Beloved,
Two years ago today, Tessa and I arrived at our new home on Lookout Mountain with a nervous excitement in our souls. A new place with new people who had called me to be their new pastor. It is a joy (and somewhat humorous!) to reflect back upon those early days as we got settled into life in Chattanooga and as I found myself thrown into the deep end of pastoral ministry which no amount of seminary training could have prepared me for. Upon reflection, there is one overarching lesson writ large over these two years:
Christ is the Builder of His Church, not me.
I would have affirmed that on September 1, 2020 as we unloaded our PODs. But in hindsight, my arrogant soul didn’t really grasp this truth. I was in large measure depending upon my own strength and persuasive powers to move us onward and upward. I look back on some of my early sermons and cringe at the sometimes harsh and overly critical applications I made, hitting you over the head with the Bible with the goal of bringing about change. I now see that my chiding, at least in measure, was a faithless attempt to move us where I believed we needed to go. I still believe we need to move in the direction of greater zeal for God, His word, His worship, and His mission. I still long for us to be a congregation that prays with all that is within us and that pours ourselves out for one another in holy, sacrificial love. But I now recognize that I have no ability to bring about these things in myself or in you. That I can yell and rebuke and bash people over the head with the Bible, but only Christ can sanctify us and make us to be the church we need to be. Year one was for me a time of stripping as God shrunk our church some numerically and showed me my utter inability to beautify and build up His people.
Year two has featured the same lesson, but God has taught it in a different way. This has come about mainly through elder sabbaticals which has left us as a leadership in what has felt like bare-bones, survival mode. I have sensed the profound limitations we have as elders, and it has driven me to the Lord in prayer like I have never experienced before. And here is the amazing thing, Christ has answered those prayers. Over this year, as our session has been deficient in man-power, Christ had demonstrated His great power. I have watched Him grow our church in spiritual maturity in profound and beautiful ways. I have watched Him graciously add to our numbers. In fact, later this month we will receive more people publicly into membership at one time than has ever been the case in our church. What makes this so encouraging to me is that it is obvious that Dan, Jeff, and myself haven’t done it! We are just trying to survive and be faithful in the face of overwhelming limitations. Clearly, Christ has done it!
In God’s providence, I have been in 1 Samuel in my personal devotions. Yesterday, I read in chapters 10-12 of Saul’s early kingship, and I found myself thinking, “Wow, Saul really got off to a good start. Empowered by the Spirit. Humble. Giving all glory to God.” This morning, I was in chapter 13 which begins with the temporal marker: “when he had reigned for two years over Israel…” It was here at Saul’s two year anniversary that everything began to go downhill, all because Saul did not follow God with his whole heart. What a sobering reality. It is possible to get off to a good start and to reach the two year mark under the smile of God (I sense His smile in wonderful ways!), but then to be overtaken by an evil heart of arrogance and to depend upon the arm of the flesh, leading to devastation and destruction. May it never be!
Francis Schaeffer prophetically wrote in his own day, “The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.”
May Christ increasingly deliver us from depending upon mere men so that we might be the vibrant, thriving, God-exulting congregation He wills us to be by His power and for the praise of His glory! Let us look expectantly to Christ as we embark upon year three together. What might He do in our midst as we lean upon His strong right arm?
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick
