The Jesus House

So what should leaders do and teach?

• First, pray according to the principles of the Gospel of the Kingdom that includes all nations. Pray for more diversity and multi-cultural inclusion in your church. Pray a lot. You have to want it enough to beg God for it.
• Second, learn about the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Learn the principles of the Kingdom and the rule of Christ in the hearts of men and local churches as expressed in the Bible. Hint: this is different than the narrow gospel of individual atonement and salvation, which is a part of the Gospel of the Kingdom and important. But you cannot teach a revelation you do not have. Change your way of thinking first.
• Third, teach on the Kingdom of God and the inclusion of all nations and the will of God for that diversity to be expressed locally.
• Fourth, develop teams of leadership in your church. There should never be only one recognized leader in a local body. That doesn’t mean you pay everyone or give them a title, but it does mean that leadership should be done by a team of men and women with different gifts and strengths working together. God has given some to be pastors, apostles, teachers, evangelists, and prophets to teach the whole church how to function in ministry. To put all that on one man is part of the problem.
• Fifth, validate leadership from different ethnic groups when available and appropriate. I qualify that only because to raise someone up in leadership is a work of the Holy Spirit and should not be done to simply conform to an idea. That can be dangerous. But as we change our thinking, intentionally open our minds to consider including leadership from different cultural groups and watch God and open the right doors.
• Sixth, become cultural learners. Learn different styles and cultural expressions of worship, dress, food, speech. Validate, celebrate, and assimilate them as best you can into your congregation. Invite people in to teach you something you don’t know in these areas. You’ll be surprised the type of relationships that can form when you humble yourself to simply learn.
• Seventh, be open to more charismatic theology. Charismatics should be open to more conservative evangelical theology, as well, but charismatic churches have been far more successful developing international and multi-ethnic congregations. This is not a coincidence. Explore the biblical foundations of more open worship and inclusion of gifts of the Spirit and be willing to adjust according to truth.
• Eighth, challenge American, suburban notions of the right house, car, neighborhood, community, schools, job, etc. The Kingdom of God isn’t safe, suburban America. It is submission to the King, Christ, and letting go of these cultural assumptions means living more simply and relationally and being willing to find our safety in Christ rather than external cultural circumstances. And since leaders are to be the examples, it begins with the life of leadership and how the administration of the church is run. These socio-economic concerns are huge. Teach the congregation that they are citizens of the Kingdom first, and the King might have different plans than the white-picket fence ideal for them. In fact, He definitely does.
• Ninth, don’t segregate ministries according to age or life stages. Have services and events where the whole families can attend and people interact intergenerationally. Only segregate the children when absolutely necessary (probably never)  and not because of some idea that they need church “for them”, too. There’s no such thing as kiddie church and grown up church. There’s just church, and we’ve lost enough young people because we’ve taught them church had to be “on their level.” It takes being a little child to enter the Kingdom, not an old fuddy-duddy. The kids will understand more than you think … or maybe even more than you. Additionally, get rid of all ministries that segregate along personal circumstance (single, married, divorced are the popular ones).
• Tenth, be patient. You’re really asking people to be uncomfortable and humble and learn about others in ways they’d rather avoid, in their flesh. There might be lots of failures and speed bumps along the way. But love suffers long and is kind. Keep moving forward but always do it in love, being realistic about the challenges (take up your cross and follow me) and the reward (he who seeks to lose his life for my sake and the sake of the Gospel, shall keep it). There is life and blessing along this path (Psalm 133). And again, the leaders should be examples of this first.

These posts are for me, as well. Some of these I’ve done, but others I still need to learn, too.

Peace.

So what about the other two servants? Didn’t they have the same master? Didn’t they see the same evidence that their Master could be hard and severe?

Of course they did. But they made a different choice. Why?

Let’s look at what the Master did for a moment. He gave them money according to their ability. In other words, he did not expect something they were incapable of doing. He gave them resources they did not earn and had no inherent right to. As the “lazy and wicked” servant admits, the Master reaps where he did not sow. He is telling them to “sow” on his behalf, with his stuff, and they would be guaranteed a profit. There was no way to lose.

Except to do nothing. Don’t participate and just do your own thing.

They were given every opportunity for success. The other two servants applied themselves to his instruction and profited. Two servants also knew he could be a hard master, but they also knew he was a Master of great reward. So they trusted in that.

So while the “lazy and wicked” servant gets a pretty harsh judgment, let’s look at what the other two servants received. They were not only commended but made “ruler over many things.” In Luke, the Master makes them rulers over CITIES.

How is this a fair reward? They were given resources they didn’t earn, a simple instruction to obey and invest those resources on behalf of the Master, and a virtual guarantee of success. Anybody could do that, right? How are they then made rulers over CITIES?

If you understand the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, which is the Gospel Jesus and Paul preached, then this makes perfect sense. The inheritance for those obedient to the Gospel (how the New Testament describes it) is to rule the Kingdom of God with Christ. Our modern Christianity points to this ethereal version of Heaven in the next life, but the Gospel of the Kingdom is more tangible and powerful than that.

Let’s look at some other scriptures. In Hebrews, we have a great definition of faith. We are told that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” And what is the faith that pleases God? “To believe that he is AND that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him.”

It is not faith to simply believe God exists. I hear it all the time. “Oh, I believe God exists.” Great. As James says, even demons believe, and tremble at the name. But faith also believes that God rewards those that diligently seek him. And so they diligently seek him.

Jesus teaches us to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all things will be added to you. You don’t have to worry about anything … IF you seek the Kingdom before anything else. Jesus also tells us that we will find him if we seek him with “our whole heart.”

The standard is clear. He’s an all or nothing God. And if you give him everything, there is no way you can lose. In fact, the reward is a ruling place in a Kingdom when it comes in its fullness. It is an unimaginably gracious and generous reward for simple obedience.

Another observation: the two servants produced something from their investment with their Master’s resources. True citizens of the Kingdom are given the resources to bear fruit. This is another important aspect of faith. Life begets life. Jesus spoke often of fruit, notably in the famous parable of the sower, where the only plants that did not die were the ones that bore fruit.

The two servants knew full well that their Master could be a “hard man.” But the guarantee of reward and inclusion in their Master’s kingdom was so overwhelming that they willingly obeyed according to his expectations. And so they looked forward to the time when he came to settle up accounts.

And so can we.

Peace.

It has been my observation over the last twenty years that thinking towards God has evolved (or devolved) and changed, and not necessarily for the better. Maybe I’ve just been more cognizant of it, but I think certain ideas and responses have become more common.

First, the perspective that if God is sovereign, then we are free to question and blame him for the evil in the world. The truth of his sovereignty is less cause to praise him today and more cause to point a finger at the Creator. He must answer to us based on our idea of good. Second, the idea that a God of love would never send anyone to hell. If he sends people to hell, then he cannot be a God of love. He is a mean and horrible, if not downright sadistic, God if this is true. And so we either change our idea of God or reject Him outright.

Both are very common arguments and perspectives given as to why people “can’t” believe or follow God; or perhaps they lead to dismissal of biblical truths, the Bible altogether, and devolve into heresy, mostly defined as a new or “progressive” truth. These arguments and reactions aren’t new by any stretch of the imagination (see the Gnostic heresy as an example, during the time of the late first century). They’ve been addressed time and time again over the last two thousand years (and before).

Jesus addressed the image of God being “hard man” in one of hid parables. If you don’t know the scripture, you can read it here. (I’ll be mainly using the one from Matthew, but a similar parable is in Luke 19)

A short summary: a master left for a journey and gave three servants an amount of money (talents). He gave one five, another two, and the third one, “each according to his ability.” When he came back, the master settled up accounts. The servant with five invested and earned five more. The one with two talents earned two more. They gave these back to their master and were richly rewarded.

The third servant hid his single talent in the ground and gave his reasoning.

“I knew you to be a harsh and hard man,” he said. “You reap where you do not sow. So I was afraid and hid it. Here it is back to you.”

The response of the Master (God) is very telling, both in what he says and what he does not say. Now, pay attention: the servant didn’t do anything we might consider horribly wrong like use the money to go out and party or oppress the poor or something. He did nothing and used his Master’s apparent “harshness” as an excuse.

The Master does not accept this as an excuse. In fact, he judges the servant as “lazy and wicked.” The Master’s response? “If you knew me to be hard and harsh, why didn’t you do what you knew was expected?”

The servant knew the Master would come back to settle up, knew the Master’s expectations … and did nothing.

In his apparent attempt to dodge condemnation from the “hard man,” the servant gets exactly that. He was “cast into outer darkness” and there was “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Yep. Sounds harsh and severe to me.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul instructs us to not forget the “goodness and severity of God.” In Luke, the servant used the word “austere” to describe the Master: strict and severe. God is both severe and good, and you can find scripture to prove both. To argue that cannot cannot be both is to argue untruth and deception. Because of the cultural shift to cringe at such ideas, the church either downplays this aspect of God, minimizes, denies or ignores it. Jesus does none of this. He freely teaches it.

Jesus is not worried about making God look mean.

Because he also teaches us much more …

to be continued …

Peace.