People Don't Trust the Church Anymore

Organized religion's trust levels are only a few percentage points higher than that of our politicians—and that is a grave problem for the church. The majority of Americans, over three quarters of them, view organized religion with the same suspicion they do politicians, who are often associated with incredible self-interest and pettiness.

People View the Church as a Dead Organization

This low view of organized religion has not led to an outbreak of atheism. Spiritual things are still a hot topic in many people's lives and still have incredible influence over how people live their lives. Many people will say things like, "I'm spiritual, but not religious," or, "I can have a relationship with God, but I don't need to belong to a church." These statements are indicative of the wider attitude towards church: the church as an organism and organization is no longer seen as a credible source to know God or find life. Instead, the church looks like a horse and carriage in a world of automobiles—tolerated, but not the best way to get around.

How to Build Trust: Humility and Sacrifice

That is why establishing trust is so important. Trust is the bedrock of all quality relationships, so if the church needs a restoration of its relationships, it will need to renew trust with others. At the core of all churches is relationship—relationship to one another, relationship to the leadership, and relationship to the organization. When trust within the church is broken, just as in all relationships, the whole edifice crashes. The church has a moral imperative, then, to not just retreat into an enclave and perpetuate a community where trust is already established, but to do the hard work of restoring trust with individuals and communities.

But sadly this is often not the case. To the outside world the church seems to be full of hypocrites, money-hungry leaders, and hateful people. This is also the experience of many Christians who now walk with a spiritual or emotional limp because the church broke their trust. Many Christians have experienced the fallout of leaders who covered their sin because their church or vision was more important than their individual righteousness or morality.

Some churches have been captured by false teaching that leave people wounded and starving for the one true God. Many have seen church people preach one thing and then turn around and do another, leaving them wondering, "Can the church really be a place where we can practice what we preach?" and "Can this really be a place that has treasure for the outside world?"

The Blueprint for Trust: Stop Pretending

The blueprint for building trust is simple. It does not involve any new thinking or teaching, but actually rediscovering something very old: the gospel.

The gospel message has two embedded characteristics that are vital for trust: humility and sacrifice. Trust is never built on perfection, but on the ability to own up to our mistakes and flaws. We also see this with church membership: the church is one of the only organizations in the world where the absolute requirement for membership is failure. You have to own up to your bankruptcy before God.

We must stop pretending that we have performed for God—that is the only way to build trust.

Scandalous

In Scandalous, world-renowned theologian D.A. Carson unpacks the meaning of the most scandalous event in history: the death and resurrection of Jesus. Get the book.

Jared Wilson pastors a church in Vermont, runs a great blog, and wrote the book Your Jesus Is Too Safe: Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel Good Savior.

I had never even visited New England before I began the interview process for the church in rural Vermont that I am pastoring now. As a native Texan who spent more than a decade in Tennessee, I have the blue blood of the Bible Belt coursing through my veins. But in 2008, as the pastor of a young church plant in Nashville, God began to shift my attention from the older brothers of my homeland to the prodigals of (what I would consider) the wilderness.

In just the last two years I have been privileged to connect with others who are receiving a heart for the now least-reached portion of the United States, and I believe more and more are receiving the call, looking to “liberal,” “pagan,” “dead and dry” New England with missionary fervor. But the need is great and the workers are still few. As I keep an eye on the momentum of church planting initiatives in the U.S., I am grateful to see so many willing hearts and strong hands engaging neighbors with the gospel, but I am disheartened to see over and over again the least-churched region of the nation overlooked. Could the neglect of this emerging mission field not be from the lack of God’s call, but the lack of the called’s interest?

If you are a future church planter or have designs on joining a missional plant, here are some reasons I hope you will consider looking to and praying for a vision of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, or Vermont, the six states that comprise New England:

1. New England is the least-churched area of the nation.

If there is an unreached people group in the United States, it is New Englanders. A 2009 Gallup poll placed the six states of New England in the top ten least religious states in the nation. While the Bible Belt is approaching a completely unchurched generation, New England is already there. There is no high attendance at Easter and Christmas, because nobody even has the nostalgia factor driving them to recapture childhood visits to church.

There is no biblical literacy to speak of, of course. According to the Glenmary Research Center, via NETS Institute for Church Planting, those in New England who attend evangelical churches hover between 1 and 3% of the population. There is a higher percentage of evangelical Christian churchgoers in Mormon Utah than in Rhode Island!

2. New England’s few existing churches are not gospel-wakened.

New Englanders have little desire for anything to do with Christianity or church, but even those who have it have little opportunity to explore it. While the landscape of New England is dotted with little church buildings, some quaint and some beautiful, more and more of these buildings now house liberal, practically Unitarian congregations, if they house church gatherings at all.

And where churches are evangelical, the evangel has not yet captured the hearts of many congregations. As the cultural environment became more worldly, conservative churches became more insular, opting to self-protect in their religious “bunkers” instead of engaging their communities in gospel mission. The need for gospel-centered missional churches throughout New England is dire. The good news is that a movement is afoot already, but it needs more workers.

3. New England is spiritually fertile.

While the soil in New England is superficially hard, beneath it run springs of spiritual openness. This isn’t always a good thing, of course, but there’s something about this area of the nation that is spiritually fertile. America’s two major cults—the Latter Day Saints and the Jehovah’s Witnesses—had their genesis in the Northeast United States, both in New York State. (My 200-year-old church in Vermont actually kicked out Joseph Smith’s secretary for heresy!) The New Age movement and pagan spiritualities are still popular in pockets throughout rural areas and college towns.

But there is a rich evangelical heritage in New England, of course. The Great Awakenings began here. George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Finney are just some of the great preachers God used to light fires of gospel revival. New England enjoys a great history of Reformational preaching and mission. Lemuel Haynes of Rutland, Vermont, was a strong Calvinist parish minister and the first black pastor of an all-white church in the United States.

But where gospel fires once burned now looks burnt over. The majority religion in New England is Catholicism, which seems so odd given the evangelical fervor of the Awakenings.

Many of us believe God can and will do something great again in New England. As in the days of Amos, we are praying that God will do what he promised to do for his dispersed children: “In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old” (Amos 9:11).

Is God calling you to raise up the ruins of beautiful New England? The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

How Do You Pastor Your Family?

How do you pastor your family? A practical article by an A29 pastor and dad. Read it here.

The City on the Hill

In Jeremiah 29:4-7 God called the Israelites, who had been exiled into Babylon, to pursue the peace and prosperity of that pagan city. Likewise, Jesus, in Matthew 5:13-16, calls us to be a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. He clarified that not only our words, but our words backed by deeds of service would shine the glory of God from the city of God into the secular city.

We see in Luke how Jesus not only used his words to bring the gospel, but also his acts of service allowed his words to be heard. As Christians sent into our respective cities, we are called to be the very best citizens of that city. We are to work for the peace, safety, security, vibrancy, and future of our city, plus the common good of all of our neighbors. A gospel-centered church is one that takes this mission seriously. We want to demonstrate the resources the Christian faith has for hope in the future.

New Heavens and New Earth

In Revelation, we don't see individuals being taken out of the world into heaven, but heaven coming down to renew the world and wash it of evil, disease, poverty, injustice and death. At Mars Hill Downtown we are actively working to build bridges and relationships with city and neighborhood leaders. We want to find out what the needs and gaps are in our city and if at all possible, work towards a solution.

City Involvement

Practically, we host "Town Halls," where we invite local city leaders to an evening of discussion, brainstorming and strategizing how we as a community can assist. A new ministry that sprung out of a conversation with a civic leader last year is "Rest". This ministry reaches out to the girls and women in our city who work in prostitution and dancing, or who are involved in sex trafficking. We are pursuing permission with a downtown strip club for some of our women to begin building relationships at the club on Friday nights.

Additionally, many members are actively involved on community councils, Mayor's office, business associations, and chambers of commerce. We don't believe that politics changes hearts—Jesus does. We do believe that we are called to serve our city, love our neighbors, and be as active as possible, so that people "see our good works and glorify our Father who is in Heaven" (Matt. 5:16).

ESV Study Bible

The ESV Study Bible is our Bible of choice. To show how good the notes are, we’ve posted some free study notes on the Trinity. Read them here.

He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man. - Hanna Rosin

There has been significant attention in the media recently about changing roles between men and women; most notably in The Atlantic, Slate, and The New York Times (Interestingly each written by women). One of the major themes in this trend is the rise of two things: The Omega Male and women who don't need them.

The entire article in The Atlantic is worth a read, but a few paragraphs are especially insightful:

"As the traditional order has been upended, signs of the profound disruption have popped up in odd places. Japan is in a national panic over the rise of the “herbivores,” the cohort of young men who are rejecting the hard-drinking salaryman life of their fathers and are instead gardening, organizing dessert parties, acting cartoonishly feminine, and declining to have sex. The generational young-women counterparts are known in Japan as the “carnivores,” or sometimes the “hunters.”

"American pop culture keeps producing endless variations on the omega male, who ranks even below the beta in the wolf pack. This often-unemployed, romantically challenged loser can show up as a perpetual adolescent (in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up or The 40-Year-Old Virgin), or a charmless misanthrope (in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg), or a happy couch potato (in a Bud Light commercial). He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man [Emphasis mine]. “We call each other ‘man,’” says Ben Stiller’s character in Greenberg, “but it’s a joke. It’s like imitating other people.”

"At the same time, a new kind of alpha female has appeared, stirring up anxiety and, occasionally, fear. The cougar trope started out as a joke about desperate older women. Now it’s gone mainstream, even in Hollywood, home to the 50-something producer with a starlet on his arm. Susan Sarandon and Demi Moore have boy toys, and Aaron Johnson, the 19-year-old star of Kick-Ass, is a proud boy toy for a woman 24 years his senior. The New York Times columnist Gail Collins recently wrote that the cougar phenomenon is beginning to look like it’s not about desperate women at all but about “desperate young American men who are latching on to an older woman who’s a good earner.”

Here's the thing; you might be this guy. You might know one, or ten, of these guys. The Omega Male is not a rare phenomenon, which is why we need to be familiar with it and them.

The Complications of Roles

This is clearly a loaded subject; packed with a slew of issues like the following:

• Sociological: the well-documented prolonging of adolescence into emerging adulthood.
• Philosophical: according to the New York Times article, questions of self-understanding.
• Pop-Cultural: as the references in each article to movie and TV characters illustrate, the media that helped to create this phenomenon is selling it back to us and perpetuating it. I could've sworn there was a line in Fight Club about this.
• Economic: are cultures without America's vast economic luxury facing the same cultural issues? Are Belize, Rwanda, or Ecuador struggling with the same confusions?

The end result of all of it is wide-spread confusion over the roles of men and women, love and sex, relationship and friendship.

The Omega Male and the Church

What none of these articles have touched on is how this has invaded and effected the church.  Like any other social entity, the church tends to overemphasize certain things to the detriment of others. Beneath the din of culture war issues like abortion and gay marriage, we have to ask if the church has been faithful in teaching young people about proper roles for men and women. In the large segments of the church that clumsily "embraced the arts" in the last 7 years, did they spend as much time teaching those same artists what the Bible teaches about what a man is, what a woman is, and how they should interact in friendships and relationships?

The Omega Male and the gender role confusion associated with them are only recently being popularly analyzed and diagnosed, but by the time issues reach a popular level they are already ubiquitous. This would make it a good time for the church to ask how it can teach Omega Males to be men; to contend for the faith (Jude 3), to treat girls as sisters (1 Tim. 5:2), and to work hard like a farmer, sharing in suffering, competing by the rules like an athlete (2 Tim. 2:1-6)—all activities that Omegas aren't prone to do but about which the Bible is clear.

For further thought-provoking commentary on men, women, & relationships, I strongly suggest this video.

The Church We Want

When pastors and church leaders read Acts 2:42-46, they get nostalgic for something they never had. Who can read these words and not wish that their church looked like this?

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And 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 the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Not Just To Be Imitated

But the question that we often incorrectly ask after reading this is, “Why do these early Christians have this quality of church?” We see this quality as merely something to be imitated, but miss the roots of their devotion. We tend to see the first church as prescriptive, but it is actually descriptive of something deeper.

The mistake we make is thinking we can recreate this quality of church by pursuing the things they did. We think, “If we just gave ourselves to the apostle’s teaching, if we ate together, if we sold our possessions and shared, then the kingdom would break in again to our churches.”

A Church That Is Aware

But this is moralistic at best. The real power behind the quality of the early church was the awareness that they had killed Jesus only a few months before. They realized that they had crucified the Son of God and were granted mercy. Their love and devotion flowed from their stark denial of Jesus and his subsequent forgiveness of them.

2 Peter 1:9 says, “If any man lacks these qualities, he is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from past sins.” We lack qualities of love and learning because we first forget that we are sinners for whom Christ died. But when we remember and live off of our justification, we will find ourselves learning from the apostles, fellowshiping with believers, and even being generous with our possessions.

Logos Bible Software

Get a Resurgence discount of 15% off anything in the Logos Bible Software library. Check it out here.

Backstage: Francis Chan from SBC Greater Things 2010 on Vimeo.

R.C. Sproul Interviews

Has R.C. Sproul ever been on the internet? What is the biggest upcoming theological battle? Dr. Sproul answers questions like these in this special interview series.

Recently I sat down with David Platt, Pastor of the Church of Brook Hills in Birmingham, AL, and author of Radical, at the Advance the Church 2010 Conference. In part one of our conversation, David shares his thoughts about the spiritual landscape of the South, his counsel for younger leaders, and his "one thing" for pastors.

Recommended Books

Get the best books on various important topics. Check out our recommended reading section.

A few years ago, I heard an interview with a Christian college professor. Having logged three decades in the classroom, he was asked to compare college students today with those of the past. Decades ago, he indicated, incoming freshmen arrived sporting some serious aspiration. If asked, they could (and would!) become the leaders, innovators, and agents of change for industry, government, and commerce. Their ideas would influence society and determine the course of civilization. Yep, humility was weak but ambition ran strong and deep.

But over time the professor detected a shift. Where postmodernism flourished, ambition went AWOL. Students grew ambivalent. Gone were the dreams for making an impact. In their place was the ethos of “Whatever!”—student-speak for, “believe in nothing, care for nothing, interfere with nothing, and live for nothing.”

The professor knew something vital had been lost.

The Future Lost

Ambition cannot survive without dreams for the future. “To be ambitious,” notes author Joseph Epstein, “is to be future-minded.” But what happens when the future-minded energy of ambition meets the future-ambivalent morass of postmodernity? Ambition stalls. Life becomes the experience of perpetual randomness. We jettison ultimate truth unaware of its connection to hope and the capacity to dream.

But that’s not all. With the cultural dive into postmodernism, future-dependent values like courage, vision, and enterprise also take a hit. Progress and goals give way to indifference and immediate gratification.

We face a generation of young men and women missing a transcendent vision. The engine of ambition lies silent—a quaint artifact from a bygone era.

In The Social Worlds of Higher Education, Mark Edmundson observes this lack of transcendent vision: “It’s a lack of capacity for enthusiasm that defines what I’ve come to think of as the reigning generational style. Whether the students are sorority fraternity types, grunge aficionados, piercer/tattooers, black or white, rich or middle class, … they are, nearly across the board very, very, self-contained. On good days, they display a light, appealing glow; on bad days, shuffling disgruntlement. But there’s little fire, little passion to be found. . . . This is a culture intensely committed to a laid-back norm.”

Colleges are not the problem; they simply reflect the problem. Where postmodernism flourishes, passion never reaches above the level of critical anger at things that don’t seem right. Causes have momentum only to the extent that they have viral cachet. And everything matters right now, only so far as it is right now. The future is not intentionally snuffed out. Postmodernism just hangs a “Do Not Disturb” sign over doors of opportunity. Few risk the hassle of knocking. Fewer still exert the energy to walk expectantly through the door.

The Future Found

God wants to rescue ambition. But not to build future monuments to our own glory. I’m talking about an instinct that looks for new ways to glorify God through our dreams. Paul said, “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:13–14).

Think about it: Paul’s got one thing in view. He wants to forget all that once defined him and press forward into future exploits. For Paul the future was so essential he pressed towards it with dreams and desires, with fiery ambition!

I want the kind of ambition he describes. What about you?

As Christians do we see the opportunity in postmodern culture for the life-transforming message of Jesus Christ? Is there anything more toxic to apathy than the heaven or hell implications of the gospel? The more I study Scripture and the culture around me, the more I see a world of people who have not only run out of answers, they have run out of questions.

We need ambition—godly ambition that lives grateful for past success while stretching and straining forward to what lies ahead. An ambition that will not rest until more churches are planted, more marriages helped, more art created, more people reached, more businesses started, more disciples made. An ambition aware of postmodernity but living for eternity.

You can learn more about godly ambition in Dave Harvey's new book Rescuing Ambition.

Doctrine Book

Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe is available now. Read a free chapter and find out more.

This is a series on 11 Leadership Lessons from 12 Disciples, based on the recent sermon Jesus Calls the Twelve, on Luke 6:12-16.

Lesson #11: Die with your boots on

You're either going to go out like Judas or Jesus—that's how your life is going to end. You're going to go out like Jesus, faithful to the end, whatever the cost, or you're going to go out like Judas, prematurely, tragically, rebelliously, shamefully. I want you to keep your boots on, finish strong, run your race, see it through to the end, be a completer, a finisher, a closer of the things God has given you to do.

As you read this, maybe you're like me, you may wonder, "What happened to these guys?" We know in the Bible, they went forward. Some of them were cowards, but they toughened up. The resurrection put some steel in their spine. They preached, they taught, they planted churches. John wrote five books of the Bible, Peter wrote two. These guys did get some stuff done, but the Bible doesn't tell us how they finished—for that we've got to go to history. Did they die with their boots on? Here are some of their stories from Foxe's Book of Martyrs. It was first written in 1559, and it's fantastic. Gotta love the Puritans.

James

Wonder how James died?

The first apostle to suffer after the martyrdom of Stephen was James, the brother of John. Clement tells us when this James was brought to the tribunal seat, he that brought him and was the cause of his trouble, seeing him to be condemned and that he should suffer death, was in such sort moved within heart and conscience that he went to the execution and confessed himself also of his own accord to be a Christian. And so were they led forth together, where in the way he desired of James to forgive him what he had done. After James had a little pause with himself upon the matter, turning to him he said, "Peace to thee, my brother," and kissed him, and both were beheaded.

James had a critic who wanted him murdered. He had a Judas, and on the way to be crucified, apparently he had some conversation with his Judas, and his Judas repented and said, "I'm sorry. Let's get beheaded together for Jesus," and they did. James is a bad man—in a good way.

Thomas

"Thomas preached to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Carmenians, Hyrcanians, Bactrians, and Margians. He was killed in Calamina, India." Most of these men died murderous martyrdom. You know what? Mars Hill Church would be much smaller but much holier, more effective, more fruitful, I think, if we had a little bit of suffering. Can't make it happen, I've tried. But what happens is when people start giving their life for the cause of the gospel, all of a sudden those who are playing church stop playing. They either step up for Jesus, and go from "come and see" to "go and die," or like Judas, they just walk away and go do something else.

Simon

"Simon, brother of Jude and James the younger who were all the sons of Mary Cleophas and Alphaeus, was bishop of Jerusalem after James," Jesus' brother. "He was crucified in Egypt." Crucified. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it well: "When Christ calls a man, he calls him to come and die." Come and die. When Jesus says, "Pick up your cross and follow me," that's what it means to be a disciple, that you go the way of Jesus. You give your life for what he gave his life to, the glory of God and the good of others for the church. "The other Simon, the apostle, he was also crucified."

Bartholomew

"Bartholomew is said to have preached in India and translated the Gospel of Matthew into their tongue. He was beaten, crucified, and beheaded."

Andrew

Andrew, Peter's brother, was crucified. Bernard and St. Cyprian mentioned the confession and martyrdom of this blessed apostle. Partly from them and partly from other reliable writers, we gather the following material:

When Andrew, through his diligent preaching had brought many to the faith of Christ, Egeas the governor asked permission to the Roman senate to force all Christians to sacrifice to and honor the Roman idols. Andrew thought he should resist Egeas and went to him, telling them that a judge of men should first know and worship as judge in heaven. 'While worshiping the true God,' Andrew said, 'he should banish all false gods and blind idols from his mind.' Furious at Andrew, Egeas demanded to know if he was the man who had recently overthrown the temples of the gods and persuaded men to become Christians, a 'superstitious' sect that had recently been declared illegal by the Romans.

Andrew replied that, 'The rulers of Rome didn't understand the truth. The son of God who came into the world for man's sake taught that the Roman gods were devils, enemies of mankind teaching men to offend God, and causing him to turn away from them. By serving the devil, men fall into all kinds of wickedness,' Andrew said. 'And after they die, nothing but their evil deeds are remembered.' The proconsul ordered Andrew not to preach these things anymore or he would face a speedy crucifixion."

If you were going to get crucified, would you stop calling yourself a Christian?

Whereupon Andrew replied, [and this is an amazing line] "I would not have preached the honor and glory of the cross if I feared the death of the cross." He was condemned to be crucified for teaching a new sect and taking away the religion of the Roman gods. Andrew, going toward the place of execution, and seeing the cross waiting for him, never changed his expression, neither did he fail in his speech. His body fainted not, nor did his reason fail him as often happens to men about to die. He said, "'Oh cross, most welcome and longed for, with a willing mind, joyfully and desirously I come to you being the scholar of him which did hang on you because I have always been your lover and yearn to embrace you."

"You boys want to crucify me? There's a good spot, go for it. I belong to Jesus."

Matthew

"Matthew wrote his Gospel to the Jews in the Hebrew tongue after he had converted Ethiopia and all Egypt. Hircanius, the king, sent someone to kill him with a spear."

Philip

"After years of preaching to the barbarous nations, Philip was stoned, crucified, and buried with his daughter."

Peter

The first of the ten persecutions was stirred up by Nero about 64 A.D. His rage against Christians was so fierce that Eusebius records, "A man might then see cities full of men's bodies, the old lying together with the young, and the dead bodies of women cast out naked without reverence of that sex in the open streets." Many Christians in those days thought that Nero was the Antichrist because of his cruelty and abominations. The Apostle Peter was condemned to death during this persecution. Although some say that he escaped, it is known that many Christians encouraged him to leave the city and the story goes that as he came to the city gates, Peter saw Jesus coming to meet him. "Lord, where are you going?" Peter asked. "I am coming again to be crucified," was the answer. Seeing that his suffering was understood, Peter turned around, returned to the city where Jerome tells us he was crucified upside down at his own request, saying he was not worthy to be crucified the same way his Lord was.

John

"The second persecution began during the reign of Domitian, the brother of Titus. Domitian exiled John to the island of Patmos." It's an actual spot and I've been there. "But on Domitian's death, John was allowed to return to Ephesus in the year A.D. 70. He remained there until the reign of Trajan, governing the churches of Asia, and writing his Gospel until he died at about the age of one hundred."

But at a hundred, he may have had a lot of scars on his body, because before they exiled him, they tried to kill him. They boiled him alive, and he lived through it, so they exiled him for a while. He got out and wrote books of the Bible, as a boiled old man.

We're glad you come and see. You need to go and die.

Father God, I pray for us as a people. We're in a day where we get a lot of come-and-see. There are free sermons on the Internet, classes, training, Christian music, radio stations, radio preachers, church events, mass crusades, services, small groups. It seems, Lord God, like there are more come-and-see opportunities than any people have ever been offered in the history of the world. And God, we rejoice in the come-and-see opportunities. We rejoice that people come to hear the Bible and see lives change through Jesus.

But God, I pray for the grace of the Holy Spirit and the hearts and minds and the lives of our people, that they would respond to your call to become Christians, that they would respond to your call to persevere as Christians, that they would give like Christians should give, that they would serve like Christians should serve, that they would suffer like Christians should suffer, that they would testify like Christians should testify, and Lord God, I pray for the grace of the Holy Spirit on us as a people that we wouldn't just be a come-and-see people, that we'd be a go-and-die people. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Note: This has been a series on 11 Leadership Lessons from 12 Disciples, based on the recent sermon Jesus Calls the Twelve, on Luke 6:12-16.

Red Letter Music

Music from the Mars Hill band Red Letter. Pay what you want and download the full album now from Re:Sound.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
–Proverbs 8:3–4

We often care about other people’s opinion more than we care about God’s opinion. We worry about our status among fellow humans because we fail to grasp our identity in Jesus. When we fear man, we’re vulnerable. (I addressed this issue recently in a sermon about The Parable of the Sower—how fear of man keeps us from bearing fruit in our lives.)

“The fear of man lays a snare,” the Bible says, “but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe” (Proverbs 29:25). Here are eight consequences—snares—that can result from fear of man:

1. Idolatry. When we care about what man thinks more than what God thinks, we turn people into idols that we worship—seeking to please them in order to earn their approval or respect.
2. Ineffectiveness. When we fear man we neglect God’s calling for us and we lose focus on executing the tasks in front of us because we’re too preoccupied with what others are thinking.
3. Lack of love. When we’re overly concerned with “getting it right,” we turn people into projects to accomplish. We withhold our compassion and grow reserved and calculating in our pursuit of people.
4. Fakeness. If you’re overly motivated by the opinions of others, you won’t act like yourself. You’ll be a chameleon, adapting yourself to any situation for the sole purpose of fitting in.
5. Apathy. Fear man and you’ll quit taking risks because of the potential for embarrassment in failure. If an endeavor is unlikely to succeed, you’ll never take the chance. In other words, you’ll never do much of anything.
6. Dishonesty. It’s tough to speak truth into someone’s life because the truth can be painful. If we fear somebody’s response, however, necessary words will remain unsaid because we care more about ourselves (being liked) than we do about the person (seeing Jesus work in their life). This negligence always creates more long-term damage than the hurt it avoids in the present.
7. Isolation. Fear of man won’t let you delegate anything because others might not do a good job (or they might do a better job), which could reflect poorly on your performance and reputation. Fear of man compels you to control everything—even if that means going it alone.
8. Decision Paralysis. When we live out of fear rather than out of the convictions God has given us, we spin in circles unable to move forward.

I invite you to join me in respecting and honoring others and submitting to authority, but also in repenting of our fear of man. Fear and worship are reserved for God. In the end, only his opinion counts.

Find Pastor Jamie on Facebook and Twitter.

Total Church

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis present a vision for churches centered on gospel community. Find out more.