Mandy and I bought our first house almost seven years ago. We embarked on this adventure with plans to refurbish and remodel. It was fun. And hard. And expensive.
Because of our budget, we did almost all of the work ourselves. (We paid someone to do something with our gas lines, which seems reasonable enough to me. I have zero desire to blow our house up. I reached the age at which not blowing my house up was worth more to me than the pride of knowing I did it myself.)
Here’s an invaluable lesson we learned: House projects are significantly easier if one uses the right tools.
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve busted my knuckles, wasted materials, and botched a project because I wasn’t using the right tools. More than once, I was hard at work on parts of the job and had the conscious thought, “They really should make a tool that does this.“ It was only later to learn that “they” have indeed made a tool for “that.”
I’ll give you an example. Once, I found myself trying to whittle plastic coating from an electrical wire with a razor blade. Well, they have a tool for that: a wire stripper.
More alarming, and more often than not, I usually already had the tools. However, I didn’t feel like taking the time to go to my storage to grab one. Or, I tried to avoid using the tools because I thought I could find a shortcut. Or, I did not have the patience to allow the tools to do what they are meant to do. Or, I believed that my new technique would be better.
This was always foolish and it caused more trouble, work, stress, strain, time, and money.
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Planting and pastoring a church is a lot like remodeling a house.
A thought that I think often, to preserve my sanity: “Just as God has ends, he has means.” Or, to fit the remodeling metaphor, “Wait, the Lord has given us the tools.” To understand how I do pastoral work, you must understand how strongly I believe that I have been given the tools for this.
As a pastor, I have embarked on a remodel project. The souls in my care are rundown and weary from being malformed by the world, the flesh, or the devil. This undoing happens all week long. And the goal of all pastoral labor is to see Christ formed in hearts and souls. Every week, in other words, is a new remodel.
And thank God, there are tools for this.
Historically, churches from our tradition have called these tools, the“means of grace.” In the tradition of the Protestant Reformation, from which Grace Fellowship descends, the primary remodeling tools are Word and Sacrament.
We believe that when the Word is prayerfully preached, declared, and proclaimed in way that exalts Jesus, something happens, and it happens every time: We believe that the Spirit of God is at work to form and reform, create and re-create, and remodel hearts and souls into the image of Christ.
And, collectively speaking, we believe a church is a creature of that declared and proclaimed Word.
In other words, without the tool of the Word, we have no church and I’m not a pastor.
Further, whenever baptism and communion are prayerfully administered, our Lord has promised to be “doing something” to us and for us: We believe he nourishes our hearts and souls.
Without the tools of Baptism and Holy Communion, we have no church and I’m not a pastor.
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I certainly believe there are other tools, and means of grace, necessary to build our church. There are secondary tools: sharing fellowship, friendship and community, training and equipping, serving within our gifts, and care and counsel, to name a few. These tools are necessary (essential!) but they proceed from the primary tools of Word and Sacrament.
We also believe that there are outreach efforts, mission partnerships, and justice initiatives that we are called to engage. But, we only are propelled toward these as we are formed by Word and Sacrament. Our worship in Word and Sacrament must be for the life of the world and we must work hard to make sure our church’s fellowship in the Spirit spills beyond the boundaries of our community in tangible expression of blessing to others.
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But I cannot tell you what a relief it is to know that I have been given the tools. They have been given freely. I did not have to earn them or purchase them. They have been put in my hands.
More than that, these are the tools that the Lord has promised to be at work within. And, I want to spend my efforts on things that our Lord has already promised to bless.
I lose confidence in the tools because I think there are shortcuts. I lose confidence in the tools because of the allure of new techniques. I can lose confidence in the tools because these particular tools work in ways that are mostly invisible and they also work very slowly. Sometimes, it seems that it would be easier to call people to some sort of strategy that is more flashy, or to recruit folks to an alternative vision. I can be a persuasive person, so the draw to something else can be a siren call.
But you and I can’t listen.
Whenever we lose confidence in the tools, our knuckles get busted, we waste materials, and we botch the project. It causes more trouble, work, stress, and strain in the end. It wears out the sheep who are supposedly being led to still waters.
The task of the pastor is to work the tools over and over and over.
And then we repeat next week, because guess what?
They are still there. And they still work.