church

Yesterday was Sunday. Now What?

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

“But to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of Yahweh thus you shall say to him, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Regarding the words which you have heard, because your heart was soft and you humbled yourself before Yahweh when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants that they should become an object of horror, and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I truly have heard you,’ declares Yahweh. ‘Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace, so your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place.’ So they brought back word to the king.”  (2 Kings 22:18–20, LSB)

How will we respond to the Word of God once we know what He has said? Many of us spent a good portion of our Sunday in our local church and we heard the Bible taught to us—possibly multiple times in different ways. In addition we sang biblical words, and prayed Scriptural truths. But, what happens to that truth we heard now that it’s Monday?

Josiah was a king who began his reign at the tender age of 8. His prospects for a long and godly reign didn’t look good. Many kings before him had been assassinated, and most of the kings who ruled David’s former kingdom (now divided in two) ruled in evil ways that looked more like the pagan nations around them. But King Josiah was different. His heart was set to obey the Lord, and the influence of godly priests around him hardened his resolve to follow God and lead his nation with wisdom and godliness.

At 18, Josiah began making some long-overdue changes. The temple had been neglected and he made arrangements for this to be corrected. In the process a copy of the Word of God was discovered and brought to the kings attention. As this mysterious book was read to the young king, he reacted with great emotion. He tore his robe in grief and anguish, and called the priest and his scribe to go and seek the Lord on his behalf.

What had disturbed this young king? The words of the Law of God spoke clearly about how God’s people—Josiah’s people—were to behave. They were to be a holy people, a godly people. They were never to worship any other gods, and they were to follow the Lord’s directions for life. But Josiah knew that it had been a long time since they had done that, and that the nation was guilty of great sin against the Lord God.

Imagine taking on a new job, and you start with anticipation of how well you will perform your duties. You work there for a few years, and you begin to learn that you are in a long line of serious slackers. Not only did they fail to do their jobs, but they stole from the company, sold secrets to the competition, and talked bad about the company owner. Some even called the company by the rival company’s name! Now you have the job, and you are a company man, and you hope to change things, and straighten up things. Then one day you find a book that not only has the company history, showing you the glorious past of your firm, but it also has all of the expectations that you should be meeting. As you read it, you become terrified! “We’re failing every metric in this book! Every worker in this company should be fired, and even sued for the damage they have caused to the owner. His losses are immense!”

This was Josiah’s dawning reality. He sent the priest and scribe to the Owner, the real King of his kingdom, to find out what He really thought about their situation. The word that came back was what Josiah feared—God was furious. Payback was coming, and it would cause the ears of those who heard about it to buzz.

Josiah, this righteous king, was overcome by grief. Yes, he was filled with sorrow for the coming judgment. But even more so, he was crushed by how his people had been toward their God. Josiah wanted to be a good king, obedient to all that the Lord had spoken—but he was in a long line of losers. It was almost payday, and not the good kind.

But God saw Josiah’s heart, and he saw his grief over the situation. The Lord told his ministers to tell the king that the judgment was so great that there was no avoiding it, but that it would be delayed. Josiah would reign, and he would be recorded as a good king. God would wait until after he was gone to bring the promised judgment.

How would you respond? Josiah was surely relieved. But even more, he was determined. He knew the judgment would miss him, but instead of sitting back and enjoying his royal life, he leaped into action. He leaned into the reforms he knew were needed. He tore down the centers for idol worship and reinstated God’s holy standard. He made godliness great again.

Let’s go back to Sunday—yesterday. What did God say to you through His servants? Do you have the zeal of Josiah? Are you looking at this week with anticipation for how you will carry out what God shared with you through His Word yesterday, or are you comfortable sliding back into your life, like the kings that came before Josiah?

Josiah is known to this day as one of the godliest kings of Judah. His reforms didn’t last long because the people quickly slid back into their wretchedness when the kings after him continued the long path toward paganism. But that doesn’t matter. Right is right, and God calls us to obey. What happens after we are gone isn’t our problem. He calls His people to walk with Him, and we need to strive to do so every day of our lives. We can prepare the next generation as best we can, but ultimately, they will need to do it themselves, and will give an account before God, just like we will.

Yesterday was Sunday. Now what?

Pastors or Shopkeepers?

/ Richard Bargas / 2 Comments

“The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns-how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.” —Eugene Peterson

Peterson’s statement strikes at the root of the modern evangelical church today. Don’t speak on controversial issues. Make sure your social media strategy keeps up with the latest trends. Watch where the “market” is driving the tastes of the most “customers” and shift your marketing strategy in that direction. God help us.

What might look like “market dominance” and “success” in this false narrative for so many of these types of ministries will turn out to be more like cotton candy. Appealing to the eyes and the flesh, and yet truly amounting to just a little bit of colored sugar spun into a frenzy that appeals to children and those who hunger for flash over substance.

Give me a church where men stand before their congregation and open up their Bibles and thunder, “Thus says the Lord.” They aren’t harvesting social media followers or their brand. They aren’t gathering up lieutenants who are loyal to them more than to Jesus. No, these men and the churches they lead are content to be faithful and be forgotten.

These types of men aren’t tending to their shops, strategizing how they can better market to the masses under the guise that they are doing evangelism. These men are more on their knees than on TikTok, more in the Word than on Instagram. Instead of selfies they are selfless. Instead of harvesting followers, they are walking with the Savior in humble obedience.

It’s not flashy. It’s doesn’t draw a crowd. But the world doesn’t need a phenom, or a CEO. We need pastors who will gently lead us to Jesus.

The Reluctant Pastor

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

“…shepherd the flock of God among you, overseeing not under compulsion, but willingly, according to God; and not for dishonest gain, but with eagerness;” 1 Peter 5:2 (LSB)

I think that possibly every child runs into a school teacher who has had it with children. When I say this, I don’t mean the teacher that has had a rough week, or even a rough year. I mean that teacher that no longer loves teaching, and has moved beyond the loss of love to an actual disdain for students that borders on hatred. In the children’s book Matilda, this person is portrayed in the character known as Agatha Trunchbull, whom the children fearfully refer to as “The Trunchbull.” I wonder if Roald Dahl went to my high school…

I think it is tragic when a teacher reaches this stage, where what was (I assume) once a love for teaching has become drudgery and buying time until retirement. But this danger is not one that only school teachers face; pastors can fall into the same trap and patterns of ministry. No longer loving people or ministry, just buying time until retirement or Jesus returns, but mostly retirement.

As he writes to the church that is scattered abroad, Peter warns pastors, as a fellow pastor, that there is a danger of overseeing the church in such a way that one feels that they do so “under compulsion.” The calling of God has been overshadowed by a sense of duty, which has devolved into buying time until retirement. Slowly pastoral duties are left off for someone else to do, or not done at all. Small ways of serving others are replaced with complaints and a bitter heart. The pastor who reaches this stage can sometimes be heard reliving the “good old days” when people really cared about things, and how now “nobody” has a passion anymore.

The vision has died in many of these churches because it has died in the heart of its leader. No longer can the disenfranchised pastor see the crowds of people as an opportunity to proclaim Christ. Instead, the oceans of humanity are seen as a trial to be endured. The traffic, the graffiti, the constant cries of those needing help. It seems never-ending, and the burnout grows each day. There is no “eagerness” anymore. Instead, some hang on, knowing they need a few more years to reach their retirement funding goals, or maybe because they don’t have retirement funds, and so they keep pastoring in order to provide for their daily needs. The ministry has become a job, and the paycheck is the motivation as much as anything.

I write this to both young and old in ministry. Be careful. If you find yourself in ministry for the money (no matter how little or much you receive), then it’s time to leave. It would be better to serve as a volunteer while working a secular job than to serve God for financial gain. By this, I don’t mean that being supported financially is wrong–because motivation is the heart of the issue here. Peter is warning about the motivation. Do we serve King Jesus willingly, even through the hard times, long hours, and dry years, or do we put up with the Church because we think we can’t do anything else, or do we find that the path of least resistance means to stay in ministry until something easier or better comes along?

I hope that no one reading this finds themselves in this place. If you are there, take some time for prayer, seek wise counsel from a good friend who can point you to God and help you as you examine your heart and motivations, and then see where God leads. You might find that the Lord brings a refreshing breeze back to your life and ministry that will once again restore you to a place of renewed usefulness in the Lord’s house.

Why Do the Wicked Succeed?

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

“Righteous are You, O Yahweh, when I would plead my case with You; Indeed I would speak matters of justice with You: Why has the way of the wicked succeeded? Why are all those who deal in treachery complacent?” (Jeremiah 12:1, LSB)

As a pastor, it can be quite frustrating and even depressing when you are trying to be faithful in your ministry and yet it seems as if the work you are doing isn’t having the effect that you hope it would have in the lives of the people to whom you are ministering. This frustration is exacerbated when your church is located near an unbiblical church or a cult that seems to be swelling in numbers and influence.

Several years ago I remember having a conversation with a member of our church over a similar situation. He came from a megachurch that had a large and influential ministry in the area. Although the teaching was evangelical in nature, the heart of the church was very sick and the church leaders were very abusive and manipulative, as was attested to by several former members. On the day of our conversation, this brother in Christ expressed his concern as to why his former church was so large and wealthy, and yet they failed to practice biblical church discipline, were unkind, even cruel to staff, and were almost cult-like in the way they had formed their leadership structure. On the other hand, he had grown to love our small church, seeing that what we attempted to model was from the New Testament, and that we had a warm and welcoming body that exemplified what he always felt was how a Christian church should act–even if imperfectly.

In his worldview, the larger church had been blessed by God, and that was why it was large. Our church, which was much smaller, struggled in all the ways smaller churches often struggle–with limited resources and staffing. We weren’t always able to do what we felt God called us to do on the scale we wanted to in order to reach others for Christ. If our heart was right and we were trying to be conformed to the New Testament model of a Christian church, why was it that God wasn’t blessing us with more people, financial resources, and other visible “blessings?” What the Bible says and how it played out in real life was puzzling to this sincere brother.

Since we live in a world where our eyes can deceive us, it is easy to default into a popular view that the Jewish people often held in the Bible. It was the idea that in this life, God blesses us when we are good, and God punishes us when we are bad. Although this idea is simple and clean (and is often true, but not always), it doesn’t always work out that way in real life experience and it can become very disorienting when the righteous are seemingly not blessed and the wicked seem to succeed.

Asaph wrote a psalm voicing his struggle with this very issue (Psalm 72). He began to feel as if all his striving to walk in obedience to the Lord was a wasted effort, ““Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure And washed my hands in innocence;” (Psalm 73:13, LSB). Essentially, Asaph wondered aloud, why bother if in the end, the righteous end off worse than the wicked? There are a lot of problems with this sort of thinking, and that is another subject for another time, but here is the reality that sobered up Asaph:

“When I gave thought to know this, It was trouble in my sight until I came into the sanctuary of God; Then I understood their end. Surely You set them in slippery places; You cause them to fall to destruction. How they become desolate in a moment! They are completely swept away by terrors!” (Psalm 73:16–19, LSB)

The moment Asaph walked into the presence of God he was immediately reminded of the eternal realities his eyes could not see in the moment of his confusion about his present realities. This world is not all there is. Jeremiah needed this reminder as well. The fall of Israel and Judah were not the end. The wicked that the Lord used as His instruments of judgment would not be eternally exonerated. And the church that throws off how the Lord desires to be worshipped in exchange for a spirit of entrepreneurial showmanship will eventually reap what they have sown. The cultists, false teachers, and those that treat the church as a money-making or power-grabbing enterprise will reap what they have sown eventually.

You see, some seeds take longer to bring their harvest. Sometimes we see the fruit of our efforts in this life–good or bad. But other seeds, and these are often the most important ones, we will not reap the harvest until we stand before our Creator God. We need to be focused upon faithfully sowing the right seeds, and worry much less on what the other guy is doing. By keeping our hands to the plow and working the vineyard the Lord has given to us, we will find that we are more content and filled with joy when we see the harvest, big or small, that the Lord brings through His powerful gospel.

A Good Problem to Have

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

“Where no oxen are, the manger is clean,
But much revenue comes by the strength of the ox.” Proverbs 14:4 (LSB)

I remember hearing a pastor say that he had to fire the church custodian because he was constantly complaining about the messes people were leaving in the church. He complained when they left bulletins in the pews, and paper towels in the bathroom trash, and when he had to constantly vacuum because their shoes tracked in dirt and grass. In his discussions with the pastor that led up to his eventual firing, the pastor continuously reminded this janitor that the whole reason he had a job was because the people were leaving these little messes!

Some of you might remember the days when grandmothers used to cover the couch with plastic to preserve it for “company.” They had special china, special towels, and special silverware. It was like they were expecting the President of the United States to pop over and have coffee, and they wanted to be ready! If you visited anyone’s house that had this sort of mindset, or you lived in such a home, then you understand that it was like visiting a museum—nice to look at but you wouldn’t want to live there!

Unfortunately, some people can have a similar attitude about their church. They liked the orderliness when there weren’t any children running around. They liked singing the same old hymns of their youth. They like the hush and echo of a solemn sanctuary. And then the church begins to see new people!

These new people bring in children—who are okay if they only behave and stop acting like…children! And then they want to change everything—the music, the carpet that was installed in 1976, the signs out front… Soon the church is ringing with noise and filled with messes! “Oh pastor!” they say, “I remember the good old days when we didn’t need to worry about all these people and we could just worship God in the old-fashioned way—as God meant it to be!”

Hear Solomon’s words: Yes, when there were no oxen in the stable, the pens and manger were clean. That is because there is no longer life on the farm. And is a farm without animals even a farm? And if there are no oxen, then there can be no plow to turn the soil. Which means there can be no or very few crops. And if no crops, then is it a farm? And if there are no crops, then how can the farmer hope to feed any other animals? How can he survive?

It is a wonder that so many churches cut off the life of the church and drive away new people through their denial of any change, and then are astonished that their pastor leaves when he cannot feed his family with what they pay him. No oxen, no crops, no food and no feed al amount to no life. The church pews and steeple may be pretty to look at. The church bell may have rung out in an earlier generation, but now sits silent. And still, there are churches that say to themselves, “This new generation doesn’t care about God anymore.” Perhaps there needs to be some more mediation upon the words of Solomon.