Be A Foolish Preacher

June 15, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Pastor, do you realize how clever we try to be?

  • We come up with a catchy sermon series and add some stylish graphics.
  • Then we labor over sermon titles that sound so compelling.
  • As we write our sermons we try to dream up memorable patterns, like all three of our main points start with “S,” or we spell out the word “P.E.A.C.E.”

When the truth of the matter is, what we’re saying is foolishness.

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. (1 Corinthians 1:20-25)

You don’t have to try to make God’s Word clever. It is already profound!

You don’t have to try to make it memorable. The Holy Spirit makes it memorable (John 14:26)!

You don’t have to make the Bible relevant. It is the most relevant, applicable wisdom that humanity has ever known! 

D.L. Moody said it this way:

“If God has given you a message, go and give it to the people as God has given it to you. It is a stupid thing for a man to try to be eloquent. Make your message, and not yourself, the most prominent thing. Don’t be self-conscious. Set your heart on what God has given you to do, and don’t be so foolish as to let your own difficulties or your own abilities stand in the way.”

Don’t try to be clever. Just be Spirit-led and you will utter the most profound, compelling, and memorable words ever spoken by a preacher!

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Thursdays With Oswald—In Christ I Can

May 17, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.

In Christ I Can

     We are made sons and daughters of God through the Atonement and we have a tremendous dignity to maintain; we have no business to bow our necks to any yoke saving the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ [Matthew 11:28-30]. …

     Every detail of our physical life is to be absolutely under the control of the new disposition which God planted in us by means of identification with Jesus Christ, and we shall no longer be allowed to murmur ‘can’t.’ There is no such word as ‘can’t’ in a Christian’s vocabulary if he is rightly related to God; there is only one word and that is ‘can.’

From Biblical Psychology

Sometimes Christians are known more for what we’re against than what we’re for. I think Oswald Chambers would say that is because we don’t really understand the full power of the Atonement.

We can better understand that word by saying it “at one-ment.” We have been made one with Christ. You hear this in Jesus’ prayer for us in John 17, “I in them and You in Me, in order that they may become one and perfectly united, that the world may know and definitely recognize that You sent Me and that You have loved them even as You have loved Me.”

When we are in this sort of relationship, we don’t even say can’t to sin. Instead, we say I can live a holy life because of Christ in me!

As Paul said, we can say:

I CAN do everything through Christ Who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13)

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A Warning To Shepherds

May 12, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

If you are a pastor, God sees you as a shepherd (see John 21:15-17; 1 Peter 5:1-4).

If you are a shepherd, there is a heavy responsibility on you to lovingly, attentively care for God’s precious sheep. We cannot shirk this responsibility for even a moment.

God loves His sheep so much that He gave His sheep YOU!

God loves His sheep so much that He will remove you, if He has to.

Consider this:

“What sorrow awaits the leaders of My people—the shepherds of My sheep—for they have destroyed and scattered the very ones they were expected to care for,” says the Lord. Therefore, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to these shepherds: “Instead of caring for My flock and leading them to safety, you have deserted them and driven them to destruction. Now I will pour out judgment on you for the evil you have done to them. …Then I will appoint responsible shepherds who will care for them, and they will never be afraid again. Not a single one will be lost or missing. I, the Lord have spoken!” (Jeremiah 23:1, 2, 4)

This is a HEAVY word, and should not be taken lightly.

Pastor, never assume you are leading God’s sheep in the right paths. Ask the Holy Spirit to tell you if you are leading God’s sheep in the right paths!

UPDATE: This post was one of the seed thoughts that went into fashioning my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter.

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What Is “Success” For A Church?

May 11, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

“How’s it going,” a fellow pastor asked me. “How’s your church doing?”

If you’re a pastor, you probably get asked this often. How do you answer this question? Do you tell them what your attendance was on Sunday morning? Or about the newest program you’ve started?

When you look in the mirror and ask yourself, “How’s it going,” is your answer related to nickels and noses (offerings and attendance)? Is it how many people complimented your last sermon?

Listen to these sobering words:

Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin. The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which we now live. 

…We have a commercialized view—we count how many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and then we think everything is all right. (Oswald Chambers)

We need to be very careful about how we define “success” in a church setting. Let’s use Jesus as our example:

  • How big was His congregation? Twelve men. One betrayed Him, nine ran away when the going got tough, and one denied he even knew Him. Even after being raised from the dead (!) there were only 120 people in the upper room.
  • How much money did His church have? Not even enough to buy a gravesite for the Messiah.
  • What did people think of His sermons? Some of His sermons made people so mad they wanted to stone Him. And after one sermon the Bible says: From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him (John 6:66).

Maybe “success” in the church is more like…

  • …people being reconciled to God. Remembering that “our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them” (Chambers).
  • …seeing disengaged people becoming actively involved in engaging others with the Gospel.
  • …“Never seek[ing] after anything other than the approval of God” (Chambers).
  • …to say with Jesus, “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

These are just some of my thoughts. What else should be on this list? How would you define “success” in the church?

I have also shared some questions that can help pastors and ministry leaders better gauge the level of effectiveness in their ministry.

UPDATE: This post was one of the seed thoughts that went into fashioning my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter.

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Do You Know Your Community?

April 20, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Jesus called His followers to be salt and light. It’s pretty easy to figure out that the salt cannot season the food if it stays in the saltshaker, and the light cannot illuminate the darkness if it stays covered up. In order to season and shine in your community, you have to know your community.

And, pastor, that starts with you.

What you do is a much more effective sermon that what you say. Pastor, you need to know your community, so that you can be involved in your community, so that you and your church can season and shine in your community together.

So let me ask a couple of questions:

  • Do you know your Mayor / City Manager / Township Supervisor? If you don’t know them, how can you affirm their leadership (Romans 13:1-7)?
  • Do you attend City / Township Council meetings? If you don’t, how will you know what issues they’re wrestling with? If you don’t know those issues, how can you pray effectively for them (1 Timothy 2:1-2)?
  • Are you involved in your community? Don’t just assume people in your community will come to your church to sit among stranger to hear a stranger speak; instead, be so involved in your community that they will come to church to fellowship with friends and hear a friend speak (John 2:1-2).

I opened with the question, “Do you know your community?” But maybe a better way to ask this is, “Does your community know you?”

Does the community come to you to ask for help? This may be the best barometer of your involvement in your community: how often they seek your help or assistance in addressing issues within your community.

If you’re not as involved as you should be, the good news is that it’s never too late to start! Go get involved—go season and shine!

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Harmless

April 13, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

When a story from the past is so well known, we can easily insert ourselves into it with a certain bias. When we do this, we read things into the story because of the facts we know now.

For instance, we know Judas betrays Jesus. So when we see his name in any story in the Bible, we immediately associate the word traitor with him, and we can only view him through that lens. Therefore, it’s easy for us to put ourselves in the place of one of the other eleven disciples of Jesus, and assume that they too knew Judas was a traitor.

Except they didn’t.

Look at this verse after Jesus says, “One of you will betray Me”—

His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them He meant. (John 13:22)

The Eleven were not suspicious of Judas. They didn’t say, “Well, I just knew it was him,” or “I kinda expected that from Judas.”

One of the things Jesus taught His followers was for them to be gentle as doves. I like how the King James Version says it: harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16).

Pastor, I know you especially have been hurt by people in your church. They have betrayed you, gossiped about you, turned on you. If people did that to Jesus, why would you expect anything less? And yet we are still to remain harmless as doves.

The Eleven never suspected a traitor. They were innocent. I think they were so focused on Jesus, they didn’t have time to be cynical about others. We view Judas cynically; they didn’t.

What a testimony to others when we are harmless:

That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and depraved nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world. (Philippians 2:15)

You may have been hurt many (many, many, many…) times in the past. But being harmless means that, like the disciples, we are “at a loss” as to whom it could be when someone tells us there is a traitor in our midst.

  • Stay focused on Jesus, so you may love others as He loves them.
  • Allow God to heal the wounds others have inflicted on you.
  • Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal any cynicism in your heart.
  • Repent of your suspicion of people.
  • Be harmless toward everyone.
  • Grieve over the traitor.
  • Then stay focused on Jesus, not the traitor and not your wound.
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Remaining

April 11, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

In John 15, Jesus uses a Greek word that gets translated in the English as remain fifteen times. If anyone uses a single word that many times, you know it must be important. The same Greek word is also translated in and last in this same passage. The word means:

  1. continually present (in reference to time), and
  2. not leaving a certain orientation (in reference to state or condition).

The big idea Jesus is trying to convey here is connectedness. So I’m asking myself, Is my life so connected and reliant on Christ’s life, that it is nearly impossible to perceive two? Do we look and operate like one? Is my life completely sustained by His life? When people look at me, can they tell I am remaining in Jesus?

This same Greek word is translated living in (John 14:10) when Jesus says, “It is the Father living in Me, Who is doing His work.” When we see Jesus, we see the oneness—the remaining—between Father, Son, and Spirit.

This same remaining oneness is possible for me because of the promise of a Helper. Jesus said the Counselor (the Holy Spirit) would be with you (John 14:16). This is the exact same Greek word. The word is used again in the following verse: He lives with you and will be in you.

The Holy Spirit helps me look more and more like Jesus. He helps me remain. He develops the oneness.

Oh, marvel of marvels! To be one with Jesus! To remain—to last! To have Him in me, and I in Him!

I want to remain more deeply, more “one-ly,” that God may be glorified in the lasting fruit that my remaining will allow Him to produce.

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Thursdays With Oswald—The New Thinking Of Pentecost

April 5, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.

The New Thinking Of Pentecost

     Everywhere the charge is made against Christian people, not only the generality of Christians, but really spiritual people, that they think in a very slovenly manner. Very few of us in this present dispensation live up to the privilege of thinking spiritually as we ought. This present dispensation is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. The majority of us do not think according to the tremendous meaning of that; we think ante-Pentecostal thoughts, the Holy Spirit is not a living factor in our thinking; we have only a vague impression that He is here. Many Christian workers would question the statement that we should ask for the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13). The note struck in the New Testament is not ‘Believe in the Holy Spirit,’ but ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ That does not mean the Holy Spirit is not here; it means He is here in all His power, for one purpose, that men who believe in Him might receive Him. So the first thing we have to face is the reception of the Holy Spirit in a practical conscious manner. …

     So as Christians we have to ask ourselves, does our faith stand ‘in demonstration of the Spirit and of power’? Have we linked ourselves up with the power of the Holy Spirit, and are we letting Him have His way in our thinking?

From Biblical Ethics

There are two dangerous extremes: (1) We can become so intellectual, that we never ask for the Holy Spirit’s help, or (2) We can become so “spiritual” that we ignore the development of our intellect.

I believe the proper balance is a both-and approach.

  • In the Old Testament, David asked for the Holy Spirit to search his heart and thoughts (Psalm 139:23-24).
  • Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth (John 16:13), and that He would help us to recall the things we have heard from Christ (John 14:26).
  • The apostle Paul talked about the Holy Spirit searching our mind and revealing God’s mind to us (1 Corinthians 2:10-16).

(check out all of the above Scriptures by clicking here.)

All of these speak of a partnership. We have to do our part AND we have to listen to the Holy Spirit’s voice. And from personal experience, I’ve found that I think much more clearly and thoroughly when I listen to the Holy Spirit!

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Here Comes Trouble!

April 4, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Do you see it on the horizon? Storm clouds building, blowing in fast; wind picking up; something ominous in the air. Here comes trouble!

Jesus certainly did as He talked with His followers just before His arrest and crucifixion. Just before the storm hit, here’s what He said…

I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

I find something reassuring about Jesus telling me that I will have trouble. Not that trouble is enjoyable (at all!). But what is enjoyable is knowing that He knows. Nothing takes Jesus by surprise!

Jesus said that I would find my peace when I remain IN Him. When I see trouble coming, my natural tendency is to start doing things for myself. I start making plans, giving orders, gathering resources, hunkering down in my foxhole. In reality, all this does nothing but increase my level of anxiety!

Jesus has overcome. So when I stay IN Him, I overcome too.

Here’s what I’ve learned about how to stay IN Him…

  • Stay in the Word every day, but especially when I see trouble coming.
  • Stay in prayer; in fact, I should increase my prayer times.
  • Stay in worship because I don’t want to focus on the storm, but on the Overcomer.
  • Stay in contact with my friends and ask them to join me in prayer.

Check out this prayer David penned when he saw trouble coming. It’s still a great prayer for you and me today:

Keep me safe, O God, for IN You I take refuge. I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing.” Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure. You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy IN your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand. (Psalm 16:1, 2, 9, 11)

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Temptation

April 3, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Have you ever thought, “Well, of course Jesus could say ‘no’ to temptation! After all, He is God.”

Yes, Jesus is fully God. But He is also fully Man. And it was as a Man that He defeated temptation.

“As a Man, without using any of His divine powers, Jesus defeated temptation in the same areas where Eve failed and where we fail. … By this He condemned sin in sinful man, that is, He showed we sin, not because we have to sin, but because we choose to sin and because we ignore the help available through the Word and the Spirit.” —Stanley Horton

We don’t have to sin, but we choose to sin.

Ouch!

“In His temptation, Jesus did not use His divine power to defeat the devil. Still identifying Himself with us as Spirit-filled human, He defeated satan by the same means that are available to us — the Word, anointed by the Spirit. Eve, tempted in exactly the same areas—the lust of the flesh (appetite), the lust of the eyes (desire), and the pride of life—failed (Genesis 3:6; 1 John 2:16). In these areas, which John says together comprise the things of the world or worldliness (1 John 2:15). Jesus won a complete victory for us. He has truly overcome the world (John 16:33). We can do the same by our faith (1 John 5:4).” —Stanley Horton

We can do the same thing. Instead of saying, “I gave in to temptation,” we can say, “I gave in to the Holy Spirit, Who helped me defeat temptation!”

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