When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”  Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Matthew 8:18-20

It seems to me that the scene has by now played out for me at least a hundred times.  I am counseling with a pastor who has been put through the wringer by his congregation and has been maligned and injured and his family has been as well.  He has fallen victim to the church at its very worst and he now has the scars to show for it.  He expresses to me his utter dismay and surprise and talks about how seminary simply did not prepare him for this.  His wife expresses shock that God’s own people could behave so badly and that this was NOT what she signed on for when she agreed to marry a pastor.  I listen, and I weep with them, and I grieve for them…and then I think to myself, “Welcome to the ministry.  This is it.  Welcome.”

Jesus was always pretty clear about the downside to following Him…the cost would be great, the sacrifice extraordinary.  He never sugar-coated that.  He was completely unapologetic about it throughout his entire ministry.  So, I suppose my thinking has always been, “If that is true for every follower of Jesus, how much more so for those called out to shepherd other followers of Jesus?”  Vocational ministry, in short, is simply not about comfort.  It is about ministering to a bunch of poorly-behaved, stinky sheep who bite and who hurt you and who get it all wrong at least as much as they get it right.  On top of all that, if you happen to be of certain Christian persuasions, you have to add poverty and celibacy to that list of sacrifices!

This is about the point in my counsel where many younger pastors might interject, “Wow, Blake.  We’ve got to work on your bedside manner.”  Believe me, I know well that this sounds grim.  I know that it is depressing, especially if you are already down for the count.  And I know that it is not necessarily helpful counsel in some circumstances.  But seriously, there is a reality about ministry which I am not certain our seminaries and Bible colleges are getting right…I am not convinced we are really painting a realistic picture of life among God’s people when we send our young men and women out onto the field with visions of large churches, large salaries, large influence, and large prestige.  Jesus would cringe at that picture!

Ministry among God’s people was never intended to be easy.  It is hard.  And the rewards are few.  But my, my…they are rich, are they not?

© Blake Coffee

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Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. James 1:22

There is a very simple explanation for why so many people outside the church accuse the church of being full of hypocrites…why people who profess to be Christians often appear to talk one way, but walk an entirely different way.  It is because it is absolutely true.

I learned some time ago that knowing the Bible does not make me a better follower of Christ, and in fact, does not really change me at all.  I can attend church every Sunday, attend small group every Monday night and discuss in great depth what I believe this scripture means or that scripture means…I can listen to Christian radio all day long and can subscribe to podcasts of my favorite preachers…I can read my Bible every day…I can graduate from Seminary with advanced knowledge in Greek and Hebrew…I can do all these things, but if I am only a knower of God’s Word but do not become a doer of God’s Word, I am the biggest hypocrite of all.  And I am not changing for the better.

In The Gathering, which happens to be the class I have the privilege of teaching on Sunday mornings, we talk about each of us having a “next step” to take toward God.  No matter where we are in our faith walk, from the strongest athiest to the most mature believer, we each have a next step to take.  Scripture teaches us what that next step looks like.  The same passage of scripture may show one next step for you and another entirely different next step for me.  That is the beauty and the power of God’s Word.  But in every case, taking that “next step” is what makes us a doer of the Word and not just a knower of the Word.

So, when I study scripture, I always have three simple questions I ask myself.  My friend Dr. Ann Farris taught me these questions (in an entirely different context, but they work perfectly in this context as well).  When I am honest about my responses to them and when I really press myself for right answers to them, it always changes me.  The questions are simple: What?  So what?  Now what?

WHAT? What is God saying to me through this passage?  Not just what does this passage say, but what do I believe it is saying to me?

SO WHAT? Why does God have this Word for me?  What is it about my life that this Word is addressing?  Why do I need to hear this?

NOW WHAT? In light of how I have answered the first two questions, then what is my next step?  What do I need to do right now in order to begin to bring my life into compliance with this Word?

These questions have revolutionalized my study of scripture.  I am no longer content to sit around a table and pontificate about what this scripture is saying to some unknown, third-person.  I want to know what it is saying to me about me.  And until I can answer that, I’m not finished with this scripture.

The really interesting thing about this process is this: I’ve been studying scripture long enough now to be going through the Bible for my 4th or 5th time as a teacher, and for the umpteenth time for a lot of these scriptures.  But every time I do, these questions get answered differently, because the scripture finds me at a different place in my walk.  But no matter where it finds me, it still has a next step for me.

And when I take that step, I once again become a doer of God’s Word, and not just a knower. Oh, I’m still definitely a hypocrite in so many ways!  But the more of God’s Word I DO, the more of my hypocrisy falls away.  And that’s a good thing.

© Blake Coffee

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How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.  Matthew 7:4-5

How are you at removing splinters from children’s fingers?  Yeh, me neither.  It is quite an ordeal, even under the best of circumstances.  It takes a steady hand, a soothing voice, and really good eyes.  As I write this, I am just now realizing how cool it is that so many of us did not need reading glasses until after our kids were old enough to get their own splinters out.  Isn’t God smart?  I can still remember feeling all medically superior one day when one of my girls came to me with a splinter in her finger.  I brought her into the bathroom (where the light was the brightest), got some tweezers, picked up her hand and examined the finger closely.  ”Wow, this must be a tiny one” I told her, “I can’t even see it!  Where is it?”  And she answered, “It’s right here”, as she held up her free hand!

Being able to clearly see the splinter, it seems, is pretty critical to the entire process of removing it.  And so it is with helping a brother with the “Speck” in his eye.  Notice: Jesus’ aim in this lesson is for us to “see clearly”…that is the goal, so that we can help our brother.  When you cannot see clearly, you simply are not capable of being any help.

It appears to me that commentators are all over the board regarding what, exactly, the “log in your eye” symbolizes in Jesus’ metaphor.  It could be similar sin in your own life.  It could be a judgmental attitude.  It could even be a past unresolved pain that somehow prevents you from “seeing clearly” where this brother is concerned.  I am not sure it matters to me which of these things it is…the bottom line is, if it is preventing me from seeing my brother clearly, i.e., from seeing my brother the same way God sees my brother, then I must get about removing it!  After all, seeing my brother the way God sees my brother is the only way I can be of any assistance to him.

So how do we remove it?

I suppose that depends on what it is, right?  If it is sin, we remove it through confession and repentance.  If it is a judgmental attitude, we pray for God to replace that attitude with one which honors Him.  If it is unresolved pain, we must express that pain in a right direction…to God first, and then perhaps to the person who caused the pain.  But do you see the common ingredient to each of these “removal plans”?  It is prayer.  After all, how else do we gain God’s perspective on anything but through prayer.

In the end, I am so glad Jesus did not leave his counsel at, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?”  He goes further.  He insists that removing the log from our eye is a priority.  It should be done now.

Tall order?  Yep.  For me too.  Gotta go.  Got some logs to deal with!

© 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

Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. James 1:23-24

When installing an appliance or putting together a piece of furniture, it seems to me there are levels of understanding. The lowest level is when you know you don’t know anything at all, so you sit down with the instructions first, before you do anything.  The next level is when you think you know something about it, so you start without the instructions and soon find that your are in fact an idiot and then sit down with the instructions. The third level of understanding is when you know enough about the task to know that each case is a little different, so you start by sitting down with the instructions.

If there are higher levels of understanding than this, I admit to being totally out of touch with them.  I myself typically float back and forth between the first two levels. When my wife sees me walking through the house carrying a tool, she immediately drops what she’s doing and follows me as she grabs the phone and calls for help. I have learned (mostly the hard way) how helpful it is to read and follow the instructions from the beginning.  In my case, it doesn’t guarantee success, but it at least prevents me from screwing my table top into the floor, or other such embarrassing results.

When asked how I can mediate congregational conflict in such a wide variety of denominations and churches, how it is possible to effectively navigate church conflict even with little understanding of the culture, the answer seems obvious to me: I just stay focused on the instructions, i.e., scripture.  I learned early in this ministry that there is no amount of worldly wisdom or experience which can guarantee a peaceful, successful mediation in a congregational dispute.  Emotions are high, the pain runs deep, and volatile relationships are unpredictable at best.  There simply is no putting things back together without starting with the instructions: the Word of God.

Interestingly, once you start there, the cultural differences suddenly do not matter much.  Scripture has this remarkable ability to cut through culture and the things of this world.  I certainly cannot always explain why it works…I just know that it does.  That, of course, is what child-like faith looks like.  Finding our way through broken relationships requires a child-like faith in the Word of God and what it tells us about relationships.  As my Dad always says: when all else fails, try reading the instructions.

Of course, I have from time to time encountered a group for whom the Bible is not the final word…a group who questions its authority.  I am always quick to clarify for them that I really have nothing to offer them.  I wouldn’t even know where to start.  If as a “church” they don’t recognize God’s Word as their supreme authority, then for me it is like trying to put something together with no instructions at all.  If the instructions which come with my new appliance are nothing more to me than guidelines, i.e., loose fences to lean against, then chances are pretty good that my new appliance will never work the way it was intended to work.  For a Christian, “The Word” should be at the very center of life.  For a church, it should be the very foundation upon which all things are built.

When it comes to mediating congregational conflict and all its inherent complexities, I am just not smart enough to come up with my own “wisdom” about how it should go.  I am at the lowest level of understanding.  So, I start with the instructions.  I let scripture order my steps and inform my process.  I allow God’s Word to set the agenda.  Then, just maybe, there is at least a chance for success at the end of the day.

© 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

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Matthew 6:25-27

I am not a worrier…at least I do not think I am. Oh, I do worry. Some. But I don’t think of myself that way. Still, maybe I am a worrier but just not very self-aware. Could that be possible? If so, then maybe I actually worry a great deal more than I think I do. In fact, maybe it is a huge problem for me but I am just not very connected to that reality. And maybe I worry so much (without realizing it) that I could actually have a heart attack or a stroke one day because of it. Maybe I am killing myself slowly every single day and don’t even realize it. It is possible, you know. I could die any day now.

 See how easy it is to worry?

I am not claiming any expertise as a worrier, but I am definitely no stranger to the notion. I have had a few stressful seasons in my life. I am actually entering a new one right now. Tomorrow, my ministry’s Board of Directors will consider approving the largest, most challenging budget in our ministry’s history. If they do approve it, it will also signal a scary shift for me. It will be a critical step toward becoming less and less financially dependent on my self-employment (as a lawyer) and more and more dependent upon this ministry to meet my family’s needs. Less dependent upon God meeting my needs the way He always has through my law practice, and more dependent upon God meeting those needs in entirely new and different ways. Scared? Worried? You bet!

In my experience–and this could just be me–it just does not help me much to know I should not be worrying. You do me no favors with your simple counsel, “Blake, don’t worry” or “Blake, stop worrying”. How, exactly do you do that? How do you just not worry? “Don’t worry, be happy” just does not work for me. No, in my experience, if I want to stop worrying, I have to treat it like a bad addiction and replace that behavior with another, more positive behavior. I suspect that may have been Paul’s experience as well. Look at his counsel to the Philippian church in chapter 4 of that letter: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  See? Paul would say that all the energy we are using to worry is energy we could be using for prayer.

That is the solution to the worry problem, isn’t it? We must replace worrying with praying.  That is the productive behavior.  That is the behavior which draws us closer to God and which slowly but surely helps us to see our world and our circumstances through His eyes.  Come on, you know it’s true…you always wonder where you will find the time to have the kind of prayer life you know you should have.  Just take the “worry” time and use it for prayer.  Think about all the hours each week that will buy you!

As for me, I have prayed more for this ministry in the past few months than ever before.  And through those prayers, God has given me a peace.  It is not an unrealistic, naive kind of peace.  It is a deep, grounded peace that God is still in control…still on His throne, that He still loves me and that He still has much to do through this ministry.  Prayer has been a good thing for me in this!  Oh there is much work to be done, and it will be hard in some cases.  It will not all be happy times.  But there will be joy, and peace, and we will see God do great and mighty things.  Not because we worried, but because we prayed.

So I am changing my tune.  ”Don’t Worry, Be Happy”?  Not so much.  ”Don’t worry…PRAY!”  Now that is worth singing about!

© Blake Coffee

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“Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” Hebrews 3:1

I have been blessed with only a limited amount of genuine grieving in my life.  Frankly, I’ve done a whole lot more consoling of others than I have needed consoling myself.  But you don’t have to be an expert on grief to know that it has a profound effect on our ability to see truth.  In fact, a part of the healing process is learning to look through the pain to some larger truth which, difficult as it may be to grasp in spite of the pain, still has a way of guiding us.

But did you know that the grief process is not reserved only for individuals?  Churches grieve also.  They grieve the loss of a much-loved leader, the loss of a ministry or program, the loss of a “way of doing things”, the loss of unity…all of these can cause a type of grieving process for a church.  And like the grieving process for an individual, a church’s grief can be unpredictable and unrelenting.  It can last a few days or a few years, perhaps even an entire generation.  It can cause the church to do and say things it doesn’t mean to do and say.  But most of all, just like the grief process for anyone else, it is painful…unbearably so.

Moreover, grief has a way of disorienting us, both as individuals and as congregations.  It turns up into down and right into left.  It leaves us not even knowing which way to look for direction.  It is chaotic and complex and confounding.

So, it is in the pain of real grief where we are often left with little orientation other than to fall back onto whatever “safe harbor” we have established ahead of time.  For me, that would be God’s Word.  Whether in my individual grief or in my corporate grief, I have already long since decided where I will turn.  I have placed my most childlike faith in God’s Word, so that, even through the unspeakable pain of emptiness and loss, I can at least find some general sense of my bearings.

Of course, hearing the truth–perhaps even knowing the truth–does not take the pain away.  It does not bypass the grief process.  We must still go through all the pain which grief brings, for however long the process may be for us.  But fixing our eyes on eternal truth at least serves to give us direction, it reminds us to breathe, and then to breathe again.  It walks before us every day of the journey, calling us one more step forward…not around the grief, but through it.

It gives us the only thing we can trust during the otherwise mixed-up season of emptiness and loss.  There is nothing else trustworthy, nothing else which is not capable of leading us astray.  We must fix our eyes on Jesus and cling to His Word…and crawl forward, and then do it again.  And at some point a long way down that road, clarity begins to come again.  And though the loss is still there and has carved out a new normal for us, we still have the one thing worth holding onto through it all…God’s love.  And isn’t that exactly what your church needs most?

© 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

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”  Matthew 6:1

I have at least a couple of observations about Jesus’ words above..observations that apply directly to us as church leaders.

1.  This is not a word for you to apply to someone else…this is a Word from Jesus to you ABOUT YOU.  Even though I do get it wrong from time to time, I consider myself a student of grammar.  With all due respect to Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Stephens and Mrs. Seitz (my first three English teachers in high school) it was Ms. Peak, my 12th-grade English teacher who really convinced me that good grammar and good communication are related.  So let’s take the English translation of Jesus’ sentence in Matthew 6:1 and do some simple diagramming, shall we? (Is there anyone else out there who remembers diagramming sentences?)

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.”  

Anybody know the subject of that sentence?  Anybody?

If you said the subject is implied and that it is an implied “You”…you get a gold star for today!  This is a word to “You”.  It is not a word about “them” or about “him” or “her”.  It is for you, and it is about you.

I once heard someone say that God’s Word is always more effective as a mirror than as a magnifying glass.  I love that concept.  It is perfect.  I believe we would all become better scholars of Biblical interpretation (and much better followers of Christ) if we would learn that.  As a church leader, I read this as a word to me about me and my leadership.  It is NOT a word for some other leader and his/her leadership.  It is for me.

2.  This is not a word about what I do…it is more a word about why I do it.  I do not have to tell you that there are books and websites and DVD’s and conferences galore out there about all the cool or good or spiritual things you and I should be doing as a church leader.  But this word from Jesus reveals a heart in the founder of this revolution we call Christianity that is more concerned with the motives behind the things we do than with the things themselves.

“Be careful not to practice…to be seen by them.”  The questions behind this counsel are simple but convicting: whose approval am I seeking?  Do I do the great things I do in order to get the approval of men?  Or am I seeking strictly the approval of God?  What motive is at the heart of my leadership?  When I hold up this Word from my Lord and look at my own reflection in it, what kind of heart do I see?  What is at my core?  What need in myself am I seeking to fulfill?  If my ministry is like Jeremiah’s, i.e., an entire lifetime of teaching without a single conversion, without any affirmation at all from men, can I still feel successful?  Or do I rather tie my success to the applause of men?

Never read this passage and allow it to conjure ridiculous images of arrogant pharisees screaming their prayers in public, giving you reason to sit back and feel good about yourself because, after all, you cannot possibly be that bad.  Rather, hear these words from your Savior and honestly ask yourself why you do the things you do as a leader.  It is a pretty healthy exercise, don’t you think?

© 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