The Arrington Family did get away this past Saturday to enjoy a little football. You know, the game where players actually spend most of the time kicking the ball with their feet? That’s the one. Well, it was the grand opening of BBVA Compass Stadium and we happened to score some tickets to the game. It was a blast. Here’s a pic after the Dynamo beat D.C. United 1-0.

For those who may miss us, you won’t! Redemption Church has acquired the land directly across Clear Creek Community Church on FM 270. In only two months we will be constructing our first building: a modest 5,000-seat auditorium. This auditorium will be equipped with retina scan offering boxes, 3D video jumbotron that makes the one in Cowboys Stadium look like a Commodore 64 display, and even a lazy river to “tube” your way around the campus in true Texas summer style. Walking is SO overrated!

We’ve known for a long time that this area of Houston needed a different church. Now you’ve got one. Here are a list of just some of the differences with Redemption Church Houston:

• All guests get a free t-shirt which humbly says on the front: “I went to Redemption Church Houston”; and on the back: “Your church is now irrelevant.”
• I’ll be signing copies of my new book Your Worst Life Now after each of our 24 morning services. That is if I’m actually going to be in town.
• 24/7 access to me via email: thisgoesintothetrash@RedemptionHouston.org
• Our 4K strategy: “From Kroger to Kilgores to KFC to KidsRUs” will ensure that Redemption Church Houston reaches the 11 people in that .04 square-mile territory.
• And so much more.

Again, while I’m incredibly sad to be leaving Clear Creek Community Church, the future is so bright at Redemption Church Houston that in the near future, CCCC will probably become our nursery facilities (if they’re lucky).

For more information you can contact: April Fools’ Day.

• The Church is a Destination.
• The Pastor is a Performer.
• The People are an Audience.

This view of church reinforces the consumeristic, soul-shrinking spirit of the age. It might even make for large congregations, a good name in the community, and the accolades of other congregations. However, it’s far from what the church should look like when she’s on mission. When on mission…

• The Church is a People
• The Pastor(s) is an Equipper.
• The People are Ministers & Missionaries.

When these are true the church is more apt to be what God intended her to be. She becomes more like a movement of men and women, boys and girls, young and old, rich and poor, sent into the world to share with that world the hope of the world.

So, one way you can discover if you’re about the mission of Christ or something else is by asking a simple question: How do you see your church, your pastor, and yourself?

With those words (and new wings in tow) the angel Clarence bids George Bailey a wonderful life with Mary, Zuzu and her siblings, and a swarm of benevolent friends singing around them. It’s an iconic moment in cinematic history that hits a soft spot in my heart. The storyline is wonderful and Jimmy Stewart is…well…classic Stewart (he received an Oscar nomination for his role), but the reason most I love the movie is the end where Bailey’s friends come to rescue him in his time of need. It’s a beautiful picture of selflessness, sacrifice, and love. It is no wonder the tale concludes with a poignant line about friendship.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” I would also add friendship gives value to the spiritual. Indeed, I would argue friendships can be a spiritual discipline. If a spiritual discipline is any activity we engage in order to put us in the best place to receive God’s grace of growth then I’d submit godly friendships along with things such as Bible reading, prayer, corporate worship. I know they have been that for me.

In reflection, I would says friendships become spiritual disciplines when:

1. They care more about your long-term holiness than your short-term happiness. They are those who will give you the last 10% everyone else is thinking but is too afraid to tell you. It’s usually done with an arm around you, in great sobriety, and sometimes in tears. Godly friendships are those individuals who will take the chance of hurting your feelings or angering you in the hopes of getting you to see what they can and you likely can’t. Prov. 27:6, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”
2. They embrace you in your ugliness. Everyone will have a meltdown at some point. The journey is long and it’s easy for things like our sanity, composure, and well-being to wear thin. Add the troubles and trials of the world and you have the perfect storm for disillusion, depression, and despair. Good friends give permission for you to be so angry you can’t see straight, so sad you don’t want to get out of bed, and so confused you can’t even spell your name. Godly friends will let you vent, wait for you to finish, then let you vent some more. Prov. 17:17, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
3. They are not afraid to tell you they love you (…bro). Some men live with a false sense of masculinity telling them the only way they can communicate care and affection for each other is to punch each other in the arm and say something sarcastic. But friends who are unafraid to let you know they care for you are relationships God will use to foster a greater sense of community in your heart which, in turn, can help you realize that in those specific friendships, God has given you a deep grace. I’m always taken with the affection shown by the Ephesian elders toward the Apostle Paul knowing they wouldn’t see him again. Acts 20:36-37 reads, “And when [Paul] had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And there was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him.”

I’m with the newly-winged Clarence; friendship is a big deal. But it can be bigger if you gather those around you who love you enough to continually point you in gospel-directions so you can see in this entire mess called life that Jesus is better, stronger, and exactly who you need right here, right now. Like George Bailey, I need friends who are willing to rescue me. And they do rescue me…back to God’s grace in Christ time and time again. That’s when friendship becomes a spiritual discipline.

Websites

• XXXChurch.com is a ministry specifically toward dealing with pornography and porn addiction
• PureIntimacy.org deals with information about intimacy, sexual addiction, and sexuality in general

Articles and Videos

• Breaking Pornography Addiction (Part 1, Part 2) is an online article by David Powlinson of CCEF
• Women and “Romantic Pornography” is an online article by Betsy Hart
• How the Gospel Helps Us Overcome Pornography is a video by Tim Keller, John Piper, and D.A. Carson
• I Looked for Love in Your Eyes is a powerful letter posted by Tim Challies from a wife to her spouse about how porn damages marriage

Books

• Porn Again Christian by Mark Driscoll is a free e-book on pornography and masturbation
• Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is): Sexual Purity in a Lust-Saturated World by Joshua Harris
• Sexual Detox: For Guys Who Are Sick of Porn by Tim Challies
• Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free by Tim Chester

Software to help with accountability in online integrity:

• Covenant Eyes
• X3 Watch

 For wives of husbands who struggle with porn:

• Help! He’s Struggling with Pornography by Brian Croft
• Shattered Vows  by Debra Laaser
• I Looked for Love in Your Eyes is a powerful letter from a wife to her spouse about how porn damages marriage
• An Affair of the Mind by Laurie Hall
• A United Front is a 60-day course for spouses of those struggling with sexual addiction
• Redeeming the Pain of Sexual Betrayal (Part 1, Part 2) is a podcast hosted by Covenant Eyes
• Renewing Marital Intimacy: Closing the Gap Between You and Your Spouse is a CCEF mini-book

Unfortunately, if you’re a megachurch like we are, it’s an easy charge to make. And even though most who level it have likely never heard one sermon from our pulpit, it apparently makes them feel good to slander us. And yes, it is slander (e.g., Mt. 15:19, 2 Cor. 12:20, Col. 3:8).

But it also got me to thinking about “ear ticklers.” Let me give you another way pastors become ear ticklers in their preaching:

1. When they give the impression their people could never understand the Bible without their help.
2. When they want to dazzle the congregation with their erudite knowledge of the original biblical languages (which they clandestinely learned from a computer program in their office) even though it really has no bearing on that particular passage for the day.
3. When they refuse to use lower shelf terms in order that the message might be more accessible for the hearer instead opting to employ obtuse, technical theo-jargon because not doing so might make them sound too normal.
4. When they’ve obviously exhausted their congregation with 20 weeks of word-by-word (not verse-by-verse) teaching on three chapters in the book of Romans and, even though they’ve run the sermons series into the ground, still continue with the homiletical drudgery because they believe they’ve got the preaching chops to make it happen.
5. When they use their sermons to moralize the Bible in order to moralize their people because it’s easier to work the Law over your congregation than show them their need for the Gospel.
6. When they go over that extra 20 minutes week after week because somehow, it would be a great injustice for all they’ve learned in their study to be constrained in the 45 minutes already allotted in that hour and fifteen minute service.
7. When they walk people through the Scriptures each Sunday showing the Bible to be the best “How To” book of success on the planet but miss the truth that it’s the Story of Redemption telling us the Good News we have failed but One has come and succeeded for us.

“Ear tickling” is very much alive today not only because there are preachers who say things their people want to hear, but because pastors say things they want to hear. Sometimes the man who gets behind the pulpit on Sunday aims to please himself. He preaches to tickle his own ears, satisfy his own sinful passions, sate his pride’s thirst; and those men are found in churches big and small, young and old.

I know they are found in my church because I’ve been guilty of this kind of ear tickling. I found myself saying things I simply wanted to hear, never mind if it helped the person in the pew. Thankfully, it’s something I repented of long ago. That doesn’t mean I never fail, but it does mean I’m more aware if it does happen.

It also helps us see that just because what you say in the pulpit might be doctrinally sound and biblically accurate, there may still be the tickling of ears…yours.

]]> http://blog.yanceyarrington.com/2012/02/14/another-kind-of-ear-tickling/feed/ 5 http://blog.yanceyarrington.com/2012/02/06/take-it-from-a-skeptic-preach-the-word/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=take-it-from-a-skeptic-preach-the-word http://blog.yanceyarrington.com/2012/02/06/take-it-from-a-skeptic-preach-the-word/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:00:28 +0000 Yancey Arrington http://blog.yanceyarrington.com/?p=1980 But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.
- Titus 2:1

Last week my lovely neighbor, who describes herself as more skeptic than spiritual, walked over to our house where my wife Jennefer was sitting on the porch watching the kids and cutting coupons. She sat down next to Jen and said, “I think we may visit your church.” When Jen asked why she wanted to leave her church our neighbor confessed she was angry at her church because they had received a new pastor and Sunday he taught that essentially everyone would go to Heaven regardless if one adhered to any religion (or not).

Then my neighbor, with a tinge of disgust, proclaimed, “I don’t even know half the time if I believe in God or not, but I know what the Bible says and that’s not what it says! And if I’m going to take the time to go to church I at least want to go somewhere where they preach from what the Bible says.”

Woe to the pastor who twists the Word to fit the world because in doing so he will often lose both.

1. Loneliness (Not enough friends): Who are you confessing to? Who knows your ‘junk’? This is the sin of the poor stewardship of not having an inner circle.
2. Busyness (Not enough slowness): Gordon MacDonald wrote, “If my private world is in order, it will be because I am unafraid to be alone and quiet before Christ.” Are you afraid to be alone with Christ? to be still?
3. Pragmatism (Not enough personal growth): Oswald Chambers said, “I hate to meet a man whom I have met ten years ago and find he is at precisely the same point, neither moderated nor quickened but simply stiffened.” Are you more about growing your church and less about growing yourself?
4. Inefficiency (Not enough diligence): This is the sin of an overabundance of taking in social media, technology, and doing everything but that which really matters throughout the week.
5. Self-importance (Not enough humility): Henri Nouwen called us to embrace: littleness, hiddenness, and powerlessness, yet too many pastors seek bigness, spotlight, and power.

Then my fellow pastor-brothers added more:

1. Indispensable: Acting as if the church can’t do it without you.
2. Escape: Any activities that divert you from the responsibilities you bear.
3. Self-Sufficiency: Doing the work without any sense for need of the Spirit’s power and the grace of God.
4. Approval/Fear of Man: Living for the praise of others instead of the praise of God.
5. Risk: Losing your missional edge as your church finds greater “success” and stability.
6. Self-Righteousness: You’ve forgotten how broken you really are. You lead a pastor-centered church.
7. Using People: You choose task over relationship. People are a means to an end.

What are temptations you believe pastors should be acutely aware of?