Fire your inner lawyer - Justification through ministry success

This is my first reflection on day 1 of Oxygen Christian Leader's Conference but it also serves to continue the thoughts I have been sharing in the Functional Justification series.  In my quest to unpack common ways we seek to justify our existence apart from the gracious work of God in Jesus I have cited justification by manliness and justification by BuzzFeed as two sources of self-justification.  But today I was struck between the eyes by the source of justification I personally default to far too often...

I attended Paul Tripp's sessions on leadership where one of the prevailing themes was the trap we who are in public ministry face of seeking to find our identity (or justify our existence) through the success of our ministry.  As much as it pains us pastors to admit most of us are incredibly sensitive to the critiques and criticisms of those we minister to.  Being told your sermon missed the mark, hearing that someone left the church because of something you said or having our passionate vision for the church shot down stings and tears shreds off our pride.  Simply being a pastor doesn't make me any more impervious to the painful criticism of my work... in fact the personal and incredibly urgent nature of the job probably makes me more sensitive to it.

And I think there is something of a perfect storm of destruction brewing in the broader evangelical scene at the moment which is making many victims of its devastating power.  Firstly the growing number of younger Gen Y people like me moving into pastoral ministry brings with it our Gen Y optimistic entitlement.  We are part of the generation who legitimately think that we should be the leading lights in our chosen field before we are 30.  And secondly we are daily confronted with the celebrity pastors who did just that and are now highly influential and powerful people in the evangelical world.  And they don't even have to be worldwide celebrities, they could just be that young up and coming preacher who seems to have the charmed ride up the church ranks in your local context and is far more gifted and influential than you are.  This perfect storm of optimistic entitlement and unrealistic examples presses down a heavy burden on the necks of young pastors as we feel in ourselves that we should be far more influential and successful than we actually are.

The reality is that when our source of justification is ministry success we will do anything we can to build a culture of success around us:

• We surround ourselves with people that stroke our egos making sure we talk to them after church and avoid those who might be critical
• We prepare sermons that target groups in the church we long to impress because of the doors they might be able to open for us
• We constantly repeat stories of wins in ministry to remind ourselves that we are on top of our game
• We inflate our statistics, exaggerate our victories and sweep negative results under the carpet
• We look for ways of magnifying our 'brand' and getting our name out there

But Tripp's sessions broke through our futile attempts to grasp for significance and identity in the success of our ministry.  He reminded us that sin is deceitful and it's greatest target is me because there is no deception worse than self-deception.  And so he called us to look past the positive success-heavy image of ourselves that we have created by "firing our inner lawyer".  By this he meant ridding ourselves of the need to present a case in our own favour in order justify our existence based on our ministry success.

For Tripp the only way we can truly be free of this self-justification was to remember the simple truth of the gospel and preach it to ourselves.  To sit at the feet of Jesus and gaze on the sheer beauty of God and bask in the wonder that my life has been invaded by this God of beauty and that His grace has let me share in Him. To remind myself that I have already received identity and significance vertically from God so I don't need to seek it horizontally from others.

Only when we are prepared to be confronted with the ugliness of the self-justifying lawyer who lives in our hearts will we be broken to the point of letting go of our desperate desire for success.  Tripp says we need to let God make our self-justification seem like "vomit in our mouths" so that we know not to go there again.

• Yes this may mean listening to some of those critiques and being humble enough to learn from them
• Yes this may mean surrendering the idol of being known as influential and successful
• Yes this may mean no one will ever want to podcast your sermons, give you a book deal or preaching gig

But you will only ever have the fortitude and character to face the unpredictability of ministry if your identity is based on the reality of who God is and what He has done for you... rather than who you think you are and what you think you have done for Him.

THE CAPITAL LETTER LIFE - Justification by BuzzFeed

This is the third post in a series called "Functional Justification"

See also "Beards, Bacon & Badass - Justification by Manliness"
There you are… hand resting on your mouse, eyes staring blankly at the screen as your forefinger turns the little wheel that makes your Facebook feed scroll down. A seemingly endless supply of links, selfies, memes and pictures of cats flash past your eyes at a rate that makes it virtually impossible to actually process any of the information on the screen. Then all of a sudden something grabs your attention! Something causes you to turn that little wheel in the opposite direction and zoom back to the link that caught your eye… and there it is… all in capital letters… the words “…WHAT HAPPENED NEXT BROUGHT ME TO TEARS!!!”

And so you click on the link and watch the soppy video of a child’s wish coming true… a father’s passionate yet humorous speech to his future son-in-law… a dog who was loyal to its master… or the ridiculously talented little girl singing some love song with lyrics that are way beyond her years of comprehension. And you don’t even care that the site is packed full of advertising… that you have to click through a thirty-seven image long slide show… or that you know these sites are merely designed to get you clicking a lot so that their statistics increase ensuring a more lucrative advertising deal. You are uncontrollably drawn to the capital letter caption and before you know it you are hitting the “share” button to pass on the riveting experience to all of your friends.

The dramatic increase in the prevalence of these link-sharing sites has been something to behold over the last couple of years on social media. “BuzzFeed” is just probably the most recognisable version, but there are now countless creatively named sites that basically do nothing more than scour the internet for videos, pictures and articles that are on the verge of going viral and then they exploit the content they didn’t create in order to generate advertising revenue. There are even specifically Christianised link-sharing sites which target Christian audiences who are ready and willing to have their faith inspired by a 3 minute video.

Perhaps the reason we are so fascinated with the content on these sites is because we are just completely bored with the monotony of our lives and the videos and slideshows provide us with a distraction from the daily grind... but I reckon there is at least some part of us that is drawn to click on the capital letter link because deep down inside we are captivated by that which seems to lift humanity to a higher plane of existence.  We are amazed by the clips of people who seem to reach one level higher than the rest of us and the moments that seem to transcend our mundane existence.

Now on one level this is good because it highlights that in the frailty of our humanity we sense that we were designed for so much more than monotony... we were made for eternity!  But the problem that easily flows from our obsession is that the growing prevalence of people appearing in the videos convinces us that the only life worth living is the capital letter life... the upworthy life... the life that transcends.  And so we use our social media profiles as our own version of BuzzFeed... scouring every moment of our lives looking for spectacular events to justify our online existence.

It is almost as if we need to be able to think of our life as spectacular or we might be destined to dwell amongst the mundane masses.  So we desperately hope that our moments of epic win are somehow captured in a format that can be uploaded and we carefully craft stories that certify our greatness.  We even use our children as pawns in our quest for capital letter status; sacrificing them to the gods of social media, longing for their drawings, sayings and talents to be voted as upworthy by the throngs of people waiting with bated breath for our next Facebook status.  The problem is of course that the bar keeps going up and the world always requires our awesomeness to escalate, so we get dragged back down into the ordinary life just as quickly as we voted ourselves up.

The beauty of justification by faith in Jesus Christ is that we are set free from the pursuit of being upworthy.  Titus 3:5 says, "he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy..." meaning that God's acceptance of us does not require us to be spectacular.  Therefore we don't have to prove ourselves by attaining to the capital letter life because our justification rests not on how upworthy we are but on the infinitely upworthy life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So don't stress if your weightloss transformation didn't turn out as you had hoped and your before and after shots are not dramatic enough to post... don't worry if your no make-up selfie really needs some make-up to make it postable... don't fret if your attempt at making a viral video only resulted in 23 hits 7 of which were you... and don't fear if your children are not musical, artistic or sporting prodigies, rendering their performances 'normal'... the reality is that the upworthiness of your life means nothing in God's Kingdom.  In Christ you are set free from the capital letter life because you get to share the benefits of His infinitely perfect life...

Seeking to justify yourself through the appearance of awesomeness will crush you under the weight of your incapacity to captivate your online audience and bleed you dry as you chase your own tail looking to manufacture upworthy moments.  Only is Jesus is the true and lasting justification... not based on your worth but His!

Beards, Bacon & Badass - Justification by Manliness

This is the second post in a series called functional justification...
OK OK before we get too far into this post I am not ignorant of the fact that most of the junk that gets put up on Facebook is purely lighthearted entertainment... but behind every cultural quip is a cultural norm being expressed in one way or another.  So when my newsfeed is flooded with images of "real men", it is not hard to deduce that there is a huge push on at the moment to set the cultural markers of manliness.

This is not new... for some reason from generation to generation men have always had very clearly defined markers of masculinity.  But the advent of social media has heightened the rate at which young men can be indoctrinated with the latest ideas of what it takes to be a "real man".  From scrolling through my Facebook feed and viewing TV and print advertisements, the image modern young men are obviously trying to live up to is that of a well built man (in other words a guy who lifts), with some sort of inkwork, facial hair and a styled haircut who knows how to rock a tailored suit.  Throw in an abnormal love of bacon and apparently you have more testosterone than the East German weightlifting team from the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Now let me just say that all these markers of masculinity are completely neutral... at the end of the day there is nothing dangerous or detrimental about beards and bacon.  In fact common grace tells us that in every generation's image of manliness there is going to be something of benefit to human flourishing.  So I am not opposed to any of these markers and I am not advocating that everyone pulls out the old Gillette Blue II and shaves their hipster beards off.  The problem is not in these markers themselves but in the fact we seek to justify ourselves with them.

I am just going to come out and say it... as men we struggle with feelings of insignificance!  From the day that the curse of sin entered into humanity men have been struck by the helplessness of working hard but accomplishing nothing.  Perhaps for a man there is no more crippling  fear than feeling you will never contribute anything, amount to anything or be recognised for anything.  So us men are suckers for the cultural markers of manliness... because if you can achieve all the markers it fills your significance tank; it marks you as a true man.  And so we will line up to get ink done, grow our beards, fork out for that tailored suit, start benching at the gym and constantly post it all to Facebook so that everyone will know that we are men!  This is how we prove ourselves... this is how we feel good about our masculinity... this is how we build our sense of significance... this is how we justify ourselves.

The problem is that the cultural markers of manhood make for a terrible source of significance... because culture is always changing... and our capacity to make the grade is always deteriorating.  Sooner or later we will find ourselves outside of culture's picture of the perfect man and we will feel ourselves slipping into insignificance again.  The cultural benchmark of manhood keeps moving further and further away from us and we are left languishing in the wake of a new generation of men who seem far more manly than us.  Justifying yourself through your manliness is destined to failure.

There are biblical markers of manhood and they have nothing to do with beards, bacon and badass no matter how much the young evangelical beard wearers want to deify their beards.  The biblical markers of manhood have more to do with responsibility, initiative, stewardship and loving sacrifice... but even our ability to display these is not what justifies us.

The doctrine of justification by faith frees you from having to justify yourself with the cultural markers of manliness.  It calls us to consider our beards, bacon and badass look as dung compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.  See in Jesus we don't have to measure up to the ever changing manly image... in fact only in Jesus can we admit our failings as a man because we don't have to prove ourselves to God or anyone else... Justification by faith means that we can rest in the reality that Jesus lived the life of perfect manliness that we have so often failed at... He took initiative to take responsibility for the mess we had made and lovingly sacrificed Himself as He became insignificant in our place; beaten, mocked, shamed and killed.  According to Isaiah's prophecies Jesus even offered his cheeks to those who would tear his beard out (Is 50:6). But God raised Him from the dead and gave Him victory over all of His enemies.

And so by all means grow a beard and eat a bacon sandwich wearing a badass suit... but know that it proves nothing... It is not through our beards, bacon and badass that we find our vindication; but through faith in the truly perfect man Jesus.  Only through Him can we be set free from trying to measure up to our culture's image of the perfect man and the burden of our failings.  Only in Jesus can we find all the significance we crave.

Functional Justification

Preaching through the book of Galatians over the last few months has once again brought the doctrine of “Justification by Faith” to the forefront of my mind. In the broader evangelical church today this doctrine is hotly contested so as I began to plan out the sermons and dive into the commentaries I very quickly became swallowed up in the various debates. But then I remembered that as a preacher I had to stand in front of a congregation of real people and teach them not only the fact of justification by faith but the implications of it. As much as I had to make decisions about what Paul really means when he speaks of being justified by faith I also had to translate to the congregation what this reality means for their day to day lives.

So as I have prepared each message I have been asking myself this question: what tangible life change am I calling the congregation to make today that will mark them as people who have been justified by faith? In other words, what does it means to live like one who is justified by faith? I hope by God’s grace that this has been happening throughout the series and that He is shaping us to be a community who truly and practically live by faith.

However, as I have gone on this journey of examining my life and the Christian culture around me I have come to the realisation that more often than not we are lacking the most powerful practical expression of justification by faith. Daily I catch myself or see other Christians visibly living in a way that actually denies justification by faith. We have blindly embraced the cultural norm of our generation without realising it betrays that our hearts seek justification from a source other than the person and work of Jesus Christ.

In Philippians 3 Paul tells the story of his illustrious past. He outlines his privileged birth, his adherence to the cultural and religious expectations of Judaism, his studious success as a Pharisee and his passion for the cause of his people. See for Paul meeting the cultural and religious expectations placed on him was where he drew his sense of self-worth; it was how he justified himself before God and humanity. But in verse 7, as he looks back at his life, he explains what he thinks of all this privilege and effort now that he has encountered Christ,

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…”

And in here is what I believe is the most powerful implication of justification by faith: If we are justified by faith in Christ then we are free from having to justify ourselves.

For Paul faith in Christ meant that his righteousness was not his own! All his cultural and religious success was, as he puts it, “rubbish” or more literally “dung”. Trying to justify himself before his fellow man and God he was running on a treadmill, constantly trying to prove himself acceptable or worthy and measure up to society's standards of success. But coming to faith in Jesus freed him from his self-justification. Instead Paul could rest in the knowledge that he did not have to prove himself to anyone because he was justified by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus had proved Himself worthy and acceptable to God through His sinless life and sacrificial death and graciously gave this justification to Paul and all who would believe.

And yet so often we are bound to run the treadmill of measuring up to the cultural expectations of our society. Theologically we claim to be justified by faith in Jesus Christ but functionally we slave our guts out to justify ourselves in the eyes of our generation. Longing to present ourselves in such a way that might lift us in the estimations of those whose opinions matter most to us, we constantly ask ourselves the question: how will this seem in the eyes of others?

My guess is that this has always been a problem but it is so much more prevalent today because we have possibly the most powerful tool in self-justification ever invented – social media! For all the good it does social media has created a context where I can express the image of myself that I want portrayed to the world. I can craft every status update, carefully choose every photo and manage my privacy settings so that only the right people can see me.  Can any of us honestly say that we have never posted something purely to impress others and then sat back and waited for the "likes" and "comments" to roll on in?

The truth is that so few of us can ever really obtain cultural success with the vast majority of us battling to keep our heads above the water.  And even if your photo, video or status of self-justification goes viral and the world gets to bask in your cultural awesomeness, it only lasts a day and you spend the rest of your life trying to reproduce the goods or trying to ride the coattails of your success. 

If we truly believe that we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ alone then surely it should free us to recognise our efforts to meet up to the expectations of our culture as dung compared to everything that Christ has achieved for us.  And so over the next few post I hope to identify some of the markers of cultural awesomeness that we are battling to attain to in the hope that we might allow the all surpassing worth of Christ free us from them.     

Stop! Collaborate and... collaborate

This is the second post in a series I am doing in the lead up to Oxygen 2014 on what events like this can contribute to the broader evangelical scene in Australia.  The first post was on the need for gospel ministers to humbly place themselves under the teaching of other gospel preachers for the benefit of their own ministry. 

I remember coaching a junior cricket team.  Part of the deal was that I had to attend club committee meetings where matters relating to the club and players were discussed.  Often I left these meetings incredibly frustrated because of one moment that would eventuate in almost every meeting.  We would sit around the table and someone would raise an issue that everyone realised was a problem and then someone else would restate the expectation on coaches and club officials and everyone would nod in reflection and offer a hearty “Mmmmmm…” of approval.  But sure enough next meeting the same issue would be raised… the same expectation would be outlined… and the same “Mmmmmm…” would resound around the room.  There were times where I just wanted to scream out, “We are all nodding here like we know what needs to be done… but the fact it keeps coming up means that we aren’t doing it… we aren’t doing what we all affirm to be essential.”

I didn’t say much then and I wished I had… so now that I have noticed something similar in the evangelical world I feel I need to speak.  There is something that just about every evangelical minister I know nods and Mmmmms at but rarely do we ever see any practical steps taken towards acting on what we know to be essential.

I am talking about collaboration for the gospel.  So often I have been party to conversations where unity and inter-church and inter-denominational co-operation are championed… and every one of us nodded and offered hearty approval… but nothing practical ever came of it.  Many are happy to sit around and complain about the ineffectiveness of the western church but few seem willing to actually do something about it.  I don’t know exactly why we constantly refuse to put into action what we know to be essential, but I reckon I can take a few stabs in the dark:

• Fear – we are scared that others might perceive our desire for unity as a compromise on doctrine… that we would have to give up too many of our core convictions in order to partner with those of other theological and ecclesiological backgrounds.
• Laziness – we just aren’t prepared to put in the hard yards that it takes to collaborate with others.  It takes hours of work just trying to find time for more than 3 ministers to meet together let alone the effort and co-ordination it takes to plan events. 
• Narrow-mindedness – deep down inside we think our denomination and our church are on a pedestal high above all the others and that we alone have got it right.  All too easily we can pick holes in the others and justify our decision to refuse to participate in any gospel collaboration.
• Pride – possibly the real killer in all of this.  If we are to be honest we like to think that when revival comes that it will be our denomination… our church… and more specifically us… whose names are linked to the success. We don’t want to share the glory of church growth with another; we want to be the next leading light in the evangelical world.

We probably aren't brave enough to admit it but our reluctance to collaborate communicates that we fear man more than God... that we can't be bothered sacrificing for what is right... that we view our tribe as being the only bastion of truth... and that we care more about our glory than the glory of God... Basically we have to admit that our refusal to collaborate actually communicates the complete opposite of the gospel we claim to preach.  But gospel collaboration offers so much more:

• Enriches our ministry – the reality is that each denomination/church/group (though we are rarely honest enough to admit it) have some areas of strength and other areas of weakness.  Normally we are blind to our weaknesses because we are too enraptured with our strengths, but collaborating with those whose strengths are different to ours enables us to see our blind spots and can give us a living example of how to rediscover aspects of ministry that we may have forgotten.
• Provides personal support – we all know that iron sharpens iron… but when you bury your head in ministry because you are flat out just trying to serve the people of your church and reach the people of your community it is easy for us not to run into any iron for sharpening.  Ministers spend most of their lives with people but can be among some of the most lonely people you know because they rarely get time to invest in their own close friendships.  But collaboration regularly brings minsters into contact with one another and you can find true friends and fellow soldiers with whom you can stand in solidarity.  
• Attractive to the world – there are many in our Australian society who see the church as arrogant, self-centred, irrelevant and disconnected from their lives.  We have to admit that our disunity has been a major contributing factor to this attitude.  But gospel collaboration can break down this wall because when churches and ministers humbly surrender their own preferences and unite in order to bless others it mirrors the sacrificial heart of Jesus.

So here is where a convention like Oxygen can contribute something of value.  Simply by providing a context where thousands of gospel ministers will be coming together from around the country Oxygen has got us halfway to collaboration... it has got us in the same room.  I guarantee you that if you come to Oxygen you will have the usual “Wouldn’t it be great if we could do more together for the gospel” conversation… without thinking the words will come out of your mouth and you will nod and Mmmmm in approval.  The question is what will you do next?

Will you be content to keep up appearances and simply be one of the resounding Mmmmms… or will you pick up the phone, send an e-mail or meet someone for coffee with the view to partnership in the gospel?  Will you do what you know to be essential or remain in the realm of denial?  And I am not talking about random one off meetings where you might see someone from another church/denomination where you can tick off a little “cross-denominational involvement” box in your head… I am talking about regular collaboration with a view to implementing tangible opportunities for promoting the gospel together.  

Oxygen is not going to solve this problem… but it could be the catalyst we need.  If you go with a heart that is open to giving more than lip-service to gospel collaboration and courage to be the one who makes the first moves towards it… then maybe Oxygen could be the context for radical change in your local area. 

In closing, Tim Keller was asked what level of theological and/or ecclesiological similarity you would need to have in order to collaborate with another minister or church… his answer, “Well you don’t need to have too much in common to pray with someone.”  It really isn’t that hard… in fact as followers of Christ the desire to even just pray with other ministers of the gospel should be in our DNA.