Tag: Church leadership

The Election Nightmare is Over-Now What?

Lisa M. Price4 Comments

 For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him~ 2nd Chronicles 16:9a NASB

 I was not going to write a blog this week.

 I am on vacation. My only plan for the week was to reconnect with friends, catch-up on some much-needed sleep, replenish my rapidly dwindling stores of vitamin D and indulge my love for tacos in the great state of Arizona.

 However.

 Events have compelled me to break with the plan and attempt to communicate my hopes, fears and thoughts concerning the future of America, and more specifically, the church in America in light of the election results on Tuesday.

 After arguably the weirdest, most contentious election in modern history, the people have spoken and Donald J. Trump has been chosen as leader of the free world.

 To say I have mixed feelings about a Donald Trump presidency understates my feelings to such a degree that I literally do not have words to describe my feelings (and I always have words, having words is my thing). On the one hand I am thrilled Hillary Clinton will not be President of the United States.

 Hillary Clinton is a corrupt and godless woman. Her behavior as Secretary of State repeatedly crossed the line into criminal territory. I am opposed to the vast majority of her policy positions and I find it highly disturbing that those positions can and do change on a dime. Furthermore her irksomely smug assumption that she somehow deserved to be President because it was “her turn” irritates me to no end.

 I am beyond relieved she lost the election.

 Despite my well-documented misgivings, Donald Trump has some qualities that give me hope. He has raised four loyal, hard working, adult children, (no small feat in this world). Throughout the campaign he has chosen to surround himself with some very wise and godly people. He has promised to restore sanity to the Supreme Court and he clearly loves our country. His Presidential acceptance speech was genuinely moving and exhibited a deep desire to unite and heal the country.

 However.

 My concerns have not vanished. Some are directly related to Donald Trump as a man. The other concerns are a bit squishier and harder to put into words.

 But I will try.

 My concerns regarding Donald Trump are mostly related to his temperament and lack of consistency on issues. He has changed his mind more times on more issues than a tired toddler coming off a sugar-high. Humility (a necessary quality in a leader) is quite clearly not his greatest strength. He has said some extraordinarily “indelicate” things regarding women and appears to relish offending people unnecessarily.

 However.

 God has had lesser men to work with and still accomplished the impossible. I may not entirely trust Donald J. Trump but I do trust God.

 My concern for the country runs deeper.

 We are a deeply divided nation of dreadfully immature people. We are no longer capable of agreeing to disagree on the issues and behaving like adults. Over the course of the last week I have seen posts on social media that have left me stunned and disillusioned with the human race. There has been gloating on one side and inexcusably ugly vitriol on the other. Some are threatening to leave the country because their candidate didn’t win; others are literally setting things on fire and shutting down our cities.

 The childishness is appalling.

 Confounding the situation further, we have reached a point in America where many have come to believe that good is evil and evil is good. Every sort of depravity is encouraged by those in authority and celebrated by the masses. In recent years government agencies have begun to mandate Christians go along with the never-ending onslaught of degeneracy or lose their freedoms. Historically God has not had a lot of patience with societies that reach our level of contempt for decency and human freedom.

 Despite all that, I believe God is giving the Christian community a much-needed opportunity to regroup and get our churches, communities and families healthy again. We cannot sit back and assume a Trump win is a mandate from God to continue on with the business-as-usual mentality that has infected our homes and Churches for decades. The time has come for Christians to get serious about serving God, deal decisively with sin, live righteously, pray for wisdom and tell others about Jesus.

 It is essential we make the most of the opportunity we’ve been given. It might be the last one we get.

Where We Went Wrong With the Millennial Generation

Lisa M. Price1 Comment

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things~ 1st Corinthians 13:11 NKJV

 Over the last dozen or so years a countless number of articles and blog posts have been written on the subject of the Millennial generation and their well-documented indifference towards organized religion in general and Christianity in particular.

 Most writers focus almost entirely on solving the immediate spiritual crisis. Concerned parties want to reach the eighty percent who have wandered from the faith, before the entire generation is irrevocably lost to secularism, humanism, and atheism. I truly care about reaching the millennial generation on a spiritual level. However, I believe its every bit as imperative we understand how we got into this mess in first place.

 History is always critically important.

 Unless we know where we went wrong in a particular area we will be doomed to repeat the same stupid mistake until we die. Sadly, a countless number of blunders were made with the millennial generation. Parents, schools and churches all carry a share of the blame.

It all began with how my generation was raised.

Few in my generation were ever told we were special or smart when we were kids. This was true even when we did things that were genuinely special or smart. We were seldom permitted to voice our opinions or encouraged to share our thoughts. It was NEVER okay to contradict an adult. So when we became parents we did what Americans do when they encounter a wrong.

 We overcompensated.

 We told our kids a hundred times a day that they were smarter, more special and better informed than any children in the history of forever. If they pooped we threw a party, complete with M&M’s and party hats. If they shared an opinion, we celebrated that opinion no matter how irrational or poorly thought-out it happened to be. We insisted every kid get a trophy and made certain no child ever felt less than AWESOME about his or her academic or athletic abilities, regardless of actual ability.

 Educators were quick to focus on feelings rather than facts and hop on to the self-esteem bandwagon. Discipline went out of fashion and subjects like history were taught from an extremely one-sided perspective. Kids were rarely expected to examine both sides of an issue nor were they taught to judge historical figures actions and attitudes in the context of the time period they lived in. Absurd viewpoints were rarely, if ever challenged in academic settings.

 Churches and youth ministries focused on having fun, forming relationships and making kids feel good about themselves. Learning the Bible was dropped in favor of “service projects” and “doing life together”. The whole notion of sin was marginalized. Youth ministries focused on transforming children not yet out of puberty, including some who exhibited no indications of salvation into “leaders” who would “reach their generation for Jesus”. Do not judge, lest you be judged (Matthew 7:1) was the one Bible verse every high school student memorized.

 The end result of this collective madness has been devastating to our culture.

 Many millennials never let go of childish ideas about life and reality. It’s appallingly common for grown people to think that feelings are more important than facts and that if you believe something to be true then it must be. Many become anxious and overwrought when a flaw is pointed out in their thinking or when a viewpoint that differs from their own is presented. That is why we now have “safe spaces” on college campuses and in workplaces, to shield people from words or ideas that make them uncomfortable.

 Sigh.  

 The most tragic consequences of our folly have manifested themselves in the realm of the spiritual. Many millennials believe that if a Bible verse FEELS wrong to them then the Bible got it wrong on that subject. Because teenagers were placed in positions of spiritual leadership long before they were actually converted, acquired any wisdom or knew much of anything about the Bible; many are prideful and will not tolerate correction, even when the correction comes directly out of the Bible.

 Sadly, that is the root reason many millennials have left the church to “work out their own spiritual experience”. They simply cannot tolerate the fact that there is a higher authority than them, be it God or the Bible.

 We must change the way we look at life, God, parenting, and the nature of reality. It’s time to put away childish thoughts about such things and think like adults, this is especially true for Christians.

 It is time to acknowledge some basic truths: facts are more important than feelings, believing something does not make it true and only children shield themselves from ideas that challenge their thinking or hurt their feelings. While we’re at it we need to get back to the understanding that God is real and due to His position as Creator and Sustainer of all things He really does have a fundamental right to tell us what to do.

 Before it’s too late.

More Church Peeves

Lisa M. PriceLeave a comment

My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge~ Hosea 4:6a NIV

 

I am not new to the church world.

 My husband and I have been Christians for the better part of three decades and I have been privileged to teach the Bible in enough settings to understand that even the most capable Pastor or Bible teacher is going to have an off message or poor delivery every now and again. For that reason, we have endeavored to give all but the weirdest churches (like the one where folks would spontaneously jump up and dash around the sanctuary during the service) a fair shake and have tried most at least twice. We understand that churches are made up of people— and people are by their very nature flawed, imperfect beings.

 We do not demand perfection from people in churches or from the pastors in the pulpit.

 That said, over the course of our recent church search we have had enough identical experiences enough times, in enough churches to know there are some developments in the church world that qualify as trends. Some trends are of little eternal consequence and my exasperation with those particular trends is doubtless at least a bit petty (e.g. peeves 1, 4 and possibly 5).

 Other trends are worrisome. Churches are the primary sources of biblical teaching in our culture. Churches are also the first place many unbelievers go to learn about God and salvation. How churches present truth can either cloud or enhance our ability to understand and receive the truth of the Bible. I chronicled some of our experiences in a blog post entitled “Church Peeves”, and in recent weeks I have come up with a few new peeves for you, beginning with:

 1. Long instrumentals in the middle of a song-

 I get that it’s rewarding for a musician to have the opportunity to showcase his or her skills. If I possessed musical talent of any kind I would probably be inclined to showcase my skills too. However, long keyboard or guitar solos create nothing but awkwardness for the worshipers in attendance. It’s impossible to know what to do when it’s over. Does one clap or cheer, or simply smile appreciatively? It feels weird not to show some sort of appreciation for the musician but it feels even weirder to clap for anyone other than God during a worship service.

 2. Misplaced vision-

 Jesus never built a building, wrote a book, or implemented a system. He did spend three years investing heavily in the spiritual lives of twelve men. Those twelve men turned around and literally transformed nearly every aspect of the world they lived in. We would do well to reexamine our fascination with one-size-fits-all spiritual growth systems and erecting large buildings. Rather, we should emulate Jesus’ example of focusing on the growth and spiritual development of individual Christians.

 3. Lack of genuinely relevant teaching-

 Intact families are becoming increasingly peculiar. It is now taught that there are sixty-three known genders. The number of folks who classify themselves as unbelievers is expanding rapidly. Race relations are collapsing. We are in the middle of one of the most befuddling and contentious elections in history. During 2012 the American porn industry generated 13.33 BILLION in revenue, and drug use is being legalized in most states. The world is clearly going to hell right before our very eyes. And yet most sermons preached on Sunday mornings can be reduced down to two incredibly trivial themes: we ought to love God and be nice to people. We need to go deeper.

 4. Pastors who dress like homeless people-  

 Three words. BUSINESS CASUAL FRIDAY. Seriously.

 5. Poking fun at tradition-

 Poking fun at how churches operated in the past bothers me, not because I believe we ought to do things the way they have always been done. Rather, because it displays a thorough lack of respect for the accomplishments of the past, and it ignores the reality practically shrieking in our face: We are not exactly hitting this leading the world to faith in Christ thing out of the park in our age. It could be argued that churches were far more successful at practically everything a generation or two back. We need to up our own game considerably before we earn the right to poke fun at anyone.

 6. Speakers who assume their listeners are shallow-

 Most people who attend church do so for the specific purpose of learning about the Bible. Contrary to popular belief, they actually enjoy getting a little history lesson or learning something about the original languages as long as the information is presented in an interesting and engaging manner. Assuming otherwise is patronizing and offensive.

 I long to see churches be successful, however I have become convinced that churches will not be successful until we let go of our adolescent obsession with “being cool”. The church was never called to be cool. The church is called to be a hospital for sinners, a school for Christians and safe place for kids to grow-up.

All else is a waste of time.