Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry.

Paul, Philippians 1:15

Everybody wants to pass as cats.
We all wanna be big big stars, but we all got different reasons for that.

Adam Duritz, Counting Crows, “Mr. Jones”

Today, I saw a man in town. People were throwing daisies at him and giving him goodies. Sometimes I would like that kind of respect.

Nacho Libre, Nacho Libre

Luke: “Come with me. Leave everything behind.”
Darth Vader: “Obi-Wan once thought as you do.”

Return of the Jedi

THE RETURN OF THE JEDI

In the beginning of Star Wars IV: A New Hope, Luke is just a punk kid who blasts womp rats in his T-16 at home. They’re no bigger than two meters.

In The Empire Strikes Back, he completes a little training and goes off half-cocked, thinking he can take Vader. He gets his arm chopped off.

In Return of the Jedi he … well, he returns. This time, he confronts his father, telling Vader that he can turn back to the light. Luke tries to persuade Anakin that he no longer needs to be a puppet of empire building.

I relate to Luke. When I went into ministry I was nineteen years old, had no training, and whined a lot. Then I raced across the globe to confront forces that were stronger than I am and got some butt-whuppins. Yet in the end I met some Yodas, saved some friends, and completed my training. Now I’ve returned home, and I see the American church that fathered me, and I know there is still good in it. I can feel it. In this chapter, I’m appealing to the Jedi that exists in every big church pastor out there in hopes that the warrior who first embarked on a mission to save the world will be reawakened within him. If that happens, it may result in danger to your position; it might be ministerial suicide; it could even destroy the Death Star construct that you’ve built. But maybe, just maybe, it will set in motion events that will save the galaxy.

You’re gonna hate me for writing this chapter.

Nonetheless, I am a Jedi, like my father before me. I’m convinced that if we blow up the Death Star, the empire building will cease and kingdom building will go back to its rebel roots.

WARNING: THIS CHAPTER COULD BE HAZARDOUS

Matisse once wanted to burn down all of the art galleries and museums and start all over again. It didn’t happen, but his “liberating color” has had a profound effect on how people see art.

My idea for church reform was once packing a time bomb underneath every empty church building and blowing our superstructures sky high so we’d have to start all over. Like construction workers say, “A new build is easier than a rebuild.” There’s only one problem with that. People. There are people in your churches for whom Christ bled, and we’ve got to take them with us.

Journalist Gloria Steinem once quipped that the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. She was right. There’s still enough punk rock left in me that is pretty antiestablishment. I believe Jesus was the ultimate radical and often made religious people mad. My Celtic bones have been etched like scrimshaw with a serious streak of Welsh nonconformity. That is my tradition. I make no apology for it, but please understand that I’m writing this chapter because I love the church.

Most of the reformers started out thinking they wanted to reform the church, not leave it. And for the record, I’ll never leave her. She birthed me, nurtured me, and made me what I am (did we both just shudder at that?). I owe Christ and His bride everything. I am grateful to the generation that went before me and held the torch so that my generation could see. Swindoll, Begg, Sproul, Smith, Laurie, Graham, Piper—all of these men inherited a system from the previous generation, and they faithfully held the torch for my generation. In no way am I criticizing these men to whom I owe so much. What I am criticizing is the system that holds us captive—the matrix of modern ministry. Like Morpheus, I’m hoping to unplug others from the chest tubes, flush them down the pipes, and set them free. Otherwise, you’ll spend the rest of your days curled up in the fetal position in some red embryonic-fluid-filled pod, having all your battery juices sucked up by the big machine. I’d rather see a revolution in Zion.

After spending the past twelve years around blue-collar factory workers, steel and dock workers, roughnecks, and people who shot heroin for breakfast and met prostitutes for lunch, I’m a little rough around the edges. I’m definitely not sure if I’m ready for America yet, but should this book get buried in a time capsule and dug up twenty years from now, it’s gonna make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

Get ready; I’m pulling the pin on the hand grenade and tossing it into your lap.

THE THINGS WE THINK AND DO NOT SAY

At the beginning of the film Jerry Maguire, Jerry is a cutthroat sports agent who hates his life. One sleepless night he has an epiphany about how things should be and writes a memo for his coworkers called “The Things We Think and Do Not Say.” His radical manifesto costs him everything, and in his passion for what he believes, he commits himself to a vision. As a church planter I relate to that.

I admire the sea of faces that show up at our conferences. These people have faith to see something that doesn’t exist yet and are brave enough to follow the vision. Jerry asks, “Who’s coming with me?” He gets a secretary and a goldfish after his stand at the office. I’m still relating.

The tension in the film, as Jerry’s life is crumbling, is that Cuba Gooding Jr. could walk at any minute, leaving Jerry with all that sacrifice and nothing to show for it. But Jerry’s about to learn what makes somebody great, and it’s not becoming a successful sports agent. Throughout the hardships in the movie, Jerry is forced to live out his manifesto, almost against his will. That’s the purpose of this chapter—to challenge you to live the manifesto of your convictions.

I find it sad that two thousand years on from the church’s birth, we still have to choose between playing it safe or being biblical. Yet church history teaches us that big corporate religion has always been on the wrong side of being biblical, from the Sanhedrin to the church during the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter Written from the Birmingham Jail” addresses the church’s role in the American civil rights movement:

There was a time when the church was very powerful.… Wherever the early Christians entered a town the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” … Things are different now.… If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.1

Being a biblical reformer got Jesus killed. From the day when He sat in the sun weaving cords into a whip to upset the money changers’ tables, He was a marked man. We’ve not even begun to approach how radical Jesus was.

Jim Petersen, former vice president of The Navigators, listed three basic approaches to change:

There is change by revolution, change by reformation, and change by innovation.

Change by revolution is almost always more destructive than constructive. It is a revolt against the prevailing system. It seeks to put an end to that system and replace it with another.…

Reformation has to do with attempting to fix an existing system. It is change by reordering what is there.…

Change by innovation is accomplished as innovative people experiment and learn within the sphere of their own lives and ministries. As they learn through their experiences, others are able to pick up on what they are doing and carry the discovery process further.… It experiments and learns without imposing the discoveries on the rest. It does not insist that everyone and everything around it adopt the changes. It thus leaves what is already in existence intact.2

Planters are already out there innovating change through church planting as they follow the Spirit’s lead. If things are going to change inside the church via reformation, then we’re going to have to pay attention to some kingdom ethics that fly in the face of how big religion operates.

BUILDING THE KINGDOM, NOT EMPIRES

When you’re in violation of kingdom ethics, the motorcycle cop of biblical truth will flash his lights and ask, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

We smile innocently. “Why no, officer. I wasn’t aware that I was breaking any laws. I thought I was just going with the flow of traffic.”

The truth stares us down, and in the awkward silence we offer up a weak confession. “I suppose I was going a bit too fast. My mind must have been on something else.”

The truth officer’s jaw unhinges as he exclaims, “I didn’t pull you over for your speed! I pulled you over because you were going the wrong direction on the freeway!”

The church has been going the wrong way for a couple of decades, and kingdom ethics have begun pulling us over. It’s true that we’ve been speeding, roaring at breakneck speed, trying to fill our buildings with listeners and pouring all of our money back into our own pockets so that we can fill our next building with even more people (as soon as the next building project is done). Kingdom ethics were staring us in the face the whole time, but our minds were on something else.

Empire building.

Kingdom ethics make for bad empire building. If we’re the Rebel Alliance, all of our X-Wings should be sporting a “No Empire” bumper sticker: a picture of the Death Star with a red circle slash through it. The focus shouldn’t be cramming more people into our churches, but seeing more people rescued from the tyranny of Satan, sin, and self. If that means merging churches, halving churches, or—God forbid—helping other churches, then we’d gladly do it to see people rescued off the road to perdition. As a card-carrying member of the Rebel Alliance, I want to blow up the Death Star, because I believe it’s hindering us from recognizing God’s agenda.

Kingdom ethics such as “serve one another,” “give to him who has nothing,” and “throw a banquet for those who cannot repay you” serve as little packets of C4 that will blast away the flawed foundations of empire building. Do you like blowing stuff up? I sure do.

One of my favorite parts of Saving Private Ryan was when they took old socks, and filled them with bubble gum, gear grease, and explosives and made “sticky bombs” that they could attach to the wheels of the Tiger tanks. As the self-serving megachurch lumbers by, I’m gonna lob some sticky bombs at its wheels and see if I can knock the treads off. Otherwise, the unstoppable force may lumber on and deal more massive destruction to the cause of Christ.

There are three philosophies advancing the tank treads, and they are barriers to kingdom advancement: size, money, and personality. Hand me a sock.

SIZE AIN’T EVERYTHING

The reason I’m lobbing a sticky bomb at the size wheel is because of the assumption that bigger is better. Megachurch pastors slap the God-talk on the growth of their churches, claiming, “God blessed the work.” I’ve heard that from guys I respect (and I believe that God has blessed some of them), but I’ve also heard it echo from false teachers. Come to think of it, I’ve heard it from everybody with a big church. Strange that nobody ever says that all this money and power has been a curse upon the work.

Is it always a blessing? I wonder.

There’s nothing wrong with being big. Megachurch is not the enemy. In the New Testament, megachurches like Jerusalem, Antioch, and Ephesus became sending agencies. They supported church planting and launched repeated missionary journeys. Churches acting as sending agencies use their power and size to propel their members outward instead of unwillingly leaking them out to competing churches across the street with sexier programs. Functioning like Antioch, these megachurches fund teams who leave networks of church plants packed with fresh converts. The new blood nourishes the mothership as they serve the wider network and team up for evangelism.

I believe God is awakening many of the apostolic leaders currently running megachurches so that they will be driven to expand the kingdom. They are beginning to move their “best guys” where they are needed, and are themselves, like the apostle Paul, encouraging, sharing, visiting, and assisting the churches throughout their network. When this happens, leaders who’ve become like David, staying at home “when the kings go out to war,” smell the thrill of battle again. Like King Theoden of The Two Towers, languishing on his throne at the mercy of Grima Wormtongue, they will rise up and regain the ability to pick up a sword, hacking against the tides of darkness. Like Caleb at eighty-five, they’ll be ready to take on the giants again, feeling as strong as ever. They become gospel outriders, visiting new works, preaching in the frontline trenches primarily to the unchurched. God can use their honed gifts powerfully, as their guns produce battle smoke rather than simply languishing oiled, polished, and shiny in the barracks week after week.

During the Great Awakening in Wales, the Methodists established an apostolic network to further the kingdom of God. Their emphasis was on spreading out to the farthest corners of Wales and penetrating the heart of every village. Today, every village has the exoskeleton of an eighteenth-century chapel building to prove it. The eighteenth-century apostle, known as a circuit rider, usually got up at 4:00 a.m. and rode out before first light on horseback, preaching from town to hamlet to village. You might kid yourself that times were easier then, but those were the days when people climbed trees and urinated on you while you were preaching or physically dragged you to the cobblestones and kicked the snot out of you. To date, I’ve never had a face full of wee for preaching the gospel. Nonetheless, because of this apostolic ministry, the gospel spread.

Without diminishing the power of the Holy Spirit, we can say that the Great Awakening really was the great apostolic networking. These men were “content to work in small places with small resources, but huge potential.”3 So what happened? In Wales at least, after circuit riding for years, the men all settled down into local pastorates, lured by comfort and stability, and the outward momentum was lost.

Sound familiar?

FILTHY STINKIN’ MAMMON

The second tank tread I’m targeting with my sticky exploding gum sock is money. Jesus pulled no punches when it came to finances and the kingdom. He once lamented that the sons of the world were wiser with their money than the sons of the kingdom. The church is raking in money by the millions but spending it all on itself, whereas kingdom principle dictates that if you have two cloaks and your brother has none, you should give one cloak to him. Instead, the church has more cloaks in the closet than Imelda Marcos had shoes. She once said, “I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes; I had one thousand and sixty.” Glad we cleared that up.

In his book Radical, David Platt pointed out that America gives a billion dollars a year to missions. That sounds impressive at first, until you realize that America spends the same amount on chewing gum annually. One repentant pastor confessed that after scrutinizing his budget, on average their church had to spend millions of dollars on overhead before it could eke out one single buck for international missions. Because large churches often exist to keep the big machine going, we don’t spend money on anything that does not first benefit the machine. Instead we simply create bigger staff teams to keep the Christians inside the church happy, thus fostering further introspection.

Assistant pastor, youth pastor, junior high pastor, marriage and family pastor, administrative pastor … And we get further and further from apostles, prophets, and evangelists. We couldn’t afford to put them on staff if we did hold to that model. We’re too busy prioritizing staff to babysit Christians so that they don’t go somewhere else, taking their money with them.

According to Leadership Journal, nearly 40 percent of Christians still believe that evangelism should be a way to grow their church, rather than the church at large.4 Somehow our decisions are measured in financial meetings by what they will do for the church itself. “Will we get a return for this investment?” I learned from many years of sitting in board meetings that everything eventually comes down to money.

Businessmen are great. They are great for strategizing about marketing and untangling financial knots, but they suck at leading churches, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because they take calculated risks based on one question: “If I take this risk, will it pay off?” The kingdom of God doesn’t work like that. Jesus calls us to do things that don’t pay off and frequently don’t make sense. Ask the disciples about a crazy night of fishing when Jesus asked them to do something they knew wouldn’t work: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4). It went against their expertise, but “at your word I will let down the nets” (v. 5). They obeyed. It paid off. It still didn’t make sense.

Apostolic teams should be funded by megachurches to venture beyond the barbed wire, out into no-man’s-land, and start churches. Yet the way that things are now, the most effective office in Scripture for expanding the kingdom of God is not just unrecognized—these guys have to work menial jobs, scrape enough cash together to provide basic things for their church plants, and sweat day to day about where the funding will come from. When I think about the travesty of this, I unlace the kid gloves. If you don’t see equipping the apostles and evangelists as more of a priority than building your private empire, then frankly, you don’t deserve to be holding the office that you do.

I warned you this chapter might crack a few knuckles and split some noses, and I know I’ve ticked you off. But is it the truth? If so, it’ll set you free from the straitjacket of an insane system. You may be thinking, “Who in Xanadu do you think you are to punch me in the nose?” Remember that faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful the kisses of the enemy. I care. That’s why I’m writing. As leaders we get too used to people kissing our butts so much because they want something from us. I want you to reform.

Reformers John the Baptist, Luther, John Knox, and Richard Baxter all busted a few ribs in their day. I think it’d have been cool if Richard Baxter wore Doc Martens like me, but he was dead before his country invented them. Nonetheless, if you need somebody with buckles on their shoes to validate what I’m getting at, listen to Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor. You’ll quickly see why this book has fallen out of popularity with ministers today. Most people in our generation can’t stomach it, but Baxter hailed from the Puritan age when spiritual giants walked the land, not this day of small things when dwarves sip lattes, doing what’s right in their own eyes. Baxter made ministers man up. Criticizing ministers that lived on such large salaries when they could be using that money to spread the kingdom, Baxter challenged them to cut their own salaries and split their wages with gospel partners:

What! do you call yourselves ministers of the gospel, and yet are the souls of men so base in your eyes, that you had rather they should eternally perish, than that you and your family should live in a low and poor condition? Nay, should you not rather beg your bread, than put so great a matter as men’s salvation upon a hazard, or disadvantage?—yea, as hazard the damnation of but one soul? O, sirs, it is a miserable thing when men study and talk of heaven and hell, and the fewness of the saved, and the difficulty of salvation, and be not all the while in good earnest. If you were, you could never surely stick at such matters as these, and let your people go down to hell, that you might live in higher style in this world.… Must I turn to my Bible to show a preacher where it is written, that a man’s soul is worth more than a world,—much more therefore than a hundred pounds a year,—much more are many souls more worth? … Or that it is inhuman cruelty to let souls go to hell, for fear my wife and children should fare somewhat the harder, or live at lower rates; when, according to God’s ordinary way of working by means, I might do much to prevent their misery, if I would but a little displease my flesh, which all, who are Christ’s, have crucified with its lusts? … Must not every Christian first ask, In what way may I most honour God with my substance? Do we not preach these things to our people? Are they true as to them, and not as to us? Yea more, is not the church-maintenance devoted, in a special manner, to the service of God for the church? And should we not then use it for the utmost furtherance of that end? If any minister who hath two hundred pounds a year can prove that a hundred pounds of it may do God more service, if it be laid out on himself, or wife and children, than if it maintain one or two suitable assistants to help forward the salvation of the flock, I shall not presume to reprove his expenses; but where this cannot be proved, let not the practice be justified.

And I must further say, that this poverty is not so intolerable and dangerous a thing as it is pretended to be. If you have but food and raiment, must you not therewith be content? and what would you have more than that which may fit you for the work of God? It is not “being clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day,” that is necessary for this end. “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth.” If your clothing be warm, and your food be wholesome, you may be as well supported by it to do God service as if you had the fullest satisfaction to your flesh. A patched coat may be warm, and bread and water are wholesome food. He that wanteth not these, hath but a poor excuse to make for hazarding men’s souls, that he may live on dainties.5

And how modern ministers love their dainties.

What would Paul say if he could see us enjoying the dainties of our pampered and pedicured ministries? “Wow, you are so blessed! I wish I could trade places with you!” I doubt it. Does it shock you that Paul sometimes didn’t have money to eat, or buy clothes to replace the ones that were ripped off his back? Think of it. Paul was the most gifted man out there for expanding the kingdom, and only the Philippians would help him do it financially (Phil. 4:14–17). I have a feeling that there are many unsung heroes out there furthering the cause of the gospel in hard-bitten lands, and they worry from day to day how they’re going to pay the bills. Meanwhile, we continue to repaint the sanctuary, upgrade our sound system, build bigger barns.

My heroes in ministry are the guys who’d love to be paid for what they do, and if they got paid at the value of how hard they actually work, we couldn’t afford them. They embody one of my favorite quotes from Bob Shank: “Career is what you’re paid for, but calling is what you’re made for.” I’ve been a bivocational planter for over ten years, and I dedicate this chapter to my bivocational brothers-in-arms in hopes that pastors with integrity will begin to recruit them onto their teams so that they can be freed up to run at it with everything they have.

I’M TOO SEXY FOR THIS PULPIT

The final sticky bomb made from my sock is lobbed at the celebrity performance element in our churches.

Today’s generation are looking for leaders that they can follow. Before they can follow you, they need to know they can trust you, and you can be certain they don’t want to help you build your megachurch. They’re asking, “Are you for me, against me, or for yourself?” After all, the job pays well, provides awesome perks, and brings a certain degree of power and celebrity. They’ve learned from the church’s modus operandi, which focuses on self-improvement, builds bigger barns, buys expensive toys, and has little time and energy for mission. They’ve watched their parents’ generation approaching God like a consumer product, and they’re not impressed.

When Francis Chan walks away from it all and infiltrates the Tenderloin district in San Francisco to minister to down-and-outs, people listen.

The issue in the modern church is that for too long we’ve bowed down at the altar of personality, serving the ego of our leaders. Church has become a place to go and witness the antics, wisdom, and giftedness of the pastor. The church settles down into the seats as an audience, ready for the big show. And anybody in show business will tell you that the better the crowd, the bigger the fame, the bolder the paycheck. Like Bono sang, “They put Jesus in show business, now it’s hard to get in the door.”6

The bottom line for teachers whose prime directive is to build crowds through entertainment is that they’re worried they’ll lose people, and we all know what that means:

Fewer people … less money. Less money equals … but wait, we’ve been there already.

Somehow we thought it was okay to take the Nacho Libre view of the ministry where we want people to throw daisies at us and give us goodies.

It all comes down to this operating principle: we’ve gotta keep ’em by playing to the crowds and entertaining the masses with clever homilies, or they’ll leave. They’ve already begun to leave—we just haven’t been paying attention. As a result of the valuable time, attention, and resources wasted on empire building over the last two decades, church planters are now having to reclaim the defecting prodigals while expanding the kingdom outward. The late great Larry Norman once challenged America that it had starved its children to beat the Russians to the moon. Our churches got to the moon, but where are the youth? I realize this is a tough pill to swallow, but I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes. When I left this country in 1999, the youth were still around. Now we’re lucky if we can keep the church kids. Research says that 90 percent of them end up leaving after watching our shenanigans.

There is coming a time when the parents are going to ask the spiritual leaders in this country some blunt, serious, and difficult questions: why did our kids leave? Why didn’t you address it? Why didn’t you stop it? Of course, the churches will lay blame at the feet of the parents and say that it started at home, but the parents will respond, “You were supposed to be leading us as we led our families.” The fact is, we didn’t give a rip about their families—just crowds. Getting more families to the drive-thru window of our churches just meant that we got to supersize our order.

And today’s youth see right through us. They see our big buildings as moneymaking machines raking in millions of dollars, and they’re disgusted. In the book The Millennials, an unchurched girl named Rebecca said, “The Boomers give money to the church, but it comes right back to them to keep them content. They hire the staff to do the ministry they won’t do.… That’s not New Testament Christianity. That’s a religious social club.”7

Some pastors have been playing the game for so long that they feel unable to leave their pulpits for too long to help new gospel initiatives because the church has become a personality cult about them. Because they don’t occasionally share the pulpit with four other roles, people demand that Pinocchio dance for them every Sunday, and as long as people keep throwing the gold coins onstage, they keep dancing. Sadly, if they’d discipled others, they would have been expendable like Paul, with an apostolic backup team at their disposal. Paul could leave a church at a moment’s notice, as he had to in the case of Thessalonica and other churches he planted.

If there isn’t an arsenal of discipled guys waiting to take to the skies to plant and others to hold the fort down, it’s because the leader has neglected his duty to train up men who are also able to teach others. When the church fixes its eyes upon leaders as the Corinthians did—“‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas’” (1 Cor. 1:12)—it’s taken its eyes off of the crucified Christ. It’s unbiblical for leaders to allow it and carnal to enjoy it. When Corinth became enamored with personalities, Paul’s antidote to Satan’s snakebite was to administer the anti-venom of looking to Jesus “crucified for you” (v. 13). When people get their eyes focused back on Jesus and the cross, it eliminates most of our problems in Churchianity.

I’ve got a theory that if you attempted church reform, you’d lose about 90 percent of your people. That’s why most pastors will never do it. Good riddance, I say—let their butts darken somebody else’s pews as they exercise the gift of sitting. If you unloaded the burden of the dead wood, as in Jesus’s pruning illustration, you’d really begin to channel sap into the concentrated areas where it would create greater fruitfulness.

Back when I was a nurse, I dealt with burn wounds. There is a growth of scar tissue known as eschar that forms over severe burns. Although eschar seems to be healing, it means that the healthy tissue underneath can’t breathe and therefore can’t heal. So one of the difficult things nurses get to do is debride the wound. That’s a fancy term for “rip that sucker off.” It hurts; people yell, cuss, scream, and pass out. But it’s done so that the tissue will grow healthy, and, my friend, that’s the only way to ensure that you’re going to grow a healthy church atmosphere.

It’s time that somebody stood up, broke the glass, and sounded the alarm, unafraid that it might interrupt the show. Shouting fire in a movie theater isn’t popular, but it’s necessary when there’s a fire in the projection room. I’m alarmed, and you should be too. Jesus basically told His disciples, “Be alarmed when all men love you” (Matt. 10:22). As Admiral Akbar cried out in The Empire Strikes Back, “It’s a trap!” Satan’s motive is to keep you from spreading yourself out, handing over to others so that they can grow, and playing your part in expanding the kingdom of God!

It’s like he’s taken us to the highest mountain and promised to give us “all of this” if we’d only bow down and serve him. In “Vertigo,” Bono paraphrases this passage: “All of this / All of this can be yours / Just give me what I want, and no one gets hurt.”8 We’ve been giving the Devil exactly what he wants in return for “all of this.” But by serving our own ambitions and idols of “success,” we’ve compromised the mission. Jesus wouldn’t take the shortcut but chose the way of the cross, serving others, laying down His life so that others may find theirs.

What about us?

Chris McCandless went out into the wild and spent years exploring the vast spaces of North America. He wrote his elderly friend Ron,

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.… [Y]ou must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty…. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover.9

What would you give if you could leave it all behind and start all over again?

A question that we frequently ask leaders when taking part in church revitalization analysis is, “If you could do it all over again, would you do it differently?” The answer is always yes. The next question we ask is, “Then why are you still doing it the same way now?”

The honest answer is you know how much it would rock the boat and empty the seats.

Am I buggin’ ya yet? Don’t mean to bug ya.

ANGER AS A CATALYST

I’m actually trying to make you a little angry. Angry enough to make you want to change.

Call it angst; call it anger; call it frustration. Call it whatever you want. Every revolution begins with the buildup of frustration that bursts apart and floods the world with radical action.

Take Rosa Parks. For her whole life, Rosa Parks had been sitting in the back of a segregated public bus. But on Thursday, December 1, 1955, in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, when she was tired and exhausted after a hard day working at the Montgomery Fair department store, something happened on the Cleveland Avenue bus.

She got angry. She’d had enough. And the dam burst. The anger, frustration, and angst of black Americans like Martin Luther King Jr. broke into peaceful demonstrations in the form of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Although peaceful, the powerful revolution of unstoppable force was under way in America.

The list of people goes on: Judas Maccabeus, George Washington, Martin Luther, Gandhi. All of them were propelled into action by the buildup of a fire in their bones for liberation, justice, or truth.

Powerful stuff, anger. A God-given emotion that has a reason. It’s a motivator, a catalyst. I learned years ago that if I’m not angry enough about something, I usually do nothing. I don’t fill out that customer complaint form or write corporate headquarters. I won’t write my congressman or protest at the polls.

Over the past few years as I’ve coached church planters, I’ve noticed that they all have this one thing in common. In assessing their calling, I usually ask them what is the chief thing they’re feeling. Almost all of them answer, “I’m feeling frustrated.” I don’t mean a sour, churlish kind of frustration that causes them to backbite and murmur against leadership. I mean a holy frustration.

Like caged animals, they can’t wait to be let loose upon a lost world with the gospel. They were made to be flung far and wide, and as with a catapult, the more you hold them back, the tauter the tension cable gets until they become damage dealers in the realm of the Spirit when they’re finally released.

Holy frustration.

Paul had it. Here was a guy who’d trained for ministry at the feet of the finest his entire life, only to have his ambitions dashed by Jesus.

Back to Tarsus.

Back to tent making.

Back to obscurity.

For twelve-plus years Paul sat plying his family trade, mumbling, “I coulda been somebody, Johnny! I coulda been a contenda!” And as he sat stitching skins together, the fire in his bones smoldered. Year by year, Paul’s passion for the revelation of the gospel grew with the pressure of a geyser as predictable as Old Faithful. After Barnabas’s fist rapped at his door a decade later, Paul never slowed down, never looked back, and never quit. Like the Energizer Bunny he kept going, wearing out young men and eating hirelings for breakfast. The only way God could slow him down enough to get him to write Bible books was to lock him up. The only way to get him to stop was to decapitate him.

Whitefield had this holy frustration. Not content to confine the gospel within the four walls of the church, he literally took it to the streets, fields, coal mines, and frontiers of America, exclaiming, “All the world is my pulpit!”

Remember William Carey sitting in that cobbler shop, staring up at the map of Asia, frustrated that the passage to India was so difficult? Wringing his hands in agony, he exclaimed to bewildered students during geography lessons that “there are millions of them there! Millions! And they’re perishing without ever hearing the gospel of Christ!” His work as the Father of Modern Missions started the day another “missions” meeting was ending in inactivity. On May 30, 1792, the association of ministers concerned about world evangelization sat for another meeting wherein nothing but talking about the problem occurred. As all arose to leave, Carey turned to Andrew Fuller in despair and tragically asked, “Is there nothing again going to be done, sir?”10

Even after being told, “Sit down, young man! If a sovereign God wants to convert the heathen, he doesn’t need you to do it,” by superior clergyman John Ryland, Carey’s resolve was not deterred.11

That day, frustration turned to anger. And in the providence of God, something popped.

There are millions going to hell, and statistical evidence points to the numbers increasing with every passing year. I pray you’d be angry enough to do something about it.

At the end of just another year of regrets, Woody Guthrie sat down and penned his famous “New Year’s Rulin’s.” There were thirty-two in all, but the last three are application enough to all that we’ve said so far:

30. Love everybody.

31. Make up your mind.

32. Wake up and fight!

The question is, do we love everybody enough to make up our mind, wake up and fight? When discussing the hold that the Matrix has on people, Morpheus tells Neo, “You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER

Wow, you made it this far. Well done. I didn’t think that most people would.

Jesus, Paul, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Whitefield, and Spurgeon were all radicals. If they were alive today, we’d write girly rants about them on Facebook. But Spurgeon’s dead, and a dead Spurgeon is a safe Spurgeon. He can do no harm from the grave, so we write nice things about him … but most churches in America wouldn’t want these guys as their pastors. I’ve written this chapter in hopes that there are more Luthers, Wesleys, Whitefields, Spurgeons, and Lloyd-Joneses alive out there who will reemerge as radicals in our time. They’ve been as rare as Jedi in the Original Trilogy; either hiding in deserts or swamps like Ben and Yoda, or exterminated by Order 66.

After reading this chapter you may think that I’ve made this journey to the Death Star only to strike you down. The truth is, I’ve come on a mission of love to save the Anakin Skywalker lost beneath that black samurai armor and breathing apparatus. I sense that there is still good in most pastors. You were once good Jedi, and the force of the Holy Spirit once flowed strong through you. I want you to stand before the Lord and still be able to hold your place among glowing blue dudes.

It’s not too late.

I feel the conflict within you. Don’t tell me, “It’s too late for me, son.”

You can reject the messenger all you like. Just don’t reject the message. Strike me down, because I will not turn. I am a nonconformist like my fathers before me. Strike me down, or grab the emperor and throw him down the energy shaft, and free countless millions from the empire agenda.

The choice is yours.

NOTES

1. Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html (accessed October 23, 2012).

2. Jim Petersen, Church Without Walls (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1992), 215–16.

3. David Ollerton, Ministry on the Move (Llandysul, Wales: Newid 2008), 25.

4. Helen Lee, “Missional Shift or Drift?” Leadership Journal, Fall 2008, 27.

5. Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 76–78.

6. U2, “If God Will Send His Angels,” Pop © 1997 Island.

7. “Rebecca,” quoted in Thom S. Rainer, and Jess W. Rainer, The Millennials (Nashville: B&H, 2011), 267.

8. U2, “Vertigo,” How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb © 2004 Island.

9. John Krakauer, Into the Wild (New York: Anchor, 1997), 57.

10. Basil Miller, William Carey: The Father of Modern Missions (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1980), 37.

11. F. Deaville Walker, William Carey. Missionary Pioneer and Statesman (Chicago: Moody Press, 1925), 54. See the recent discussion of this event by Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792–1992 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992), 6–7.