A Reflection on the Cross: The Confession of a former Pastor to the Hipsters

Vineyard/Urban YoungLife Leading Lock-in @ our School

When I first became a senior pastor I used an illustration with my congregation that I had picked up from John Wimber the the founder of the Vineyard movement.  The illustration was that I was a nickle in God’s pocket and he could spend me however he might choose.  At that time it didn’t take a lot of faith to make that statement.  I was pastoring one of the fastest growing churches in the city of Chattanooga.  We were reaching young Christian college kids from the Christian universities around us that were looking for a cool band, an ireverant approach, and free bagels and cream cheese; all of which we had in abundance.  

At the time we had a monopoly.  We were the only blue jeans and rock and roll church in the midst of what Barna describes as the most Bible loving city in the United States.  We had been able to land a deal with a Seventh Day Adventist Church that had just built the most contemporary worship center in the city so we embodied young religious folks naughtiest dream of a church.  We opened our doors and they came in by the hundreds.  Its a heady thing to preach to hundreds of people every week.  Its a heady thing to have people want to be close to you because they think you're a success.  Its a heady thing to be sought after to speak at different conferences or to be thought of as somebody.  All that to say, I was happy to be a nickle in God’s pocket because I absolutely loved the way I was being spent.  There was no cost to being God’s nickel at that point in my life.

But is that they type of pastor that the american culture needs? Do we need pastors that indulge the entertainment centered, celebrity obsessed, coddled beyond belief, consumeristic, materialistic population of the United States?  I might have been the type of pastor America wants but I wasn't the type of pastor my community needs.

God in his mercy rarely gives us what we want but always provides us with what we need.  

The first century Jews wanted their Messiah.  They wanted a King like David to ascend to the throne of Israel.  They wanted him to crush all the foreign governments that had used them and their resources over the years.  They wanted Rome and Rome’s Caesar to become their Messiah’s foot stool.  They wanted Jerusalem to be the city that all the nations of the world looked to as the world power.  They wanted the judgement of God to fall on all the unrighteous Gentiles and the status of the faithful Israelites to be elevated so that they were the envy of all other peoples of the world.  That was the Messiah Israel wanted not the one they needed.

Six years ago God began to lead me on a journey.  Our church had grown to the place where we felt like it was time to leave the Adventist Church where we had grown so significantly.  We wrestled with the option of whether to go the route of building a campus on the growing edge of suburban Chattanooga or to walk a road less traveled that seemed more in line with our mission to reach the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely.  

I had been invited to listen to a speaker that had come to Chattanooga by the name of Stanley Tam a Christian business man who had deeded his business over to God in the 1950’s.  During that time Tam capped his salary and diverted all the business’s profits into funding different Christian ministries around the world.  Over the next 60 years the business he gave to God has given over 100 million dollars to missions all over the world.  At that meeting I felt like the Lord was speaking directly to me through Tam.  I felt like he was asking me to give him back his church.  I felt like he was asking me to try the risky thing.  I said O.K.

Our church decided to not build at that time but to instead purchase a portable church system and move into one of the poor performing schools in our community.  It gave us the ability to direct the majority of our facilities budget into our mission by helping a school rebuild it’s library (Today the school has the type of library a well funded suburban school would have). The amount of effort required to set up and take down the church every week meant that we needed to mobilize most all of our people into ministry, undoing the 80-20 principle that most churches operate under. I was excited.  I thought people would see how our church was making a radical move to fulfill it’s mission and it would lead to even further growth.

I could not have been more wrong.

Jesus mission was a costly one.  At first when the people heard Jesus was proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was breaking into the world through him they were excited.  They saw him doing signs and wonders that had not been a part of Israel’s experience since the time of the prophets. They saw him attacking the power structures that had compromised with Rome.  They followed him by the thousands.  

But the more they listened to him the more they came to realize his vision of what it meant to be the Messiah and their vision of the Messiah’s vocation were very different things.  He said that being part of God’s people was no longer based on participation in worship and sacrifice at the temple but was mediated through our response to him as king, that God’s word through Torah was superseded by his word, that no longer was being a child of God based on whether you were part of the people who had been chosen to inhabit the land of Israel but simply based upon your response to him as king. They began to realize the battle he came to fight was not against Rome but a far different and older enemy who held the power of death.  He was not the Messiah they wanted but he was the Messiah they needed.

His way of defeating this enemy required two things.  It required that as a man he walk in perfect obedience to God; by faith trusting the path God had him on even if it meant his death.  Jesus trusted that God could make a way even out the other side of death and that his obedience would be vindicated.  This faithfulness was the call of the old covenant, and humanity and Israel had not been able to fulfill its requirements, not until Jesus.  For the Old Covenant to be ended and a new one inaugurated required the death of the covenant originator.  For an everlasting covenant to end it required the death of the everlasting one (God himself).  So Jesus as fully God went to the cross and died putting to death the Old Covenant and through his resurrection inaugurating a new one.  He was not the Messiah they wanted, but he was the one they needed.

Now through Jesus suffering and death and through his resurrection a way to the Father has been made by the Son.  To all those who choose to follow Jesus as King the blessings of his Kingdom come raining down.  Those blessings include forgiveness of sins, life everlasting, inclusion into the people of God through the church, and the ability to live by the rule of the King in the present. Jesus wasn't they type of Messiah Israel and the world wanted but he was the type of Messiah they needed.

But to gain this victory for us it meant that Jesus had to live a life that looked like defeat.  As a man he had to fully identify with the human condition; this condition often involves suffering.  In the end all but a few friends had walked away from Jesus.  Though he was a king he was mocked as a common criminal.  Though he loved he was despised.  Though he was the deathless one he tasted death. Though he was the sinless one he became sin.  He died publicly humiliated almost utterly alone.  Yet he trusted God through it all and was obedient to the will of the Father.  Jesus wasn't the type of Messiah Israel and the world wanted but he was the type of Messiah they needed.

As we think about the cross of Jesus and what it means, I think we also might get a picture that challenges our perception of what Christian leadership looks like.  Maybe just maybe Christian leadership looks different?  Maybe Jesus gives us a different picture of what the Christian life looks like? Maybe just maybe if we want to be a nickle in God’s pocket to be spent how he chooses, he might spend us in a way that looks different from the world’s picture of success; he might choose to spend us in a way that is hard but, in a mysterious Kingdom of God sort of way, increases the value of the nickel he’s spending into something priceless and beautiful ?

We left the 44,000 square foot, 2 million dollar state of the art worship center and moved into a low performing high school, and week one we mobilized 80 percent of our people to serve.  Within 6 months we only had 40 percent of those people left.  Each week they dropped like flies.  Within five years we had turned over the entire church except for a very few, very faithful people.  Friends that I thought would be with me forever left and did not leave well.  People have questioned my leadership ability (I have questioned my leadership ability!), I have been told that I’m a horrible speaker, that I’m lazy, that I've squandered a great opportunity, that I’m out of touch, that I’m a loser.  Last year the enemy came after my family.  My name has been trashed, we are constantly under financial pressure, The stress has been almost unbearable at times and I probably came as close to a nervous breakdown as I’ll ever come last summer. In my darkest moments I wonder if I really did hear from God or was I just over spiritualizing.

But I've noticed something.

I've noticed people are watching.  People whose pain and suffering far outstrip the minor inconveniences I've faced over the last several years.  They’re watching to see if I’ll last.  Will I remain faithful.  They are watching to see if life can come from death, if glory can come through humiliation, if joy can be found on the other side of suffering. They are watching to see if obedience and faithfulness will be vindicated.  

To be honest I’m watching too.

But I've come to suspect something.  As I look at the cross of Jesus and the wisdom of God, I’m starting to see a bigger picture emerge.  Maybe what my community and country needs is not more pastors who are celebrities, maybe they don’t need more pastors that model the picture of western success, maybe they don’t need more pastor’s who use the authority given to them to build their own Kingdom. Maybe we don't need more pastors who could have been world class CEO’s and can build mega-institutions.  Maybe just maybe the world needs more pastors whose lives look like Jesus.  Maybe they need to see faithful obedience walked out even when the cost is unbelievably high.  Maybe they need to see faith and hope where all signs point to hopelessness.  Maybe the pastors we need aren’t the pastors we want.  Maybe their lives look more like the cross than the crown.

I look to the cross of Jesus this Holy Week and I feel hope.  Because the Messiah I need is the Messiah I got, and somehow he is transforming the painful broken things in my life into beautiful, wonderful examples of his victory and grace.  I’m happy to be a nickle in your pocket, Jesus.  Thank you, Lord.  Thank-you for the cross.

Happy Easter.

Pastor Jeff