Cody Thomas

Back in the day, more specifically antebellum America days (late 1700s-early 1800s), church denominations utilized a system of pastoring called “circuit riding”. Here’s how it worked. In that time period, much of frontier America was made up of small towns, or barely even that. Most of the frontier was very sparsely populated. Most areas barely had enough people to create a decent sized congregation and especially couldn’t pay for a full-time pastor to stay there. So, these “circuit riders” would be appointed a circuit of rural villages and unorganized settlements. They would travel this circuit of settlements, ministering to each town’s congregation as they were passing through.

This form of pastoring, although probably not the most ideal, seemed to work well for these small settlements. There was no way to pay a pastor to stay there full time, so it only made sense that each congregation in an area covering five or six towns could provide some financial support, which, when put together, could support a pastor for all of them.

Well, these are different times and we certainly live in a different America. Yes, lots of America is fairly rural, but nothing like the frontier. So I don’t think the need of circuit riding senior pastors is quite necessary so much. However, I want to propose something else.

With the emergence of so many “megachurches” in America over the past decade, I think we have seen the extreme benefit of having a large church support staff with people working in very specific skilled areas. I mean, think about it. How much better would ministry be if the youth pastor wasn’t also the “Weekend Service Production Director”, “Worship Leader”, “Web Designer”, “Graphic Designer”, “Tech Guru”, and “Video Editor”? Instead of the youth pastor (who should be freed to actually spend his/her week on reaching students) designing the church’s website just because he/she knows what a blog is, how much better would ministry be if you had people who are actually gifted and skilled in those areas doing those things?

I know much of what I mentioned is technology-based skill sets. However, with the exponential rise of the use of the web and technology in general as a means of advancing the Kingdom and sharing the Gospel, I think that those skills are vital to a growing church. In today’s age and society, the web is the largest new frontier for advancing the Gospel and creating community. Also, the use of graphic design, sermon series branding, video media, etc. is becoming more and more a vital source for marketing and using art/design to tell the redemptive story of the Gospel. Graphic design and video media are the stained glass windows of today.

So here’s my point. Back in the 1700s, these frontier congregations couldn’t afford to hire a pastor for their church. However, denominations knew that they had to advance the Gospel into the frontier that was open to be won, so they banned together to be able support a “circuit rider” for their area. Today, most churches certainly can NOT afford to hire tech or design people. They don’t have a budget for a video editor or a web strategist. I believe that today’s churches need to realize that their is a new frontier (web/tech/media) to be won for the Kingdom, and they can do so by banning together to support what I would call today’s circuit riders.

What if five, six, or maybe a dozen or more churches in one area or one denomination banned together to each pay a “circuit riding” web designer/strategist who did work for each church dividing up his/her days or weeks between those churches? Or what about a “circuit riding” graphic designer who designed all the sermon series brandings, bulletins, flyers, and more for all the churches in a denominational district or area? Or maybe a “circuit riding” designer who did both web and graphic design? Many churches couldn’t afford a good full time designer, but they might be able to afford a good designer a few hours a week. And if just a few churches did that, we would have a modern circuit rider…or maybe “circuit designer”.

I truly think, if taken seriously and done strategically, this concept of “circuit riding” ministers of design and ministers of technology has the possibility of creating better equipped churches for reaching more people with the Gospel and advancing the Kingdom.

Alright people. Bring your thoughts.

In the beginning, the Gospel was spread across dinner tables and martyred in coliseums. Now the Gospel is taboo at our dinner tables and we have to go to church coliseums to spread it.

There is something about that reversal that does not sit well with me. We handed off our personal responsibility to the Gospel to the production staff of a now highly “corporatized” church.

The Church still has its place. The Gospel still advances on Sundays from stages and microphones. However, I am now convinced that the Gospel has to be advanced on a personal level from our homes, not just coliseums. We have a responsibility to the Gospel message we claim and to the God that loves us to proclaim that Gospel from our dinner tables and living rooms to our friends and neighbors. Not just to pawn it off to the corporate world of churches.

The Gospel is grassroots. Not hierarchical.

Thoughts?

Recently, I saw a re-airing of an episode of 60 Minutes in which they did a segment on Joel Osteen. Joel Osteen is the lead pastor of the largest church in America, Lakewood Church, located in Houston. They meet each Sunday in a 15,000 seat sports arena (which took $100 million to renovate when it was given to the church).

You can watch the segment and read the whole interview here on CBS’s website.

What made me enjoy this segment most was the words of Rev. Michael Horton, a professor of theology at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California. He has this to say about Joel Osteen’s message:

I think it’s a cotton candy gospel. His core message is: God is nice, you’re nice, be nice. If it were a form of music, I think it would be easy listening. He uses the Bible like a fortune cookie. ‘This is what’s gonna happen for you.’ ‘There’s gonna be a windfall in your life tomorrow.’ The Bible’s not meant to be read that way… It is certainly heresy, I believe, to say that God is our resource for getting our best life now. Well, it makes religion about us instead of about God.

Thank you, Rev. Horton!

Even the interviewer, Bryan Pitts, says this of Osteen:

Osteen preaches his own version of what is known as the “prosperity gospel” — that God is a loving, forgiving God who will reward believers with health, wealth and happiness. It’s the centerpiece of every sermon.

Read this excerpt from the interview:

But the real money for Osteen comes from his book sales, which are re-packaged versions of his sermons. His latest book, “Become A Better You,” for which he reportedly got a $13 million advance, debuted in October at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and has stayed on the list ever since. The book lays out seven principles he believes will improve our lives.

“To become a better you, you must be positive towards yourself, develop better relationships, embrace the place where you are. Not one mention of God in that. Not one mention of Jesus Christ in that,” Pitts remarks.

“That’s just my message. There is scripture in there that backs it all up. But I feel like, Byron, I’m called to help people…how do we walk out the Christian life? How do we live it? And these are principles that can help you. I mean, there’s a lot better people qualified to say, ‘Here’s a book that going to explain the scriptures to you.’ I don’t think that’s my gifting,” Osteen says.

What I really want to understand is if Osteen believes he is NOT gifted to explain the scriptures to people, then why the heck is he pastoring thousands of people and taking on the responsibility of teaching all of them each week from the living Word?!?! The pastor who preaches regularly is responsible to be the one person in that community of people who is most trained in understanding the Scriptures as deeply as possible, so as to be able to correctly explain them for the chance that those listening would take those Scriptures to heart and live them out. The pastor is to be the local theologian for those people. The pastor is to give his life and time to doing his best to understand the Scriptures and correctly lead people to those truths in order to see life transformation. If he KNOWS he is not gifted and trained in doing that, then stop! By saying he knows he’s not gifted in that, Osteen has completely negated his own authority to use Scripture for teaching. So he might as well just become some life coach or Dr. Phil. The only thing that would change about his message is he would stop twisting the few verses of Scripture that he’s ever read and used.

I’m not claiming that anyone else has the understanding of Scripture down. If that were so, how do we explain the two thousand years of conflicting ideas about interpretational issues? I certainly don’t believe that I have it down. Far from it, in fact. I am a student of the Scriptures and I will die a student as well. However, I also know that I am a servant of the Scriptures. Osteen treats the Scripture as if it is there to serve him in supporting his self-help campaign. He treats it as if it, along with God himself, are here to serve us. He would be better suited to be a writer for a fortune cookie company than take on teaching the Scriptures.

I know that all my understandings of God and the Scriptures are not completely right. There are other traditions of theology and beliefs within Christianity that have valid beliefs and understandable interpretations of Scripture to lead them there. I can accept that, loving them as brothers and sisters under the same Jesus. However, there come some who do completely pervert the Gospel message of servanthood and humility and make it about gaining wealth and prosperity. That sort of obvious twisting of the Gospel can not be validated as just another sect of Christian interpretation. That is a complete disregard for who Jesus was, what Jesus did in GIVING all of himself for humanity, and what Jesus taught us to do (follow him and his example of servanthood). Listen to Jesus’ teaching to his disciples in Mark 8:34-36, right after Jesus taught that he must suffer and die soon.

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (ESV)

This doesn’t sound like the Jesus of Osteen’s gospel. This is the Jesus who said, “I must give everything I have for those who don’t deserve it because I love them. Now, if you want to follow me, you must live like me.” We have to understand that when Jesus asked them to “follow me,” that was a loaded statement! That wasn’t simply, “Walk behind me.” It wasn’t even just, “Walk with me and worship me.” It was, “I’m going to give all of me for you. Go and do likewise.” Paul understood this as well. Listen to these words from Philippians 2:3-8.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (NIV)

That is the Gospel message. God who came down from all glory and honor to give it all away in a horrible, human death for the sake of all humanity. God who asks those who follow Him to follow His example of sacrifice and servanthood. That is the beautiful yet arduous Gospel.

So I’m on a John Piper kick. Here’s some more wise words:

We got news at our church that Ruby Aliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon. Ruby Aliason. Over 80, single all her life. A nurse. Poured her life out for one thing–to make Jesus Christ known among the sick and the poor in the hardest and most unreached places. Laura Edwards. A medical doctor in the twin cities, partnering up with Ruby, also pushing 80, and going from village to village in Cameroon, and the brakes give way, over a cliff they go, and they’re dead instantly. And I asked my people: is this a tragedy? Two women, in their 80’s almost, their whole lives devoted to one idea, Jesus Christ magnified among the poor and the sick in the hardest places. And 20 years after most of their American counterparts have begun to throw their lives away on trivialities in Florida and New Mexico, they fly into eternity with a death in a moment: is this a tragedy I asked? It is not a tragedy. I’ll read you what a tragedy is.
I’ve got a little article here from Reader’s Digest. This is a tragedy. The title of the article, “Start Now, Retire Early.” February 1998. (reading from the article): “Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball, and collect…shells.”
That’s a tragedy. That’s a tragedy, and there are people in this country who are spending billions of dollars to get you to buy it…Don’t buy it. Don’t buy that dream. The American Dream. A nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells…as the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account with what you did. ‘Here it is, Lord, my shell collection! Look, Lord, my shell collection. And I’ve got a good swing. And look at my boat…God, look at my boat!’
Don’t waste your life.

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…” Galatians 6:14

So, taking this verse, what do we do with the other verses where Paul boasts in other things:

you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus. -2 Cor. 1:14

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. -2 Cor. 11:30

we boast about your perseverance and faith -2 Thess. 1:4

So what do we do with this? Does Paul contradict himself? Not really. John Piper, theologian and pastor, discusses the subject:

“When Christ died, He purchased for sinners everything they enjoy that is not part of their condemnation. We are sinners all. All we deserve is damnation. The only thing that everyone deserves is damnation. That’s all we deserve. Therefore, every beat of your heart, every sight with a wholesome eye, every word sung to the Lord, every movement of a strong arm, every step taken with healthy legs, every word heard with a healthy eardrum, every friend at your side, every word you can read, every joy that springs in your heart, it is a blood-bought gift which you would not have had He not died. Therefore, if you boast or glory in one of these things, it is, if you are thinking rightly, a glorying in and a boasting in the cross because He bought them for you on the cross. Let every legitimate pleasure and every pain that God turns for your good become an occasion for glorying in the cross by which they were purchased for you.”