Church-Planting and Idolatry

My daughter has this book about a lizard named Lucas. Lucas has a dilemma. He lives in a zoo with many other animals. Because he is little, and can’t catch air like the dolphins or roar like the lions, poor Lucas is tormented with an inferiority complex. So what does he do? One night while lying in bed, he dreams up a myriad of tricks, like dancing on his hands (do lizards have hands?), balancing a cane on his nose, with a top hat in his hand to conquer his complex. He’s so excited, he can hardly sleep. Sure enough, the next day, his exhibition eclipses his rivals. Lucas lives happily ever-after as he finally slays his complex by securing the spotlight and so, his own self-veneration. I don’t like the book. It’s teaching my daughter a radically egotistical and enslaving worldview that will only fertilize her already depraved heart. And at the same time, it’s piercingly convicting into my own sin I’ve seen in my church-planting ministry.

In a previous post on church-planting and pragmatism, I mentioned that something deeper is going on beneath pragmatic tendencies in our ministries. One of the most painfully convicting moments that God, in his grace, has brought upon me was when I finally saw what fueled my whatever-works-idolatry. I had the same egotistical bent as Lucas; veneration of self; a blinding lust for self-affirmation cloaked in “doing ministry.”

A desire for ministry, and especially church-planting, should never be thought of as a sanitized, neutral desire. On the contrary, there are not many more dangerous means of laboring for self-approval than ministry. It seems so innocent, so noble, to plant a church. And don’t get me wrong, it is a fine work the planter desires. However, precisely because it seems so noble is why it can be so dangerous. And the more you scan the current evangelical landscape, the more you will see that church-planting is hijacked as a cloaked way to secretly feed the craving for approval.   Keep Reading >>>

We Do Not Preach Ourselves

Two weeks ago, we looked at 2 Corinthians 4:3 and considered what it had to teach us concerning the nature of Gospel ministry. The conclusion to that post was that the purpose of Gospel ministry was not to amuse the goats, but to call the sheep. Last week, we moved onto verse 4 and discovered the world’s problem: they are blind to the glory of Christ. Therefore, the Church’s mission is to solve that problem. If we’re doing something that won’t solve that problem, we need to stop.

The question is, then, what solves that problem? How can the Church be instrumental in the opening of blind eyes? Well, Paul gets to that in verse 5. Just as we must know the purpose and the problem of Gospel ministry, we must also know the proclamation.

For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake.

– 2 Corinthians 4:5 –

What does it mean to “not preach ourselves?” It means that we don’t put ourselves—the messengers—forward as the appeal to unbelievers in our ministry. We don’t make our methodology or our style the draw. We don’t appeal to that which is fleshly or worldly in the unbeliever in order to attract and compel their participation. Instead, we do everything we can to get ourselves out of the way so as to be merely incidental—merely the finger that points to the substance, to the content of the message: that Jesus Christ is Lord.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 really sheds light on what it means for Paul that he not be preaching himself. He says... Keep Reading >>>