When people are used to build up a ministry, rather than the ministry being used to build up people …

It’s no longer ministry.

Making Jesus all about that one thing,

Which happens to be your thing,

Denies His Lordship over all things,

Including the many other things,

He does through others.

The Great Commission isn’t about coming in for prepared messages …

But going forth as prepared people.

I don’t wear skinny jeans and cool glasses .. .

Or have an elevated stage with a smoke machine, a hip band, brass tinged collection plates and comfy pews for the feel-good masses.

I don’t peddle trans-Biblical messages like “deeper life,” “easy believism,” or “seeker friendly” …

Nor have I sought – as is common these days – notoriety through books, blogs and conferences about “how to” on things I’ve not made work first in my own life and hometown.

Instead, my life has been about simply going – without pretense or fanfare – wherever Jesus sends me.

Often it was to distinct, disreputable subcultures near my home, to break bonds of darkness through the raw, unmitigated gospel of repentance and Christ’s Kingdom rule.

So I went to places others feared to go, at the fringes of polite society …

Where those who are lost and know it live broken lives.

And like Jesus commands in Luke 10, I never brought a budget, a branded “ministry,” a title, an agenda or a program.

Instead, I learned to embrace, respect and honor – in their own communities – those who I encountered …

Because “love,” I have found, is such an overused word these days.

So I’d go – simply, just as I am – carrying an unadorned message of grace, forgiveness, repentance and redemption …

But in the authority of Christ’s name and the power of His Word.

It was enough:

Lives were changed …

Disciples made …

And simple, indigenous churches emerged – without building campaigns, ministry teams, sound equipment or marketing plans – in living rooms and coffee shops and other places where relationships otherwise naturally happen.

I’m not claiming total success each and every time I’d go.

Trust me, I made many mistakes. But by doing it, I learned, and despite my shortcomings God nonetheless brought forth amazing fruit and built His church more often than not.

As His Kingdom took root and local leaders emerged, I’d then stay in touch but otherwise recede back to my own local fellowship …

So others could come forth and express Christ in their own, wonderfully unique ways that reached their own communities.

It cost almost nothing:

I gave of my own labor and resources …

Rather than live off of, or peddle for donations, those God sent me to reach.

But this I learned:

Although Christ expresses Himself in different ways in different contexts, and He calls us each to different things …

His Kingdom is never about building our own kingdom.

Forgive us, Lord, for what we’ve done with your mercy and grace …

Because it’s not about us.

We deny Biblical authority when we read post-Biblical traditions, meanings, and presumptions not actually found in Scripture back into Scripture.

This is especially true with our current concepts of:

“Church”
“Worship”
“Communion”
“Tithing”
“Pastor”
“Ministry”
“Leader”
“Submission”
“Covering”
“Preaching”
“Teaching”

The meanings we give those words today are not found in – and often are at odds with – the original language, meaning and context of the New Testament when written in the first century.

Let’s be like the New Testament Bereans and once again begin “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

Only then can we truly say we have begun to accept the plenary authority of Scripture over all traditions and opinions to the contrary …

Including our own.