Lance and Dante talk about solid theology, Calvinism, and why the reformation is still important and relevant today.
The Next Chapter of Life -After Kids
Lance talks about becoming an "empty nester" and looking back at raising his kids. He talks about what worked with his kids, what didn't, and what's next for him and Legacy Dads Ministries.
Moving From Milk To Meat
“You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food.” Hebrews 5:12
Based on the teachings of disciple-making leaders like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Robert Coleman, Leroy Eims, and Bill Hull using examples from the Christian Church in Europe (where less than 1% of people were attending church but some leaders were having success with discipleship). Reflecting on my own walk with Christ, 13 years of building ministries and walking with Christians and what the average American church member needs to grow in our faith. Ultimately, this all led back to Christ and the model he used with his own Disciples.
13 years ago, God called me into ministry (sort of) but I didn’t come quietly, I gave God every excuse why I’m not qualified, not the guy, and not spiritually mature enough for the calling. 10 years later I would still say that I’m not qualified, not the guy and not spiritually mature enough but God continues to shape and use me as He sees fit.
Over the past 13 years, one thing that I’ve come to realize is that I love Jesus but the more I get involved in ministry, the more frustrated I become. I love my pastors and ministry leaders but I’m often the guy in the room saying “Why are we making this so complicated?” or “That works great with people who are already saved but that would just scare away people who are unsaved.” I’ve been in a handful of meetings where a highly educated ministry leader with all the right pedigree can’t seem to lead a ministry or muster a following but a recovering drug addict with no training who can’t even pronounce exegesis can pack a room full of eager believers and lost alike.
One of the issues is that many ministry leaders are trained and educated to manage the daily functions of a church, teach and preach God’s word and offer words of encouragement but very few are trained on how to make authentic disciples of Christ. Furthermore, a leaders personal context often shapes how they are perceived and their ability to reach people. If a leader has always been a Christian or has never struggled with faith, it’s often hard for them to relate or reach those who are not Christians or those who have left their faith in frustration. Ministry leaders also often default to associating and socializing with those we feel comfortable with rather than those we need to reach.
This may sound outrageous but please consider this – if your goal is to make authentic disciples, you always get a church but if your goal is to make a church, this does not guarantee you will make disciples. Most ministry leaders are trained and great at making churches and managing day-to-day ministry tasks, but leading people to have hearts and lives that are more Christ-like is another issue altogether.
Ask yourself this honest question: Does my life and lives of the people at my church resemble those in the New Testament? How does my walk with Christ compare to Paul or Timothy?
Sadly, our modern churches today tend to produce “Christian Consumers” – members who rely on the church and leaders to spiritually feed them each week. Members who attend a church because the music, preaching style or the type of environment is what they “like” or “prefer” rather than attending church to glorify and worship God or to be challenged to grow in their faith. Often, we treat church like a restaurant or movie, if we are not entertained or we don’t like the service – we go somewhere else.
The truth is that there is no Plan B. We are God’s plan to make disciples of all nations. However, we must remember that Christ stated that He will build his church (Matthew 16:18) but we are called to make disciples. (Matthew 28:19)
How many pastors or ministry leaders are caught up in building His church instead of making disciples?
In the typical American church, 10-15% of the staff and laypeople are often doing a majority of the work because leaders are often scared to empower others to be disciples or they micromanage the disciples they do have stifling people’s ability to grow and lead. Leaders are often praying and waiting for that “perfect person” to come along and champion a ministry or project rather than developing and growing the people God has given them already.
5 years ago, God called me to lead an important ministry with the focus of making disciples in a large, thriving church. I am still amazed by the leadership, grace and faith of that senior pastor who allowed me to undertake this important role knowing that I had no formal ministry training and had never undertaken this kind of ministry before. Honestly, this probably helped me more than anything because I had no theories or templates to fall back on so I had to trust God and spend time researching what was currently working and then put these principles into practice.
God first led me to the teachings of disciple-making leaders like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Robert Coleman, Leroy Eims, and Bill Hull. He then led me to look at the Christian Church in Europe (where less than 1% of people were attending church but some leaders were having success with discipleship) and finally I reflected on my own walk with Christ and the average American church member and what would get me to grow in my faith. Ultimately, this all led back to Christ and the model he used with his own Disciples.
When I examined Jesus’ model, I observed that he used a Challenge, an Invitation but ultimately Grace with all His disciples and followers. Sadly, many church leaders today are scared to challenge people out of fear that they may leave. They would rather use empty words of praise and encouragement than call people to greater community with Christ. Yet Jesus repeatedly challenged people directly and did not worry if they left or did not accept His challenge.
Jesus also told stories and used language that related to and often shocked His audience of both religious and non-religious listeners and He often admonished the religious leaders of His day stating that they too were focusing on things that didn’t matter. Where did Jesus send most of his time during His public ministry? With non-religious people: prostitutes, beggars, the sick, sinners and tax collectors. He didn’t expect these people to come to his sermon on Sunday; he spent time with them and brought His message to their doorsteps and places of business.
Throughout the rest of this series, I will give you eight ways to understand ourselves, one another, and our relationships with Christ through the lens of Jesus discipleship model. I will give you Jesus’ methods for focusing on multiplication and replication. I will share with you Jesus’ tactics of challenging people, inviting people but also extending grace while people grew in faith and putting them into leadership roles within a short amount of time. This was the strategy I used to build a highly successful discipleship ministry and one you can use to make disciples in your church or ministry who then become disciple-makers themselves.
Creating Faith That "Sticks" With Our Kids
One of the statistics that has always troubled me was the studies showing that somewhere between 64 and 94 percent of Christian teens leave the Church within a few years of graduating high school. Most of these are coming out of the Catholic and Evangelical Christian sects. What is further troubling is that most of these kids came from great homes, churches and were actively involved in their faith as teenagers.
Recently, I was asked to sit on a steering panel to interview potential youth pastors and youth programs, and to prepare for this I wanted to look at which youth programs and churches were beating these overwhelming odds.
Enter the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) and youth experts Kara Powell and Chap Clark whose mission is “to leverage research into resources that elevate leaders, kids, and families. Powell and Clark spearheaded the “College Transition Project,” which is a six-year research study of over 500 graduating seniors, “To better understand the dynamics of youth group graduates’ transition to college, and to pinpoint the steps that leaders, churches, parents, and seniors themselves can take to help students stay on the Sticky Faith path”
Simply, how to create a faith in kids that lasts beyond college. Or Sticky Faith as Powell and Clark’s book is titled.
Here are a few of the practical things Powell and Clark found in their research about Sticky Faith:
- Kids who left the faith report having questions about faith in early adolescence that were ignored by significant adults (parents, pastor, teacher).
- A factor causing kids to shelve their faith is the segregation of kids and adults in church. Kids who attend church-wide services are more likely to keep their faith.
- The more kids serve and build relationships with younger children the more likely they are to hang on to their faith.
- Short-term mission trips seem to have little impact on the lasting faith of young people (they are not more likely to give to the poor or become long-term missionaries).
- The more students feel prepared for college the more likely their faith is to grow.
How do we accomplish this? Read on…
1. Create an atmosphere of unconditional love and grace – See This In Depth Post
2. Plan and Develop Social Capital – Everyone who interacts with adolescents play a critical part in shaping them into adults. Therefore we should surround ourselves and our children with other positive adults and kids. We should also spend some time seeking other adults who are willing to invest in our children in the form of teaching, leading, and conscious care. This can be grandparents, coaches, youth pastors or even other kids.
3. Make God A Part of Daily Life – Faith is not just for Sunday. Children should see faith played out in the real world everyday. This includes praying and encouraging children to take some of their concerns and issues to God. Also, openly give God credit when something positive happens or prayers are answered. Children should see faith lived out in their home daily.
4. Avoid Lecturing – It didn’t work for our parents so why do we revert to this tactic? Lecturing at kids or talking down to them will never get our points across. Life lessons are caught not taught, therefore we need to spend less time lecturing and more time focusing on asking questions to elicit responses which open up meaningful conversation with our children. And once they start talking, resist the urge to interject and lecture, give them honest answers and expectations versus dictating. Sometimes just listening and not saying anything is the best thing we can do.
5. Integration versus Segregation – Many churches have moved to segregating the children from the adults. This is done through Sunday School, Children’s Church or separate youth services. While these are fine for other nights of the week or early morning, Church services should be integrated between adults and youth, ideally with the youth taking an active involvement in the service. The younger generations are much more apt to stick if they are involved in the process of Church. Plus, they are interacting with multiple generations and seeing faith working for adults other than their parents.
6. Teaching Biblical World View – As David Kinnaman points out in UnChristian, one of the reasons we are losing a generation is that we are not teaching them how to think with a biblical world view. Kids are having fun at youth group but are they learning the pillars of the Christian Faith and how it compares to the secular/humanist world? Atheism and Humanism spend a good deal of time developing logical, researched arguments against faith which resonates well with college aged adults. The church should use this same approach to solidify faith and equip kids to understand why they believe and defend what they believe. Youth-based apologetics, Confirmation classes and Faith In College classes can work wonders and children often site that they wish they had more of this. I’ve even seen these classes taught by college aged students which further made them fun and resonated well with teens and tweens.
7 . Service and Justice – The younger generations have a drive to be involved with service and social justice. The Church should be leading the way to involve kids in being apart of service and justice programs. Ongoing, frequent out reach and service programs should be apart of our children’s activities. Also noted in the research was that teens that taught and mentored younger children in the Church, had a higher sticky rate than those who did not.
8. Allow Questions and Have Answers – Questioning faith should be encouraged and an integral part of our children’s faith journey and should lead to answers which further solidify their beliefs. Answers can come from parents, mentoring, books and of course the Bible. The best approach is to point the children in the right direction but let them answer their own questions through positive-based research. Debating faith issues should be common practice and the family can work them out together.
Finally, we must realize that as parents sometimes we have to put our faith in God and simply resort to prayer. We must seek authentic walks with Christ and model these for our children, we must teach and surround our children with faith but do not force or try to circumvent the timing and efforts of the Holy Spirit. While there are certainly no guarantees in life or with children, creating an atmosphere that encourages sticky faith is one area that we can control. As I move forward this year, I am going to spend a considerable amount of time trying to incorporate and enrich these sticky faith principles in our home and our children’s lives.
— Lance
When I Was An Atheist Part 2
I tried to give you my frame of mind when I was an atheist and why I left my faith and the church. In this post, I’ll share how my atheism broke down and ultimately failed me and how I discovered that what I was really frustrated with, was religion and the Church.
My initial reaction was to write a long, voluminous diatribe trying to explain, in explicit detail, every possible angle to this post as I know many atheists will attack me, these post and my stance. But in the interest of the reader and not dredging up the same debates, I decided to keep it short and leave a lot out. That being said, I know atheists will attack my rational in this post but this is further evidence of exactly the point I’m trying to make. When I was an atheist, I felt an incessant need to lash out and attack Christians or those who did not hold my point of view.
My atheism worked well in my controlled environment but my sole reliance on logic, science and reason began to break down when I utilized it in human relations with other people in a not-so-logical world, especially in relationships where emotions like love were involved. In hindsight, I now know from neuroscience that although logic, facts and science are helpful – ultimately the human species makes decisions based on emotions not logic and I found that trying to apply logical and scientific reasoning to the thousand or so decisions I needed to make everyday was not only futile but ludicrous to try. Inevitably, we use “thin slicing” in our decisions and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to always remain logical and unbiased.
I also experienced that my atheism made me more confrontational if not militant towards my fellow mankind, specifically those who believed in God and faith. Rather than just living my life (happy in my logic and science) I felt the need to attack, belittle and debate those who did not share my views. I wanted to prove them wrong thus making myself feel intellectual superior and elevate myself above their irrationality, when in reality, most people perceived me as intellectually arrogant and egotistical.
My atheism line of thinking often challenged believers to prove the existence of God which I would then debate incessantly in the form of disqualifying all their claims based on the grounds that they could not be proven using modern scientific principles and laws and thus were irrational. But as an atheist, I now realize that I simply replaced my beliefs and faith in God – to belief in science, logic and reason which in itself was making a bold intellectual commitment of faith about the nature of the universe, and I made this “leap of faith” while denying, in science, the same type of insufficient data.
Ask yourself this question: Throughout human history, has science ever been wrong?
A PhD in Zoology and Professor of Biology for over 30 years at a leading liberal university told me, “Science is what we know about the natural world, given the amount of data available at that time in our human history. Scientific advances in the past have proven everything we know and thought to be fact at the time…wrong. We could make a scientific discovery next week that proves all of our textbooks and theories to be dead wrong.” This professor, despite studying evolution for over 30 years, is a Christian.
Plus, there has been more than one study that has shown that even science is incapable of research bias. Most scientific research gets skewed by researchers because of their need for career advancement, funding for research programs, and competitiveness for staff and research facilities.
So putting my faith in science, logic and reason was really not empirically true and free of outside bias. I simply traded religious mysticism for scientific mysticism.
A Freethinking Society Would Advance Humankind?
I often hear, and thought myself at one time, that if we could rid ourselves of religion and God, our society would be free to advance and evolve based purely on science, logic and reasoning.
In studying countries and societies who were atheist, the exact opposite happened.
Peter Hitchens, brother of outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens, spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union towards it’s end. “Godless society was sobering.” He wrote of the riots that broke out when the vodka ration was cancelled one week; the bribes required to obtain anesthetics at the dentist or antibiotics at the hospital; the frightening levels of divorce and abortion under their atheist rules. It was not Utopia. Mankind did not advance. Government sponsored killing and human rights violations escalated. In fact, China (a supposedly atheist society) despite being a technological powerhouse in the world, is year after year #1 on the list of government sponsored deaths and human rights violations.
Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stated it this way “But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened”
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Furthermore, my atheism ran into challenges of the heart. As a atheist, I had to prescribe to the idea that humans have no soul, and we are merely evolutionary advanced animals, so love is nothing more than instinct or hormones.
When a mother, father, husband or wife feels love and says, “I love you,” the atheist says they are not expressing anything metaphysical or spiritual. In fact, the atheist believes, they are just verbalizing their instinct to preserve their species or having increased hormones. Wouldn’t that sound great on a Hallmark Card?
If we have no soul, then there is only the bubbling of the brain. Love is only a response to stimuli and hormones. Tell that to your wife or girlfriend!
The problem for atheists, is that majority of humans claim that they do feel love in mystical and spiritual ways. Anyone who has ever been in love can attest to this and our sometimes irrational thinking because of it. Christians believe that is because our love is connected to our soul and our soul is a metaphysical reality that assumes the existence of God, or at least the supernatural and points us back to our connection with God, our creator.
I’ve yet to find someone who has been alive more than a few decades who has not had at least one metaphysical, spiritual or supernatural event in their lives that cannot be explained using the laws of science, logic and reason. Despite what you or I have felt or experienced, my atheists friends claim this is just a momentary lapse of irrationality or that millions of people are just psychological delusional.
I Can’t Change, Even If I Tried.
What I found profoundly fascinating (yet its not talked about in atheist and many scientific circles) is that science itself is actually seeing more and more evidence of God and Intelligent Design, specifically in chemistry and in the study of DNA. British philosopher, Dr. Antony Flew, was once a leading spokesperson for atheism and actively involved in debate after debate. However, recent scientific discoveries in the genome project have lead him and many others to question their atheism. Although Flew did not become a Christian or accept Jesus, he did admit he believed in a God. Researchers today are learning that DNA is so complex and contains such a specific, written code that if one mistake was made, we’d be a different mutated species altogether. Our DNA code is compared to the most complex computer program ever written, and in science and technology, a complex computer code has never existed unless it was designed, programmed or coded with an intelligent mind behind it.
Cognitive scientists are also becoming increasingly aware that a metaphysical outlook may be so deeply ingrained in the human psyche, that it cannot be expunged. While this idea may seem outlandish to my atheist friends —after all, it seems easy to decide not to believe in God—evidence from several scientific disciplines indicate that what you actually believe is not a decision you make for yourself. Your fundamental beliefs are decided by much deeper levels of consciousness, and some may well be more or less set in stone. This line of thought has led to some scientists claiming that “atheism is psychologically impossible because of the way humans think,” says Graham Lawton, an avowed atheist himself, writing in the New Scientist. “They point to studies showing, for example, that even people who claim to be committed atheists tacitly hold religious beliefs, such as the existence of an immortal soul.”
Hmm…God is so deeply engrained into our being that no matter how hard we try, we still feel his presence despite all our logical thought processes?
“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?” – Psalm 139:7
“No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” – 1 John 4:12
“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:13
In the Part 1, I explained that these posts were not meant to be an apologetics study or debate of atheism versus faith but my own personal journey. Although I’ve spent some time researching a lot of the arguments for and against the authenticity of the Bible, the existence of Jesus, and if he really was the Christ or Messiah – There’s a lot of evidence, historical writings, anthropological digs, etc. that we could spend hours debating, but I think one of the most compelling arguments for myself and my own faith, has been the early church and the disciples of Christ.
I often hear and believed myself that the Bible we have today and ultimately religion was developed by man in order to control and wrest power from the masses. We could argue that in the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, Roman Emperor Constantine envisioned a way to garner the support and conformity of the people and put the Bible together, along with other pagan rituals, in order to accomplish this. But none of this stands up to scrutiny or makes logical sense when you go back to the original disciples of Christ.
We now have evidence and fragments of the New Testament dating to within 30-50 years of the death of Christ, some 200 years before Constantine and the Council of Nicea. The writers of the New Testament were the original followers of Christ, the disciples, and they spent the rest of their lives in poverty, persecution, humiliation and were ultimately tortured and killed for professing what they had witnessed with and through Jesus Christ. If Jesus or his divinity was conjured up, as some claim, what did these early followers gain? Why would these eyewitness observers be tortured and die for fiction, with seemingly noting to gain?
The early disciples’ prolific writings exist as a historical source. These writers also took the subversive actions of writing to women and slaves rather than pandering only to men, which would hardly have made their writings popular according to the culture of the time. Yet we still have these writings preserved and available as well as outside accounts of Jesus from other historical sources. The early disciples did almost everything wrong, according to the culture of the time, in trying to create a following.
So if it was all made up, what did they gain?
These early disciples were pursued and hunted by the religious and government leaders of their day. Yet their lives, actions, writings and ultimately deaths gives us further evidence of their quest for truth and accuracy in proclaiming what they witnessed rather than creating popularity, control, power or a large following.
In Part 3, I finish my story by explaining how I discovered that what I really was frustrated with, was religion and the Church and how despite the early disciples and churches best efforts to keep religion out, eventually the old Temple Model crept back into Christianity and caused a lot of bad things to happen in the name of God and religion.
I’ll leave you with one finally thought. If Jesus was not the son of God and even more God in human form and was just some guy killed 2000 years ago by the Romans. If this was the biggest lie ever sold, why hasn’t it faded into history? Why are we still talking and debating him today? Why do more people attest positive life changes and supernatural events occurring from reading His book and experiencing His presence in our lives?
“But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. 35 Then he addressed the Sanhedrin:…….38 Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. 39 But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” Acts 5: 34-35, 38-39
When I Was An Atheist Part 1
If you have heard or read my testimony, you know that I was professing atheist for a few years in my early 20’s. I was raised in between two conservative Christian churches, studied and memorized scripture daily and attended church and mass twice per week while I was growing up. Much of my early experience with God and religion was based on rituals, guilt, obedience without question, religious head knowledge and a list of Do’s and Dont’s. In my teens, I started asking skeptical questions about my faith but was often told “I shouldn’t think these things” or simply given looks of disappointment rather than logical answers to my faith struggles. Thus, in my early 20’s, I decided God was man-made, religion was used to control the masses and usurp resources and money using guilt and ultimately walked away from God and my faith.
Before I continue, please understand that this post is not meant to be an argument or debate on God versus atheism or logic versus faith, or anyone of the other debates that both Christians and Atheists love to spend hours in forums going back and forth on. This is simply my journey from religion – to atheism – to faith and how atheism ultimately failed to work for me personally. For those of you looking for hours of debate and discussion or if you are struggling and in need of answers, please visit RZIM, Probe or CARM for hours of answers and debate.
I was the prototypical atheist – male, above average intelligence, favored logic and the sciences and had some angst towards authority and societal norms. I wanted to be unique, innovative, and I wanted to be accepted for who I was and how I acted.
I was first exposed to Objectivism which ultimately led me to Atheism. My core beliefs were that rationality, intellectual honesty, and objectivity were needed in all areas of my life and this would ultimately lead to the betterment of myself and humanity through the advancement of science, logic, reason and technology. I believed the universe is a natural system, not created or guided by God and not containing supernatural beings; a universe that can be explained by science, because it consists of material objects operating according to physical laws. Since I disregarded God and the Bible, I would follow a code of conduct and morals which would be defined by our societies cultures, laws, and ethics and I believed this code would give the best possible results not only for myself but for anyone I interacted with.
In my mind, I had discovered the secret to success while most of the masses were walking around like zombie-sheep, relying on magical stories and the promises of things that could never be proven or substantiated during human life. Almost immediately, I became more confrontational and would often search or contrive opportunities to debate believers. I would talk Christians into corners or into areas that they had no knowledge of, thus making myself appear intellectually superior and more rational. I argued that God could not be proven by the laws of science, the Bible was full of erroneous contradictions and obviously written by man to bestow power on those who controlled it and it’s followers.
During these years, I was a cold, cruel person to anyone who did not agree with my philosophy. I lived my life solely for my own personal happiness and the pursuit of success. My new idols become personal success, power, logic, fame, and beauty. My life became a quest to make myself happy and better mankind in the process. At first, I believed that “survival of the fittest” involved being strong enough, smart enough and sly enough to obtain personal fulfillment and happiness for myself, in doing whatever I wanted as long as I did not violate any laws. My study of modern moral theories like existentialism, situation ethics, and sociobiology allowed me to violate morals that I did not believe were valid or applicable to me. This left areas like lust, business practices, infidelity and coveting open to debate as religious rules did not apply to me.
Within a year or so of my new-found beliefs – my marriage, my finances, and my relationships with people all began to suffer and take a turn for the worst. I believed this was because these people where not subscribing to my new worldview and I simply needed to educate them with more debate, logic and science in order for them to finally see that I was right and they were wrong. I wanted the world to change in order to accommodate my personal views and opinions and if you didn’t, I would label you as hypocritical, irrational or illogical.
What I soon learned through some painful life lessons, exposure to the Gospel instead of religious dogma, scientific evidence for Christ and the Bible and years of retrospect – was that although my ideas on logic, science and ethics were great in theory or within the constraints of the laws of science – human beings as a species are incapable of consistently rational thought or behavior. The flaw in my atheism (and even societies/countries who tried to govern with atheism) is our human ability to rationalize any behavior (at a given time or often after the event) and our refined ability to evade personal responsibility for our actions.
Plus, my logic, science and reasoning did not stand up to the tests of my life experiences involving emotions like love or events I experienced, fully cognitive that could not be explained by the laws of science. Due to our recent scientific advances in understanding the complexity and specific information coded within our human DNA, the amount of intelligence required to piece all this together to form life supersedes our current human technological capabilities not to mention that it defies all mathematical probabilities of something this complex forming randomly without intelligent design.
Based on this continued research and understanding, even the most adamant atheists like Richard Dawkins have recently conceded that life may appear “designed” because if you look closely in the cell you might see a “signature” of a designer.
In Part 2 – I’ll dive specifically into why my atheism failed me and ultimately why what I really struggled with, was religion, not God and faith.