Be Gentle!

Text: 1 Peter 3:13-22

Focus: Sharing our Faith

Function: To help people approach evangelism in a post-Christian culture.

Form: Storytelling

Intro:

On the first Sunday of this month I mentioned how Tony Compolo preached against legalism by exposing how the Christian prohibition of going to movies didn't serve the purpose of sharing our faith to outsiders.

I remember how this was played out in a odd way in my ministry. In the late 1990's TBN produced a move called “China Cry.” It was the story of a woman in China whose job was to indoctrinate young minds to communist ideology.

While doing a background check on her, the thought police discovered that she attended a Christian mission school when she was a child.

While at school, she placed her trust in Jesus. And then forgot about it.

However, the officials wanted her to recant her profession. In the process of her making up her mind about it, she realized that she was indeed a Christian and she refused to deny Jesus.

The colonel in charge of the Secret Police had her arrested and eventually she faced a firing squad.

True story, BTW.

The colonel said “what God can deliver you out of my hands?”

At the moment that the men fired their rifles to kill her, an electrical discharge happened which disoriented all the executioners and every single bullet missed her.

A great story.

So, a Sunday School class decided to go en masse to the movie. However, one of my parishioners would not go because she was afraid that if someone saw her enter the theater Saturday night, and then show up for Church on Sunday, her “Christian witness” would be blown.

We heard that a lot growing up. God's only plan for sharing the good news of His love is through the Church, us. Wherever we go, we are the visible representation of Jesus to the world. And I was constantly challenged with remembering what I displayed to the world as a Christian.

So, Christians, don't “Blow your witness!”

And there was/is several ways that was described. All of which were great sermon fodder: dress, alcohol, tobacco, language, movies, acquaintances, hair cuts, music and etc.

What this parishioner probably failed to realize is that a non-Christian, and most Christians would have never thought anything was wrong with that behavior.

She lived as a Christian and that is good. But she was so caught up in Christian sub-culture that her concept of non-Christian life was disconnected from modern culture.

I am not saying that is bad, but it is important to live in the world that Jesus has called us to be His agents to redeem.

If she were to judge non-Christians for going to a movie, how can she open a door to them to share the hope she has inside of her?

So, I remember a similar incident happening to me when I was a child. I was sure that my family had completely blown our witness.

I grew up on the South Side of FW and attended school with all the traditional, or orthodox, Jewish children whose families lived within a Sabbath Day's walk of the Synagogue off of Old Mill road near Foster Park.

Converting them to Christ was part of our mission statement.

And I was friend with Rabbi Gebhardt's daughter.

And to explain this story, one must remind people younger than me that beer used to come in these little squat brown bottles that didn't look anything like soda bottles.

And as an advertising gimmick, a root beer company decided to package their root beer in bottles that looked like beer bottles.

I was 13 and I was in the checkout line with my father at the Kroger store in Southgate shopping center.

And my dad, a preacher and on staff at FWBC bought a six-pack of that root beer.

In the line next to us was Rabbi Gebhardt and his daughter.

I remember the panic I felt because I was sure that she would see the root beer, think it was beer, and then think that we were not Christians at all, I would lose my chance to witness Christ to her, she would die and go to hell and it would be all my (or my dad's) fault.

I worried about how I would face God at that moment.

I had no idea what the Jewish religion was all about until later that same school year when I was invited to her bat-mitzvah and they served wine like it was kool-aid.

The point of both of these illustrations is that we do not really know what ideals, ideologies, practices and traditions make up the spiritual and social values of our neighbors.

And, as we increasingly become a less Christian culture, we cannot assume that people know what we think proper Christian behavior actually is.

We cannot assume that people know about all the ways we have sought to define our faith.

People on the outside will judge our sincerity by what they perceive the teachings of Jesus to be.

Let me repeat that. People will judge the sincerity of our faith, our religion, by how they understand the teachings of Jesus.

I think this can be a very good thing because it is causing us to re-focus on Jesus' love for humanity instead of our own religious practices which might have devolved into Christian legalism.

So know, when I remind myself that I am Christ's representative to a hurting world, or to use the old term, when I concern myself with my witness, instead of legalistic principles, I concern myself with how well I show Jesus' love.

Do I respect people who are different from me? Am I kind to the clerk at the grocery store? How do come across when negotiating the price of my car, or contractor services to my house?

So let me repeat verse 15, as we are looking at the Gentle Shepherd: “...Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect...”

This passage is about our Christian testimony, our Christian witness.

And it springs first from doing good.

You know how dads always have the same joke that they repeat over and over and the kids get a little tired of it?

My dad would say: “I am a preacher, so I am paid to be good. And you are not a preacher, so that means you are good for nothing.”

But there is a difference between being good and doing good.

Good people do good things.

But doing good is a big part of our witness.

Ephesians 2:8-9 reminds us that we are saved by grace through faith and not by our works. But then verse 10 tells us that we were saved to do good works.

And I keep pointing out, Christians, we are not saved as a fire escape from hell so that we can live for ourselves here in this life and go to heaven anyway. But we are saved to do good things for God toward others.

We are saved to take part in God's great adventure of restoring the world to wholeness and healing through the good news.

I like this perspective on evangelism. It reminds me of St. Francis of Assisi. He said, “preach the gospel always, sometimes use words.”

Our lives preach the good news that God is still in the world. Our lives demonstrate God still loves people.

The whole passage tells us how to preach with our lives.

Verse 15 tells us how to share with our mouths.

Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is within you.

It springs from faith. It springs from our faith. And it springs from the way our faith brings us hope.

I bought a Christmas tree from the Optimist club one year. It was a great tree and a good value.

And the volunteer selling it to me said to me: “next year is going to be a bad year, I am going to die next year.”

I switched into preacher mode right away and gave him some time to talk about his problem, but before I got there, I was tempted to chuckle at the irony that the optimist was so gloomy. As it turned out, he wasn't gloomy, he was realistic about his health and had a very positive attitude about dying.

Always be ready to give an account of the hope...

Do we have hope? Do we show hope?

But most importantly in this passage, how do we communicate it with words?

This is an important aspect as we are sharing hope with a post-christian world.

Always be ready to share... ...with gentleness and respect.

The operating principle is “...with gentleness and respect.”

I wonder if that is where our message breaks down?

I am convinced that the reason the message is so readily embraced on our Kairos weekend is because of the respect shown to the inmates at the prison.

We always refer to them as resident. We do not allow the use of their prison slang name, and we rise above the correctional officers use of a number instead of a name when referring to the residents.

England is much more a post-christian nation. And an evangelist that I was talking with who was from there explained to me the subtle shift in the “gentleness and respect” concept.

He said, “In Seminary I was taught to teach the doctrines that we believe and there was always an implication afterward to question the person this way: `why don't you believe what I am teaching?`

“Don't hear me wrong. It wasn't supposed to be a teaching tactic that placed the person on the defensive with the implication `what is wrong with you that you don't understand what is so clear to me?'

“The gist of the question was designed to ask the person what I could to to help them see the light the way that I saw it.”

But my friend, Johnnie March, said “Now I ask the question this way: `this is what I believe, what do you believe?'”

And he was telling me that it is a subtle difference between what happens when Christianity is no longer the dominant religion in a culture.

We haven't gone as far as most European nations, yet. But the concepts of gently sharing our hope in a pluralistic culture apply to us.

My friend who didn't want to go to a movie assumed that everyone in our culture knew of a religious prohibition of which only a subset of Christianity knew.

Tell the story of Cat.

Cat, short for Cathy, a waitress at the diner I attended was scared of me.

She was young, but her face showed the lines of a hard life.

I was sharing with another waitress about my reaction to the movie “The Passion of the Christ.”

I was so moved that I was in tears.

And Cat overheard us. And started inching closer to the conversation.

First, while passing by the counter, she said: “my uncle was a preacher” and then she just sort of ran off.

Then, she got a little closer with the statement: “my grandfather was a preacher as well.”

But again she ran off. She reminded me of a puppy slowly coming closer and closer to see if I was safe.

I got the chance to ask her about her grandfather, she told me a little and when she discovered that I was not going to attack her, or preach at her she told me the rest of her story.

She was heavily involved in church until at 16 she got pregnant. She was kicked out of her church because they didn't want that kind of girl with their youth.

At this point, Cat was starting to weep.

I looked her squarely in the eyes and said to her: “on behalf of that church, on behalf of preachers everywhere, I apologize for the wrong done to you.”

She broke into tears and that moment started the slow salvation of Cat.

With gentleness and respect is the operating word. We have to be humble and admit our mistakes.

I love the way the Lutheran Church has recently apologized for the anti-Semitic language that Martin Luther.

If we are going to share the hope inside of us, then instead of being upset about the changing of our culture, the loss of genuine Christian values, we need to remember that this is our Father's world and regardless, the good news is entrusted to us.

I See God!

Text: Luke 24:13-35

Focus: Knowing God

Function: To help people understand the passions that drive God (as if I could know His mind).

Form: Storytelling.

Intro: I heard in a sermon illustration somewhere that a shepherd, especially with a wayward lamb, would carry the lamb around his neck so that the lamb would imprint on the shepherd and continue to follow him.

Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice...”

Every lamb is important to Jesus.

One of my philosophies of ministry is that Churches hire pastors to be witnesses to the good news to their own communities.

Evangelism is the responsibility of the Church. Actually, it is God's only plan for redeeming the world.

The message is shared by us.

A healthy Church sends its pastor out into the community.

And the Church has a duty to love the world around it so that the world comes back into the family of God.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd, He calls us each by name, and then He makes all of us shepherds to the lost world.

And the importance of the lost sheep is throughout Jesus' teaching, but perhaps the best is the story of the 1 and the 99.

He leaves the 99, who are safe within the flock, in order to rescue the 1. (Matthew 18:12-14)

And the passage says, He is happier about the 1 who is restored than the 99 who never strayed.

Sometimes, that seems like an insult to the 99.

Especially when the 99 are paying the salary and the shepherd is off rescuing the 1.

But we get over that when we see the passion of God.

It is not His will that any of these perish.

Today is part 2 of Jesus the Shepherd.

Last week we saw that the under-shepherds, you and I, lead people to God.

Today we see Jesus, the Good Shepherd, showing us what God is like.

I have probably done around 100 funerals in my career and I can only think of one where I did not read, or have the scripture read: “In My Father's house are many mansions...”

But the passage is more than just a passage to comfort us when we die.

In the passage, Jesus is preparing the disciples for the hard life to come. He tells them to live for their eternal reward. He is implying that Christian service includes risk, sometimes fatal risks and He wants them to focus on showing God to people instead of merely focusing on their own luxuries.

God is love. And to show God, for others to say, when they see us “I see God” we need to focus on loving others.

The Christian world for love, agape, is not tied to a romantic or erotic feeling. It is a choice. That is why I like the KJV translation “Charity.”

We are commanded to love. This is how people see God. And it times it requires sacrifice. That is why Jesus is preparing the disciples for in these verses.

Jerry Brenneman told me this week that carrying out Jesus' mission of love for the world becomes a lot easier when we see people and their needs and realize sometimes their needs are so desperate that they are more important than our comfort. Christian love holds in tension their desperation and our luxury.

This passage is a passage about the ultimate comfort of heaven, but the whole context is preparing us, as Christians, for a life of service to God.

Thomas answers, we don't know where you are going, how can we know the way?

Jesus tells him another great mystery, I am the Way, The Truth and The Life.

He gives them three absolutes about Himself. He is the way to God. He is the truth. There is absolute truth in this world and Jesus is part of it. And in Him is life.

Life, eternal life, and reward in heaven are oftentimes interchanged in scripture.

This time it isn't Thomas who doubts, but Philip: “Show us the Father and it will be enough...”

And here we get to the meat of this morning's message.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd and the Good Shepherd shows the Father by His life.

Remember, Jesus spent three years teaching people about God. He spent three years as God's representative instructing people how to love each another.

In so doing, He condemns excessive materialism, He condemned racism, He helped everyone and gave mercy to every single person who asked Him and the only people that He ever criticized were those who were so religious that they resented His love toward others.

In this passage, Jesus says, the works that He does show us the Father.

He fed 5,000. He fed 4,000.

The Good Shepherd shows us what God is like.

We, as under-shepherds must do the same.

What impresses me about Jesus is the way He loved unconditionally.

The only real criticism that He meets out, face to face against anyone are those who refuse to love their neighbor as themselves. But for the sinners and the desperate, Jesus just graces them and loves them until they are healed and set free.

His actions, His complete generosity, shows us who God is.

God is love and Jesus showed us God's love.

So why was it, miracle after miracle that Jesus performed, He told the people not to talk about the miracle?

The other day my youngest son asked me just what I could do to grow a Church bigger.

I jokingly said to him, well maybe I could pray and raise someone from the dead, or heal some huge disease or feed thousands of people with just a few small loaves of bread.

He laughed because he knew that this wasn't what Jesus expected of us.

Only Jesus was Jesus.

But in this passage Jesus Himself says that those who trust in Him will pray and do greater miracles than He did.

In 2,000 years of Church history there have been many miracles that happened as a result of believers praying, but no one has ever done anything close to what Jesus has done.

Now, I have seen miracles happen.

But I hope most of you caught what was wrong with the question and what was wrong with my answer.

“Dad, what can you do to grow a church?”

I can do nothing except... ...Show people God's love.

So why did Jesus order people not to talk about His miracles?

Because He wants them, us, talking about His love.

Jesus didn't do miracles to show off His power, He did them to communicate His love.

I can't grow a church and no church ministry is about me, or about the pastor. It is always about Jesus.

When these miracles happened, they happened because Jesus loved the people that He helped.

My first ministry was planting a Church in the ghetto of Atlantic City, NJ.

We showed up in a playground in a ghetto with a guitar and a tambourine and started praising the Lord. A few people came out to see us because nobody really cared for anybody in that neighborhood.

A woman in her 50's who was heavy set and walked with a walker came up to us and asked us to pray for her.

We prayed, left and told them we would be back the next week.

Next week, we started singing and a crowd came running toward us.

We were shocked until a man told us that the woman we prayed for was miraculously healed.

We are nobody. But God loved that community.

The ministry went on and about 9 months later that same lady asked us to come and pray for her son who was going for a medical procedure.

Now the kid was hard to control. He would ride his bicycle right through our little meetings in the playground. Some would call him a brat. At least, that is what I thought. He had suffered a traumatic brain injury that had left him blind in his right eye.

So, we are there praying for the young man and he makes another request.

He says: “can you pray that I would do better in school?”

God forgive me, but I too, can be judgmental. And I looked at him and told him that if he wanted to do better in school, he needed to sit still and listen to his teacher.

“I know, I know” he replied, but please pray for me as well.

Two days later his mother calls very excited because her son, who was blind in his right eye all of a sudden had 20/20 vision.

God loved that little boy.

Half of his schoolwork problem was his inability to see the board. So God healed him.

The greater works are the works of love.

Jesus didn't want His miracles shouted about, He wanted His love proclaimed.

He shows us Father God, and God is love.

And God loves you.

Let me finish with one more story about God's love for Agape Church.

When I was a student here at Bible College, God showed me something that blew me away.

I made friends with a Brethren minister while I was a student there.

So, when the man took a vacation, he asked me to fill the pulpit for him.

Now we ministry track students were always preaching somewhere while pastors were gone. It was nothing new.

But the search committee from another COB came to hear me and asked the DE if they could pursue hiring me.

He was against the idea because I was not raised Brethren.

And my friend was keeping me informed of how the process was going.

One Wednesday, right before Chapel service, he told me that my name was out of consideration.

I tried to be kind and I said to him: “well, God loves that Church, God knows what they need and God will send the right person to pastor them. Don't worry about me.”

During the chapel service I was called out for a phone call.

It was the board chairman of that Church and he asked me to preach for them that Sunday.

So, on Saturdays, I had this prayer group of these young men that I was mentoring.

We would share prayer concerns and then pray for each other.

I told them this: “I have been asked to fill the pulpit in a little Church of the Brethren...”

Before I finish, I need to give you a little detail about my perspective.

Because of a non-denominational Church that I attended a few years before, I felt like Job 1 for me was to fight the liberal influence that was infecting Churches.

So, when I asked them to pray for me, and forgive me Agape Church, but I said to them: “I'm afraid that the Church of the Brethren is pretty liberal, I hope they hear the gospel from me.”

The man who prayed for me, and his name was actually Rhett Butler prayed this way: “Lord, I pray that you will fill Phil with the Holy Spirit and give him love for the Church he is preaching in tomorrow.”

I guess, in my pride and arrogance, the message that came across in my prayer request was that I thought that I was better than “those liberals.”

And guess what happened? The moment I stood up to preach, God answered his prayer. I was overwhelmed with a sense of love for that congregation.

Remember, when we show the Father, we show love.

Now, it was more than usual, I had filled the pulpit in 30 or so churches during my tenure at the College and never felt this. This was special.

They asked me back, Sunday after Sunday until they hired me as their preacher.

Now, the fruit of the Spirit is love, it is a choice, not a feeling.

So, I am going to call this a miracle of love because I was overwhelmed with this genuine care for the congregation.

And this is what I take away from the miracle of love.

God loves everyone. At the time, I have been erroneously taught, and I believed it, that God only loved conservatives. God loves everyone.

So, I pray for you all a lot. Oftentimes, I pace the sanctuary and lay hands on every single chair in the room and pray that God will bless everyone who is sitting in these chairs.

I pray that their preacher will point them only to Jesus.

About a month ago, I was doing that and God reminded me of how he changed my mind about who is in and who is out.

He said, I love everyone, Phil, not just the people that agree with you. I love them all.

And then last week, when visiting the Andersons and Shirley shared the story that she shared in testimony time about how God spoke to her to comfort her before her surgery it was reinforced again to me. God loves this Church and God loves you people.

If you get nothing from my short tenure here, please get this: God loves you.

God Loves the Agape Church and God has great plans for this Church and her people.

And since you know that God loves you, keep on showing His love to everyone. That is how people see God.

Jesus and Jesus

Text: John 10:1-10

Focus: Jesus

Function: Reminding people that my job is to focus on Jesus

Form: Storytelling

Intro: A few weeks ago I preached about the problem with Jesus and something else.

That sermon was based on John 9, when the religious leaders refused to see Jesus for who He is. They were changing the message of the good news into something else. Jesus calls them blind leaders.

Good Christian leaders, good shepherds keep people focused on Jesus, the Good Shepherd.

If it is Jesus and anything, it is Jesus and then more Jesus.

So, to keep it positive, we keep our focus on Jesus by preaching Jesus and nothing else.

My son is thrilled with the success of last weekend's Kairos mission.

I have served on the team 6 times now and I can say that every weekend has been a success.

Maybe we say that because in order to serve on a team, there is a lot, a lot of effort involved.

No one wants to put that kind of individual effort into a project and then not call it a success.

But that isn't why the weekends are successful.

I believe they are successful because God blesses them.

And there are biblical reasons for God's blessing.

The first, and foremost, is prayer. The weekends are bathed in prayer.

And the second is Christian unity.

Theologically, we are a diverse group.

We have Methodists, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Brethren, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Charismatics, and independents serving together.

Normally, one would think that this would lead to disputes and differences.

However, we come together for one purpose. And that one purpose is to share Jesus with the men in the institution.

And so, in order to prevent any conflict, all the specifics of each denominations are excluded from the room.

We Brethren are not allowed to anoint someone with oil.

The Charismatics and Pentecostals are not allowed to speak in tongues.

The Catholics and the Orthodox believers are not allowed to venerate Mary.

We don't baptize anyone. We don't lay hands on anyone. We don't wash anyone's feet.

We are only allowed to focus on the doctrines that we all agree on.

And that really just boils down to one. Jesus Christ, the Savior of humanity.

It is amazing how when the good news is crystallized to its purest component, how powerful it becomes.

Keeping focus keeps the gospel powerful.

I have a confession to make.

Some will say: “So what?” Others may be truly offended. I hope not.

I have been baptized three times, all by immersion.

I was baptized at 12, but then I fell away from God and when I returned to Christ, I felt the need to be baptized again. And then the third time because I didn't feel the same overwhelming presence that I felt at my first baptism and the church was doing this really cool baptism in a lake and I wanted to be a part of it and so on.

I have a pastoral friend, actually, he is from a church not too far from here who did a week of revival at my church.

While out visiting, I was talking with him about our baptism ceremony and he told me that unless a person is baptized forward, three times, he isn't really saved.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that although I was baptized three times, it was at three separate instances and every time, it was a backward dip into the water.

I am afraid that his message was a “Jesus and” message instead of a Jesus and Jesus message.

So, what does this have to do with today's scripture?

Look again at it. Jesus is speaking these words to the religious leaders.

And Jesus is reminding them that Jesus is the Shepherd. He is the Good Shepherd and they better not get the message confused with their own passions or, more importantly, they better not exaggerate their own significance or importance.

Most Churches grow in spite of the pastor, by the love of the congregation for Jesus and others.

But most pastors are proud and they think the success is up to them.

A young missionary friend said this on his Facebook wall: The thief who kills, steals, and destroys in John 10:10 isn't satan, (sic) but religious leaders. Be careful whom you follow. Be careful how you lead.

And then he said: A bad shepherd gets his life from the sheep. The Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Is your leadership taking or giving life?

Jesus is the Good Shepherd, me or whoever follows me are merely men, tainted by sin, trying desperately to follow Christ.

And I love what Jesus says about Himself: “The Good Shepherd knows His sheep by name. He calls them by name and they know His voice so they do not follow another.”

We too, know the voice of our Savior.

Jesus voice is obvious to us.

The bad shepherds that Jesus is teaching against have just condemned a man because he wasn't like them.

The good news heals, it never condemns.

He walks with us, He talks with us and He tells us we are His own.

Look at these verses: Isaiah 49:15-16a

¹⁵“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
¹⁶See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;

The Good Shepherd has engraved us on the palms of His hands. (I wonder if that is a metaphor, or symbol, of Jesus death wounds.)

God is speaking to God's people and in this image of El-Shaddai.

El-Shaddai is literally El -Mighty God- and Shaddai from Shad -the breast.

This image of God is female. And, it is a name that God uses in scripture for God's own name.

God, the nurture and fierce defender of God's people.

The name evokes the image of the fierce mother bear protecting her cubs.

This God, our God will never forget our name. God calls us by name.

(look at crowd) God calls you by name. He knows your name.

And again, in the prison, there are all kinds of shepherds. Some point to Jesus, others point to Jesus and something else, and others point to Allah and other religions.

Religious life in the prison campus can be difficult and confusing.

On Friday morning there is the beautiful worship service that focuses on God, both Father and Mother. It starts with a dramatic reading of the Prodigal Son's father waiting for the son to return so that he can embrace him and restore him to the family.

Friday morning is still the beginning of the weekend and the men have not let down their guard, yet. They are tough and want everyone else to know it. (Mention Aryans)

The men are in silence with their eyes closed.

And then a team member, with a beautiful voice sings the scripture song: “I will never forget you...” the men begin to melt.

It becomes one of those moments that you don't want to end. You just want to sit there in the beauty of that song and feeling again that sense of unconditional love.

Love is a demonstration of who God is.

The song is a lullaby of God's love.

The men are reminded of that perfect time of complete innocence before they are aware of sin, when all they really know is the purity of the unconditional love of a mother.

That is why we celebrate mother's day.

So we have this mother's day event that brings them back to the holistic concept of being born again, with the slate wiped clean.

And the love that these men are so desperately trying to get back to hits them in a powerful way through this scripture and the song.

Jesus is the good shepherd who calls us, His sheep, by our own names.

The good news is that Jesus knows us by name.

I read this last week: “Satan calls us by our sin, but Jesus calls us by our name.”

Just as that message, “even if your mother forgot you, I will never let go of your hand” powerfully connects with the residents in prison, so too, Jesus calling us by name reaches us.

God loves us as a mother loves her Children.

Here is the thing.

We shepherds are far from perfect. Only Jesus is perfect.

A preacher/commentator wrote these words:My wife would often make the comment "you clergy will have a lot to answer for." She was right, of course. We get up in the pulpit and tell people how they should live, but often struggle to live honoring lives ourselves. We pontificate on the truth, often our own version of truth, since we are infected by the virus of modernism - I think and therefore, it is true. Worst of all, we manage by manipulation. I well remember a colleague explaining how to guide a committee to an appropriate conclusion - pose the problem and wait for someone to come up with the desired solution, congratulate them and adopt it. Oh dear, "thieves and robbers."

Let me interrupt the reading of this for a moment.

My wife, a preacher's wife, and my mother, a preacher's wife, were not as thrilled at the end of the movie “Heaven is For Real” as most of us were.

They are both that “mother bear” protecting not only their children, but their preacher husbands as well.

And when the preacher became human and was wrestling with what all this meant, and then was almost fired, their ire got up. Preaches are far from perfect. Now let finish what was this guy wrote:

Of course, in the end, clergy are no different to the people they minister to. We are all flawed, our "righteousness is but filthy rags." Still, there is one flaw that every minister fears, and it is that somehow, by something we do or say, we hide the narrow gateway that leads into the presence of God - we scatter rather than gather, we fail to point to Christ. I know in my own life that the flaws are many, and I fear that, at times, my sin has blurred the gateway, has stood between the lost and their view of Jesus....

I do wrestle with where I should preach.

This passage is about leaders focusing on Jesus.

Do I stand here (behind the pulpit) as a symbol of authority, or here, (away from pulpit) as a symbol that only Jesus is the shepherd.

I am here (behind pulpit) only because it is true that God's word has authority beyond anything that I possess.

But never ever look at me like you look at Jesus.

Jesus is the shepherd, we, all of us, are merely His instruments.

We are all under-shepherds of the Great Shepherd.

For two more weeks we will be looking at how well we, as under-shepherds represent the Great Shepherd.

But today, its about religious leaders. If they point you to Jesus and, anything but Jesus, they are crossing the wrong line.

And we all do it.

We are far from perfect.

So remember, the mission of the Church is to point people to Jesus.

Hold me accountable to preaching Jesus.

Hold my successor accountable to preaching Jesus.

Let us, as a Church keep focused on Jesus the Good Shepherd.

Jesus who calls us by name.

Jesus who gave His life to redeem us and restore us into the family of God.

Jesus who is at work in us to heal a dying world.

Jesus who may be calling you today, maybe for the first time, to make a covenant with Him.