Joe Pursch
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Ephesians 2:19
Due to the changing nature of our American demographic, rare is the congregation these days that is entirely of one ethnic background, at least here on the West Coast. In my case, I serve as a Teaching Pastor for a congregation that represents three distinct languages and cultures. It’s true that the solid majority of our core congregation members are American-born and share the same background, but we have two sister congregations that are entirely made up of immigrant Christians. This makes for a real challenge when we seek to draw the three congregations together in order to do strategic ministry.
The biggest reason for the challenge is simply that cultures “listen” to leaders differently. Some people, like those from Western American culture, like to be invested in the process of leadership analysis and decisions. Western leaders therefore learn early on to be participative leaders. On the other hand, some culture groups from the Asian domain of our globe are extremely deferential to formal leaders, don’t feel comfortable giving them feedback, and most of the time seek to be aggressively led by their superiors, sometimes almost in a dictatorial fashion. Now at our particular church, we have to blend both sides of this cultural response of leadership into our working style with people. This can threaten to make you schizophrenic as an organizational leader, because your golden touch with one cultural group actually works directly against you when you use that same leadership style with the other group.
So what do you do? Do you try and teach one culture to be like the other culture? Well, I wouldn’t suggest it, because I have found out in my time in this ministry that all culture is essentially relative. No culture can really be said to be superior to any other culture, except in some extreme moral cases. That’s because culture simply develops out of the shared history of any group of people. In fact, my simplest definition of culture is this: culture is history. It’s simply the gathered experience of a group of people, a history that’s now an unconsciously told story among the people group, aquired simply because they have all lived through it together. Given this, who is to say that one group’s history is more valuable or less valuable than that of another?
But what you do when one people group’s cultural preferences lead them away from the pathway of Scripture? How do you convince them to change, and not have it all devolve into a simple argument of your culture being preferred over theirs?
Well, I think that you need to understand that for the Christian leader, Scripture trumps culture, including your very own. What I mean by this is that the Bible is very clear that when we came to Christ, we became citizens of another Kingdom. We left the kingdom of darkness and were transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. We became the servants of another King, and we became members of a different household, the household of faith. That means that we now have a relationship in the spirit that is far more important than any past or present relationship by blood or by culture. It also means that we answer now not simply to a personal history, but to a personal Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, when you are called as a leader to challenge someone from a different culture to change their behavior, I urge you to do it from the basis of Scripture and not from the basis of your own cultural preferences. The Word of God has been designed to pierce through to the thoughts and intentions of the heart. The Word of God abides upon someone’s soul when it is preached and as they listen closely to it, they experience revelatory truth. I mean by that that the Word of God is the only truth-source on the planet that is able to reveal itself to the inner heart of a redeemed soul. All other truth is received on a purely intellectual level; the Word of God is received at a deeply spiritual level. Therefore it’s able to break open the prejudices and mental habits that culture creates within all of us, and we experience the power of conviction and the urging to change, all authored by the Holy Spirit.
So, in my leadership life in the very challenging congregation in which I currently minister, I’m learning not to place one culture over another, and certainly not to place my own cultural viewpoints over other people’s. I’m learning instead to gather us all together under the shared teaching of the Word of God about whatever issue it is that I am seeking to lead and teach about. I don’t allow my preferences to do the talking… I let the Scripture do the talking. And I wait until the Holy Spirit allows the truth of his Word to germinate in hearts and to generate changed attitudes. Some people might say that’s a rather slow way to do ministry. Well, maybe so, but it keeps me out of the arena of personal pride, and when we do make progress as a gathered people in this ministry, we get there with an understanding that the only One who could have brought us together for all of this is the Lord, who united us at the cross first.
It was great to be back guest hosting again on AM 1100 KFAX in San Francisco last week. Jarel Martin (shown with me here) did a great job board producing/call screening as always. Topics for the shows included: David Platt and the emerging controversy over the nature of true and false conversions in churches, Singleness, Spirituality and the Evangelical Woman, and California’s pending law allowing minor children to have more than two parents.
Here’s the second thought-unit in my three part post on measuring success in ministry.
The best evidence of supernaturally effective ministry in a church may not be numerical growth in the early stages.
Don’t get me wrong… if we focus on making disciples, growth will eventually come, because disciple-making churches are healthy churches, and healthy churches grow. But the path to deep and healthy growth is often long. In fact, if the stated goal of a church is to make deeply committed disciples of Jesus, that church may well struggle with numerical growth initially. Consider the ministry experience of Jesus Himself. As His call to radical discipleship deepened, the size of His crowds dwindled ( see John 6, whole chapter). What are to make of this in the “dramatic-growth-conditioned” mindset of modern church leadership? I can only speak from my experience and tell you this: disciple-focused ministries can and do experience numerical growth, but this growth possesses a twofold quality: it is slow but strong.
Slow. Disciple-focused churches don’t have big surges in attendance like other more attraction-based ministries often do. They also don’t suffer from as many dramatic drop-offs in attendance as those ministries do, as the novelty of what attracted people initially wears off or staff or programs change. Disciple-making churches focus on a more relationally – intensive form of ministry. They also make a different promise both to the God-seeker and the established believer: they are calling people not to come and experience something, but to come along and become someone. The important thing to note is that although this kind of growth may be more gradual, it tends to be growth that lasts. Why? Because becoming a disciple means experiencing deeper maturity, and deeper maturity means deeper commitment to both ministries and relationships in the Body. Slow growing but long lasting… a good combination.
Strong. Disciple-making churches also sometimes see other types of growth that transcend simple numbers: people growing in personal victory and godliness as they experience true spiritual transformation, new leaders stepping up for the first time in a lifetime to influence and disciple others, men and women sensing the call of God to commit to full-time ministry and foreign missions, and everyday people using their newly discovered spiritual gifts in ministry to other believers and in authentic outreach to their lost friends and neighbors. Pastors I know who are driving attraction-based ministries are often happy about their attendance but ready to quit out of exhaustion from spinning all the plates necessary to keep new people coming. By contrast, pastors who are cultivating disciple-making ministries are sometimes insecure about their numbers but seem to be more satisfied in their ministries, perhaps because the game they are in is more often populated with stories of deep change like I’ve listed here.
Please don’t misunderstand; I’m not labeling any style or leader as wrong or ineffective. Nor am I laying out a case for low growth or mediocre numerical performance in ministry as justified by a focus on building disciples vs. simply attracting attenders. I’m just sharing some thoughts after two decades in ministry regarding what I am really in the game to achieve at this point in my life. My experience has been that disciple-making as the chief goal in church ministry creates a clear understanding of what we are all laboring for that bridges the expectation-gaps in numerical attendance and keeps leaders in the game of ministry long-term.
Theodulf sings in prison...Billy Graham’s season of fear… William Tyndale’s one-note-revolution… George Mueller’s “monster stats”… Theophilus, a heart for God and for the ages. Click below to listen:
Transforming Moments Theodulf In Prison
Transforming Moments Billy Graham’s Season of Fear
Transforming Moments William Tyndale’s One-Note Revolution
Transforming Moments George Mueller’s Monster Ministry Stats
This week on the broadcast join me as I relate some of the untold experiences of the man who told the story of God’s redeeming and faithful grace to generations of spiritually hungry pilgrims with unforgettable vividness and depth. This week it’s the transforming story of the tinker turned pastor, John Bunyan,author of Pilgrim’s Progress. Click on the links below to listen to each day’s broadcast.
Transforming Moments Bunyans Conversion
Transforming Moments Bunyans Preaching Call
Transforming Moments Bunyans Patience
What does “success” in ministry look like? Among pastors, this is a frequent if sometimes unspoken question. The answer to the “success question” when it comes to ministry is made complicated today by all of the terms and performance standards that have subtly been imported into the ministry from secular industry. So we need to do some re-translating before we answer the question. Recently I was rolling the issue over in my mind, and came up with three ideas that are helping to guide me as I answer the question. Here’s the first one:
Be careful about measuring supernatural work by natural factors. Ministry is a work of and by the Spirit, done through the submissive lives of disciples, who are led and equipped by gifted elders and pastor-teachers (Ephesians 4:11-16). It is a working in human lives, in the realm of the spirit, touching human character and behavior. It is a work that is largely done Scripture to soul and heart to heart. It is a unique kind of work. And this kind of “deep water” spiritual work can’t always be measured by dramatic outer results in terms of numbers, program growth, or ministry popularity.
An example comes to mind of great missionaries like Adoniram Judson in Burma, who labored for seven long years before seeing a single person decide for Christ. The character of Judson’s life and the fruitfulness of that field after he planted the seeds of his labor both testify today to the fact that he was anything but a failure. And yet, if the outward measures that we often associate with ministry success today were applied to his life and ministry way back then, he might’ve been removed from the field by people looking at things with an eye for outer results alone.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is a place for outer results and a time to expect them. I’ll deal with this question in a future post. But my leading idea in regard to evaluating ministry successes remains this one: supernatural fruitfulness cannot always be naturally or outwardly measured. In fact, God can be working in powerful ways through His Word, drawing souls to Himself and building believers in intimate communion with Christ without the evident results “moving the needle” of our natural factors of evaluation. Indeed, there have been some dry stretches in my ministry career when I couldn’t have kept preaching if I hadn’t believed this.
Look for Part Two of “Measuring Success in Ministry” in my next post.
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Jesus Christ: The Easter Interview
Come and walk with two discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus and experience their unexpected interview with the Risen Jesus. May your heart burn within you as theirs did under the unfolding of the Scripture from the Master’s heart that day. Click the link below to listen:
The Spirit Driven Church:How The Impossible Can Become Actual In The Life Of The Church Today
What would it be like to be part of a church that attempted the impossible every day, and regularly saw God make the impossible become actual? How can a church count on God to transform the lives of lost people in an eternal way, no matter what struggles with sin they may face? And what happens when a modern church adopts the Core Values of the very first church? Recently I explored these questions in a three part message series from the Book of Acts. So how about it? Can the impossible really become the actual in the life of a modern church? Click the titles below to listen and find out .
The Spirit Driven Church Part One Acts 1:1-11
What I call “The Christian Constants” are the most underrated blessings of what it means to know Christ in a life-giving way.
We spend too much time trying to get God to make improvements in the changeable dimensions of our lives ( work tensions, dollar dilemmas, even predictable strains with our kids) but we spend too little time luxuriating in the Constants that His cross-work has already guaranteed in our lives. Things like the constant peace of mind that being on morally forgiven ground with God brings, or the constant baseline of joy that is ours when we spend consistent time in His presence and get better at keeping His commandments in our daily decisions.
I explained this Guaranteed Pathway to Joy recently in an exposition of the final verse of one of the greatest messages Jesus ever delivered, His sermonic allegory on The Abiding Life in John 15:1-11. I was blessed in the revisiting of this classic passage, and I hope you will be too.
Click the link below to listen:
Holding The Line In Your Ministry
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” 2 Timothy 4:7
Ministry is not a career choice, nor a profession. It is more often a war. It’s a spiritual conflict that’s waged on a human scale, by weak but dedicated warriors. It’s a lifestyle involving nearly constant battle for serious stakes: captured souls and stolen glory all taken out of the hands of a wicked enemy for the sake of a wonderful King. For the Apostle Paul, ministry often meant conflict and confusion, short stays and slander, riots, beatings, show trials and midnight escapes. No, it was we moderns who added the “professional” dimension to ministry, much later in the pastoral pilgrimage. But ministry is a battle first. Always has been.And battles are often ugly, costly and chaotic.
If you are an Elder or a vocational Pastor and right now you’re going through a firefight in your ministry, don’t confuse yourself by thinking that what you’re experiencing is unusual. The effort to free people from the dominance of sin, even redeemed people, can be a grim work at times.Paul said he served in ministry “With all humility, tears and trials”. And yet through it all, right up to the very end, he ran that race with joy. He called the last days of his ministry experience the final battle of the good fight. Christian leader, don’t reproach yourself if you find you’re in a battle today. Thank God for the privilege of being involved in the conflict for the souls of men and women. And stand into the battle line where God has placed you, one more time.