A Positive Addiction
Spirituality
Golf In The Real Kingdom
A Spiritual Metaphor For Life In The Modern World
Object:
I am not ashamed of the gospel....
-- Romans 1:16
We're looking for a new executive presbyter in Washington Presbytery. Our last one just took a job with the Synod of the Trinity as an interim associate executive of something or other.
Before you get too confused, a presbytery is kind of like a district (Methodist) or diocese (Roman Catholics). An executive presbyter is kind of like a district superintendent (Methodists) or bishop (Roman Catholics) except for respect and authority. Nobody knows what a synod is anymore. Actually, there's a movement to get rid of them. So I won't clutter your mind by trying to define what's soon to be deleted from our denominational dictionary. They'll probably be gone not long after we cross into the next millennium with or without the parousia which is why I'm glad our former EP's new job has a time-limited designation.
I really liked our last executive presbyter and I'm sad to see her go. I know she was inhibited in her ministry by some good old boys who long for the way things never were through scarcely veiled gender bias and a phobia about anything happening for the first time. And challenging the occupational wisdom of insuring success by following a boob, she took the mantle from a very popular and long-standing predecessor. But she was a decent pastor to pastors and their families. Personally, I cannot thank her enough for her care of my wife after a second miscarriage. She wasn't as perfect as her friends suggested but she was much better than her detractors pretended.
Of course, knowing the American Revolution was referred to as "The Presbyterian Rebellion" across the pond is a hint that we are almost impossible to lead. You've probably heard about the first group of Scots to hit shore building the First Presbyterian Church and the second group of Scots building the Second Presbyterian Church across the street. Proving ecumenism and even denominational unity to be a myth, it's not uncommon in many parts of America to find Presbyterian churches within spitting distance of each other. That's always the case where the Presbyterian population is dense.
That's a taste of the socioecclesiastical context awaiting our next executive presbyter.
Spanning the early and recent years of ministry, I've served on two successful executive presbyter committees (i.e., our choices lasted longer than your average pastorate). So here are my general qualifications for anyone crazy enough -- I mean called -- to take the job:
1. Clearly Communicated Christology -- I expect our next executive presbyter to believe and behave like "Our vocation is to belong to Jesus" (Mother Teresa). It shouldn't be too much to expect our executive presbyter to mention Jesus by name more often than when closing prayers. I expect our executive presbyter to assess every aspect of life and ministry through a Christocentric filter. Jesus is, after all, the founder and focus of our faith. And as I tell our new members, if we agree on Jesus, everything else will eventually work out.
2. Career Bureaucrats Need Not Apply -- Everybody knows our denomination is dying. So why would we be interested in someone schooled in keeping us headed in the wrong direction? We need someone who has been in the trenches, survived, succeeded, and empathetically knows what makes churches grow. Moreover, nobody in our local churches is going to listen to someone who tells us how to do what she or he has never done.
3. Positive Pastoral Instincts -- Our executive presbyter must be a coach (encouraging people to be God's best for their lives and ministries) and referee (keeping people from hurting each other) rather than a ringmaster (one of those my-way-or-the-highway types). A short list of theological/ideological/idiosyncratic passions wouldn't hurt. If our executive presbyter cares too much about too many things, our presbytery will be as conflicted as churches with pastors who care about too many things. We need someone to enable, exhort, enlighten, and maybe electrify rather than condescendingly conspire to control us as a shill for the party line.
4. Lover -- Our executive presbyter must enflesh our confession's agape love ethic: praying and working for the highest good for all regardless of who, what, where, or when without the expectation of getting something in return. As long as Jesus is Lord of all, all -- left, right, middle and even confused -- are important to the life of our presbytery. Indeed, I'd like our next executive presbyter to say, "You can be right about every area of theology and polity but wrong about Jesus and you're dead wrong and can lose your soul. You can be wrong about every area of theology and polity but right about Jesus and you will be saved."
Whoa! That looks like the job description for a pastor. So be it!
We need a pastor to and among pastors.
But if you were to ask which qualification is the most important of all, I'd say our next executive presbyter must love Jesus passionately. Our next executive presbyter must be positively addicted to Jesus.
This should not strike any Christian as odd because a positive addiction to Jesus is the biggest part of the definition of being a Christian.
Every corner of the Kingdom requires its members to confess Jesus as uniquely Lord and Savior.
Every corner of the Kingdom requires its members to affirm questions like these: Do you trust in Jesus Christ? Do you intend to be his disciple? Do you intend to obey his word and show his love?
Every corner of the kingdom expects its members to be positively addicted to Jesus.
Again, I've always believed churches with members who really embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior don't have many problems.
Conversely, churches which are not positively addicted to Jesus have membership, education, financial, mission, and all kinds of relational problems. Churches without Jesus as the focus are always confused and conflicted.
When Jesus is not on the tip of our tongues, there's a bad taste in everybody's mouth.
Churches grow in every way when they say with positive addiction, "I am not ashamed of the gospel."
If you've been reading the preceding chapters and thought for one moment that I'm proposing golf as the solution to your problems, you've missed the point.
I believe golf or any other therapeutic distraction enhances life.
Jesus is life. That's why I pray and work for the church to grow. For when churches grow, that means people are coming alive emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and eternally. Or as Jesus promised, "I am the bread of life" (John 6:48).
That's why I've always liked Mother Teresa's prayer:
Dear Jesus,
Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through us
and be so in us
that every soul we come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul.
Let them look up and see no longer us
but only Jesus.
Stay with us
and then we shall begin to shine as you shine,
so to shine as to be light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from you.
None of it will be ours.
It will be you shining on others through us.
Let us thus praise you in the way you love best by shining on those around us.
Let us preach you without preaching
not by words, but by our example
by the catching force
the sympathetic influence of what we do
the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.
Amen.
That's the enfleshment of saying, "Our vocation is to belong to Jesus."
Paul Azinger, the great golf champion who was diagnosed with cancer shortly after winning the 1993 PGA Championship, put it bluntly (Zinger, 1995):
People often ask me now, "Zinger, is golf still as important to you as it was before you had cancer?"
Yes and no. Yes, of course, golf is important to me. I love the game; it is how I make my living. But no, golf is no longer at the top of my priority list. In fact, it runs a slow fourth. My priorities now are God, my family, my friends, and golf. Golf is no longer my god. Golf is hitting a little white ball. God is my God, and God is a whole lot bigger than golf.
But don't get me wrong. I played some great golf at the end of 1994 and the beginning of 1995, and I plan on playing a lot more. You won't hear me out on the course, saying, "Woe is me. I missed that four-footer, but at least I'm alive."
Oh, no. I'm playing to win. But then, in many ways, I have already won.
Do you remember Richard Dortch? He was President of PTL. He was Jim and Tammy Bakker's right-hand man. Everybody knows the sad story of PTL by now. But few folks know about Richard Dortch. He was a respected superintendent of the Assemblies of God before joining the PTL team. Not long after becoming PTL's President, he got caught up in some of the negative addictions surrounding PTL which led to defrocking and imprisonment. By the grace of God, Richard Dortch repented and was restored to ministry by the Assemblies of God on November 20, 1991. He wrote about his experiences in Integrity: How I Lost It, And My Journey Back (1992).
Essentially, Richard Dortch confessed losing his integrity by failing to keep Jesus as the first priority or most positive addiction of his life and ministry. Instead of his personal relationship with Jesus controlling his behavior (the positive addiction), other people and commitments began to control his behavior (the negative addictions). He explained:
It wasn't until later, when the ministry came crashing down around me that I realized: Knowing God and being submissive to His will is more important than doing ... What God intends us to be is more important than what we do in life. That element is essential to living a life of integrity. Being is far more important than doing ...
When we fail, it is usually not the result of ignorance. Most of us know what we are supposed to do and the importance of why we should do it. When it comes to moral or spiritual failure, as Christians, we cannot plead ignorance ...
If I didn't fail because of ignorance, inability, or idleness, what caused my downfall? I think I know. I was too busy ... The secondary so absorbed us at PTL that we neglected the primary ...
At PTL we were often engaged in great, stressful, straining trivialities. While not sinister or malicious, these secondary priorities so absorbed us that we didn't have time left to do what God called us to do. We were involved in a thousand and one decent and wonderful programs and ministries, but while we were busy here and there, something of God slipped out of our lives. Our busyness kept us so preoccupied that we didn't have a keen interest in simply "knowing God" which should be every Christian's highest goal.
I learned a painful lesson: To maintain integrity I must put first things first.
When Jesus is the first priority or most positive addiction in our lives, our lives are better. When our personal relationship with Jesus controls our behavior, we are whole, happy, joyful, and secure. It's like he said: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him" (John 7:37-38 NIV).
Putting it another way: it's hard to become negatively addicted when we're positively addicted to Jesus. When we hang out with Jesus, it's hard to get into trouble. That's why Jesus is the most positive addiction. That's why Chuck Colson says, "I tell people, 'Don't follow me! Follow Jesus!' "
That's why Christian leaders follow the Leader and say: "If we meet and you forget me, you have lost nothing. But if you meet Jesus Christ and forget him, you have lost everything."
You may have heard about the aging parents whose son still lived with them. They decided to conduct a little test to discern their son's future. They put a ten-dollar bill, Bible, and bottle of whiskey on the kitchen table. They figured he would be a businessman if he took the money, a pastor if he took the Bible, and ne'er-do-well if he took the bottle. They left. When they returned to find their son had taken the money, Bible, and whiskey, they exclaimed in unison, "O Lord, help our son! He's going into politics!"
Or golf?
There are so many addictions out there. Some are good. Some are bad.
But there's only one addiction in the real church -- Jesus!
That's why Mother Teresa counseled, "Let us free our minds from all that is not Jesus."
A positive addiction to Jesus is without existential or eternal liability.
A positive addiction to Jesus is existentially and eternally therapeutic.
So get hooked on him!
-- Romans 1:16
We're looking for a new executive presbyter in Washington Presbytery. Our last one just took a job with the Synod of the Trinity as an interim associate executive of something or other.
Before you get too confused, a presbytery is kind of like a district (Methodist) or diocese (Roman Catholics). An executive presbyter is kind of like a district superintendent (Methodists) or bishop (Roman Catholics) except for respect and authority. Nobody knows what a synod is anymore. Actually, there's a movement to get rid of them. So I won't clutter your mind by trying to define what's soon to be deleted from our denominational dictionary. They'll probably be gone not long after we cross into the next millennium with or without the parousia which is why I'm glad our former EP's new job has a time-limited designation.
I really liked our last executive presbyter and I'm sad to see her go. I know she was inhibited in her ministry by some good old boys who long for the way things never were through scarcely veiled gender bias and a phobia about anything happening for the first time. And challenging the occupational wisdom of insuring success by following a boob, she took the mantle from a very popular and long-standing predecessor. But she was a decent pastor to pastors and their families. Personally, I cannot thank her enough for her care of my wife after a second miscarriage. She wasn't as perfect as her friends suggested but she was much better than her detractors pretended.
Of course, knowing the American Revolution was referred to as "The Presbyterian Rebellion" across the pond is a hint that we are almost impossible to lead. You've probably heard about the first group of Scots to hit shore building the First Presbyterian Church and the second group of Scots building the Second Presbyterian Church across the street. Proving ecumenism and even denominational unity to be a myth, it's not uncommon in many parts of America to find Presbyterian churches within spitting distance of each other. That's always the case where the Presbyterian population is dense.
That's a taste of the socioecclesiastical context awaiting our next executive presbyter.
Spanning the early and recent years of ministry, I've served on two successful executive presbyter committees (i.e., our choices lasted longer than your average pastorate). So here are my general qualifications for anyone crazy enough -- I mean called -- to take the job:
1. Clearly Communicated Christology -- I expect our next executive presbyter to believe and behave like "Our vocation is to belong to Jesus" (Mother Teresa). It shouldn't be too much to expect our executive presbyter to mention Jesus by name more often than when closing prayers. I expect our executive presbyter to assess every aspect of life and ministry through a Christocentric filter. Jesus is, after all, the founder and focus of our faith. And as I tell our new members, if we agree on Jesus, everything else will eventually work out.
2. Career Bureaucrats Need Not Apply -- Everybody knows our denomination is dying. So why would we be interested in someone schooled in keeping us headed in the wrong direction? We need someone who has been in the trenches, survived, succeeded, and empathetically knows what makes churches grow. Moreover, nobody in our local churches is going to listen to someone who tells us how to do what she or he has never done.
3. Positive Pastoral Instincts -- Our executive presbyter must be a coach (encouraging people to be God's best for their lives and ministries) and referee (keeping people from hurting each other) rather than a ringmaster (one of those my-way-or-the-highway types). A short list of theological/ideological/idiosyncratic passions wouldn't hurt. If our executive presbyter cares too much about too many things, our presbytery will be as conflicted as churches with pastors who care about too many things. We need someone to enable, exhort, enlighten, and maybe electrify rather than condescendingly conspire to control us as a shill for the party line.
4. Lover -- Our executive presbyter must enflesh our confession's agape love ethic: praying and working for the highest good for all regardless of who, what, where, or when without the expectation of getting something in return. As long as Jesus is Lord of all, all -- left, right, middle and even confused -- are important to the life of our presbytery. Indeed, I'd like our next executive presbyter to say, "You can be right about every area of theology and polity but wrong about Jesus and you're dead wrong and can lose your soul. You can be wrong about every area of theology and polity but right about Jesus and you will be saved."
Whoa! That looks like the job description for a pastor. So be it!
We need a pastor to and among pastors.
But if you were to ask which qualification is the most important of all, I'd say our next executive presbyter must love Jesus passionately. Our next executive presbyter must be positively addicted to Jesus.
This should not strike any Christian as odd because a positive addiction to Jesus is the biggest part of the definition of being a Christian.
Every corner of the Kingdom requires its members to confess Jesus as uniquely Lord and Savior.
Every corner of the Kingdom requires its members to affirm questions like these: Do you trust in Jesus Christ? Do you intend to be his disciple? Do you intend to obey his word and show his love?
Every corner of the kingdom expects its members to be positively addicted to Jesus.
Again, I've always believed churches with members who really embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior don't have many problems.
Conversely, churches which are not positively addicted to Jesus have membership, education, financial, mission, and all kinds of relational problems. Churches without Jesus as the focus are always confused and conflicted.
When Jesus is not on the tip of our tongues, there's a bad taste in everybody's mouth.
Churches grow in every way when they say with positive addiction, "I am not ashamed of the gospel."
If you've been reading the preceding chapters and thought for one moment that I'm proposing golf as the solution to your problems, you've missed the point.
I believe golf or any other therapeutic distraction enhances life.
Jesus is life. That's why I pray and work for the church to grow. For when churches grow, that means people are coming alive emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and eternally. Or as Jesus promised, "I am the bread of life" (John 6:48).
That's why I've always liked Mother Teresa's prayer:
Dear Jesus,
Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through us
and be so in us
that every soul we come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul.
Let them look up and see no longer us
but only Jesus.
Stay with us
and then we shall begin to shine as you shine,
so to shine as to be light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from you.
None of it will be ours.
It will be you shining on others through us.
Let us thus praise you in the way you love best by shining on those around us.
Let us preach you without preaching
not by words, but by our example
by the catching force
the sympathetic influence of what we do
the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.
Amen.
That's the enfleshment of saying, "Our vocation is to belong to Jesus."
Paul Azinger, the great golf champion who was diagnosed with cancer shortly after winning the 1993 PGA Championship, put it bluntly (Zinger, 1995):
People often ask me now, "Zinger, is golf still as important to you as it was before you had cancer?"
Yes and no. Yes, of course, golf is important to me. I love the game; it is how I make my living. But no, golf is no longer at the top of my priority list. In fact, it runs a slow fourth. My priorities now are God, my family, my friends, and golf. Golf is no longer my god. Golf is hitting a little white ball. God is my God, and God is a whole lot bigger than golf.
But don't get me wrong. I played some great golf at the end of 1994 and the beginning of 1995, and I plan on playing a lot more. You won't hear me out on the course, saying, "Woe is me. I missed that four-footer, but at least I'm alive."
Oh, no. I'm playing to win. But then, in many ways, I have already won.
Do you remember Richard Dortch? He was President of PTL. He was Jim and Tammy Bakker's right-hand man. Everybody knows the sad story of PTL by now. But few folks know about Richard Dortch. He was a respected superintendent of the Assemblies of God before joining the PTL team. Not long after becoming PTL's President, he got caught up in some of the negative addictions surrounding PTL which led to defrocking and imprisonment. By the grace of God, Richard Dortch repented and was restored to ministry by the Assemblies of God on November 20, 1991. He wrote about his experiences in Integrity: How I Lost It, And My Journey Back (1992).
Essentially, Richard Dortch confessed losing his integrity by failing to keep Jesus as the first priority or most positive addiction of his life and ministry. Instead of his personal relationship with Jesus controlling his behavior (the positive addiction), other people and commitments began to control his behavior (the negative addictions). He explained:
It wasn't until later, when the ministry came crashing down around me that I realized: Knowing God and being submissive to His will is more important than doing ... What God intends us to be is more important than what we do in life. That element is essential to living a life of integrity. Being is far more important than doing ...
When we fail, it is usually not the result of ignorance. Most of us know what we are supposed to do and the importance of why we should do it. When it comes to moral or spiritual failure, as Christians, we cannot plead ignorance ...
If I didn't fail because of ignorance, inability, or idleness, what caused my downfall? I think I know. I was too busy ... The secondary so absorbed us at PTL that we neglected the primary ...
At PTL we were often engaged in great, stressful, straining trivialities. While not sinister or malicious, these secondary priorities so absorbed us that we didn't have time left to do what God called us to do. We were involved in a thousand and one decent and wonderful programs and ministries, but while we were busy here and there, something of God slipped out of our lives. Our busyness kept us so preoccupied that we didn't have a keen interest in simply "knowing God" which should be every Christian's highest goal.
I learned a painful lesson: To maintain integrity I must put first things first.
When Jesus is the first priority or most positive addiction in our lives, our lives are better. When our personal relationship with Jesus controls our behavior, we are whole, happy, joyful, and secure. It's like he said: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him" (John 7:37-38 NIV).
Putting it another way: it's hard to become negatively addicted when we're positively addicted to Jesus. When we hang out with Jesus, it's hard to get into trouble. That's why Jesus is the most positive addiction. That's why Chuck Colson says, "I tell people, 'Don't follow me! Follow Jesus!' "
That's why Christian leaders follow the Leader and say: "If we meet and you forget me, you have lost nothing. But if you meet Jesus Christ and forget him, you have lost everything."
You may have heard about the aging parents whose son still lived with them. They decided to conduct a little test to discern their son's future. They put a ten-dollar bill, Bible, and bottle of whiskey on the kitchen table. They figured he would be a businessman if he took the money, a pastor if he took the Bible, and ne'er-do-well if he took the bottle. They left. When they returned to find their son had taken the money, Bible, and whiskey, they exclaimed in unison, "O Lord, help our son! He's going into politics!"
Or golf?
There are so many addictions out there. Some are good. Some are bad.
But there's only one addiction in the real church -- Jesus!
That's why Mother Teresa counseled, "Let us free our minds from all that is not Jesus."
A positive addiction to Jesus is without existential or eternal liability.
A positive addiction to Jesus is existentially and eternally therapeutic.
So get hooked on him!
