There’s More Than One Way to Be Wicked
PLUMB LINE:
“Risk Is Right.”
During my first year of college, a group of us traveled out to a box canyon called “Split Rock” about an hour away from our campus. The canyon was hard to find — you had to park your car at an unmarked spot on the highway and walk about a hundred yards into the woods, where you would hear the unmistakable sounds of a pounding waterfall. When you heard that sound, you had to pay attention because, almost without warning, the ground at your feet dropped away, and 40 feet below you lay the pool basin of a waterfall.
I’m not sure who figured this out first, but if you got a slight run, you could jump off of the cliff and plunge into the pool. But here was the thing: The distance you had to cover horizontally to clear the slightly sloping canyon walls was longer than you could clear in a broad jump (about 10 feet). Because you were in the air for so long, however, if you jumped hard, your forward momentum would enable you to clear (pretty easily) that horizontal distance, plunging safely into the waterfall pool basin below, which was more than 30 feet deep.
Was I one of the ones who jumped? Well, since my mother may read this book some day, and maybe my son when he grows up, I will take the Fifth. But I will tell you, what an exhilarating experience it was as your feet left the side of that cliff and you sliced through the air to the icy water below.
Taking risks is always frightening, yet few of life’s rewards come without them. (And, to note, I am not saying that this risk was a wise one or that the payoff was worth it . . . and Adon, son, if you read this someday, you are NOT allowed to do this!)
For many of the most important things in life, you will never clear the distance unless you leap with abandon. That certainly is true if you’re going to be a sending church, or sending parent, or sending person.
To All Would-Be Disciples: Risk Required
Jesus’ told a story about a rich boss who left behind sums of money for his servants to invest that established risk-taking as a necessary component of true discipleship. To one servant he gave five “talents,” to another two, to another one. (A talent was a rather large unit of money: about twenty years’ salary!1 So, to one man he gave twenty years’ salary (on our terms, about a million dollars); to another, double that; and to another, a hundred years’ worth.
He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more.
So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. (Matt. 25:16 – 18 ESV)
The man with two million turned it into four, and the man with five turned it into ten. When the master returned, he commended the first two servants for their wise investment of his resources. But to the one that sat on it, he said:
“You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matt. 25:26 – 30 ESV)
Two things about that parable grip me. First, Jesus commended the first two servants for taking a risk with his money. Investing it means they could have lost it. That’s the nature of investing: no guarantees! Yet, Jesus doesn’t say, “What were you thinking? You could have lost all my money!” Instead, he commended them.
The second thing that stands out is even more startling, however: He called the one who did not take the risk “wicked.”
Wicked?
What had he done? There seems to be no stealing, immorality, or even reckless irresponsibility involved. He didn’t blow the master’s money on partying, prostitutes, gambling, or first-class accommodations in the Caribbean. In fact, he had not spent a single penny on himself. He returned 100 percent of what he had been given to the master.
And for that, Jesus called him “wicked.”
Most of us tend to think about wickedness only in terms of bad things that we do. But according to this parable, “wicked” can apply as much to what we don’t do as to what we do. Failure to risk our lives to the fullest potential for the kingdom of God is as wicked as the most egregious violations of the laws of God.
Let that sink in for a minute.
The question is not just whether you have done bad things; the question is whether you have done the right things with the good things God has given you.
Growing, But Wicked, Churches?
Typically, we apply this parable to individuals, but I want to encourage local churches to apply it to themselves as a whole.
As we have discussed throughout this book, most churches tend to judge their success only by their size, so they spend the lion’s share of their resources on growing their congregation. Of course, growing a church and reaching the community can be a wise investment of kingdom resources. But what if Jesus saw our reticence to send out some of our best leaders and resources as an attempt to sit on his blessings to us, to safely guard them instead of scattering them into the harvest so they could multiply? Might he also call us “wicked”? If we only spend money to bring in people who will enhance our bottom line, we are not being risky in our investment at all. When you spend money on things that grow your attendance, you experience the reward of your “investments” immediately.
Might Jesus say to church leaders who have devoted all their resources to things that increase their own comfort and prestige in this world what he, in essence, said to the Pharisees: “You already have your reward” (see Matt. 6:2 – 4)?
As I have explained throughout this book, sending is both costly and risky. You give up some of your best people, divest yourself of precious resources, and exert emotional energy to see something flourish somewhere else. But we do so because the Master has told us to invest what he gave us, to send it out into the field so that it can multiply. Jesus gave us what he gave us so that we could create greater return for his kingdom, not so we could have more to sit on for ourselves.
Each May we commission teams going out from our church to plant churches that fall. Each domestic plant is led by at least one resident planter who has spent nine months on our staff preparing for the plant, recruiting other Summit members to go with them. As these teams stretch across the stage, I typically see leaders who have led vital ministries in our church. I see friends. I see faithful volunteers and big givers — because people missional enough to join a church planting team are usually the kind that are sacrificially generous. I told one church planter that my name for his team is “a new sound system,” and another “that high-tech lighting package.” Looking across that stage I see a lot of “things” I would like to keep at our church. But I know that those rewards do not compare to the reward the Master will one day give us if we have invested faithfully.
Yet, still . . . I feel the fear. What happens if the 160 we sent out this past year aren’t replaced? What if no one steps up to fill the gaps they leave? What if new givers don’t rise up to replace the money these 160 will no longer give to us?
Well. . . that’s just a risk we have to take. To not take those kinds of risks would be wicked.
The Guaranteed Bankruptcy of Not Taking Risks
What is more: Not taking those risks ensures our decline. The servant who refused to risk had even the one talent he held onto taken away from him.
The nation of Israel in the time of Moses did not take the risks God laid out for them. Ten of the twelve spies Moses sent out to survey the Promised Land came back and said, “The land is good . . . but there are giants, and we are like nothing but grasshoppers to them!” Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, countered: “Yes, but what are the giants to God? He promised us victory. It’s worth the risk!” (see Num. 13:26 – 33).
God called the report of those ten spies “evil” (Num. 13:32), even though every word of their report was true.2
Risking for God is dangerous; but not risking is more dangerous.
When Jesus taught the principle of the harvest in John 12:24, he said that those who “hold on” to their lives surely will lose them. That means if we hold on to our resources, our leaders, or our power, we surely will lose them. In the kingdom of God, what you hold on to, you lose, and what you give away, you keep. What Jim Elliott, martyred missionary in Ecuador, said is as applicable to pastors and churches as it is to individual believers: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”3
God has blessed our church so much since we began to devote ourselves to sending. Every dollar we have put into church planting has multiplied at least ten times in terms of how much these churches now gather for the kingdom. And I believe God “credits” their success to our account. The joy we have watching our plants baptize people exceeds even the joy we have baptizing people of our own. Like the first and second servant in Jesus’ parable, we have the joy of knowing we have placed the resources of our church in his hands and that we have all of eternity to share in the ROI. God really is “enriching us in every way” as we leverage our resources for his kingdom (2 Cor. 9:11). But every time we give something significant away, we face the fear that this time it will not work out.
Throughout Scripture, we see the kingdom of God advancing through risk — risk with no guarantee the gamble will pay off. When David took on Goliath, he took a risk. We don’t see anywhere in Scripture that God told David to fight Goliath or verbally assured him he would get the victory. David simply found himself in a place with a defiant giant, whereupon he picked up some rocks and trusted that God would knock him down (see 1 Sam. 17).
King David’s best friend, Jonathan, took a risk against an entire garrison of Philistine soldiers when he had only one companion (1 Sam. 14:1 – 6). Jonathan was out in the wilderness with only his armor bearer and a couple of swords when he encountered the hiding Philistine platoon. Rather than do the smart thing and wait for backup, he and the armor bearer decided to take on the entire garrison by themselves. More accurately, Jonathan decided to do it. Listen to how he invited his armor bearer to join him:
“Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised men. Perhaps the LORD will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the LORD from saving, whether by many or by few.” (1 Sam. 14:6)
Uhhh . . . perhaps? I’m sorry, bro, but if you are inviting me to take on an entire, fortified garrison of trained Philistine soldiers, then I’m going to need more than your “perhaps.” Yet, they took the risk, and God gave the victory (1 Sam. 14:11 – 15).
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego took a risk in defying King Nebuchadnezzar. We see no place in Daniel 3 where God told the three college-aged young men that he would deliver them from Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. In fact, in their response to the king I hear a curious mixture of certainty and uncertainty:
“The God we serve is able to deliver us from [the blazing furnace], and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand.” (Dan. 3:17)
That sounds like certainty, but then they turn around and say,
“But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” (v. 18)
If not . . . ? Why the sudden flash of uncertainty? Because God had given them no assurance they would walk out of the furnace unscathed. Going into the fiery furnace was a risk they had to take. And God delivered.
Esther took a risk when she appealed the fate of the Jews before loony King Artaxerxes. She had no idea what his response would be. We know this, because she said to her Uncle Mordecai before she went, “If I perish, I perish” (Est. 4:15 – 16).
Paul’s entire life was one risk after another (Acts 20:23; 2 Cor. 11:24 – 28). John Piper, who wrote a book called Risk Is Right, says of Paul,
[He] never knew where the next blow would come from. Every day he risked his life for the cause of God. The roads weren’t safe. The rivers weren’t safe. His own people, the Jews, weren’t safe. The Gentiles weren’t safe. The cities weren’t safe. The wilderness wasn’t safe. The sea wasn’t safe. Even the so-called Christian brothers weren’t safe. Safety was a mirage. It simply didn’t exist for the apostle Paul.4
Piper concludes: “The Christian life is a call to risk. You either live with risk or waste your life.”
We say, “God, I want some kind of guarantee!” He doesn’t give one. Planting, sending, investing, going — all take leaps of faith. Yet without risk, the kingdom of God does not advance.
Piper says, “It is the will of God that we be uncertain about how life on earth will turn out for us, and . . . that we take risks for the cause of God.”5
Paul: My Ambition
I am certainly not saying that every desire to risk is from God. Sometimes the wise thing to do is hide in the woods and wait to fight another day. King David walked away from quite a few fights, and Paul had himself smuggled out of a city to avoid a confrontation (Acts 9:25).
Following Jesus means asking the Holy Spirit what risks he wants you to take for his kingdom. The whole of the Great Commission is too big for any one person, so the Holy Spirit narrows it into specific assignments for you. You are not called to take every risk — as Larry Osborne once explained to me, “Not everything that comes from heaven has your name on it.” Something does, however, and we are responsible to find the garrisons of Philistines that God has for us — and then take the risks in pursuit of them.
At the end of the book of Romans the apostle Paul reveals a narrowing of his ministry focus he experienced toward the end of his life. “My ambition,” he says, is to preach Christ where he has never been named (Rom. 15:20 ESV). His ministry focus, you see, had started really wide: he debated Jews in the synagogue, helped build up the first churches, and preached to Jews and Gentiles alike. But as his life progressed, God narrowed his focus onto one thing — preaching Christ where he had never been named — and Paul made that his personal ambition. He was willing to take whatever risks necessary to fulfill that ambition (see, for example, Rom. 15:31; Acts 20:22 – 24).
God does that for each of his followers. What part of the mission has the Holy Spirit elevated to be your “personal ambition”? Maybe God is calling you to start a Bible study in your workplace, to get involved in your church’s ministry to children, to start the process of fostering or adoption, or to pursue a career field that lacks a gospel presence. Maybe he is leading you to move to an under-resourced part of your city or putting it into your heart to live out the gospel in an unreached people group. Maybe he is urging your church to give away more money for church planting next year than you have ever dreamed possible, or maybe to start the process of planting your first church.
Those are things the Holy Spirit will have to show you himself. But whatever it is, I can assure you it will involve risk.
A Certain Savior for an Uncertain Risk
To return to our parable, do you ever wonder what character quality separated the first two servants in Jesus’ parable from the third? In other words, why were they able to risk for the master when the third one couldn’t?
I think we find a clue in how the third servant responded to the master:
“Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” (Matt. 25:24 – 25 ESV)
The third servant did not trust his master’s goodness. Apparently, the other two servants knew that their master was gracious — and also competent enough to handle any mistakes they made in pursuit of their risk.
Every great risk in God’s name begins with confidence in the goodness and trustworthiness of God. The woman who touched Jesus’ garment received healing from him because she believed in his goodness (Luke 8:45 – 46). The Gentile woman who coerced Jesus to heal her daughter did so because she knew there was so much grace in Jesus’ heart that “even the little dogs,” like her,6 could have some (Matt. 15:27 NKJV).
The story is told that Alexander the Great had a general who approached him after many years of service to ask if he would pay for the wedding of his daughter. Alexander agreed and told him to obtain the funds needed from the treasurer. Soon thereafter the treasurer came to Alexander, complaining that this general was taking advantage of Alexander’s generosity. He was asking for an exorbitant amount of money, enough to host the largest wedding Greece had ever seen.
Alexander thought about the situation for a moment, then waved his hand dismissively and said, “Grant him his request in full.” The treasurer looked bewildered. Alexander continued, “My general pays me two compliments: He believes that I am rich enough to afford his request and that I am generous enough to grant it. In assuming these two things, he honors me.”
Our God is so good, gracious, and powerful that we can never ask or assume too much of him. We don’t offend him with large requests; we offend him with small ones! John Newton said it this way in his hymn “Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare”:
Thou art coming to a King, large petitions with thee bring!
For his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.
Any worthwhile kingdom attempt involves risk. C. S. Lewis said that the way to know you are living by faith is that what you are doing for God scares you. If it doesn’t, he said, there is no faith involved.7 So get comfortable with being scared. We have a Master who not only has commanded us to risk, but also has promised us that as we do so, led by his Spirit, he will multiply our investments in the harvest of his kingdom.
Our church has asked God to allow us to plant 1,000 churches and bless 1,000 cities by 2050. We want to send out 5,000 people as a part of those church planting teams. We have started a pastor training school that will train pastors and church leaders. We have asked God to let us baptize 50,000 people in the Raleigh-Durham area. We have asked him to let us be part of major awakenings in Muslim and European nations. Each year we try to give away more money and send out more leaders than we feel we can afford. Only when our giving scares us do we know we are getting close to target.
Some well-meaning people have called our vision “grandiose”; others, “foolish.” We believe, however, it is the required faithfulness to a Master who entrusted us with a small pile of talents to invest until he returns. He is gracious and powerful enough to compensate for our incompetence and would rather have us risk too much than play it too safe.
Where do you need to take a risk? Is the Spirit of God leading you to start the application process, or write the check, or walk across the street to knock on the neighbor’s door?
You will clear the rocks below if you jump with all your might and trust that the God who walks on water can get you to exactly the place you need to be.
One important word of counsel, however: Every risk you take should be done in submission to wise counsel from your local church and under the clear direction of the Scripture. I am not advocating reckless foolishness, and the Spirit of God never leads us do anything that contradicts his Word. I know of a man, for example, who felt that God was leading him to leave his family to devote more time to the ministry. I can assure you that whatever he was feeling was not the Spirit of God (see 1 Tim. 5:8). Furthermore, God wants us to submit what we sense the Spirit is saying to the counsel of the local church (see Acts 13:2). If you feel God moving you toward a risk, get the counsel of your pastors and other Spirit-filled brothers and sisters before you do anything.
For what it’s worth, I wrote Jesus Continued. . .: Why the Spirit Inside You Is Better Than Jesus Beside You to help believers discern what particular risks the Spirit is calling them toward. In that book I explore the various ways the Spirit moves and speaks in our lives and how to tell the difference between his voice and, say . . . indigestion. Pardon the shameless book plug, but if you’re looking to delve into that question more deeply, that book may provide a good starting place.
Do I Really Believe This?
Just to be clear: I haven’t mastered this “risk” thing yet. I am always surprised at how much of a fight I put up when the Spirit of God moves me to a new venture.
In fact, recently I sat in a room asking myself if I really believe all of that stuff I just wrote above.
I was sitting around a table listening to our four church planters for the year give their report on whom they were taking with them to launch. One is planting in Washington, DC; another in Wilmington, NC; and two are planting locally, both less than twenty minutes from our home campus. One is taking 15 of our members; another, 23; another, 20; and one, more than 50. As they went through their lists of Summit-member recruits, I heard the names of elders, big givers, key volunteers, skilled musicians, and personal friends.
As the third planter started on his list, a small lump formed in my throat. I honestly couldn’t tell if it was a lump of sadness or of joy. I think it was panic. Had we really committed to this? When each of the first two planters had gone over their lists, it had felt like two punches in the gut. Now this third guy was winding up for the knockout blow.
“Sending” preaches more easily than it is executed, you see. Our church will look different next year when these men and their teams leave. Their absence will leave significant gaps.
As I sat listening to them, I put my hands under the table and forced myself to open them to God. Opened in surrender. Taking my hands off of one of the most precious earthly things to me — my church. Opened as an offering of praise to Jesus and faith in his promise. Opened in the belief that God will build his kingdom if I let go of mine.