Monday musings - March 26

Being a pastor means Sunday is like "game day" for me. Much of the week is spent getting ready for the weekend. Much of Monday is spent replaying the mental highlight reel of events and conversations. Here are my musings about this past weekend.

Sermon - I am preaching through Luke. Yesterday I started chapter 9. It was a shortened message because we had so many things going on in our meeting time - which I will talk about in a minute. I only discussed verses 1 through 6 in my sermon. Jesus sent the 12 out with the message of the kingdom and the authority to heal diseases and cast out demons. It was essentially a short-term mission trip. The disciples were not to take long-term provisions; they were to live on the generosity of others; they were to return soon and report to Christ the details of their mission. Reading that passage, I am confronted by the intentionality of Jesus' program. His plan for impacting the world with His message was to invest his life in a relatively small number of people - to train those people for ministry and then send them out with a mandate to continue with the mission. It is clear from Luke 9:1-6 that Jesus' plan was not to teach them in order to become knowledgeable, but to train them in order to become leaders. This was a training mission. By the end of his ministry Jesus will command his disciples to go and do what they have been trained to do - what they have witnessed Jesus doing - making disciples.

Jesus gave us a model for worldwide evangelization - multiplication through spiritual reproduction. Disciples are to be in the business of making disciples makers. Anyone who has spent any time in Campus Crusade (or any similar para-church ministry) has probably been a part of this model. It is interesting when you look back over the last 100 years of church history - the rise of evangelical para-church ministries (like Crusade) happened because the church was (by and large) not doing its job. The church had become ingrown and self-obsessed, not actively engaging in the mission Jesus gave us to fulfill. And now, decades after the rise para-church ministries, much of "the church" has yet to learn its lesson. We seem content to equate knowledge and obedience, teaching and training, discipleship and Bible study. All too often, the way of "the church" does not seem to fit Jesus' model, nor does it produce the effect Jesus was after.

Pastor of Student Ministries. On a much lighter note - this past weekend was the "candidating weekend" for our new Pastor of Student Ministries. His name is John Bueger; he will be graduating from Dallas Seminary this spring. He will start with us this summer. I am super excited about this guy. I think he going to do great. I wish he could start next week. The weekend was filled with meetings and social events designed to give people the opportunity to get to know John and his wife. I conducted a mock interview on Sunday morning to let people hear his philosophy of ministry (which is why I had a shortened sermon).

All and all it was a good weekend - busy, but in a good kind of way.