A few weeks ago I got a call at the Library where I work as the IT Manager from some company wanting to sell me their crap. I explained to the person on the phone, we’ll call him Louis, that I did not want to order anything, and indeed I could not because of our new building project. He asked when we expected the building to be completed, to which I replied a few months, thinking I had just bought myself a few months of “Louis” not calling me.

Apparently, I was wrong. What I had really bought was a $500 case of printer cleaning supplies. Of course, I had no idea that I had done such a thing until I got faxed an inovice from Louis’ company. (I really wish I still had it so that I could scan it in, but alas, it is no where to be found.) After getting the invoice, I fired off an email to the address listed on the fax, and called the 800 number. The number gave me a busy signal, and I never receieved a reply to my email. (In fact, I’m still waiting). 

Fast forward to this week and receive a package via UPS. You’d be surprised at how underwhelming 500 dollars worth of printer cleaning supplies can be. It all fit into a 12″ x 6″ cardboard box. Who knew? I was finally able to get their customer support on the phone and explain to them that I did not place an order. After a few minutes of discussion, the support rep assured me that their warehouse manager contacted every customer to make sure that they were shipping the right thing. This gentlemen apparently had a record of speaking with me. Now, I get a really low number of work-related phone calls. The rep finally accepted that I wasn’t going to be paying for the order, when he honestly said: “What if I were to hold the billing for a few months?” To which I replied: “Listen, it’s not about the money, it’s about honesty. You guys made up an order, didn’t respond to my emails or phone calls to cancel the order, which I didn’t place, and now you want me to give you money? Are you serious? I don’t understand how you’re in business. I’ll be shipping these cleaning supplies back to you, please don’t call me, or make up orders for me again. Have a great day.”

As a church, are we signing people up for things they didn’t ask for? At LifePoint, we’re getting ready to launch some new things that will let people know where we’re headed up front. No surprises.

Don’t get me wrong, doing things is incredibly important. If there weren’t things to do, there would be no purpose in leading people. When I talk about leading vs doing, I don’t mean to say that leading is cooler, better, or more important. As a pastor at LifePoint, I just think that it’s something that God has called me to.

Logical thinking, troubleshooting, and problem solving. Those are the gifts that God has given me. To use a cool “pop culture” reference, if I were to say that my God-given abilities were a power from, say,  the show Heroes, they’d be like Sylar’s. I have a knack for figuring out how stuff works. This is one of the things, I think, that makes me a natural computer programmer. I look at the problem, and eventually I find a solution. I can’t even really explain how I know that a piece of code will work. I’ve written lots of code before that I couldn’t even begin to explain, or even really understand. I look at the problem and the solution just starts to become clear, like one of those 90’s Magic Eye 3D images.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with being someone who “gets things done”. The problem is  I don’t think that I’ve done a great job in transitioning from being a “doer” to being a “leader”. In fact, my first reaction when something needs to be done at LifePoint isn’t usually: how can I empower someone else to get this done so that the task is completed and they grow personally at the same time? I wish I could say it was, but it isn’t. Usually, my response is more like: How can I do this AND all the other stuff I need to get done. Just because an employee is amazing at their job, doesn’t mean that they will be good at managing other people to do their jobs. 

At the end of the day, I have to learn to take the opportunities to learn from the leaders that God has put into my life and the experiences he allows me to have. I just want to be a good steward of what God has given me.

Back in the original post, we talked about how discipleship isn’t just memorization of scripture, commandments, or traditions. Discipleship goes way beyond just “knowing” stuff. If it didn’t, then I’d have to say that Jesus chose the wrong types of people to be his closest followers: most were fisherman, some were tax collectors or zealots, not exactly an Ivy League crew. (But I bet they’d be really good at rowing). Some of the disciples were at the bottom of the intellectual barrel, but Jesus knew that being a disciple was about more than just brains.

Today I’d like to take a look at how we oft-times confuse gifts of the Spirit with spiritual maturity. If you come from a pentacostal or charismatic tradition, this post may make a little more sense to you. If you don’t, just bear with me and I’ll do my best to bridge the gap. In every pentacostal or charismatic church there’s the super-spiritual man/woman who always manifests some “Gift of the Spirit” during the service. It may be praying in tongues during the worship service, or having a Word of Knowledge for everyone, or, my personal favourite, having an interpretation for someone else’s outspoken prayer in tongues. Like I said, I think it’s mandatory for every pentecostal or charismatic church to have one of these guys/gals. In the church I grew up in, we had “Bob”. (Don’t worry, Bob isn’t his real name)

Every time there was a prophecy, or a tongue, or an open alter, or dead space in the service, Bob was there. Once, during a Sunday Evening Service, we had some visitors who, unbeknownst to Bob, were from South America. Our guests, who were missionaries from Argentina, spoke English, but prayed in their mother tongue of Spanish. (If you grew up in a pentecostal or charismatic tradition, you should be able to tell where I’m going here.) After the worship service, our pastor asked one of the gentlemen to pray for our church and the message he was about to give. This is where the “unbeknownst to Bob” part comes in. When the missionary stopped praying, our pastor made the fatal mistake of leaving some dead air. Bob, sensing the moment was absolutely right, began to interpret. Luckily for Bob, our pastor was used to dealing with situations like these and quickly moved in to fix the situation. But I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of those missionaries. I can only imagine him thinking: “Hey, I didn’t even know I was speaking in tongues!”

Bob is a good example of Spiritual Gifts not equalling Spiritual Maturity, but unfortunately he’s not the only one. There’s the world renowned pastor who gets caught in an adulterous relationship. Or the worship leader who’s become completely self-obssessed. The problem is that all too often, we confuse Gifts with Fruit.

We’ll pick up with the topic of Gifts vs Fruit next post. I hope it’s not two months from now. :)

* SPOILER ALERT! * If you’re a regular LifePointer, all the stuff you read in the rest of this post may be a spoiler for what I’ll be sharing in July, but it’s 1:00 am, and I have to get this stuff off my mind before I can sleep. If you don’t think you can handle hearing me talk about the same thing more than once, you may want to skip on over to weather.com now.

WTF?, as I’ll be referring to it from here on in, is really shaping up to be a look at how we can cultivate the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives, which, really comes down to discipleship. It’s natural to assume that discipleship means cramming our heads with more knowledge about Jesus. From the time we eat our first crayon in Kindergarten, to when we walk across the stage at graduation, we’re taught that learning and maturing is all about knowledge. [For those who were a: home schooled or b: didn't graduate high school, please insert your own, applicable school reference here.] When you take a test, your teacher grades you based on how much of the information you can recall. They don’t care how hard you studied for the test, or how much you really wanted to pass.

Our educational focus on knowing facts has influenced how the church handles discipleship. We assume that feeding people more information about Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, etc. will make them better followers of Jesus. And, it will, to a point. The problem is that knowing the facts about something without applying them only makes people pompous and arrogant. And, let’s face it, none of us acts up to our level of knowledge. We all know more of the Bible than we are applying at any given moment. Now, before you get all: “Hey, this guy doesn’t think people should learn about Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, or the Bible. Where’s the stake?” Let me say that I whole heartedly agree that people should learn more about Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible, but let’s not be fooled into thinking that that knowledge makes us better disciples, or produces the Fruit of the Spirit on its own.

Tune in next time where you’ll hear Kevin say:

“…Some of the disciples were at the bottom of the intellectual barrel.”

Goodnight.

If you flip to your Bible’s table of contents, you won’t see The Gospel of Thomas, and you probably won’t see I or II Maccabees either (unless, of course, you happen to be Catholic, or have a Bible that includes the Apocrypha). What gives? Why is Mark included, but not Thomas? What about Judas “The Hammer” Maccabees? Who decided those guys weren’t inspired?

I hate to sound like a cheesy carnival barker, but I’m going to anyway: “For the answers to these and even more amazing questions…come to LifePoint Church Sunday, April 20th!”

These are two of my favourite historical topics, so you can bet that I’ll be writing about them after the series is over. So, even if you can’t make it to LifePoint this Sunday, and don’t give me some lame excuse like: “oh, but Kevin, I live in California”, you’ll be able to read my thoughts on the topics.

• So, I just installed the new version of WordPress (the program that powers my blog), and I have to say that it is amazing. I’m discovering new features as I type this very post. The layout is amazing, I can upload photos and files directly to my blog. You may not notice many of these as you read, but rest assured that I will avail myself of them in the coming posts.
• This Sunday (April 6th) is LifePoint’s One Year Anniversary! I’m sure that I’ll have more to say about that as we get closer, but praise God that we’ve made it this far. And, thanks for sending us all the cool LifePoint peeps. (Myk, can I say peeps?)
• I’m really excited about the coming Bible series. Those of you that knew me know that it’s a subject that’s near and dear to my heart. Those of you that don’t know me know that now as well. I’ll put more up about the topics we’re going to cover tomorrow.
• God has really been speaking to Pastor James. I don’t know if you can tell a difference in his speaking, but I have to say that I can tell a difference. And it’s good. He sacrifices a lot for everyone at LifePoint, be sure to lift him up in prayer.
• Thursday is James‘ anniversary. Send him a message and tell him Kevin sent ya. He’s writing a series of posts about it on his blog.

About a week or so ago, I emailed the executive pastor over at Elevation Church. Initially, I had asked him for advice relating to church finances. Much to my surprise, he offered to speak with me over the phone, instead of just corresponding via email. We finally got connected last Friday and I don’t think I could explain just how much that conversation has motivated me concerning where LifePoint is headed (and how we’re gonna get there). I wound up asking him for advice about a myriad of topics, from church finances to communication. I think he may have regretted giving me a few days to come up with more questions. ;)

Here are some things that I learned from the conversation, filtered through our leadership team meeting. I’ll flesh these out some more in future posts. Think of this as the appetizer.

• As soon as we find the right charity, LifePoint is going to be giving away 10% of our income
• “Every church needs to leverage their strengths”
• Teaching – One of LifePoint’s greatest strengths is teaching. We’ll be trying to leverage this strength by getting more of our messages on our website.
• Community – I think we do a good job of getting involved in each other’s lives. Soon, you’ll be hearing more about opportunities to hang out with other “LifePointers” from both the stage and the web.
• Design/Webstuff – We have some very talented graphics and web people. Hopefully, the people of Cleveland will be inundated with stuff telling them to visit lifepointchurch.tv. Stay tuned, I’ll be putting up some information on how everyone can get involved in this one.
• We’ll be having regularly scheduled All-Volunteer meetings
• Plans are being worked on to give the theatre a much better appearance/smell. If you were there last Sunday, you know what I mean :P

Joe wants to be a “Senior Pastor” someday. So, what does Joe do? Obviously he becomes a Children’s Pastor. Then, after he’s “paid his dues” he moves on up to being Youth Pastor. After that, once he really gets noticed, he becomes College Pastor. (Please note: this sequence is much easier to carry out if you are the senior pastor’s kid) Next, he becomes the Assistant Pastor. He’s just one breath away from “the man”. Yep, just waiting for the Senior Pastor to commit adultery or die. A lot like being the Vice President, only with more responsibility. What’s the problem with this model? Well, nothing I guess, but if Joe isn’t called to be a Youth Pastor, then why is he doing it? What makes being a Youth Pastor or Children’s Pastor any less of a calling than being the Lead Pastor?

One word: Perception. So many people view being Assistant Pastor or Executive Pastor or any kind of “behind-the-scenes” leadership as “paying your dues” until you are ready to lead a church of your own. Well, not here at LifePoint. I’ve not been called to be “Lead Pastor”. And I don’t want to be. Life is too short to be worried about other people taking your job, both in the secular world and in the church. Now, at some point in the future God may change his mind, but I doubt it.

So, if God has called you to “behind-the-scenes” leadership, then be the best leader you can be. And don’t be discouraged if people ask you “When are you going to get your own church?” I get that all the time. Your Senior Pastor needs to know that he can count on you to have his back. He won’t be able to rest if he thinks you’re trying to get his job. After all, wouldn’t you worry if someone much more handsome, witty and intelligent were trying to take over? Just kidding James, you know I love ya. :)