearing the fruit of the Spirit. 

We live in a broken world among the broken people and the church is also comprised of broken members. Although we hope for the church to behave better, let us not walk way from it just because some members demonstrate their brokenness. The church is still the body of Christ and as members of his body; let us do our part in healing and restoring even when people keep hurting us.

Apart from me you can do nothing - John 15:5

Cheerful or Painful Sermon?

Last Sunday after the sermon, a member of our church made a remark about my preaching that is still stuck to my mind; I wish to forget it but it does not go.  It has made me to be more fearful in how I preach.  Don't get me wrong, I am a human being and I like to hear something good rather than bad.  But at times an honest response is better than a good and pleasing one; the remark that is stuck to my mind was an honest one.

Being in the pastoral ministry from the teenage years, with a few improvements in some areas, preaching a sermon on every Sunday is still a fearful challenge.  This fearful challenge arises from the twofold realization of having the word from the Lord and then faithfully delivering it to his people; a timely word of the Lord to the hungry people of God, with all its ramifications and relevance, is a delicious delicacy in any given age and culture.  How I wish that the Lord would speak through me to each and every member who sits under my voice; he/she would return from that place edified, revived and filled with strength to live in this fallen world with faith and courage!  Such desire as a preacher always weighs heavily upon me, at times to a breaking point.  Even as I climb the steps towards the Pulpit, I keep breathing a silent prayer even though, for reasons unknown to me as of yet, I feel not so comfortable to pray publicly before I begin my sermon.    

But there is one thing I have overcome as a preacher; a visit to restroom before climbing up to the Pulpit.  For about until five years into the full time preaching ministry, the fear of public speaking would grip me so tight that I wished to be raptured just before the presider would call me to the Pulpit.  Since the wish to be raptured never came true, my stomach would give up!  The situation would be more compounded when invited to speak in a new place.  In such a scenario, my first priority used to be to locate the restroom and then calculate the timing for me to take the Pulpit.  Considering the living conditions in rural Nepal and India, finding a restroom in close proximity of the church itself used to be a lifesaver!  Once the location of the restroom is secured and you are seated inside the worship hall, the struggle proceeded to the next level.  Worship services in these places don't have the printed bulletins and the program sheets with the calculated precision of the allocated time; if they had, it would have given my stomach the luxury of telling me when to plan my trip to the restroom.  But you could never tell as how many songs, hymns and testimonies would be incorporated in the worship before your name is called.  The worship leader would have full freedom to do or say anything or even preach a whole sermon based upon the hymns just sung or about to be sung; all depended on how he/she felt led by the Holy Spirit.  And you add to that the supernatural manifestations; someone would either be filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in tongues and prophesy or be filled with demonic spirits and roll on the floor, scream and cry.  In either case, the service would go one until the calm is restored or the demonic spirits have been exorcised.   The day I would not have to preach, I would be perfectly at home in a service like that; in fact, I would add to what seems to be a chaotic style of worship to a naturalist.  But the day I am supposed to preach, everything would change for me; I would be focusing on the worship leader and interpreting his/her moves and planning my trip to the restroom before my name is called.  Failing to visit the restroom would ruin the first 5 to 10 minutes of my sermon and I would make a fool of myself.

But it has now been over 15 years without the regular panic attacks of the fear of public speaking (there are occasions it returns).  The Lord has been gracious to take away that fear from me, but the fear that I have now is even greater than that.  It is the fear of failing to minister each and everyone who comes to the church seeking the word of the Lord.  I have heard/read great preachers say "you do your best and leave the rest to God".  It is a comforting thought.  But as a minister who is called upon to speak God's word to God's people, I wish that every single individual who comes to Church would return home knowing that one has heard God speak to.

Having such a prayer in my heart, the remark on Sunday compelled me to hear God before I speak and speak before people without fear.  The zest of the remark went like this "I used to attend an X church but the reason I came to this church is because the pastor in X church always preaches 'Cheerful' sermons but you preach 'Painful' sermons.  Even though I like cheerful sermons and your sermons hurt me, but life in this world is painful and your sermons provide me the inspiration to face the painful world with faith and courage".  The idea that sermons can be painful and yet provide the needed inspiration to face the painful world; I take it to be a great compliment for me!

 

The world is indeed painful.  There is evil in every side; suffering and life have become twin pillars of our existence in this fallen world.  That is why Jesus said, "In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world".  Life giving message to a hurting world needs to be communicated through the channels that have the experience of what it is to suffer and overcome the suffering in this world.  It is possible that the "cheerful" sermons are born out of the comfortable life-style of the preachers; lack of experience of suffering in life makes us either a merry-go-round preachers or stiff-naked legalist devoid of love; attributing the lack of suffering in life as a reward for their religiosity; "if everyone would do what we did, there will be no suffering in life".  But the person who has travelled the road of suffering and experienced the shepherding hand of God through the valley of shadow of death will know the both spectrums of life; there is trouble in the world but the one who shepherds us has overcome this world and therefore we can overcome with him.  On the other hand, unless the preacher experienced the victorious hand of God in the suffering, there is also the danger of remaining in the painful state of mind and think that this world is not a place to hope for anything good.  Indeed, the good shepherd wants us to have life abundance in this world, and with Paul we ought to be able to say "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me"!

So, I prefer a 'painful' sermon that gives me the inspiration to overcome the painful world than hear a "cheerful" sermon that sets me up for disappointments and discouragements in the real world. 

This world is so broken that self-help and 'cheerful' sermons can only take us to some extent, but to make life worth living in this world, we will need the power of God revealed in the gospel.  "The gospel is the power of God unto salvation for those who believe"!  Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life".  If I have Christ, I have the power of resurrection and life even in this painful world and because he lives, I shall also live and live victoriously!   Therefore, whether the sermon is cheerful or painful, the most important thing is to have Christ in it!  

Easter Sunday - Hope Beyond the Grave