Month: August 2026

The Difficult Work of Christian Restoration

/ pastorlynnmalone / 2 Comments

Every person carries burdens. Some arrive through no fault of our own—a diagnosis, a death, a job loss, a broken relationship, a season of grief. The church is often at its best when those burdens appear. We show up with meals, prayers, financial assistance, and a steady presence. We do what we can to make sure no one carries the weight alone.

But there is another kind of burden we discuss less easily: the weight created by our own sin.

That burden may include guilt, shame, damaged trust, consequences we cannot escape, and the hard work of repentance. What does a Spirit-formed community do when someone has made a terrible decision? Do we stand back and explain why they fell? Make an example of them? Discuss their failure with everyone except them? Decide that their worst decision is the truest thing about them and leave them beneath its weight?

Or do we help them stand again?

Restoration Requires Truth and Gentleness

Paul answers that question in Galatians 6, immediately after describing the fruit of the Spirit. After naming love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, he writes:

“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

Then Paul turns directly to the person caught in sin:

“Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.”

Conceited people provoke, compare, condemn, and keep their distance. Spirit-formed people move toward the fallen with gentleness. One way to measure whether the Spirit is forming us is by examining how we respond to someone else’s failure.

Paul does not tell us to excuse the sin, pretend it never happened, call evil good, or remove every consequence. He tells us to restore the person—and to do it gently. The word translated restore was used for mending a torn net or setting a broken bone. Restoration is careful work because the person is already wounded. Even a self-inflicted wound can be made worse by careless hands. Gentleness is not weakness, and it does not require us to avoid the truth. Setting a broken bone requires us to tell the truth about what is broken. But that truth must be handled by hands committed to healing rather than humiliation.

Get Beneath the Burden

Paul continues:

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

We often separate this instruction from the verse before it and apply it only to illness, grief, or financial hardship. Those applications are right, but Paul’s immediate context is the person caught in sin. The guilt, shame, damaged relationships, and difficult road back to faithfulness are also burdens the church is called to help carry. Burden-bearing means walking with another person even through their worst decisions. It means saying:

“You have made a terrible decision. I will not pretend otherwise. But I will not abandon you beneath the weight of it. We will walk through this together.”

That kind of presence is messy and costly. It is much easier to offer advice from a distance than to get beneath the load. But when we bear another person’s burden, we embody grace. We remind the fallen that repentance is possible, forgiveness is real, consequences do not mean abandonment, and their worst decision does not have to have the final word.

Peter made a terrible decision. After promising that he would never abandon Jesus, he denied Him three times. The risen Christ did not pretend the denial never happened. On the seashore, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love Me?” He brought Peter back to face his failure—not to humiliate him, but to restore him.

“Feed My sheep. Follow Me.”

Truth. Grace. Restoration. Discipleship. Jesus refused to let Peter’s worst decision have the final word.

Restore the Person, Not Necessarily the Position

Paul says, “Carry each other’s burdens,” and then, only a few sentences later, “Each one should carry their own load.” The first word can describe a crushing weight; the second points to personal responsibility. There are burdens we must help one another carry, but there are also responsibilities each person must bear before God.

Burden-bearing does not mean taking responsibility for someone else’s choices. We cannot repent for them, force them to tell the truth, manufacture humility, or perform the work of obedience on their behalf. We can walk beside them, pray, listen, speak truth, establish boundaries, and help them identify the next faithful step—but they must take it.

This distinction becomes especially important when the person once occupied a position of responsibility. In recent years, the serious moral failures of several prominent pastors have become public. Churches have then debated whether those pastors should be “restored to ministry.” But Galatians 6 tells us to restore the person. It does not necessarily tell us to restore the position.

Our task is not to rescue a career, recover a platform, or repair a reputation. It is to help the person bring the burden to Christ and return to faithful fellowship with Him and His church. Sometimes the clearest evidence of restoration is the humility to live faithfully without the former platform.

The goal is not to return people to prominence. It is to return them to faithfulness.

Restoration Is a Field We Cultivate

Paul then turns to the principle of sowing and reaping: “A man reaps what he sows.” In the larger context, he is speaking about the whole life of faithfulness, but his words certainly apply to the slow work of restoration. Restoration is hard, patient cultivation. Like a garden, the ground must be prepared, seed must be planted, weeds must be pulled, and the gardener must keep showing up and then wait.

Long conversations, intentional prayer, uncomfortable truths, patient listening, clear boundaries, practical assistance, and consistent presence are the implements of restoration. We cannot sow a few words of advice and expect an immediate harvest. Restoration is a field we cultivate, not a moment we announce. We cannot force the harvest, and the person being restored remains responsible for how they respond. Progress may be uneven. Setbacks may come. That is why Paul writes:

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

The church should be the place where sin is taken seriously but fallen people are not discarded—where truth confronts us, grace carries us, and love helps us stand again. That does not mean every relationship returns to what it was, every position is restored, or every consequence disappears. It means no person is reduced to the worst thing they have ever done, and we keep believing that the grace of Jesus can still produce a harvest of faithfulness.

Jesus did not stand at a distance and explain the burden of our sin. He came near, got beneath its weight, and carried it to the cross.

The self-righteous stand above the fallen. The followers of Jesus get beneath the burden.

We are not called to return people to prominence. We are called to return people to faithfulness. And we do not abandon people beneath the weight of their worst decisions.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

When Ambition Masquerades as Calling

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

Age is a humbling thing. It brings aches in new places, but it also brings old decisions into sharper focus. One uncomfortable truth I have come to see is this: Not every decision made for questionable reasons ends badly.

That may be one reason some of them are so difficult to recognize. Sometimes the opportunity works out. Sometimes the new position goes well. Sometimes everyone involved flourishes. The outcome becomes evidence we use to reassure ourselves that we made the right decision. But good outcomes do not always justify the reasons behind our decisions. Sometimes we succeed for the wrong reason.

You’re wondering about that questionable decision, aren’t you? One in particular has returned to my thoughts recently. It happened in 2011. At the time, I was serving as pastor of Benton United Methodist Church. A few years earlier, in 2008, I had taken a clergy renewal leave. When I returned that December, I stood before the congregation and made a commitment: I would stay as their pastor as long as they would have me.

And I meant it when I said it.

At least, I thought I did.

Then, in February 2011, the bishop called. He invited me to serve on the Cabinet as a district superintendent. It was an honor—a significant opportunity and the kind of invitation a pastor does not receive every day.

Vanessa and I talked about it. I said I would pray about it. Looking back, however, I’m not sure I really did. If I prayed at all, my prayer was probably more “Thank you” than “What do you want me to do?”

The truth is, I had already made up my mind.

The invitation felt like the next rung on the ecclesiastical ladder I had been climbing for a long time. It carried recognition, greater responsibility and the possibility of broader influence. I could easily describe it as an opportunity to serve the Church in a new way—and it was.

But it was also something I wanted.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with accepting a new responsibility or pursuing an opportunity. There is also nothing necessarily wrong with ambition. The danger comes when ambition becomes so entangled with our sense of calling that we can no longer tell them apart.

That is what happened to me.

I accepted the position without fully wrestling with the commitment I had made to the congregation. A promise that had sounded firm in 2008 suddenly became negotiable when a sufficiently attractive opportunity appeared in 2011.

Perhaps it was a promise I should never have made. In the United Methodist system, pastors do not ultimately control how long they remain in an appointment. But I had made it. The people had heard it. They had every reason to believe I meant it.

And then I set it aside. At the time, I had plenty of ways to justify my decision. It was a good opportunity. It was a larger role. It offered the possibility of broader impact. I could tell myself that the bishop had called, the Church needed me, and God had opened the door. All those things may have been true.

But they were not the whole truth. The rest of the truth was that my ambition spoke louder than my commitment.

I wish I could point to a particular moment when that realization struck me, but I can’t. It emerged gradually. As I have grown older and looked back across the years of my ministry, I have begun to see things I could not—or would not—see when I was living them.

Faithfulness has certainly been part of my story. I have loved the Church. I have wanted to serve Christ. I have tried to follow where I believed God was leading. But faithfulness was not the only thing driving me. Ambition was there too.

That is difficult for me to admit because ambition rarely announces itself honestly, especially in the Church. It does not usually say, “I want a more important position,” or “I want people to recognize me.” It learns to speak the language of calling, opportunity, influence and impact.

We tell ourselves we are expanding our ministry. We are accepting a new challenge. We will be able to influence more people. We may even interpret the opportunity itself as proof that God wants us to take it.

I did not have to choose between faithfulness and ambition because I had learned how to call my ambition faithfulness. Only with the passage of time have I become more capable of separating the two.

Leading a small congregation has been part of that process. Small-church ministry has brought a level of humility into my life that I did not know I needed. It has forced me to reconsider some of the assumptions I once carried about success, influence and significance.

There are fewer people in the room. There is little institutional prestige. Most of what happens will never be noticed beyond our congregation. There are no impressive statistics to report and few opportunities to convince myself that the size of my platform is evidence of the importance of my ministry. There are simply people to love, Scripture to teach, burdens to help carry, prayers to pray and a congregation to serve. And perhaps that is closer to faithfulness than much of what I once imagined.

Small-church ministry has not removed every trace of ambition from me. I am not sure anything short of complete sanctification could accomplish that. But it has exposed ambition in ways that success often concealed it. It has reminded me that a larger assignment is not necessarily a more important one, and that faithfulness cannot always be measured by the size of the room, the prominence of the title or the reach of the ministry.

Sometimes faithfulness looks like staying.

That is what makes the promise I made to the Benton congregation difficult to remember. I told them I would remain as long as they would have me. A little more than two years later, when an attractive opportunity appeared, that commitment became negotiable.

I never went back and acknowledged that to the congregation. There was no moment when I stood before them and admitted how much ambition had influenced my decision. I cannot go back and change what I did, but I can look back honestly and name what I now see.

Some things can be corrected. Other things can only be confessed.

I do believe God was at work in ways I could not see at the time. The Benton congregation has flourished, and so have Vanessa and I. God brought good from the years that followed, and I remain grateful for them.

But good outcomes do not make every motive good.

God’s ability to redeem a decision does not relieve me of the responsibility to examine why I made it. Grace does not require me to rewrite the past so that I was right all along. Grace gives me the freedom to admit that I was not fully honest about what was driving me—with the congregation, with God or perhaps even with myself.

That may be one of the most difficult forms of repentance. Failure forces us to examine ourselves. Success often allows us to avoid it.

Sometimes the hardest thing to face is not realizing that we failed.

It is realizing that we succeeded—and still need to repent.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

Forgiveness and Healing: Grace Is Greater Than the Wound

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

When someone wounds us, something inside us begins keeping an account.

They owe me an apology. They owe me an explanation. They owe me the years I lost. They owe me the innocence they took. They owe me the trust they destroyed. They owe me for the humiliation, grief, or pain they caused.

Some of those debts are real. Forgiveness does not say otherwise.

But forgiveness does determine what we will do with the debt.

Paul writes in Ephesians 4:32, “Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

The word Paul uses for “forgiving” is charizomai. It comes from the same root as charis, the word we translate as grace. It can mean to give freely, to grant graciously, or to forgive.

Forgiveness, in Paul’s language, is grace in relational form.

It is not primarily a feeling. If we wait until we feel like forgiving, we may wait for the rest of our lives. Forgiveness is a grace-shaped decision concerning what we will do with the debt created by another person’s sin against us.

We decide that we will not spend the rest of our lives trying to collect that debt through bitterness, retaliation, humiliation, or revenge. We release our personal claim to make the other person suffer as payment for what they did, and we place justice into the hands of God.

That does not mean all earthly consequences disappear. It does not mean a crime should go unreported, restitution should never be made, or accountability should be abandoned. Grace and accountability are not enemies. Forgiveness simply means that I refuse to make revenge the organizing purpose of my life.

Forgiveness Tells the Truth

We need to speak carefully about forgiveness because, in our hurry to tell hurting people they need to forgive, Christians have sometimes failed to acknowledge how deeply they were wounded.

Forgiveness is not denying that the wound happened. It is not minimizing the seriousness of the offense. It is not calling evil good. It is not excusing the offender by saying, “They couldn’t help it,” or “It really wasn’t that bad.”

Forgiveness is not forgetting. We sometimes say, “Forgive and forget,” as though faithful Christians should be able to erase painful memories. Human minds do not work that way, and Scripture does not command spiritual amnesia. Some experiences leave marks that remain for a lifetime.

Forgiveness does not automatically restore trust. Forgiveness can be given; trust must be rebuilt through truth, repentance, consistency, and time. Reconciliation may not always be possible, and forgiveness never requires someone to remain in an abusive or unsafe relationship.

Forgiveness does not eliminate consequences. A forgiven person may still lose a position, face legal consequences, or live with a permanently changed relationship. Grace does not erase wisdom, boundaries, accountability, or justice.

These distinctions matter because some people carry not only the pain of what was done to them but also the shame of believing their continued pain proves they have failed to forgive.

Healing is not always immediate. Forgiveness may begin with a decisive act, but with a deep wound it may also require repeated surrender. We may have to place the same hurt into God’s hands more than once.

The capacity of grace to forgive never diminishes the depth of the wound.

Grace is able to tell the whole truth. It can say, “What happened was wrong. It hurt me. It changed something. There were consequences. I did not deserve it.” Grace can say all of that without allowing hatred to have the final word.

Look at the cross. God’s grace never treated sin as insignificant. At the cross, God named the horror of sin and revealed the depth of divine love at the same time. Grace tells the truth about sin—and then demonstrates that sin will not have the last word.

Grace Is Greater

When we say grace is greater than the wound, we are not comparing levels of pain. We are not telling someone, “Your wound should not matter because grace matters more.” We are saying that the sin committed against us does not possess greater power than the grace of Jesus Christ at work within us.

Grace does not make the wound smaller. Grace keeps the wound from becoming greater than Jesus Christ.

Paul does not begin with the person who hurt us, the size of the offense, or the strength of our willpower. He begins with what God has already done for us: “just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

We do not forgive to earn grace. We forgive because we have received grace. Forgiveness is not the price we pay to be forgiven by God. It is the fruit produced in people who know how much they have already been forgiven.

Grace received becomes grace extended.

We love grace when it moves in our direction. We sing about the grace that forgives our sins and reconciles us to God. We are less enthusiastic when that same grace moves toward those who have wounded us. We want mercy to explain what we did and justice to define what they did. We want the Lord to remember our weakness but remember their wickedness.

Paul does not allow us to separate the grace we receive from the grace we extend. The grace that comes to us through Jesus Christ takes shape in the way we respond to one another.

That is why forgiveness reveals so much about our spiritual formation. It is possible to know the language of grace without being gracious. It is possible to explain forgiveness while refusing to forgive. It is possible to celebrate what Christ has done for us while resisting what Christ wants to do through us.

My capacity to forgive is directly related to the depth of my spiritual formation.

That statement is not intended to shame anyone struggling to forgive. Some wounds are extraordinarily deep, and the path of healing may be long. The struggle itself may become the place where we learn to depend upon grace more deeply than ever before.

If grace is greater than my sin, then grace is greater than the sin of the person who wounded me. And if grace is greater than the sin that wounded me, then grace is greater than the wound that sin left behind.

If grace is greater than my sin, then grace is greater than my wound.

What Is Discipling Us?

The pain of a wound is not an idol, and feeling that pain is not a spiritual failure. But a wound begins to occupy the place that belongs to Christ when it defines who we are, determines how we see others, dictates our decisions, and claims authority over our future.

Before long, we are no longer simply remembering the wound. We are allowing the wound to disciple us.

The wound may be part of my story, but grace refuses to let it become the author of my story. Forgiveness does not rewrite the past. It places the future back into the hands of Jesus.

Nearly thirty years ago, I pastored a church where two men lived in the same community, worked for the same company, and worshiped in the same congregation. Somewhere along the way, a work-related offense created a division between them. I do not remember all the details, and after all these years the details are not really the point.

What I remember is that they never found their way through it.

They continued attending the same church, but they sat on opposite sides of the sanctuary. Week after week, they worshiped the same Lord, heard the same Scriptures, and received the same grace—but the division remained between them.

Both men have now died. I do not tell their story to judge their hearts. Only God knows everything that passed between them. I tell it because their story has stayed with me.

They had moved on with their lives, but it appeared that something between them had never been surrendered to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ.

That is the danger of an unforgiven wound. Life continues. We go to work. We come to church. We sing the hymns and listen to the sermon. From the outside, it may appear that we have moved on. Yet the wound may still be deciding where we sit, whom we avoid, and how far the grace we have received will be allowed to travel through us.

Is there someone I need to forgive? Is there a wound I need to surrender again? Is there a division I have learned to live with that Jesus is calling me to address?

Forgiveness may not restore every relationship. It may not remove every consequence or erase every painful memory. But it refuses to let what happened to us become more powerful in shaping our lives than what Christ has done for us.

The wound may be part of your story, but don’t let it write the ending.

Give Jesus back the pen.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

Christian Encouragement Is More Than Making Us Feel Better

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

We usually hear the word encouragement and think of kind words that lift our spirits. There is nothing wrong with that. We all need people who will speak hope into our lives. A timely word can sometimes make the difference between giving up and taking the next step.

But Christian encouragement is more than helping people feel better.

If encouragement only tells us things that make us feel better but fails to tell us things that actually make us better, then it is not Christian encouragement.

Christian encouragement helps us remain faithful to Jesus. Sometimes it comforts us. Sometimes it reminds us of what is true when our circumstances have caused us to forget. Sometimes it challenges us and calls us back when we begin to wander.

It says, “Keep going. Don’t give up. Christ is faithful. You are not alone, and we are going to walk this road together.”

That kind of encouragement can only happen in community.

Holding on Together

The Christians who first received the letter to the Hebrews were growing weary. Life had become harder. Opposition was real. Some were starting to pull back from the community. Some were neglecting the gathering. A few may have been quietly wondering whether it was still worth holding on.

The writer does not scold them for being tired. He points them again to Jesus. Then he tells them how to respond:

“Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.” Hebrews 10:23 (NLT)

Notice the language. He does not say, “Let ‘me’ hold tightly.” He says, “Let us hold tightly.”

Faith is personal, but it is never private. Each of us must trust Christ. No one else can believe or surrender to Christ for us. But we hold tightly to hope together.

There will be times when your faith is strong and the faith of the person beside you is weak. There will also be times when their faith is strong and yours is weak. That is one reason God gives us to one another.

Imagine that you and a friend are hiking on a steep trail. Your friend slips and begins to slide backward. You do not simply shout, “Hang in there!” You plant your feet, reach down, and take hold. For a moment, both of you feel the pull of the drop. But because you refuse to let go, your friend finds solid footing again.

Christian encouragement is like that. Sometimes we are the ones doing the holding. Other times we are the ones who need to be held. Christ holds us, and he has given us to one another so that we can hold on together.

Our hope is not wishful thinking or the belief that everything will work out the way we want. Our hope rests in the character of God. We hold tightly because God can be trusted.

When I cannot see what God is doing, you can remind me that God is faithful. When you wonder whether God has forgotten you, I can remind you of his promises. When one of us grows weary, others can help carry the weight.

That is how we encourage one another with hope.

Encouragement Is Not the Same as Approval

The writer continues:

“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.” Hebrews 10:24 (NLT)

Encouragement is intentional. It requires us to pay attention to one another. We cannot encourage people we never notice. We cannot help carry burdens we know nothing about. We cannot motivate one another toward love and good works if our only concern is our own spiritual life.

We are accountable to Christ, but we are also accountable to one another.

We have a difficult time with accountability. Part of that comes from our individualism. Part of it comes from not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings. We would rather remain silent than risk an uncomfortable conversation. And part of it comes from believing that another person’s life is none of our business.

But if we belong to the Church together, then it is our business to love one another. It is our business to care when someone is hurting. It is our business to notice when someone is wandering. It is our business to confront sin, brokenness, and division, not because we want to control one another, but because we love one another.

John Wesley described this responsibility as “watching over one another in love.”

That does not mean spying, constantly looking for faults, or using religion to control another person. It means caring enough about another person’s faithfulness that we refuse to remain indifferent.

When I begin to wander, I need someone who loves me enough to call me back. When I become discouraged, I need someone to remind me of the faithfulness of God. When I begin making excuses for behavior that damages my relationship with Christ or harms others, I need someone who will tell me the truth in love.

That is encouragement too.

We sometimes confuse encouragement with approval. But Christian encouragement is not concerned merely with making us comfortable. It is concerned with helping us become faithful.

The question is not simply, “What can I say to make this person happy?” The deeper question is, “What does this person need from me to help them remain faithful to Jesus?”

Sometimes the answer will be comfort, prayer, practical help, or a reminder of God’s promises. Sometimes it will be a difficult truth spoken with humility, gentleness, and love.

Your Presence Matters

Finally, the writer says:

“And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.” Hebrews 10:25 (NLT)

We often use this verse to tell people they ought to attend church. That is certainly part of what the writer is saying, but his concern goes deeper than filling seats in a building. He is telling us that we need one another.

We sometimes approach worship as consumers. We ask whether we enjoyed the music, whether the sermon spoke to us, whether the service met our needs, or whether we got anything out of it.

But we do not come to worship only to receive. We come to give.

We give our praise to God. We give our prayers, presence, gifts, strength, service, and encouragement to the community. Everyone has something to offer the Body of Christ.

Even when you arrive tired, discouraged, grieving, or spiritually empty, your presence may encourage someone else. Seeing you continue to trust God during a difficult season may give another person the courage to keep trusting too.

That is why withdrawing from Christian community is so dangerous. We lose more than an hour of worship. We lose the voices that remind us of hope. We lose the accountability that motivates us toward faithfulness. We lose the encouragement that helps us keep going.

And the community loses something too. It loses what we were meant to bring.

Someone needs your presence. Someone needs your prayers. Someone needs your words of hope. Someone needs you to speak the truth in love. Someone needs the example of your quiet, steady faithfulness.

And whether you realize it or not, you need those same things from them.

So here is the question I am asking myself:

Am I helping the people around me remain faithful to Jesus?

Identify one person you can encourage this week. Call them. Text them. Invite them for coffee. Listen to them. Remind them of what is true. If necessary, help them regain their footing.

Christian encouragement gives hope to those who are weary. It motivates us toward love and good works. It reminds us that we do not walk alone.

Let us hold tightly to hope. Let us think about one another. Let us gather faithfully. And let us encourage one another.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

What Has Institutional Success Done to the Church?

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

Questions About Multisite Churches, Institutional Spending, Consumerism, and Accountability

Over the past several posts, I have been examining eleven questions I have been asking myself about the contemporary church.

I began with questions about church leadership and then turned to questions about what happens when the church gathers. 

Four questions remain:

  1. Are multisite campuses a desire to grow God’s kingdom—or the senior pastor’s kingdom?
  2. How biblical is it for as much as 50 percent—or more—of a church’s giving to support buildings, maintenance, utilities, and staff?
  3. Has the contemporary church fostered a consumer mentality rather than genuine discipleship?
  4. Why is the contemporary church so reluctant to practice church discipline?

These may appear to be four separate issues, but I believe they belong together. Each one raises a larger question: What happens when preserving and growing the institution becomes more important than forming faithful disciples?

Once again, I am not asking these questions as someone standing outside the institutional church. I have spent more than thirty-five years as an insider. I have served as a senior pastor and district superintendent. I have made my living from the gospel for most of my adult life. I have not merely participated in these systems. I have benefited from them.

Neither am I suggesting that everything associated with institutional Christianity is necessarily wrong. Institutions can preserve important traditions, combine resources, support ministries, and accomplish things an individual congregation could never accomplish alone. But institutions also have a natural instinct for self-preservation. Over time, keeping the institution alive can become more important than fulfilling the mission for which the institution was created. That is the concern behind these four questions.

When Expansion Becomes the Mission

I understand the appeal of the multisite church model. We explored it in two of the congregations I served over the years. It can make good financial and missional sense, particularly when a larger congregation merges with a smaller or struggling one.

The larger church can provide financial resources, leadership, technology, administrative support, and ministry programs the smaller congregation could not sustain on its own. A struggling church may remain open, and a Christian presence may be preserved in a community where it might otherwise disappear. Those are good things.

Everyone wants to reach more people for Christ. At least, that is what we say our goal is. A multisite model can provide opportunities to reach people in different communities while avoiding the expense of duplicating every administrative function. I appreciate the concept.

Still, I find myself asking a question: Why not call the new location a church plant? If the goal is to establish a congregation that makes disciples and reaches its community, why must it remain a campus of the larger church? Why must it retain the larger congregation’s name, organizational identity, ministry system, and usually its primary preacher?

Does the campus have local leadership with meaningful authority? Is it being prepared to become a self-governing congregation? Is the goal to reproduce healthy churches—or to extend the reach of one church’s brand? And, perhaps most uncomfortably, is the goal to grow God’s kingdom or our kingdom?

I am not suggesting that every multisite church is driven by ego or control. That would be an unfair judgment about motives I cannot know. Some multisite churches are undoubtedly reaching people and doing meaningful ministry.

But the model deserves examination. Bigger is not necessarily better. Expansion is not necessarily multiplication. Increasing the audience of one gifted communicator is not necessarily the same thing as forming a new congregation with mature local leaders.

Perhaps the real test is not how many campuses a church has but what kind of disciples and leaders those campuses are producing. If every campus remains dependent upon the personality, preaching, and authority of one senior pastor, have we planted churches—or merely expanded a platform?

When Maintaining the Church Consumes the Church

I am writing this while attending the General Conference of my denomination, the Evangelical Methodist Church. As part of that meeting, I have been looking at financial information from our congregations. The numbers raise difficult questions.

In many smaller churches, more than 50 percent of the congregation’s giving is allocated to pastoral support. Once denominational support, insurance, utilities, maintenance, and other facility expenses are added, as much as 80 percent of the church’s income may already be committed. That leaves very little margin for ministry and outreach.

This is not an argument against paying pastors. Scripture clearly supports those who receive their living from the gospel. As one who has received his living from the gospel for most of his adult life, it would be more than a little hypocritical for me to suggest otherwise.

Nor is it an argument against maintaining church property. Buildings require electricity, insurance, repairs, and upkeep. Those expenses are real and ignoring them does not make them disappear.

The problem is not that churches have expenses. The problem is what happens when almost everything a congregation receives is required simply to keep the congregation operating. At what point does maintaining the church consume the church?

We regularly say, “The church is not a building.” Our budgets, however, sometimes tell another story. They may reveal that maintaining the building, supporting the staff, and preserving the organization have become our highest priorities.

Again, I understand how this happens. A congregation loves its pastor. It values the building where generations have worshiped, married, baptized their children, and buried their loved ones. The building holds memories that cannot be measured on a financial statement. But a difficult question remains: If 80 percent of a church’s giving is required to maintain its staff, building, and denominational obligations, how much is left to feed the hungry, care for the poor, serve the community, support missions, and make disciples?

Perhaps an even harder question is this: Are we supporting these things because they advance the mission, or has preserving them become the mission? The institution was created to support the ministry of the church. The ministry of the church was never intended merely to support the institution.

When Disciples Become Consumers

Church-hopping and church-shopping have become normal in the United States. When we want a strong children’s ministry, we look for the church with the best children’s ministry. When our children become teenagers, we search for the church with the largest youth group, the most activities, the best facilities, or the most dynamic youth pastor.

I have watched this happen in churches I served. Families would participate in our children’s ministry, but once their children became teenagers, they migrated to the bigger church because it offered more opportunities for their teens.

I understand the impulse. Parents want their children to enjoy church. They want them to build Christian friendships, learn the faith, and have experiences that will encourage them to follow Christ. Confession: I’ve got teenage grandchildren. I want the same for them.

But I have begun to wonder whether we parents (and grandparents) have abdicated our responsibility for our children’s faith development to the professionals. We have outsourced discipleship.

We began to believe our children needed a professional children’s minister, a professional youth minister, and a full calendar of religious activities more than they needed parents who prayed with them, opened Scripture with them, worshiped beside them, served with them, and demonstrated a life of faith before them.

Churches have helped create this expectation. We compete for families by offering more programs, better facilities, larger events, and specialized ministries for every age and stage of life. In the process, we can unintentionally communicate that discipleship is something religious professionals provide for us. That is what consumerism does. It changes the question.

Instead of asking, “Where is God calling us to belong, serve, sacrifice, and grow?” we ask, “Which church offers the most for me and my family?”

The church becomes another provider of goods and services, which happen to be religious in nature. Worship becomes something we attend. Ministry becomes something the staff performs. Discipleship becomes another program we consume. And when another church offers a better product, we move.

I am not opposed to children’s or youth ministry. I am grateful for those who invest in children and teenagers. But no church program can replace the role of parents (and grandparents) in the spiritual formation of their children. The church should equip parents for that responsibility, not encourage them to surrender it. Have we become so focused on attracting families that we have forgotten how to form them?

When Accountability Threatens Attendance

Consumer Christianity also helps explain why church discipline has largely disappeared. No one seems to be accountable anymore—morally or theologically. We are reluctant to address destructive behavior because we do not want to appear judgmental. After all, we are all sinners. We are afraid of being hypocritical, unloving, or legalistic.

Those concerns are understandable. Church discipline has sometimes been practiced harshly, selectively, and publicly. Certain sins have been exposed while others were excused. Ordinary members have been disciplined while influential leaders were protected. What was supposed to produce restoration sometimes produced humiliation instead. We should repent of those abuses.

But the misuse of church discipline does not eliminate the need for loving accountability. “We are all sinners” is a reason to practice accountability humbly. It is not a reason to abandon accountability altogether.

The New Testament vision of the church is not a gathering of people who mind their own business while sitting near one another for an hour each week. It is a community whose members belong to one another. They encourage, teach, correct, forgive, restore, and bear with one another. That kind of life requires accountability.

Of course, accountability becomes difficult when people relate to the church primarily as consumers. Consumers do not expect to be corrected by the businesses they patronize. If they become dissatisfied, they take their business somewhere else. Church leaders know this.

If we challenge someone’s behavior, question a theological conviction, or call for repentance, that person may leave. Their family may leave with them. Their giving may leave too. They will probably find another church down the road that asks fewer questions. The temptation is to remain silent. But a church that is afraid to lose people will eventually become afraid to disciple people.

Biblical accountability is not about controlling people, policing every failure, or pretending some of us have risen above the need for grace. It is about loving one another enough to tell the truth and walking with one another toward restoration.

Perhaps the disappearance of church discipline reveals something deeper. Meaningful accountability requires meaningful belonging. It is difficult to hold one another accountable when relationships are shallow, attendance is optional, and participation consists primarily of watching a few people conduct a service. Church discipline cannot be separated from church community. We cannot expect accountability from people who have never been taught that they belong to one another.

What Are We Actually Building?

Multisite campuses, church buildings, paid pastors, denominational structures, children’s programs, youth ministries, and organizational growth are not inherently wrong. Each can serve the mission of the church. The danger comes when these things cease to serve the mission and quietly become the mission.

A church can have multiple campuses, excellent facilities, strong programs, growing attendance, and a substantial budget while failing to form people who live under the lordship of Jesus. A smaller congregation can devote nearly all its resources to preserving its pastor, property, and programs while having little margin left for the ministry it is trying to preserve.

Both may be institutionally successful—or at least institutionally committed—without necessarily being faithful to the mission Jesus gave His church. Perhaps the most important question is not whether our churches are growing, adequately funded, programmatically successful, or institutionally secure. Perhaps the question is whether our life together is forming people who look more like Jesus.

Are we making disciples—or merely attracting attenders? Are we multiplying churches—or extending brands? Are our resources supporting ministry—or is ministry supporting the institution? Are we forming children in the faith—or outsourcing their discipleship? Are we loving one another enough to practice humble, restorative accountability—or are we too afraid someone might leave?

Institutions have a way of convincing us that their survival is essential to the kingdom of God. It is not. The kingdom existed before our institutions, and it will remain long after they are gone.

The church must always be willing to ask whether its structures are helping fulfill the mission of Jesus or hindering it. Everything else—our buildings, budgets, programs, positions, campuses, and denominational systems—must remain secondary to that purpose.

We should not be asking only whether the institution is succeeding. We should be asking what its success is producing.

No Easy Answers

I know. I’ve raised a lot of questions. Many of which have no answer. Or, the answer will be different in every congregation. 

I haven’t asked these questions to condemn anyone or anything. I asked them of myself as one who leads in the institution. I just asked them out loud in the hopes that other leaders might ask themselves, and in so doing, that we might all be more faithful in our leadership.

As usual, my questions only raise more questions. Perhaps they did for you, too. I’d love for you to share your questions with me. Leave them in the comments below.

Until next time, keep looking up…

What Happened to the Church Gathering?

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

Questions About Participation, Preaching, Communion, and the One-Hour Worship Service

Fair warning: This post is longer than most. I’m supposed to be writing a blog, not a book. Even so, these four questions belong together, so I hope you will persevere to the end.

In my last post, I considered three questions about church leadership: the role of the senior pastor, denominational hierarchy, and professionalized ministry.

Today, I want to turn from who leads the church to what happens when the church gathers.

Four of my original eleven questions belong together:

  1. Is the church supposed to be a gathering of non-participants?
  2. When did church gatherings become sermon-centered?
  3. When did the church lose its weekly commitment to the Lord’s Supper?
  4. Were early church gatherings limited to one hour?

Once again, I am not standing outside the church criticizing what everyone else is doing. I have planned and led more worship services than I could possibly count. I have selected songs, prepared sermons, written liturgies, scheduled volunteers, administered Communion, and watched the clock—yes, that clock that hangs above the back door.

I have worried about whether the service flowed smoothly. I have shortened parts of the service when I knew my sermon would be long. I have felt the pressure to finish on time. I have also stood at the door after worship hoping people were pleased with what they experienced.

I am not questioning practices in which I have merely participated. I am questioning practices I have helped create and continue to perpetuate. That doesn’t necessarily make those practices wrong. It does mean I should be willing to examine them.

Is the Church Supposed to Be a Gathering of Non-Participants?

Most churches say they want people to participate. We invite people to sing, pray, give, serve, and respond to the sermon. Even so, most of what happens during a typical worship service is performed by a relatively small group of people.

The pastor preaches. The worship team sings. The musicians play. Designated people pray, read Scripture, make announcements, receive the offering, and serve Communion. Everyone else watches, listens, and participates when instructed.

There are practical reasons for that arrangement. A worship gathering needs order. Not everyone is gifted to preach, sing, teach, or lead publicly. Giving everyone an opportunity to say whatever is on their mind could produce something closer to chaos than worship.

Paul certainly valued order. When addressing the church in Corinth, he instructed them that everything should be done properly and in order. But the same passage also presents a picture of participation that feels unfamiliar to many of us:

“When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some special revelation God has given, one will speak in tongues, and another will interpret what is said. But everything that is done must strengthen all of you.” (1 Corinthians 14:26 NLT)

Whatever else we make of that passage, Paul seems to assume that different members of the congregation will contribute something when the church gathers.

That reflects his larger understanding of the church as a body. Every member has a function. Every member has received gifts from the Spirit. Every member has something to contribute to the health and mission of the whole. How, then, did the gathering of the church become an event in which most people are spectators?

Perhaps part of the answer is that our gatherings became larger. Participation that might occur naturally in a home becomes more difficult in a room filled with hundreds or thousands of people.

Perhaps another part of the answer is our desire for excellence and predictability. We want the music rehearsed, the transitions smooth, the message prepared, and the service completed on time. Spontaneous participation is difficult to plan, control, and fit into the order of worship.

Again, none of those concerns is necessarily wrong. Preparation can honor God and serve the congregation. Disorder does not automatically indicate the presence of the Holy Spirit. But has our desire for order gradually eliminated meaningful participation? Have we unintentionally taught people that their role in worship is to arrive, sit down, sing when invited, listen to the sermon, and go home?

Attending a worship service is not the same as participating in the body of Christ.

When Did Church Gatherings Become Sermon-Centered?

I need to tread carefully here. I am a preacher. Preaching has been central to my calling and ministry for more than thirty-five years. I believe in proclaiming the gospel. I believe Scripture should be read, taught, explained, and applied to our lives. This is not an argument against preaching. It is a question about the place preaching has come to occupy in our gatherings.

In many Protestant churches, the sermon is the defining feature of worship. Even the architecture of our sanctuaries communicates the significance of the sermon—we have “pulpit-centered” sanctuaries. Everything before the sermon prepares for it. Everything after the sermon responds to it. The length of the service is often determined by it. I have heard church members call everything leading up to the sermon “the preliminaries.” Worse, I’ve heard pastors call it that!

If the music is exceptional but the sermon is poor, people may say the service was disappointing. If the pastor is absent, attendance sometimes declines because people prefer to wait until “the preacher” returns.

I know because I have helped create that expectation. I have promoted worship by telling people what I would be preaching. I have encouraged church members to invite their friends to hear a particular sermon. I have sometimes acted as though the congregation gathered primarily to hear what I had to say. Preaching matters, but was the sermon intended to carry so much of the weight of the church’s life?

The earliest Christians devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. Teaching clearly mattered. But they also devoted themselves to fellowship, sharing meals—including the Lord’s Supper—and prayer. The church gathered to hear the Word, but it also gathered to pray, eat, share, encourage, discern, testify, give, and care for one another. Somewhere along the way, many of those elements moved toward the margins while the sermon moved to the center.

Prayer was shortened. Testimony became unpredictable and occasionally uncomfortable. Conversation was moved to a Sunday school class or small group. Shared discernment was assigned to a committee or leadership board. The Lord’s Supper became an occasional addition to the regular service. The sermon remained.

Perhaps that happened because a sermon is efficient. One person can prepare during the week and speak to the whole congregation at once. It is easier to control than open participation. It fits neatly within the allotted time.

It also reinforces the centrality of the pastor. The pastor studies. The pastor hears from God. The pastor explains what the Bible means. The congregation receives what the pastor has prepared. That arrangement may produce informed listeners. But does it necessarily form mature disciples?

People can listen to thousands of sermons without learning to read Scripture for themselves, pray with one another, discern the Spirit’s direction, articulate their faith, or participate in Christ’s mission. The question is not whether we should preach. The question is whether we have asked preaching to do what the entire body of Christ was intended to do.

When Did the Church Lose Its Weekly Commitment to the Lord’s Supper?

This question may expose the imbalance more clearly than any of the others. The earliest Christians gathered regularly around the Table. Acts tells us that they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. Acts 20 describes believers gathering on the first day of the week to break bread. Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians suggest that the Lord’s Supper was a normal part of their life together—even if they were observing it badly enough to require correction.

The evidence may not allow us to establish that every congregation celebrated Communion every week in precisely the same way. Still, the Table appears to have occupied a far more central place in the early church than it does in many churches today.

How did we arrive at a pattern in which the sermon is offered every week while the Lord’s Supper is offered once a month, once a quarter, or even (heaven help us!) once a year?

I grew up in a tradition that celebrated Communion quarterly. Later, monthly Communion became more common. In some churches, even monthly Communion can feel like an interruption to the regular order of worship—something that makes the service run long.

Think about what that communicates. We make room every week for the preacher’s words but only occasionally for the bread and the cup. At the Table, the focus shifts away from the preacher. We remember Christ’s death. We receive the signs of His grace. We confess our need. We gather not as customers evaluating a religious presentation but as sinners who come with empty hands.

Communion also reminds us that Christianity is not merely a private relationship between Jesus and me. We do not receive the bread and cup alone. We come to a shared Table as the body of Christ. Rich and poor come to the same Table. Young and old come to the same Table. Republicans and Democrats come to the same Table. Those who agree and those who struggle to understand one another come to the same Table. We receive the same grace because we share the same need.

Perhaps that is part of what we lost when the sermon became weekly and the Meal became occasional. The sermon can be evaluated individually: What did I learn? Did I enjoy it? Did it speak to me? The Table confronts us with a different reality. Christ gave Himself for us, and in Christ we belong to one another.

I am not suggesting that weekly Communion would automatically renew the church. We can participate in the Lord’s Supper thoughtlessly just as easily as we can listen to a sermon thoughtlessly. But perhaps the frequency of our practices reveals something about our priorities. What does it say when we consider thirty minutes of preaching essential but ten minutes at the Lord’s Table optional?

Were Early Church Gatherings Limited to One Hour?

Let me say immediately that longer services are not necessarily more spiritual. I have attended long worship services that were deeply meaningful. I have also attended long worship services that only felt long. A three-hour service can be every bit as lifeless as a one-hour service.

The issue is not simply how long we gather. The issue is why one hour has become the expected limit in so many churches.

We print the times on signs, websites, and social media. Worship begins at 10:30 and should end around 11:30. If the service goes fifteen minutes long, people begin looking at their watches. Parents become concerned about children. Restaurant plans are affected. Volunteers in the nursery wonder if they have been forgotten. I even had an uncle who was a member of one of my churches whose watch alarm went off promptly at noon every Sunday. Such a nice reminder for the preacher. And, from a family member, too…

Some of those concerns are legitimate. Time matters. People have responsibilities. Children have limits. Respecting people’s time can be an expression of hospitality. But our anxiety about time may reveal something deeper.

We routinely spend several hours at ball games, concerts, movies, festivals, and other activities we value. We arrive early. We stay late. We do not resent overtime when the experience matters to us. Yet an additional fifteen minutes in worship can feel like an unreasonable demand. Why?

Perhaps it is because we approach worship as one appointment among many. We have given God His hour, and we expect the church to honor the arrangement. The one-hour expectation also shapes what can happen when we gather. There is time for a few songs, announcements, an offering, a prayer, and a sermon. There may not be time for people to share what God is doing in their lives. There may not be time for extended prayer, silence, conversation, testimony, or discernment. There may not even be time for Communion unless something else is shortened. The schedule favors the predictable. It rewards efficiency. It makes participation difficult.

Again, the answer is not necessarily to make every service longer. Perhaps the answer is to ask whether everything the church needs to do when it gathers can—or should—be compressed into a single hour.

Maybe some of what we expect from Sunday morning needs to happen in smaller gatherings where people can know one another, pray for one another, confess to one another, bear one another’s burdens, and contribute their gifts.

The deeper concern is not the length of the service. It is whether our gatherings are structured primarily around convenience or around the formation of a people. Perhaps the deeper problem is that we have made the Sunday worship service virtually synonymous with the gathering of the church—and then tried to compress everything the church is called to be into that single hour.

The Church Is Not an Audience

I am not calling for the elimination of sermons, worship teams, planned services, or established times. I am asking whether our gatherings are accomplishing what they were intended to accomplish. Are people merely attending, or are they participating? Are sermons equipping people to engage Scripture and follow Jesus, or are they creating a congregation dependent upon the preacher?

Does the Lord’s Table occupy a central place in our life together, or has it become an occasional addition to a sermon-centered service? Does our use of time reflect thoughtful stewardship, or does the sixty-minute limit reveal how little room we have made for worship in our lives?

Perhaps we need to recover gatherings in which more members of the body have something meaningful to contribute. Perhaps we need more room for prayer, testimony, conversation, silence, discernment, and response. Perhaps we need to come to the Lord’s Table more frequently and remember that Christ—not the preacher—is the center of our gathering.

Not every congregation will answer these questions in the same way. A church of thirty people will gather differently from a church of three thousand. A congregation meeting in a home will have possibilities that a congregation meeting in a large sanctuary may not have.

The New Testament gives us principles without handing us a complete order of worship. That gives us freedom, but it also gives us responsibility. We are free to develop forms appropriate to our time, place, and circumstances. But we are responsible for asking what those forms are producing.

Perhaps the problem is not that we have sermons, planned worship, or an established order of service. Perhaps the problem is that the order has become so fixed, the sermon so dominant, and participation so limited that most people can attend church for years without ever believing they have anything meaningful to contribute to the gathered body. The church is not an audience. It is a body.

When the body gathers, every member may not speak, sing, preach, or lead. But every member should understand that they have been given grace, gifts, and responsibility for the good of the whole.

Once again, I have generated more questions than answers. Then again, I’m not the perfect pastor.

That doesn’t keep me from trying—or from asking more questions.

Until next time, keep looking up…

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