6 March: Psalm 8:1-5

PSALM 8:1-5

"O Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.

    Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
    to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,
    and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
    and crowned him with glory and honor."

READ. MEDITATE. PRAY. CONTEMPLATE.

To download the full devotional, click here.

Learning To Lead During COVID-19 (Two Years On)

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote about learning to lead worship during COVID-19. Two years on I am still learning. Maybe you are too. I hope these brief reflections can at least make you feel less alone, and hopefully encourage you to keep going…

I believe that hard things do not change us as much as they expose us. And our hearts and lives have been exposed by COVID-19 in ways that many of us have previously been able to avoid or ignore.

What do we value?

Whose lives matter?

Are masks a sign of fear, and going maskless a sign of faith?

Are vaccines helpful and useful, or reckless and untested?

Are there only ever two sides and two options?

Is everything black or white?

What is selfish and self-serving, what is foolish and careless?

Can I be friends with people who think and believe differently than me, or must we now become enemies?

Are we going to be discipled by culture and politics or by the Gospel?

The ugliness of my heart has been exposed in the pandemic: my tendency to judge other people, other followers of Jesus against myself and my own decisions. To look for specs through a log.

When I am attentive to the conviction of the Holy Spirit within rather than an outward condemnation of the pharisee within, I can see these places of friction as opportunities for repentance and prayer.

If we are willing these are opportunities for iron to sharpen iron. For the Church to truly be what we already are - one people, one body, made up of every tribe, tongue, nation, and language. This is an opportunity for us to image to the world our unity not through ideology, politics, or socioeconomic brackets, but by the unifying blood of Jesus.

This truly could be an opportunity to display the beauty of the Gospel.

To make obvious our adoption as sons and daughters of God.

My prayer as I look out on the faces of the congregation,

as I run into people as they stumble over why they have not been serving or attending,

as I field questions about why we are doing this, and why we are not doing that,

as we wrestle with what it looks like to love and honor God and care well for His people,

as we stumble forward,

and as I become more aware of my own sin, is:

God give me Your eyes to see these people. Let me grieve over my sin more than over the differences of my brothers and sisters. Keep me close to You, and tender toward especially those who are loud, vocal, and combative in the opposite direction from my own convictions. Give me the compassion of Christ, who ‘When He saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’ (Matthew 9:36).

May our divisions be an opportunity for repentance. May our divisions turn us to Christ, the One who has torn down the dividing wall of hostility between God and man, who has reconciled us to become people of reconciliation, who has comforted us to be people of comfort. Amen and amen.

3 March: Matthew 16:24-28

MATTHEW 16:24-28

"Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

READ. MEDITATE. PRAY. CONTEMPLATE.

To download the full devotional, click here.

Lent Devotional [Free Download]

God has designed our world to be shaped by seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Our lives are also shaped by seasons - made up of times of abundance, joy, and celebration, as well as times of suffering, pain, and loss.

This is why our calendars are filled with holidays, literally meaning holy days. These are days set apart from all the rest. We mark the days that have marked us. These holidays remind us every season of who we are, where we have been, and who we desire to be. So too with the Church calendar. Followers of Jesus have designed and followed the Church calendar to mark their lives and days by the arrival, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Christ.

Beginning on Ash Wednesday, for forty days during Lent, we strip away some of our usual comforts (often through fasting) to create more space for reflection, repentance, and refining. These days ready our hearts to gaze upon the gore of Good Friday, and the glory of Resurrection Sunday.

March 1: Tuesday Refocus

‘…never spare a little sin.’ - J.C. Ryle

We are prone to overlook, avoid, and justify.

It is easy to shrug in the direction of quiet, little sins.  It takes both humility and courage to pray with the Psalmist: ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!’ (Psalm 139:23-24).

The Apostle Paul was no stranger to his own sin - both great and small - he called himself the chief of sinners (1 Tim 1:15), confessing that he does not do what he wants to do, but does the very thing he hates (Rom 7:15).  And yet, it is this former persecutor of the Church who says that it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance (Phil 3:6, Rom 2:4).  Repentance requires that we must acknowledge our sins - small and great, the wrong things we have done, the right things we have failed to do, sins of omission and commission, those things are known to us, and those things that are still hidden.  Even here, maybe even especially here, we experience the kindness of God that leads us toward repentance - turning away from our sin and turning toward Christ.

Lord, as we enter this season of Lent, would you give us the courage and humility of the Psalmist, so that we might experience your kindness toward us as we see our sin, and experience Your grace?  In Jesus’ name, amen.

Praying,

AB 

Lent Preparation

Lent is a season of preparation. From Ash Wednesday the following forty days (excluding Sundays), we fast and pray as we ready our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits to treasure Christ in all things - the gore of Good Friday and the glory of Resurrection Sunday. Even if your church does not follow or celebrate the seasons of the church calendar outside of Easter and Christmas, I believe there is still benefit in personal preparation, and leading our teams to prepare as well.

Easter and Christmas are some of the busiest times in the life of any church. If we do not prepare practically we run the risk of being scattered and frantic. If we do not prepare spiritually our lives are emptied of opportunity for meaning and significance. And that is why we prepare. Because preparation builds meaning and significance into our lives. Because preparation is never about the preparation itself, but making space for something else. We exercise not for the sake of exercise but for making space for a healthy body. We study not for study's sake, but to make space for learning and becoming. Preparation creates space for us to focus on the right things. So as we spend time fasting and praying, turning inward with the Holy Spirit to examine our hearts and lives, and turning outward toward Christ in repentance and faith we are preparing our hearts not just for another Sunday, but for deeper levels of gratitude and thanksgiving for the cross and resurrection.

Whether it is adding a spiritual discipline in this season (like fasting, or silence) or spending more time in prayer and Scripture, how might you prepare your own heart for Easter this Lenten season? Whether it is pulling back on the production of your team, doing fewer upbeat songs, leading a Lenten devotional, or giving your team the opportunity for prayer and silence during rehearsals, how might you prepare your team for Easter this Lenten season? Whether it is through a weekly corporate confession, changing the visuals on the platform, or simply acknowledging and encouraging people to spend the next forty days in preparation for Easter, how might you prepare the congregation for Easter this Lenten season?

February 22: Tuesday Refocus

‘For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.’ - Thomas Merton

Truth understood intellectually, becomes embodied through experience.  We can cognitively understand and grasp truths with our mind, but our desire should be to declare like the Psalmist - ‘…Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.’ (Psalm 139:14).  This is understanding not just at the level of the mind, but at the very center of our being.

Lent begins in two weeks.  A season of introspection and reflection before the celebration and joy of Easter.  The spiritual disciple of fasting has traditionally accompanied the season of Lent.  And one of the things that fasting can do is expose the gaps between our intellectual understanding (God is good), and our lived reality (God is good, my soul knows it very well).  With the Psalmist we may declare intellectually ‘…there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You (Psalm 73:25).’ But as we give up and go without our functional saviors - as Tim Keller has called them - are exposed.  Those things that we desire to give us value, significance, comfort, and worth.  Yet this too is a gift - the chance to confess, turn to God and move our intellectual, hearsay understanding of God, to embodied reality.

God, in your kindness, would You expose the areas of our lives where we grasp the truths of Your character intellectually but live as though we do not believe?  Might we know Your goodness and Your kindness not by hearsay but by our everyday walk with You?  In Christ’s name, amen.

Learning,

AB

Plural Pronouns

We live in a pronoun-obsessed culture.

But rarely do we make conscious decisions about pronouns in our corporate gathering when it comes to songs, readings, and prayers.

In the West, we have often emphasized having a personal relationship with Jesus, at the expense of understanding that we are not just saved to be an individual, but saved to be a people, a part of the family, the body of Christ, His Church. As a result, we see lots of language in our corporate worship songs that emphasize the individual: I, me, my, mine.

But when we gather as the people of God we are once again reminded of the corporate nature of our identity as followers of Jesus. We are the Body of Christ.

When we intentionally choose songs, prayers, and readings that use plural pronouns we are simultaneously reinforcing our truer identity as a people. And countering the dominant narrative and understanding that our Christian faith is merely an individual pursuit.

We need individual pronouns as well. We want to make space for individual praise, confession, repentance, and response. But we need plural pronouns to rightly form what the culture has deformed in the life of every follower of Jesus.

Words matter. So let us think intentionally about how language shapes our understanding of who we are and who we are becoming.

February 15: Tuesday Refocus

“Confession and forgiveness are the concrete forms in which we sinful people love one another.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

Grand, romantic gestures, gifts, and extravagance are often the visible markers of love the culture recognizes - particularly on Valentine’s Day.  But Scripture tells us, greater love has no one than this than they lay their life down for their friend (John 15:13).  But when Christ laid down His life for us, we were not friends of God.  In fact, we were His enemies, hostile toward Him (Rom 5:10).

Maybe there will come a day when you will be called upon to literally lay down your life on behalf of someone you love.  More likely, you will be called upon to lay down your life by dying to self, taking up your cross, and in humility thinking more highly of others as you confess your sins, and give and receive forgiveness (Gal 2:20, Col 3, Rom 12:3, Luke 9:23, James 5:16).  There are few things more vulnerable.  There are few things that display the kind of Christ-like love that is ours in and through His life and death.

Jesus, You have loved us with an everlasting, steadfast, immovable love.  May our love not just live in our hearts, but move our actions as we confess and forgive.  This is love too deep, and too difficult for us to accomplish in our own strength.  Help us to love with the power of Your Spirit.  Amen.

Love,

AB

February 13: Liturgy + Set List

• BEFORE THE THRONE

  Call to Worship: Psalm 24

  Let there be no mistake, we gather to lift our eyes to the King of Glory. The One who made and sustains all things, who has pursued us with His goodness and mercy. Let’s sing together:

• GOODNESS OF GOD

• IN CHRIST ALONE

  Sermon: Joshua 5:13-6:27

  If we were honest, each of us desire to be our own king. And more than that, each of use desire all of the benefits of living in God’s kingdom while remaining king of our own lives. We want God’s justice enacted on those who have wronged us. We want to receive God’s goodness, kindness, grace, love, mercy and forgiveness, but we don’t want Jesus to be our King. Because if Jesus is king it means that you are not. Jesus is a king who disrobes himself of glory and majesty, steps into our world to pursue treasonous and rebellious sinners like you and me. Jesus is king and that is good news for you and me. Let’s sing:

• GOD WITH US

• REVIVE US AGAIN

Family and Leading

Whether as a volunteer or as a paid staff member - ministry is not for the faint of heart. It can be easy to become discouraged. It can be easy to work for God without spending time with God. It can be easy to have our time become consumed with pursuing excellence in our preparation, to the neglect of other God-given responsibilities. And if you feel called to some kind of ministry, it can be tempting to see others as an obstacle, rather than co-laborers in serving together on mission.

Whether you are living at home with your parents, are married, or single, or have children, a calling to ministry is not an individual call as much as it is a communal, familial call. I have found Pete Scazzero’s language to this end helpful when he talks about how we lead ‘out of our marriage or singleness.’

And if it is true that we minister out of our marriage or singleness, how should that reality shape the way we lead? I am learning that this idea means we do not lead and serve apart from our family but from our family. We lead as a missional representative of the family to which we belong. What is more, if this is true for those of us charged with carrying the responsibilities for a team, it is true for each person serving on our team as well.

Here are some of the rhythms I am trying to incorporate as I consider what it looks like to lead out of my family, and encourage my team to do the same:

Thank families, not just individuals. We often think that the individual is having to sacrifice their time to serve - this is true, but it is also a sacrifice for the family. Less time with a spouse, or children with their parent. It may mean driving separately, coming early, sitting by yourself, or solo-parenting. This is not just a sacrifice of the team member, but their family unit.

Involve the kids. I like to strike the stage every week. If and when possible, my kids love to help me wrap cables, clean up trash, and carry equipment on and off the platform. This is a simple way for them to feel a part of what we do as a family. And I hope and pray this is the way they will come to see ministry in the future.

Prepare at home. This is a great way to involve our families in what we are doing, and why we are doing it. My kids love to sing and practice with me for a Sunday - they will get out all of their instruments and play along as I sing through the setlist.

Use your home. Whether for team meetings, training, or discipleship - our homes can be a great place to show hospitality, but they can also be a great way for our families to be able to participate with us - in the preparation of cleaning, cooking, and hosting, as well engaging face-to-face with those we serve alongside.

Thank your family. I want to be aware that I am able to do what I do because my wife encourages and enables it. I can do what I do because my kids are willing to give up time with their Dad - this is not my thing, it is our thing, and they deserve credit and appreciation for the sacrifices made as we serve together on mission.

Lead from your family, not apart from your family. And encourage your team to do the same.

February 8: Tuesday Refocus

‘Faith is ever occupied with God.  That is the character of it; that is what differentiates it from intellectual theology.  Faith endures ‘as seeing him who is invisible’ (Heb 11:27): endures the disappointments, the hardships, and the heartaches of life by recognizing that all comes from the hand of Him who is too wise to err and too loving to be unkind.’ - A.W. Pink

There are many careless words spoken in the language of faith.  

You didn’t have enough faith.  

Have more faith. 

In Matthew 8, a storm is tossing the sea-worn disciples as Jesus is asleep in the boat.  They cry out for Him to rescue them, and Jesus says ‘Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?’  But it is the storm, not the disciples who receive a rebuke: ‘Then He rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.’ (Matthew 8:26).

Make no mistake, the disciples are witness to Jesus’ strong words against faithlessness at other times: “And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?…” Matthew 17:17

But like God calling out to Adam and Eve in the garden - ‘Where are you?’ (Genesis 3:9) - the questioning of faith as an invitation to draw toward God not away from Him.  Because of Christ, the invitation from God for the follower of Jesus is always to come, always to draw near (Heb 10:19, Matt 11:28, Rev 22:17).

Keep drawing near.

‘…for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.’ James 1:3-4

Lord, thank You that You do not stand far off, but You have drawn near to us. And now we can draw near to you with full assurance of faith, with hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Help us to hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for You who promised is faithful… (Hebrews 10:22-23)

Drawing near,

AB