My Story

A Pastor friend asked me to write out my testimony so he could use it as an illustration in his sermon.  Since I've never written it out I thought I'd use it as this weeks blog post.  This is my story.

I grew up in a family where not a single person was a follower of Jesus when I was little.  Not my parents, not my step-parents, none of my aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins; no one in my family was a follower of Jesus.

When I was in the seventh grade my grandfather on my mother’s side died.  There was a little Baptist church down the road from my Granny and her neighbors recommended that the pastor from that church do the funeral.  He was a professor at a local seminary who loved to preach and he loved his people.  He began to visit my Granny shortly after the funeral and within a few months had led her to Christ. 

My Granny began to pray for her family.

Now my mother would feel guilty for not having her children in church from time to time; usually after I had done something she deemed particularly bad, or after something like my sister’s first words being “Damn Flies”.  After one of the events had occurred we would attend the local United Methodist Church for maybe three weeks in a row, until the urgency of our trespasses had wore off and then we’d slip back into our routine, only showing up for services on Christmas and Easter.  I can remember my Dad on one Easter morning looking out at some men playing golf and commenting with disdain, “Who doesn’t go to church on Easter?”  The answer to that question would be my biological dad and stepmom.  All that to say, we had very little in the way of a formal Christian upbringing.

When I became a senior in High School my best friend Gary Rhom, who loved to party and chase after the girls with me, had an encounter with Jesus at a YoungLife retreat.  Out of nowhere it seemed he went on the straight and narrow.  After this had gone on for several weeks and Gary’s weekly twisting of my arm to go to YoungLife club I finally decided to go up to our schools YoungLife leader, a guy named Kitt Sublett who had the thickest coke bottle glasses you’ve ever seen, and ask him what he had done to freak my  friend out about God.

Kitt looked at me and said,  “Do you really want to know?” and I was like, “yes” and then he said call me up tomorrow and we’ll catch a sandwich at Schlotzsky’s. 

The next day I went and strong armed another of my good friends Frankie Sanford to go along with me.  We asked Kitt every question that our unbelieving hearts found so critical (what about the pygmies in Africa? What about the dinosaurs? What about evolution?) and Kitt gave us honest answers that I could tell he genuinely believed.  This was enough to get my curiosity up so when he said, “Where do we go from here?” I was open to continuing the dialogue. 

Kitt started a small Bible Study for Gary, me, and Frankie.  We called it the Coke-a-cola club because Kitt bought the cokes that came in the little glass bottles.  For nine weeks we studied the Bible.  Kit taught us about God’s good creation, about the Fall and the problem of sin, then we looked at Jesus his life, teachings, and miracles, then he showed us prophecies about Jesus in Old Testament and how they were fulfilled in the New Testament.  When he showed me Isaiah 53 I freaked out.  That passage was written hundreds of years before Jesus walked the planet and yet was so clearly about him.  It seemed like overwhelming proof to me that Jesus was who he claimed to be.  During that study my mind came to believe that Jesus was Lord but God wanted all of me not just my mind.

Now during these nine weeks God was at work in my life.  You see I had sort of a Diest’s view of God.  I believed there was a God, I just believed he wasn’t personal and he did not care about me.  That he had got everything going and he was kindda watching the show.  Well as we began studying the Bible I began reading the New Testament on my own and Jesus was anything but impersonal.  In Jesus I was confronted with a God who loved each person individually, who’d entered humanity to redeem and fix what was broken about it. 

I began to look at my friendships and see that all centered around getting drunk and partying.  I knew that in a few short months I’d be leaving home and going to college and was wondering is this all there is?  Am I going to be spending the rest of my life trying to get the beautiful sexy wife, accumulate the most stuff, so that I can make my life the biggest party that I can?  Is this really the meaning of life?  Or is there something that I’m seeing in Jesus, something about his self-giving, self-sacrificing love that points to the fact that real life, the good life is found somewhere in a completely different direction?

All these questions came to head on the evening of April 16^th, 1987.   One of my good friends Gregg Gambel and I had gone to a party together.  I had ridden with him and I put my keys in his glove compartment (these were the days of skin tight levi’s and your keys looked pretty stupid sticking out of your pocket).  At the party there were a bunch of kids from another school and my girlfriend was there too.  I was a pretty horrible boyfriend during those day’s, it was hard to find space for anyone other than my ego, so we were constantly fighting. 

We had a talk the day before about how we felt our relationship was to physical and we were going to try to figure out how to be friends on top of being boyfriend and girlfriend.  Anyway we arrive at this party and I come up to her to say hi and she did not give me the greeting that I felt like I deserved (you know fawning, gushing, pseudo-worship) and so I start churning up the party so all the attention can center around me.  I get together a group of people and we start playing the drinking game quarters and before long I’m fairly drunk.  I look over at my girlfriend and she is talking with this guy I can’t stand.  I start thinking how much I’d like to punch him; I decide to take a walk instead.   Frankie, my good buddy, lives a few streets over so I decide to walk to his house.  It takes me about an hour to find my way two streets over.  When I get to Frankie’s I ask if he will take me home.  He tells me he can’t because he’s sick, so I start trying to find my way back to the party. 

During this walk I begin to talk with God.  I’m telling him how empty I am.  I tell him what a mess I’ve made out of my life.  I finally make it back to the house where the party was, but when I get there everyone is gone.  The party has moved locations and my buddy that I had come to the party with is gone as well, with my keys.  The next morning is Easter Sunday, and I’m thinking great, the one Sunday we are going to be in church and I’m going to be coming home way late, drunk off my butt.   I decide I’m going to have to walk home and I head towards the exit of the neighborhood.  All this time I’m talking with God asking him if there is a better way to do life.  Finally I just sit down on the sidewalk and I make a bargain with God.  I say, “God if you will get me out of this mess, I will give my life to you hook line and sinker.” 

No sooner does this prayer come out of my mouth than a friend of mine who is home from college for Easter weekend drives by and sees me sitting on the side walk.  He stops and says, “Jeff, what are you doing sitting on that sidewalk?”  I say, “I’m drunk and lost, will you take me home?”  He says sure. 

I get in his car and we begin to drive to my home.  He has to stop and get gas, and while he is getting gas I see my buddy that I came to the party with in the turn lane that is next to the gas station.  I hang out the window and wave my arms and yell.  Gregg sees me, drives over, I hop in his car, get my keys, arrive home and go to my room no questions asked. 

The next morning we are sitting in church.  Our pastor is preaching on the power of the resurrection and God’s Spirit begins to speak to me.  He says, “I upheld my end of the bargain; Jeff, are you going to uphold yours?”  I begin to think, that is going to mean some dramatic changes.  I will have to change my lifestyle, it might mean my friendships will have to change, what will this mean for me and my girlfriend?  Then I start to think it all could have just been a series of coincidences.  I need to be reasonable.  Then I hear God speak again, he says this is your opportunity Jeff, if you don’t move now it won’t come around again for a long time.  At that moment I came to realize that the God I had always thought was impersonal and distant was as close as some drunk kids prayer in the back of a neighborhood.

So right there in that moment, I surrender my heart to Jesus.

Many thought that was just a phase; that in a few months I’d grow out of this Jesus thing.  But 25 years later I know it was the best decision I’ve ever made.  Now, I understand that any choice I’ve made to be faithful to Jesus has been a good one and any choice I’ve made to do life my own way has been a bad one.

I guess Granny’s prayers were packing some power.    

An Example to Follow

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. ¹³ The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. ^[1]

I want to talk about one of my heros today; Godfrey Hubert.  Godfrey Hubert was the first pastor I worked for when I went into full time ministry.  Godfrey comes from a line of pastors.  His parents escaped Nazi Germany in the 40’s and became missionaries in Quito, Ecuador where they ran an orphanage (He had an uncle that was martyred during the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia).  Godfrey told me that his bedroom was a renovated chicken coop, so obviously, Godfrey grew up poor.   I remember him relating a story to me one time about how he woke up one morning to find a snake lying on his chest, curled up because of his warmth.  He had to wait until his father came to check on him, being totally still and quiet so he could remove the thing.  If it had been me, I would have wet the bed. 

Godfrey came to the United State when he was eighteen with a 1000 bucks and the instructions to go to Asbury College.  He worked as a pastor, a bus driver, and probably about any other odd job he could find to get himself through school and seminary.  He and his young wife began to pastor Foundry United Methodist Church when he was in his early thirties and he’s still pastoring the church 30 years later.  There are so many lessons I’ve learned from Godfrey both personally and professionally, but there is a new lesson that his faithful service is challenging me with today. 

You see, pastoral ministry is hard.  In most churches you have a faithful 20%.  These are folks who make huge sacrifices so the ministry of the church can happen.  They tithe, they serve, and they understand their participation is important so they can be counted on to attend worship and many of the key church events.  They are people who actually understand that the pastor and his family are people and their long term faithfulness walked out over years provides the church with its strongest leaders and the pastor with his dearest friends.   These are the people who represent Jesus well to the outside community and are models to faithfulness inside the community of the church as well.  These people are easy to make sacrifices for, and it’s their presence that keeps pastors and their families sane.

Then there is the other 80%.  They are church hoppers that go from church to church looking for what they can get.  Like the fair weather fans of a sporting team, they are happy to cheer when things are going well, but they are quick to abandon ship when things get tough.  They are the first to say that the church is filled with hypocrites but fail to see that they are the hypocrites they are talking about.  The problem is that some of the 80% will become the 20% if you can move them along in their faith, you just don’t know who they are.  You don’t know who the diamonds in the rough are.  I know that over thirty years Godfrey has been told countless times his preaching stinks, he’s not good at leading a church, or he basically just stinks at everything.  He has had tons of leaders and people he thought were his friends leave by the droves.  I was one of those.  I was a young twenty something youth pastor who thought I knew everything.  I thought I was a better pastor, a better preacher, a better innovator, and if Godfrey would just do church the way I thought it should be done then all would be great.  I was saying this to a man who came in after a church split, and grew the church to 1500 people while I was there.  It’s now a church of 4000.  What I’ve learned since I left is if I could be even on sixty-fourth of the pastor Godfrey is I’d be O.K.

 6 months after I left, I called Godfrey repenting in dust and ashes, and because he is the kind of man that he is, he forgave me and has been one of my biggest cheerleaders (he always was, I just had to eat some humble pie to see it). 

 So here I am twelve years into the church I planted in Chattanooga Tennessee.  I’ll tell you a little secret; every pastor has their favorite exit strategies.  Mine involve planting a church next to a warm beach, in my beloved College Station, back home in Houston, or next to Disney World.  I’ve always kept these in my back pocket, just in case.  However, as I see the courageous leadership of Godfrey, I find myself asking the questions, “What if I committed myself to a group of people most of whom, I know, would never commit themselves to me? What if I followed the model of Godfrey who is following the model of Jesus and served whether I’m accepted or rejected by those whom I’m laying my life, dreams, and desires down for?   What if I burned up all my exit strategies and climbed up on the altar and said my life is not my own, but it belongs truly to the sheep to which you’ve called me, Lord.  What if…”

Well I haven’t left yet.  Godfrey, I hope I make you proud.  I hope I can be as faithful to my charge as you have been to yours.  You have been and always will be my pastor.

    

---

^[1] The New International Version. 2011 (Jn 10:11–13). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

A Beautiful Day

A Beautiful Day

I saw something beautiful last week.  I walked outside the public school where our church has made its home for the last several years and saw our teenagers playing the opening game at our youth group meeting.  When I looked at them it was beautiful, firstbecause there was a group of kids learning to be the Christ-centered community that is the church, and second because it was almost fully racially integrated.  It looked like the actual demographic make up of the city of Chattanooga.  Kids from different races, different socio-economic backgrounds, different cultures were becoming friends and learning to do life together.  It was picture of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.  When the rule of God is fully established on earth as it is in heaven it will look like our youth group did on Wednesday night.

I then walked inside where my wife, Kellie, and a couple of  wonderful leaders in our church were starting a new Wednesday night outreach to the elementary aged siblings of the teenagers from the neighborhood in which our church is located.  You see, the teenagers have been bringing their younger siblings with them to church on Wednesday nights.   It’s not uncommon for us to have eight or nine of these siblings.  We had been just providing childcare with some crafts and a movie, but we felt like there was an incredible opportunity to communicate the love of Jesus with children who were literally coming to our doorstep.

We pulled out one of our old children’s ministry curriculums and decided to give it our best shot. This was our first week to give it a go, and wouldn’t you know, it was the evening we had the smallest amount of elementary kids since they began showing up; we only had two, yet undeterred we went forward.  The kids were a brother and sister that had very limited exposure to the church.  We broke ourselves into a boys and a girls team, each consisting of two adult leaders and a child.  We played the games, we cheered, we memorized scripture, and the enthusiasm we were showing as adult leaders infected thekids and they smiled, laughed, and cheered right along with us.  You could tell they were really eating up the attention they were getting from the adults.

After the games and competition portion, we broke into smallgroups and began to talk about what it means to have a relationship with Jesus.  We talked about praying a prayer to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. The children told us they had never prayed a prayer like that.  We asked them if they wanted too and they responded yes.  Now I don’t think these second and third graders connected all the dots as to what it means to belong to Jesus, but I think it was their first step on a life long journey of growing closer to God.

The last few years have been tough for me personally.  Our church was the thriving hipster church in town.  We were the cool place to be.  We leased a beautiful contemporary building with soft cushy seats.  We had over 500 people and I was thought of as being somebody in the Vineyard Movement.  But the Lord (and there is no doubt about that) called us to leave our facility and move into an “at-risk” school in our city.  Within seven months we lost 50% of our congregation.  Since then we have turned over 75% of our church, but we’ve added people too, which has given us a net loss of about 55% over three years. I’m no longer really thought of as “somebody” within our movement, and we are definitely no longer the “cool” church. Many of our hipster types have hipped themselves right out the door.  I have had many on my leadership team leave telling me I just don’t have the goods anymore.  Yet, as I see a youth group that was as white as an Easter lily become fully integrated, as I pray with children who have never heard what Jesus has done for them and are now hearing it because we’ve parked ourselves in the middle of their neighborhood, I think maybe God does use the foolish things to confound the wise and maybe there is something about that opening section in the Gospel of John where we read that the Word becaming flesh and dweling among us.  Maybe, just maybe, the church was meant to be more than just an entertainment for the wealthy, and the spoiled, and the coddled, but rather a courageous community that is to go where few dare with the proclamation of the Kingship of Jesus.     

First things First

I was reading an article today in the Chattanooga Times Free Press about the dramatic increase in teens dying from accidental overdoses on prescription meds. The interview featured a parent who was devastated by the loss of his daughter. He related the call he had received from his ex-wife who was screaming into the phone that his daughter would not wake-up. The call and the story were heartbreaking. He went on to relate how his daughter had begun experimenting with drugs when she was fifteen years old and he didn’t know what caused the problem. He felt like he had done everything right as father.

 

How many times over my twenty-three years of ministry have I been faced with parents bewildered over the choices their teenagers and young adults are making. It’s sad because their hearts are breaking for their children. They literally feel that they have done it all right; and in the eyes of the world they have.

 

The Bible states in the book of Proverbs, “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death (Pr. 14:12)”.

 

We have been sold a lie by our culture as to what makes a good parent. The advertising companies and marketing machines spend billions of dollars trying to convince us that what our kids really need is stuff. They need great clothes, they need subscriptions to cable or satellite T.V.’s with the kids plan, they need their own room in a large home, they need to be involved in every activity a good parent can afford, they need cell phones, computers, mp3 players, tragically hip parents, they need the latest and greatest this and the latest and greatest that. If you are a good parent in the eye’s of this world you will do whatever you can to provide your child with these things.

 

The world does not just stop at stuff though. It tells us those with great stuff win and we want our children to be winners. The way that they get to be winners is through achievement. Our kids need to achieve academically so that they can get the right opportunity and land the right job that is going to allow them to get the right stuff, they need to be invested in the right activities and we should be willing to drop or sacrifice whatever so that Suzie Q can play soccer or Bobby Joe can play football because athletic success is the real ticket. They might be able to land a scholarship or maybe even one of those 100 million dollar pro sports contracts. Just think of all the stuff they could get with that!!!

 

No really, I just want them to be happy, and I know that if I had more stuff, more success, a prettier body I’d be happy so I darn sure want my kids to have a better shot at happiness than I’m having.

 

“There is a way that seems right to a person, but in the end leads to death (Pr. 14:12).”

 

George Barna, a pollster who has conducted surveys of the American people for the last 20 years, has a book called Revolutionary Parenting. It’s quite interesting, especially for someone who is a Christ follower. In the book he surveyed 2000 young adults who are committed Christians, love God, and are active and generous within their churches. These were kids that weren’t perfect but they experienced none of that teenage rebelliousness we’ve been taught is normal. When he surveyed them he found that most all of them had pretty amazing parents and so he surveyed parents as well. What he discovered is that “Revolutionary Parents” had some universally shared values, and these values seemed to produce some pretty amazing kids. I’ll share a few of them with you. These are going to be shocking so get ready.

 

1. The parents loved God deeply and sincerely, and this love for God influenced every area of their lives.
2. These parents saw parenting as their greatest responsibility in life.
3. These parents saw the goal of their parenting being to raise kids who grew up to love and serve God (over academics, athletics, or anything else).
4. These parents loved their spouse and were committed to their marriage for a lifetime.
5. These parents took responsibility for the education of their children (whether public, private, or home schooled both academic and spiritual).
6. These parents were consistent in their discipline.
7. These parents did not try to be their kid’s best buddy.
8. These parents made whatever economic sacrifices were necessary so that they could be involved in their children’s lives (instead of trying to give their kids more stuff, they gave them more of them; in almost every case one spouse was at home).

Some of these values might make you angry, but remember these are not Jeff’s eight values. These are some of the values that Barna discovered through his survey. They are just facts derived from statistical information. However, I have found that these values have worked in my life and in many, many other people I know.

 

During this fall quarter Kellie and I are going to be co-leading a growth group with some Revolutionary Parents Scott and Laura Lillard on the topic of how to be the best parents we can be. Those of you with kids that go to our church I highly recommend you attend this growth group, but after reading the article today I felt compelled to blog a bit on this topic.

 

Out of all the things God has given us to steward in our lives our children are the most precious. I have never once heard one person on their death bed say I wished I had spent less time with my children. I have seen many people who have been heartbroken over the direction of their children’s lives wondering what they could have done to prevent the reality they find themselves and their kids in. Well there are eight values that if internalized and lived out will be a huge dose of preventative medicine.

 

I’m writing this because I don’t want you to ever wake up to a daughter who is dead because she was using drugs to escape the world. I kept the first sentence of the story I related at the beginning of the blog intact because if the girl died at 22 and started doing dugs at 15 it doesn’t take brain science from the context of the story to figure out what happened that shattered her world to the point she wanted to go numb on drugs. Did you catch it? If not reread it over and over again until you clue in.

 

The good news is even if your parenting has been miserable; you can always make a fresh start. Recommit. Because if you look hard at this, all that is really being said by the results of the survey is be the person you want your kid to be. If they respect you they’ll want to be like you.

 

Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you”. I think this holds true for parenting.

 

 

 

Couch Surffing in Calcutta: A Pespective on Ministry to the Marginalized

This post is by a friend of mine, Chris Heintz, who has attended the Vineyard Chattanooga since he was in the 8th grade.  Since graduating from high school Chris has been caught up in many an adventure for Christ.  He attended Christian college in California, has lived in a Christian communal setting, has had several neat experiences in other countries, and is now interning at monastery in Conyers GA.  Chris and I had coffee a couple of weeks ago where he shared with me his experiences with the Sister's of Charity in Calcutta India.  I thought what he shared was s interesting that I asked him to write it down so I could share it with you.

Two years ago I was given a plane ticket from my grandparents for my college graduation. A ticket to anywhere in the world. I had spent time in Europe and Japan while I was in high school and had seen how other cultures in the so called "first world" lived differently and how they lived similarly to those of us comfortably in the United States. But what I hadn't yet seen was the world most people lived in. The very world Jesus lived and died in. The world of the marginalized, the excluded, and the outcast. The world many of would prefer not to acknowledge. The world of the poor.


And so I decided to travel to Calcutta India to work with the Missionaries of Charity, the order that began with Mother Teresa. By the time the plane landed in India, I still didn't know exactly where I was going to stay those two months, but somehow I wasn't too worried. I finally connected with the Indian man I found online through couchsurfing.com who lived on the outskirts of Calcutta (or Kolkata, as it's officially called today) and was willing to let me stay with him. A stranger, willing to welcome me into his home. And all was well. At least where I would sleep.

That first day in Calcutta was about as much of a shock to the system as any place could have been. The kind that feels impossible to describe. People EVERYWHERE! Cars, mo-peds, motorcycles, rickshaws, buses, and taxis all happy to reduce the pedestrian population. All moving in mass anarchy to the constant honk of every horn. And trash... trash, everywhere. Calcutta could sometimes make Skidd Row in Los Angeles seem like a safe, quiet neighborhood to raise a family. For the first few days, the poverty was all I could see. You'd try to escape it in air-conditioned book stores or coffee shops, something, anything to give you a taste of home. But all you could taste sipping your latte as malnourished children would bang on the glass windows, begging for food, was your own guilt.

But I arrived in India precisely to see this. To see the world in all its reality. And what was beginning to stir in me was the reality of the Gospel. The reality of a God that would rather be born among the poor in ancient Palestine, in a filth covered manger, than in the palaces of Rome. That it was precisely to the weak and powerless, to those sick and in despair, to those shoved to the margins that Jesus said, "follow me".

After several days of trying to adjust to everything I was experiencing, I began working in Kalighat, the home for the sick and dying, there with the Sisters of Charity and volunteers from around the world.

I had heard stories of people, friends of mine, who had traveled to Calcutta to work with the Sisters in Mother Teresa's various "homes," and I came somewhat skeptical. I heard of how homes could often be flooded with volunteers who weren't really needed, who came to earn a badge or "check off" a life experience. I came with the (feeling) that the homes were more for volunteers than for the patients, and I heaped on it all the criticism I had gathered for "short term" missions. But what I experienced there was very far from what I anticipated.

It was a place unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It was a place of poverty and pain so real you could feel it inside your bones. But it was also a place permeated by the thick love of God. It was a picture of the church. A picture of the Kingdom of God. People literally from all over the world, speaking all different languages, came to serve the very people the world considered least. To bathe them, to dress them, to feed them, to wash their soiled clothes, to bandage their wounded bodies.

And God was there. There in the gentle hands of the Japanese man who cleaned the sick with soap and water, there in the West African nun who radiated with love and humility as she directed volunteers to the back to wash dishes or the roof to dry clothes, and there in the emaciated face of the Indian man too weak to feed himself. Here in a place of so much despair was the Kingdom of God breaking out. A sign of the Kingdom that will one day come.

Everyday was filled with so much beauty and so much pain. Every morning we would carry patients every bit as starved as images from Auschwitz. Many had bones exposed or limbs black with gangrene. The patients had no anesthetics except to squeeze our hands or to be held tightly against our chests as the nurse would clean their horrific wounds. And many mornings we would arrive to find patients who had become our friends, covered in white sheets.

One particular morning, there were four people that had passed through the night. One of the sisters pointed to me and three other volunteers to carry them out from the "cold room" onto the bus and to the crematorium. And so we carried them, first on a cold metal stretcher and then by our hands into the crematorium. Death. In our hands. Cold. Utterly lifeless. And we laid them on a platform and watched as they were slowly moved into the furnace.

It's an image burned into my memory. This was poverty. An empty, silent funeral with no one to mourn. Burned into ash with no hope of resurrection.

But here... it was here that Christ died. Beside the poorest of the poor, among the utterly abandoned, among the god-forsaken. I began to see how much it is that this is the God we worship.

Somehow by God's grace, after several days away to process through what I had experienced, I returned to work at Kalighat for several weeks until I finally returned home.

The transition from Calcutta to Chattanooga again was nearly as jolting as it had been when I arrived in India. But I had changed. I began to see things clearly that before I saw only in a blur. The poor. As I would read scripture, every passage about the poor and marginalized would jump out. It would come with the face of that little girl that tugged my arm for food. Or that older man I carried in my arms to bathe.

I began to see God's heart for the weak and invisible illuminating every page of scripture, as one of its most central themes. From the Exodus to the New Jerusalem. I began to see where it was and to who it was that we were called to proclaim the reign of God. To the sick, to beggars, to sinners, to the demon possessed, to the unclean, to children, to the poor. To the very people most shoved to the margins. I learned too, that this call to the margins meant not simply to "minister" to "them" at a distance, from above. But beside, as Jesus did. Remembering that we too are the sick our physician came to heal.

God doesn't call us all to Calcutta. But he does call us to our neighbors. Our lost, lonely, hurting, forgotten neighbors. Because the good news of the Kingdom of God, hope in the midst of despair, the hope of resurrection, is good news indeed.

Value 2: Ministering to the Marginalized - Conclusion

How Do We Do It?


Several years ago I was going through the line at a discount grocery store. There was a young mom in front of me and she had two little children with her and one on the way. When she got through the line she realized she did not have enough money to buy everything she needed. She stood there with the cashier deciding what she could do without, so she could get within the dollar amount she needed. I noticed that what she was having the cashier put away were not frivolous items but just basic food products. It wasn’t ice cream and coke, but baby food and bread.

The Holy Spirit began to nudge me. He said “Offer to buy what she can’t afford”.

I said, “Lord I’m shopping at the discount grocer not because I’m trying to be thrifty but because I can’t afford anything else.”

The Spirit said, “Jeff, am I not your provider? I will make sure you have enough.”

So I waited until she had culled her groceries down to a level she could afford and then I spoke up saying that I would purchase the groceries she had separated out and that I would give them to her. It totaled somewhere near fifty dollars, which was a small fortune for me at that time. The woman and the cashier both looked at me in shock. I smiled and simply said that it was something the Lord wanted me to do so that she would know God loves her.

I paid the bill and guess what, my family didn’t starve.

There are opportunities every day for us to partner with God in loving the marginalized. It could be in the grocery line, the parking lot, walking along a city street, in our schools, neighborhoods, or even in places where there have been great disasters. The first thing that is needed for us not to miss these opportunities is awareness.

Awareness

In the gospel of John, Jesus tells us that his Father is always at work and that he too is working. What that means is that God is always up to something. No matter where we are or what we are doing, God is at work. Opportunities abound! God is at work in your workplace, at your school, in your neighborhood, and with your friends. The trick for you is to open your eyes and see what He is doing. You need to develop an awareness of where God is working.

The hard part about this is retraining our brain to not be centered on ourselves. I know that I walk around in a self-centered fog most of the time. I call it a fog because when I’m only concentrating on myself it makes it impossible to see the needs that are all around me.

I remember one time being in the Home Depot parking lot with a friend. We were picking up some tools for an outreach project our church was involved in. We hopped in his truck to head back to the building and my mind was already focused on my “to-do list,” when my friend stopped the truck and looked at me and said, “Come on.” In the parking lot was an older man wondering how in the world he was going to get this packaged hot water heater in the back of the truck. My friend ran right over to him and said, “My friend and I will help you.” With the three of us helping, it took a grand total of three minutes to get the water heater in the back of the truck.

I looked at my friend amazed. He was aware enough to see the need. I had not been. If we want to make a difference in the lives of the marginalized the first thing we’ve got to do is open our eyes and perceive what is going on around us; God is always at work.

Listen

Just as we’ve learned that God is always at work, we also know that he is always speaking. One of the things that we see in the book of Acts is that the Holy Spirit is constantly communicating with His people; guiding them and directing them on their mission to make disciples of all nations. He speaks to them in visions, dreams, signs and wonders, angelic visitations, in a still small voice that seems to urge them on, through each other, and through the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. In the New Testament we get the picture that God is intimately involved in the decision making process with His people. The question we must ask ourselves is “Do we get any indication that this process is supposed to cease?” Some may try to point to 1 Corinthians 13 where the Apostle Paul says that tongues will cease and prophecy will be stilled. A closer reading of the text reveals that this will occur “when perfection comes” or an easier way to understand that might be to say that when Jesus returns and “sets all things to right” we will no longer need the spiritual gifts of prophecy and tongues because God will be all in all. Until that day, we need God’s Spirit speaking and directing our life in every way possible. God is speaking to us; all the time. We need to learn to listen.

So how do we do that? First we need to ask God what He’s up to or what He wants us to do in a given circumstance. There are many times when I’m in conversation with someone and I realize the question they are asking me is way out of my league, so as I’m talking to that individual I send up a silent prayer, and the prayer is usually, “HELP!!!!!”

That happened to me the other day when I was volunteering with some kids. I was working with some teenagers and we were talking about reading. I asked them what they were reading right now and was it influencing their lives. Each one of the kids began to talk about the book he or she was reading and what he was learning from it. One of the kids talked about a book called the “The Secret.” It is one of those self-help, “I am God and can have whatever material thing I desire” - type books. In other words, it’s the gospel according to Oprah. I was in a setting where I was not allowed to talk about my faith openly and was wondering how to handle this conversation. I immediately felt out of my league. So I silently let go a favorite prayer, “HELP!” and I tuned in and began to listen.

Sure enough, the Spirit began to speak to me. He told me not to belittle or tear down the book but to ask what he liked about the book. So I did, I asked him what he liked about the book and he told me that it talked about having a dream or a destiny and not giving up on that dream or destiny. He said the book talked about the fact that many people would try to get you to give up on your dream. I replied that I knew what it was like to have a dream, and that I too had discovered that there were many voices that would come and try to convince me to give up on that dream. Some of the voices were very familiar; they could be family, friends, or colleagues. I said I had also discovered that those voices seemed to be influenced by something bigger, something that wanted me to give up and be discouraged.

One of the girls said, “That voice is the voice of the devil.” I said, “Really, tell me about that?” She began to explain how she had learned in church that the devil hated us and wanted us to amount to nothing, that he spoke very negative things into our life. I asked her if she had experienced that before and she said yes as did all the other kids and they began to share stories about how there seemed to be voice that spoke into their lives that was negative and would try to get them to believe hurtful things.

I asked if that was the only voice they ever head and the same girl said no that God would speak to her and he would tell her positive things, encourage her and build her up. I asked what the rest of the group thought about that and some said they had experienced the same thing, others said that made a lot of sense. I thought God you are so cool. I had just watched a teenager tell her peers how to hear the voice of God by simply asking one kid what he liked about a book that I did not feel was a very theologically healthy book to read.

I don’t know about you, but I’m just not smart enough to navigate life without God’s direction. I’m also too self-centered to be aware of what God’s doing around me if I don’t take the time to ask. However, I find most of the times when I ask, God is more than happy to share with me exactly what He is up to.

Act

I know this sounds self-explanatory but when God asks us to do something we need to be the type of people who actually do it. To incorporate action into our lives is going to mean one thing; risk.

Let’s face it, when God asks us to do something we feel uncertain about it. We ask questions like “Is that really God? “Am I just making that up?” and “What if I’m wrong?” Rachel Garvey presented a message to us the other day and said the greatest enemy to action is not laziness but excuses. We will talk ourselves out of just about anything that involves risk.

But faith is all about risk. It’s about stepping out into the unknown and realizing that God really does have our back.

A year and half ago God asked our church to take the greatest risk in its history. He asked us to trust Him. Instead of walking the path most every other church travels by taking on lots of debt and building a building, God asked us if we would be willing to identify our self with our community. Were we willing to be incarnational? Would we move into a fifty year old high school, go portable, and wait on Him to reveal to us our next step? We said, “yes,” not being fully aware of what He was asking us to do.

Now a year and half later we’ve come to realize that the key to changing our city lies with the people who are served by our public schools. Within the lowest performing schools in our city are Chattanooga’s marginalized. 42% of the kids that go to Howard, Brainerd, and Tyner High Schools never graduate. I have it from some reliable sources who say that percentage increases to even greater heights when you think of the kids who are just passed through the system. Chattanooga’s other high schools are not graduating much higher percentages (All high school graduation rates for Hamilton County schools is on the Hamilton County Department of Education website). Every year thousands of young adults are spilling into our city without even having a high school diploma. What kind of job can they get? What kind of future do they have? What types of opportunities are open to them?

When this happens over a period of years, crime increases, infant mortality goes through the roof, poverty, desperation and hopelessness set in and our taxes are raised because it puts a drain on every social system our government provides. This is exactly the challenge our city faces today. Do you want to imagine what the consequences will be if we ignore this problem for another five or ten years?

This is the issue God has asked our church to deal with. I can’t tell you how excited I am by this, because I can think of no other area of investment that has the potential to yield as great a Kingdom return. But this endeavor is for the risk takers. It is for those who want more out of their relationship with God than being comfortable. Within our first year of being in Tyner, 50% of our congregation left, but 50% stayed! Our church is now like Gideon’s army in the Old Testament. We are a group of seasoned warriors ready to take the fight to the enemy.

This is faith in action. It is what happens when we become aware of what’s going on around us. We listen to what God says, and we take action. I’m going to make a bold prediction. I believe the more we engage in the risky ministry that God has given us; the more we champion the cause of the least, last, lost, and lonely, the more people will join us in our efforts. People want to be a part of something significant. This will do more than give our city a cosmetic face-lift, like the investment in our downtown (which is cool). It will change the nature of our city.

Engage

How do we begin? We’ve got to learn the habit of engaging. We’ve got to roll up our sleeves and get involved. It will start out as a spiritual discipline at first. Something we begin to do because we know that it is right. It then becomes normal, and before long we wonder how we ever lived without serving the marginalized as a consistent part of our lives.

The way we are doing this at the Vineyard is through our different outreach opportunities. Once a month our Patton Towers team goes downtown and delivers groceries to the handicapped in a government subsidized housing complex. Every week we feed the hungry in Miller Park after church on Sunday’s. Some of us engage in servant evangelism where we do simple acts of kindness as a means of communicating God’s love through Kindness is Normal. Others do service projects at the Tyner Schools, and some go out on the streets and pray for people. These activities are highlighted in our bulletin every week and are a regular part of our church’s life. You just need to make a discipline of jumping in and getting involved.

If you will seize these opportunities, they will develop a habit in your life. The habit over time will become what’s normal. This is where the rubber hits the road. It will be in these practical exercises of risk, service, and faith where you begin to grow spiritually like you have never grown before. This is where you start. Take the risk.

God has always loved the marginalized. He has asked us, the people of the Vineyard Chattanooga to do the same. As for me and my family, we will see it done.

Value 2: Ministry to the Marginalized IV - The Age to Come

The Age to Come

The book of Revelation describes the cosmic battle between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Darkness. In the midst of this battle we realize that God is holding back on our enemy so that the nations of this world might have the opportunity to become the nations of our God and King by giving their allegiance to Jesus, creation’s true Lord. The book of revelation uses the pallet of metaphors from the prophets of Israel’s past to describe this new thing God is doing. At the end of this beautiful and mysterious book we read this passage.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;

Each line is filled with meaning. We see the language of the “new” heaven and earth being used. The old heaven and earth had been broken by man’s rebellion and sin and by the enemy’s deceits. But the enemy and his lies are being dealt with once and for all and the sins of mankind are being judged. Now we have a new heaven and a new earth, joined together as they were intended to be. This new creation will not know the touch of evil. It’s described as having no sea. In the Old Testament the sea symbolized chaos and disorder; this has been done away with, overcome by Jesus.

The apostle John sees the heavenly Jerusalem, the true royal city of God, descending from Heaven and coming to rest on earth. Heaven and earth are joined together in relationship as they were always intended, and God says that He has made His home among humanity. When this happens there is no more need for faith, because God dwells with us. We are able to see Him and experience Him face to face.

And what does that mean for us? What happens when Heaven and Earth unite under the rule of our loving God? It means everything is set to right!

REV 21:4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."
REV 21:5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."

The power of these words is incredible. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. As a pastor I have been with people during some of their worst moments. I’ve had to tell children that one of their parents has died. I’ve had to sit with parents after the death of their children. I’ve had to help people work through the pain of a murdered loved one. I’ve consoled women who have been raped, women who are dealing with the pain of an abortion, or who have felt their heart ripped out as they’ve given their child away for adoption. I’ve counseled many soldiers dealing with the pain of what they witnessed and participated in on the field of battle. I’ve watched marriages dissolve, people ruin their lives, fortunes come and go. I’ve watched people live pay check to pay check; maxed out in debt, lose their jobs and be cast out onto the streets; the list of pain that I’ve seen has been staggering. When people find themselves in the midst these situations, they are the marginalized. They are the least, the last, the lost, and lonely.

The Bible says that at the end of the age, when Jesus sets all things to right, that He will wipe every tear from our eyes. He will comfort us in our pain, and our pain will be no more. He goes on to say death will be no more. No longer will we have to contend with the loss of loved ones. Mourning, crying, pain will all be things that were part of the old creation. In the new creation no one will be marginalized. There will be no least, last, lost, or lonely because these things will have passed away. There will be no more poverty, murder, death, war, sin, or sickness because these things will have passed away. God will have made all things new.

This is the trajectory of the Kingdom. One day through Jesus there will be no under performing schools. Children who want to learn will all have the opportunity to learn. There will be no need for ministries to the homeless, there will be no need to speak up for the enslaved or the oppressed. These people will be free.

As the church, we are the community of this coming age. We are already residents of this time. When we hear Paul use language that we are foreigners or aliens to this world, or when he says we are in the world but not of it, he is describing the fact that we are the people of the coming Kingdom. So wherever we are, there should be visible signs of the old order of things being set to right; poverty, sickness, slavery, and the marginalization of people disappearing as the world and its systems encounter the people of the Kingdom; the people of the future age.

What we have to understand is that the conditions of poverty, marginalization, sickness, slavery, and violence are all reminders of the brokenness of the world. Followers of Jesus are to serve notice to the world that these conditions will come to an end completely one day by working for their eradication now. Every time we feed the hungry, comfort the mourning, befriend the lonely, heal or care for the sick, or bring peace to areas of violence we pointing towards the future God is bringing. We are demonstrating the life of the “age to come”. This is the life that will be normal when Jesus sets all things to right; it’s the life we give our broken world a glimpse of every time we act to bring the Kingdom’s order to the broken chaos of this age.

This is our duty. This is our message. This is our privilege! Paul in Roman’s 8 says that all creation literally stands on tip toe waiting for the revealing of the children of God. Every time we love the marginalized we are giving creation a sneak peak of what it’s longing for!