You are invited to read Part 1 first. Here are five more sermonic tidbits lifted from the series When Life Hurts: The Story of Job.

1.     Job teaches us about the Sanity of Tears.

Job cries for God’s justice in the face of extreme and grave injustice. 

Job cries for God’s presence when he experiences the hiddenness of God.

Job cries for God’s voice when he experiences the silence of God.   

Has Job gone mad?

Has he? Or do our lack of tears implicate our own callousness to the injustices of our world and all the ways we normalize our own spiritual apathy to the things of God?

• Oh, that we would cry for God’s presence.

• Oh that we would cry to hear God’s voice….the way Job did. 

When was the last time that I wept and cried because of my sin before a perfect and holy and loving God? Is spiritual growth to be measured only by the temperature of my joy....is it not also to be measured by the depth of my sorrow over my sin? 

2.     What Job faintly hoped for, we experience the reality

“If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together.” (Job 9:33; “I know my redeemer lives…Job 19:25-27)

What Job longed for, what Job hoped for, what Job cried out for, we experience in reality.

Job saw the shadows, we see the light. 

A mediator is one who Receives our Sentence, Removes our Sin, and Represents the Sinner -- bringing us To God. 

Christ as the Mediator is the one who (1) Receives our Sentence, (2) Removes our Sin, and (3) Represents us before God, thereby reconciling us to God.

• What Job saw in the shadows, we experience in reality. 

In Job 16:19, Job cries out: “Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven.  And he who testifies for me is on high.”

Job knows there is no earthly witness who could come to his defense.  Job wants a defender that will testify to his blamelessness and righteousness before God. 

Job’s hope builds from Job 9 – to Job 16 and to a crescendo at Job 19 where Job says:  “I know that my Redeemer lives”. 

Christ walks in the book of Job.  And Christ as the Mediator doesn’t walk faintly and in the shadows of your life but walks boldly and powerfully as your Mediator between your great sin and God’s great holiness.

Here is the good news: What Job experienced faintly and in the shadows, we experience in reality. Christ is our mediator! Christ is our witness in heaven! Christ is our Redeemer!  Hallelujah!   

3.     Theology: Know When To Employ It

Complete these phrases:

• Cause…..and Effect

• To every action there is always…an opposite and equal reaction.

• What goes up…must come down.

In a nutshell, this is the theology of Job’s friends.

Job’s friends live by the motto that every spiritual effect has a spiritual cause. Every spiritual action has an opposite and equal spiritual reaction.

Or, if you want to get more theological, this is called the doctrine of retribution. 

• The Doctrine of Retribution: A legalistic and simplified reading of Torah in which linkages between deed and consequence become frozen into absolute principle.[1]

The doctrine of retribution feels like it could be good advice -- in the abstract -- but the fault is that these abstractions make no sense in the particular case of Job.  Job’s friends should have been using a ball-point hammer, instead they take a sledge hammer to the case. And destruction ensues. 

You not only have to know the right theology, but also when to employ it.

4.     The Logic of retribution confuses the Law of Linearity with the Principle of Influence.

Many Christian parents have stumbled over these words:  “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).   

“Ahh....the law of linearity…all I have to do is A, and I’m going to get B! It’s the Law of Linearity and it’s in God’s word!”

This is the cause and effect mentality of retribution (but with a positive spin).  Yet, have you ever noticed that really bad parents sometimes have really good kids? And that good parents sometimes have kids who do terrible things? 

That’s because there is a difference between the wisdom principle of influence and the cause and effect logic of retribution.

The Spiritual principle of influence says: 100 parents who love God and train their child well, will raise a greater number of responsible children than a 100 selfish-uninvolved parents.  That’s influence.

But a “Cause and Effect Christianity” is no Christianity at all! A cause and effect Christianity where I am in control is completely devoid of grace, completely devoid of mystery, incapable of real prayer (because you’re still in control!)  and completely at odds with surrendering your will to another because you still hold onto the illusion of control. 

The Law of Linearity actually takes God out of the equation! Because you don’t need to relate to God – you just have to apply some of his principles.  And the main focus is upon making life work  rather than enjoying and glorifying God for who God is. 

The logic of retribution puts God at arm’s length, but Job is not satisfied with the advice.[2]

5.     An Open Posture to God in the Midst of Suffering

What I’m saying is that in the midst of my suffering, that I should  have an open posture to God’s deepening and sanctifying process in and through the trial. 

However, that’s different than saying that it’s your job to figure out precisely what God is doing, each little lesson he is trying to teach you at each little juncture of your life. 

Some of these things that go on in my life have their cause in the heavenly court, just like they did for Job (they happen above my head).  I’m just feeling the effect of a cause I can’t see.  It’s not my job to always know and figure out the Cause.  If you can, good.  If you can’t—fine.

But there is a Job-type of abandonment to God, a posture of openness to God’s deepening and sanctifying process….even when I don’t know the cause.

Did you know that God loves and delights to work in the dark night of the soul – whatever name that may be for you?

Why?  Because God loves and delights to work in the cross. 

So don’t miss your cross.  Golgotha ain’t  pretty, but it sure does redeem. 

6.     BONUS:  Suffering and Resurrection

Did you ever notice that when you read the apostle Paul: Paul is a resurrection guy!  He loves the resurrection. He glories in the resurrection.  He lives in the power of the resurrection.  So what does he do with suffering?  He pleads with God to resurrect the suffering in his life – to take away his thorn in his flesh!

• Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this that it should leave me. (2 Cor. 12:8)

Yet Jesus doesn’t answer the prayer. Why?  It’s a big question.  Yet in this case, Paul knows why: “So to keep me from becoming conceited…a thorn was given to me in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7)  So Paul understands a truth with profound implications: God is going to use evil outside of him (the thorn) in his life to deliver Paul from the evil inside of him (the conceit and pride in his heart).   

Do you understand how wise and good and loving God is?  God is going to use the suffering and evil that comes upon Paul’s life (the thorn in the flesh) to deal with the sin in Paul’s life (his conceit and pride).

Suffering/evil comes upon Paul’s life, God uses it in Paul’s life.

***

[1] Susannah Ticciati, Job and the Disruption of Identity: Reading Beyond Barth.

[2] For more development on this theme, read Larry Crabb’s great book The Pressure’s Off. 

Read this blog post entitled “The Enduring Value of a Long Sermon Series” at the Reformation 21 website.

*****

But Pastor…Why Preach a Longer Sermon Series on the Book of Job?

(1)   Spiritual gains take place during hard seasons of suffering.

All the giants of the Christian faith testify that it is precisely in the dark night of the soul and in seasons of suffering that God transforms our lives and produces lasting fruit that lasts unto eternity.

As C.S. Lewis so eloquently put it, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

(2)   Everyone suffers. Either now or later, you will suffer.

The apostle Peter counsels, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12). Peter’s admonition seems to imply that Christians should “ready themselves” for the day when suffering arrives on their doorstep.

Yet, truth be told, American Christians are last in the entire known world for knowing how to suffer in steadfast faith and with resolute hope as Christians.

We are some of the least resilient and fiercest complaining Christians on the planet. If any group of Christians on earth needs to hear the message of Job, it is American Christians who, relative to the rest of the world, live in the lap of luxury, convenience, and comfort.

(3)   Suffering is a problem that won’t go away for the Christian.

The British novelist Muriel Spark once argued that the problem of Job is “the only problem, in fact, worth discussing”. Suffering is often called “the bedrock of atheism”, the quintessential thorn in the flesh of Christianity.

If we truly want to model a faithful witness to Jesus Christ, we need do it both intellectually and personally. Intellectually, we need to be prepared for the apologetic question of suffering (i.e. “Why does a good God allow horrendous evil in our world?”). Personally, we need to be able to tell our story authentically, without leaving out the hard parts of our lives. In other words, we need to be able to share where God has met us in the broken places of our lives.

Today in America, we need less human-centered preachers of self-empowerment and more preachers heralding the hard edges of our faith for the good of our witness and for the health of our churches.

Here are five sermonic tidbits lifted from the series When Life Hurts: The Story of Job:

1.    The Purpose of Suffering and Our Thirst for God Alone

So what am I suggesting about the nature of suffering and the book of Job?  It’s this:

The purpose of suffering is to awaken our Spirit-implanted thirst for God alone. Suffering’s main purpose is to give you a deeper thirst for first things.  To bring us to a place of deep detachment to second things, to the place where the passions of the heart have nowhere else to go.[1]

The purpose of suffering is to awaken my thirst for first things and detach me from second things.

Don’t you see that worked out in the life of Job? 

He went straight away to God in the dark night of the soul.  His thirst to see God, to meet with God, to dialogue with, and yes, even to accuse God is passionate, powerful, and prolonged. 

It’s this cultivation of a deeper thirst for God in our suffering that we take away from Job’s faith.

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” ~ C.S. Lewis.

Friends, what sustains you in your pursuit of God?  It’s not the blessings of God!  It’s not even (as many Christians think in today’s world) a felt experience of the presence of God.  More than the blessings of God and more than the felt experiences of God, what sustains me in my pursuit of God is a thirst for God and God alone.

This is what God longs to do in suffering. 

2.     Fearing God “For Naught” & The Habit of Worship

“God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.” ~ Abraham Heschel

The first bit of evidence that Job fears God for naught (Job 1:9) is that Job worships even when he experiences God as an earthquake. 

Job worships.  Yet: it’s not any old worship! It is clear to us that Job had formed a habit of worship. 

• Deep ruts had been formed in the heart & soul of Job that connected him with God.  And those deep ruts were ruts of worship! Those deep ruts were the language of worship:

• Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshipped (Job 1:20).

Worship was Job’s initial response.  His spontaneous response – surprisingly enough – to deep suffering & painful trails. How does that happen?

That only happens because Job had first cultivated what the Latins called a habitus ­(a habit) of worship. 

“For we know that under such desperate circumstances worship does not come to a person naturally or spontaneously, but rather it is a practiced response, a fruit of long faith and discipline. Job could never have reacted as he did unless he had been practicing for this moment all of his life.” ~ Mike Mason

Job had cultivated a habit of worship.  Worship became second nature to him.  Worship became his heart language. The way he expressed his deepest longings.  The way he delighted to express his heart. So when faced with incredible trials, the rut of worship to God had already been carved out in his heart and in his soul.

Are you developing this habitus of worship in your daily life?

3.     You have no earthly rights.

Job recognized this: Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return (Job 1:21).

We love to maintain the mirage & illusion of control over our lives.  We love the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley.  You know the poem because it ends: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” 

The Book of Job tells you a different story. The book of Job tells you that some of the most impactful things that happen in your life are totally and completely out of your control. 

• The cancer that surprises you. 

• The unexpected death that strikes suddenly.

• The loss of a job or a relationship – that you would have kept.

All these teach us the same lesson that Job had already learned: The believer has no earthly rights. 

Remember the question God asked a sulking Jonah:  “Have you any right to be angry?”  (Jonah 4:4)

One writer puts it like this:  “We Christians are people who know in our bones that we never had any right to be created in the first place, let alone redeemed.”  [Our creation was a gift of God, not a right! And our redemption was a gift of God, not our right!]  “We know we have no more inherent title to life and its goodness than a dead man has.”   “When Adam discovered he was naked, he hid from the Lord. But when Job was faced with his nakedness, he worshipped, and this is what sets the fallen man apart from the redeemed man.” ~ Mike Mason

Job feared God for naught because he had already renounced all his earthly rights.

4.     Praying with a Limp: Job’s Lament and Cursing the Day of his Birth

In Job 3 we find one of the most famous laments in all of scripture.  

For seven days and seven nights, Job has been enveloped in a cacoon of silence. His friends didn’t speak to him because they saw that his suffering was very great (Job 2:13).

How do you pray with a limp? 

In God’s graciousness to suffers, God has already given sufferers like Job a gift – a way to pray with a limp. In the Hebrew tradition, it’s called the prayer of lament.

• During times of suffering and trials, normal modes of speech will not do. 

• During times of suffering and trials, normal prayers won’t do.

So God graciously gives to his people the prayer of lament. A biblically sanctioned way to express your deepest hurts, your deepest disappointments, and your deepest sorrows before the Lord. 

Dorothee Soelle writes, “The first step towards overcoming suffering…is to find a language that leads out of the uncomprehended suffering that makes one mute.” 

The first step out of suffering is to find a language, and God has already graciously given you the language of lament.

The prayer of lament is the first act of grace from God to sufferers who undergo trials and pain.

5. First Things and Second Things

Maybe the challenge of the whole Christian life is to keep first things first and second things second. Do you understand this truth?  That God is so committed to me putting first things first and second things second, that He’s willing to take away some of the second things in my life until I get it.

Remember what Jesus said:  “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things [all these second things] will be added onto you” (Matt 6:33).  The Book of Job tells us that even when they aren’t added or taken away for a time or perhaps even permanently:  the expectation that God has – the very deep longing in the heart of God –  is for us to keep first things first and second things second.

*****

[1] An assist from Larry Crabb here.

Paul David Tripp in the video below asks an important question many Christians have asked during this global pandemic: “What’s the Point of Going to Church?”

Hebrews 10:24-25: "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Let me share with you Peter Adam’s 10 Reasons Why You Need to Belong to a Church:

1. Because you need the regular support and encouragement of Christian fellowship.

The Christian life is not designed to be lived in isolation, and those who try it that way are likely to crash! (see Hebrews 10:25).

2. Because fellowship provided by Christian friends is no substitute for belonging to a church.

You choose your friends because their ideas and style are similar to your own. God puts different people in a congregation so they can learn from each other  (see Titus 2:1-10).

3. Because gifts can only rightly be used by someone who is a member of a congregation.

Gifts are primarily for the congregation, not for the individual and are rightly used to build up the church. The picture of a church as a body tells us that our various gifts complement each other. You don’t see a foot or an eye wandering around by itself! (see 1 Corinthians 12).

4. Because God’s basic unit is the church, not the individual.

The story of the Bible is that of God making, shaping and refining his people—beginning with Abraham. The lives of individuals like David, Isaiah, the Disciples, and Paul have their meaning because they are part of God’s continuous community. This pattern has tasted c.4,000 years and there are no signs that God has changed it (see Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1-6; Romans 4).

5. Because you are not paying the price of being a Christian.

The ‘solo flight’ is a very attractive style of Christianity for some, but it evades a basic element: the cost of Discipleship. Jesus called his followers to serve their community of faith … to be ‘slaves of all’ (see Mark 10:35-45).

6. Because you cannot understand the New Testament properly unless you belong to a church.

Most of the New Testament is addressed to churches. If you only read the Bible privately, then you will not be in the right place to hear God’s word. You will ‘privatise’ its message, and so misunderstand it (see most of Paul’s letters).

7. Because basic maturity in faith and knowledge is only found in the church.

The Bible clearly teaches that immaturity is found in those who cannot cope with the church ‘system’ (Titus 1:5; 3:10), and that maturity and fullness of faith is a corporate experience of the Christian community (Ephesians 3:14-21; 4:13-16).

8. Because sharing in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper is basic to Christian obedience.

We share in these sacraments because of the command of Christ. They are not private rites but corporate actions of the body of Christ. A ‘grab-and-run’ approach is wrong; sharing in them means belonging to a church (see 1 Corinthians 10:16; 11:17-34; 12:13).

9. Because submitting to Christian leadership is integral to New Testament Christianity.

‘Going-it-alone’ is okay in the short term, but eventually we err if we imagine that we do not need structures and human authority. God’s provision of order and authority in the church is his realistic way of helping us (see Hebrews 13:17; Titus 1:5).

10. Because fellowship-groups, evangelism teams, Christian societies are no substitute for churches.

Special groups and teams are more exciting than churches because they attract people of similar aims, Ideas and abilities. They do good work but are not the same as churches, because they are limited in membership and task-oriented. Churches have to accept everyone, gifted or not, and so they more accurately reflect God’s free grace.

See also:

What’s So Special About Church?

“If we want to experience more of Christ’s presence, we must go to church. There, he is with us by his Spirit. There, he ministers to us by his appointed pastors and elders (Eph. 4:11-13). There, he displays his gifts and graces in his body (1 Cor. 12:12-13). There, he brings us into the loving circle of his family (Matt 12:49). There, he welcomes us at his table and nourishes us with his own body (1 Cor. 11:24). There, in the church — and only in the church! - we experience all the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13).”

Why You Should Go to Church Even When You Don’t Feel Like It

If “I am a Christian but I don’t need the church” was a photo.

“Friends, do you realize how vital it is to gather here together on the Lord’s Day, Sunday after Sunday? Satan loves to isolate us. This is a killer!”

“You’re here today — but your presence here today is not just for today. It’s for five years from now. Twenty years from now. It’s for a time when you may find yourself alone in a cancer ward…or alone at home, in the middle of the night, after you’ve buried your loved one in the ground….Through all these ordinary means of grace, God is weaving a tapestry of remembrance to sustain you in the days to come.”

“Your attendance in worship, your participation in baptism and the Lord’s Supper and confession and praise and thanksgiving and singing and intercession and hearing the preaching of God’s Word - it’s all being woven together by sovereign grace.”

Al Mohler in He is Not Silent writes:

“Every single text of Scripture points to Christ…From Moses to the prophets, He is the focus of every single word of the Bible. Every verse of Scripture finds its fulfillment in Him, and every story of the Bible ends with Him.”

The same is true for the book of Job. Here are eight ways that Christ walks in the book of Job:

1.      A Blameless Man

In the book of Job, the most upright man on earth (Job 1:8) suffers the most of anyone on earth. 1 Peter 2 says of Jesus “He committed no sin” but “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:22, 24).

2.      Passionate Lament

Job bemoaned, “Why do You hide Your face, and regard me as Your enemy?” (13:24). The lament of Jesus on the cross was: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mt 27:46) Both engaged in passionate laments in in the hour of their suffering.

3.      Forsaken by Friends

In the hour when Job needed his friends most, they failed him: “Miserable comforters are you all” (Job 16:1).  At Jesus’ arrest, all his disciples abandoned him: “Then everyone deserted him and fled.” (Mark 14:50).

4.      Disfigured by Suffering

Job was so disfigured by his sufferings that his friends didn’t recognize him (Job 2:12: “When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him”). Isaiah says that the Messiah’s “appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance” (Isaiah 52:14).

5.  Source of Trial

The source of Job’s suffering was that he was attacked by people, by Satan, and by God. When you look at the cross, you realize that Jesus was crucified by people (the Roman soldiers, the Jewish leaders), by Satan (who entered Judas Iscariot), and by God (who gave His Son for us all).

6.      Innocent Sufferer

God to Satan about Job: “You incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause” (Job 2:30). Job did nothing wrong to deserve his suffering. Nor did Christ. Jesus was a sacrificial lamb “without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:19)

7.      Intercession & Suffering

Job was asked to intercede for his friends. Job 42:8:  “My servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly.” Jesus is our great high priest who “always lives to make intercession” (Heb 7:25).

8.      Granted A Vision of Seeing God

Job says: “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You” (Job 42:5). Jesus says only the Son “has seen the Father” (John 6:46).

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the doyen of nineteenth-century British preachers, once indicated his own hermeneutical method:

“I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if I ever do find one that has not a road to Christ in it, I will make one; I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savor of Christ in it.”

Christ treads beautifully in the pages of the book of Job.

Trinity Wellsprings Church,

The last months of shepherding and leading a church during the coronavirus has been uniquely challenging, frequently exhausting, and often exhilarating all at the same time. These last 13 months has required our church and staff to be endlessly adaptable, flexible, and open to the constant changing circumstances in our world and in our church family.

Here are some reflections from the last 13 months in no particular order.

(1)   I’ve been encouraged by the missional footprint of Trinity Wellsprings Church. I’m proud of the way our church has mobilized to meet real needs both in our community and around the world during the last several months, including:

• Responded missionally by surprising Neighbor Up Brevard with a food drive for struggling families

• Blessed 125 Assisted-Living Health-Care Workers at Zon Assisted Living Facility working on the local front line of the coronavirus

• Fed 100 families living in extreme poverty in a town dump in Guatemala (live chickens, 50 lb bag of rice, etc.) during the height of the worldwide lock-down

• Helped Iranian seminarian-refugees living in Turkey struggling to survive in the midst of the lock-down

• Helped purchase a truck for the missionary family Paul and Thania Heier in Guatemala working with folks in extreme poverty

• Participated in “The Perspectives of the World Christian Movement”

• Supported young church plants within the ECO family struggling to birth an expression of Christ’s church during the coronavirus

• Rallied around Becca Bowers as our “Fall Priority Mission Partner” to send her to Guatemala as a short-term missionary from our own congregation

• Provided Thanksgiving dinners for nearby school families and purchased numerous Christmas gifts for local families (in concert with Gifts from the Heart, a consortium of 9 local non-profit agencies).

• Partnered with Parker Memorial Missionary Baptist Church (Cocoa) to renovate a house adjacent to the church to become a center for drug addicts to get counseling and move from a life-of-drugs to a life-in-Christ.

• Provided meals and the love of Jesus to homeless families for a week through an adapted program via Family Promise of Brevard and served our local homeless and low-income residents by serving monthly at The Daily Bread

• Continued our faithful prayer and financial support of our global mission partnerships with Rev. Frank Godberg/Bethel Church in India (church planting), IBCP Seminary in Equatorial Guinea (pastoral leadership training), Unnamed Family in (for security purposes) Unnamed Location (church planting), Candy Reiger in Dominican Republic (church ministry/discipleship), and Fishers of Men Ministries in Haiti (discipleship, poverty).

• Continued our faithful prayer and financial support of our local mission partners with Community of Hope (homeless transitional housing), Family Promise of Brevard (homeless families), Love Inc. (poverty), Neighbor Up Brevard (integral mission: low-income housing/after school program/food desert), Nana’s House (locally abused, abandoned, and orphaned children)

And those are just the missional endeavors that come to my mind at the moment!

 (2)   Our church family will need to embrace an “unmatched level of graciousness” to weather this storm and these changing times.

Our church currently exists in a world soaked in fear, enamored with division, and hostile to peaceful dialogue. In May 2020, I wrote a congregational letter that included these words:

  …one value stands head-and-shoulders above all others. In the ensuing weeks ahead, our church family will continue to display an unmatched level of graciousness as we navigate these changes together.

An unmatched level of graciousness.

That was my motto, esp. from March to June of 2020. I sought to communicate various versions of this same leadership axiom nearly every week for months. 

In changing times, you will not agree with every decision by the leadership of our church.  (Masks? Tent! Live-Stream! Easter!) That’s understandable and, quite frankly, impossible.

Yet we all can – by the Spirit’s power – continue to display an unmatched level of graciousness towards staff, elders, lay leaders, and our wider community as we follow Jesus together.

 (3)    I’d love to lead our church better in the practice of prayer.

Session adopted a three-year strategic plan which included 9 Dreams and 13 Initiatives that we rolled out during our SHINE Capital Campaign.

Dream #5 was entitled “Prayerful People: Develop More Fully our Identity as “A Praying Church” alongside this description: “We embrace our calling to be a people of prayer, recognizing that the renewal and revitalization of God’s people comes about through the Holy Spirit as God’s children humble themselves in prayer before the throne of grace.”

During Holy Week a few weeks ago, my favorite time was our “Good Friday Prayer Service”.  We prayed through the stations of the cross: we prayed for forgiveness, we prayed for peace in our world, we prayed for thankful hearts to be centered on the cross of Christ, and we prayed that our church would overflow with witness, mission, and hope to a hurting world. It was so good to hear my brothers and sisters in Christ pray together!

In the recent past, our church has engaged in a “50 Days of Prayer” experiment, did a church wide study on Paul Miller’s A Praying Life, held 24-hour concerts of prayer, and participated in creative expressions of prayer (remember “the prayer labyrinth”?).

Can you make a daily commitment to pray for your church family?

(4)   I long for our church’s culture of discipleship to experience a “heating up” over an open fire.

I recently saw a striking truth on social media:

 “The church has majored in holding worship gatherings and minored in discipleship. Let’s restore the balance.” 

How do we restore the balance? It’s not by minimizing the corporate aspect of worship in our lives of discipleship. We need to hear the Word. We need to declare God’s worth with the saints in the household of God. We need the “ordinary means of grace” as experienced in the Lord’s Supper and Baptism.  And we need the fellowship of God’s people. 

And yet…our culture constantly bombards our lives with unending opportunities for busyness. An intentional life of discipleship – lived alongside other believers – is increasingly being considered “optional” or “unnecessary”.

Studying the Word in a slow, methodical fashion is slowly “going out of style”. At TWC, we will work hard to combat this mission drift! 

Are we hungry for life-on-life discipleship?  I’d love for students to be asking Randy and the Small Group Leaders at Riptide: “Can you disciple me?”  I’d love to hear of folks asking Pastor Steve or Mike Elmer (when he comes on staff) or any number of other capable lay leaders in our church family: “Can you meet with me every month for spiritual direction?”

Left to our own devices, we plateau in the spiritual life.

In the upcoming months, we will do our best to put a “discipleship lens” over everything we do at Trinity Wellsprings Church.  In the Fall, we will aggressively re-launch Life Groups because our church still believes wholeheartedly that the Christian life is best lived alongside other believers in fellowship, in prayer, and in the Word of God.

We also believe that Life Groups provide our church family the best avenue for reaching our neighbors who are also desperate for authentic connections and relationships after a long season of relational disconnectedness and dryness! 

(5)   Pretending there is no “Dark Side” to Digital Forms of “Church” is not an option.

In April 2020, I penned a blog post for the Reformation21 website entitled “The Dark Side for the Church during Its Online Hiatus”. The dangers of digital worship that takes place without other believers will remain a problem for the church long after covid recedes into the background.

On one hand, I am so thankful for the technology that has allowed our saints and immunocompromised believers to maintain a meaningful connection to our church body through this season of the coronavirus. Our church loves these saints even as we miss their physical presence with us! This has undoubtedly been part of our church practicing “an unmatched level of graciousness” towards one another as people have responded to this global pandemic in divergent ways. I am also incredibly thankful for our Live Stream Team that has persevered through many challenges, toils, and snares!

Yet, I still have many of the same reservations about our en masse pivot to digital worship that I did twelve months ago. After covid (hopefully) recedes to the background, believers will need to do a “theological reckoning” about the “dark side” of these digital forms of church. Several “open questions” that I raised twelve months ago might be worth contemplating: 

 …The problem is that “participation” of online worship lowers the bar to such an extent as to beg the question of whether this “church” is attracting consumers (to digital content) or raising up worshipers (of the Triune God).

We already live in a cultural moment where a person kayaks on the river or takes a run on the beach on a Sunday morning and posts a picture to Instagram with #church. Evangelicalism’s long confused love affair with its muddled ecclesiology seems to be at a potential tipping point during the coronavirus crisis. Tim Challies asks, “If we all stream our services, will anyone ever come back?” The fact that this is now a question reveals evangelicalism’s shaky foundation: the church’s orientation has been inverted with man at the center…

A church that worships the Triune God recognizes that humanity was made for relational connection (God is Father, Son, & Holy Spirit).  Disciples who follow the Incarnate One are meant to incarnate truth and grace in a community of real relationships. An individualized, fuzzy spirituality devoid of the body of Christ is not a recipe for church but for navel-gazing “experience-ism”, an increasingly common and cheap substitute for church in our particular moment in time.

What does it mean to “participate” in the life of the church after covid recedes? 

Does the Christian life necessarily include aspects of “service” and “fellowship”? 

Can an online worship experience ever duplicate what the New Testament writers portrayed as “the church” wherein the “ekkelsia” was believed to be the harbinger and outpost of the Kingdom of Heaven?

 (6)   Thank the Staff of Trinity Wellsprings Church…and then double-down on your own commitment to serve in whatever way you can. 

I have heard many votes of confidence and appreciation for the staff’s hard-work and endless efforts during the last 13 months. It has been a herculean effort! 

Please know that I already feel appreciated. But could you do me a favor? Might you send an encouraging email or note to other members of our staff?

And then…step up to serve?

Like many churches, Trinity Wellsprings Church will be faced over the next several months of (almost) completely re-building our network of lay leaders and faithful volunteers. 

It takes the whole body of Christ working together for our church family to effectively disciple children, pour the gospel into the lives of students, welcome new folks onto our campus, and overflow on mission into our community and world!

You can safely and confidently assume that the church desperately needs your participation, your time, and your gifts as we engage in the hard work of re-planting and re-launching Trinity Wellsprings Church for the glory of God!

 So…please “SAY YES to SERVING” at Trinity Wellsprings Church! Jump into a new role, a new ministry, or a new way to share your joy and your gifts with others!

Thankful for the privilege of shepherding this beautiful expression of Christ’s body,

Pastor Jason Carter

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An INVITATION (and a Final Thought)

Every church in America is now a church re-plant.

During this season, TWC will need to act like a church re-plant in radically “turning outward” towards our community in hospitality, love, and intentional mission in re-launching our fellowship. We need everyone to rally together!

Thus, you are invited to a lunch after church (11:45-1:15, in the Beach House) on Sunday May 2 entitled “The Replanting of Trinity Wellsprings Church: Our Next Steps”. Can you rsvp as soon as possible so we know how much food to order?

Hope to see you there!