Embracing Obscurity

If you’ve been connected at all to the Christian blogosphere in the past month or so you will have undoubtedly heard the saga of celebrity pastor Mark Driscoll and his sudden (though not at all surprising) fall from grace. Now Driscoll’s troubles are well documented and a quick Google search will provide you with more information and commentary than I could ever provide in this blog – so I’m not going to bore you with the details of the case – nor am I going to pile on the criticisms and judgments that you might expect from someone like me who has openly stood against many of the things that Driscoll and his buddies have been famous for in the past decade. What I want to look at instead today in this blog is what I have taken away from the Mark Driscoll saga and how I need to become a different type of pastor as a result of it.

A few weeks back I was driving to Portage La Prairie (about 50 minutes down the highway from me) to pick up my dog who had been kennelled while my family was away on vacation. Having just gotten off of a transcontinental flight about 12 hours earlier no one felt much like making the trip with me so I took the opportunity to fire up my iPhone that had been sitting in mothballs while I was away and catch up on some podcasts. Seeing as this was the height of the media storm concerning Driscoll you can guess what the conversations were about. It was during this drive, and while listening to one of my regular podcasts (The Phil Vischer Podcast if you’re interested) that one of the hosts turned the discussion from the specifics of the Driscoll controversy to the much larger problem of Western Christianity’s obsession with celebrity.

Celebrity is not a phenomenon that is unique to modern western expressions of the faith. There have been celebrities within the church, as long as the church has been around. Great teachers, leaders, theologians, writers, revolutionaries and evangelists have long risen above their local and immediate contexts to become the voice of a movement or a generation. This sort of celebrity comes when greatness is thrust upon someone by circumstance, happenstance, and/or (one would hope) divine appointment for the purposes of fulfilling God’s will. However in the last 100 years (an arbitrary, but I would guess fairly accurate timeframe) we as a western culture have turned celebrity into less of an occurrence and more of a product that is meticulously manufactured and marketed to a public that has developed a voracious appetite and addiction to the idol that celebrity represents. Consider the popular music scene as a chief example – where attractive young artists (a term that must be used loosely) are scouted, trained, groomed and auto-tuned into an irresistible package of the-next-big-thing and then shoved down our throats through every available media channel until we are infatuated with them. Manufacturing and marketing celebrity is big business.

And the church, not wanting to be left out of the business of culture making at some point decided it should begin manufacturing celebrities too. Skye Jethani (who was the co-host on the podcast that I mentioned earlier) followed up that episode with a blog of his own where he elaborated on his thesis. He calls it the Evangelical Industrial Complex (EIC); an industry that has an ever increasing capacity for authors, speakers, and gimmicks to market, which demand an ever increasing pool of Christian celebrities to meet its quota. He actually likens it to the military industrial complex that emerged out of the end of World War II and which has so driven US defence spending out of need to feed the machine. But what I see is a culture that encourages people to aspire to celebrity status, in the hopes that one day they will be “noticed” by someone in the industry, in much the same way that modern pop stars like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande were noticed my music moguls from their self-promoting YouTube videos.

Which brings me back to Mark Driscoll. Mark, for all the harm he has caused, and all the good he has done, was someone who had celebrity thrust upon him. Not in the traditional way, but by the forces of the EIC. He was a young (and by his own admission probably too young), hip, different and influential pastor of a church in a heavily unchurched part of the USA that was finding success. He has the right connections, and his team was media savvy and that voice found an outlet and he found a following. Shortly thereafter came the book deals, and the speaking tours, and the recognition of being one of America’s foremost celebrity pastors. He told people all around the world to worship Jesus – but the truth of the matter is that many of us secretly worshipped him. We wanted a celebrity and the industry found some talent and made one for us in our own image – and we declared him good. Should we be surprised at all that he has now fallen from grace? Should we be surprised at all that the very same industrial complex that made him a celebrity has now sacrificed him on the altar of public opinion?

Mark Driscoll is a cautionary tale for any pastor who may have aspirations of being anything more than the faithful under-shepherd of the flock that God has assigned him or her to. It’s not about his theology, his politics, or his leadership style in the end – those may be the things that are pulling him back down to earth, but the fall was induced by the unsustainable gravity of his celebrity status. The bigger they are, the farther they fall.

And that is why this will be my final blog post on chrisssmithtopher.com

A colleague of mine popped in for a friendly visit shortly after I began my ministry here in Winnipeg he was telling me about his prayer when he became the lead pastor of his church (and he will forgive me I’m sure if I slightly misquote him here – it’s been a year), he asked God that his influence would never exceed his maturity; in many ways that’s the same thing that I’m trying to ensure here. I don’t want to be conflicted by the work of building my “brand” and the co-labour I have been called to in building the church as a shepherd of this local flock. I know without needing any outside critique that my maturity does not warrant more influence than I already have (perhaps not even what I have), and I know that no matter how humble my words or how self-depreciating I can be, that the seeds of wanting to be more lie buried deep within me. And so I am choosing to deny them the light they so desire that would allow them to grow into something that would choke out the good seed of the Gospel that God has planted in me.

I am not naïve or arrogant enough to believe for a second that I am destined to be the next Mark Driscoll, or Rob Bell, or Craig Groschel (or pick your favourite celebrity pastor and insert them into this list); I will likely never have a world famous podcast or best selling book (I will likely never write a book so that’s almost a certainty). I will likely never be invited to join the touring circuit as a Christian speaker or ascend to great positions of power within my denomination – but it would be far too easy for me to manipulate my “brand” so that even in much smaller ways the gravity of celebrity could pull me crashing back to earth and jeopardize the small, but significant work that God IS doing through me in my ministry. And so after much prayer and deliberation I have decided to discontinue my practice of blogging on chrissmithtopher.com and instead take my periodic thoughts, musings and teachings onto our new and improved church website. From now on all of my blogging will be done under the banner and authority of my local congregation and for the edification of my local congregation. And because it will no longer be my blog that I contribute to, I will just be one of several voices that will lend insight and interest to that blog – further diluting my capacity to have my influence exceed my maturity.

I know that some of you will be reading this and think that I’m overreacting. You will think that I’ve taken this idea way too far and am throwing away a perfectly good platform to share Christ through my writings. I appreciate your perspective but I cannot ignore what I feel the Holy Spirit is convicting me of – whether it seems like common sense or not. I also know that some of you will think that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill – and that my decision is no big deal and not worth this self-aggrandizing explanation – perhaps you’re correct, but after 258 posts I felt like some explanation was warranted. And lastly I know that some of you will think that in posting this I am judging other pastors who have not, and will not, take the same steps in relation to their brand-building. Please hear me that God has not told me that this practice of personal brand-building is wrong, or sinful full-stop – he has merely told me that it is wrong for me. And in the same way that a Christian can choose to abstain from alcohol without passing judgment on a brother or sister who drinks responsibly – I harbour no judgement toward anyone else who chooses a different path.  This is something I must do, something that God has asked me to do.

And so I say goodbye. Thank you for all the praise, encouragement and constructive feedback you’ve all given me over the years. It’s been an amazing and exciting ride. Chrissmithtopher.com will continue to exist as an archive of my past writings until the domain expires – at which point I will probably keep it up under a new name as long as blogger will host it for free.

God bless,

Christopher

All Eyes on Jesus - Part 3

Wrapping up the third section of this blog series, where we’ve been focusing on Jesus’ teaching on prayer from Matthew 6 we come to some practical applications for prayer meetings to help coax people out of bondage to their fears of praying in front of others. In my experience as a pastor I’ve learned that there are some very simple changes we can make to our prayer meeting structures that make it a more welcoming and safe place for people who are uncomfortable with corporate prayer. In case you are just joining us now at the end of this series and are wondering were this is coming from, you should know that This is the last post in an 11 post series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer.” You can Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed.

Four suggestions for making corporate prayer less terrifying

1. Limit prayers to short requests – ask the questions:

The simplest way to make prayer less intimidating is by asking those people who have a tendency to wax eloquently for lengthy periods of time in prayer to keep their prayers succinct. It doesn’t impinge on the potency of the prayer and it might even help that person to be more focused in their prayer life. The easiest way to do that is to evaluate your prayers with the following questions

          “does this glorify God?”

          “does this edify the church?”

Is anything you’re saying glorifying to God; Either by the content of your praise, or the faith of your request? And does your praise or prayer edify the church in the same way? Is it beneficial for a corporate meeting or is it a “prayer closet” issue?

The reality is that not ALL prayer requests are meant for public airing. When I was in high school my youth group had a regular Sunday evening prayer meeting – it was actually pretty awesome that we would gather at my youth pastor’s house and 15 or more of us on a regular basis would have a prayer meeting together. On the outside there really isn’t much better that could have been happening in our youth group – but on the inside things weren’t as healthy as they appeared. I didn’t realize it at the time, and I don’t think my youth pastor (who was fairly young, himself) even was aware of it fully as it was happening, but our prayer meetings were slipping into gossip events and social posturing in the guise of selfless intercessory prayer. What do I mean? Well you would get people who would share details about the lives of other people for “prayer,” but they were details that they had no business sharing with the group, and often (sadly) they were about people that I don’t honestly believe in retrospect they really cared about – it was just an opportunity to share some juicy gossip in a sanctified setting. It was also an opportunity for social posturing by revealing to everyone else in the prayer meeting who you knew intimate or personal details about and flaunting your social connections. Now we were young and immature high school students, and even Paul tells us that when he was a child he walked, talked and acted like a child (1 Corinthians 13) but we need to demonstrate a maturity in our prayer meetings that proves that when we became men (or women as the case may be) that we put childish things behind us. Remember the heading for this section of the series is “All Eyes on Jesus,” what is our focus and intention in sharing a specific prayer request?

Another thing that I think is really unhealthy in a prayer meeting is the “unspoken request” or what is sometimes called a “private issue.” The idea behind this is that you really want prayer for some issue that you’re too embarrassed or unwilling to share with the group. Now before I go any further my position on this is not as ironclad as my other examples, and for sure there will be some who disagree with me on this, but I don’t believe that there should be a place for those types of prayers in a prayer meeting.

I am convinced that these sorts of prayers don’t pass the sniff test of edifying the church. The church cannot be built up by praying for something that they don’t know about, something that they cannot, by virtue of their ignorance, celebrate the answering of or watch for God’s working in. I don’t think that it fosters trust and openness and authenticity among the pray-ers and it becomes a hindrance to what God wants to accomplish in that gathering. It’s not that those prayers, or those burdens are unimportant to Jesus, or that they shouldn’t be brought before God in prayer – it’s just that they need to be brought forward in a different way. Either, you need to trust your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to bear your request in confidence and actually share the details (if you can – see the above comment on gossip disguised as prayer) or you need to find a different (perhaps smaller) group of people who you can trust with the details and ask them to pray with you through this issue. It’s not just about you when you pray corporately, it’s also about what is happening in the body of Christ through your participation – never forget that.

2. Develop a culture of acceptable silence – allow people to pray silently during (and overtop of) other prayers.

You may not think that we pray over top of each other in this culture but you may have been introduced to that sort of prayer under all sorts of foreign sounding names – but we do. Every time you hear someone but into a prayer with an “amen” or a “yes Lord” or a “please Jesus” or the good old Alliance “mmmm” we’re engaging in polyphonic prayer (that’s a musical term for many lines being played at once). But just as you don’t assume that because someone is not making those noises or saying those things when you pray that they are not praying along in agreement with you – also realize just because they don’t “take a turn” and say something when the time arises that they are not praying along with you either.

Corporate prayer is about coming together in agreement in prayer – and sometimes you go to pray in a prayer meeting and realize that someone has already just prayed everything that was laid on your heart and all you really have left to add is “amen”. That’s okay. There is nothing unspiritual about that. Create a prayer environment where the heartfelt “amen” is an acceptable prayer. It helps put the focus on God and off of our words.

3. Challenge attendees to think about what it is they are saying and who they are saying it to.

In the same way ask people to think long and hard about what they are praying for and who they are praying to. When I was travelling with the Canadian Bible College choir during my college days we had a specific pattern of prayer before we went out to minister to the crowds at concerts. There was a hard and fast rule that we didn’t engage in any “poor me” prayers. We had a corporate devotional time every morning for our own personal needs but when we got ready for a concert we intentionally focused our prayers on the people in attendance and the things God wanted to do. It took the pressure off of us to consider each other for a time and only focus on God and his ministry.

In the same way encourage people in prayer not to praise people. Prayer is for praising God. If you want to tell someone how wonderful they are don’t wait until a prayer meeting to tell God (in front of them of course) how thankful you are for them, and what a blessing they have been in your life. Go tell them that before the prayer meeting, or when they are being a blessing. A Prayer meeting is not the time for social posturing of any kind no matter how heartfelt or genuine it might be. And in the same way, there are times and opportunities for praying for your personal needs in a corporate setting. Some prayer meetings are designed for those very issues to be addressed (what you pray about with your small group is a perfect example of that) but there are other times when the focus needs to be taken off of us and put on others. For example, at our monthly Acts 2 prayer meetings we are committed to not praying for our own needs but instead to pray for revival in the church to spill into the community so that the Gospel may go out and the world may be transformed starting with our little corner of the city. We don’t entertain personal prayer requests at that gathering because that is not the focus. Keep your focus on the right things and make sure everyone at the meeting knows the “rules” so that we can all pull toward the same goal.

And lastly:

4. All eyes on Jesus

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened.”

Luke 11:9-10

The secret – if there is one – to God honouring, powerful effective prayer corporately or privately is very simple. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Keep focusing on the object of our prayers. Keep coming back to His truth, seeking His will, asking for His plans, praying for His power while being moved by His heart. That’s what everything is all about. And that brothers and sisters is how we move toward becoming a people of prayer.

All Eyes on Jesus - Part 2

Continuing on from our last post where we started examining Jesus’ teaching on prayer from the Sermon on the Mount – the part that encapsulates that most famous of prayers, The Lord’s Prayer. Our goal today is to identify some biblical principles that will help us to do corporate prayer well. In case you are just joining us now and are wondering were this is coming from, you should know that This is part 10 in an ongoing series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer ”and you can Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed.

Using our text from Matthew 6 as a guide here are a few Biblical principles that should guide our prayer:

1. Prayer is not a performance art!

Now bear with me on this one because it can get a little convoluted. It is clear as mud that Jesus in our text rebukes the Pharisees (here he calls them hypocrites but the context makes it very clear to whom he’s referring) for their showy prayers and instead tells them that they should take those prayers into the privacy of their own homes. But at the same time we’ve already established that corporate prayer is normative and healthy in the life of God’s people – so what is Jesus point here. What can we take away from this that is non-contradictory and helpful for us in developing our own pattern of prayer?

Here’s what I’ve come to as I’ve read and meditated on this text over and over again. What I see is something very different that simple public prayer being offered, I see self-righteous religious people putting on a performance. Listen to these words again.

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. 

Listen to the breakdown of that statement. 

When you pray:  That is a command to be a people of prayer – we’ve covered that already

Don’t be like the hypocrites: don’t be like these guys. Okay I get that, but why?

For they love to pray: Okay that sounds pretty good so far – what’s the qualifier here?

Standing in the synagogues and on the street corners: Okay so they love to pray publicly a little weird but as we’ve already established that’s not unbiblical. Where is the problem? Here it comes:

To be seen by others:  Ah, there is the rub. What makes the prayers of the Pharisees so detestable is that their prayers are not for God. They have turned communion with the Almighty into a performance art. They have taken a holy and transcendent privilege given by God to his people and turned it into the equivalent of a mime on the street corner pretending to be trapped in a box. What they are doing – and claiming to do in the name of God – is patently offensive. And Jesus wants his followers to have no part in it.

When I or a worship leader or one of the elders or anyone else stands up here in church and delivers a prayer on the congregation’s behalf we have the daunting responsibility to make sure that our words our genuine and that our eyes are on Jesus. Public prayer is about keeping everyone’s eyes on Jesus. It’s not about how eloquent or articulate the prayer leader is – it’s about whom they are focusing on. If I stand up to pray publicly and my goal in prayer is to impress you – it doesn’t matter how beautiful my words are – they are offensive and ugly to God. And if you stand up in the congregation, or in your small group, or in a prayer meeting to lead people in prayer and you are truly focused on communing with Jesus on the group’s behalf – it doesn’t matter how clumsy, or simple your words are – God loves what you’re doing. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus because prayer is not a performance art.

2. Fear God; not others

After rebuking the prayer pattern of the Pharisees Jesus delivers this little gem of insight when he says:

Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Near the beginning of the book of Galatians, Paul picks up on this idea is the motivating drive for his ministry:

Am I now trying to win human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Galatians 1:10

Who are we looking to impress with our prayers? Does it really matter what the other people around you think about your prayers, your eloquence or lack thereof; does it matter what other people think about your vocabulary, or the perceived simplicity of your prayers? Whose approval are you trying to win? In Proverbs 29 there is a wonderful truth that explains what happens in our heart when we get this backwards – it’s especially poignant in the Common English Bible translation where it says:

People are trapped by their fear of others;
   those who trust the LORD are secure.

Proverbs 29:25

Are you trapped by your fear of others ore are you joyfully free to respond to God in the fear of the Lord? Too often we become paralyzed by the fear of what people are going to think about us when we are seeking validation in the wrong places.

Those of you who only ever see me at church may not realize that I'm a terribly self conscious person. I have quite a bit of social anxiety when it comes to certain things. For instance, I actually have to work my self up to do cold calling. If I've got to call around to ask for help for some event or project it terrifies me - being transparent with you here, it's one of those areas where I struggle with the whole fear-of-man thing.

On the flip side though EVEN THOUGH I'm extremely self conscious about singing in front of people (choirs don't count, there is safety in numbers) you probably wouldn't be able to discern that if you saw me leading worship because when I sing for God the people out there really don't matter that much. When we understand in our hearts who we are aiming to please, it can make the difference between a grown man afraid to make phone calls and a singer getting lost in God in front of a hundred people.

And it makes a difference in prayer too. Don't get wrapped up in the fear of what others think. If you stutter, then stutter to the glory of God. If you've got a funny accent, just remember that somewhere else in the world it would be the rest of the group that talked funny. If you don't have an expansive vocabulary, remember the most powerful prayers are prayed on our behalf by the Holy Spirit in groans that cannot be understood by human ears. Keep your eyes on Jesus and don't worry about who else might be watching.

3. You can’t wear down God with words 

Jesus continues with these instructions:

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 

First when you pray, don’t be like the Pharisees – we’ve covered that – but now Jesus uses a different comparable – Don’t be like the pagans. Well what did the pagans do that was so wrong?  Well of course the answer starts and ends with the recognition of Jesus as God with a lot of stuff in between but specifically Jesus is talking here about their pattern of prayer. The pagan approach to prayer in the 1^st century was to keep repeating yourself until whatever god you were praying to gets so weary of hearing you that he relents and does what you want.  That's basically it.  Just keep doing it and doing it and saying it and saying it until he gets so sick of hearing it, that He finally reacts. 

In fact, if you'll remember back in the encounter between Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18), Elijah played up this fact for comedy.  Elijah kept egging them on.  Maybe He's on a vacation.  Maybe he can't hear you, better yell a little louder, he might be asleep.  And the prophets of Baal just kept on and on and on.  All day long and they kept crying out oh Baal hear us.  Oh Baal hear us.  Oh Baal hear us.  Oh Baal hear us.  Hour after hour after hour, they mumbled that same phrase, trying to wake up their god.  Trying to pester him into doing something.

But that’s not what our God responds to. God is not interested in superhuman feats of repetitive stamina as if we could wear down his resolve and change his mind by our stubbornness – he’s interested in a heart that longs to be in relationship with him and a spirit that is committed to waiting on him. That doesn’t mean as some have suggested that you ask for something once and then never speak of it again – it means you come to God with your need and earnestly wait for an answer. When you pray for the same thing over again it is not because you think that God has forgotten it’s because you are reminding yourself that God has not answered that prayer yet and you are professing anew to the Lord that you are trusting in Him to provide that answer.

The perfect and timely example is the prayer for healing. We believe that God heals our bodies. We believe that we are promised a complete and physical renewal in the end times and that glimmers of that renewal are breaking through into this world with the coming of the kingdom of God. And so when someone is sick – we pray. We anoint. And we call out to God and we do not stop until we receive an answer – and in that sense healing is an easy one – either God heals or that person waits for the resurrection and full restoration in paradise. What is your heart’s orientation toward God?  He is not impressed or interested with mantras or vain repetition. He is interested in persistent faithful trust in his power to act. Keep your eyes on Jesus and not on any formulas or mantras that you might have learned for prayer.

Which brings us full circle back to our initial quandary: how do we overcome the crippling fear of praying in front of others so that our corporate prayer life can be vital and effective? Well in our next, and penultimate post in this series I will have four quick suggestions for you to consider. These suggestions are less exegesis (now that you know what that word means) and more application but I think that they are important things for us to consider in making prayer meetings accessible to those who struggle with this problem.  But to see them, you’ll need to come back next time.