Growing Deep, Growing Strong

 

Pastor Mur talks about the long term benefits of staying planted at a local church.

I have six stories to tell to set the stage for where I want to go. They are short stories, and they are true stories. You will like the stories. I know the people in each of them.

I will start with one where I was directly involved. A few months ago my wife, Jean, and I went 2500 miles from our home and attended a Sunday morning service at the church of her youth. It was the weekend of her 50th High School Reunion and also the first time that she had been back to that area since she graduated in 1950. Jean’s Dad pastored that church for 13 years from 1938 to 1950. My wife grew up in its parsonage, and had gone to elementary school and then junior and senior high in the same town.

Jean remembered the church and the 300-400 people that used to fill it every Sunday. She still knew some of them there the Sunday we visited even though 50 years had passed. Later at lunch she talked about how her father and mother had loved and served all those people during those 13 years. She remembered her Dad on his knees daily praying for various members of the church. My wife knew her Dad as a godly man and remembers him, as do I, as just that.

Jean’s Dad was ordained in a holiness denomination where the national church polity gave the congregation the responsibility to vote on the acceptability of their pastor each year, and his/her contract was renewed for another year after the vote. While there were and are instances where the denomination allowed contracts longer than one year, the polity essentially was and still is one where the pastor serves at the sheep’s pleasure. In the summer of 1950 after 13 years of dedicated loving service, her Dad’s congregation voted him out of his pastorate by one vote.

My second story is about one of my daughters. A couple of years ago she asked me what I thought she should do with her tithe. Her church was buzzing with rumors that the pastor was misusing church funds. She was uncomfortable with giving her money to a bad cause. What should she and her husband do?

The next story is about a retired businessman who had held ministerial credentials in his denomination off and on over his career. He had a seminary degree, was well read in theological matters, and late in his life was an unpaid though recognized and respected member of the pastoral staff in one of the denomination’s largest churches. He did a lot of counseling, and the congregation always enjoyed his thoughts when he was allowed to teach from the pulpit. It was a growing church and people were constantly being saved which meant a baptismal service was held every month for a hundred or so candidates that wanted to follow that ordinance. My friend was one of the dozen pastoral staff members who administered those rites on that monthly Sunday afternoon.

One Sunday when he arrived for the service, the staff pastor responsible that afternoon called him aside and said that the church management team had decided that my friend would not be needed to administer baptism that day or any more. The church’s call was to identify and equip young emerging leaders, and he was too old. They needed his space on the team to train the new ministers or potential ministers.

The next story is about a distinguished influential Christian layman who took offense to a group of Christians who loved to dance and attended a church where the pastor allowed them to dance as part of the Sunday morning worship services. Even worse they danced the hula, a dance with pagan origins and followings. When the pastor declined this fellow’s request that the dancing be stopped, the man wrote a long critical letter to the editor of the City’s largest newspaper who printed it with a big border on the editorial page along with the opinions of several ministers the paper had solicited who likewise urged that the dance was irreverent and ungodly. The group still dances at the church and travels extensively in the US and abroad dancing in churches. A number of fine Christians left the church because of the dancing.

Then there is the Christian lady I once knew who had suffered a shattered eardrum in an accident. Her affliction required surgery and she had an appointment for that in several days with an eye and ear hospital in a nearby city. In that interval, her husband took her to hear a man with the gift of healing, and while he was preaching, God healed her ear and the surgery was cancelled. She took that healing as a confirmation that she possessed superior spiritual properties and a deep understanding of God’s ways. When someone resisted her ideas, she became angry, resentful and bitter. She literally would shake the dust off her feet and after speaking the appropriate warning to those needing to be warned, she would exit, never to return.

Eight years later her husband finally gave up and left her, and she became someone who bounced from church to para-church to church and on and on. It seemed that every time phenomena were present in a meeting, she was there with an opinion, the correct opinion of how things should be done.

My last story is about a church where God’s spirit and presence were evident for a long season of time. The congregation grew in that season of fifteen years from 20 to 5,000 every Sunday. People were saved, healed, delivered; prophecy was commonplace and every gift of the Holy Spirit was in operation. Most of the congregation spoke in tongues, and those who did not constantly were seeking the gift. Over time they built or acquired facilities to house all the people that came. It was the flagship church in its denomination and it contributed the most money to missions and headquarters.

Then the season changed. The time for gathering was over and the congregation stayed at the 5,000 level for many years. People still came and they went as well. Some were passing by and were curious. Some came once and got miffed at something or someone and never came back. Some moved because of reasons unrelated to the church. New faces were ever present each Sunday as people replaced those who left. The new folks got saved, trained, filled with the Spirit and took their places in the local congregation and in the Kingdom of God. Some attended and never came into salvation, and they too are still there or have been replaced by others with the same experience.

Finally after 25 years in leadership, the pastor retired and a new man came on to lead. The church continues. It is healthy and vibrant, a haven of rest, a safe port in the storms of life, a place to meet God for the first time, a place to grow in Him to Whom we owe all, to develop a pure heart and a tender heart as well. Its congregation does not vote on its pastor, instead the pastor can cast a vision for his congregation and can work at seeing it come to pass.

It’s a church that births other churches, identifies and equips those called to ministry, supports and blesses other godly works both within and outside its own walls. It is a place where the mantle can be passed. A place to hang out and hang on.

I told you these stories to set the stage to respond to a request from one of our readers who asked us to comment on what he called ‘Cruise-amatics’. Our reader is a Spirit-filled Episcopalian minister who indicated he was troubled about what he saw as an unusually high percentage of people filled with the Spirit like you and me but who never belong anywhere. I intentionally ended all my above stories early, I only finished the last one. I wanted to let you think about each situation I described and to imagine what the end of each story should entail.

The first Psalm is on point on these, the cruisers, who fit our inquiring reader’s description. The Psalm defines a blessed man and it says in part of that definition that:

He is like a tree planted by streams of water. A tree which yields its fruit in season.

I live in Hawaii. It is a beautiful land of rainbows, and there are lots of trees that we do not see in many places in North America. Hawaii’s trees are green all year round. They have root systems that are often astonishing to behold. Our trees have to withstand the ever present strong trade winds and the hurricanes that come through every ten years or so. We have a dry season that lasts six months each year. Our beautiful trees have roots that grow down deep into the soil and in so doing become strong so they can find and feed on the moisture and nutrients in the soil so their portion above ground can withstand the strong forces that would topple what we love so.

You cannot easily move a tree planted deep and strong or one planted by streams of water. If you do, the tree will wither and die. I have moved some houseplants, and they lost their vigor and beauty. I submit that the cruising charismatic misses or lacks what is necessary to grow strong. God can certainly bless a cruiser apart from a local church, but His plan is clear. He says that the local congregation is the place to build roots that go deep and strong. Rooted that reach the point where they are convinced that God is able to keep that which they have committed to Him against that day. The bouncing charismatic is like the chaff that the wind blows away. They float here and there, tossed about by the winds of what is the ‘latest.’ Their habits and ways never take them to the end where God intended them be.

On the other hand, true Spirit filled people are wise people. Wise people are pure, peace loving, willing to yield, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. They are peacemakers who sow in peace and raise a harvest of righteousness. Spirit filled people also know when to pull up stakes and move their tent and flock to another location. Seasons when it is time to move come occasionally to most of us. The mature dependable Spirit filled people of God are prudent and discerning. Their decisions are thought through and prayed through. They are people where the ordinary and the righteous have long merged in the deepest part of their souls. They are the old money in the Kingdom of God, the people who count and are wanted everywhere. They can hear the voice of the good shepherd, and they follow that voice to the good pasture he has selected for their growth. They are not cruising through the Kingdom, they are not looking for entertainment. Their call is to serve their master all day, every day even when the price they must pay to serve is so high it costs all they have. They are God’s people, special in his sight, set aside for his purposes, calling and blessing and you can be one of them. Tough people may get going when the going gets tough, but when God’s people face a challenge they go to Him and listen for his voice. When they hear that voice, they move with the confidence that only the bonding of the commander, commandee and commandment can produce: A prophetic awareness of God.

PR