Tag Archives: Change

The Gospel and the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-10)

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This is a sermon I spoke at three services at Shiloh Community Church in Orleans MI last weekend (Palm Sunday).  I focused primarily on poor in spirit, mourning, and peacemaking…

It’s Palm Sunday and we are remembering and celebrating the triumphal entry of The Servant King Jesus – arriving into Jerusalem to the praise and adulation of the multitude — and less than a week later, he is to be brutally and shamefully murdered…

  1. Next week is the high point of the Christian calendar as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
  2. Jesus triumphed over death and hell and bridged the gap between our utter depravity and God’s standard of holiness. (To miss the mark by even a little is still to have missed the mark.)
  3. We call this sacrifice the Gospel – or Good News.

I believe it is Tim Keller who reminds us that the Gospel is not advice, it is news.  It is the ultimate Good News.  He suggests that weekend services are not primarily the place to give advice… Gospel-centered (or Christ-centered) change is rooted in remembrance. We are to remind one another of what Christ Jesus has done, not what we must do.

We cannot commend what we do not cherish.  -John Piper

The essence of Christian maturity is when the Gospel – or, what Christ has done — gets worked in – and then through our lives, which is what I’d like to spend our remaining time considering.

Turn to Matthew 5 where we will take a look at the Beatitudes.  While you’re turning, allow me to offer a few introductory thoughts.

What is Christian conversion? Christian conversion, or salvation, occurs when genuine repentance and sincere faith in Jesus intersect.

  1. These are not two separate actions – but one motion with two parts:
    • As we turn to Christ for salvation we turn away from the sin that we are asking Jesus Christ to forgive us from. (Rom 3:23 – All have sinned and fallen short of God’s standard.)
    • Neither repentance nor faith come first – they must come at the same time.
  2. They are two sides of the same coin.[1]

Contained in the Beatitudes are eight qualities that characterize the life of Jesus Christ, and therefore, through conversion, they begin to characterize our life in Jesus Christ.  Jesus calls us to follow him through life and to depend upon his strength and power.

The word beatitude comes from the Latin word meaning “blessed.”

  1. More specifically the word means exalted joy, or true happiness. (Joy is calm delight in even the most adverse circumstances.  Joy fueled Paul’s contentment.)
  2. With the beatitudes, Jesus dives into our innermost being probing the heart and raising the question of motive.
  3. What made Jesus a threat to everyone and the reason He was eventually killed was that in His encounters with people (particularly the religious leaders), He exposes what they were on the inside.  Some people find it liberating – others hate it.

The Beatitudes, I have come to see, are our surrendered response to the Gospel.  I view the Beatitudes as a step-by-step spiritual formation process that moves us toward spiritual depth and maturity.  This becomes cyclical as we grow deeper and deeper in our faith.  The Beatitudes become the outworking of the Gospel in and through our lives.

Matthew 5:3-10…

3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 4“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

 5“Blessed are the meek (gentle), for they shall inherit the earth.

 6“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

 7“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

 8“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

 9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

 10“Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Following is an overview and how one unfolds into the next…The first two are foundational to the Gospel blossoming in and through our lives…

1.  Blessed are the poor in spirit…

a.  “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope.  With less of you there is more of God and his rule.” (MSG)
b.  Another translation renders this verse, “Happy are those who know their need for God.” (JBP)
c.  What does it mean to be “poor in spirit”?  A desperateness of soul that is weary of living in it’s own strength and longs for God’s mercy and grace to come and refresh the soul.  In a word, it is DESPERATION.
d.  Consider the Prodigal Sons (Lk 15)…

2.  Blessed are those who mourn…

a.  I have a river of sin in my life – with 3 primary tributaries…

#1 – Original sin (Adam & Eve traded the presence of God for the knowledge of God – and that’s been our core tendency ever since…

#2 – Family of origin issues

#3 – My own dumb choices.

b.  As we are honest about the sin that has infected us there will be a transforming grief and accompanying repentance, that surfaces – not only for our own lives, but also for the injustice, greed, lust, and suffering that grips our world.

c.  I want to own my sin everyday.[2]

d.  This is counter intuitive (paradox – seeming contradiction).  We go down to go up; death precedes resurrection; we get to joy by traveling through grief.  Our soul wants to find a way around grief, but God says, “No, you must travel through grief – and the good news is, He says, “I’ll go with you and we will do it in My strength and power.”

e.  The way of the Gospel is a death and resurrection cycle…

f.  The gospel has the greatest potential to captivate us when we understand that we are more depraved than we ever realized and simultaneously more loved that we ever dared to imagine.

g.  I don’t mind inviting you to question your own salvation today.  If our default mode is, “I’m basically a good person…” then we simply have not understood the gospel.

3.  Blessed are the meek…

a.  Rick Warren would say, “Meekness is not weakness, but the power of your potential under Christ’s control.”

b.  The concept of meekness describes a horse that has been broken.  We can either surrender to Christ and invite the breaking, or remain the undisciplined and wild stallion.

c.  Grieving over sin and suffering grows meekness in us and delivers us into a humble learning posture (disciple means learner).

4.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…Spiritual hunger and thirst is the growing desire to be empty of those things that don’t reflect God, and initiates a deep longing for wholeness in our lives.

5.  Blessed are the merciful…

a.  Mercy is entering into another persons feelings – attempting to see things from another person’s perspective – all with understanding AND acceptance…just like Jesus has done for us.

b.  As we receive God’s mercy we begin to give mercy – to ourselves and to others.

6.  Blessed are the pure in heart…

a.  Mercy cleanses our heart and restores purity to our lives.

b.  Did you know that your (spiritual and emotional) virginity CAN be restored?

2 Cor 11:2For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.

7.  Blessed are the peacemakers…

a.  Purity gives way to a personal serenity and peacefulness.  Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the absence of anxiety in the midst of inevitable conflict – and when others encounter it, they want it too.

b.  Our Western concept of peace needs to be considered in the light of the ancient Hebrew concept of peace, which is SHALOM — and means more than our limited understanding of peace (i.e., the lack of conflict).

Biblical SHALOM speaks of a universal flourishing, wholeness and delight; a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied, natural gifts a fruitfully employed — all under the arc of God’s love. Shalom is the way things ought to be.

Neal Plantinga – “the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in equity, fulfillment, and delight.”

c.  There is a difference between a peacemaker and a peacekeeper.

To be a peacemaker does not mean peace at any cost.

Peacekeeping creates a false peace.

Many of us live out our lives with this false peace and say nothing or do nothing to change it—in churches, homes, work places, and our marriages.

Examples:

(i)  A family member makes a scene at a family gathering.  It embarrasses you, the rest of the family, but you say nothing.  You keep the peace because to go there would unearth a lot of stuff that you just aren’t willing to deal with.

(ii) Your spouse makes insulting remarks to you or humiliates you publicly through critical tone of voice.  It grates on you.  But you keep silent because you want to keep the peace.

d.  We struggle with this false peace because the conventional wisdom of the day is that its better to keep the peace than to make the peace and there is a very real difference.

e.  Keeping this false peace insures that real issues, real concerns, and real problems are never dealt with.

f.  A façade, or veneer, of peace in that there is calm but the reality is the tension is still there.

g.  True peacemakers will challenge and disrupt the false peace.

h.  Jesus didn’t have a problem disrupting the false peace of his day.

i.  The whole history of redemption, climaxing in the death and resurrection of Jesus is God’s strategy to bring about a just and lasting peace between rebel man and himself and between man and man (Eph 2:14-22)

j.  Colossians 1:19-20 puts it like this,

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

k.  True peacemakers will give people the benefit of the doubt while graciously bringing up concerns

l.  But true peacemakers will deal with what is real.  FIRST IN THEIR OWN LIVES…

m.  True peacemakers will steward the conflict they find themselves in because God will often use conflict to develop things in our lives that are developed in no other way.

8.  Blessed are the persecuted… Living life from a kingdom of God perspective will place us in conflict with those that oppose it (often times it’s “religious” people!).

Without the knowledge of our extreme sin, the payment of the Cross seems trivial and does not electrify or transform.

But without the knowledge of Christ’s completely satisfying life and death, the knowledge of sin would crush us – or move us to deny and repress it. By walking the way of the Beatitudes we hold our depravity and the Cross in a healthy and dynamic tension that will lead to transformation and renewal.

[1] Wayne Gudem, Systematic Theology, p. 713.

[2] “None is righteous, no, not one.” Romans 3:10 (ESV)
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” Eph 2:1-2 (ESV)

Lessons From a Failed “Change Agent”

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This is a re-post from Julia Kirby, who is Editor at Large for Harvard Business Review.

I have made these same mistakes — and found Ms. Kirby’s descriptions to be succinct and illuminating. Enjoy…

The abrupt departure of Time Inc. CEO Jack Griffin after less than six months on the job has the media world buzzing. Now, to be sure, the media world likes nothing better than talking about itself, so the story is probably getting more play than it would if he’d been ousted from a job in the, say, cement business. But that’s just as well, because in it is a cautionary tale for new leaders in any industry.

[The change agent,] that’s become a common label, especially in an era when so many traditional business models need rethinking, but run a Google search on it and you will begin to appreciate the special challenges it creates. What immediately becomes clear is how it raises hackles in an organization; the term is quoted with irony, or upon someone’s departure, more often than not. It would appear that nothing guarantees more schadenfreude on your departure than having arrived as an agent of change.

So if you yourself are a change agent, or considering becoming one, here are some lessons to take away from the very short story of Jack Griffin’s Time Inc. career:

  1. Avoid the term “change agent.” The strange thing about Griffin’s case is that he appears to have applied this “kick me” sign to himself. In most cases, it’s the board that puts the word on the street that a change agent is coming. Try to keep that from happening. It’s not as though the organization won’t hear the news, and it’s insulting. It casts veteran managers as part of the problem, not forces for positive change themselves. As one Time Inc. veteran complained to me, “it’s not as though all of us had just been sitting on our thumbs.” That is a classic, and predictable, response.
  2. Gauge the internal hunger for change. It’s one thing to be the agent of change in an organization that realizes it needs it; it’s quite another when you’re the only one in the room convinced of that. A big problem at Time, at least as far as Griffin was concerned, was that there was no such sense of a burning platform. People, therefore, would perceive any change as being done to them, not for them. It’s not impossible to take a comfortable organization and get it excited about a quest, but it definitely affects how you should frame the mission.
  3. Arrive without a vision. Reportedly, Griffin showed up on day one of his new job with a manifesto in hand. When I heard this, I couldn’t help but recall some great advice from leadership gurus Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. “Somehow, through all the talk over the years about the importance of vision,” they observed, “many leaders have reached the unfortunate conclusion that they as individuals must be visionaries.” They spell out for less incisive thinkers what the future holds and therefore how the enterprise must be transformed. “Bad idea!” say Kouzes and Posner. “Yes, leaders must ask, “What’s new? What’s next? What’s better?” — but they can’t present answers that are only theirs. Constituents want visions of the future that reflect their own aspirations.”
  4. Go directly to “us”. As leadership expert Steve Reicher and his colleagues convincingly argue, great leadership involves tapping into the psychology of “us” versus “them.” This means that job #1 for a leader is to go native, immediately taking the side of the organization, uniting it against a common enemy, and building consensus on what “we” should do. From this perspective, it’s clear how the work of anyone fighting the status quo is fraught with the potential to be misread. Ask yourself honestly whose side you are on — and if it’s not your organization’s, don’t blame them for hating you.
  5. Act as catalyst not cattle prod. Chances are, there is change energy to be tapped in the organization at some level. To get at it, think first of what might be holding it back, and address those things. As in chemistry, a catalyst lowers a barrier to effect a transformation — it doesn’t apply a shock.
  6. Surround yourself with new friends. Of all the new-manager missteps Griffin is accused of, probably the worst is his decision to surround himself with cronies. It’s an understandable temptation, when you don’t yet know your new colleagues well enough to say who’s brilliant and trustworthy, to just recruit some folks you already know to have those qualities from past experience working with them. But nothing — nothing — is more alienating to your inherited team than to suddenly be on the outside of the inner circle looking in. It doesn’t help that, in Griffin’s case, the cronies were also perceived to be carbon copies of himself.

5 Dimwitted Leadership Strategies

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This is a re-post from Dawna MacLean.  I was struck by how many pastors struggle with these identified leadership strategies.  I also appreciate her statement (below) regarding momentum toward transparency and collaboration.  For many of us this involves risk and learning new skills.

Today’s post was inspired by The 8 Stupidest Management Fads of All Time and The 5  Dumbest Management Concepts of All Time by Geoffrey James.  I would respectfully disagree with some on his lists but I did enjoy his provocative perspectives.  Geoffrey’s articles got me thinking about the most dim-witted leadership strategies that continue to linger in today’s business community.  The good news is that there is growing momentum in our appreciation for transparency and we are finally starting to embrace the power of mass collaboration.  Let’s agree to abolish these 5 useless and more often dooming leadership strategies.

#1 Command and Control
Command and control leaders might as well put a blindfold on along with some earplugs.  Typically these leaders rationalize their methods emphasizing the negative outcomes of consensus based strategies.  Consensus based strategies, while polar in nature, are as dysfunctional.  Both strategies are negligent and like most things in life the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.  Decision makers are crucial, as are collective buy-in and the voice of the team broadly.  We need more leaders that have the confidence to act and the humility to listen.

#2 Bottom Line Be All End All
Leaders that put the bottom line above all else will eventually find themselves at the bottom without the line.  And assuming they defy the odds and sustain this risky strategy, they will not be maximizing their potential.  They are simply gaining more than they are losing.  I’m not suggesting the bottom line is not important, it is without question a key performance indicator, but it is no more significant than customer experience or employee experience and arguably less important.  A healthy bottom line can be a goal, but it is not a strategy.  Once again, it’s about balance, we need more leaders with the courage to focus beyond the all mighty dollar.

#3 Tradition and Prescription

While tradition might provide comfort, familiarity, and even bind groups of people, it can also inhibit and even sabotage meaningful change.  I’m not suggesting all traditions be tossed, but they do need to be examined mindfully and they should never be maintained blindly.  Similarly prescriptive leadership may provide consistency and reduce complexity but the reality is we do not live in a one size fits all world.  It stifles creativity and fosters inflexibility.  The effort required to develop a universal solution is enormous and commonly fraught with compromise on behalf of the customer.  That said, highly regulated industries often require a more prescriptive approach, such as Health Care.  The key is to examine all practices through the lens of your customer; it is possible to both meet regulatory demands and remain creative.  Bottom line, we need more creative leaders that embrace and celebrate change.

#4 The Black Hole

Every company has a black hole, that is where all the wasted money, energy and talents fall when the are misused, misunderstood or worse unnoticed.  I would bet that we could feed an entire continent, if not the world, if we could monetize this waste collectively.  Every company needs a ‘waste master’, chances are they would be your most profitable investment.  Leaders are often aware of some waste and blind to even more, we need leaders that have the courage and foresight to eliminate waste and in so doing maximize their potentiality.

#5 The Lone Ranger

This is the “I need to do it myself if it is going to get done right” leader.  News flash, you are NOT a leader if you are doing everything and deciding everything.  Being a leader is about empowering others, motivating them to act like an owner.  A lone ranger may feel like a rock star but nothing could be farther from the truth.  This leadership approach will chase away the talent on your team, it clearly does not scale, it is not sustainable, and it puts your business at massive risk.  We need leaders that cultivate positive results from others; a smart leader surrounds themselves with those smarter then they are.

What does your top 5 dim-witted leadership strategies list look like?  And what does your top 5 smartest leadership strategies list look like?

Change

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Change is hard work.  Looking at the book of Nehemiah (an example of a masterful change-agent) we see he did three initial things

  1. He established a sense of urgency (including identifying and embracing the crises as well as “grace disguised” opportunities)
  2. He created a guiding coalition (in other words he put together a group with enough influence to lead the change and sought to help them work together like a team)
  3. He developed a vision and strategy (asking, “how do we get there from here?”).  Following is a list that has been percolating in me regarding the opportunities to grow to a new place.  What does it take to change?

10 Signs you’re not ready for change:

  1. We believe conflict is a bad thing.
  2. We’re trying to avoid the criticism that comes when we fail — and when we succeed.
  3. We think the surrounding culture needs to think like we do (instead of contextualizing the gospel for them – like a missionary would).
  4. Our lives are too fast and cluttered — and there’s no space to dream.
  5. We value being right over being in right relationship.
  6. We think disillusionment is a bad thing (to have an illusion is to have a false idea).
  7. We’ve stopped asking questions.
  8. We think systems and strategy are the enemy of creativity (remember, we’re invited to live in the tension of Spirit AND Truth).
  9. We’re expecting to receive credit for our ideas.
  10. We think we’ve already arrived.