The last week has been hard on me emotionally. I will not tell you everything that has been going on in my heart and mind but I will tell you that on Sunday I hit a low point. There were few people in worship and I thought the sermon did not go well. Then I taught Sunday School and the kids seemed bored. The rest of the day was spent mulling over my life and the events of the day. Finally on Sunday evening I sat down at my computer to catch up on the day’s events. On a whim I posted a statement on Facebook that simply said:

I was not quite prepared for what happened next. There were 28 replies to my original post. All of them were very supportive of me and my ministry. Some people emailed me personally. Some people stopped by the office on Monday. My elders encouraged me and prayed for me. It was an outpouring of love and support that brightened my day.

Last night as I lie in bed I was thinking about everyone’s kind words I had one clearly defined thought, “How do people get through life without a faith community? Yesterday I was clearly given three things by my Church.

1. Encouragement. The word encouragement means to give someone support, confidence or hope. While I felt bad about my leadership in the Church numerous people spoke about the difference I had made in their life. They gave me hope when I was feeling down.

Side Note – The best encouragement is specific. A personal story or comment takes it to a new level of helpful. (Thanks for sharing)

2. Prayer. Several people just let me know they were praying for me. This is frequently the best thing people can do. Whenever you do not know how to help someone, prayer is the answer.

3. Togetherness. Several people just reminded me that I am not alone. Everyone has a bad day now and then. All of us feel like a failure at one time or another. Most people have a day when they feel the weight of the world crushing them. It is good to know that other people have made it through tough days for the better and the same will happen for me. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just sit quietly with people and let them know you are there with them and for them.

The Church is a place where there are flawed people who gather in the name of Jesus. They make a lot of mistakes with each other that are sometime regrettable. Other times the Church is a place of support, encouragement and prayer. It is a group of people who help each other in their walk with God. The Church has been that for me. I hope that you find it that way for you too.

It happened again yesterday. Attendance in worship was way down. I have spent the last 24 hours thinking about it.

In the first day of a freshman practical ministry class I was told “Don’t evaluate your ministry effectiveness based on your Church’s attendance.” Every preacher knows that. Most of them parrot it over and over to themselves on Monday morning in order to keep their sanity. But if you want to know the truth – all of us still do it. Every minister I know has an intimate connection to the amount of people they serve each week. When attendance is up we feel confident and secure. When attendance is down we feel like a failure with little self-confidence. No matter how hard a preacher tries to tell you that is not the case, he is lying.

Before you hop to judgement there are some good reasons for this.

1. Preaching is Extremely Personal. I am not just teaching some facts, I am also sharing my life. This is what I believe. This is what I am trying to live every day. This is what I am being challenged by. I am sharing stories and struggles from my life. In part a rejection of Church is also a rejection of me.

2. The Gospel Message is Extremely Significant. At the end of the day I am not just trying to get people to buy another widget. I am not speaking to people just to encourage them. I am sharing what I believe is the life changing message of the gospel. I want people to hear and respond to Jesus and lack of attendance means that fewer people will hear the message. I believe heaven and hell are at stake an every person matters to God.

3. Spiritual Growth is Hard to Measure Any Other Way. A minister friend of mine was remodeling his house. I asked him about juggling work, family and the remodel. He told me that he found it energizing because when he did a remodeling project he could actually see something get started and bring it to completion. Then he added, “And I don’t get to do that in Church.”
Spiritual growth is hard to measure and it is never finished. I can measure Bible reading, prayer time, giving and service but I also have to include Church attendance. You can disagree with me, but in 23 years of ministry I have yet to meet one growing Christian who did not attend Church regularly. What I mean is that rarely is someone growing in the other measurable areas of spirituality without being a part of Church regularly.
I want to see people grow and attendance is one metric to show if I am doing my job well.

4. I Wonder Why People Are Not Here. Did I offend them? Do they need someone to talk to them or pray with them? Are they leaving the Church? Are they mad at me or someone in my family? Did I teach something wrong? What happened? People miss Church for legitimate reasons but some miss because of my past failures. The other possibility is that I am currently failing them as a pastor. These are personal questions that spin out of every empty seat on Sunday morning.

5. God Is Molding Me Too. I have to remember that God is teaching me in everything. That means when attendance is down I ask myself, “God, what are you trying to teach me?” That is a very personal question. Is he teaching me to trust Him more? Is He showing me my pride and arrogance in the past with present failure? Have I been trusting my own clever ideas rather than His spirit? Attendance numbers can be a reflection of my spiritual walk, that is something I can only evaluate through a week of prayer and reflection.

These are just a couple of the reasons that Sundays when attendance is down lead me into a self-doubt and insecurity. They lodge into a preacher’s brain and push him to ask question and evaluate everything. I know I was told not to do this, but I think I have good reasons. I do not want anyone to attend Church to make me happy, but when people attend Church to worship the Lord, it definitely makes me happy.

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*NOTE* No comments will be accepted to this post.

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I have a little pamphlet in my office that is entitled “Never Read a Verse of Scripture.” The main point of this little booklet is to remind us that the Bible did not come to us as random verses here and there. Instead the Bible books come to us as complete documents or letters. Only hundreds of years later were they broken down into chapters and verses. Those writing were then organized with other writings into a collection of 66 books. Together they form the Word of God.

I frequently remember the name of this pamphlet as I hear people talk about the Bible. Quite often people will pull out one verse and use it to define their theology and practice. Sometimes this is at the expense of good interpretation. Proper understanding of a passage comes by exploring the original context within the immediate writing. Once we have a grasp on that information we then have to ask about the overall message of the Bible. Does the basic meaning of this passage align with my overall understanding of the Biblical topic?

In doing these simple and routine practices of interpretation through the years I have started to notice the Bible often gives us two things. First it gives us direct commands. You shall not steal is easy to understand.

I think the second thing the Bible gives us boundaries. These are diverse statements from which we navigate in between. Here is what I mean:

-We are told to be like children (Matthew 10:14). Then we are told to grow up. (Heb. 5:11-14)
-We are told to help one another (1 John 3:17-18). Then we are told that if we don’t work, we don’t eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
-We are told to grow and be fed spiritually (1 Peter 2:2). Then we are told to feed others (John 21:15-17 & Heb. 5:11-14).
-We are told to have a drink of wine (1 Timothy 5:23). Then we are warned about the evils of wine (Proverbs 23:30-31).
-We are told not to judge (Matthew 7:1). Then we are instructed to judge those inside the church (1 Corinthians 5:12)
-Jesus was a friend of sinners (Luke 15:1-2). Then we are told that bad company corrupts good character (1 Corinthians 15:33).

I could actually keep my list going and going.

I think this is important to know when we are reading the Bible and trying to live for God. One verse may resonate with me and help me know more about God, but frequently I need to see this from the other side of the issue too. Before you set your life in a firm direction be sure the other side is clear. This will always keep you moving the right direction with God.

I often think that our life with God is a bouncing back between the boundaries of God’s will.

Many of the things we celebrate and the days we observe have little meaning to us because we do not understand their history. This is true in our Churches and in our countries. So today I wanted to bring a little clarity.

Veterans Day is an official United States public holiday, observed annually on November 11, that honors military veterans, that is, persons who served in the United States Armed Forces. It coincides with other holidays, including Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, celebrated in other countries that mark the anniversary of the end of World War I. The United States previously observed Armistice Day. The U.S. holiday was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.

Armistice Day is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o’clock in the morning — the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918.

The date was declared a national holiday in many allied nations, to commemorate those members of the armed forces who were killed during war. An exception is Italy, where the end of the war is commemorated on 4 November, the day of the Armistice of Villa Giusti.

Remembrance Day (sometimes known as Poppy Day) is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth of Nations member states since the end of the First World War to remember the members of their armed forces who have died in the line of duty – following a tradition inaugurated by King George V in 1919.

The memorial evolved out of Armistice Day, which continues to be marked on the same date.

The red remembrance poppy has become a familiar emblem of Remembrance Day due to the poem “In Flanders Fields”. These poppies bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I; their brilliant red color became a symbol for the blood spilled in the war.

Have a great day whatever you call this day.

For years and years I prayed before every meal something that my parents taught me. “Dear God, thank you for this day, thank your this food and thank you for everything. Amen”

Somewhere around 18 I ventured off and started to pray “original” prayers. My words flowed from the moment and usually were still focused on that one word, “thanks.”

Also somewhere in this time my dad began to use a phrase in his prayers before the meal at large family gathering. He would say something like “Lord we thank you for these blessings you provide which we often overlook and are too often taken for granted.”

I don’t know whether he heard this from someone and added it to his prayers or whether he just stated saying it and it stuck. Somehow it made it into his words and I have had the opportunity to hear him say it dozens of times over the last few years.

This is in my thoughts as I set at my computer this morning for a couple of reasons. First, I am amazed at the number of articles, blogs and posts that are already talking about Christmas. Second, I am more amazed at the lack of any discussion of Thanksgiving.

Maybe there was a simple natural progression in my dad’s thinking. He was thankful for all that we had been given as a family but as time went on he saw how we overlooked the Lord’s blessings. It is easy to do as an individual or as a family or as a country.

So today I wonder what would happen if we spent a month being thankful to God for all of his blessings before rushing into another season of want?

If I really knew you. I mean I really knew your secret thoughts and your private actions. I would bet you are not a very good person. You harbor ill feelings along with guilt and shame. You have done stuff you have never told anyone about. You have failed in an ugly fashion. You have have had thoughts that would make you blush if they were made public.

I know this about you because it is true of me as well.

I don’t deserve respect. I don’t deserve forgiveness. I don’t deserve to be treated special in any way.

And yet, God loves me in spite of myself. He cares for me in spite of my past. He gave himself for my sins even though I didn’t deserve it.

None of that is surprising and you have probably heard it before. What challenges me is not how God treats me but how I treat other people.

I don’t deserve your respect. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I don’t deserve you to treat special in any way. Honestly, you don’t deserve these things from me.

Because I follow a God who serves, loves, gives and treats people special – I am called to the same standard of living. I am not to show others the love and respect they deserve because they have earned it by their actions. I do it because I serve a God who gives me everything I don’t deserve.

Maybe the biggest indicator of my faith in God is found in the way I treat those who don’t deserve to be treated well.

I have two unrelated images that keep connecting in my thoughts.

First is the images that I saw plastered all over Facebook about the parade in Kansas City for the Royals. If you do not live nearby or having been living completely unaware of what happened this week then let me tell you. An estimated 800,000 people went to Kansas City to celebrate the World Series victory by the baseball team the Royals. Here is one picture to capture the image:

Schools closed, people skipped work and thousands of people gathered to celebrate a group of grossly overpaid athletes who can hit a ball, catch a ball and run around bases.

The second image is from my last sermon series from Luke 15. Jesus tells three parables that build on each other. In the first two he stopped the parable to add his own commentary.

In the third parable he interjects a statement by the father, who represents God, when the prodigal son comes home.

Each story is culminated with a picture of a celebration. The picture is of a party in heaven by the angels in the presence of God.

I have been wondering all week if heaven looks a lot like Kansas City did this week. Instead of people wearing blue they were dressed in pure white. And instead of celebrating baseball they were focused on something of eternal significance.

It really makes me wonder how in tune we are with God’s agenda for this world.

Over the past two weeks I have been working on my sermon plan for 2016. One part of this process is to look back over the past year and see what I have already preached. Finally I take a big look over my entire preaching ministry (I have a record of all sermons since 1996) and see what has worked well and what has not.

Yesterday as I was looking over my lists I began to see huge patterns in my preaching. There are several topics that I have hit over and over again.

1. Making Jesus Your Savior and Lord. My greatest desire is for people to come to faith in the grace of Jesus. Then I want to see their lives transformed by that grace. My biggest question is, “What is your next step of faith?”

2. Learning Basic Bible. Every year I have preached a series about some basic bible stories or characters. I firmly believe that the Bible is sharper than any two-edged sword cutting to the very soul of a person. Do you know more about God’s word this year than you did last year?

3. Growing In Faith and Practice. While I want everyone to know their Bible, the ultimate goal is the transformation of a person into Christlikeness. I would rather you live 10 verses of scripture that you know than to know 100 verse and do 1. What do you need to do with the knowledge you have of God and his word?

4. The Church. The Church has fallen on hard times lately. People skip Church and do not make it a priority. I firmly believe that the Church is the best place for every believer. It is the place we learn, grow, serve and fellowship. In 22 years of ministry I have yet to see one person grow in their walk with God by Biblical standards outside of Church. The Church is full problems, but so is everything else on this earth. It is still a great place to develop as a believer. Is the church a vital part of your faith?

5. Sharing Your Faith. As our life is transformed by Jesus within his Church we share the good news with the people around us. Each one of us should personally care about the eternal fate of the people around us. Who is closer to the Lord because of knowing you?

These five themes have reappeared in my preaching year after year. As I look into 2016 they will be a part of my sermons once again. I guess when I feel like people have mastered these five things I will move onto something else. Right now, it looks like I should be busy for many years to come.