1another :: confession

We continue with the 1another series. hope you are finding it worth your while. Remember to check Danny’s post each day as he and I are co-blogging this series.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. James 5:16

We are confronted here with a passage of scripture worth meditating deeply on. A great, largely unrecognized, truth exists in this verse and in its surrounding context. That is, there is a very real power in the verbalized confession of sin and in the prayers of the saints (believers).

In fact, I feel a bit irresponsible talking about this verse without talking about 13-20 where James explores many more facets of the church as a people of prayer so be sure to read that on your own. Today, we will cover the first part of this verse, tomorrow the latter.

I digress. Let’s talk about the first part of this verse. Confess your sins to one another. This is probably, along with fasting, the most overlooked command of scripture among protestants in our time. When you hear confession your mind either wanders to the confessional booths of the Catholic church, or to the last 5 minutes of your favorite TV crime show where the criminal finally reveals what happened.

Yet it remains a 1another command. Confess your sin. why? Because there is great victory in bringing sin out into the open where it can no longer eat away at you in private. Confession to another is what helps you maintain a correct perspective on the grace of Jesus Christ given to you. When you confess, you acknowledge you have disobeyed God in some way. This acknowledges God as your authority whom you are a servant of. And you dont offer some sort of gift to God when you confess. All you have is your acknowledgement of sin and your repentant heart. yes repentance must come with confession.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer, one of my favorite authors, talks about confession in his book Life Together. Read below

In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. But in confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart….

Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold to self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power.

I could go on and qoute the whole chapter. You should read it. Suffice it to say, I know beneath your pride is fear of being exposed as a sinner among the righteous. This however is a lie from hell. You are instead a sinner among sinners who are all made righteous by the grace of Jesus.

How? Again, this is why we have SummitLIFE groups. And to our group leaders, make confession a part of your prayer time together. Break up into groups of 3 (SINGLE GENDER PLEASE) and offer a time to confess sin together. And as you do dont say “thats okay man” but instead say “praise God you are not enslaved to that sin and that God doesnt love you less for it. Praise God for the gospel. believe the gospel that you are forgiven” or something like that.

If you are not in a SummitLIFE group….I think you know.

1another :: encourage

Today’s post comes from our newest small groups staff guy, Craig Eggleton. See Danny’s post on serving one another here.

Who doesn’t like encouragement?  Everyone needs a little “‘ata boy or ‘ata girl,” every now and again.  But encouragement often times calls for something deeper and heartier than a pat on the back or a cheerleader in your corner.  Taking a snapshot look at the Scriptures in continuing in the “one another” series, let’s look at what the Word say about encouraging one another.

1 Thessalonians 5:11
Therefore comfort one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing.

There are 3 principles I would like you to consider when meditating on this verse.

1. The encouragement the writer is referring to is motivated by Verse 9: For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ
   Take notice of the “therefore” at the beginning of the verse.  What becomes apparent is that this particular text is fundamentally built upon some truth the writer has just previously mentioned.  Look back at verse 9 and find that the encouragement is motivated by the truth that believers have obtained and continue to obtain salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Do not look over this point too quickly as something you may have already grasped, for I believe in this life we will never be at the point of fully grasping everything Christ has saved us from.   Verse 10 further amplifies a believer’s encouragement in the Lord that whether in life or in death, we will live together with Him.
2. Encouragement must take place in the context of a community.
   In order to fulfill the command “comfort one another and build up one another,” a believer needs to be plugged into a healthy and vibrant group of fellow believers.   Comforting one another calls for more than the typical shake of the hand and pat on the back during the normal greeting time at the Sunday worship meetings.  This type of comfort is vocal in nature, requiring the community of believers to express the truths of Christ salvation and the assurance of His communion with the saints.  Building one another up calls us to embolden each other in the truth; spurring each other on to obedience and healthy Christian growth.  The way the Summit Church has chosen for such community to take place is within our Summit Life groups.  We feel that being a part of a Summit Life group is vitally important to the spiritual growth and well being of every member of the Summit which is why we go on and on about how crucial it is for each member of the Summit to make every effort to plug into a small group in his or her area.  You can get into a SummitLIFE group on January 18th at GroupLink.
3. Encouragement is a continual, ongoing practice
   The writer of Thessalonians affirmed the original recipient of their conduct of encouragement in the faith but still found it necessary to command them to continue in the practice.  What we as believers can take from this principle is that we ought to make it our habit to always “comfort one another and build up one another” in the truth of Christ’s salvation on behalf of His saints.  We can never say within ourselves that we have arrived or have attained his quota of encouragement in the faith.  Therefore, encouragement is an ongoing command for the community of believers.

1Another :: love

This week The Connections Guy and I are doing a series of blogposts where we will be discussing what “being the church” really looks like in a 21st century context. To do this, we will be discussing the “one another” commands found in the New Testament and talking about how those principles translate into practicing church. Why?

1. We are going through a “why the church” type series in our Sunday services called cannonball.
2. We find most people, ourselves included, have an extremely difficult time figuring out how to practice “church” without it resulting in good old fashion legalism

These will not be exhaustive, because we have other stuff to do as well, but hopefully helpful for small group leaders & members at the Summit, as well as readers at large, and readers at all other sizes.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

Toss aside introductory comments and lets jump right in. I hope you catch the gravity of this statement Jesus makes here. The setting: they just finished “last supper.” Jesus has just washed his disciples feet, and subsequently announced to them that one of them will betray him. He goes outside, and his next words to them are these words about loving one another. This is an immensely intense moment in his teaching relationship with his disciples and this is the command he gives them.
Love one another. What a simple yet profound command. If the church today practiced this simple command as best it could, what would the perception of christianity be today? Would there be a generation of 20 & 30 somethings who abandoned their “faith” when they left home at 18 because all they can relate church to is hypocrisy? I believe there are believers in the local church who do genuinely want to love one another but they lack tangible direction to carrying that out. How do we love one another as Jesus commanded and not as we feel is right?

just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. Sacrificial love is to be the marker of the church. Do not let the significance of this statement get lost on you. This is the heart of the church. It is a simple explanation of the gospel-centered life. AS YOU HAVE BEEN LOVED, so love one another. Do not love out of guilt, force, coersion, or any other motivation, love out of worshipful response to the gospel. Implication? if you have trouble loving other christians in your church, you do not understand the gospel. simple and true. This deserves meditating on. Are you practicing sacrificial love in your church? Or are you just hanging out with those you like?

Ok, catch what he says next for it is the implication of the church loving one another: By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

WHOA! Follow as I quote a great pastor who quotes a great theologian:
“Do you see how high the stakes really are? Do you grasp why we can’t settle for anything less than Jesus’ dream for community? the credibility of the gospel is at stake! As Francis Schaeffer rightly said “Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful – Christian community is the final apologetic.”  – Andy Stanley in Creating Community (44)

We cannot be a church who loves Jesus, loves the world, but is just not that concerned about loving one another. The world will see through it and we will be an incredibly unhealthy church. So here is my challenge to you. Are you in a SummitLIFE group where you can practice this extremely important command of Christ? If you aren’t, get in one on GroupLink Sunday, January 18th. If you aren’t at the Summit, ask a pastor for a place to get connected to a small group of believers.

A moravian lesson

Yesterday I spent the day in Winston-Salem where I attended the funeral service for the father of one of my best friends. The family has been a part of the Moravian church (yes they love Jesus) in Old-Salem for years and years. It was a hard day and I hated seeing my friend & his family in such pain. The service itself was a traditional moravian service that definitely honored this man and brought some comfort to his family. The lesson I learned though is what happened afterwards. It happened very subtly but really hit me hard. After the graveside service the family got back into the limo and were driven to a lunch provided for them by the moravian church. See, the moravians have a great deal of respect for “God’s Church” as I heard it referred to. They see a great deal of importance in caring for every single person who becomes a member of “home church” another way I heard it referred to. So the night my friend’s dad passed away, the pastor was there in there home at 3am. And the point i want to make with that lunch after the service is that the church simply continued loving and supporting this family. Love & Support didnt begin at the time of the tragedy and end when the formalities ended, this church was already in the habit of supporting one another and they are just continuing that now that the services have passed. They will, i believe, continue to support this family as long as they are there at home church. 

What’s my point? Tragedy will happen in our lives as unexpectedly as it did to my friend the other day. A church who understands the importance of community will not wait on tragedy to begin to genuinely love and support one another. They will do it because they understand God created us to be in community and created the community of believers we know as the church to be God’s reflection of hope, love, and life to a world filled with pain and hopelessness. 

At the summit this community is formed first by covenanting to be a part of the Summit Church, and second by committing to a small community of believers we call SummitLIFE groups. We’ve had tragedy strike our church several times in the last year or so and I can tell you those who have a small group to lean on during those times experience God’s comfort, peace, and hope in the best way I think we can offer it here at the Summit.

Ok, this was long and kind of a downer considering thanksgiving is tomorrow. But maybe not. Maybe we can rejoice in the community of believers God has given us. When was the last time you thanked God by name for the people in your small group?

I was really baptist yesterday

This blogpost goes out to those who are not connected to the church I work at other than through this blog. I say that because anybody connected to the summit via any other means has no doubt heard by now of the great stuff that went down yesterday. namely, the droves of people who responded to Jesus by getting baptized. Thus the title of the post. That’s right. I got to personally baptize some of the 140 who were baptized yesterday at the Summit. If you read that and thought anything about me or our church being a numbers oriented church…shut-up and repent to God for such a spirit. Im rarely that direct but I know somehow somebody could hear that news and get discouraged and/or angry and if that person is a christian something is deeply wrong b/t him or her and Jesus. (whoa, that tangent lasted longer than expected.)

For us at the Summit, baptism follows when one places faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They become a “believer” and so we call it “believer’s baptism.” I would go into a whole explanation because it is something you should understand, but our pastor preached that sermon yesterday. So you can just listen to it. Here is our sermon-download page. It will probably be posted in the next couple of days.

Ok, that’s all for now as I am deeply in study for a debate on the legitimacy of torture. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Accountability in fellowship

Probably the thing people love most about the small group model is that it is a disarming environment to get to know other people in the local church. “hang out time” is very natural when done someone’s home, the study time is more discussion than it is lecture, and there is almost always food of some sort. A trend I’ve noticed in small groups is that after about 4 to 6 months together, the friendships have been made and the allure of the small group meeting as the place to just go hang out with friends starts to lose its luster. What happens here is nothing unlike a dating relationship. After that initial period of just staring at each other and giggling, you both realize you need some substance in the relationship. You need a “why are we still together” motivation.

For the small group, one way to avoid this 4 – 6 month DTR (define-the-relationship for you who weren’t college campus ministry kids) encounter is to build deeper spiritual fellowship into your group in the early stages. Now, this should not be done in week 1 ok? If you try it, you will be having small… at your house next week, no group. They will bail. But after about a 6 to 8 week period you can start to build what is commonly called accountability into your group. That is, you break the group down into pairs or groups of 3 and in those smaller groups you challenge one another to grow in your faith. Hebrews 3:13 actually warns us towards this action “but encourage one another daily, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” Regardless of how spiritual you think you are, God created you to grow in your faith through the encouragement and accountability of other believers. side note: often called accountability it really should be called encouragement, but that sounds to cheesy so we end up giving it a negative connotation through a word like accountability. sometimes we should deal with cheesiness if its a better word.

So, once your small group breaks into pairs or 3s, what do they do? Well that can and should look different from time to time. Below I am offering you a couple of well known lists of accountability questions they could ask one another. By the way, this can be done outside of group time because it should take an hour or two. Maybe you can start this by you as the leader asking one other guy (if you are a guy) or girl (if you are a girl) to start meeting together regularly to go through this stuff. regularly can be twice a month, once a week, daily, or monthly depending on your situation. John Wesley who was more spiritual than you or I met daily with guys to ask his list below. So dont meet monthly because your pride wont let you meet more often. See Hebrews 3:13 cited above.

These are 22 questions the members of John Wesley’s Holy Club asked themselves every day in their private devotions over 200 years ago.

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I relly am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
3. Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence?
4. Can I be trusted?
5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?
6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
7. Did the Bible live in me today?
8. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?
9. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. When did I last speak to someone else about my faith?
11. Do I pray about the money I spend?
12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
13. Do I disobey God in anything?
14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
17. How do I spend my spare time?
18. Am I proud?
19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?
20. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?
21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?
22. Is Christ real to me

Chuck Swindoll’s Pastoral Accountability list – for pastors. warning: every area of your life is game.
cited by Chuck Colson in his book, The Body

1. Have you been with a woman anywhere this past week that might be seen as compromising?

2. Have any of your financial dealings lacked integrity?

3. Have you exposed yourself to any sexually explicit material?

4. Have you spent adequate time in Bible study and prayer?

5. Have you given priority time to your family?

6. Have you fulfilled the mandates of your calling?

7. Have you just lied to me?

If you are still reading this absurdly long post at this point, I hope these help. what else have you used that has been valuable in creating accountability relationships with others?

Awesome small groups video

The guys at serendipity house found this video on the importance of small groups. They actually featured the small groups guy in a list of small groups blogs out there right now. you can see that list on their blog here.

Suburbia Church

I live in a suburb. I mean the real deal where kids play in the street, houses are like 20 yards from one another, families have cookouts in their backyards, everybody has a dog and walks that dog sometime between 5 – 7pm each day, and oh yes…there is a homeowners association. You should see it, its straight out of “lower – middle class America” magazine. We even have the appropriate amount of racial and cultural diversity (no discernible majority, its pretty cool.) to make us the poster-child for 21st century suburbia. But i gotta tell you the move I made from Seminaria to Suburbia this past winter has opened my eyes to alot of things.

One thing I have started making connections between is how a lot of times we treat church like our own lil suburbia neighborhood. If we are honest with ourselves, all we often really want to do when we come home is park the car, go inside, and be with our family. We hope the neighbor isnt pulling in at the same time because then we will have to exchange that awkward pleasantry with them we’ve been doing for 4 years now. (My neighbor says “Hey Scott”, I’ve stopped trying to correct him. If you come over & he is out there, just go with it.) We like the neighborhood, certainly don’t want it to change, and would prefer to be left alone for the most part. And the homeowner’s association? Well, its just one of those necessary evils you have to deal with. You pay your dues and hope that buys you enough clout to plant a shrub without causing a community meltdown. As long as they dont raise the dues too much, or come up with any new ideas, we can peacefully co-exist.

I gotta tell you, this sounds alot like how I used to view being a part of a church. I wanted to go on Sunday, sit where I normally sat with the people I came with & HOPE the greeters and people around me didnt notice me because I really didnt want to do the handshake + greeting thing. I liked the music and preaching so I would come back each week. And yes, I even put money in when they collected the offering, you know, paying my dues to keep the church going so the pastors (re: HOA) would be happy. That way we could peacefully co-exist and ultimately God would be happy because I was in church. Pretty good investment if you asked me.

Does this sound in any way familiar to you? So many churches are filled with people who bring this suburbian mindset into the church. So what happens? WE, not everybody else, YOU AND ME help foster an attitude and atmosphere of fake friendship, obligatory tithing, and an isolationist “dont go changing anything” mentality. Check that against what the church originally looked like:

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers…all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” Acts 2:42-47

The original church had no concept of isolation or fake friendship, they had genuine fellowship that came from sharing life together. They didnt pay their dues, they looked for any way they could find to give everything they had to help out one another. And they grew in number and were ok with it. They probably had to change to accomodate that growth, but they were so pumped about seeing people come to love Jesus, they didnt really care about the change. Friendship, radical generosity, and a communally entrenched passion for people characterized the early church.

This passage re-shaped me drastically in how I view church. Where do you sit right now? Is church another HOA for you? Are you honestly willing to share life with others the way the original church did? What is keeping you from taking the next step to connecting to a church community maybe in a way you never have before?

If you are at the Summit, an easy step for you could be starting point this Sunday. If you are already a part of the Summit family, maybe its time to step into a SummitLIFE small group where this fellowship im talking about can take place.

Learning how to be a pastor (that could be my life subtitle)

Some of you know I still have a couple of classes to go to complete my time at seminary. Since Courtney and I are planning on being here in Durham for a long time, I am creeping to the finish line. Id rather be with you guys in our church than over in seminaria land. I have come to love seminaria, but its time to move on. This week I am over at seminary in a one week intensive course on church planting and pastoral ministry. More than a class though it has really been a retreat for me personally. Ive loved my first 6 months pastoring at the Summit but listen, it has been a hard 6 months. The following is personal to me and I questioned sharing it but the people of God need to encourage one another through sharing how God is dealing with them. Here is my “sharing.”: Personally my wife Courtney and I have struggled in our marriage in ’08. Our first pregnancy has not been easy. Bitterness, anger, frustration, apathy, have all at some point entered our home this year. I have faltered in being the spiritual leader Courtney needs me to be. Not like I denounced Jesus or anything, I just became the passive man that Adam was right when Satan attacked Eve. The TV has been more important in the evenings than the spiritual growth of my marriage. (This actually harkens back to a post from a couple of weeks ago on spiritual disciplines.) I say this because I spent some time confessing this to Courtney Sunday afternoon. That was hard, very hard, because my pride is big, very big. The sermon on Sin Sunday morning was the tipping point where God himself, through the scriptures as taught by our pastor, spoke directly into this area of my life. My passivity was short-circuiting what God clearly desires for our marriage. This week the course I am in has encouraged me over and over to get alone with God on a regular basis. It has encouraged me that my wife and my son are my first priority. That is a big deal and is hard for me because I just assume they are doing ok while I go pour myself into the life of our church. no mas. Im starting at home and working my out from there.

Question: where is sin keeping God from working in your life? In the life of those you influence? Serious question people. And are you close enough with another guy or girl that you could open up and confess this stuff to? My short answer: get in a SummitLIFE group. And SummitLIFE groups, its time to put the superficial on the shelf and start getting real with one another.

Examining overused church phrases: “building community”

I have recently been re-influenced by three guys who rank among the greatest thinkers in the 20^th & now 21^st centuries: Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, and Tim Keller. What all three have reminded me lately (when I read their stuff) is that one of the most important things a Christian must do is to speak the Christian message in a way non-Christians will understand it. I got to thinking about how even in Christian circles we throw around certain phrases so much we no longer really know what they mean. One phrase that gets tossed around every Jesus corner is “building community.” By the way, I am the first to admit I probably say, type, or pray this phrase 30 times a day as a small groups pastor. So if nothing else this post will help me out a bit!

At our church, and thus in our small groups, we say our purpose is to Love God, Love Each Other, Love the World. While I could go into more detail, the basic job of our group leaders is to establish an environment where all three can happen and to be the primary place where Love Each Other happens. So a big big thing our church is asking them to do is “build community.”

Im not about to give you a formula for building community. That process looks different in every setting. What I want to get at is what the essence of Christian community is. We’ve got to stop assuming we know what community is and re-orient our “building” steps based on what community actually is. God created community, and thus your small group, to be:

About God: Did you read that bold print and think “duh, that’s what bible study and prayer time is for?” STOP ASSUMING!! First of all your community better exist outside the walls of your group. But more importantly, when we think that way we compartmentalize God. Community is people, not meetings. So your main purpose is to be about God. Here is how this is challenging to me: is my main purpose as a group leader and group member to create an environment for people to be comfortable & make some friends, or is it to help people worship God with their whole lives? While I normally answer the latter, I often find myself settling for the former. Community is not ultimately about friendships, it is about God. Question for you: what one new step could you take to be about God in your group?

Transparent: Honestly, I almost didn’t write this because of my own shortcomings here. Thank God for the encouragement of scripture that I am not condemned for those shortcomings (Rom 8:1) & can live in freedom. Community is not surface level. Sorry, that’s just for acquaintances. Since the gospel of Jesus reaches in and challenges the deepest most private parts of a person’s life, community must go there too. This is the hardest thing in the world for us I think. And it is where Satan wins most of his battles against the church. Personal example: God tells me in the scriptures I gotta confess my sins to my Christian family (James 5:16). I commit the sin of not honoring my wife in an argument we have about that blankety-blank dog of ours. I have a small group & among the people in it are a couple of guys ive designated to be the guys I confess my sins to (who then will do their job by telling me to go confess to the one I sinned against). I deliberately choose not to tell them about my argument with my wife. Why? Because that shows weakness. Why does that matter to me? Because it is more important to me to appear like a great husband than it is to participate in the church family God has given me for just this purpose. Underlying assumption: I am more confident in me than I am in God. It happens this way everyday with so many people. Pride trumps gospel. Transparency is hard. But the consequences of not practicing it are infinitely worse. I really don’t want to think how many marriages in our church could have been saved if we practiced this a little more.

Missional: I will be brief here. See John 17 for Jesus’ words on this. The unity we experience under the gospel must be visible to the rest of the world. We should put ourselves in settings where we can be “watched.” Basically, God’s community is one that doesn’t exist for itself, it exists to bring the world into a reconciled relationship with its creator. How is your small group missional?

Ok, so the caveat here is many books have been written on this subject, but I didn’t want to write a book today. I challenge you to start thinking both on your “community” and on how clearly you are speaking about Jesus to people who don’t worship him.