God's Marketing Campaign

"God also testified to (the Good News) by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will" (Heb. 2:4).

For a few years, I worked part-time for a small advertising company while I continued to pastor my church in Walnut, CA. I learned how to place advertising in newspapers, magazines and other publications. But I also placed billboards, radio spots and even television ads. At one point, I wrote a paper for our clients on beginning to use the internet to place ads on their sites and on other search engines. We began to develop online components to just about every ad campaign. This area has continued to grow significantly in recent years.

Did you know that God has a marketing strategy for the Gospel? It is described in the text quoted above from Hebrews. God advertised the incredibly Good News about Jesus through "signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit." And I think His strategy has been phenomenally successful. The 500 or so people who would have called themselves disciples when Jesus ascended into heaven has become 2.5 billion (out of about 7.5 billion total world population) in 2020.

Instead of internet ads, TV commercials, radio spots or newspaper ads, God has used incredibly powerful tools that are all empowered by the Holy Spirit:

•  Signs: which are supernatural interventions of God that point to the reality of His presence.

•  Wonders: which is another way of looking at miracles from the human perspective. That is, when God intervenes and His presence is made known, it causes the sense of "wonder or awe" in the observer. You could say that the miracle has a stunning effect and creates an "Aha!" moment in the recipient.

•  Miracles: is just a way of saying that God's intervention breaks our understanding of how nature is supposed to act. Wayne Gruden says, "A miracle is a less common kind of God's activity in which he arouses people's awe and wonder and bears witness to himself" (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, ch. 52). 

•  Gifts of the Holy Spirit: from our perspective, the nine "manifestation gifts" of the Spirit mentioned in 1 Cor. 12:7-11. The unique thing about these charismata is that they are purely works done through the believer by the Holy Spirit, not by human cleverness or skill.

This last Sunday, I was standing in the back of the sanctuary as Pastor Alan was leading us into a time of ministry. I felt God speaking to me about a woman who was with two others, here for the first time. I went over to them and asked if I could pray for the middle women because I had a word for her. I can't describe it here because it is too close to the event. Suffice it to say that it was specific enough that she began to cry and her two friends were agreeing to the accuracy of what God had given me. What they didn't know is that, because I'm a chicken sometimes, I was holding another more specific part of my word to her. 

After the Service was over, they came to talk to me and I gave the rest of my Word of Knowledge. One of the women exclaimed, "How did you know that?!" I told her it was not me, it was God. He wanted her to know that He not only saw what she was dealing with, but that He cared and that, indeed, He loved her.

You see, God used the revelation gift as a way making His presence real. This got her attention like no billboard could. The Gospel got through.

In 1 Cor. 14, Paul says, "If an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he/she will be convinced by all that he/she is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his/her heart will be laid bare. So he/she will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, 'God is really among you!'" (1 Cor. 14:24-25).

The Church has largely lost it's zeal to see the Holy Spirit move. Instead, we have sought out the "experts" to tell us how to market our church, how to grow through advertising or better "outreach" campaigns. What would happen if we got back to the basics of letting the Holy Spirit distribute His gifts according to His will? What would happen if we started to risk moving out in faith and letting His presence be known through us? What would happen if He took over our marketing campaign through signs, wonders, miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit?

Transcendence and Immanence

 “For this is what the high and exalted One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isa. 57:15)

 

In his commentary on Isaiah, John W. Oswalt says of this verse that “it is one of the finest one-sentence summations of biblical theology in the Bible” (NICOT: The Book of Isaiah: 40-66, Oswalt, p. 487). Just what is it about this verse that goes to the heart of what the Bible is about?

 

There are two terms that must be held together in tension whenever we try to understand God and His relationship to His creation: Transcendence and Immanence.

 

Transcendence is “the attribute of God that refers to being wholly and distinctly separate from creation…that God is ‘above’ the world and comes to creation from ‘beyond’ (Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms, Grenz, Guretzki & Fee-Nordling, p. 115).

 

Certainly, the first half of our verse describes a God who stands above all of His creation. He “lives forever,” that is, He is the “I AM” who is always there. Another way of putting it is that, whereas creation has a beginning and may have an end, God has no beginning or end. By definition, He is the only uncreated thing. I like to say that He is the only One for whom “existence” is an essential attribute. Therefore, he stands wholly above and beyond everything else that exists.

 

Immanence is the idea that God is close to and intimately involved in His creation. (Imminencemeans that His return is about to happen-temporally; whereas Immanencemeans His Presence is “at hand”—spatially.) Unlike the God of Deism, who started the creation ball rolling and has left it to run out on its own, the biblical God is always actively at hand. This must also be distinguished from Pantheism which says that God is part of creation, like the soul is to the human body. Or even Panentheism which says that God is different but present in creation to such an extent that he powerlessly waits to see what will happen.

 

Once again, our verse ends with the idea that God is present and concerned for those who are humble, contrite, lowly, perhaps even crushed and discouraged. God’s heart is moved with compassion for the plight of his creatures who have forsaken Him. He draws close to those who are weak.

 

And that is the God who is revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. As it says so well in Philippians 2:  

6 [Christ Jesus}, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 

7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! 

9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 

11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 

And we can add the words of the writer of Hebrews in chapter 4:

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 

15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 

 

We worship the Almighty God, who has come to us in our weakness to redeem us in the person of Jesus Christ so that we can ascend with Him to live in His eternal Kingdom. What a wonderful God we serve!

Jesus Is the Head of the Church

 

I just heard someone present statistics, mainly from Barna Research Group, about the steep decline in church membership over the last 20 years. It was a bit depressing. 

In many ways, the last year of lockdowns has merely served to expose the flimsy foundations upon which the Western church has tried to build in the last 20 years.

 

At the end of Jesus’ greatest message, The Sermon on the Mount, He says this:

 “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 

The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 

But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 

The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matt. 7:24-27).

 

My thesis here is that the Western church has been too dependent on human cleverness and worldly techniques but has not been radically dependent on Jesus. We want to grow big churches, but we are not vitally dependent on Jesus, as Head of the Church. We have been building on sand instead of on the Rock Himself.

 

For church leaders, what has occupied the greatest amount of energy and attention for the last 20 or more years? What have we spent the most financial resources on? What are the biggest conferences we have attended?

 

The Church Growth Movement. The Seeker Movement. Church Marketing techniques. Church Systems. Etc.

 

Let me just interject that my criticism is as much pointed at myself as anyone else. I have spent hours listening to the “experts” tell me how they did it and how I can also be successful.

 

As leaders, how do we measure success? Numbers. Always numbers. Attendance, budgets, building sizes, membership.

 

When I was on staff of the Vineyard Anaheim, now more than 20 years ago, we held conferences that attracted thousands. Why? Our numbers said to other churches, “Come learn how to build better numbers in your church.” As other churches grew big, they offered conferences that attracted people who were looking to grow their numbers. Willow Creek, Saddleback, etc. 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I highly admire Bill Hybels and Rick Warren. I remember weeping as I listened to Bill Hybels talk about his heart for the lost. It was obvious that his church grew because of the move of God through him. If you heard Rick Warren’s story, you would realize that the Spirit of God moved creatively through him. They were men on fire for God.

 

But other leaders gathered to study their techniques so that they could be “successful” and thus gain the same notoriety and build a similar empire. But these leaders seldom developed the same heart for the lost or the same total dependence on God’s Spirit.

 

In Ephesians 4:11-16, we are told that the Equipping ministries of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher are meant to equip the rest of the church to do the work of the ministry. This is at the center of God’s plan to grow the church.

 

But the key is that Jesus is the Head of the church, from whom the whole body is knit together and built up. The pastor/teacher is NOT the head of the church. He/she is a servant whose job is to equip everyone else. The apostle is NOT the head of the church. The prophet is NOT the head of the church. The evangelist is NOT the head of the church. They are all servants who should be submitted to the one head, Jesus Christ.

 

JESUS IS THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH!

 

The problem is stated well in verse 14:

“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14).

 

The church has been tossed about on turbulent waters and wind gusts of teaching. Clever and cunning. Even deceitful. These teachings promise to give us what we want: success as measured by numbers.

 

But the numbers tell us something else: the church is shrinking, not growing.

 

So what is the biblical alternative?

“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ” (Eph. 4:15).

 

For many years, John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard, presented a conference entitled, “Signs and Wonders, and Church Growth” at venues around the world. At one point in the conference he would deliver a keynote address entitled, “What the Holy Spirit is Saying to the Church Today.” And his point is as relevant today as it was then, “I want my church back.”

 

Jesus is supposed to be the Head of the Church. But we leaders have tended to think that we know how to run the church better than Him. If we learn anything from the last 20 years, it is that we have been doing a poor job and it’s time for us to hand the steering wheel back to Him. Jesus is the Head of the Church, and He wants His Church back.

Living Sent

 This past week, I was able to preach at our online and live weekend services centered on the command of Jesus in Matthew 28: 18-20, "The Great Commission." I focused on the command to "Go" and the implications of that in the current climate of Covid Lockdowns. Rather than write a long blog, I am embedding the Facebook link. You can skip to minute 10 to begin the worship part of the service. You can skip to minute 33 to begin the message. I hope you both enjoy and are challenged by the message.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=721584698458933

Blessings,

Mark

Trudging the Road of Happy Destiny

In the Big Book of Alcoholic's Anonymous, it says "we shall be with you in the Spirit as you trudge the road of happy destiny."

This phrase has always struck me as entirely insightful and profound. The fellowship of encouragement and support that is the 12-Step community joins with the individual addict on a journey towards a happy and blessed future free from the addictive lifestyle. And what is the nature of that journey? It is described as a "trudge."

Websters says that "to trudge" is "to walk or march steadily and usually laboriously." And "a trudge" is "a long tiring walk."

Of course Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, was a Christian who was influenced by the Oxford Group in formulating the 12-steps. The first three steps are the essential ingredients of conversion. First we have to admit we are sinful. Second, we have to admit that God exists. And third, we must surrender our lives to Him.

But the remaining nine steps are more about the continuing process that we must pursue in order to obtain and maintain freedom from sin and to walk in a deep and life-changing commitment to God. Conversion is the easy part. The difficult part is the "trudge," the long tiring walk that is our daily life.

Of course, this is true of the Christian life in general. Turning over our lives to God so that we are now "born again" is the easy part. But walking out our faith through the painful trials of daily life is the hard part.

Jesus says that those who would follow Him must "pick up their cross daily and follow him." Put another way, we must look at the example of Jesus' trudge and imitate Him.

Jesus laid aside the "self-directed life" and took up the "God-directed life" when he picked up the old rugged cross. True discipleship means picking up the symbolic cross given to us and following His example of obedient submission to the Father. He trudged the entire Via Dolorosa to Calvary. And even beyond Calvary. You could say, to hell and back again. A trudge that brought him to the place of Happy Destiny at the right hand of God.

As the writer of Hebrews says: "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" (Heb. 12: 2-3).

Is life hard? Don't lose heart. Join with us in the Spirit as we all trudge the road of happy destiny together.

Good and Evil

 

"Woe unto those who call evil good and good evil,

who put darkness for light and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter" (Isa. 5:20).

When I was 18 years old in 1973, I got hired for a non-speaking part on a TV Show called, The Streets of San Francisco. You see, I was intent on becoming an actor, so I studied at the American Conservatory Theater's Summer Training Program. At the end of my time, I got an agent in San Francisco and she got me this part.

I only tell you this story, because I met an African American kid with whom I shared the scene. We were talking about the main actors on the series, Karl Malden and Michael Douglas. He said to me about Michael Douglas, "He's bad!" 

I thought this was rather rude. I said back to him, "I actually think he's pretty good."

The kid said back to me, "That's what I mean. 'He's bad' means 'He's good.'"

This was the first time I had heard this rhetorical phenomenon; using "bad" to mean "good." In fact, later I would hear someone say something was "fat" to mean something was good. Or another one, saying something was "dope" to mean it was good. Or even, "That's sick," to mean that it's good.

There is a trend in our culture to call good evil and evil good. And I don't think it's just a random rhetorical phenomenon. There is an underlying spiritual dynamic that feeds it. 

The crumbling of our moral foundations as a society has been following age-old patterns. 

Gangsta Rap has led the trend in making lawlessness "cool." Your street creds are often based on how many swear words you can amass in your lyrics and how many lawless acts you can glorify. 

I recently had someone get married in Las Vegas and they were shocked at the state of "undress" of the women wherever they went. Female pop singers have led the way in becoming more and more risqué. As a result, girls think they must emulate this kind of seductive, lascivious fashion. 

When I grew up, I joined the Boy Scouts. This is the Boy Scout Oath:

"On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." 

And the Scout Law:

"A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent."

Do you react to these Scout slogans with something like, "Wow. That's really corny?" Or square or old fashioned or out-dated? Or do you think, like me, "What a sad state of affairs that we should think that this is no longer admirable?"

Unfortunately, Scouting has come under attack from people in the culture who want to cancel anyone or any institution that does not agree with their agenda. Scouts did not support the entire LGBTQ agenda, therefore they must be destroyed. Beyond that is the underlying spiritual agenda to undermine the desire for "goodness" in our culture.

The Old Testament tells us that one of the trees in the garden was "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." The Hebrew word for good is "tov" and the word for evil is "ra'". Mankind's disobedience lay in the fact that they ate from the forbidden fruit of this tree. Tov represents the goodness that mankind would experience by obedience to His command not to eat the fruit. In fact, not to eat the fruit would have been an expression of trust in God because mankind would be demonstrating that God's word was good for them. The keeping of that command meant keeping goodness in its place.

But the eating of the fruit also meant demonstrating distrust in God, and therefore experiencing the fall, and thus the brokenness apart from God. Ra' is the state of walking in separation from God and experiencing the full implications of disobedience and thus, evil.

We have an enemy who is intent on deceiving and undermining God's moral authority. Jesus tells us, "When [the devil] lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44b). In Revelation 20, we are told that Satan will be loosed at the end to go into the world to deceive.

It is time for the Church to rise up to speak the truth to a culture that has been flipped upside down. Goodness is our highest moral goal. Evil is to be resisted and utterly rejected. Search your own heart. Ask yourself, "Have I embraced a culture that calls evil good and good evil? What must I do to embrace God's greatest good for my life? How can I become a force for God's good agenda in this world?"

It is time for the Church to repent and to turn entirely back to God. He is Goodness incarnate. We are His children, embracing what is Good and utterly rejecting what is Evil.

A Whole Lot of Shaking Going On

In the book of Hebrews, the writer quotes from Haggai 2:6 to issue one of the many warnings in the book. "At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, 'Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens'" (Heb. 12:26).

The writer is comparing two mountain experiences. The first is the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai in the wilderness, the act of which created Israel, the people of God. The second is the consummation of God's new redemptive order through Jesus, and the mountain is Zion.

The first mountain experience was terrifying to the Israelites. Fire, darkness, gloom and storm--and an earthquake. It was the formation of a new people who needed to respect the holiness of God and to learn to respect the Law. 

But the writer says that Haggai prophesied a time when not only would the earth shake, but the heavens as well. The formation of the new people of God is also a dreadful experience for those who want to approach God and His exalted presence. "For our 'God is a consuming fire'" (Heb. 12:29 quoting Deut. 4:24).

Why all this shaking? The writer says that it is for "the removing of what can be shaken--that is created things--so that what cannot be shaken may remain" (Heb. 12:27).

I believe God spoke this word to me recently about the state of the church. The closing of businesses to slow the spread of the coronavirus has resulted in a shaking of all the churches that I know. Online meetings and live-streaming services are not the same thing as gathering together. After all, the Greek word ekklesia means "those who are called out into the public square to assemble together." The children of Israel in the Old Testament are called the church, called out of Egypt to assemble before God.

The Church is being shaken by God right now. Both because of the pandemic and because of the civil unrest over perceived systemic racism and leftist/anarchist activities. God's purpose for shaking us must be seen in light of this passage. He is removing the things that are impermanent and not desirable so that the permanent and desirable things can remain.

Threshing is the process of beating the heads of wheat to separate the grain from the chaff. Then, on a windy day, the whole thing is tossed repeatedly in the air so that the chaff is blown away but the actual grains of wheat remain. 

As John the Baptist says about the soon-coming Messiah: "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3:12).

And in John 15, we hear a similar metaphor. The Father is the vinedresser who prunes the branches that are not producing fruit in order to increase the harvest. 

I believe that the Church needs to wake up to God's judgment and submit to His correction through our obedience to Him. No longer will it be good enough to go to good meetings and act like going to church is the same thing as being the Church.

In the 80's, we were all wondering whether there were any Christians left in China. The Cultural Revolution of the 60's destroyed the existing churches and the church hierarchy. Yet, the first smuggled films showed us a vital and growing underground church, alive with the Gospel. The same thing is currently happening in Iran where, if reports are true, under intense persecution, the Church is growing more rapidly than anywhere else in the world.

I don't know about you, but I want to be with the desirable things that remain after the shaking is done. How about you?