Category Archives: Blog

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Pastoring with Less Pain, Part 2 of 2

When pastors gather, they sometimes joke that if it weren’t for people, pastoring would be a great profession. Indeed, people are the reason that pastoring is sometimes so painful. However, as I contended in June’s E-teaching, Pastoring with Less Pain, Part 1 of 2, if you are a sincere disciple-making pastor, then you know that pastoring genuine sheep—those who want to be discipled and truly follow Jesus—is an absolute delight. Thus I did my best to encourage pastors to purge their churches of goats by preaching the truth. And if that doesn’t clear them all out, then biblical excommunication is in order. (And excommunication is biblical, of course.)

Most pastors, however, find the idea of excommunication to be a frightful proposition, and understandably so. Can you imagine what would happen in most churches if the pastor excommunicated someone, even attempting to do it quietly? Most likely it would result in gossip, strife, and a potential church split. If the pastor publicly explained his reason for the excommunication, he could well be accused of being insensitive, dictatorial, or face a lawsuit for defamation of character. Even though Jesus gave very clear instructions to all His followers regarding excommunication and shunning—instructions that are reinforced in the New Testament epistles—actually following those instructions seems like a way to open Pandora’s Box.

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Pastoring with Less Pain, Part 1 of 2

Note: Like April’s e-teaching, Dear Pastor, Will You Repent With Me?, this month’s is also directed primarily to pastors, but even those who are not pastors could, I hope, benefit from reading it. Please understand that a major part of our ministry is to pastors around the world, and we’re reaching tens of thousands of them in numerous nations. This is a great burden on my heart, and I can’t help it! — David

I’ve been thinking about a conversation I had not long ago with a friend who is a pastor. He shared his pain regarding some people who had recently left his church. At one time they had been loyal, enthusiastic supporters of his ministry. But their departure was anything but that. Now they were speaking ill of him to others, and it had become ugly.

It wasn’t the first time he had experienced what pastors sometimes refer to as “the Judas syndrome.” And if past experience teaches anything, it wouldn’t be the last time.

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Why?

Note: The E-Teaching that follows was originally published in January of 2005. It was my attempt to offer some biblical answers regarding the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of December, 2004. In light of the recent natural disasters in Myanmar and China in which tens of thousands of people have tragically perished, I thought it would be appropriate to send it out again. It was originally written in hopes of reaching not only Christians, but those of other faiths who were trying to make some spiritual sense out of the tsunami. — David

Everyone around the world who believes in God (or gods), whether Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or something else, seems to be asking the same question—Why? Why did God decree or permit a tsunami (and it must be one or the other, as there are no other possibilities for those who believe in an all-powerful God) to take the lives of well over 226,000 people in eleven nations? I’d like to make an attempt to answer that question as a Christian.

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I Could Be Wrong About Some Things

Do you remember Y2K? It was 14 years ago this month. Looking back, it is amazing that so many of us anticipated catastrophic events on January 1, 2000. Dr. James Dobson, a man I respect and who has been right about so many things, dedicated three radio broadcasts, interviewing experts, to help Christians prepare for the inevitable. But he, along with so many of us, was dead wrong.

When I first felt called to the ministry in 1976, I came home from Penn State for a weekend to tell my parents that I was quitting my freshman year of college to enter the ministry. They suggested that I stay in college and then go on to seminary. I told them I couldn’t do that because it would be seven years before I graduated from seminary, and I was sure Jesus would be returning within seven years. He’d come back and I’d have nothing to show!

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Deeds that Determine Destinies

Agnostic and celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan used to keep a framed postcard near his shaving mirror—just so he could see it every morning. On the back was a penciled message to a Mr. James Day of Swansea Valley, Wales.

It read:

Dear Friend,
Just a line to show that I am alive and kicking and going grand. It’s a treat.
Yours, WJR

On the opposite side of the postcard was a color photo of a sleek, four-funneled steamer captioned, “White Star Liner Titanic.” The postmark was dated April 12, 1912, just two days before the Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and sank with the loss of 1,500 lives, including that of WJR—William John Rogers.

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An Inconvenient Truth

Provocative communicator Tony Campolo has been known to begin sermons with the following words:

I have three things I want to tell you. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 children died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition.

Second, most of you don’t give a sh**.

Then, after a pause to allow some inward reaction to his first two statements, Tony drops the bomb:

What is even worse is that you are more upset that I used the word sh** than you are that 30,000 children died last night.

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Who Can We Trust?

Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being (Psalm 51:6).

Last month when I was in Sri Lanka, I made a point to visit a world-famous orphanage director. He told me about ominous dreams he’d had some days before the Indian Ocean tsunami swept ashore on Sunday morning, December 26, 2004. He knew something was going to happen that would submerge his orphanage. But before December 26, 2004, the concept of a tsunami was foreign to him, as it was to most people in the world.

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A Prophet Among Profits

It was pointed out to me that the title of last month’s E-teaching, Jesus, the Greatest Prosperity Preacher, was a phrase also used by a popular prosperity preacher in one of his teaching articles. He used that phrase, however, not as I did, but rather as a serious claim that Jesus was in fact just like him and other modern prosperity preachers—but Jesus was the greatest! This, in my opinion, was a terrible slur against Jesus. Jesus was the absolute antithesis of greedy prosperity preachers.

Since that particular prosperity preacher has duped so many people into helping him live his opulent lifestyle, I thought it might be worthwhile this month to examine his entire article in which he makes his outrageous claim. By so doing, it will not only reveal how he has abused Scripture to prove that Jesus was like modern day prosperity preachers, but it will also be a lesson in what questions should be going through our minds when we listen to any Bible teacher, so that we may avoid being duped by anyone about anything.

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Jesus, the Greatest Prosperity Preacher

“Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, they will pour into your lap. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.” — Jesus (Luke 6:38).

The primary reason that Scripture is misinterpreted is because context is ignored. Every verse must be interpreted in light of its surrounding scriptures and within the context of the entire Bible. If our interpretation of any verse does not harmonize with the rest of Scripture, our interpretation needs adjusted.

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A Parable about Frank, the Wise Investor

The following parable was sent to me from a friend in France, who received it from a friend of his. It is a short story of a man named Frank who became very rich by investing in Microsoft stock. (If you had purchased one share of Microsoft when it first went for sale in 1986 for less than $25, your investment would be worth 300 times that today.)

Although some of the decisions that Frank made on his way to becoming a billionaire may have seemed foolish at the time, in the end, he would prove all of his critics wrong.