Articles from March 2016

Preach a Biblical Sermon on a Relevant Cultural Issue

The current church growth mantra of our era is “relevancy”. The Church is being exhorted from every direction that it wants to remain viable it must become “relevant”. Of course, defining relevancy is an interesting pursuit as it can mean anything from upgrading your technology to rebranding your image to repackaging your messages to getting a fog machine. Some Pastors have even gone so far to change their doctrine to accommodate the need to be “relevant”.
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   CHANGE YOUR VOCABULARY

Words are vehicles by which we communicate and sometimes those vehicles carry baggage. There are few words which can evoke more negative images than the word “politics”. For many people politics infers (if not outright describes) everything that is antithetical to Christianity. Politics is about ego, self-promotion, self-interest, acquisition of power, compromise and a host of other qualities that are diametrically opposed to what a follower of Jesus should be concerned about. Our tendency is to confuse the character of the participants with the validity of the process.

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Hold a voter registration drive on a Sunday -or- how about a month of Sunday’s?

I hang out with a number of pastors who are deeply involved in public policy matters and what is conventionally called “politics” and I can tell you that even in our churches we are constantly amazed at how many people are not registered to vote. I have even had staff pastors who somehow navigated around that responsibility. (By the way…we got that corrected.) If that is a reality in a church and with a pastor who is highly engaged, I can only imagine the statistics to be higher in churches that neglect this important aspect of Christian stewardship.
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I just returned from teaching a weekend seminar training Pastors and Christian Leaders to be involved in public policy and the “political” arena. (READ the previous blog on the Bonhoeffer Institute) A great portion of the time is used to unveil the historical roles of pastors in this arena, dispel myths that prohibit their involvement (especially the 501c3 myth), and lay out the Biblical case for their leadership in public policy discussions, elections and legislation. It is always fulfilling and amazing to watch the room as the epiphany takes place that this is a part of the calling of shepherds with their sheep. Slowly, there is an awakening that is occurring with the ranks of the clergy in America.

However, that being said, we are playing the proverbial game of “catch-up” because Pastors have fallen asleep at the wheel for at least a generation. The awakening is, of course, the first step to reformation but the subsequent steps are equally as important. The question naturally arises, “Where do we go from here? What can we do to potentially turn the direction of the culture around?”

Where to begin?

It seems so overwhelming…

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 Equipping Pastors to Engage the Culture

A little over a year ago I was invited (including my wife) to join approximately 25 pastoral couples on an all-expense paid cruise by the Alliance Defending Freedom. The cruise had a two-fold purpose…

1. To train affiliate lawyers in arguing first amendment cases before appellate courts more effectively on behalf of churches, religious organizations, and Christian individuals.
2. To solicit pastors to become more engaging from their pulpits and ministry to the issues of religious liberty and first amendment speech.
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