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Mission Trip – Week 7

I remember standing up in front of the church after every trip and listening to teenagers give basically the same testimony every time (and I participated in it as well).

“It changed my life.”

“I’ve never experienced God like that.”

“You should have seen how God was at work.”

A lot of people cried. Somebody always said they were never going to complain about their own life again after seeing what other people’s living conditions are.

They’d show the slideshow – kids’ faces, a wall that was built, someone handing a child a Bible – and the room would celebrate and the offering for next year’s trip would come in strong.

It took me years to notice that everyone shared almost the exact same testimony every single year, no matter which trip they went on. It is almost like we’d all been handed the same script before we ever got on stage.

And we kind of had been. We just didn’t know it.

a script nobody wrote on purpose

Nobody actually sat down and scripted any of it (I don’t think at least). It just happened, trip after trip, the same way the lock-in and the camp and the youth room did created culture…

People learned what the church wanted to hear, and they gave it to them. They learned that “they had nothing and were happier than us” gets nods and tears, so they said it, whether or not we’d actually spent enough time to know if it was true. They learned that a wall they half-built and a local team finished after they left still counted, on the video, as “what they built.” they learned that a photo of a kid’s face, taken without really knowing his name, was worth more in the recap video than whether any longer term change would happen in that kid’s life or not.

No one set out to do this on purpose. It was just teenagers doing exactly what they were “trained” by the culture around them to do. It’s the same reason the youth pastor and the church started to measure how a good trip was by how good the recap Sunday went over.

In the end, the trip wasn’t really about the place they went or the people they saw.

It was about what they’d come home and say.

“big church” takes the same trip, just bigger

I’ve now watched this same strategy show up in adult mission trips, church-wide disaster response, and local service initiatives – similar testimonies, similar Sunday recaps, similar slideshows and videos – for year after year after year now…

A hurricane hits somewhere, and a church sends a team, and the team comes home with a video.

A trip to build houses in foreign countries turns into content for the fall sermon series on generosity.

The fundraising message is almost always the same. It says “they need us,” whether or not it’s actually true, because “they need us” raises more money than “we’re going to learn how little we understand and how little short-term trips do to impact long-term change.”

Sadly, no one grew out of the youth-trip script. Instead, they scaled it up and gave it better production value.

And underneath the production and the marketing, the same quiet assumption survived: We are the ones with something to give, they are the ones with a need, and the trip exists to let us feel that gap close for one week and chalk it up to doing the Lord’s work.

the cost nobody put in the recap video

One problem with the youth-trip script is that it never realistically evaluated if the impact actually outweighed the cost.

It never had room to say a team of well-meaning teenagers with no construction experience can build something a local contractor would’ve built better, cheaper, and while employing someone from the community who actually needed the work.

It never had room to say the orphanage we visited exists, in part, because Western churches will pay to visit orphanages, and some children get kept in them longer than necessary because a family with means can’t compete with the steady flow of American short-term teams and their donations.

It never had room to say the “relationship” we built over four days was, for the family or the church we visited, one relationship among dozens of teams that came through that same week, that same month, that same year – and for us, it was the whole story we told for the next twelve.

Have we treated the poor as a means to an end for our own feelings of spiritual achievement?
Have we called something “missions” when it mostly serves our desires more than their needs?
Have we created an experience to make us feel like better Christians that actually costs the people we help rather than serves them?

not anti-mission trip

I want to be careful here, same as every post in this series. I’m not arguing to cancel missions trips.

Going somewhere unfamiliar, meeting people whose lives look nothing like yours, having your assumptions about the world quietly rearranged. These are genuinely good things and I don’t want to talk anyone out of it.

The problem is not actually the trip or experience itself. The problem is when we build the mission entirely around what the missionary gets out of it, but just dress it up in language about what the missionary is giving.

Real mission work asks a harder question first: What does this community actually need, and are we the right people to give it, in the right amount, in the right way?

Sometimes the most faithful thing a wealthy church can do is fund a local pastor and local ministry who already knows the community and will be there for the long term, instead of flying in forty people to build what locals could’ve built for a fifth of the cost and would have allowed them to provide for their families.

That’s a much less exciting slideshow. But it’s a much more Biblical missions plan.

everything this series has been trying to say

I still believe in going on mission trips. I still believe in planning fun events for teenagers where you also include sharing the Gospel. I still believe in worship nights, and prayer initiatives, and leadership pipelines, and all sorts of things about the modern American Church that I also critique.

I started this series remembering the youth room, with its own paint colors and furniture. I’ve spent six more posts reminiscing about a lock-in strategy that never ended, mountaintop experiences we keep trying to hold on to, churches sorting people into groups just like them, stages that promote charisma over character, a weekend that slowly became the entire discipleship plan, and missions that benefits the givers more than the receivers.

Every single one of these things started as something good – a real solution to a real problem – but then turned into a permanent church culture I doubt anybody chose on purpose.

Many have built a spiritual life that measures itself by the story it gets told after the spiritual high – the life-changing worship service, the mountaintop weekend, the small group gathering, the compelling preacher, the trip no one wanted to come home from.

Every one of these aspects of church life became optimized for the moment instead of the lifetime. Every one of them ultimately focused on a feeling more than a life changed.

“Big church, same games.”

That’s what I’ve been trying to say for seven posts.

My generation didn’t leave youth group when we grew up. We just kept changing rooms until the whole church was one big youth room, dressed in better production and run by people who never learned any other way.

can it actually be different

I don’t have a simple solution to hand you at the end of this series. Offering one would be doing the exact thing this series has been critiquing anyways: turning the Christian life into a product you can package and sell in six easy steps.

It felt like the right way to end it was to get us looking outward, at our “missions trips,” at how the world actually experiences us and what our impact actually is or isn’t. The only way forward is to be honest about what currently exists.

And I do know what it would look like to actually change course. I’ve written two books about it (shameless plug, go check out my 2-book series on American Christianity on Amazon: https://a.co/d/09fFVvBf)

I can list some things that definitely need to change if we want things to be different.

We need to start measuring maturity instead of attendance. We need to form leaders with decades of pastoral habits, not via stages. We need to have groups where the sixty-year-old and the sixteen-year-old, the person who votes like you and the person who doesn’t, sit across from each other on purpose and are formed into the likeness of Christ together. We need to plan missions around what the world actually needs instead of what makes a good reel on social media. We need to start valuing what faith looks like for an everyday believer on an ordinary Wednesday more than any single Sunday, camp, trip, or moment we could manufacture ever.

Sure, none of that fits nicely on a flyer and none of it fills a room fast. It’s slower, and smaller, and it will definitely never trend.

But I think it’s also the only version of Christianity that has ever actually produced disciples that look more like Jesus than the culture they live in…

That’s the kind of Church I want to help build. Not one that just looks like an adult version of a youth group. But one where we all finally grow up…and start looking like Jesus…

This post is a part of the “Big Church, Same Games” series. Start at the beginning of this series by reading “The Church Became Youth Group.”

Mountaintop Worship – Week 3

I remember how the ride home from retreats or youth camps was almost the same every single time.

A bus full of teenagers who’d spent a weekend or week crying at the altar, writing letters to their future selves, promising God and each other they’d never go back to who they were before.

And then Monday came.

People rarely talked about Monday at camp. Unless it was to state emphatically everything would be different this time around.

And yet, when Monday came, the same friend group that got you in trouble was still your friend group. On Monday, the bedroom you’d promised God you’d clean out spiritually still had the same posters on the wall. On Monday, life was ordinary again and ordinary couldn’t continue the excitement that camp had built up.

By Wednesday night, most of us were already focused on when the next trip was.

Nobody in youth ministry ever really solved the problem. Some of them did talk about it and tried to. But mostly everyone just got better at planning the next mountaintop experience.

the crash wasn’t a bug in the system

Here’s the thing nobody said out loud back then and still almost nobody says out loud now.

The crash wasn’t a flaw in the system. The crash was the expected outcome.

A camp, a retreat, a worship night – all these things run on emotional highs. You pull people out of ordinary life, strip away distraction, turn up the volume, and the peak feels enormous precisely because everything around it was flattened first.

That’s not a spiritual phenomenon. That’s just how contrast works on a nervous system.

And it’s not evil.

God can absolutely meet someone in a mountaintop experience. He met Moses on one. But Moses came down the mountain and had to lead a people through forty years of wilderness that was not, in any way, a mountaintop.

Most of Scripture doesn’t happen on the mountain. Most of Scripture happens in the wilderness, in exile, in a boat, at a well, in a prison cell.

The mountaintop is rare on purpose. And yet we built entire youth ministries as if the mountaintop was the goal.

the church learned the same operating system

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that entire churches now run on the exact same operating system as the youth retreat format.

The worship set builds the same way. Slow song, quiet down, a moment of stillness engineered into the setlist, a swell, a peak, an altar call or a “response time” while the band plays underneath at exactly the right volume to keep the moment from breaking.

We didn’t invent this by accident. We learned it from youth events, and it worked, so we kept doing it – every Sunday, on a stage, for adults, using the same tactics made popular for teenagers at winter camp.

The church conference circuit definitely runs the same way as youth camps if you haven’t noticed. Three days, tight production, a lineup of speakers each building on the last, a closing time engineered to be the emotional peak of the whole conference.

People leave “changed.”

Well, for maybe about a weekend. Then Monday comes for adults too, the same way it did for teens.

we started confusing feeling with formation

We have to be honest about what got traded here.

We started measuring people’s spirituality by intensity instead of consistency.

We started treating the size of the feeling as evidence of the presence of God, instead of asking whether anything about a person’s actual life was different in six to nine months.

We started building whole churches around the producing of peak experiences, because peak experiences are exciting, and exciting things grow attendance, and attendance is what we decided to measure.

Have we mistaken a good cry at the altar for actual repentance?
Have we told people the mountaintop is where God lives, when Scripture keeps insisting He’s normally present in the valley?
Have we built spiritual lives that can only sustain themselves by getting out next hit at the next scheduled high?

building the muscle that actually holds

There’s now a vital shift churches have to make.

The primary rhythm of the church can’t be the retreat, the conference, the big upcoming sermon series, the month of prayer, or even the next important Sunday.

It has to be the ordinary week – the same small group of disciples meeting on the same Tuesday, month after month, with nothing building toward a climax. If that’s not the actual backbone of the church calendar, the mountaintop will keep being the focus.

It means teaching people to pray and read Scripture in a way that doesn’t need a worship set to be meaningful. A Christian that can only spend time in God’s presence with a band leading them hasn’t been taught to be with God at all.

It means creating different metrics on purpose – not “how did the retreat go,” but “who is still praying, still showing up, still being formed, six months later, with no event on the calendar.” If a church can’t answer that, it’s still living off the mountaintop.

And it means being honest from the stage that the high will fade. Saying it out loud before Mondaygets the chance to say it first, so people aren’t left thinking their faith failed when the feelings went away.

what actually holds up

The people I know who are still following Jesus decades after their own youth group years are almost never the ones who chased the next mountaintop the hardest.

They’re the ones who learned to pray in the midst of their ordinary lives and busy schedule.

Who kept showing up to a small, unglamorous group of people who knew them long after the retreat high wore off.

Who learned that faithfulness on Monday matters more than the tears on Friday night. Not because the tears were fake, but because the tears were never meant to be the point.

The mountaintop is real. God does meet us there.

But He doesn’t need us to meet Him there. He never has.

And a church that only knows how to build mountaintop experiences has never actually taught anyone how to walk in the ordinariness of life…which, it turns out, is where all of us actually live and Jesus wants to be the most present to us…

This post is a part of the “Big Church, Same Games” series. The next post is “Find Your People.”

Lock-In Gospel – Week 2

I still remember my first lock in.

Pizza and sodas all night. A prize if you brought a friend. Games till 11 pm, worship at midnight, a movie at 2 am. Somebody playing music thru the sound system in the gym like it was a concert. Lots of kids, lots of energy.

And sure, Jesus was in there. Usually around the time everyone was tired enough to sit still.

That was the deal, and nobody hid it.

Get them in the door with the fun. Slip in the gospel once you had their attention.

It worked. I know it worked, because it worked on me and my friends.

And since then, I’ve watched that exact strategy walk straight out of the youth room and onto the main stage of churches.

Come be entertained. Jesus is there somewhere.

Except now it’s not a strategy for a lock-in once a semester. It’s a plan used for one hour, every single week. It’s a plan to grow churches and build more campuses.

bait and switch faith

Nobody sat in a meeting and decided to model church off of a lock-in strategy.

It happened one decision at a time, and every decision probably made sense on its own.

The band got better musicians because a great band honors God (oh, and draws a bigger crowd).

The lighting and screens were upgraded to provide an easier way for the congregation to sing along (oh, and a more exciting experience).

Someone noticed attendance always spikes for the series with the movie-trailer-style promo video which means more people could hear the Gospel (so they started making more of those to draw more people).

The greeters got a script. The coffee became fair trade. The lobby got re-named and re-modeled as a “gathering space.” And whether anyone said it out loud or not, churches started modeling themselves after lock-ins…

Every single one of those moves made sense at the time. And yet together, they built a machine. A machine built to get people in the door and keep them coming back.

A bigger version of the same machine youth ministry leaders began building prototypes for decades ago.

we traded formation for attraction

We didn’t set out to replace discipleship with entertainment. We set out to remove barriers. And somewhere the barrier-removing became the whole job.

We started asking “how many people showed up” instead of “how did that form them.”

We started measuring the wrong things because they were the things we could quickly and easily measure.

Attendance.

Salvations.

Baptisms.

How many people volunteered for the second service.

We stopped asking harder questions because they didn’t show up on the scorecard.

Did anyone repent of anything significant this year?
Did anyone learn to actually pray or read the Scriptures for themselves?
Did anyone get discipled by a person, instead of only by a stage and a public speaker?

A lock-in never had to answer those questions. It had one job: keep a hundred teenagers occupied and safe until their parents came back in the morning, and try to sneak in Jesus. Fun was really the main assignment, not discipleship.

“Big church” was never supposed to copy that assignment.

the add-on became optional

Unfortunately, what happens when Jesus is the add-on instead of the whole point is eventually you don’t actually need Him at all.

You can run an excellent Sunday morning service – moving music, an impactful communicator, a well-produced series with a good hook – and never actually lead anyone to repentance, confession, or a lifetime relationship with Jesus. You can hold a packed room’s attention for ninety minutes purely on production value.

We know this is true because plenty of arenas do it every weekend for sports or music with no gospel in the building at all.

If the thing that makes your church different from a well-run concert or sporting event is a forty-minute public speaker and a response time at the end, you haven’t built a church. You’ve built a very good show, with a chaplain.

not anti-excellence

I want to be careful here too, because it would be easy to hear this as turn off the lights, kill the band, sing four hymns off key and call it holy.

That’s not it.

Excellence isn’t the problem. A great band isn’t the problem. A technology-filled room isn’t the problem.

The problem is what this version of excellence that is being celebrated actually results in.

A lock-in’s excellence was in service of getting as many teenagers to show up as possible, helping them to think youth group is fun and cool, and keeping them busy till morning.

If a church’s excellence is in service of the exact same kind of thing — getting people to show up, keeping them spiritually entertained, and getting them to come back — then it doesn’t matter if Jesus is included or not, the results will never be about Him.

We will have built a very well-run version of the wrong version of excellence.

what it would actually take to fix this

We are at the point that it would take an major shift, not just a slight modification, to correct course.

It would mean the “invitation” isn’t the last thing you do as a part of a well-produced religious hour. It has to be built into the structure of the service itself — real space for confession, for actual response, not a swelling instrumental track cueing people toward a decision they’ll forget by lunch.

It means whoever plans the service asks a different first question. Not “how do we hook people,” but “what would actually need to happen in this hour for someone to walk out more formed than they walked in.” Sometimes that still means a great band. It just stops being the whole strategy.

It means real follow-up when someone does respond — a person calling them that week, not a name added to a database. A lock-in never had to follow up with anyone after Saturday morning. A church does.

And it means being willing to measure something harder than attendance: are the people who’ve been here five years actually more like Jesus than they were five years ago? If nobody can answer that question, the production was working. The church wasn’t.

questions worth sitting with

Have we confused a full room with a formed people?
Have we made actual relationship with Jesus the smallest, quietest part of the hour?
Would this Sunday still be worth it if the lights never came up, the band never played, the world-class communicator never spoke, and you weren’t served good coffee?

I don’t know a pastor who set out to build a lock-in that never ends. But I know a lot of them who have unfortunately inherited and perpetuated a system originally built for attracting teenagers and never asked whether it was unfortunately built for the wrong job all along.

The add-on was never supposed to be the add-on. He was always supposed to be the whole point.

This post is a part of the “Big Church, Same Games” series. The next post is “Mountaintop Worship.”

The Church Became Youth Group – Week 1

I grew up in church. Sunday school, VBS, children’s choir and musicals, and of course eventually youth group.

In fact, I still remember how big of a deal it was when our church started allowing 6th graders to join the youth group instead of having them wait until 7th grade (what used to be called Jr High). And it was my grade level that was the first to make this transition…

I still remember being so excited to join my older brothers at youth group, and yet so nervous about all the big teenagers I now had to be around.

I remember the games, the food, the lessons on puberty and purity, the looking up to older teenagers and wanting to be like them, and of course the big events and trips — 5th quarters after Friday night football being some of the best.

And I especially remember my first youth pastor who always made sure we knew he cared. Still to this day I can hear him say what he always said at the end of every youth group gathering: “Even if no one else tells you today, I want you to know I love you.” And he meant it. He is still one of the “good ones.”

I actually have very little bad things to say about my time in youth group.

My reason for writing isn’t some sort of negative experience that now I want to project onto church in general. Even though I certainly have my share of stories that I can’t believe happened…

But my goal in writing these reflections is to look at how what was meant to be a transitionary version of ministry for teenagers (youth group culture) actually became a permanent framework for ministry for many churches today (church growth strategy and megachurch or contemporary culture).

And that because this has happened, that is why I think we now have a very immature (and sometimes heretical) version of American Christianity that has been popularized today.

lock-ins and lights down low

Lock-ins. Summer camps. Worship nights with the lights down low. Altar calls that felt like the most important fifteen to thirty minutes of the week.

I won’t say I didn’t enjoy it. I did. I was swept up in it all.

Early on I learned how to be a “leader” by fully engaging in whatever it was we were doing — from the “innocent” pranks on trips to the serious prayer times during worship nights.

I don’t regret being fully “in” on youth group. But somewhere along the way, as I grew up and engaged in college ministry and then eventually became a leader in church ministry as an adult (especially church planting or large church ministry), I started noticing something.

It felt familiar. It no longer felt like “big church” used to when I was a kid. It felt much more like youth group did.

The songs had the same emotional arcs.

The sermons had the same focuses, stories, and calls for response.

The “big moments” were engineered the same way my youth pastor used to engineer a Wednesday night: build the energy in the room and then land the ask.

As I grew up, it turns out church didn’t grow up with me. Church just became an adult version of youth group, with a bigger budget.

a transition became a destination

Youth ministry, at its best, was never meant to be the model for the whole church.

It was created to be transitional.

A way to meet teenagers where they are – because teenagers many times need novelty and energy and belonging – and to point them toward something deeper. Toward a lifetime of ordinary, unglamorous discipleship among people of every age.

Well, that was the theory when it started anyway.

Somewhere in the last few decades, that transitional version of ministry became the destination.

The methods people built for us as teenagers, followed us as we grew and got implemented into “big church.”

Nobody voted on this. Nobody announced it from a stage. It just happened.

Partly because the youth pastors of old worked their way up to become lead pastors or church planters. Partly because the youth group kids of old became the adults churches were then looking to attract to “come back” to church with their kids.

Either way, churches becoming adult youth groups started to “work.”

Attendance went up. Energy went up. Budgets went up.

And slowly, without a single decision anyone could point to, many American Churches became larger versions of the youth groups a lot of us grew up in.

Adult mission trips started looking a lot like youth summer trips. Church events started looking identical to youth conferences. And lead pastors starting dressing and acting just like youth pastors used to.

The youth group didn’t transition us to “big church.” The church transitioned to becoming a youth group. And almost no one seemed to see it happening, or seemed to care.

three things we traded in the process

I’ll spend the rest of this series unpacking what this has meant for what the church is today. But here is an overview of what we’ve traded in this transition:

We replaced discipleship with spiritual entertainment.
We embraced emotional highs as if it equates to spiritual growth.
We created groups based off ages, stages, and preferences instead of forming a spiritual family.

Somewhere we decided the goal of a gathering was to keep someone’s attention rather than to form them.

We started measuring whether people encountered God by whether they felt something.

And we got very good at manufacturing experiences instead of developing spiritual awareness.

The mountaintop experience became the metric.

Just like youth camp was always followed by a crash (and nobody in youth ministry ever seemed to solve that problem but just planned the next thing) now churches just run on the same roller coaster spirituality:

The worship night. The mission trip. The men’s or women’s event. The sermon series built to climb toward a climax. The next Sunday you just don’t want to miss.

The crash still comes every time. We’ve just gotten better at scheduling the next experience or emotional high before anyone asks questions.

not nostalgia

I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to write this as things were better in the old days.

They weren’t.

The pre “youth-groupification” of the American Church had its own problems. Formality without formation. Moralism without mercy. Communities that pushed people into cultural conformity as easily as into Christ.

I’m not asking us to go back.

I’m encouraging us to notice what we’ve actually built. And to ask honestly whether it forms the kind of people the New Testament describes, or whether it’s just really good at getting people to show up, show out, and shell out money.

Because those are not the same thing.

A youth group can be full every Wednesday and still fail to produce a single disciple that will follow Jesus in their twenties and thirties.

A church can be full every Sunday, with all the same slick production, gifted communicator, and talented band, and also be producing the exact same result.

Just with better marketing and more expensive equipment.

built for a stage nobody was meant to stay in

I don’t think most pastors have created the problems we are now seeing on purpose.

I simply think they were taught (or caught) a style of ministry built for a specific, temporary developmental stage of life, and then they just kept doing that kind of ministry when everyone grew up because it seemed to “work” and it’s what they knew.

But it doesn’t mean we should just accept it as normative for the Church.

We must ask difficult questions:

Have we mistaken entertainment for formation?
Have we trained pastors to know how to fill a room but not how to sit with someone in their real relationship with God?
Have we built churches that feel exciting over churches that make ordinary disciples?

It’s worth asking what the church should look like if we formed it to make mature disciples. Not just grown-ups performing a polished, entertaining, emotionally-cued version of a group of teenagers at youth camp.

Mature disciples. Formed slowly. Known deeply. Led by people who have done more than survive their own adolescence.

That’s the church we should want to attend. That’s what we should want to lead.

And this series is my attempt to identify what we have allowed to be built instead…

This post is a part of the “Big Church, Same Games” series. The next post is “Lock-In Gospel.”

a resurrected king – Wednesday of Holy Week

when the church is rebuilt

The story of the Gospel does not end in ruins.

It does not end in ashes.
It does not end at the cross.
It does not end in exposure.

It ends with light entering in thru what was broken.

The image before us is the same church as the one on Ash Wednesday.

Same stone.
Same location.
Same history.

But it has been rebuilt.

The walls are restored.
The pews stand again.
Icons shine softly in the morning light.

It is not larger.
Not flashier.
Not more powerful (at least in the way empires measure power).

It is simply faithful.

what had to fall

Over these weeks of Lent, we have walked through Jesus’ wilderness temptation – the offer of kingdoms without the cross.

We have welcomed the children who have been harmed by empires and asked whether we have justified what Jesus would condemn.

We have knelt in the road with the wounded and considered whether our loyalties have trained us to pass hurting people by.

We have listened as Jesus pronounces woes against leaders who protect their image more than their integrity.

We have watched tables be overturned in a house that had forgotten how to pray.

And we have stood at the foot of a cross where empire tried to silence a different kind of Kingdom.

Each reflection exposed something inside us.

Not just “out there.”

In us.

Because the deepest theme of this Lenten journey was never some sort of cultural critique.

It was our spiritual allegiance.

Who have we chosen to be the King of our lives?

What do we believe must be preserved at all costs?

If we believe our nation must be preserved at all costs, we will compromise.

If we believe our safety must be preserved at all costs, we will justify harm.

If we believe our platform must be preserved at all costs, we will silence prophets.

But if we believe the identity of the Kingdom of God is the only thing worth preserving at all costs, then something else entirely happens.

We learn to live in true freedom.

resurrection is not the result of empire

Resurrection does not come from the triumph of the “best” political system.

It does not come from a divine endorsement of someone’s influence.

It does not come from the “sanctification” of political power.

Resurrection is God’s declaration that His way of self-sacrificing love is stronger than any force of mankind.

Rome crucified Jesus to maintain order.

God raised Him from the dead to usher in a new Kingdom.

The empire remained standing after that first Easter.

But its authority was exposed.

It could kill the body.
It could not extinguish the Kingdom.

And that matters.

Because resurrection does not mean worldly power nor evil instantly collapse.

But it does means they no longer get to define reality.

a house of prayer

The rebuilt church in the image is not a Cathedral or a megachurch.

It does not align with the empire’s sacred monuments.

It is not draped in flags.

It is small.
It is beautiful.
It is rooted.

It is a house of prayer.

And that is the hope.

Not that Christians would win the “culture wars.”
Not that the Church regains “its place.”
Not that the name of Jesus secures influence or fame.

But that we become faithful again.

That we disentangle from our earthly allegiances.
That we tear down what has been false.
That we rebuild around repentance, honesty, and love.

Resurrection is not about reclaiming control.

It is about receiving a new way of life.

what resurrection requires

Something has to die for the Church in America to be rebuilt in our day.

Illusions of permanence.
Confidence in proximity to power.
The belief that compromise is harmless.
The myth that “lesser evil” is still conducive to righteousness.

Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten journey in dust.

Easter ends the Lenten journey in light.

And the path between them requires honest confession and deep repentance.

It requires naming idolatry, not as someone else’s problem – but as our own.

It requires admitting that I have been wrong, that I have defended what I should have condemned, that I have confused my citizenship and my allegiances.

Resurrection does not come to the overly confident.

It comes to the surrendered.

the call forward

The good news of Easter never leaves us without hope.

Instead, it leaves us with clarity.

You do not have to choose between escapism or tribal loyalty.

You can choose Christ.

You do not have to baptize political power to keep the faith.

You can follow a crucified King.

You do not have to accept the narrative that faithfulness requires compromise.

You can refuse both dehumanization and despair.

A rebuilt church can stand as a quiet resistance.

Not loud.
Not triumphant.
But very much alive.

And that is what counts.

a final reflection

If God’s resurrecting Spirit were to rebuild your own heart right now –

What would it require removing?

What would it seek to restore?

What idols would no longer be allowed to stand?

Easter does not erase the damage.

It transforms it.

The stones that once lay scattered now hold together a different kind of house.

And this time, it will be a house of prayer.

The Kingdom has the final word.

Not the empire.

Not the fear it stokes.

Not the death it leaves in its wake.

Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

And now we must decide what we will do with this resurrected King.

crucifying christ – Sixth Sunday of Lent

the conflict of the cross

There is a temptation to make the cross “safer.” To merely make it a “symbol.”

To reduce it to a reminder of only our individual salvation.
To shrink it into jewelry that we wear.
To frame it beautifully in stained glass.

But the cross was never a symbol. And there is certainly nothing about crucifixion that is safe.

It was Rome’s billboard of compliance. Their social media ad about law and order.

In the first century, crucifixion was not simply a form of execution. It was political theater. It was a blatant warning. It was a message broadcast with wood and nails, with flesh and blood.

This is what happens when you challenge the empire. When you don’t “fall in line.” When you are labeled a domestic terrorist.

Jesus was not crucified simply for being too nice. For healing too many people. For breaking “social norms.” For advocating for the vulnerable.

He was crucified because His declaration that “the Kingdom of God is at hand” is a direct threat to every earthly empire. Even those who claim to be on the side of God’s people…

That is why the cross should confronts us so sharply.

Jesus, the very son of God, hangs on a cross, crowned with thorns, blood dripping down his body, as he’s gasping for air. Forced to die an excruciating death surrounded by the guardians of the empire.

The cross is not trapped in history. The empire ridding itself of those who challenge its exclusive authority is not a lesson of the past.

It is a pattern of how all earthly empires work. Generation after generation. Aligned with “Christian institutions” or not.

The empire’s way of ruling over humanity is in direct conflict with the identity of the Kingdom of God.

the cross is political

In the Gospels, Jesus speaks of good news for the poor, freedom for captives, release for the oppressed. He touches lepers. He eats with outcasts. He calls out religious hypocrisy. He exposes economic exploitation in the temple. He refuses to baptize violence in the name of God.

And what was the solution by those in power to this disruption?

The use of a state-sanctioned show of force.

Religious leaders and the empire colluded to make it happen. Fear and power aligned their goals. Stability was preserved. The troublemaker was silenced.

God’s own people and political leaders played a key role in silencing the son of God. In working against the ways of His Kingdom. In putting an end to the disruption of His ways.

Whenever the Kingdom of God breaks into this world, the empires and the systems that profit from fear and total allegiance react boldly.

The cross displays what empires do when they feel threatened.

They crucify.

where god stands

The revelation of the cross though is not actually about what the empire does. That is expected if we look at the history of humanity.

But what the cross ultimately shows us is where God stands when the choice is between the empire and His Kingdom.

God does not stand with the war mongers.

God does not wield weapons of mass destruction.

God does not draft policies that dehumanize others.

God does not side with those who use politics and wealth to exploit.

God stands with the oppressed. With the vulnerable. With the victims.

This is one of the main scandals of Christianity: that the Creator of the universe identifies not with strength but with suffering. Not with systems of control but with the bodies being broken by them.

Jesus said, “Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me.” That is not metaphor. It is incarnation.

The crucified Christ is present wherever people are being crushed by empires.
Where families are displaced.
Where policies erase dignity.
Where bombs fall and mothers weep.
Where fellow humans are imprisoned behind walls and fences.
Where fear is weaponized for political gain.

When the world shows us all the evil that is possible when men wield their power for their own sinful ambitions, the cross tells us where God is standing. And who God is standing with.

the temptation of comfortable faith

There is a version of faith that reveres the cross but resists its implications.

It sings about Calvary but avoids confronting the injustices that caused the crucifixion.
It preaches forgiveness but is silent about the harm that requires people to forgive.
It worships loudly on Sunday and ignores suffering on Monday.

That kind of faith is tidy.
It is manageable.
And it never makes those in power uncomfortable.

But the path of the cross does not allow for a comfortable faith.

Jesus is not neutral. The cross is not bipartisan and it is not apolitical either. It exposes violence wherever it exists. It critiques oppression wherever it operates. It calls into question every allegiance that requires dehumanization.

The question is not, “Which side are you on?”

The question is, “Where is Christ?”

And the answer is painfully consistent.

Christ is with the crucified.

the mirror of the cross

The story of the crucifixion is meant to hold up a mirror to our participation in the systems of this world.

Because the truth is, the crowd that day believed it was justified. The soldiers were following orders. The leaders were enacting the law. The system was preserving peace.

No one wakes up thinking, Today I will participate in the crucifixion of God.

And yet, they did.

The cross forces an uncomfortable reflection:

Where have we mistaken security for righteousness?
Where have we baptized fear as wisdom?
Where have we ignored suffering because it was politically inconvenient?

Empire always believes power is necessary.

Kingdom always looks like going to the cross.

And yet, in the end, the Kingdom wins.

The way of the cross leads to resurrection.

love that absorbs violence

Here is a paradox at the center of Jesus’ crucifixion story:

God’s people, with the help of the empire, believed they were ending a threat to their existence.
Instead, what was revealed was their own empty idolatry.

Jesus did not call down legions of angels (though He could have).
He did not respond with violence toward their violence.
He absorbed it.

That is not passivity.
That is confrontation at the deepest level.

The cross unmasks the empire’s power by refusing to mimic it.

And three days later, the resurrection answered the empire’s power of violence with something it could not manufacture: the Kingdom’s power of new life.

good friday comes first

We are not at resurrection yet in this movement.

We are still standing in the shadow of the cross.

We should not rush past it. We should not sanitize it. We should not symbolize it.

The entire week leading up to Easter, but especially Good Friday is not a sentimental moment. It is an exposure. It is a reckoning. It is a revelation of how the world maintains control and how God subverts it.

Before glory, there is crucifixion.
Before triumph, there is suffering.
Before resurrection, there is confrontation.

And the cross still speaks these truths today.

It speaks to governments.
It speaks to churches.
It speaks to us.

It asks:

Will you align with the empire’s power that crucifies the other or with God’s love that absorbs hate?

Will you protect a politicized version of faith or stand in costly solidarity with a subversive Savior?

Will you bow down to nationalistic symbols of safety or follow a crucified King?

And so this is where the season of Lent leads us – to the foot of the cross.

A place that’s uncomfortable and unsafe.
A story that exposes idolatry.
A person that invites us to follow His ways.

Because resurrection can come.

But first, we must decide where we stand. And if we stand with Him, we will end up at the cross ourselves. Usually at the very hands of those who most ardently say they’re the ones on God’s side…

*This blog is a part of a series of Lenten reflections. I encourage you to go back and start with the Ash Wednesday reflection for context if this is the first one you’ve read.

a house of prayer – Fifth Sunday of Lent

“my father’s house”

The same Jesus who welcomed children.
The same Jesus who healed the sick.
The same Jesus who told stories about mercy.

That same Jesus walks into the Temple, walks into a gathering of God’s people, and He flips tables.

Coins fly.
A whip pops.
Transactional religious practices are interrupted.

And He says:

“My Father’s house shall be called a house of prayer…but you have made it something else.”

what made Jesus angry?

It wasn’t preaching.

It wasn’t music style.

It wasn’t marketing.

It was exploitation.

It was sacred space being used to “get ahead” rather than to lay down one’s life.

The temple had become a place where power and profit quietly hid behind religious practice.

And Jesus would not allow it to continue unchallenged.

the worship industry

This reflection in this Lenten series asks another hard question that builds upon the previous ones…

Not simply: Have we compromised our faith for the sake of power?

But instead: Have we capitalized on faith mixed with power?

When churches measure success by size, influence, revenue, or political priorities – are we sure we are measuring the same things Jesus measured?

When churches protect platforms and leaders more than they believe victims and defend the vulnerable – are we sure the system isn’t already preying on the least of these?

a house of prayer

Prayer is slow.

Prayer is dependent.

Prayer admits we are not in control.

While empires move quickly,
The Kingdom waits in prayer.

While empires create spectacles,
The Kingdom surrenders thru prayer.

While empires count money and votes,
The Kingdom measures faithfulness with prayer.

Jesus did not cleanse the Temple because He disliked it. It was built for His Father after all.

He cleansed it because the sacred had become a means to an end, and not the end in itself.

the danger of “necessary”

The most subtle corruption rarely feels evil.

It feels strategic.
Pragmatic.
Necessary.

If we don’t do this, we’ll lose influence.
If we don’t do that, we’ll lose relevance.

If we don’t protect this leader, the mission will suffer.
If we don’t vote for this politician, the nation will fall.

Lent causes us to ask:

What if preserving the system costs us our worship?

What if we’ve confused effectiveness with obedience?

What if the tables are still standing because they benefit us?

What if we’ve gained all of the world but lost all of our souls?

a cleansing we need

Jesus’ anger in the temple was not random outrage.

It was protective love.

Love for His Father’s house.
Love for the people being exploited.
Love for true worship that had been distorted.

Remember, Jesus sat at far more tables than He flipped.

But there is an important lesson in why He flipped those tables:

It wasn’t about clearing out the Temple. It was actually about cleansing their hearts.

He turns over our carefully placed idols.
He exposes our most ardent justifications.
He confronts the sins we have grown most comfortable with.

our temple tables today

If Jesus walked into our churches today –

What would He bless?

And what would He overturn?

Not in someone else’s life or some other church.

In mine.

In yours.

What would he notice that looks more like the empire than the Kingdom?

Because a house of prayer cannot exist if the church is chasing after money, popularity, or political power.

The Kingdom of God does not advance through political strategy.

It advances through personal and corporate surrender.

*This blog is a part of a series of Lenten reflections. I encourage you to go back and start with the Ash Wednesday reflection for context if this is the first one you’ve read.

woes of love – Fourth Sunday of Lent

“woe to you…”

There are versions of Jesus many of us prefer.

Savior.
Provider.
Healer.

But in Matthew 23, Jesus takes on a role that is just as important: Prophet.

He names names.
He confronts power.
He exposes hypocrisy.

“Woe to you…”

“You clean the outside of the cup, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence.”

“You build monuments to the prophets, but you silence the truth in your own day.”

These are not private corrections.

They are public indictments.

And they are aimed not at “the pagans” nor “the world” – but at God’s own religious and political leaders who claimed to represent Him most faithfully.

when power protects itself

The leaders of Jesus’ day were not cartoon villains.

They believed they spoke and acted on behalf of God.
That they were protecting tradition.
That they were defending truth.

But somewhere along the way, they began loving influence more than integrity.

They honored God with their words.
They invoked Scripture.
They spoke of rightness.

But their systems burdened the everyday person.
Their leadership protected the powerful instead of the vulnerable.
Their piety masked ambition and pride.

And Jesus would not let it pass.

the temptation of applause

The reflection this week forces a hard question:

What happens when my faith becomes entangled with my social status?

When access to money feels like blessing?
When proximity to political leaders feels like influence?
When we defend “our side” because losing would mean weakness?

Jesus’ harshest words were reserved for those who used God to secure their own position.

Not because He hated them.

But because blatant hypocrisy in the name of God does more damage than genuine ignorance.

prophecy is not tribal

Jesus stood before many leaders during his time on earth – religious, political, cultural.

He was never impressed by credentials.

He was never swayed by titles or platforms or uniforms.

He was concerned about different things:

Does your leadership look like servanthood?

Does your power protect the least of these?

Does your faith look like the Kingdom instead of the empire around you?

The condemnations of Matthew 23 were not because of the positions of leadership that people held.

They were that the people holding them could no longer discern that they had become the very thing the Scriptures warned about not becoming…

an examen

This story is not about pointing at “them.”

It’s about our ability to be self-aware enough to know when we’ve begun to defend what the Bible condemns.

Have we excused arrogance because it delivers results?
Have we minimized corruption because it protects our interests?
Have we confused being influential with being faithful?

The woes of Jesus are not political slogans.

They are spiritual diagnoses.

They expose the subtle drift from devotion to dominion.

the mercy of woe

“Woe” is not anger and condemnation.

It is grief. It is an invitation to change.

It is the sorrow of watching people mistake popularity within the world’s systems for righteousness.

It is the heartbreak of seeing the faith that you love weaponized against the people those weaponizing it are supposed to love.

“Woe” comes from a love strong enough to confront. To hold accountable. To call others to be consistent with what they say they believe.

The season of Lent invites us to sit with this sort of self-reflection.

Not as spectators watching others. But as participants in our own formation.

Because the most dangerous kind of hypocrisy is the one we refuse to see in ourselves.

today’s leadership landscape

If Jesus stood in the center of our religious and political landscape today…

What would He affirm?

And what would He condemn?

Before we answer this for others, we might ask:

Where have I been silent about the ways the empire is misaligned with the heart of Christ?

People of the Kingdom of God should never fear being exposed by the truth.

They should fear never allowing themselves to be exposed because they pridefully believe they are always on the side of truth.

Only God is on the side of truth every time.

God doesn’t “choose” our side. We choose to be on God’s side.

Are you actively seeking to ensure you’re choosing God’s side and not asking God to choose yours?

Are you holding accountable your leaders to ensure they are doing the same?

*This blog is a part of a series of Lenten reflections. I encourage you to go back and start with the Ash Wednesday reflection for context if this is the first one you’ve read.

wrong kind of compassion – Third Sunday of Lent

who is my neighbor?

A religious leader once asked Jesus this question: “And who is my neighbor?”

Not to learn.
But to test Him.

Jesus answered with a story.

A man is beaten down, poor, and left for dead, sitting on the side of a well-traveled path. A religious leader passes by. A political leader passes by.

People who know the Scriptures pass by. People who are “like him” pass by.

But one person stops. An outsider. A person considered impure by the religious leaders. A person considered on the wrong side by the political leaders. A person considered “less than” or “other” by those waiting for Jesus’ answer to the question that was asked.

A Samaritan. Someone of mixed lineage. Someone not “like them.”

dangerous compassion

The Samaritan does not begin his interaction with the man with merely kind words.
He begins with compassionate action.

He kneels.
He binds his wounds.
He uses his own resources.
He risks embarrassment and judgment.

He does not first ask how the man ended up there.
He does not consider the optics of the situation.
He does not calculate what helping him might cost him financially.

He sees the suffering of another person and he moves toward it.

That is what makes the story dangerous to the ones asking the question of Jesus.

Because compassion always disrupts relational power dynamics.

people who pass by

Jesus could have chosen random travelers to ignore the wounded man. He could have made the ones who passed by Samaritans or Roman leaders. He could have made the wounded man the “other” and the one who stops someone “like them.”

But he didn’t.

He chose their religious leader to pass by.

He chose their political leader to pass by.

People who loved God.
People who taught Scripture.
People who believed they were faithful and on the “right side” of God’s story.

Sure, they did not actively harm the man.

They simply ignored him. Looked the other way. Kept walking.

And that is where the story becomes uncomfortable.

Many times, we are not the “villain” of the story.
We are just the passerby.

We are the ones with good theology and busy schedules.
We are the ones managing relational influence, public messaging, preserving institutions.
We are the ones who believe we are on the “right side of history.”

But the wounded are still there, along our well-traveled paths.

Those who have lived hard lives.
Those who can’t “dress up” or hide their messes.
Those who have had to leave their homes behind to make a better life for their kids.
Some are unhoused or hungry.
Some struggle with mentally illness or medical complications.
Most are the ones whose stories are too complex for campaign slogans. For church budgets. For social media influencer posts.

And we are tempted to judge them instead of kneel beside them.

To decide they just should have worked harder. Just shouldn’t have done this or that. That it is ultimately their fault or even God’s will that they continue to struggle or suffer…

the wrong kind of compassion

The Samaritan in Jesus’ story was the wrong ethnicity, religion, and on the wrong side of political lines to be the one helping the man. He was the wrong kind of compassion.

That was the scandal. That’s what made Jesus choosing him as the “hero” so wrong.

Compassion that broke tribal loyalty. Sacrifice that broke political allegiances.

The question from this story is not simply: “Am I kind?” or “Do I have compassion?”

The question is: Has my loyalty to ethnicity, to ideology, to political party, even to national identity trained me to walk past certain people without noticing? To allow harm to happen to people simply because they are not “like us.”

Have I learned to see suffering through the filter of the empire’s power dynamics?

The religious and political leaders may have told themselves they were protecting something sacred. But they protected it at the cost of their faith. At the cost of God’s love.

In denying compassion and mercy to the man, they denied the One who is the very embodiment of those things.

mercy over power

In the image posted, there are leaders, officials, protesters, officers – all convinced that their cause matters.

And maybe it does.

But in the foreground, someone is hurting.

The Kingdom of God is revealed not in the speeches or the strategies, but in the kneeling.

The Samaritan did not win a theological argument. He did not win a campaign for office.
He simply refused to step past a person.

He chose mercy, not political allegiance.

No one applauds for the Samaritan at the end of the story. Certainly no one thanks Jesus for his teaching.

But He does end his conversation with a command:

“Go and do likewise.”

a question for today

If Jesus told this story today, who would be cast as the Samaritan?

And how would we be uncomfortable with that choice?

Who have we learned to distrust, to discount, to disregard – who might actually be nearer to the heart of God than we are?

And who have we stepped around while arguing about being on the right side of politics or of power?

This week, ask yourself:

Where have I walked past someone because helping would complicate the world’s narrative that I’ve believed about them?

The Kingdom of God does not belong to the ones “on the right side of history.” It does not belong to the church leader who passes the theological purity test. It does not belong to the church member who made the politically expedient choice.

It belongs not to the conspiracy theorists nor to the “truth tellers.”

It belongs to the one who kneels.

Which are you? Which one will you be?

*This blog is a part of a series of Lenten reflections. I encourage you to go back and start with the Ash Wednesday reflection for context if this is the first one you’ve read.

do not hinder them – Second Sunday of Lent

“let the little children”

There is a moment in the Gospels that reveals the gentle strength of God’s Kingdom.

People start bringing children to Jesus.

The ever-practical disciples are trying to manage the situation. They want the children to be sent away. After all, children are not important. There are more urgent matters at hand. Political tensions. Religious controversies. After all, the mission must be protected.

In response, Jesus is very direct in His gentleness:

“Let the little children come to me. Do not hinder them. For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

He does not say this softly. He does not say this symbolically.

He says it prophetically. He says it literally.

In the world of first-century Rome, children were among the least of these.

They had no status. No leverage. No influence. They were entirely dependent on the adults around them.

To welcome them would be to reorder the value system of these people who had been formed by the empire.

Which is exactly what Jesus does.

the identity of a kingdom

The Kingdom of God is not identified by military might.
Not by economic dominance.
Not by political influence.

Those who are a part of it are identified by how they treat the smallest. The least. The children.

And this is where the reality of earthly empires becomes uncomfortable.

Because children are usually the first to suffer when worldly power consolidates itself.

When bombs fall, children are dismembered or die.
When boarder policies harden, children are displaced and separated.
When systems protect reputation over truth, children are silenced.
When exploitation and trafficking hides amongst wealth and politics, children are abused while adults negotiate the outcomes.

And we convince ourselves to look away, to believe the narratives that justify, to learn to cope thru distraction.

But even if looking at what is happening to the children is complicated, it is necessary. We cannot avoid it.
Yes, it can feel political. But really, it’s ethical.

In this crucial story, Jesus does not speak in the language of politics.
He speaks in the language of protection.

“Do not hinder them.”

it’s tempting to justify

The real danger is rarely that we cheer for harm.

The real danger is that we learn to rationalize it.

We learn to prioritize stability over safety.
Order over innocence.
Tribe over truth.
Access over accountability.

We tell ourselves that protecting our personal opinion, our party, our leaders, or our institutions is the higher good – even if it requires muting the volume of the suffering of children.

But if following Jesus requires us to soften the concern for the vulnerable in order to maintain power, we have already traded the sacred for the profane.

Last week, the temptation in the wilderness was about power.

This week’s story presses deeper:

Are we willing to tolerate abusive power if it promises us safety or success?

indirect harm still wounds

Most people are not directly harming children.

But indirect harm still wounds.

When we defend actions that produce casualties.
When we excuse accused abusers because they are a means to an end.
When we dismiss testimonies because they are inconvenient to our established allegiances.

We may not hold the sword.
But are we steadying the hand that does?

We may not enact the abuse.

But are we emboldening the people who do?

This series is not actually about public outrage. Though there are enough things happening to our children in today’s world that public outrage is justified.

It is actually about individual and collective repentance.

Where have I looked away or justified what Jesus would condemn?

Where have I allowed allegiance to empire to take precedence over my compassion to the least of these?

Where have I looked at children caught up in war, policy disputes, detention, trafficking, abuse, or political theater and decided the ends justify the means?

the kingdom belongs to such as these

Jesus gathers the children close in that Gospel story.

He does not ask about their family lineage.
He does not check their ethnic identity.
He does not calculate their political utility.

He welcomes them and blesses them.

And then he says something even more powerful:

“Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

God’s Kingdom is not established by dominance.
It is revealed through dependence.

The reflection for us this week is only partially about how we ourselves treat children.

A major portion of the reflection is how we allow those in power to treat them.

And the most crucial part of the reflection is whether we have become too important in our own imagination to become like them.

Because if we are unwilling to become like children, we will not inherit the Kingdom.

the invitation of the children

If Jesus stood among the most vulnerable children in our world right now – those displaced by violence, separated from families, silenced by exploitation, or ignored because their suffering complicates our loyalties:

Would we be standing with Him?

Or would we be explaining why it is more complex than it looks?

Do not rush past the children this week.

Let their vulnerability expose our compromises.

Because the Kingdom of God does not advance by sacrificing the smallest.

It is revealed by those who protect them.

*This blog is a part of a series of Lenten reflections. I encourage you to go back and start with the Ash Wednesday reflection for context if this is the first one you’ve read.