My current essay title is "Explain the strengths and weaknesses of the early church and how they compare to the church today."
We are talking about the very early church, as described in the book of Acts.
Initial thoughts are the obvious ones really: unity, hospitality, provision, continuous growth.
But I'm sure I can go deeper than that. What can I say about Jews/Gentiles? The early church was made of Christian Jews, yes? So I suppose a weakness would have been the Judaistic mindset that most if not all of the early Christians had... As you can tell I need to do much more reading on this.
Any nuggets of wisdom to share with me, anybody?
What In The World Is The Anointing?
in
Worship Leaders with
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We all know that we want more than just great music on Sunday morning.
We desire more than a tight band, innovative programming, and well executed services.
We want the presence of God. We desire for God to be lifted up and glorified in our midst.
We want to decrease as the glory of God increases. But how does that happen?
For my entire life, I’ve heard a particular word mentioned in the church.
Every worship leader wants it, whether you know what it is or not.
It’s the anointing.
So when we speak of the “anointing”, what do we mean?
People in the Scriptures were anointed by God. Even Jesus was “anointed” by the Holy Spirit for the ministry he was sent to do.
My fear is that we’ve cheapened it. We’ve begun to see the anointing as an emotional feeling more than the favor of God.
We are in danger of equating anointing with the octave-jump chorus in “How He Loves”.
Is anointing just a really humble, yet talented vocalist or is it something deeper?
What Is At Stake
There is a lot at stake here. As we raise up the next generation and develop other worship leaders, we don’t just want excellence in our craft.
We need worship leaders who are desperate for God.
Worship leaders who depend on the Holy Spirit.
Worship leaders who love God more than they love the stage.
If there is such a thing as the anointing, we’d better have it.
3 Questions
So I want to start a discussion, involving three questions.
1. What is the anointing?
2. How do we get the anointing?
3. What is the purpose of the anointing?
I have my own thoughts (which I’ll share in the comments) but I want to hear yours. Many of you read this blog but have never commented or haven’t commented in a while.
Now’s your chance.
Take your stab at one (or all) of the three questions.
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Healthy Preaching = Healthy Churches
8 Jul
The importance of preaching is God’s chosen instrument for doing good to souls. By it sinners are converted, inquirers led on, and saints built up. A preaching ministry is absolutely essential to the health and prosperity of a visible church. The pulpit is the place where the chief victories of the Gospel have always been won, and no Church has ever done much for the advancement of true religion in which the pulpit has been neglected. Would we know whether a minister is a truly apostolical man? If he is, he will give the best of his attention to his sermons. He will labor and pray to make his preaching effective, and he will tell his congregation that he looks to preaching for the chief results on souls.
~ J.C. Ryle
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke volume 1, [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986], 292. {Luke 9:1-6}
The corruption of human nature is a universal disease. It affects not only a man’s heart, will, and conscience, but his mind, memory, and understanding. The very same person who is quick and clever in worldly things, will often utterly fail to comprehend the simplest truths of Christianity. He will often be unable to grasp the plainest reasonings of the Gospel. He will see no meaning in the clearest statements of evangelical doctrine. They will sound to him either foolish or mysterious. He will listen to them like one listening to a foreign language, catching a word here and there, but not seeing the drift of the whole. “The world by wisdom knows not God” (1 Cor. 1:21). It hears, but does not understand.
We must pray daily for the teaching of the Holy Spirit, if we would make progress in the knowledge of divine things. Without Him, the mightiest intellect and the strongest reasoning powers will carry us but a little way. In reading the Bible and hearing sermons, everything depends on the spirit in which we read and hear. A humble, teachable, child-like frame of mind is the grand secret of success. Happy is he who often says with David, “Teach me Your statutes” (Psalm 119:64). Such an one will understand as well as hear.
J.C. Ryle - Humbling Praying For the Illumination of the Spirit
“That’s not fair.”
It’s a child’s first sentence, perhaps a senior’s last, and it makes many appearances in between. So who would have thought that fair is a dirty word? It should never be spoken within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Heaven; it is never spoken there. You have to leave the throne room before it can be muttered.
Fight injustice not fairness
We know salvation is not merely about personal security, but it carries with it an obligation to stand against oppression. “Fair” wants justice, which, we would think, is a good thing.
Fairness usually takes aim at perceived injustices against ourselves. The danger is, we are better about identifying true injustices when they are against others than when they are against ourselves. When it is about me, a slight becomes an injustice. That is, you took my toy, and that was an egregious wrong, and I want revenge . . . I mean fairness.
Though we might be clumsy in our concerns for justice, we are right to pursue them. When we talk about fairness, however, we are actually speaking about something different from injustice. Fair, to us, is not so much about injustice as it is about symmetry. We want the pot divided evenly.
Don't sacrafice relationships in pusuit of your perception of "fair"
The other day my wife and I were out for dinner and her portion was bigger than my own. Maybe this wasn’t an injustice, but this, of course, was unfair on two counts. First, the portions should have been even. Second, if you take into account the portion-size to weight-of-the-eater ratio, and realize that I outweigh my wife considerably, then fairness meant, if there was going to be a larger portion, I should have it. Yet I was patient. I waited until dessert and took a big spoonful of her white chocolate ice cream. Life then returned to its harmonious balance, though it almost cost me a couple fingers.
Look around. Any time you hear the word fair you will find broken relationships and other forms of nasty fruit. Guaranteed. In other words, during our fine dinner, I was actually turning away from Jesus Christ to utter some profanity – “this waiter should know better; this isn’t fair” – while my wife continued on her normal course of sanctification, except for when she tried to stab my hand.
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The danger is, we are better about identifying true injustices when they are against others than when they are against ourselves.
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The problem with all this? There is no symmetry in the Kingdom of Heaven. Instead, God’s Kingdom is completely lopsided. God has done it all. He pursued, loved, forgave, blessed and promised a lavish inheritance. We can never meet God half-way, and we should stop trying.
Thank Jesus for imbalance
There is a kernel of something right in fair. In a close relationship, if one person always receives preference, the relationship becomes strongly hierarchical rather than mutual. The result is something less than a genuine relationship. In such situations we might speak out because of our interest in unity, but we do that in humility and gratefulness as we remember the unbalanced nature of real life.
If we keep in mind the story of the ungrateful servant in Matthew 18:21-35 we will see the asymmetrical kingdom. Jesus, the most asymmetrical human life was never angry when he was violated and abused. He always loved first and loved more, and he always will. Be thankful for imbalance.
 As I sift through a mountain of emails, I’ve learned to quickly dismiss forwarded “junk mail,” even if it’s from people I consider friends. At the same time I learn to recognize which email “clicks” might actually reap spiritual blessing. When I get an email from a particular dear friend who works with the Navigators, I pay attention. A few years ago he forwarded an email of a quote passed along by one his friends. The blessing and challenge of that email made such an impact on me that I’ve saved it to this day. The email read: Years ago, I asked Jim Downing, one of the patriarchs of the Navigator work, “Why is it that so few men finish well?” His response was profound. He said, “They learn the possibility of being fruitful without being pure. . . they begin to believe that purity doesn’t matter. Eventually, they become like trees rotting inside that are eventually toppled by a storm.” A Holy Life—or a Scandalous One? A compelling expression of the mission of the Church found in the Lausanne Covenant is “the whole Church bringing the whole gospel to the whole world.” The gospel-transformed, grace-saturated, holy lives of Christians provide a powerfully compelling face to that mission. There are few things that threaten such global witness more than hypocrisy-revealing scandals that leave local churches and ministries struggling for survival. And yet the scandals continue: On one side of the world a preacher fakes a fight with cancer to cover his shame in losing a battle with addiction to pornography. On the other side of the world a pastor who preached powerfully against homosexual immorality is revealed to have been leading a secret life of homosexual trysts with a male escort. There have been countless “successful” and “blessed” ministries rocked by scandal. I can’t help think about the missed opportunities of both scandals. What if both leaders had been open and honest with their congregations and ministries? What if they had been the ones to reveal their weaknesses and sins rather than a television network? What if they had shared such struggles with other leaders earlier on? What if they had allowed the gospel to heal and cleanse in faithful community, loving church discipline, and accountability? What if, from the pulpit, the message was, “I say these things about the dangers of pornography (or the darkness of homosexuality) because I’ve been there. I’ve struggled through these things, and I’ve seen the power of the gospel to effect change.” Winning or losing the heart battles over confession, repentance, and humility is the difference between those who end well and those who do not. Why hypocrisy often wins the day is, I believe, because leaders learn the possibility of being “fruitful” without being pure. There is, in some sense, the ability to maintain professional administration of ministry and even to see “fruitfulness” in such activities. This, in turn, can deceive one into thinking that confession of heart struggles and personal sins are in some sense unnecessary and mere distractions to ministerial progress. Christ Cleanses Us The scary reality is that most of these seemingly blessed and fruitful ministries led by morally compromising leaders will never be brought to light on earth. Many lives are “successfully” lived and many ministries are “successfully” operated apart from a vital relationship with and properly desperate dependence upon Jesus Christ. This is the great scandal of Christian leadership; this is what leaders should fear. The gospel message teaches us that God works and saves and loves and cleanses despite us, not because of us. That is true in salvation “in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And this dynamic remains true throughout our Christian life. God continues to build his kingdom despite us, despite our sin, and yet through us by the power and grace that is ours through the work of Christ on the cross. Let us not take such amazing grace for granted, thinking we have a license to remain isolated and unaccountable in sin simply because our ministry seems blessed and fruitful. Let us not put the Lord our God to the test. How can we respond to the sinful tendencies in our hearts and persevere in purity? - We must daily die to pride. I recommend to you C. J. Mahaney’s book Humility. One of his key points is that it’s not a question of whether we have pride or not but what our pride looks like. One subtle and dangerous form of pride that tempts leaders and threatens God’s kingdom work is the pride of thinking that we can actually do ministry apart from intimate relationship, fellowship, and dependence upon Christ. Jesus rebukes the pride in us that we can do anything apart from him (John 15:5). Let us live in desperate dependence upon Christ in our lives and ministries.
- We must confess our sins to God and one another. We, not Satan, should be the ones who expose our sin. James 5:16 reminds us of the power of confession and prayer: “Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” The greater the “fruit” and growth and public nature of your ministry, the more difficult such confession becomes. Therefore, I urge especially my fellow younger leaders around the world to deal with sin issues. Do this quickly and early. Seek out mentors who will pray for you, listen to you, rebuke you, and encourage you. Allow the Church to be the Church as Christ intended.
- We must diligently guard against two “cardinal sins” of leadership. The first is mistaking giftedness for spiritual maturity. Too many young people have been thrust into leadership and responsibility too quickly and without proper supervision and guidance. Leaders tend to be overly eager to give responsibility and authority to young people because almost every ministry has numerous needs and positions to fill. But giftedness must not be mistaken for maturity. And giftedness alone without spiritual maturity can oftentimes do more long-term damage to a ministry after short-terms “gains” fade away.
The second “cardinal sin” of leadership is mistaking “fruitfulness” for holiness. We can often become easily enamored with the shininess and abundance of “fruit.” “Successful” ministry is not measured by numeric indicators. When Christ addresses the seven churches in Revelation, does he commend the larger churches and rebuke the smaller? Does he compare growth rates and highlight numbers? No. Instead, he hits at the heart of character, faith, endurance, compromise, idolatry, and immorality. If we leaders of the Church will humble ourselves before God and before his people, if we will give proper focus and attention to our purity and holiness, if we will understand and live our lives and do our ministries in desperate dependence upon Christ, and if we will simply return to the power and the beauty of the gospel, not only will the Lord grant fruit, but it will be fruit that will endure and bring his name great glory for eternity. Let’s live and end well for that great name.  
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