Book Review: Renovation of the Church by Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken

This is a book I have been waiting for someone to write for a very long time. When I was preparing for my senior year of college, I was required to spend a summer doing a ministry internship. Although I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to do that as part of a good ministry in a good church, that summer left me disillusioned with ministry. I returned to my senior year at Asbury hungry for a way of doing ministry that led to something more, and that hunger, along with relationships I was fortunate to have with great people at Asbury, guided me into the beginning of my interest in spiritual formation. It was during that year that I first read Dallas Willard, and from then on, my understanding of Christianity and ministry was dramatically changed.

The authors of [amazon_link id="0830835466" target="_blank" ]Renovation of the Church[/amazon_link] had very similar experiences, only theirs occurred more than a decade into a very successful attempt at planting a church. They had a rapidly growing suburban church with a new facility, and had around 1,700 people attending worship every weekend. Then they realized that the way they did ministry was actually working against the likelihood that their followers would ever have their characters become significantly like that of Jesus. They state, "It slowly began to dawn on us that our method of attracting people was forming them in ways contrary to the way of Christ" (35).

The book tells the story of their church, Oak Hills Church of Folsom, CA, from the time that it was planted, through their entry into the seeker church movement and rapid growth, then through the decision to change and the mistakes, consequences, and rewards that have followed. It is very honest, respectful, and obviously took a great deal of courage to publish. (Congratulations to both the authors and InterVarsity Press for doing so.) I've read the stories of other pastors or churches who have gone through similar journeys, but this is by far the best written.

Dallas Willard's foreword is worth the price of the book. He opens the book with a question (also repeated in a later chapter) which the rest of the book tries to unpack and Willard says is "the single most important question in the church culture of North America today": "How do we present the radical message of Christ in a church that has catered to the religious demands of the nominally committed?" (9) Or, as it played out in the story of Oak Hills, the question might be: How can we expect people whom we have attracted with a 'come have all of your preferences and desires met at church' style of ministry to respond well to Jesus' 'deny yourself and give up your life to follow me' gospel? The authors concluded that those two were incompatible.

Personally, one of the greatest strengths of the book was in making connections I had not been able to make before between our consumeristic habits that are so deeply ingrained in us in North American culture and churches' general lack of effectiveness at helping people grow in the character of Christ. As the authors point out, cultural consumerism isn't so much the problem, as is how churches have adopted the consumerism of the culture around us and decided we have to harness it as a strategy for church growth. Ministry becomes an endless cycle of creating attractive ministries to get people to come to our churches, then trying to keep them happy and engaged enough to continue coming rather than dropping out or finding another church. When people come to us on these terms, we cannot be surprised when we discover that they may actually have very little interest in learning to do the things that Jesus taught and arranging their lives as any of his serious students would naturally do.

Along with tackling the "insidious monster" of consumerism, the book also addresses personal ambition in pastors and how it feeds this destructive cycle. We can cover and excuse our selfish ambition in language of wanting to accomplish great things for God's kingdom, but ambition often leads us into ways of living that are destructive to our souls and those of the people following us. As Carlson states,

"The desire to be better than others, the odious nature of comparison, and the lack of contentment with our actual state, is the problem formationally. This whole personal ambition thing is a very messy area... Perhaps ambition is needed more than ever. But it must be ambition directed toward something other than personal and organizational success. We must be ambitious to decrease so that Christ may increase. This is truly something worth giving our lives to " (76, 87).

Amen. Our churches will certainly benefit if this book can launch honest conversations among our leaders.

P.S.: If you're not a pastor, this is still an important book to read, but... If you come away from reading it ticked off at your pastor or your church for not doing things this way, you've entirely misread the book. The authors themselves strongly urge against thinking that would lead to such a reaction, as they state that the best possible result is for you to encounter God in the church where you already are, rather than going looking for another church or pastor who does things the way you like. As I've stated it before personally, the biggest hurdle to great ministry in my church is my own unlikeness to Jesus, not that anyone else has gotten things wrong. In almost every case pastors and church leaders are working very hard and doing the very best they can in an incredibly difficult job. Take it easy on them, and use this book to help you become more like Jesus for them.

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Regardless of whether I receive a commission, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Looking for Something More?

The following is an adaptation of a letter I sent to a few friends today about a new Apprentice Group that we are starting. Some of you reading this have already been through the experience. If so, please consider leaving a comment below and share your thoughts on Apprentice. If you haven't been in a group, you live in the Midland area, and this sounds like something you'd like to do, email me.

Over the past two years, the best thing I have been involved with in ministry has been participating in and leading others through Apprentice Groups. I've never been a part of anything else that's as effective at helping people grow in their relationship with Christ, regardless of where they are in their spiritual life or how long they've been a Christian.

Some of us who have gone through the experience together so far came into it feeling spiritually stuck; we had been active Christians for decades, but had even become numb to how lifelessness had crept in to the most important relationship in our lives.

Others have come into these groups as a way of taking their first spiritual steps as Christians; regardless of how rough our pasts may have been, or how opposed to Christianity we may have been in the past, some of us have gotten very solid footing for our first Christian steps through these groups. When asked how the experience had changed their relationship with God, one participant simply said, "Now there is one."

Still others have come into these groups already growing spiritually, and have found in our experiences together reliable guidance for how to continue growing and satisfying their desire to know God in a real, practical way, as we learn to actually live as Jesus' disciples (apprentices).

Our experiences in Apprentice Groups are based upon coming to realize that we do not change by simply gritting our teeth and deciding to do better next time. This is true from small things, like trying to lose 10 pounds and keep it off, to larger things such as becoming the kind of person God created us to be and experiencing the fulness of life that Jesus said he came to give us. When we're talking about our lives in Christ with the Holy Spirit involved in the process, there is a way in which change happens naturally, even easily, though it always requires our cooperation. The brief version is that change happens in us when the Holy Spirit works and we tweak these three factors:

• Our thoughts: In Apprentice Groups, we specifically look at this question: Is the way that we think about God aligned with or contrary to the way that Jesus thought about God, and the way that God is revealed in the Scriptures? This makes a huge difference in the course of our lives. Regardless of how long we've been Christians, or how many Bible studies we've done, every one of us in these groups has had our thinking challenged by the way that Scripture instructs us to think about God. A big part of how we seek to modify our thinking in these groups is through memorizing full passages of Scripture together.
• Our habits: Most of the advice we've been given as Christians on how to shape our lives often comes down to two things: pray and read your Bible. While we can't overstate the necessity of those two things, they do not form a life that we actually live as we follow Jesus. Rather, along with many other habits, for apprentices of Jesus they should be part of an overall lifestyle arranged around our desire to learn from him. Therefore, during each week in between each of our Apprentice Group meetings, we have one Soul-Training Exercise to engage in. Some are things we usually associate with our spiritual lives, like specific ways to pray and read the Scriptures, but others are ways to more generally shape our overall lives to cooperate with the Holy Spirit's work in us. (For example, the first week's exercise is sleep!) In other words, the goal of these exercises isn't so much to add things to your already-too-full to-do list, but rather to train us in arranging the lives that we already live around our apprenticeship to Jesus.
• Our relationships: Although we're tempted to think that this is the least important of these three factors, by the end of our previous groups, participants have said that this was the most impacting aspect of the entire experience. One participant summed it up by saying, "I've come to realize that I don't spur myself on to holiness. I need other people to do that for me." To put it another way, we cannot be spiritually healthy Christians apart from spiritually healthy community, and many of us are unknowingly desperate for this kind of community in our lives. This is precisely what John Wesley meant when he said: "There is no holiness without social holiness."

The material for Apprentice Groups comes from three books by James Bryan Smith, with each one emphasizing one of the three factors above:

• The Good and Beautiful God deals primarily with comparing our thoughts about God to those of Jesus and how God is revealed in the Scriptures.
• The Good and Beautiful Life is based on the Sermon on the Mount and deals with the habits that make up our lives, and if arranged according to the teaching of Jesus, can actually lead to us becoming people who live lives free of greed, lying, lust, worry, etc., and who live in ways where we become people who do the things that Jesus taught and did, such as blessing people who curse us.
• The Good and Beautiful Community addresses our relationships and the things we do together in our life with God, such as forgiving, worshipping, serving and living generously. Although each book has its specific emphasis, the group's experience is designed to affect each of the three areas from the beginning of the group until its end.

Some of you reading this have already been in an Apprentice group with me or someone else in our church. The rest of you should! But- I realize that some places where I've had readers in the last month (like Atlanta and Kenya) are legitimately too far to travel to Midland each week to meet with us. So, regardless of whether it's with us or with someone else (or starting your own), here are the normal commitments for Apprentice Groups.

• Make being there a priority. Some groups commit to 25 weeks together, and state right off the bat that none of the participants will miss more than three of the sessions.
• Read one chapter from the book each week. Whether you spend a lot of time in books, or they're a completely new concept to you, you can do this. The chapters are very readable, not too long, and well-written (no pictures, but you do get some good stories).
• Do the Soul-Training Exercise for each week. Like anything else, the more you put into this, the more you'll get out of it. Some require time and planning, others don't.
• Memorize Scripture together. We take nine weeks to memorize Colossians 3:1-17, two verses at a time. Regardless of what you're thinking, you can do this. It's something that I've come to believe God is tremendously in favor of, and therefore helps us to accomplish.

Again, if you're near Midland and this sounds interesting, email me. If you live somewhere else, you can check this partial list of churches with Apprentice Groups, or look into starting one at your own church. If you've already been in an Apprentice group, leave a comment and describe it for yourself.

A Parable of What We're Doing Here

Situation One:

Imagine that you are going on a tour of an automobile manufacturing plant. On this particular day, employees from all levels of the company are there, and you have a chance to visit with several of them. Some of them work on the manufacturing lines, others are managers, some are in marketing, and you even have a chance to visit with a board member and the CEO.

In making conversation with the first couple of workers, both of whom work on the manufacturing lines, you happen to ask the same question to each of them. It catches your attention that their answers were very different from one another. If the question had been something like, "What is your name?" you might expect different answers, but not for the question that you asked them: "So, what is it you that you make here?"

The first person described something like this:

But, strangely, the second person described something more like this:

You were sure that both of those things couldn't be manufactured in this one plant, so, being intrigued, you decide to ask the question of every worker you could talk with. To your amazement, you received a huge variety of answers from people at every level of the company. You asked nine more people the same question, and each one described something still different:

Situation Two:

On another tour of a similar plant, you had similar conversations and asked the same question. This time, everyone gave the same answer, describing the same product. What was incredible to you, though, was that the product everyone claimed to be making was this:

while the product that you actually saw coming off the assembly line was this:

Situation Three:

On yet another similar tour, again with similar conversations and the same question, you noticed that everyone gave the same answer, and this time the product they claimed to be making was the same as was coming off the assembly lines:

What puzzled you this time, though, was that you were at a plant whose building and signs said that it made fire engines, so they should have been making this:

Application:

Most churches today have some kind of mission statement, which is a good thing. And many of those mission statements, including that of my entire denomination, will have something like this in them: "To make disciples of Jesus Christ." This is also a very good thing.

Situation One: Problems arise, however, when we don't know what a disciple is, and are very unclear on what it would actually be like to live as one. Regardless of what the mission statements say, if leaders themselves aren't even clear on this, teaching others the meaning of and way into discipleship is certainly impossible. The result is that no unified idea of what we're doing here exists, so everyone has their own ideas. If anything identifiable actually ends up being produced, it's mostly by accident.

Situation Two: Thankfully, increasing numbers of church leaders are too learned and capable in organizational leadership to let such confusion exist, and are very effective at communicating the church's purpose to everyone involved. Many times, though, in the desire for Jesus' gospel to be mass-produced it is first reduced, resulting in a product that is far below what was promised. Instead of "life to the full" that Jesus described, we end up with "things will be really good after you die."

Situation Three: Because of the difficulty of Situation Two, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the original mission handed down to us wasn't realistic; therefore it isn't what Jesus really wants us to be doing, and we should redefine the project altogether. Because of how we misconceive what a life of discipleship is like when we aren't living it, other strategies can seem very appealing in the name of realism, since we'll have serious doubts about how many people would ever actually sign up for how awful we think a life of full-throttle discipleship would be.

If you, like me, would like for your community to steer clear of any of these three options, Dallas Willard offers a simple alternative in part of his masterful final chapter of Renovation of the Heart:

"A simple goal for the leaders of a particular group would be to bring all those in attendance to understand clearly what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and be solidly committed to discipleship in their whole life. That is, when asked who they are, the first words out of their mouth would be, 'I am an apprentice of Jesus Christ.' This goal would have to be approached very gently and lovingly and patiently with existing groups, where the people involved have not understood this to be a part of their membership commitment" (p. 244).

Caution: Before you think I'm encouraging you to start blaming your church or its leaders for being off-track, does the above paragraph describe you? I've recently become convinced that, although we are quick to place the blame on others, the biggest hurdle in the way of our churches being more effective is much closer than we'd like to think.

The Biggest Hurdle to Great Ministry

I have more confidence in one book on Christian leadership than any other that I've read, and that book is Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership by Ruth Haley Barton. (Click to find out more about Ruth's ministry, The Transforming Center.) Each time that I revisit one of its chapters, something new sticks with me, but the powerful premise on which Ruth bases the entire book is this: "Truly, the best thing any of us have to bring to leadership is our own transforming selves" (page 19).

Upon first glance, it may not seem like all that radical of a statement, but if we let ourselves be put to its test, it won't take long to find some of the many ways in which we don't really believe it. Particularly in ministry leadership, it implies:

• my own process of becoming more like Christ is more important than any skills I bring to the table, which means
• my ability to love others well is more important than my ability lead them, which means
• the degree to which Jesus' life in me is so abundant that it will naturally influence those around me is more important than my ability to manage them, to preach a moving sermon to them, or set meaningful goals and objectives for them, which means
• although it's great for me to develop all of these skills and others, to do so without giving ample time, space, and attention to the things that lead to my transformation to become more like Jesus is to miss the point.

Not only have I been tremendously challenged by this statement from Ruth, but I've been equally challenged by its natural corollary. If our own transforming selves are the most important thing to move us forward in leadership as Christians, we can carry the statement another step forward and identify the biggest hurdle to great Christian leadership:

my own unlikeness to Jesus.

The implications of this won't feel fun to deal with, but can certainly lead us into a much better way of living and leading for others:

• the primary hurdle to Jesus' kind of life growing in those whom we influence is never "out there," but "right here," which means
• the answer is never really to be found by finding a different church, a different boss, a different pastor, a different small group, a different curriculum, or any other difference that leaves me unchanged, which means
• if I have any desire for my community to be led well, I should immediately stop blaming anyone else for it not being so. Instead, I need to take the huge responsibility of un-busying myself enough to make room for the hard work of the things which reliably lead to transformation like prayer, solitude, silence, and serving others in secret.

In other words, the biggest hurdle to great ministry in my community is never someone or something else, but my own lack of love, joy, peace, and all of the other things that Jesus' kind of life naturally produces in me. In the short term, it's much easier just to blame someone else rather than deal with these kinds of things, but we've all tried that course for a while, and, honestly, how helpful has that turned out to be?

An Ever-Available Option that We Can't Afford to Choose

Several years ago, I had lunch with one of my wisest friends, Richard. I consider Richard wise for several reasons; among them are that he's found a way to make a living as an artist (not easy to do), he has a great beard, he's generally happy, and he lives his life very differently than most people I know, who aren't generally happy.

Among our topics of conversation that day was why, even among people who participate faithfully in Christian churches for the majority of their lives, some people grow to take on a significant amount of the character of Jesus and others never do. We disagreed on why this happens.

My case was, because churches generally do not do a very good job of leading people to learn reliable ways of living in the Kingdom of God (focusing more on getting people ready to die than getting them ready to live), that people are pretty much doing the best they can but have been given poor guidance. If we were to offer more reliable guidance, I thought that almost everyone would be ready and willing to walk the path of whole-life discipleship to Jesus.

Richard thought differently. He thought that people's lack of growth comes from their simple choice not to grow. Through God's grace, the opportunity has been made available to everyone, and most people just choose to say, "Thanks, but that's really not for me right now."

Now it's nearly a decade after that conversation, and I think that the best answer is somewhere between our two opinions. I absolutely still believe that churches must do a better job of seeing themselves as training centers where people learn to take Jesus' invitation to live in God's kingdom. We have to experience and teach deeper, fuller, and more reliable answers than "pray, read your bible, and go tell everyone you know about Jesus." Or, as Henry Cloud summarizes what we usually hear in church, "God is good. You're bad. Try harder."

Yet although the lack of reliable guidance is true, Richard's point is also true: God's grace (that builds Jesus' character in us) is already available to everyone, and many of us simply choose to say "no, thanks."

So, what's the explanation that accepts both sides of our conversation?

The option of not growing will always be available to us.

I continue to shape my ministry around the assumption that if leaders in churches can live, model and offer a more reliable way of living in God's kingdom, many more people will willfully and thankfully enter into it than we're accustomed to see doing so now. My dream for churches is that among the people committed to them, lives overflowing with the love, joy, peace, and hope that were characteristic of Jesus would become the norm rather than outstanding exceptions.

But, at least in our culture, I've also become convinced that the option of living another kind of Christianity will always be available. This other kind of Christianity accepts a mediocre kind of life (with one foot in the kingdom and one foot happy to remain outside) as the acceptable norm. It sees getting into heaven as the point of Christianity, rather than getting heaven into us (or, staying out of hell rather than getting the hell out of us.) It's a way for us to do enough religious things to feel like we are paying our dues or doing our duty, but to still avoid entrusting ourselves, here and now, to Jesus, his kingdom, and his way of life.

Dallas Willard calls this kind of Christianity "Vampire Christianity." In his article, "Why Bother With Discipleship?", he says, "One in effect says to Jesus: 'I'd like a little of your blood, please. But I don't care to be your student or have your character. In fact, won't you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I'll see you in heaven.' But can we really imagine that this is an approach that Jesus finds acceptable?"

As I read the gospels, I don't see that Jesus ever intended to leave this option open to us. Rather, the only kind of life he describes and invites us to is one of being his disciple (student, follower, or apprentice), with he being our Lord and Teacher, as to how we live our lives.

Perhaps a large part of the problem is that we don't really understand how good Jesus' way of life really is, and how much we miss out on by not living it. The option of not growing will always be available to us, but we cannot afford to take it. It costs us too much life.

In one of his most often-quotes passages, Willard says:

"...the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater – even when this life alone is considered – than the price paid to walk with Jesus. Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring." (From his article "Discipleship: For Super-Christians Only?" in [amazon_link id="0060694424" target="_blank" ]The Spirit of the Disciplines[/amazon_link]).

You and I both have many choices today, and as we make them we will be headed down one road or the other: either toward a life ever more full of the character of Jesus himself, or toward something less. The good news is that God's grace and our relationships with one another provide everything that we need to consistently choose wisely, beginning right now.

What REVEAL Can't Reveal

[This is one of a series of posts related to the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey. To see the others, click here.]

I am a big fan of the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey produced for churches by the Willow Creek Association. I have invested a lot of my time and energy in digging into its findings and helping other people to do so; I've tried to be creative in communicating some of the things we learned by writing A Parable of Churchville; my endorsement of REVEAL is even printed inside the third book on their research, Focus. The work they are doing is unprecedented, and church leaders will be much better off to learn from their general findings, published so far in three very quick reads (Reveal, Follow Me, and Focus), as well as to see what the survey finds about their own specific congregations.

After being pretty immersed over the past 2 1/2 years in any information I could find about REVEAL as well as my own church's data, I've noticed something that's lacking. (The lack isn't in the survey, but in me.)REVEAL gives church leaders insights like we've never had before into what is going on inside of the people in their churches, what they're looking for, what they really need, and specifics about what will be most effective at helping them grow in their love for God and for other people. The problem (to no fault of the survey, because it isn't supposed to serve this purpose) is that all of these insights can keep a pastor's focus on obstacles to spiritual growth that are exterior to him or her.

In other, more direct, words, REVEAL cannot reveal any insights like these to a pastor:

• It has been years since your church's staff members have had any time in solitude with God.
• The speed of your church's programming schedule allows no room for you, your staff, or your lay leaders to learn the ancient discipline of resting in God.
• Although you may be highly effective at teaching others about God and the spiritual life, rather than enjoying your own relationship with God, you use ministry to avoid ever having to be alone with him.
• The most vital factor in a church's effectiveness at helping people to grow is the quality of your friendship with God.
• Your staff have never learned to be discerning in their own lives and can therefore be very dangerous to themselves and others when making decisions that affect the entire congregation.

REVEAL will make a church's leadership face some great questions, like "Are the things we're putting so much time, energy, and resources into actually and predictably helping people grow?", "Which ones should we keep doing?", and "Which ones should we stop?" And the focus is certainly not all external; it does have some detailed analysis of people's perception of their senior pastor and the research lays a strong emphasis on the importance of staff modeling in their own lives how to grow.

Yet leaders who have become accustomed to looking for programmatic answers to problems before waiting on God for them will still easily find ways to focus on what the data says are the problems "out there" in the congregation rather in "right here" in the hearts and lifestyles of the people in the highest levels of leadership.

In a great article available here, Ruth Haley Barton says, "Spiritual transformation in your church or organization begins with you and your transformation. Any additional strategy must and will come quite naturally after that." Leaders should keep that constantly in mind, focusing first on helping one another learn to live more fully in God's kingdom together before digging in to all of the exterior insights that REVEAL can provide.

So, if you have any influence in your church and are someone other than one of the pastors, you can do a couple of very important things: Encourage your pastor to learn about and participate in REVEAL, if your church is not already doing so. Also, do everything possible to help your pastor(s) be assured that they are in an environment where cultivating their own intimacy with God is not a luxury for them to attend to when time is left over from the real work that they do. Rather, use your influence to communicate to them that "no time is more profitably spent than that used to heighten the quality of an intimate walk with God" (Dallas Willard- read the entire article here). As someone who is being pastored and shaped by them, your own well-being depends heavily upon this.

A very practical way to do this is to make it possible for your pastor(s) to participate in a community where their own spiritual formation is the focus. I have recently finished a Transforming Community with Ruth Haley Barton and benefited greatly from it. Renovaré and The Upper Room also have good opportunities available.

If you are a pastor, you may or may not have control over whether or not you can participate in something like this. If you can't, you must find ways to cultivate your own life with God through practices such as Sabbath-keeping, solitude, and silence, and involve others in your efforts to do so. As Dallas Willard says in his penetrating article, The Key to the Keys of the Kingdom:

A response to giving attention to personal soul care often is, “I don't have time for extensive solitude and silence. I have too much to do.” The truth is you don't have time not to practice solitude and silence. No time is more profitably spent than that used to heighten the quality of an intimate walk with God. If we think otherwise, we have been badly educated. The real question is, “Will we take time to do what is necessary for an abundant life and an abundant ministry, or will we try to 'get by' without it?”

So a couple of words of counsel are appropriate for our attending to the inner life. First, God never gives anyone too much to do. We do that to ourselves or allow others to do it to us. We may be showing our lack of confidence in God's power and goodness, though it may be that our models and education have failed us. Second, the exercise of God's power in ministry never, by itself, amends character, and it rarely makes up for our own foolishness. God's power can be actively and wisely sought and received by us only as we seek to grow by grace into Christlikeness. Power with Christlike character is God's unbeatable combination of triumphant life in the kingdom of God on earth and forever. Power without Christ's character gives us our modern-day Sampsons and Sauls.

Why You Should STOP Trying to Support Your Ministries with Prayer

A recent article in the newspaper of my denomination's local conference was advertising an upcoming Prayer Leader's Summit, which appears to be a very good event. I'm certainly thankful that it's happening and the leadership I serve under is putting it on. Therefore, I don't want this blog post to come across as belittling this prayer conference and others like it; it's certainly a good thing whenever people involved in doing "God stuff" can be intentional about talking to him about it. So now that you understand I'm in favor of it... One sentence in the article caught my attention because it represents what I've come to believe is a mistake about how we usually look at the relationship between prayer and ministry: "This Summit is not about praying for the Conference as a whole. Instead, it's about encouraging and equipping prayer leaders to support their local ministries." Innocent enough, right? I'll see if I can explain my picky-ness with the wording. I've been involved in church all of my life, and in church leadership all of my adult life, and have used phrases myself to describe prayer in ways similar to the newspaper quotation above. We often say things like, "this needs to be covered in prayer," or such-and-such is done on "a foundation of prayer," or as the article said, that a particular "ministry is supported by prayer." We say such things for good reasons, because we are involved in doing a multitude of kinds of things for others, and we realize that if we try to do them only according to our own abilities rather than dependently on God's ability, the results will be limited to what we can accomplish by ourselves. We all know ourselves far too well to get very excited about that. We certainly want to welcome God into these things that we're doing. We serve others, care for the sick and the poor, lead worship services and Bible studies, etc., and all of these things are ministries that have to be based on, supported by, and enabled by prayer. But what if that's wrong? What if it's the other way around? What if prayer is the ministry and all of the things we do for others are the supporting and enabling forces? What if prayer is where God and we really get things done, and the ways that we serve others are just how we can come along for the ride? This is a lesson I began learning a while ago, but still have lived into very little. If I can really start to think this way, I will certainly approach ministry differently than I do by habit. It would lead to a way of ministry with much less pressure on me and those around me. My title indicates that I am Pastor of Discipleship in a large church, but how in the world am I supposed to help a large congregation of people connect with God? It's an intimidating job description, and I can't do it. But, if prayer is the ministry rather than the activities, I can pray. Then I can act, doing things for others that will support and be a part of what happens when I pray. This helps something become practical that we talk about a lot but have difficulty enacting: rather than leaving results up to me, they are left in the much abler hands of God. When I pray, I become more aligned with who God is. I become more who he wants me to be in the world. That simply matters more than all of the other kinds of things we do. It is where things get done, and it is how God's kingdom comes. It is ministry. Then, when I work and act by serving others, caring for the sick and the poor, leading worship services and Bible studies, etc., I'm simply jumping in on the work God is doing in the world (or putting my hand on the load God is carrying). So while the aim of the newspaper article is more than admirable, this one sentence reinforces our misconception that prayer and ministry are separate things. We need to stop trying to support our ministries with prayer. Instead pray, then find ways to be a part of what begins to happen.