What to Give the God Who Has Everything

24 05 2012

With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.   Micah 6:6-8

Father’s Day is nigh upon us…just a little more than three weeks away.  It is not too early to start thinking about what (for most of us) is the most difficult gift of the whole year to find.  What in the world will you give him for Father’s Day?  He is so very difficult to buy for!  Whenever he needs something, he just goes and gets it…what could I possibly get him that he doesn’t already have?  A tie?  Did I give him that last year?  Did I really give him a tie last year!?  How cliche is that!?  I am so embarrassed.

In The Gathering, we are wrapping up our study of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah this week.  Finishing with this passage out of Micah got me thinking about God and what He really wants from His church (from His bride) and what we could possibly give Him, and I wondered…What do you give the God Who has everything?

Some would answer we should give Him our very best gathered worship…excellence in music, in preaching, in communion, in corporate prayer…that we should give Him a truly amazing gathered worship expression week after week.  They might cite Psalm 22:3 (our God inhabits praise).

Others would answer the church should give Him our broken Spirits and contrite hearts…that what He really wants from us is moldable hearts.  They would cite Psalm 51.

Still others would argue that what the church should give God is everything.  After all, it all belongs to Him anyway!  They would argue that we should give Him our very lives and all they contain…that we should present to Him “our bodies as living sacrifices”.  They would cite Romans 12:1-2.

None of those would be wrong.  That’s the nice thing about serving this God…it’s not really the gift that counts, it is the heart behind the gift.  Cain and Able taught us that.

But Micah captures the very essence of what it is God really desires from His people.  Micah, it seems to me, has the answer for what to give the God Who has everything.  What God really wants from His church is simply that we do justice in the world, that we love and show kindness or mercy just like Jesus did, and that we walk humbly with God.  Somewhere in there is a pretty good strategic plan for your church, wouldn’t you say?  What would it look like in your church?  How can your local body of believers do better to give this great gift to God?  Are you up for it?

Or, you could just give Him another tie.  Your choice.

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Everyone's a Minister, leadership, missional, Spiritual Formation, strategic planning

God’s Annoying, Relentless Pursuit

19 04 2012

So people will be brought low 
   and everyone humbled, 
   the eyes of the arrogant humbled. 
But the LORD Almighty will be exalted by his justice, 
   and the holy God will be proved holy by his righteous acts.  Isaiah 5:15-16

This week marks the 8th week teaching (in The Gathering) from the prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah…with 4 more to go.  May I just tell you something, just between us…I am growing so very weary of this lesson!  It is the same lesson, week after week.  The people’s “religion” is meaningless, our hearts are not turned toward God, we show no compassion for our brethren in poverty, God is severely displeased and judgment is coming.  Seriously, how many different ways can I teach this lesson and keep it fresh?  After a while, it begins to sound like so much “white noise”, difficult to hear with any discernment.

So, my frustration made me wonder what the people of Judah thought after about 40 years or so of hearing from Isaiah!  Forty years!  Can you imagine?

Maybe you can.  Maybe there is a voice (or two or three) in your own church whom you have grown weary of hearing and have just tuned out.  It is negative, and persistent, and harsh, and annoying, and you have (over time) just grown tired of it. So you have tuned it out.  Surely, you have tuned it out because you have determined that it is not God speaking (or, at least that it has not been thus far).  I suppose my first challenge to you is, are you sure?  Because “negative”, “persistent”, “harsh” and “annoying” are all characteristics of possible words from the Lord, at least according to how I read my Bible.  I suspect that Isaiah fit all of those.  I strongly suspect he became just a bunch of “white noise” to the people of Judah after a few years of this message.

But God persisted.  Isaiah persisted.  Like the parent of a rebellious teenager trying yet again to make his point, because he loves that teenager too much to just be silent, God persisted year after year after year with this same message.  And Judah missed it, because (like that rebellious teenager) they tuned it out.  We can make that same mistake.

So here are two important questions: (1) Aren’t you grateful for a God Who persists, even when you refuse to hear? and (2) what voice(s) have you prematurely tuned out because they are negative or harsh or annoying or simply not what you want to hear?  Do you think you can afford to tune them out?

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Discerning God's Will Together, leadership

The Multiple-Choice Pastor Search

29 11 2011

Tuesday Re-mix -

I always preferred essay tests when I was in school (duh, I became a writer).  I didn’t like the “objective” tests, because I felt like they weren’t as accurate in measuring how well I knew the material, at least for material that is thick in concepts and not-so-thick in memorizable facts.  In law school, I became even more opposed to objective tests…we called them “multiple guess” tests…it seemed always about finding the “least wrong answer”.  Give me an essay test, please!

I feel that same way when it comes to eliciting information from a person or a group of people.  If learning what is on their minds is important to me, I would much rather sit down and have a conversation with them than give them an objective survey.  And I especially feel that same way when it comes to discerning God’s will as a church…my concept of God’s will just does not lend itself to a series of multiple-choice questions.

And yet, the conventional wisdom (and literature) for Pastor Search efforts is to do just such a written survey to your church in order to develop a profile for your pastoral candidates.  The problem with asking your church objective, demographic questions like “Place a check next to the age range you think our next pastor should be?” is that, invariably, once all the results are tabulated, what your church ends up telling you is that they want a 40-year-old pastor with 30 years of pastoral experience…and a big, red “S” on his chest would be nice as well!  Good luck with that.

Objective surveys may be mildly effective (not greatly effective, but mildly so) at figuring out what the people want, but not so much at figuring out what God wants. For that, if you don’t have the time and resources to personally interview every church member, then I suggest an essay survey.  Because when it comes right down to it, there are only a couple of questions which matter:

1.  Describe how you believe God has been working in recent years in this church, and how you see Him working right now in the life of our church?

2.  In light of how you answered question #1, describe some qualities or characteristics of the person you believe God would have pastor this church?

When we used this simple, two-question survey with my own church body 16 years ago for our last pastor search effort, we got hundreds of responses, ranging from one paragraph to multiple pages.  It was a lot to assimilate!  But as we began poring over the responses, we began to see certain words and phrases and concepts over and over again.  We began to see a few characteristics which had the consensus of the congregation…five characteristics, to be exact.  These are not the five most important characteristics for any other church’s pastor.  But they became the defining characteristics of our own search committee’s profile:

1.  Humility

2.  A man of prayer

3.  Impartial; not a “respecter of titles or positions”

4. Good communicator

5.  Not political (this was a reference to denominational politics)

Those characteristics may seem broad and vague to you, but that would only be because they aren’t intended to describe your pastor.  They represent God’s will for my pastor, and anyone who knows my pastor even moderately well would immediately put his picture next to this profile.  Before we ever knew him, we knew his profile.  But most importantly, it was NOT because we asked our congregation to fill out an objective survey.  It was because we asked them to help us discern God’s will.  This profile helped us sift through scores of resumes and candidates.  It literally eventually took us right to our pastor, because it was a right reflection of what God wanted for us.

So, as your church works to discern God’s will together, may I suggest that you not try to relegate that process to an objective, multiple-choice test?  Give them the opportunity to share testimony of what they see God doing among you.  You may just be surprised at what God does with that.


© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Discerning God's Will Together, Pastor Search

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