Category: Disciple (Page 3 of 18)

Don’t You Like Us?

July 14, 2023 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

Over the past week or so I’ve given you a peak in the window of my heart. I’ve shared with you about receiving a call to a new church and what that means for me and for my family. I’ve talked about determining if I’ve taken my current congregation as far as I am capable.

Today we look at one more question that I have received in one form or another.

Why did you even agree to interview if you’re happy here? Don’t you like us anymore?

Ok so let’s dispel some rumors or hit them off as quickly as possible. We’ll do that by answering a question or two that I’ve heard.

How did the other church get your name? Are you looking for a new place to go? Ah, that’s a fantastic question that is easily explained but hard to understand. Think of it this way. To most of the world I’m fairly invisible, and that’s perfectly fine! But to the church body to which I belong carrying the title pastor all of a sudden makes me visible to every church out there. Having the title pastor is like covering the invisible man with a sheet. Now you know he exists, but you still don’t know anything about him.

The next step is to see if the man under the sheet is even worth looking at. This is where I kind of have a little bit of control. I am allowed to mark myself as closed to interviews, not interested at all, and don’t want to talk to anyone. Some guys do that and that’s ok for them. But I personally don’t feel that’s the most God honoring way to handle things. So my position is that I am really not interested in moving and personally feel there are things left to do here but I am open to the realization that God knows things I don’t know. So I’m willing to prayerfully consider something if it’s of God. And this is what I told the churches who have asked for interviews…all 18 of them.

The church then takes the names of the, now visible, pastors and combs through a fun little document that tells all the details of the pastor. Family stuff. Where he’s been up til now. What size town does this guy want to live in? Are there special interests, hobbies, needs that he and his family have currently? And how does he function in different settings with regard to how he does church work?

If the church thinks, after going through this paperwork, that I am someone worth pursuing and getting to know more, then they ask for an interview. It’s really that simple. And since my philosophy has been that God is way smarter than I am, it’s important that I take the due time to really make sure I go where God wants me to go. Not sure if you know this or not but if you don’t go where God wants you to go you could end up in some fishy scenarios. Just ask Jonah!

So to answer the question don’t you like us anymore, the answer is an absolute yes. I love the people I serve. I have friends and family here. I love the community and the house I live in right now. I love the facility we have for church and the property on which it sits. I value each and every relationship that has been part of this journey up to this point. Yeah I even love the people who aren’t here anymore.

This whole journey isn’t about whether or not I like or even love you all. That goes without question. If you ask around a little bit you’ll hopefully hear stories of how I’ve dropped my own needs to meet yours. And I would do it again today if needed. The journey is about God. Not you or me or them. It’s about God. All these other things are parts of the bigger picture, but at the end of the day where does God need me to be.

If it was about my wants, this would have been a nonissue a long time ago. If it was about my needs, I’m doing pretty good right where I am. This prayer and discernment time is about making sure my wants and God’s plan align. If they don’t, then we both know God isn’t going to change his plan which means my wants need to shift. But if my wants align with God’s plan, then a whole new fire is breathed into ministry because now we all know God is in this and what God brings together man can’t separate.

I hope this has helped you see this a little from a pastor’s perspective. It’s not an easy thing at all. Just because I don’t have a ton of emotion oozing out of me over it doesn’t mean that my sleep and diet and health aren’t messed up a bit during this time of prayer. Look Jesus sweat blood when he prayed because it was a hard thing in front of him. And while I’m not sweating blood or anything, I am taking this whole process very seriously because I love you all tremendously and I love the kingdom of God.

Thank you for the thoughts and prayers!

Parenting By Proxy

June 26, 2023 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

How much time do we spend with our kiddos a day? How much time do you intentionally set aside to be home with them through a week? How about a year? What about through their growing up years? Who gets the most amount of time with our children in their day to day lives?

I would venture to say that if we’re being honest with ourselves many of us would answer that we don’t spend enough time with them and that someone else spends more time with them. Whether that’s a babysitter, teacher, school system, church – who knows pretty much anyone.

Now who’s responsible for making sure our children are raised properly? You know to be people of humility, integrity, faith, respect, kindness, generous, and all those cool attributes. I sure hope that you said that you as the parent are responsible for making sure that your child is raised properly!

Unfortunately there are far too many parents in the world today who are parenting by proxy. They’re letting someone else raise their kids. From assuming the schools are teaching everything they need to know to just letting the church teach them about faith matters to letting screens occupy them while we’re busy doing other things to letting the coach teach them about obedience – we have a tendency to pawn our parenting responsibilities off on someone else.

Now before those of you in two working household families get all bent here, I’m not saying that you have to homeschool your children. Not against it by any means but definitely not for everyone. I’m not saying you can’t have a job outside the home or both of you work. As a matter of fact there is something powerful that a child learns when they see mom and dad working and still engaged in their lives.

But I am saying that parenting is your responsibility not someone else’s! Here’s a quick example of what I’m trying to convey. I recently had a conversation with a group of people from a church. We were talking about the role of the pastor in the lives of the children in the church family. I want to be very clear. I am not a proxy parent for anyone’s kiddos. I’ve done enough damage as a less than perfect parent to my own three children. This church was saying that they want their pastor to be the one who is the primary teacher of faith to the children in the church.

Well, I don’t parent by proxy and I don’t think the pastor should be the faith builder in a child’s life. We’re to teach them but we’re not the one’s who are primarily responsible for the faith development of children. I also don’t think it’s the pastor’s job to do the whole catechism teaching bit for the youth of the church. I think if the pastor does his job rightly, then the parents will be the primary teachers of this to their children. Pastor should most certainly be involved and active and encouraging but the parent should be the primary discipler of the children.

This analogy is true for other areas like math and science and grammar and economics and you name it! The parent cannot shove the kids to someone or something else to teach them. That’s not parenting. All of these other things are assets and tools in the raising of children but they cannot replace what it means to be a loving and true parent.

Look teachers can only teach so much. Pastors can only reach so far. Coaches can be great role models but are limited. You are the parent. You can’t parent your kiddos if you’re never home. You can’t teach them the faith if you don’t open your mouth and teach them. No one is responsible for the development of your children but you. It’s time our culture stopped trying to parent by proxy.

The Balancing Act

June 7, 2023 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

Ever have two seemingly opposing ideas that you knew were both true but didn’t seem to match up? On a simple scale it’s like trying to balance my desire to be healthy with my love for pizza, tacos and chocolate cookies. It’s really hard to keep those two thoughts in a way that seems to honor both. It’s like there’s an unhealthy tension that exists that is almost insurmountable. We will call that the balancing act.

More life altering than the tension between dieting and a love for tacos and cookies, there is a key concept in Christianity that deals with something we call the sovereignty of God. This is the idea that God is infinite, always and everywhere. He is over all things, in all things and works through all things. This is actually a really big deal that I might have to tackle in a later post by itself. But for now try to imagine everything in the world under one microscope. Imagine a being that is able to see all things around the world in one picture at the same time. That’s a pretty significantly spectacular or in this case sovereign being.

Now match that up with the idea that the same being with all that power and size is so personal that he knows your thoughts, cares, worries and fears. He wants to hear about your day and provide for you in ways that no one else can. This is the balancing act we find ourselves in with the God of the Bible.

The Bible paints the picture that God is eternal and forever and all powerful and, well sovereign. But it also gives us the demonstration that God is personal and individual and very intimate. Such a cool balancing act that we get to work with as we navigate the truth of who God really is.

Sovereignty and intimacy are two ends of the spectrum of the identity of God.

Words like creator and redeemer and advocate for humanity are concepts that speak to this idea of sovereignty. He’s called Lord of lords and King of kings. He’s referred to as everlasting and eternal. All of this speaks to the vastness of God’s power and presence in the world.

As we embrace the sovereignty of God, we are humbled and left in awe. This is a power we can hardly fathom. The reality of this size and magnitude is something so vast it’s nearly beyond comprehension.

Then as we turn the coin of God’s character over, we see words like love and Father, adoption and child of God. This leaves us even more awestruck and dumbfounded than before! How can a God who’s so massive be so in to me? How can a God who’s infinite be so intimate? How can a God who is so powerful also be so personal?

This is the paradox in which we live. This is the balancing act we much wrestle with as followers of Jesus today. God truly is sovereign in every way while also remaining intimate and personal in every way. And it’s all because he loves us. When we can accept this reality about God, we’ll be able to better understand all he’s done for us. But for now, it’s a balancing act.

You’re a Saint!

June 6, 2023 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

I knew a couple who were a fairly unique pair of individuals. Each one had their own quirks to say the least. But one of them was less unique than the other. Ok so I’ll shoot straight here – one of them was just a bit much and was a hard person to get along with much of the time. This individual would tend to over share information, and life needed to be their way all the time!

I often said that the less hard to get along with spouse was a saint for how they dealt with the other. A saint in this case isn’t someone who died centuries ago and is now remembered for all eternity. Rather a saint in this usage is someone who was willing and able to put up with a lot of baggage out of love for the other person. They were a good person.

In my experience it seems as if we tend to throw the saint word around a little bit too easily in my book. We tend to miss the point of what a saint really is. I don’t think a saint is necessarily a genuinely good person. That diminishes the real value of what a saint truly is. Instead a saint is someone who has experienced the goodness of God.

Do you see the difference? It’s not about my goodness that makes me saintly, rather it’s about knowing I’m not all that good and still experiencing the goodness of God’s great love for me.

There’s something kind of special about being this kind of a saint. When we can acknowledge our “not goodness,” it makes the grace of God that much more powerful and amazing. When I recognize the tremendous amount of grace I’ve required from so many people, the easier it is for me to see the goodness in others.

Being a saint doesn’t mean we have it all together, or even that we’re necessarily all that good of people. It means that we’ve experienced something that not everyone realizes. We’ve experienced the goodness of God in immeasurable ways.

So have you experienced the goodness of God? Then you too my friend are what I call a saint!

Four Must-Haves

May 1, 2023 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

For over 20 years now I’ve done pretty much one thing with my life. Some people say I’ve worked one day a week and it must be nice to have this kind of gig. And well they’re kind of right. Ok not the one day a week bit but it is a pretty nice gig! However, I have to admit, the 20 years have not been all roses and candy, and that’s largely my own fault. You see I had a wrong focus for the first several years that I served as a pastor and that caused me a great deal of grief. It also likely led some people to a bad understanding of who we really were. For that I must apologize.

For decades, we’ve seemingly missed a key point in what it means to be followers of Jesus. It’s evident in the way we talk and how we use some key words in our vocabulary. We’ve changed the meaning of words to fit our comfort levels. We’ve left parts out of the Bible. Maybe we did it because we didn’t know better. Or perhaps it was because we just weren’t comfortable with going that far.

This post is about going that far. I’m growing increasingly tired of lowering the bar to make life easier and that’s exactly what the church has done for decades. We’ve become the lovey dovey, sissified, passive but vocal group that really doesn’t do a lot. There are exceptions but from what I see this is more the norm than the exception.

Warning: What follows is not a lowering of the bar. It’s not an attempt to make the church feel better about itself and tell you it’s going to be ok. Actually it’s just the opposite. It’s not going to be ok. If things don’t shift, and we don’t start to take our calling more seriously then we’re doing a great disservice to the gospel and leading people into a false sense of hope.

Being the church cannot be a hobby for weekends when we’re bored!

Acts 2:42 is a powerful verse that provides insight into the early Christian church and its practices. The verse reads, They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. This simple sentence outlines four key practices that were absolutely critical to the early Christian community and should be seen as vital to the church today. I will even go so far as to say that without all four of these parts we cannot be the church.

The Apostles’ Teaching

The first practice that the early Christians devoted themselves to was the apostles’ teaching. This simply refers to the teachings of Jesus passed down by his apostles. These teachings were foundational to the Christian faith and formed the basis for the early church’s beliefs.

They knew that the only way to truly find meaning and power in life was through the word of God. Just like God created Adam in the Garden of Eden but he wasn’t alive until God breathed into him, so also we aren’t really alive until we have the life-giving words of God in our hearts and minds.

For the church today, the apostles’ teaching refers to the Bible. We need to be devoted to the reading, hearing and talking about the Bible. We need to spend time regularly in the Bible as individuals, couples, families, churches, Christians. All of us need the Bible, especially as we look around at the cesspool of crap the floating in the world today.

A special word of caution for parents: if we are not making the Bible a key part of our family diet, then what will our children do when they are met with challenge in their day to day lives? We should fill our children so full of the truth of the Bible that when the world cuts them, they bleed the word of God.

Fellowship

The second practice that the early Christians devoted themselves to was fellowship. This refers to the act of gathering together with other believers to share their lives, encourage one another, worship, and hold each other accountable. The early Christian community placed a high value on fellowship, recognizing that it was important for believers to be in community with one another.

Unfortunately we’ve watered down the idea of fellowship and simply toss the label on anything the institutional church does as a group. We have dart team fellowship, pickle ball fellowship, trash collection fellowship, fellowship luncheons, fellowship conferences, youth fellowship and the list goes on! But is it really fellowship? Or just a fun activity that we want to pretend is churchy so we throw the label on it to make ourselves feel better?

The concept of fellowship was so vital that it wasn’t about what each individual got out of the time together. Instead the point of fellowship was what you brought to the group. When they devoted themselves to fellowship they didn’t focus on themselves but on the rest of the gathering. They truly had a oneness to their community and it was evident to everyone around them.

The Breaking of Bread

The third nonnegotiable practice that defined the early Christians was the breaking of bread. This phrase refers to the act of sharing a meal together. The early Christian community recognized the importance of sharing meals together as a way of building community and celebrating their faith. They knew that eating together was a great way of building a bond that wasn’t easily broken.

This phrase is also about a very specific meal though – communion. The gathering together for the bread and wine, body and blood of Jesus, was a vital part of what it meant to be the church. When they gathered together, they expected to meet Jesus. They didn’t come to be entertained or given a feel good message. Nope! They gathered together expecting to experience the God of the universe right there in their midst.

When we gather for worship, bible study, small groups, fellowship gatherings and the like do we really expect to see Jesus? Or just have a mildly entertaining time, get a spiritual high, then go back to life as usual? If the church is really going to be the church that God calls out into the world we need to expect to see Jesus when we gather!

Prayer

The fourth and final pillar that held up the early church was a devotion to prayer. They didn’t shy away from the act of praying together whenever they met and we shouldn’t either.

There are so many times when we say we’re going to pray for someone but we just feel like we’re not capable, good enough, adequate in our vocabulary, educated enough and we shy away. But praying together should be like breathing. We need to be able to offer prayers for one another every time we gather. No one is better or worse at this task because we are not the point of prayer…God is!

So there you have it four key things that define what it means to be the church. You either have them or you need to make these part of your life! No time like the present. Being the church isn’t a weekend hobby or something for the faint at heart. God doesn’t lower the bar for us and we shouldn’t either. It’s time to be the church.

Pass The Wine Please

February 16, 2023 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

There are some things in life that carry many meanings. They remind us of a variety of things. I know that seeing certain images takes me back to another time and another place. The crystal cookie jar that’s on my shelf at home reminds me of summers spent with my grandparents at their pool. The smell of cinnamon rolls in the oven transports me to Christmas as a child. The loud rumble of a semi truck using its engine as a braking system going down a hill makes me feel the bouncing seat of my Grandpa’s semi truck.

Everything has the ability to remind us of something else. But those special things can have multiple memories attached.

In the life of the church for which I am a pastor, we celebrate something called communion on a weekly basis. Communion is the bread and wine that are linked to and remind us of the amazing gift we receive in Jesus. Our particular identity believes that miraculously and mysteriously the bread is the body and the wine is the blood.

I recently took some time to consider why these particular elements were used. I found something interesting when it came to the wine. I always thought the wine was used partially because it was there as part of the Passover meal that Jesus was eating with his disciples. I thought it was used because it was red and it would be a visual reminder of the blood of Jesus shed on the cross. And while these may be true, I think there’s more to it than just that. Wine has a much bigger, wider and deeper significance.

The use of wine weaves its way through the Old Testament. And throughout it has a wonderful array of overlapping meanings. Wine is more than just a harkening ack to Jesus’ blood on the cross. It was a symbol throughout the Old Testament of prosperity, life, vitality and celebration.

If we look at the uses of wine throughout the Bible, you’ll see that wine was indicative of wealth. It was a symbol of having plenty in life. Genesis reminds us that the blessing of Isaac on his son Jacob would be the blessing of abundant amounts of wine among other things.

But wine was also a marker of celebration. I think this one is most overlooked. Even in the context of the Passover meal, which Jesus was celebrating when he gave communion for the first time to his disciples, the tone wasn’t worship or contemplation. It was celebration. The passover meal was a meal of remembrance of all the God had done. It was the marker of when God saved the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. You better believe there was a party there. Wine was for celebrating!

Jesus’ first miracle is another time wine is used. I think there’s no accident here either. When Jesus first breaks onto the scene and does one of those cool God-things, it wasn’t healing someone or raising a dead person or even casting out a demon. His first miracle was all about wine. It was about provision, partying and participating in life with his people.

When Jesus turned water into wine, he did far more than just help the party manager save face. He elongated their celebration! He gave them a visible and edible reminder that he was able to provide for their needs in a variety of ways.

When we come to communion and take the bread in our hands and drink the wine, it’s far more than a memorial meal. It’s more than just a reminder of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s a reminder of the provision of God for his people. It’s a display of God’s blessing and the prosperity that he brings on his people. But it should also be a visible and edible reminder that he wants us to celebrate.

Even in the New Testament the idea of drinking too much wine is correlated to being overcome by the Holy Spirit. When a person has a couple drinks too many they have a tendency to lose themselves in the moment. The same should be true as we gather at the table for communion. We should lose ourselves, not in too much wine but in the abundant provision of God through his Spirit. We should leave joyful and excited, like we just were part of a great celebration!

Wine is a wonderful reminder of God’s provision, blessing, and joy. It’s definitely something worth celebrating! So this Sunday, if you’re one of those church going types, go up to the table for communion. Take the bread. Drink the wine. Then remember. Remember the sacrifice of Jesus. Remember the provision of your Heavenly Father. But remember also to celebrate the full cup of God’s Spirit that he pours out for you at this table.

Obstacles To Faith

February 14, 2023 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

Some people won’t read this simply because of the title. Others will read it just for that reason. My hope is that we read this not for the title but for what’s inside.

I have to be totally honest. I’m a pastor. I’ve been one for nearly 21 years. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. But a little known secret that most every follower of Jesus tries to hide…I sometimes struggle with my faith.

Now let me be totally transparent. I’m not saying that I doubt who Jesus was or what he did or any of that. I do believe all of that and am truly grateful for all of the people who have poured into me to get me to where I am today. The issue is that I struggle with my personal understanding of and need for faith.

Let me put it a different way. The biggest obstacle to a life of faith is pride. It’s easy to put the wrong mindset on and go through life thinking we don’t need God or we didn’t do anything wrong in that area. It’s all too tempting to kind of sideline our faith because our lives are really going well.

If you look around and honestly reflect on your life, you probably have moments when things were just cruising on autopilot. Your marriage was fine. Bills were being paid. Kids aren’t in jail. No major illness in your family. Haven’t lost anyone in recent years. Your vacations are wonderful until they end. All the things in life just click along.

It’s in these moments that we don’t really feel the need for God. It’s all too easy in these days when our cup is overflowing to look past our God to all of the things that we have amassed for ourselves. This, not sin, is the greatest obstacle to our faith.

Yes sin, all of it, is wrong and needs to be repented. That’s not what I said. So quit hearing what you want to hear and hear what I actually said. Sin isn’t the greatest obstacle we face when it comes to faith.

The greatest obstacle to saving faith in Jesus is our pride. When we seem to have everything we think we need, then we don’t need Jesus. That’s pride. That’s the greatest obstacle to faith.

What’s worse than this? I’m glad you asked! It’s often in these moments of self righteous pride that we hold our magnifying glass over the apparent failures of others. In our pride we try to magnify someone else’s struggle to make ourselves even bigger. And that’s the pride slide.

No where in the Bible is pride a good thing. Nowhere in the Bible is focusing on my accomplishments over Christ’s sufficiency acceptable. Nowhere is it remotely approved of to highlight someone else’s sins while keep our closet locked securely so that no one, even ourselves, can see what’s inside.

If the church, Christians, pastors want to find a way to reach the people around them, we better start by dealing with our own selfish pride. When we get that part right, the rest will start to make a lot more sense. We can’t love one another if we think we’re better than everyone else. We can’t live God’s story if we think we’re God’s gift to the world.

Remove the obstacle of pride with repentance. Honest admission of where we’ve wronged others followed by changing your lifestyle is what fixes this pride slide. True you can’t change how others see you. Some people will just hold onto the one thing you said or the one thing you did. That’s not what this is about. This is about you.

You, nope not her or him but you! You take time to deal with your pride and you’ll see how much it has hindered your faith. When pride is gone, you’ll see just how effective sharing the gospel story can be because it will line up with life.

At Least They Didn’t See You Naked!

February 9, 2023 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

Ok so this one is a bit of an out there kind of comment and I get it, but bear with me. No pun intended, well sort of.

I was recently chatting in a bible study group on the book of Luke in the New Testament. It was the story of Jesus healing the man with many demons. If you don’t know the story, it’s found in Luke 8. But the gist is that a man was possessed by many demons. Those demons did everything they could to try to kill the man. They gave him some unique abilities that we would call supernatural. But they also made him a tad out of his mind to the point that he would often be found running around town stark naked.

I know that would be a tad embarrassing to say the least, right? Well, after Jesus healed this man of his demons and cast them out of him, the man was in his right mind again. And all he could do was tell everyone around him about the man who healed him. And yes he was fully clothed.

As a pastor I hear a lot of people saying how uncomfortable they are with the idea of telling their friends and family what Jesus has done in their lives. We call that evangelism in the church world. We get a little apprehensive because we don’t have all of the answers. We aren’t sure we have the courage to speak up. We’re embarrassed about the idea of it. And what if people talk about us like we’re some kind of weirdo or freak?

Ok so I get it. The idea of sharing your faith is something that’s a bit abnormal. And I also agree that it can be a little unnerving at times. But at least the people you’re telling about Jesus didn’t see you naked!

Could you imagine being that man walking around town telling the people all that Jesus had done knowing that just yesterday he was running around town in his birthday suit? Now I get it. This isn’t the most normal way to think about this passage. And I’ve never really considered myself normal, so take that for what it is.

It’s really not that hard to do when you have had the experience this man had. He knew how much Jesus did for him so even his embarrassing naked escapades didn’t stop him. Do you know how much he’s done for you? Can you see the difference he’s made in your life?

Jesus isn’t calling you to streak through town. He’s just telling you that if you’ve experienced something that he’s done for you, then have the courage and boldness to talk about it. It’s really that easy.

One Way With Many Entrances

November 16, 2022 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

Now this is going to be a bit hard for some of you to handle and I get that. I know that my way of thinking and approaching life isn’t for everyone. And that’s a good thing actually! So a word of caution for those of you who can’t or won’t digest the whole article before forming an opinion, I’m going to encourage you to simply close the article and move on.

Alright, if you’re still with me, here we go. The Bible says that Jesus is the only way to heaven. And I firmly believe that. So let’s get that straight right out the gate. I do think that the narrower the path and the more clear cut the direction, the better off we humans are! Knowing that Jesus is the only one who is capable of setting us up for salvation is pretty great if you think about it. You don’t have to wonder if you’ve done enough. You don’t have to question if you have the right attendance at church or have said the right prayer enough times. It’s done. Finished. Complete. No more to be added by you! Pretty cool right?

While I will not argue with Jesus being the only way to heaven, I often get the impression that there are some people who think they have some kind of special sauce when it comes to connecting people to Jesus. There is only one way to heaven, but there isn’t only one way to Jesus. Trigger a flurry of emotions because it sounds like I’m bashing the church or challenging your way of thinking.

Perhaps I am challenging your way of thinking. Maybe I am coming at this a little strong. But from my perspective it seems as if we’ve put the wrong thing in the most important place in the bus as the church. I’ve seen this far too often in the over 20 years I’ve served as a pastor. The church thinks that the world needs us in order to know salvation.

When we value something so much that we want everyone to be a part of it, we can easily make it to be the most important thing when it’s just not. Now before you come unhinged here I am going to be very clear and probably a little more blunt than some would like. Just so there is no question, yes I am saying that the institutional church and corporate worship are not the most important thing in the life of the follower of Jesus. They are very important but they’re not the most important thing in life.

Think of it this way. Jesus very much is the only way to heaven. But the local church is not the only way to Jesus. We can argue whether this local expression of church is better than another local expression of church, but that’s not the point. The point is – can someone access knowledge of salvation without connecting to a local expression of the church? Short answer: yes absolutely they can and often do.

I’m a picture guy, so indulge me for a minute. Consider a freeway system as a mental picture. A large freeway with on ramps all over the place. Now this analogy will break down because that’s what analogies do, but stick with me for a little bit. I live outside of Columbus, OH and often travel to Cleveland. There is one major freeway that connects these two bigger cities. Let’s pretend that freeway as the only way to Cleveland. Now that same freeway that connects Columbus to Cleveland has many entry points. We call those on ramps. That means that even though this one major freeway connects Columbus to Cleveland, you don’t have to get on the freeway in Columbus in order to make it to Cleveland. You can enter in Sunbury, Mt. Gilead, Mansfield, or Ashland to name a few.

It’s the same with Jesus and Salvation. Jesus is the only road that will take us to salvation. Nothing else will get us there. But there are multiple ramps that will get us onto the roadway of Jesus. The local church is one major ramp that leads many to a place where they can get to know Jesus and understand salvation. But there are many people in the world who will never set foot in an institutional church who we’ll see in eternity.

Church is massively important to the ongoing growth of the follower of Jesus. But it’s not the only way that someone can come to know and grow in Jesus. The challenge of the local church is to find creative ways, in addition to Sunday morning worship, that they can use to connect their community to the one way road of Jesus that leads to salvation.

So there you have it, there is one way to heaven but there’s not just one way to Jesus.

A New World Order

October 5, 2022 / Derrick Hurst / 0 Comments

Wow that sounds like a Star Wars image or something a bit sci-fi doesn’t it? The idea of a new world order is kind of strange to say the least. It’s scary to some and exciting to others. For most it’s future oriented although in some people’s minds it’s sooner than we might want. But rarely do we consider a new world order a present reality or even an old world reality, but that’s kind of my perspective.

Ok so let’s be a tad less cryptic here. I think the life of the follower of Jesus should be, although often isn’t, an example of a new world order. Jesus peppers the New Testament with references to this new world order. They’re everywhere in the gospel accounts. Admittedly, Jesus doesn’t call it the new world order but that’s what it is. Jesus uses the phrase Kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven. This in many people’s minds is a new world order that one day will be a reality.

Unfortunately this is a short sighted view of what Jesus is actually talking about when he references the Kingdom of God. Jesus doesn’t use the phrase Kingdom of God in the future tense. He doesn’t say that it one day will be here. Instead when Jesus refers to the Kingdom of God, he does so in the present tense, as if it’s already here? How can this be? How can this Kingdom of God thing be here when life looks the way it does? Can this new world order be a present day reality?

It seems that’s the way Jesus was teaching. He was trying to get the people of his day to see the potential to have a different kind of life than they were living. The Jewish nation knew hardship, but Jesus wanted them to see beyond the hardship to the life God desired for them. From captivity to exile to enslavement to living under the thumb of oppressive rulers these people knew what it meant to have a bad day! They wanted out of this way of life pretty much at all costs.

Enter Jesus saying The kingdom of God is at hand. That didn’t mean it was around the corner or coming tomorrow. It meant that it was within reach. And to be honest it still is within reach. The Kingdom of God is ours today just as much as it was theirs when Jesus first uttered the words. But they, and we, have a problem. We don’t believe it, or at best don’t live like it.

The people of Jesus’ day complained more about the bad than they claimed the kingdom realities in their lives. Jesus was telling the Jews of his day that a new kingdom, new world order, had made its way into their lives already. That new world order was far more than a religious approach to life. As a matter of fact, and we’ll address this in a future post, Jesus didn’t enter the scene as a religious leader necessarily. He was addressing far more than mere church membership and attendance. He was driving at the heart of humanity from a political, economic, health care, environmental, friendship, family, society level.

The new world order is here. The kingdom is here. The kingdom was just as present in World War II Germany as it was Jesus’ day. This kingdom was there when the towers fell and when covid rampaged the world. It was there when your political party won or lost. It was there when the hurricane flooded much of Florida. It was there when your loved one fought through their final moments with cancer. It was there when your spouse chose someone/something else over you. It was there when your child rebelled. It was there when your church had to close. It was there when you lost your job.

The kingdom of God, aka new world order, isn’t about getting the good things right now. It’s about living a different way regardless of how things go right now. Jesus was far more concerned about how we treat the poor and disenfranchise than how much is in our bank accounts. He cared more about the orphan and the widow than preserving the freedoms of the Israelites. The kingdom of God is less about you and me and more about the people with whom we interact daily.

You see the long and short is the Kingdom of God is already here. It is a new world order. Not one built with power and prestige and centralized rulers, but with service, love and humility. It’s time that we start living the realities of this New World Order, and there’s no better time to start than today.

Category: Disciple (Page 3 of 18)

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