People are not horses, and yet they can be broken also. I started to ask the question, which method of training do you seem most active in the church today?  Do we use “old west” method in breaking people in at church, or do we slowing bring them along exposing them to new sight and sounds as the learn to trust the master?  Do we toss the full load of rule and doctrines on to the backs of new believers or do we work with them day after day in a community of trust until they begin to look like Jesus?  Are we breaking them for our pleasure or teaching them to follow for the purposes of God? With people you can break the body without affecting the spirit or heart.  Sometimes I think that is what is happening in the church.  We tell people how to look and act so that they are accepted, which only leads to a change in behavior. This method is faster and easier but doesn’t accomplish the goal of working with the spirit. This takes time, patience, and an intimate relationship to make sure we reach the heart.

When God created the world, He took chaos and brought order, he set the boundaries of dark and light, earth and sky, water and dry land, sun and moon, God is sovereign, this is his right.  We are His creation it is not our right to set the boundaries for other men, this is for God alone.  Jesus bids us to come follow him, and we do just what Israel did in the time of the Judges, they demanded a leader, a king.   God said obey and follow me, and the people cried all the louder, “give us a king.”  Jesus says come follow me, and we demand a leader to show us what to do.  And just like the kings of Israel lay heavy burdens on the people, that they were never meant to bear, so our leaders do the same.  Jesus called out his followers to live together in a united community, our leaders set up denominations to divide us.  Jesus called us to follow him daily and learn from him, saying that his yoke was light.  Our leaders make more and more rules that continue to divide, and pile on a yoke that we were also never suppose to bear.  The temple veil is torn in two, Jesus has made us priests and kings, and we are accountable directly to Him.  He is the vine we are the branches, there should be no separation.  It’s time to stop taking, seekers and new believer’s, riding them hard and putting them away wet.  It’s time to abandon the man made call to be leaders, and return to the God give call to become followers.

To get more information on this topic read Leonard Sweets book, I am A Follower: The Way, the Truth, and the Life of Following Jesus.

If you say leaders or a leader, you have answered the way the culture has trained you to think.  Our culture is leadership crazy.  How many leadership conferences have you attended? Dozens of huge events are held to train Christian leaders.  To think of yourself as a follower, in our culture is to think of yourself as a looser, who wants to be just a follower.  However, this is not the way that Jesus thought.

Jesus was not looking for leaders, He was looking for followers.  The first words that the disciple heard were “come follow me.”  The last words that Peter heard were “come follow me.”  Jesus was much more interested in followers than leaders.  You do see him holding a leadership summit and asking for resumes filled with leadership skills.  He looked for people with followership skills.

Here is another instance where the church has run after the culture instead of following after Christ.  Why do we in our Greek way of thinking want to be leaders?  The world is chaotic so we seek control and power to limit our exposure.  We see this idea in the way leader is defined in Greek. Leader in Greek is Proistemi, means to rule over, leader in Hebrew = yad, root means hand, or to support.  Jesus warns the disciple not to take on the Greek way of leadership.

The Greek speaking Romans ruled over and controlled the Jews.  Jesus made it clear that it was not leaders that He desired, what He desired was those that would follow Him and serve others.  Want to be great, be a servant.  Want to be first, be a slave.  Does this sound like any leadership training that you have ever attended, Christian or not?

The current situation in the Church and in politics in America shows that our leadership models are failing. We put our heart and soul in to creating leaders, what has been the effect? With all these leaders you would think there would be on left to convert.  Instead the anemic and losing ground every day.  In most churches in America this has set up and eternal struggle between pastors and board members for control of the church, instead of a concentration on letting Christ have control and focusing on service.  We need to humble ourselves, kneel before Jesus and listen again to His plan to build followers not leaders.  Maybe we need to start to holding followership conventions instead of leadership conventions.

To get more information on this topic read Leonard Sweets book, I am A Follower: The Way, the Truth, and the Life of Following Jesus.

This picture is out the front window of our condo. We are so thankful for the prayers and support of our friends in Iowa, and for our new friends in Fish Creek. We love you all.

Even though we fear change, most of us long to have our lives transformed on some level, but we all know that change is often a painful proposition.   The fear of that pain and insecurity often outweigh our desire to transform.

Romans 12:1-2 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.

When we become follower of Christ, the first thing we realize is that in order to follow, we need to know the will of the one we are following. This passage in Romans tells us that if we want to know His will our lives need to typify transformation or change.   Everyone has a different tolerance for change, but we all need to press through the fear if we are to be a follower of Christ.

So, how do we do this? We sometimes take on the title of follower, disciple, or Christian without knowing what is fully involved. Romans 12:1 spells it out.  What allows us to change or transform is the offering of our bodies in sacrifice to God.  God is the only one that can bring about lasting and meaningful change in our lives, and it only happens when we come to the end of ourselves, and live solely for God.

That is why Jesus said in Matthew 5:6, Lucky or fortunate are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.   Jesus was saying that those who are starving of hunger and thirst to be right before God are happy and lucky because they will be in the position to be changed by God.  This attitude is what places them in a position to be changed by the will and word of God.

This is the process, which I set out to facilitate at Lutheran Church of the Cross.  My very deepest prayer for you all is that you will continue to let God transform your lives.  Push though the fear and the pain and struggle, to reveal the pure gold that is left behind.   You all have facilitated that change in me, I feel like I have gone from a green recruit to a battle hardened warrior in just a little over two years.  I guess that is what fighting together does; we band of brothers.

To all my friends at Lutheran Church of the Cross, I say good-bye, and keep up the fight for transformation.

Pastor Chris W. Leonard

⁴⁶ “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?

 Jesus said that the one that is fully trained would look just like his teacher.  If Jesus is our teacher, our goal is to look and act just like him.  Secular studies reveal that modeling is still the best way to train people.  Coercion or rewards have nowhere near the results as a motivated attempt to resemble another person.  

Why is it so hard for us to commit ourselves to the relationship of student and Master when it comes to Jesus?  Robert Bellah and a team of fellow sociologists went in search of the one distinguishing characteristic of Americans.  What he found was that the one characteristic that separated American from other cultures was freedom.   This is not Freedom in a good way, but a freedom from all obligations.  “Bellah makes the point that this view of freedom as radical independence does not provide the basics of any long term covenantal relationship, such as marriage or even a relationship with God.” (Ogden 2011)   This means it is going to be very hard for us to take on the long-term covenantal relationship of Jesus as master and us as student.   God has always dealt with mankind through covenants and he has always been faithful to them.  In essence, God has given up some of His independence for our sake.  Radical independence has always been man’s problem, and the solution has always been the same, repent, turn around.  We need to turn from radical independence to radical dependence on Jesus, after all, that is what it means to be a disciple.

We say God loves us, but do we really believe and act that way? Perfect love drives out all fear, we should be fearless.

The study found a drop in three major areas, in church attendance, Bible reading, and priority in faith, research group founder George Barna warned that American Christians are become increasingly complacent.

An article in Christianity Today revealed the following information.  Attendance at weekend church services has declined among this group by seven per cent since 1991, falling from 66 per cent to 59 per cent.

The proportion of Christian adults who read the Bible during the week, not including when they are at a church event, has decreased by nine per cent since 1991. The weekly average is now at 62 per cent.

Volunteering at church during the week for those identified as born-again Christians has dropped from 41 per cent in 1991 to 29 per cent today. 

The study also found that those who self-identify as Christians are 10 percentage points more likely to be unchurched than in 1991. The 31 per cent who fit this profile have not attended any church service during the past six months.

This means that it is getting easier to call yourself a Christian and not live like one. 

Barna concluded his analysis of the study by saying that such a spiritual condition reflects the “pursuit of cheap grace”, described by theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Hebrews 10:26-27 warns us never to look at what Jesus did for us as cheap.
²⁶ If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, ²⁷ but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.

What can we do to reverse this trend and give grace back it’s value?

Couchenour commented, “Perhaps what we’ve done in making church a really cool place, this excellence in all we do kind of thinking, is that we’ve allowed the people in the pews to evolve into a coasting mode.”

Maybe it is time to wake up the coasters, authentic community means that everyone plays a part, and everyone becomes intentional in connecting with their neighbour.  Every note has to be played to hear the harmony.

What happens when we make decisions, not based on our convictions, but on the lesser of two evils?  Do things get better or worse?  Things can only get more and more evil.  We live in a culture in which this is the case.  This is called Syncretism.  Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of religions, cultures, or schools of thought.   This is happening in our country with Christianity.  I learned a new word this last week and the word is Chrislam.   

Chrislam is a syncretism of Christianity and Islam.  How can this happen?  It happens when we give up our convictions and begin to pick and chose what we like.  Across this country, crosses are coming down and the Koran is being placed alongside the Bible. 

Who wins in this deal?  Christianity loses every time.  Jesus says “I am the only way.” Mohammad says “there are many prophets.”  We know who wins that one.  Church are sharing their buildings with Muslim group and holding combined Chrislam services.   If Christians needed a place to worship in say, Saudi Arabia, would the local Muslim mosque be happy to open its doors to them? Of course not.  I guess we know who wins this one too.

From the beginning, God has been very clear that He does not allow us use or do whatever we want to worship Him or serve Him.   Worship is about Him and how he wants to be worshiped.  The first three commandments have to do with being separated unto God alone. 

2 Corinthians 6:14-15 (NIV)
¹⁴ Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? ¹⁵ What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

Do you remember the story of the Gingerbread Man? Because of compromise, he ended up in the mouth of the fox.  God continues to call his people out of the culture, not to meld with it.

When the Jewish people celebrated Passover, the first thing on the list of preparation was to remove all of the yeast from their homes and to make bread for the seven days of the feast without yeast in it. Yeast, is often used, throughout scripture as a symbol of sin and immorality. Paul uses this same symbol to help the Corinthians see some things about sin. First, sin is infectious. Just like the yeast that works its way throughout the dough, so sin works its way throughout the church, if left unchecked. Paul tells the church, to get rid of all of it, and create a new batch without any yeast. The second thing that he wants them to see is that sin and living life, in Christ, are incompatible. Paul tells them to become a new batch “as you really are.” As Paul so often does, he exhorts them to live a life worthy of their calling. He wants them to live a life of sincerity and truth and to get rid of all malice and wickedness.

How do they do this? Paul tells them to “keep the Festival (Passover)” as an observance to remind them of their calling, and that Jesus the Messiah is our Passover lamb, the one that provides our freedom from sin. He tells them to continue to observe the practice of removing all the yeast (malice and wickedness) from their lives.

As Christians we need to remember that our heritage is Jewish and that we need to pay attention to the Old Testament because God has spoken through the Jews.  We tend to see Paul as someone who converted to Christianity instead of a Torah observant messianic Jew.  When we separate ourselves from our heritage we miss out on many things that God’s word teaches.  Celebrate the Passover this year, after all Jesus is our Passover lamb.

• 50% of marriages end in divorce both inside and outside of the church.
• ·         In recent years the divorce rate seems to be dropping, but only because fewer people are getting married at all.  8.1% of coupled households consist of unmarried heterosexual partners. 
• ·         Only 63% of American children grow up with both biological parents – this is the lowest percent in the western world. 

These stats are trouble for our culture but a shame for the church.  What this says about the church is that we mirror the culture we live in.  The biblical worldview says we are to be set apart (Holy) and that family and community are some of our highest values. 

Romans 12:2 (NIV)
² Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

What is the problem and how do we begin to stop the decline of the family?  The problem is that we are picking up the values of our culture and abandoning the values of God.  What are the values of this culture?  It values quick solutions; we want everything now and are not willing to wait. It values comfort over character.  It values knowledge over actions.  It values self-first over everything including family and community.   These values are a part of our culture but they are directly opposed to scripture and the will of God.   Until we change these values in the church, we have no hope of being different from the world we live in.   These values are not just taught they are caught.  We need to begin living out the things that we believe.  We need to think and be intentional about what we teach when we do what we do.  Our marriages need to be a priority, think of how many things are affected by what happens in our marriages, our husbands and wives, our children, our worship attendance, our ability to give to God, and every skill we learn that helps our marriages also help us to better live in covenant relationship with out God.   In February, we will be hosting a marriage event to begin to strengthen marriage in our church.  You will find detailed information following this article.