A friend of mine made a comment last week that's been sticking with me. He says that he survived the first years of planting his church on adrenaline and idolatry.
Adrenaline - One pastor says that adrenaline is a cheap substitute. "It masquerades as passion from God, but it can imperil our lives and ministries" (Wayne Schmidt). Doctors warn of the dangers of living on adrenaline for sustained periods of time. This can often lead to burnout and a long period of recovery.
Idolatry - Mark Driscoll identifies eleven types of ministry idolatry. Given that our hearts are idol factories, I'm pretty sure there are even more. The issue is elevating ministry success until it's the functional center of our lives.
How do we combat this? I find B.B. Warfield's words helpful here:
There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ's sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all...This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in behavior may be. It is always on His "blood and righteousness" alone that we can rest.
Warfield essentially says that we must continue to get our identity from God, not from our achievements and ministry. The gospel saves us from being driven by adrenaline and idolatry. Easy to grasp; getting this deep inside is one of the hard but necessary tasks of daily ministry.
2 comments:
This is a wise and profound post. I need to read it every day for a few years.
Nice. There's nothing more challenging than church planting, for sure.
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