The Wounded Healer

The Wounded Healer, Henri J. M. Nouwen

Question: Are numbers a good way to measure success in ministry, and if not, what is?

Henri Nouwen emphasizes hope as being a critical characteristic of any Christian leader, primarily because it allows him to offer vision to people that looks beyond human suffering and death.  For him, this hope is based on a promise that has been given to us and made tangible in Christ. However, that same hope should prevent a Christian minister from trying to measure his success in tangible ways.  He writes,

Every attempt to attach this hope to visible symptoms in our surroundings becomes a temptation when it prevents us from the realization that promises, not concrete successes, are the basis of Christian leadership. Many ministers, priests and Christian laymen have become disillusioned, bitter and even hostile when years of hard work bear no fruit, when little change is accomplished. Building a vocation on the expectation of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of on solid rock, and even takes away the ability to accept successes as free gifts.[1]

In other words God does not promise any Christian that life will be easy, that virtue will appear overnight or vice will be magically purged, that he will get his dream job, that marriage will be easy and fun, or that all sickness, pain and loss will be prevented. God’s promise is that we are now seated in the heavenly places with Christ,[2] given authority and wisdom through the mind of Christ,[3] given an eternal inheritance with Christ,[4] and our names are written in the book of life.[5]  Is Nouwen guilty of ignoring the tangible, earthly, immediate ramifications of these promises by warning against expecting success in ministry, or is he asking us to redefine success by looking at ministry through a different lens?

Obviously we shouldn’t believe or preach a gospel of prosperity, because Jesus never taught that the Kingdom of God would come and make our lives easy and our wallets fat.  However, as God’s ruling power and authority infiltrates our lives and the world, we will undoubtedly see the effects of His love, mercy, healing power and justice occurring in tangible, earthly, immediate ways.  We live in a physical world, but it also directly affects and is affected by the unseen spiritual world.  So if my ministry is bringing God’s Kingdom, shouldn’t there be a way to physically measure it?

I think we need to find a balance between defining success in terms of numbers while simultaneously investing our lives in the places and people God has called us to without regard to results.  Both extremes are mistakes, because while the former is faithless and short-sighted, the latter is naïve and spiritually insensitive. 

One of the dangers of looking for numbers to define success is a purely programmatic, institutional approach to ministry.  Humans, and especially Christians, tend to want a formula for success that has clearly defined steps and easily implemented strategies, as well as lots of workbooks, media, catchphrases and famous endorsements.  Unfortunately for us, the kingdom of God is made up of people, and relationships.  In my opinion, a huge and famous ministry with best-selling books, charismatic leaders, and great music that lacks true discipleship—no matter how much money is being donated or how many people are being miraculous healed—is a failed ministry.

On the other hand, a willingness to labor tirelessly and indefinitely in a neighborhood or church—investing our time, energy, money and spiritual assets regardless of any return—based on God’s call to that place or the needs of that place, has its own dangers.  Complacency or burnout are probably inevitable in the face of difficult obstacles like addictions, spiritual strongholds, generational poverty or racism.  We can easily become blind to the truth of a ministry situation when we avoid asking hard questions about effectiveness, strategic approaches to ministry, or the possibility that God has called us to do something else or go somewhere else.

Maybe one of the ways we hold these things in tension is through relying on the diversity of the body of Christ.  We need faithful people who are willing to work tirelessly, to pray constantly, and to invest themselves regardless of the outcome.  We need visionaries who have an idea of where a neighborhood, church or other community could be in 5, 10 or 20 years, and who can keep reminding the workhorses of the kind of change that is possible.  We need conscientious, detail-oriented people who will keep picking apart the nuts and bolt of a ministry, trying to make it better in every way and trying to customize it to the vision and purpose that God has for it.  We need prophetic people who can feel the movement of the Spirit and speak it into the hearts of everyone involved, so that when God begins to do a new thing or wants to redirect an existing thing, there is sensitivity and willingness to obey.

Perhaps the best way to measure the success of a ministry is to see what kind of leaders it attracts and what roles they are filling within that ministry.

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[1] Nouwen The Wounded Healer 76-7.

[2] Ephesians 2:6.

[3] Philippians 2:2.

[4] Ephesians 1:11.

[5] Revelation 3:5.

KONY 2012 & MOVE:DC

Thousands of people are headed to Washington D.C. next Saturday, November 17, to put pressure on 10 world leaders to create a definitive policy regarding the arrest and trial of Joseph Kony.  My close friend Kelsey is a roadie for Invisible Children, the organization behind this event.  She came to Buffalo recently with her team and I got an interesting glimpse of what true desperation for social change looks like.  The four people that are a part of Kelsey's team care so much about stopping the Lord's Resistance Army and the atrocities that are being committed daily in Uganda, that they have committed to going for months without any pay, driving all day in a 15-passenger van, setting up for film screenings, sleeping on someone's couch, and repeating the whole process every day.  Their deadline is next Saturday, and they're going non-stop until then to see how many people they can motivate to head to Washington.
It's intense, and awe-inspiring.  There is a sense of urgency to their presentation, their speech, their energy, their movements.  They firmly and completely believe in what they are doing.  And they are doing it in the face of immense apathy, doubt and even hostility.  They are a great model for what Christians should be doing all the time.  Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Master Plan of Evangelism

Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert Coleman 

Question: Is it an effective evangelism strategy to pray for unbelievers to be saved? 

Robert Coleman explains that Jesus’ eighth and final method of evangelism through discipleship is an emphasis on reproduction—disciples making more disciples.  In this chapter, Coleman uses Matthew 9:37 and Luke 10:2 to argue that praying for the world is an ineffective way of making new disciples.  He asks “What good would it do?  God already loves them and has given his Son to save them.  No, there is no use to pray vaguely for the world.  The world is lost and blind in sin.  The only hope for the world is for laborers to go to them with the gospel of salvation, and having won them to the Savior, not to leave them, but to work with them…"

I argue that Coleman is partially correct—it is most important for believers to engage relationally with the world and with new believers—however it is also important for Christians to pray specifically and strategically for people with whom they have a relationship.  At a deeper level, Coleman’s emphasis reveals a lack of value for spiritual warfare as a means of advancing the kingdom of God.   

There’s no question that the evangelistic activity of the church today relies too much on a few hard-working individuals and leaves the vast majority of Christians sitting in the audience.  This is why believers need to pray for more laborers to work in the harvest and often to become the answer to their own prayers by giving more time and energy to the non-Christians and new Christians in their lives.  However, engaging in successful and productive relationships with these people must also include prayer.  Prayer is critical simply because the power of God can be facilitated through prayer, and the powers of darkness can be thwarted through prayer.  The power of the Holy Spirit to prepare and to change a person’s heart is not something that we can overlook as we approach evangelism, nor is the power of Satan to blind, deafen and block someone’s ability to hear truth.  As Christians, the way we exercise our authority over powers of darkness and our position in the kingdom of God is through prayer. 

Obviously praying vaguely that God will ‘save’ people or heal them is not the most effective approach.  However, a relational approach to making new disciples that ignores the importance of prayer is just as inefficient.  Intercession for non-Christians and new Christians should include praying for freedom from bondage, for emotional and spiritual healing, for Holy Spirit filling and anointing, against generational sins and curses, against demonic oppression and harassment, and against hardness of heart.  Those relationships should also include the normal aspects of a good friendship, including spending quality time, engaging in meaningful conversation, seeking to meet physical and emotional needs, and more.   

What is the gospel?

What Saint Paul Really Said, N.T. Wright

Question: How does Paul’s ‘4 part gospel’ according to N.T. Wright deconstruct and/or reveal as misguided the evangelistic efforts of today’s church?

In Chapter 3, Wright begins to unpack Paul’s usage of the term gospel (evangelion) in his letters within the context of Paul’s conversion and ministry.  According to Wright, Romans 1:1-5 is one of the flagship passages where Paul lays out “his understanding of God, the gospel, Jesus, and his own vocation.”[1]

It runs as follows:  "Paul, a servant of Messiah Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures—the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David’s seed according to the flesh, and marked out as God’s Son in power, according to the spirit of holiness, through the resurrection of the dead, Jesus the Messiah our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of his name..."[2]

The four parts of the gospel that Wright pulls out of this passage are the crucified Jesus, the risen Jesus, King Jesus, and ‘Jesus is Lord.’  Jesus’ role as a servant—suffering and dying on the cross—is the foundation and center of Paul’s gospel, as it signifies victory over powers of sin and darkness.  As Wright goes on to explain later, the cross is also proof of Jesus’ fulfillment of the Jewish side of God’s covenant as the only truly faithful Israelite.

The risen Jesus is a profoundly Jewish fulfillment of God’s covenant, as he resurrects the one faithful Israelite (not at the end of history but in the middle), thus proving that He is faithful and that what Jesus accomplished on the cross was legitimate.  It also inaugurates a new age of which Christ is the first product, where Jesus’ victory over sin and evil begins to permeate the world and signs of God’s reign start to multiply.

Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, and the Anointed One are all synonyms for King Jesus.  The title is significant for a number of reasons, but what is perhaps most relevant because it is most often ignored is that Paul’s gospel is an announcement of a new world order initiated by the establishment of Jesus as King.  Jesus Christ or King Jesus is not just a name—rather it is a proclamation that God’s promise to the Jews for salvation is becoming available through the Messiah who also assumes the royal position as ruler of Israel through the line of David.

Finally, ‘Jesus is Lord’ takes the message of King Jesus and proclaims it to the whole world.  God’s covenant is no longer applicable only to Jews but also to Gentiles, women, slaves, and anyone else who will come to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus, thus becoming part of the family of God through adoption (Romans 10:12, Philippians 3:20-21).  This is also significant because it displaces anyone else—like a Roman Emperor—who would claim lordship of the whole world.

With these four parts and their major implications laid out, the question remains; what can Wright’s exposition of evangelion bring to the table in a contemporary evangelical discussion on ‘spreading the gospel?’

First, it becomes clear that any understanding of the gospel as the mechanism by which people ‘get saved’ is misguided.  It might be helpful to explain to someone who is interested in spirituality and truth that salvation consists of belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection along with confession of sin, but this is not the gospel.  The gospel is the message of what has happened and what is happening, and along with that message the reality and ramifications of its existence in our daily lives.  In other words, the gospel means telling people about Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection and reign.  Sharing must be followed by demonstrating it to them and summoning them to a similar calling.  The gospel does not consist of programs.  Perhaps that is the biggest mistake in our understanding of what we must do with the gospel.  Many leaders and ministers in today’s church understand the gospel as a mechanical process in a person’s soul, rather than a tangible and visible experience of God’s kingdom coming, through the truth of Jesus.  The church needs to start framing evangelism differently.

More specifically, the first practical message of the gospel is one of suffering.  As Jesus said, “take up your cross and follow me.”  He followed up that speech by suffering and dying according to the will of His Father.  Contemporary church evangelism, instead of being a message of participating in the suffering and death of Jesus, has for years been a message of life improvement, self-help and even prosperity.  It is critical—for the sake of staying faithful to the life, ministry and death of Jesus and for the sake of a worldwide church who can grasp the meaning of sacrificial worship—for Christians to communicate the true cost of discipleship.  Furthermore, the gospel is a message from within the framework of Judaism.  It is not an appropriation of pagan religious ideas, but a logical and timely fulfillment of the one true God’s relationship with the Jewish people.  If we are to understand how the gospel relates to us as Gentiles, we must understand how God has related to His people throughout history.  We must look back and see how God’s promises to Israel have been proclaimed and worked out for the past four or five thousand years.  Taking Paul and Jesus out of their Jewish context are what have led to many misguided and even destructive movements in the church.  The church needs to start contextualizing the gospel better.

Along with the contextualization of the gospel, the reality of Jesus’ resurrection demands that we see the gospel as a message to a community, not a message to individuals.  If God raising Jesus from the dead points to the world-transforming faithfulness of God to His covenant, then it also points to the importance of community to the message of the gospel.  The Jews did not understand salvation as being a matter of individual faith, nor did St. Paul, and therefore the individualistic message of salvation that has often been preached by the American church is probably more cultural than it is accurate.

Since the gospel means a new kingdom with new values, it means through-and-through transformation.  The gospel is not just a set of philosophical commitments or emotional convictions—it is also power.  If Jesus died and was resurrected, then all of creation must go through a death and resurrection as it begins to participate in the family of God.  The power to make this happen—which comes from God—means very practical differences.  We must take Jesus’ ministry and his apostles’ ministry as models for our own outworking of the gospel.  More than social justice or Bible teaching, this also means signs and wonders of the Kingdom of God that have a certain magnetic ability to draw a response from people.  The church (especially in the US) needs to start praying and fasting, as the disciples did, for more power.

[1] Wright, What St Paul Really Said, 45.

[2] Ibid.

Fight Club

I was watching this excellent movie for the second time a few nights ago, and it struck me that it's actually a movie about male initiation.  I haven't read the novel so it's possible that the film version is a complete reinterpretation of Chuck Palahniuk's original story, but after doing some reading on male initiation and the effects of its massive deficit in Western culture, I could instantly recognize some of the major themes present here. 

I especially like this clip, where Tyler Durden gives the narrator an unexpected chemical burn and then goes on to explain why.  WARNING!  There is some strong language here.

"First, you have to give up.  First you have to know--know, not feel--that some day you're going to die."
"You don't know how this feels!"
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."

One of my favorite authors lists the following as the five central tenets to male initiation:

1) Life is hard.
2) You are not important.
3) Your life is not about you. 
4) You are not in control.
5) You are going to die.

More men need to figure this out.  If they all have to have their condos blown up, get beat up night after night at underground fight clubs, get ceremonially burned, and face down their criminally insane alter-egos to get there, so be it.