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Every square inch

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Every square inch

This afternoon found me in a series of massive barns praying over chickens. Let no one say a pastor’s job is boring.

And yes, I am serious. My friend Mat raises chickens. A lot of them. In fact, he has eight barns with forty thousand chickens in each barn. They run free and look quite content.

The problem was this. A mysterious bacteria had invaded the barns. In spite of every possible precaution being taken and the vet pronouncing the barns to be in outstanding shape, chickens were dying. And antibiotics are not an option for this business.

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Potholes on the road to affirmation

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Potholes on the road to affirmation

They clear the roads to a pretty high standard in southwestern Michigan, which is just as well as it means you can see the devastating potholes the recent polar vortex left behind.

There are a lot of potholes on the road to affirmation. We spend a great deal of time worrying about what others think of us. Most of us want to be well-liked. Nobody likes to be on the outside of the “in” circle. This pushes us to do all sorts of things we don’t want to do in the desperate search for approval. People become depressed and even resort to self-harm when they feel nobody likes them. We tailor our conduct and even our appearance to make ourselves more acceptable to those around us. Our lives become hostage to our perception of what someone else’s opinion may or may not be.

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The most dangerous word in the Bible

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The most dangerous word in the Bible

Leaving a church can be like committing spiritual divorce.

Have I got your attention?

I evidently got the attention of the group I was teaching last week, to the point I had to make a lengthy clarification of my comments the next time the group was together.

The (very fair) question came back at me: “Then is it ever right to leave a church?” Obviously the answer is yes. Once-thriving churches can start to die. They can begin to teach wrong doctrine. Leadership can go off the rails. Sometimes job relocation or other circumstance means we have to change church. And sometimes it is just not a spiritual fit. But all these things do not change the fact that people leave churches far too often for the wrong reasons, leaving a trail of hurt and brokenness behind and taking the same baggage with them, which sadly results in them often leaving the next church as well.

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The inconvenient truth about truth

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The inconvenient truth about truth

I want to declare an inconvenient truth. Very inconvenient, in fact.

No, I am not wading into the climate change debate.

But Al Gore posed an interesting question when he titled his movie this way. Why I find it interesting is that (in my educated guess) neither Al Gore nor many of the people who watched his movie actually believe that truth even exists, at least in an absolute sense.

What people really believe is summed up in Oprah Winfrey’s recent speech: “Speaking your truth is the most powerful weapon you have.” She borrowed a phrase heavily used in today’s culture.

In the school of ministry I am currently leading in the USA, and in my “big book of doctrine” titled Landmarks, which has just come off the press, I start not with the doctrine of God, but with the issue of truth. And in particular, the truth of the Bible.

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The doorway to divine power

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The doorway to divine power

Thirty-seven years ago, with the help of a brave band of a dozen university students, I started a church in the cathedral city of Durham in northern England. At the time, the situation looked totally bleak. Everything was ranged against us. We had no money. Hardly anyone even had a job. I had been falsely accused of being involved in a cult. The university launched an inquiry, and I was nearly thrown out of my PhD programme. All the pastors of the town were upset with me for overturning the ecclesiastical applecart, fearing that my new church would steal their members, which was never my intention.

I had given up my scholarship, funded by the Canadian government, in an act of faith that God would provide. I felt he had called me to do something significant in England, yet I had arrived at a place of desperation where it seemed I had hit a brick wall. There were moments when it looked pretty dark.