THE WORD DOES THE WORK.
Some years ago I sat near the front in a worship service and watched the guest preacher pace back and forth across the stage. He was a popular speaker in our area, and crowds had come to hear what he had to say. My first clue that something wasn’t right was when he started by saying, “I forgot my Bible tonight.”
But that didn’t deter him. He explained that for days he had prayed about what God wanted him to say to us. He told stories about how he had taken walks in his neighborhood, sat at coffee shops, and reclined in his study. He was funny, witty, and engaging, and he kept the crowd entertained.
When he came to his conclusion, these were his exact words: “I tried to do everything I could to figure out what God wanted to say to us, but nothing ever came to my mind. So maybe that means God simply doesn’t have anything to say to us tonight.” With that, he prayed and walked off the stage.
I sat there with my Bible in my hands, dumbfounded. God doesn’t have anything to say to us tonight? There I was, holding a library of sixty-six books that are decidedly and definitively the Word of God, and this guy had just said that God doesn’t have a word for us? In my mind I said to this guy, “Just open this book anywhere—to Leviticus, for all I care—and read it, and you’ve got a word from God. Save yourself the walk around the neighborhood and the cost of your mocha. Just read the book, and God is saying something to us.”
I am thankful for that experience, for it burned a permanent brand into my heart and mind. In our lives and in the church, we are never without revelation from God. At all times you and I have his message to us in all its power, authority, clarity, and might. We don’t have to work to come up with a word from God; we simply have to trust the Word he has already given us. When we do, the Word of God will accomplish the work of God among the people of God.
For a moment I want to speak specifically to pastors, staff members, small-group leaders, and other influencers among God’s people. Practically, how do we motivate and mobilize individuals in the church to abandon their lives for the glory of God in the world?
According to countless books and conferences, you and I need to be innovative and creative. We need an entrepreneurial spirit combined with an engaging persona. Strangely, though, none of these characteristics are mentioned in the Bible as qualifications for leadership in the church. Instead, Jesus tells all his followers that, in order to make disciples, they must be able to teach people to obey God’s Word. Scripture is clear that any leader who wants to unleash the people of God in the church for the glory of God in the world must simply be competent to communicate and faithful to follow the Word of God.1
This truth brings comfort and confidence to me as a leader in the church.
I remember when the Church at Brook Hills began talking with me about becoming their pastor. Heather and I had temporarily relocated to Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina. We were waiting to figure out how we would get back to New Orleans, where I had been teaching in a seminary. During that same time the pastor at Brook Hills resigned, and the church began the search for a replacement. A few months later I preached at Brook Hills simply to fill in. Before I knew it, I had become the interim pastor. I told them I would be glad to preach on Sundays whenever I was available over the next few months but that Heather and I would be moving back to New Orleans as soon as possible.
One Sunday morning after I had preached at Brook Hills, I got in the car to make the three-hour drive back to Atlanta. As I crossed the border between Alabama and Georgia, I received a call. The chairman of the pastor search team was on the other end. He said, “David, would you be able to meet with us next week about you potentially becoming our next pastor?”
What?
I had never even thought about pastoring. I loved teaching at the seminary and traveling around the world with students, sharing the gospel. I had no desire to do anything different.
Besides, what were they thinking? Clearly I was not the best person for this church. For starters, I had never been a pastor. The last thing such a large church needed was a rookie. What’s more, I had no clue how to be a part of, much less to lead, such a large church. The church of which I was a member in New Orleans had two hundred people on a high-attendance Sunday. Brook Hills had thousands of members and a multimillion-dollar budget. I didn’t even know how to handle my family’s meager finances.
Still, I wanted to be considerate. I was honored by their invitation, so I told the chairman, “Heather and I would be glad to have lunch with you all next week, but I am certain the Lord is not leading me to be your next pastor.”
Famous last words.
Heather and I met with the team the following week. I came armed with reasons why they would not want me to be their pastor. With airtight logic I explained how obvious it was that they needed someone with pastoral experience, professional capability, and personal wisdom—all of which I lacked. After I had made my case for why this conversation needn’t go any further, Heather and I got in our car, all the more determined to go back to New Orleans.
But the Lord had different plans. Over the coming weeks God coordinated a variety of circumstances to bring the search team—and us—to the conclusion that the Lord was indeed leading me to pastor this church. But the question still persisted at the fore-front of my mind: How do I pastor this church? What I did not bring to the task simply overwhelmed me.
And that’s when God reminded me of what I did bring: his Word. “Apart from me,” Jesus says, “you can do nothing.… If you remain in me and my words remain in you, … you [will] bear much fruit.”2 God reminded me that my ability to lead his people was ultimately not dependent on my experience or my ingenuity. My ability to lead his people was (and is) dependent on his power that is alive in his Spirit and at work in his truth.
During that time I was also reading David Brainerd’s diary. Brainerd, as you may know, was a faithful missionary who spent years preaching the Scriptures among Native Americans. Brainerd would often write in his journal about how utterly incapable he was of accomplishing the work to which God had called him. He was constantly overwhelmed by his own inadequacy. Based upon Brainerd’s example, I began to pray, “Lord, let me make a difference for you that is utterly disproportionate to who I am.”3 Thanks to Brainerd, this has been my continual prayer, not just in the pastor search process that led me to the Church at Brook Hills, but also in the day-to-day process now of leading the Church at Brook Hills.
The reality is that I’m still a beginner as a pastor, in over my head at every level. I often feel like Solomon when he said, “I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.”4 I need wisdom—the kind of wisdom that comes only from the Bible.
God has designed us to depend on his Word to lead his people in ways that are utterly disproportionate to who we are.
The only wise basis for an act of radical obedience is God himself—the author, creator, and ruler of our lives—commanding such action. Christians would be foolish to make radical sacrifices or to take radical risks in their lives simply because someone in the church suggested it. That’s why dependence on God’s Word is his design for all of us, not just the leaders. As members of churches, we stake our lives—and his church—on truth from God, not thoughts from men and women. For this reason, members of churches should desire and, in a sense, demand nothing less than continual feasts on God’s Word in the church. This alone will satisfy, strengthen, and spread the church in the world.
When I began pastoring at Brook Hills, I spent many Sundays describing the supremacy of the Bible and explaining how it must be central in all our plans, priorities, and programs. I tried to make clear that, apart from God’s Word, I was helpless as a leader and we were powerless as a church. But attuned to God’s Word, together we could be a part of accomplishing God’s purpose in the world.
Without a doubt everything God has done and is doing among our faith family has been built upon the foundation of our studying God’s Word. You’ve already seen what happened when we grappled honestly with the book of James. I could name many other examples. When we came to Matthew 7:13–27, we were frightened by the portrait of men and women who deceive themselves into thinking they are right before God when they are not. That led us to foundational texts such as Romans 3, John 3, Philippians 1–2, and 1 John, which show what the gospel is, how the gospel saves us, how the gospel works in us, and how the gospel guarantees the completion of our salvation.
The more we studied the gospel in God’s Word, seeing how the gospel infiltrates every facet of our lives, the more I found myself asking, Do I really believe this gospel? I preach it, but do I really believe it? For if this gospel is true, then the implications for me, my church, and the world around me are staggering. As I wrestled with these questions, personal conviction led me on a pastoral journey in which I walked our church through biblical truths that I hope are accurately expressed in Radical.
As we explored those truths, I began sensing a tendency in our people to define holiness by how much we do for God. Amid all our talk of radical obedience, we were losing sight of gospel grace. This concern led me next to preach through Galatians, where God reminds us of the centrality of grace in the life of faith. Not long after studying Galatians is when we walked through James, and God showed us how his grace in our faith works to his glory. Taken together, these immersions in Bible books compelled us to take risks that we had never taken before and to make decisions that we had never made before.
In short, the Word of God accomplishes the work of God. Some of my favorite moments in the church are when people come to me and say, “Pastor, I think you’re crazy for saying some of the things you say.” Then they follow up (most of the time!) with these words: “But you’re only saying what God has said, so I guess we need to obey.” When the words of mere humans drive how and where we are going, we will get nowhere. When we unchain the power of God’s Word in the church, it will unleash the potential of God’s people in the world.
Please note that I am not espousing a certain methodology for teaching and preaching the Bible, whether that be topical, narrative, verse by verse, verse with verse, dialogical, or doctrinal. My intent is simply to say that if we want to make God’s glory known in the world, then we must make the teaching of God’s Word central in the church.5 We are fooling ourselves if we think we can advance the church any other way.
But you might be wondering, is that all? That’s how to unleash a radical people for the glory of God in the world—just teach God’s Word in the church? How radical is that? And isn’t everyone already doing it?
Unfortunately, everyone is not already doing it. Many voices today, in fact, are claiming that teaching or preaching the Bible simply doesn’t work as well as it used to. For instance, not long ago I listened to a lecture from a “church innovator” who boldly proclaimed that the spoken word no longer communicates as it once did. He said, “If you want to get your point across to people today, you must make your point musically.”
I’m suspicious. After thousands of years of effective communication through the spoken word, I don’t think we’ve quite reached the zenith in history that this man surmised. (In addition, I found it ironic that he chose to speak, not sing, his lecture.)
Even among those who stand by the spoken word, many lack confidence in the sufficiency of God’s Word. They sometimes point out that the Bible doesn’t speak directly to the situations that people are experiencing today. In every church, parents struggle with rebellious kids, single moms enter divorce recovery, men and women find themselves in financial straits, businesspeople face daunting challenges at work, and families suffer through the cancer of a loved one. Do we really think (these objectors might say) that teaching about the Israelites and the Moabites will help our members in need?
As a result of this lack of confidence, churches may begin to minimize God’s Word. It’s not necessarily that we think Bible teaching is unimportant. We just don’t believe it’s enough. Members of the church want something else, and so those of us who lead the church give something else. In our small groups and from the pulpit, we read a verse or two, maybe a story, and then we supplement it with our own motivational thoughts, moving stories, creative ideas, and personal opinions. We glean help from the latest Christian books, the most promising leadership fads, the newest recovery advice, the sharpest financial counsel, and the best opinions on marriage and family. Our motives, of course, are admirable. We want to serve people in need far better than a sermon on the Israelites and Moabites could. Still, in the words of Walter Kaiser, “Pastors have decided that using the Bible is a handicap for meeting the needs of the [different] generations; therefore they have gone to drawing their sermons from the plethora of recovery and pop-psychology books that fill our Christian bookstores. The market-forces demand that we give them what they want to hear if we wish them to return and pay for the mega-sanctuaries that we have built.”6
Do you see the problem that can result from our good intentions? We can soon find ourselves scaling the heights of arrogance. For at this point we are assuming that God has not given us enough in his Word, and we are acting as if he needs us to supplement his communication to his people with our own talks and thoughts every week.
But God is not in heaven thinking, Man, if only I would have known or thought about this struggle or that situation my people would walk through in the twenty-first century, I would have addressed it. I am so thankful for wise leaders who are helping me in areas I left out! Obviously this is not the case. God has given us everything we need in the Word we have.
“But what we have does not address so many situations in people’s lives today,” some might say. And this is true. But God’s design in his Word is not to provide all the practical guidelines, parenting tips, leadership advice, and financial counsel that Americans are looking for in the twenty-first century. Instead, the purpose of God’s Word is to transform people in every country and every century into the image of Jesus. The Bible is sufficient to accomplish this task, and God knows this is what people need most.
No leader in the church can be expected to give people all the answers they want or need on parenting, marriage, money management, and every other issue in life. No leader is that good, and God has designed it this way so that the church never fosters an unhealthy dependence on, or an unhealthy admiration of, any particular leader in the church.
The Bible is not in a church leader’s hands so he or she can give people answers to every question they have and guidance for every situation they face. Instead, the Bible is in a church leader’s hands to transform people into the image of Christ and to get people in touch with the Holy Spirit of God, who will not only give them counsel for every situation they face but will also walk with them through those situations. And when church leaders use God’s Word for this purpose, then church members develop a healthy dependence on God’s Spirit and a healthy admiration of God’s glory.
When you think about it this way, the Israelites and Moabites are definitely worth talking about. For example, it’s worth looking at how Lot’s incestuous relationship with his daughter created the despised Moabites. It’s worth reading how Israelite men were later seduced by Moabite women into sexual immorality, with thousands of Israelite men dying as a result. It’s worth seeing all of that to know that one day, in the most unexpected way, God pursued an undeserving Moabite woman named Ruth. In her otherwise hopeless situation, God turned her suffering into her satisfaction. He grafted her into an Israelite family where her line would one day lead to the birth of Jesus, the Savior of the world.7
How is this going to help people walk through twenty-first century struggles? It will remind all the businesspeople in the church that they needn’t worry about spending their lives climbing a ladder when the God of the universe has pursued them by his grace, not based on what they have done, but based on who he is. It will remind the family dealing with cancer that God is indeed sovereign and that in their suffering he may actually be plotting their satisfaction. It will remind all the people of God that the highest privilege of our lives is not found in who we know, where we live, what we achieve, or how much money we make. Our highest privilege is found in being a part of the family line of Jesus, in whom we have life and for whom we live.
The Word does this work.
The question is, will we let it? As leaders and influencers in the church, will we turn aside from our wit, our thoughts, our counsel, and our advice to give people God’s Word instead? As members in the church, will we trust that God knew what he was doing when he gave us his Word? Together, will we realize that our greatest need is not to be successful business executives, profitable money managers, or even good parents but to know God and to walk with him?
Now we’re getting to the heart of how God moves his people.
Let’s take this line of reasoning one step further. God’s Word is clearly the foundation for teaching and preaching in the church, but what if his revelation is also the foundation for strategizing and planning in the church? What if the Bible is intended not only to dictate our theology but also to determine our methodology?
Just as I am tempted to interject my thoughts and opinions into preaching in the church, so I also find myself tempted to interpose my ideas into planning for the church. I love to dream about what we can accomplish for the kingdom of God and then to diagram the steps we need to take to achieve it all. I love to sit around with other members of the church who want to glorify God and who have been given creative gifts from God and together to craft plans and strategies for the church. I can walk away from such conversations with great anticipation in my mind and great zeal in my heart for God to bless our work for his name’s sake.
But there is a subtly deceptive, ultimately dangerous assumption inherent in doing things this way. The assumption is that God is somehow obligated to bless the plans we create. Yet nowhere in Scripture has God promised to bless my plans or anyone else’s in the church, no matter how innovative or creative they may be. Neither has God promised to bless us based solely on our motives. Sure, we are supposed to do everything for the glory of God, but that doesn’t mean everything we do for his glory is assured of his blessing.8
There is only one thing God has promised to bless, and that is his plan.9 He has given us his plan in his Word, and if we want the blessing of God, then we don’t need to come up with something else. Instead, we need to align with the plan he has already promised to bless.
When I came to Brook Hills, multiple phases of a building project remained to be finished. The plan was to expand the lobby into a more spacious and inviting environment for guests, to build additional classrooms, and to begin construction on sports fields adjacent to our parking lot. The plan seemed good, and people were excited about it. The creative energies of church leaders, combined with the abundant resources of church members, had made this plan possible, and people were ready to get started.
Then we began asking, “Does this plan best align with the plan of God?”
As we took this question to Scripture, we saw a clear plan from the mouth of Jesus: Make disciples of all the nations. Take up your cross, follow me, and lead others to follow me in the same way. Jesus never told us to build lobby space, create more classrooms, or design sports fields. Not that it would necessarily be wrong to do these things. After all, Jesus never commanded us to build bathrooms either, but we have those. When it came to our plans then, the question was, Is this the best (notice: not good but best) way to align with the plan Jesus has laid before us?
Is building a nicer, more comfortable lobby the best way to use our resources to lead people to take up a cross and follow Christ? Is building more space for classes the best way to help people obey Christ? Is building soccer fields in Birmingham the best strategy for spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth (particularly when so many have never even heard the gospel)?
They might be. But you and I have to ask.
And as we asked these questions at Brook Hills, our decision became clear. Instead of expanding the lobby for our church, we would use that money to start planting other churches. Instead of constructing more classrooms where we could listen to more lectures, we would become more intentional about gathering in our homes, where we could better share our lives. And instead of building more soccer fields in our community, we would use that money to serve spiritually and physically impoverished peoples around the world. (Interestingly, we have members in our faith family now using sports fields in slums around the world to serve and start churches.)
In our decision we believed we were exchanging good, well-intentioned plans that we had hoped God would bless for better, Word-driven plans that God had guaranteed to bless.
Now, I want to clarify what I mean (and don’t mean) by the blessing of God. I am not saying that if the Word is primary in our churches, then we will be popular in the world. In many ways we can expect the opposite to be true. If crowds of people hated the words of Jesus in the first century, we can certainly expect them to feel the same way in the twenty-first century.10 The blessing of God does not mean acceptance by the world.
Similarly, I am not implying that teaching and studying God’s Word in the church bring instant results. The process of sanctification in Christians and mobilization in the church takes time and requires patience. The challenge for church members and leaders alike is to faithfully hold fast to God’s Word, trusting that ultimately God will use it to accomplish his intended, eternal, global purpose.11
I wish you could have slipped into the auditorium at Brook Hills around midnight last Friday evening. Every seat was taken, and some sat in the aisles. Everyone had their Bibles open, and almost everyone was still taking notes, soaking in the Word of God as it was being taught. We call it Secret Church—an event patterned after underground house churches around the world who gather for hours at a time to study Scripture. In Birmingham last Friday, from 6:00 p.m. straight until almost 1:00 a.m., several thousand men and women simply studied the Word and prayed together. College students from faraway campuses sat next to eighty-year-olds from various churches. As these believers listened attentively and engaged passionately, I was reminded again that we don’t have to engineer something entertaining to win an audience. The Word is sufficient to hold the attention of God’s people and satisfying enough to capture their affection.
You and I can trust this Word. It forms and fulfills, motivates and mobilizes, equips and empowers, leads and directs the people of God in the church for the plan of God in the world. This won’t automatically make everything easy in the church. But as long as Christians together are prayerfully and humbly asking what the plan of God is in his Word for his people and are abandoning our lives to it, we will be unleashing a radical people.
And what, then, is God’s plan? That question sets the stage for what may be a surprising answer.