Author Archives for Rob Krause

Don’t rush eldership

As Paul instructs Timothy, don’t be quick to lay hands on a brother because his character might not be tested or revealed enough, and you will be blessing an unseen set of problems. Character problems just don’t go away; they hide, not vanish. In younger and talented believers, when the pressures of ministry come, those problems will be amplified.

22 Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure.

1 Timothy 5:22

What are we symbolizing by the laying on of hands? We are conferring a role and a sacred charge. We are also indicating that this person has the proven character not only to share the Gospel but to conform his own life to it. His private life and his public life correspond. As we confer the blessing and the role upon this brother, we are linking our lives and ministries to him, too.

Once we lay hands on a brother, we are telling the church that this man has a public and personal life which they can follow. In other words, we are saying that we trust him to demonstrate the Gospel and they should to. So, this is not an act or declaration which should be taken too quickly or prematurely. Once you do it, it is very painful to take it back. It is noteworthy that Paul immediately connects the phrase “nor take part in the sins of others.” The laying on of hands is a prayer of the bonding of trustworthy ministers together.

We are not saying that the man is perfect, rather, that the elder knows how to immediately calibrate his life back to the Gospel when he sins. He is growing in holiness together with the bride. (I’m not referring to disqualifying sins here). Therefore, his teaching will take on a sense of personal humility before Christ and at the same time, the authority of Christ will be evident in his teaching.

We all know of plenty of ministry train-wreck stories. I don’t think they can be completely avoided this side of Heaven. Even Paul shared a few with us from his ministry. However, I do believe we can wisely reduce these wrecks through patient service together and observance of a man and his family. One practice which has helped us is to have a brother serve as an “elder-in-training” for a while (at least 1 year). This has given us the necessary time to evaluate his character and his giftings. The temptation which I think many ministries face is to invent what’s not there because we earnestly want our churches to grow and multiply. So, on one hand we should be proactive in identifying and training men who could be potential elders and on the other hand wise enough not to rush them into place.

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Refugees part 6: Watch the Animal Talk!

“Let us deal shrewdly with them…” said Pharaoh at the opening of Exodus (1:10). Immediately in the Exodus account, we find at least two main reasons for justification of genocide by the end of the first chapter.

The first reason was a refusal to remember when Egypt herself was in need. The verse says, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” In other words, the Pharaoh of Exodus 1 failed to look to the Pharaoh of Genesis 50 (approximately 390 years prior). In that episode, it was a Hebrew who saved the world through Egypt. However, “Pharaoh 2” of Moses’ day was preoccupied with the power and greatness of now. He had become the center of his polytheistic world. The news cycle was only 24 hours! Pharaoh didn’t have the time or the desire to know about some power from 4 centuries prior. He was the central power of today.  When we were studying through this in our church, many people commented how much we recognized “the Pharaoh” in each of us.

egypt animal talkThe second reason was the animal talk. You can hear it in the word “shrewdly” which Pharaoh used. “If we don’t deal with them, they will be harmful to us.” You can also pick it up in the language of the text which repeats the fruitfulness of Israel and the following fear of Pharaoh. Read this opening verse (1:7), “But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.” Do you get the sense the narrator is emphasizing something here?

Yet, to Pharaoh and the mainstream Nile media it sounds like the Israelites are snakes or insects which slither and crawl on the ground. Look how Pharaoh begins to describe them a few verses later, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land…’ But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.” (1:9-10, 12)

So, Pharaoh’s first solution of oppressive working conditions for the sake of the national economy only made them grow faster. A second solution of sterilization through in-birth abortions wouldn’t work either. Finally, we read this brief but haunting verse, “Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile.” (1:22) Everybody had to do their part! These Hebrews must be assimilated into our way of life (the Nile was the central vein of life, religion, culture, economy, & politics) — or else, genocide.

How do you get a people to commit slavery, sterilization, and then genocide? Taking a page from Pharaoh’s playbook, here are some of the steps:

  1. Forget or refuse to recognize God in any way.
  2. Make your way of life superior to all others and supreme to your own people; nationalize it.
  3. Make the foreigners into a threat. Deal shrewdly.
  4. Use animal-talk to make foreigners something sub-human. Tweet shrewdly.
  5. Deny the foreigners inherently have the image of God and any personal dignity.
  6. Make “elimination” the best and final solution.

Do any of these sound familiar today or were those wicked Egyptians just an anomaly in our Bibles and history books?

I recently shared how easy it was to begin to treat people as sub-human when we don’t naturally relate to them. In other words, people who are different from me (in color, language, customs, food, economics, and religion) usually make me feel uneasy and intimidated. If enough people who are similar to me dislike others who are dissimilar to us, then we can begin to call them “these people” or “these foreigners” and make the case to deal shrewdly with them. It is quite interesting to see Pharaoh’s worry about “these Hebrews” going to join a stronger enemy, returning, and attacking Egypt.

Early on, Pharaoh was using defensive language as if they had already risen up with coordinated armies against him. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the foreign army was God himself. And I think we have a fascinating lesson here in the irony and inner-working of divine justice. If we begin to talk like Pharaoh, making the weak to be our enemies, our greatest threats, and less-than-human animals, one day they will be — because we made them that way without regard to God who is repeatedly on the side of the weak. If we say the weak and poor are invading, attacking, or crawling out of their toilet-hole countries to destroy our way of life, then we’re defending our lifestyles on the pretext of lies. Only an idol will cause us to defend it against any perceived threat whether it is true or not. Is it not better to name and surrender our idols to God now than making our fears come true later? And how would we do that? I believe it is one Christian at a time and then one Christian community at a time. In other words, it begins with you and me and then our churches.

So, where do you think we as modern Western nations are on the ancient Egyptian scale of slavery, sterilization, and then genocide? My sense is slavery and sterilization are already quite active, and just a little more animal talk and policies to solve the problem of ‘these people’ and we are headed to a quiet, Nile-at-night result.

Please click here if you would like to read part 5 of this series, Where are YOU migrating to?

 

Refugees part 5: Where are YOU migrating to?

How can we (Christian believers) recover our lost sense of migration? Or do many of us not realize we are migrating at all? Indeed, the Bible has been called a handbook on migration, and you really sense that reality when reading books like Exodus, Acts, Hebrews, and many more. Do you know you’re emigrating? As the Exodus-people, the Scriptures point us to and call us to the city of God — the future reality with present ramifications.

Personally, I’m a stranger to the land where I live, but no stranger to migration. For over 22 years now, I’ve been a migrant into different cultures. Because of the daily detachment from being in a sense of “home”, I do think it has helped me to seek a greater home. It has also helped me with a sense of empathy for others who share similar migratory paths and experiences in life. A while back, I came to the realization I may never again have a sense of “rootedness” on this Earth. That lost sense of “home” begs the question and antagonizes the heart, “Am I ok with perpetual migration?” At first, I struggled like many with the thought, but now, I welcome it.

Almost every refugee we encounter is in search of a better home. The reactionary response to them is generally, “Well, don’t make my home your better home!” However, if we simply take their human ache on its merits, are they not teaching us something about our own temporary lives? It’s as if they are holding up a mirror of life to us, but we often don’t like what we see. Do we disdain their pursuit of a better home because it actually reminds us of our own, oft-forgotten pursuit of the better home?where is our treasure Could it be that our hearts are daily following our treasure (as Jesus said it would), but our treasure which is meant for Heaven is buried way too deeply here on Earth? All of a sudden, we meet many people who have very little earthly treasure and it makes us very uncomfortable.

And now we’ve arrived at the rub of the argument. Do you know that you are migrating, too? If the Gospel is our new life, then it is the Gospel which dispossesses Earth from our hearts. Yet, it is the very same Gospel which repossesses our hearts with the new, glorious home of the Father we know as Heaven. In other words, we reveal not only where we are migrating to but also WHO we are migrating to.

You may love your home, your city, your culture, your people, your food, and your country. There is no problem to love each of these deeply but not supremely. Do you love them too much? How can you know if you do? A simple answer might be — Can people tell you’re migrating? Here are some more reflective questions to help us discern how much of this world is our true home or not:

  • what lifestyle are you aiming for?
  • can you easily tell how the Kingdom has had an impact on your financial decisions?
  • do small changes in your plans or dreams upset and irritate you?
  • what have you “left behind” to enjoy Christ or to help others enjoy Christ?
  • do you look at countries and cities only as tourist destinations ?
  • do you often think or talk about Heaven?
  • do you have a God-centered view of retirement?

Jesus, the migrant city-builder

Jesus said in John 14, “I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, you may be also…” What a sweet promise to a migrating heart! Abraham (and other men and women of true faith) sought that place.

Abraham migrated heavenward

Life in God’s Son means we are anchored to that place; the very presence of God. Life in God’s Spirit means we are tethered to our anchor, and with each passing day we are pulled closer to that future reality. Jesus is our promised land whose border crossing is wide-open and welcoming. Home is where the Father, the Son, and the Spirit dwell in boundless love. I don’t know what you want to do, but I’m going home!

In the meantime, however, I need to learn how to live as a migrant. For the joy set before him, Jesus despised the shame of this world and is now seated securely on the throne in Heaven (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus was the King-walking, who bore the humiliation of any migrant who would follow him. Did you catch where Jesus was migrating to? He was migrating — to joy. Or, as the prodigal son’s father called it — a great celebration where both the father and the son were (Luke 15).

Therefore, if that joy is my motivation too, renewing my status as a heaven-bound migrant is not so frightening. I am becoming more and more like the Ultimate Migrant as faith works itself out in my life. Continually, I become as the Refugee of Heaven to reach refugees of this Earth while the Gospel transforms my baseline motivations in life.

Walking in the Gospel toward joy will not take long for people to tell you’re a migrant, too. Look how migrants behave. Migrants walk today in light of their future. Migrants agonize in hope. Trafficked humans in the slavery of sin champion their liberator. Refugees seek and celebrate true refuge. You never hear long-time travelers say, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow, we die.” No, they care deeply about tomorrow, about the journey and the destination, or they never would have travelled in the first place. There is a marked difference between a refugee and a rancher. Likewise, a Christian cares deeply about their city today, but not by forsaking the celestial city of tomorrow.

With this hope of Christ which lies within us, may we provoke more people to ask, “Where are you migrating to?”

Please click here to read part 4 (Don’t Romanticize the Work) of this series.

Refugees part 4: Don’t Romanticize the Work

Dark eyes and hearts

A missions trip to work with the refugees sounds so humanitarian, so helpful, doesn’t it? However, the actual work is far from “glorious”. Don’t get me wrong, the result of working in the pain-filled process is glorious — the reconciliation of sinful men and women into loving, Father-adoring children through the work of Christ Jesus. I speak of heavenly glory; the glory of the upside-down story where God shines through from the darkest corners of life. . . . . but the earthly work to arrive at the heavenly glory is not for fun-seekers or resumé-builders. It is work which conforms to and identifies with the Cross.

In the experience of our team, the most frequent and challenging question we have asked in these early years is, who are we doing this for? The work in the camps challenges us at our most basic human level. There, we are dramatically confronted with what it means to be a human being. Month after month, our men encounter wave upon wave of trouble. As each wave of trial and trouble passes over us, we see another layer of human wreckage in its wake — and another layer of Gospel character which needs work in our own lives is exposed. If a Christian does Gospel work among our new immigrant friends, even for a short time, and they do not walk away from the camp saying, “Oh Lord, I’m just a sinner saved by grace,” then something is fundamentally wrong with their theology.

Why We Do Anything At All

One might ask after reading the above paragraphs, “Then why do anything at all? It seems like it is such a futile endeavor.” And yes, while the process is long, arduous, and pain-filled, each initiative we do is pointing to something greater than itself; a hope beyond. Here are 3 reasons why we consider investing in these initiatives as a worthy endeavor:

  1. We do initiatives to help them with life skills and development. As I mentioned before, many of the men have good energy and are eager to work, but they lack the necessary skills to be of much benefit to a European context. In most cases, that is no fault of their own. It may be their parents had no more money to send them to school, or there were no education programs where they lived. So, full of energy and nothing good to do with it, they left. We are striving to put together initiatives which help them understand the safety measures, industrial theory, and working environments of Italia which are quite different from their various homelands and often different from other European nations.
  2. We do initiatives to build relationships for the gospel. The initiatives are the platforms for Christian love, and this is how the gospel works in every sphere of life. Often, gospel proclamation flows quite naturally from Gospel service. The men ask us all kinds of spiritual questions after they’ve seen our intentionality to serve and help them. In fact, the staff of the Catholic association running one of the camps in a Roman convent have begun to ask us for spiritual counsel and answers. We do everything for free, from a fountain of grace, and that provokes questions.
  3. We do initiatives to welcome God into Italia. I know this sounds a bit strange, but hear me out. Jesus brought a small child into his band of disciples to teach them. The disciples had been having one of their favorite arguments and playing one more round of “Who is the Greatest?” It seems they really liked that game. Bringing the child up into his arms as an object lesson, Jesus said (paraphrasing Mark 9:33-37), “The greatest will be found with the smallest, the least of all. Receive someone like this (no status) in my name, and you will be receiving me. Now, if you receive me, you will also receive the one who sent me — and that’s the greatest!” God is found among the struggling and hurting more than the wealthy and self-satisfied. We do initiatives because those initiatives draw us into the place where the Father loves to show up and distribute grace. The struggle is worth it because our King is worth it.

What we Encounter

A brother in our ministry who has had a good amount of hands-on experience with the men in the camps put together a list for us to realize what we often encounter in the work. The following list will de-romanticize any kind of thinking that we (whoever we are) will save them. No, we need something — no, someone — who can go deeper than any of us can and transform such incredible wickedness and soul-destruction into healthy children of God.

  • Prosperity Gospel
  • spirit and ancestor worship
  • Animism – the control of localized spirits to obtain blessings
  • Physical trauma
  • Mental trauma
  • human slavery
  • forced criminality
  • Families left behind
  • War
  • Genocide (both inflicted and victims of)
  • Islam, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism — all works-saving religions and beliefs
  • deep distrust
  • Womanizing & pornography
  • Fatherless and orphaned
  • Mother with siblings from multiple men
  • Sex trafficking
  • Broken relationships
  • Greed
  • Smuggling
  • Laziness and no trained work-ethic
  • Cultural timeliness (extreme tardiness)
  • Desire to be like kings and/or tribal chiefs
  • Illiteracy and lack of education (reading, writing, speaking)
  • Majority are young and lacking life skills and experience
  • Internet/Facebook identity and image management
  • Escape based on lies
  • Medical Problems
  • Marital Problems
  • Fatherless Children
  • Desperation and depression
  • Language challenges (eg. learning Italian or other European languages)

Upon arrival, other struggles and problems begin to arise:

  • There is a deep belief that this country (or the next) is the promised land
  • They lose early enthusiasm to seek work and learn the language as depression increases.
  • Loss of motivation to establish the critical basics — for example, wanting to make money without learning the necessary work or language skills first.
  • Pressure increases to make money and send it back to family and tribe.
  • a false sense of entitlement increases
  • Islamic and Prosperity-gospel theologies polarize men and create strong resistance
  • Religious activity becomes a mask for personal ambition. There’s a strong sense of doing religious things to get God to make them money.
  • Camps are only meeting minimal needs for two years or more and not truly setting the refugees up to successfully achieve work and permanent residence

Enduring Negative Effects and Dangers

  • False documentation — there is a black market where men pay thousands to take on the identity of someone else.
  • Begging — due to the lack of small job opportunities and their lack of skill or will to work toward something more stable, a number resort to begging on the street or selling small items (often for those connected with organized crime).
  • Homelessness — if you don’t have some sort of official income, you cannot obtain a housing rental contract. So, you either pay someone else for a room or become homeless. As the amount of men exiting the camps increases in this next year, this could become a hardship in numerous cities.
  • Petty criminality — begins with stealing small things or running some kind of false marketing claim or false work. Theft and corruption only increase over time.
  • Remaining illegal within the country and hiding under the radar
  • Hatred grows and men become more susceptible to evil, radicalizing ideas.

If you take a few minutes and thoughtfully consider the scenarios we are facing, you will immediately have a missionary prayer list on your hands. If you’ve desired to pray more precisely about life-changing requests, then put your gloves on, lean into the Lord, and open some doors to the Light of the World for us! It will be a delight to share stories with you where your prayers have been heard and answered.

Click here if you would like to read part 3 of this series.

Refugees part 3: 4 ways a Christian can miss the point on immigration

The news media is a problem for western Christians; not because of its bias against godly ethics but because of Christians wholesale ingestion of news commentary. I know, that was a broad statement and not true of every Christian. However, would you give it some thought? How many voices do Christians listen to (or read) in a given day? And what are the sources of these voices — dead men or the living God? I would suggest that many Christians have a problem parroting more of what they’ve heard on the news media than what they’ve heard through God’s Word. This problem is most evident when it comes to hot-button “social” issues such as immigration.

Now, the call to the Christian is to guard our hearts for what is coming in and out, and to let our speech be seasoned with grace (others can “taste” the grace in the words we use). We should be speaking as “other-worldly” people. Yet, so oftenScreen Shot 2018-08-17 at 1.43.48 PM when a difficult issue arises, opinion trumps grace. So, here are 4 signs which can test and reveal if we are dead-men’s parrots or life-giving prophets:

  1. The use of dehumanizing language: I’m probably going to explore this one with another post altogether. This sign is so subtle because it stays in the realm of “solving a problem.” You see, the immigrant people are more a problem to be resolved than a people to be restored. Look at how you talk about refugees or immigrants. What words are you using? Do you ever call them people, humans, human beings, image-bearers of God, or friends? Or, do you stay neatly in the realm of calling them immigrants, refugees, undocumented, illegals, foreigners, invaders, or threats? One of the tell-tale signs of a language and heart problem is the use of the word “these” —  these people; these immigrants; these foreigners. A worker in one of our camps was shocked when he saw the LifeLab we installed in action with our refugee friends. He exclaimed, “You spent all this money on these people!?” There is something despising in the use of the word these to classify people as lower and more akin to sub-human; something less-than-me.
  2. The defense of political policy first: a little flag goes up in my heart when I read Christians running to defend a civil policy first and foremost with no mention of the Gospel-need anywhere to be found. There’s a Gospel apathy which becomes evident when we label all people “lawbreakers” and we are referring to the State. Again, let me say, I am not advocating for transgressing the law, rather, is the civil law of my resident country the only filter I’m using to describe “these people”? That is not the filter the Father used when he sent us Christ Jesus — and thank Heaven, he did not, or all of us lawbreakers would be without hope. The motive of the Gospel was to love sinners first. The point of confusion often comes when we classify any and all immigrants as illegal lawbreakers. On the other hand, the Gospel tempers this tendency and compels us to seek out their humanity and to meet the needs of the stranger. Our natural disposition, however, makes it so hard for us to approach and understand those who are different than we are.
  3. The Lord’s church doesn’t factor as a solution: Following on from the last point, one of the things I have noticed in comments on Christian forums is the tendency not to see the local church as God’s welcoming and sheltering family, but rather, the church is more of a complication (a nuisance in the argument even) or maybe even a contributor to the social problem of immigration. In Italia, we have a dual crisis on-hand. First, we have the humanitarian crisis of the massive wave of immigrant people who are now trying to integrate into European societies. The second crisis, however, is more severe and has to be seen with eyes of faith. We do not have the churches which can serve all of the new people arriving in Italia. Indeed, this is a main reason why we are engaged in church-planting. We believe the Lord’s church is by far the best answer to the humanitarian crisis — simply for the fact that the foundational need of both indigenous people and immigrant people is to know the Lord Jesus. The church does not look at people groups as cattle to be herded or numbers to be pressed through a system. Rather, the church works to get down into each individual life and soul to lift-up Christ as the substance of the image we all bear. Christians and Christian churches miss the point (the Gospel opportunity) when we relegate all the answers and solutions to the State or societal institutions.
  4. The Great Commission isn’t so great: King Jesus ended his ministry with one last charge — Go into all the world and proclaim this Good News of me…!
    In a certain sense, it may be the church is not “going” enough, so the nations are “coming” in a glorious turn-about in modern history. For those intimidated or threatened by others who are not like them, this trend is not a welcome sight. But for those instructed by the King of all, this affords the church a beautiful opportunity.

    In the late 4th century A.D., Augustine wrote a series of works called The City of God where he dealt with the real invasion of the Visigoths of the north and the sack of Rome. Remember, at the time of his writing, the modern world was in a state of shock that the impossible-to-happen, just happened (a surprise theme repeated often in history). In this large work, he has many things to say about the impact of the unseen city of God upon the seen city of man. While Augustine’s main motive was to refute the blame placed upon the Christians for the sack of Rome, he simultaneously challenged Christians to live more for the City of God and to live in the perspective of eternal Heaven than that of what was happening around them.

    In the same way, with such a massive, modern issue (also and often called a “ruinous invasion”), we Christians need to strive to begin with the Great Commission and see to it that the Commission really is Great in our hearts, speech, and decisions. There is enough parroting of the voices of dead-men’s media. Our churches and homes don’t need any more of that. Rather, we need delightful, risk-taking, self-sacrificing, and eye-popping Gospel perspectives which honor our King and his Commission. Please don’t miss that point on immigration no matter where you live in the city of man.

If you would like to read part 2 of this series on refugees, please click here.

Refugees part 2: Legalities and Love

I published a brief article through the Gospel Coalition on our church’s direct experience with the refugee crisis in Italia which was meant to encourage the church at large that there is some good news out there! The surprising thing which took place both here in Italia and the US was how quickly the negative comments began to fill the conversations from “Christians” who were angered by our outreach.

One of the themes which arose was that our church was disrespecting national borders set up by God (so we were disobeying God), that we were illegal for helping “illegals” (so we were disobeying the state), and that the church shouldn’t be involved in politics like this (so we were disobeying political correctness).

In response, I would like to share here that we were not disobeying the first two and really don’t mind breaking the third. Rather, we are seeking in our approach to have Gospel centrality and to be careful how Christ is presented while at the same time not compromising with the feelings del giorno of man before God.

Are national borders important?cloud-3074621_640

I would answer yes to that question as borders define civil law of a national sovereignty, but I don’t sense that is the real issue, at least for the church. We have never preached to throw down national borders and haven’t really heard of that being presented in like-minded churches. If that is an issue for you and your church community, I would be glad to explore it more with you. However, what I do see is the following argument being used somewhat as a straw man fallacy. Any outreach to any newly arrived immigrant or helpful initiative seems to be met with suspicion and then we are categorized as one of “those churches who just want to throw down borders and let everyone in.” Or, another commenter immediately shared how God in his law honors borders — as if we didn’t and don’t love God and his law.

The point is each country has their own immigration and border policies — and as long as they are humane and do not cause immediate risk or damage to human beings, then they should be respected. It is also good, Gospel witness to help others who need to comply with immigration laws if they’re willing to do so. We have encountered some who are unwilling to legalize their status choosing to “hide for a while” until more advantageous times. To those, we patiently offered correction but not membership.

Italia (up to this year) has had a more humane and “compassionate” policy than many countries. For example, one does not need to “touch” the shoreline to seek asylum in Italia; a sea rescue is also sufficient. In recent news, we have seen a more hard-line policy where the sea rescues have taken place but the ports have been closed to entry. Yes, the numbers of refugees entering Italia has dropped dramatically, but the interesting statistic is that the number of deaths at sea has still remained high proportionately. Think of the irony of the situation when the many Mediterranean cruise ships packed with vacationers pass over the spots of hundreds of drowning victims just hours and days before. And to twist the knife into the sadness further, most of the refugees have paid dearly to get on those doomed boats. They’re paying to be drowned, yet the human traffickers are still sending them north.

What happens, then, to those who do reach the ports and shores? That is an important question because Italy places them in a status of semi-sequestration for up to two years until their documents are approved or denied. In our experience, the vast majority do receive their proper papers and enter the society. Some are ready to enter the workforce and many are not.

Please note here: I acknowledge, first, our experience is not a “uniform” experience across all of Italia. We are reporting from the north where hundreds of refugees continue to arrive and other regions may or may not be similar. Second, I am speaking only to their entrance into Italia at this point before they may have broken any laws. I realize that there are riots and attacks by migrants in various cities of Italy for a number of different reasons. The laws are indifferent to race when they are broken, and the judgments or penalties should be applied equally. 

Therefore, in a legal sense, the refugees do have a limited permission window to stay, and the large majority being granted longer term permissions to sojourn. This is where we come into direct contact with the refugees. They are already here, and they are provisionally legal. So, if the requirements of the law have been met, there is no “civil” reason why we should withhold the Gospel of life from them. We are neither disobeying the State nor disobeying God’s great commission.

However, if we do ignore them and take up the popular sentiment all around us that they are all illegal (which is untrue), we will definitely disobey the Father. The truth of the situation of popular sentiment is not that they are all illegal, but rather, they are all unwanted.

A better way

For that reason, our Cristocentric approach is to be ambassadors of Heaven; pointing them to a better land where they are invited to enter. They may be unwanted by many around them in this new, European land and that is exactly how Jesus identifies deeply with them. Jesus came to his own people, and they denied his status (John 1:11). The rest of the Gospel of John chronicles how many different ways he was rejected all the way to the final, unjust one in the Cross. This is the message of good news which follows in John 1:12 — to all who will receive him, Jesus gives them the right to be called children of God. This is law and love together.

We want to show them how much they are wanted and how the Savior has already met the law, broken down the dividing wall, and thrown open his city gates — for them! This is news they have never heard before, and after the horrific experiences many of them have endured, it is truly good news.

To read part 1 of this series, please click here.

Guidance for Spiritual Gifts: part 6 – the Spirit is giving your life away

spiritual gifts logo-imageLife is given to be given away and grace-giftings are God’s beautiful way to pour out your life — for you. Let me phrase it another way. If you are born from above, the Holy Spirit has made you such a new human being (and continues to make you more and more like Jesus) that to continue his mission he not only gives you new life but gives your new life away to his purposes in the world. In the Holy Spirit, we are the walking temples of God where “Spirit-ual” things happen. Look at how Paul wrote it in 1 Corinthians 6:19 when church members were justifying sexual deviancy as an act of worship! “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own…”

So, for me and you to experience anything spiritual, we have to allow that the Spirit saved us, to dwell in us, to fix the world through us, and glorify the Father because of us. We don’t own our lives; He does.

To see grace-giftings in action, we need to look at how and where the Spirit is bringing this world to see the majesty of Jesus Christ. Here are some examples. Literally, the Spirit of God is stepping into situations of disorder and bringing gifts through his church of organization and administration. Where the fog of ignorance hinders his children from hearing his truth, God sends teaching which leads men to worship him. Where illness seems to conquer, the Spirit arrives with merciful hands to show he is the ever-present Help in time of need. When the suffering of lack and oppression take place, the Spirit releases a wave of generosity through his children. We can continue on like this with prayer, faith, discernment, hope, and many more. In fact, I believe that as many different needs which you can identify, there is One Solution with the right gift for each one of them.

Therefore, God is gracing us beyond our own means to accomplish his will. He is giving evidence and signs of the Kingdom which is here but must be accepted by faith. We can say that the Spirit is operating in a way that “rights” a world gone wrong, and he is doing it so that it reveals the truth and presence of Jesus. Through the spiritual gifts, God the Spirit is gifting the message of God the Son around the world through a gracious invasion.

Yes, yes, I know we really like the spectacular stuff. It is quite tempting to want to see the miraculous for its own sake. And as a Christian journeys through the years with Jesus, we will definitely see some surprising things which only God can do. On the other hand, we should be thankful God has ordered his world so that each of us can participate in it. To enjoy the grace-giftings of God does not mean that we each need to perform miracles. It may simply mean we are giving our availability to God and serving others in simple, unseen ways.

Is it right, then, to demand that if a gift is not spectacular, then it must not be of the Spirit? I have had people come to our church “looking” only for the showiness of the gifts only to leave after spending less than a couple hours with us saying our church doesn’t “have” the Holy Spirit. However, the more obvious thing missing and unmentioned in their research was if the Gospel was being proclaimed and lived in our church. Simultaneously with their dismissal and departure, the Holy Spirit was always working through many grace-giftings. The reality is the desire for the seen and the spectacular was more important to them than the working out of the Gospel through humble service without a spotlight.

Take careful note of how Jesus was washing feet the night before he was unjustly murdered. There was nothing spectacular about that. No power-show was happening there. It was all quite ordinary and yet extraordinary at the very same time. Jesus left them the example of loving service for how he operates in his world. Apostle Paul follows this up with, “You can do the spectacular with angels and lightning bolts included, but if you don’t have love, you’ve only lit-up fireworks.” (my paraphrase, 1 Cor. 13:1-3). The Italian words for “fireworks” are fuochi artificiali meaning “artificial fires” and are apt here. They might be spectacular like fireworks, but they’re beneficial per niente (two other Italian words meaning “for nothing”).

So, we might test a “gifting” with a few helpful questions — Does the gift in operation serve specific needs and heal the world to Jesus through the Gospel? Does the gift bring glory to God more than the person through whom the Spirit is operating? Is the gifting evident through a person’s self-giving service?

The point is there are hundreds of kinds of needs (ways in which the world just doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to). And corresponding to those needs, there are hundreds of opportunities for the Spirit to work through me and you by placing Jesus right into the middle of each one of them. Let’s not overcomplicate the beautiful simplicity of gifts. Also, we must be careful not to overemphasize one, singular “gifting” at the expense of declaring one, singular Christ. Needs abound, but there is one, generous, gift-giving Solution.

Does that mean that I have all the gifts? In a certain sense, yes. If you have the one Spirit of God who operates to meet needs and you’re like me with a thousand weaknesses to operate through, the Spirit may gift you away to all kinds of Gospel settings. In fact, Paul calls us to desire all the gifts, which, if our lives are Christ-centered is a healthy desire (1 Cor. 14:1). However, no single person has all of the gifts exclusively. The Father distributes them throughout the Body that we might bring him glory together. If you had all of the gifts, then you simply wouldn’t need me or anyone else. One evidence of humility in a Christian’s life is how considerate they are toward other believers because they acknowledge how the Father is operating through others for their good. Humble believers desire and search for the way God is directing and blessing other members in the Christian family.

In closing, I would like to encourage and challenge each of us to not make church all about ourselves. Rather, let us give our availability each day to the Holy Spirit and ask of him, “Holy Spirit, would you give my life away today for your delight?” Then, just watch what he does to restore his world. I believe at that point, we will start to see how much grace he is imparting through his gifts to us and how much God wants us to enjoy him in our churches.

Note: please click here if you would like to read the earlier articles on guidance for spiritual gifts.

Refugees: Personhood and Politics

Whatever your views on the subject of immigration, do you at least see migrants as human beings? Whenever you hear the word “refugee” what do you think of first? Do you permit the fact that each human being has been formed in the glory of the Imago Dei? Or do you sense judgment like Jonah toward the Ninevites or worse, disgust like Pharaoh toward the Israelites? As I contribute my thoughts and experiences on this vast subject, the undercurrent which daily sweeps over my soul is that the Gospel for the Christ-follower must be the basis, the conditioning “first-thought” which governs all other questions and solutions pertaining to other human beings.

refugee boat

It must be stressed that I am not advocating to throw open borders, ignore national sovereignties, and invite freeloaders and terrorists to enjoy consuming and destroying our cities. I do believe that a Christian’s witness is enhanced or it is hindered by how they treat civil law. On the other hand, I am not advocating that the many foreigners arriving in our land are only a political problem and are not worthy of welcome, care, and the Christian Gospel.

Rather, as I’ve outlined this series of articles, I think the call and the urgency of the Gospel compels believers to go deeper than the news and popular, cultural opinion which tends to rest solely in the political arena. At the outset, what we face is a regular, daily tension of whether we will put our politics aside for their personhood or their personhood aside for our political narratives.

It is much easier to remain in the socio-political arena; there, everyone believes they are entitled to an opinion without many consequences, if any at all. However, we have found when someone begins to work directly with people whose lives have been ravaged and traumatized by war, famine, poverty, slavery, and maltreatment their socio-political opinions are greatly challenged. So, what happens to people between the Facebook wall and the walls of the camps where large groups of human beings are sequestered? My answer is the impact of “personhood” is happening. People are sensing both the dignity of personhood in the Imago Dei and the significance of the pain of human need. It’s the simple practice of personal contact which changes everything.

The Great Samaritan

We can see this plainly applied in the parable of the Good Samaritan. When the Hebrew traveller is mugged and left to die, the two surprising aspects of those who pass by are who they are and the distance they keep. The fellow Jews (who would have had a moral and societal obligation to care) kept their distance and masked both their fears and their disdain for the man-in-need behind their societal robes and roles. In shocking contrast, the Samaritan comes close and personalizes the situation at his own expense. As Jesus recounts the parable, it seems as if proximity to the brokenness caused an immediate melting of any prejudice that the Samaritan could “rightly” claim.

good-samaritan-sculpture

Jesus told this parable to answer the question, “So who really is my neighbor?” At face value, we can discern that our neighbors are human, in need, people along our path, often different than we are, and can also be our socio-political opposites. The question came from an attorney, an interpreter of the law, and it was designed to force Jesus to reduce Heaven’s compassion to man’s comforts. Little did the attorney realize he was trapping himself by putting his politics before personhood — and it takes the invasion of Jesus himself to liberate the lawyer. Indeed, it takes Jesus himself to liberate our sacrifice from our opinions. I cannot overstate how challenging and uncomfortable this practice is for us. Nothing short of the resurrection power of Christ can bring us even close to what Jesus called us to in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

This is a good starting point to advocate for the challenge of our own hearts in how we view humanity — humans who are different than us, messier, and often more broken. It ought to grieve Christians first when another human is in difficulty or suffering before we quickly judge whether they deserve it or not. Ninevites can repent, and God looks forward to their repentance. Did we listen to Prophet Jonah in our Bible classes or did we only color the picture of the fish with a belly full of bitter prophet?  Imagine what the Gospel could do in the hands of energetic, young men who have risked their lives and faced death for much lower causes. Can you visualize how many missionaries and church planters could return to the shores of their homelands from today’s incoming waves? Just imagine how the Gospel could shine and show the upside-down and right-side up story of Jesus Christ among the nations. For this I advocate — the Gospel to humans first and foremost.

How do you gospel you?

In a recent conference, I had the opportunity to share a workshop on developing one-to-one discipleship in your church. One of the questions in the seminar that we sought to answer was What does every believer need? We discovered at least 5 helpful answers to that question, and one of the foundational answers is – a healthy understanding of their identity in the Gospel. If you’re going to live by the Gospel, you have to know how to identify yourself in Christ, get back to the Gospel when facing various situations, marinate in it, and calibrate your every step to it.

Well, the above all sounds good, but for a new follower of Jesus it sounds daunting. So, how will a young or new believer really gain a healthy understanding of a life permeated by the Gospel? They “get it” in a one-to-one relationship; by asking, watching, and relating to more mature believers. Titus 2:4,6 says to “train the younger women… and urge the younger men…”

 

friendship is the key to discipleshipSo, the value of intentional discipleship relationships is that new and younger believers can feel safe enough to simply ask, How do you gospel you? In fact, whether they say it or not, each gathering which young believers attend (whether large or small) they are asking that very question. I think they are simply saying, “I am here, so teach me the Gospel. Show me how to love and obey Christ.”

Yet, one of our current challenges in the church today is that many people who may attend our gatherings believe the length of time they have invested in attendance = maturity in the Gospel. Therefore, what is closer to reality is that we have many young believers who have been sitting a long time. I believe that maturity in Christ is understanding how to get back to, live in, and press forward in the Gospel. So, we need to take a healthy look around our ministries and inquire to see if we have ever asked others the question, “How do you Gospel you?”

If Luke Wrote About Your Church

In our small group leadership training plan, we ask the question, if Luke were alive today to write about the impact and effects of the Gospel in your community, what would he say?

Some Context

When Luke wrote the second chapter of the book of Acts, he began it with the spectacular inauguration of his new family. The Holy Spirit of God, full of divine delight, was freed to accomplish what he had ached to do for millennia past — to fall upon us and sweep us up into wedded bliss and power and union with Jesus. The church was consummated and what a celebration it was; complete with heavenly wind, fire, and good news proclamation in all languages. In fact, it was such a powerful and joyous occasion, some hardened onlookers thought Jesus’ bride was drunk!

Then, Luke writes in Acts 2:42-47 about the happiness of the bride and her honeymoon as it were in those first weeks of her union with Christ. Look at how filled-up she is with the mission and heartbeat of Jesus and look at some of the things Luke celebrates:

  • They eagerly devoted themselves to hearing and learning more about their groom with the apostles’ teaching.
  • They shared all that they could with each other and invested their earthly resources in each other.
  • They spent time together and invited others to join them.
  • They were in the marketplace telling the Good News message through selling items of value and property for the benefit of others. (quite possibly at inopportune times to sell their goods for the “highest value” for themselves just to be able to benefit others.)
  • They praised and adored God both publicly and privately. Worship became integral and contagious.
  • They ate meals together in Jesus’ name.
  • They were socially winsome and found favor among all the people.
  • They were welcoming in whatever they did in their homes (house-to-house). So, their homes became centers for community and moved away from being personal castles.
  • They saw answers to their prayers abounding as the Holy Spirit delighted to shower them with love through his special signs and wonders.
  • There was no line or barrier between “my church life” and “my regular life”.

Did you notice how different these things were from the first part of chapter 2? Married couples don’t have a wedding ceremony every day. Luke is highlighting how ordinary life with Jesus was filled-up with purpose and power that stretched into the spiritual and the eternal. The church is not dating Jesus in a paramour relationship. No, He is her everything.

Back to the Question

Now, how much do we recognize the integral and united nature we have with Christ while living in our communities? You see, our goal is not to replicate what the early church experienced in Luke’s list. If we do that, we turn our marriage relationship with Jesus into something mechanical and heavy by thinking that if we can just copy what they did, “church will work!”

Instead, Jesus will orchestrate all kinds of new gospel gestures, sacrifices, activities, and rewards to impact your community right where you are. So, imagine if Luke was walking around your church this month.

• How would he celebrate the gospel happening among you?

• What might he write in his list to show how Jesus is orchestrating the impact of the gospel in YOUR everyday lives?

This is a great exercise to do right now personally and/or in a group of friends. If you sense that Luke wouldn’t have much to say, then you might be experiencing more of a cultural Christianity than a vibrant, communal, gospel-fueled Christianity. At that point, it would be wise to evaluate if you really understand the gospel and especially the Ascension of Jesus. And, it would be wise to deeply ask what has been radically transformed in your life and the lives of your church community. What can we celebrate as evidence of the gospel in action?

Life as Extraordinary

A little catch-up:

It has been a while since I have sat down and written here at HM. Some have asked me when I would start again. All I can say to that effect is that I have eagerly desired each and every day to write something I’ve newly discovered in this glorious gospel to share with you. However, over the last couple of years, ministry life and responsibilities have dramatically increased for me which has netted the result of a high desire to share and a low output rate. I hope to match the two a bit more this coming year and that all of it will be a blessing and encouragement to you.

Now for some cibo (food) in the gospel and community

There is a line of thought which is often expressed in our churches from well-intentioned Christians (at least in Europe) that goes something like this:

I can’t do very much for God, and I don’t have much to offer God:

  • I’m not wealthy.
  • I’m not a leader.
  • I’m not talented.
  • I am timid.
  • I don’t have time like others do.
  • I’m not as smart as others.
  • I’m more of a private person.
  • My career prohibits me.
  • Nobody listens to me.

What our friends are expressing is an exaggeration of the ordinary; living with the gospel at an unreachable distance. The main problem with allowing our inner voice to talk like this is twofold.

First, it is poor theology which puts pressure on the mind and heart to try to generate something useful for God. Grace does not work that way. We do not generate-up good works in the hope that they will be something profitable that will satisfy God. In fact, this kind of thinking causes us to feel like we are never doing enough. God is rarely, if ever, happy with me. Instead, a true Christian is provided every day with the fountain of grace and providential goodness to live in the glory of Christ who gives his child good works to walk in (Eph. 2:10). For example, yes, it may be that God opens the door for you to visit with a neighbor about Jesus and grace, but it is also a God-glorifying work to respond with patience when your children won’t get ready for school in time during a hurried morning. Both situations require the Gospel and both are an opportunity — not to generate-up something useful — but to give-up something glorious back to the Lord who guided you into that very situation.

Second, this negative response creates a sense of desperation or fatalism because it is a response based too much on the circumstance of today and not governed by the reality of Jesus over us now and for eternity. Simply, this kind of thinking is poor theology because it denies who we are in Christ Jesus now, and who we are becoming in Christ Jesus tomorrow.

Applying the extra to the ordinary

holy_spirit1Here is how we need to help each other “get back to” the gospel and live it. In Acts 2, we see the marriage ceremony of Jesus to his bride. He brings his church into himself and collocates her to himself in Heaven before the Father. This is the privileged position of being united together in Christ.  The temple veil was torn and God the Holy Spirit is rushing out to indwell his people from all over the world! The physical sign of this was the beautiful manifestation of the flaming tongues of fire and the good news invitation of Jesus shared across the languages. These fire-tongues were both sign and signal that his people were now in him, and if Jesus is the new temple then they are also representative temples with the specific presence of God in them.

The follow-on results in Acts 2:42-47 do not strike us as spectacularly as the first wonders do in the early verses with the rushing winds and hovering flames of fire. No, on the contrary, we see people are doing quite ordinary things but with a completely new position and perspective. Yes, there are signs and wonders, but Luke does not elaborate on those and seems to emphasize the Christians’ desire to know more about Jesus, to praise Jesus both publicly and privately, to share food by eating together in Jesus’ name, to sell their possessions for those in need, and to invest in caring gestures toward each other. It is still Jesus directing his church, but he is not doing it through human greatness or achievement. Rather, he is guiding his church through service and care.
And here is the delightful response of Jesus to his bride as they live this ordinary-extraordinary life of the gospel:

And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Acts 2:47

So, the point for true Christians (I’m not speaking about cultural Christians) is that the reality of being married to Christ is the same for us today as it was for the early church. We are directly under and in the temple-reign of the Lord Jesus — right now.

Therefore, when we hear each other say that we can’t do much for God, we must be active to remind and challenge each other that — you say you cannot do much for God, but what you must see is that if you are in Christ, every thing you do is already done for God! Yes, each ordinary thing is given to you by Jesus. You think you have a powerless, ordinary life because of what you feel you can or cannot achieve. However, you have an extraordinary life not based on what you do, but based on who you are — on who Jesus has made you to be.

You simply have a choice to make in every action and circumstance. You will have to decide whether you will acknowledge that, “…this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” and give it back to the Lord Jesus in honor for his glory or whether you will claim it for yourself. But if we can see that God’s mission is not simply “out there“, but rather, being providentially directed from “in Him in here“, it is truly extraordinary to think of what Jesus will do with our ordinary-extraordinary lives when we care for him and for each other in this gospel-centered way. The challenge is to realize and appropriate who you are in him — right here & right now.

When Kids Break My Stuff

Through the years of training people to open their homes as ministry, we have encountered different reactions to “changing” our life patterns for the gospel. For some, change is refreshing and welcome; for most, downright dreadful. The simple truth is this, changing my life to open it up for gospel ministry is often difficult to cope with.

One of the simple markers of this ministry change at living-room level is what happens to our precious home when children from other families arrive; not just the growing, hungry ones but the little “ISIS” ones. Seriously, how were they ever recruited to such violence at so young an age? 😉

Some families do really well with this. They throw their arms, cupboards, and refrigerators open and say, “La casa mia è la casa tua!” Other families, wellllll, not as much. Practically, we share that God is sanctifying your home from the ground up. If you have ever prayed the prayer, “Lord, we open our home to you,” or, “Lord, we want to bless others with our family” or possibly, “I surrender all…” Then, the Father has heard you from Heaven and is answering your prayers!!

kids and stuff comicYes, everything from waste-level and down in your home is being sanctified and put up on the altar for God. Community in Christ is one of the ways that Jesus simplifies our homes and shapes our hearts. When you hear the crash, the zap, the scream, or the shatter and you know instantly something irreplaceable has happened, it’s one of the Lord’s cute ways of saying, “I told you, you didn’t need that anyway. It’s mine. Just look to me in this moment.” It’s cute because the Father has lovingly placed a little human, belonging to other bigger and “not-paying-attention” humans, right into the middle of the situation. The decision in that very moment is radical; it’s either wrath or trust. Is it not?

I share all of this with a little “tongue-in-cheek” playfulness. However, what is working more deeply is the gospel against pride. Yes, this is hard. It is pride of stuff and pride of identity and pride of parenting and pride of independence which says I don’t need community (at least this one) anyway. I like my life cozy and nice and safe! It’s pride that places temporary treasures over eternal people; my treasures over God’s treasures. All those kinds of pride together begin to surface and boil over into one, bad minestrone. I know! I am good at making bad minestrone.

But it does get better with time and experience. In fact, it becomes more joyful. God will simply change our hearts until his treasure becomes our treasure and his joy becomes our joy. And what is his joy? It is when one sheep, coin, or son who was lost repents and is found (Luke 15 where God throws parties). Remember, we broke his stuff – badly – and he still wants us as his children. Our homes are being brought into mission and that mission exchanges stuff for joy which is priceless.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  – Philippians 2:3-11