In the continuing saga of Old vs. New, I have stated that we as ministers, and Christians, need each other, no matter what generation we come from or what style of worship music we prefer. Whether the McKameys or Hillsong, the real issue is that we are stronger together than isolated, and this current NFL season offers some insights and examples of how old and young can work together.

Would I rather go into war with a seasoned veteran or a young lion? An old war-horse who is familiar with the territory and knows all the tricks, or a hungry stallion strong in youth and filled with passion for the fight?

The answer? I want to go into battle with BOTH.

We need the caution and experience of those who wear the scars and tell the stories of victories and defeats, but we also need the zeal and energy of those not bound by tradition and expectations, denominations or committees.

Take the New England Patriots. Not my favorite team by a long shot. But this year they have the most effective offense in NFL history. Their coach, Bill Bellichick, is a seasoned veteran who has trained a young phenom named Tom Brady as his quarterback. Old and new, working together, laying opponents to waste. And not only has the coach invested the entire Patriot dynasty in Tom Brady, the young lion, he drafted 2 of the most respected seasoned veterans in the NFL during the off-season. Junior Seau “retired” as a linebacker for San Diego and was done in football until he joined the Patriots. He is having his best season ever. And Randy Moss, who is old enough to draw a pension (nearly) and became a joke at Oakland last year is catching passes and making plays that NOBODY in their 20’s is doing. He is 10-15 years older than most players in the NFL. Why is he showing out like this? He is a veteran who is working with a lion.

How stupid for Tom Brady and Randy Moss to argue over offensive styles, pass routes, or who gets the most press time after a victory! The bottom line is the team. THE TEAM!!!

If we play for the team, if we work for the Kingdom of God and not our own reputation, our own fame, or our own preferences in doing church, we are more effective for Christ and His mission of redeeming the world.

I just wish more people, especially ministers, could build a bridge over the generation gap and work together like Brady and Moss, the veterans and the lions, the seasoned and the rookies, working together for Jesus Christ.

This is not some liberal, feel-good, Oprah plea for harmony. This is a life or death necessity because people’s souls are at stake.

The question as I see it for these 2 cultures of doing church is not so much “…is the old way or the new way(s) better” but instead “..can we cross the cultural divide of old vs. new and help each other?” And the answer, as I see it, is an emphatic YES. But HOW do we help each other?

Two examples come to mind. First, I saw an old friend at church yesterday. He and his wife surprised all of us at Broad River Community Church. We have been friends with him for years and our ministry has partnered with him numerous times. He felt God calling him to leave his ministry at a traditional church in a conservative southern town and step out in faith to plant a new church with the specific goal of making life-long disciples. His experience in the traditional church has prepared him to venture out into new territory, like a modern exploration of a new continent. He is scared but confident, nervous but excited. He takes with him the cultural and spiritual legacy of not only his former church, but the old paradigm. This for him is essential to being obedient and effective in the new church plant.

Secondly, my close friend Perry who is the pastor a large church in SC (newspring.cc) told me that his former pastor, Danny, called him this week to have lunch. Danny is the pastor of a small, traditional church of perhaps 300 people while Perry pastors a church of over 8,000. Danny is old enough to be Perry’s father, and ironically that is actually what he is doing. He is acting as a spiritual mentor and father to a young pastor. He is not jealous or envious of the size of the new church, but instead chooses to share his wisdom, lessons, failures and triumphs with a younger pastor who needs that sort of persepctive.

This is how we help each other. Older pastors with scars and stories not only invest spiritual wisdom in the lives of young pastors without the experience, they also find that through sharing their lives, envy-free, with the “new guys” that they themselves find healing and spiritual restoration. So I urge established, seasoned pastors to seek out the young lions that God is raising up and train them, mentor them, just talk to them like you care for them.

Several years ago, Rick Gage (evangelist) and Rick Stanley (Elvis Pressley’s brother) said something to me before I spoke at one of their summer camps. They said “We want to bring in young guys like you that God has annointed so we can give you the chance to learn the ropes. We are getting older and will one day be dead. We won’t be around forever, so it is our responsibility to see the next generation of guys prepared to take the ball and run with it when our generation is gone.”

I could not say it better, and I could not agree more.

It seems that my post a few days ago concerning pastors entitled “Shooting The Wounded” hit a nerve. The sheer volume of response I have received in comments and emails means my instincts were right; there are countless ministers who have been burned, or are near burn-out, for various and sundry reasons. They need a voice. They need people to care, shoulders to lean on, and healing from the pressures of ministry. Your comments have kept my mind camped out in this space for the past few days, questioning the connection (or disconnection) between the congregation and their shepherds, and especially the growing animosity between old streams (traditional church) and new streams (contemporary, emerGING, emerGENT, missional, etc.).

I pose a question: Can we help each other at all? I am not so much talking about the old-school approach and the new-school approach of DOING CHURCH. That can be discussed at a later date (it will, I promise). I am specifically talking about MINISTERS. Can ministers help each other?

In 20 years of itinerate ministry, I feel confident that I can speak candidly on this subject. Pastors risk isolation, depression, discouragement, loneliness, spiritual fatigue, satanic attack, jealousy, territorialism from other pastors, political posturing of fat cats in the church, emotional exhaustion, obesity, high blood pressure, panick attacks, and alienation from their spouses and children. While not every pastor succumbs to these, many do.

My point? We need each other. The old and the new, the young and the old, the traditional and the missional, we need the fellowship and community and accountability. We need to confess. We need to laugh and cry together. We need to hear one another’s stories, empathize and celebrate and worship together. We cannot afford to cut ourselves off from the only other people on the planet who understand our lives and have a context for our struggles.

Over the next few posts, I will offer a few ideas on how we can do this, no matter what stream or strand or tradition we come from. I am afraid if we don’t ban together now, many more will walk away from ministry having given up under the pressure.

**I wrote this reflection several months ago, and after spending the day with my boys today, I felt like it may stir up some emotion in everyone who has ever loved a child or hopes to one day have children**

“You have to learn to walk before you can run.”

This worn out cliche has been repeated so many times that it is almost meaningless. But there are reasons for cliches. They don’t just create themselves. Stuff happens, consistently, to a large number of people, and phrases are created to describe phenomenons that most people have witnessed. They are shared within the general population and thus, a cliche is created. They regain a sense of meaning when they actually happen to us or near us, and we are reminded of why they exist in the first place.

That is what just happened to me. Right in the middle of some extremely important ministry endeavor that I was immersed in, right here in this very office from which I type, God slid right up beside me and in essence said “Hey son, you need to see this.”

In the office with me were my two boys. I had tuned them out for just a minute to get some important stuff done. While I was engrossed in that stuff, my youngest son Joseph was stammering across the floor, taking his first multiple-steps. He had already been walking, but only one or two steps at a time. This time, his eyes were fixed, his eyebrows were raised, and his lips were wrapped pensively around his slightly protruding tongue. He was in the zone.

I sat there and soaked in the sheer HISTORY of that very moment. My boy was learning to walk. He was teaching himself. Or maybe he was surrendering to the natural instincts of development that God placed in all little boys and girls. He wanted to walk more than anything in the world at that moment. He was intent. His mind, as little as it was, was made up. Nothing would stop him, and there was no turning back.

He would never settle for crawling again. It would no longer satisfy him. He had stood upright. His perspective had changed. All fours would just never do anymore. It was so inefficient. Walking was (going to eventually be) so much faster.

As I sat mesmerized, I thought to myself “I am watching my flesh and blood do something for the first time that will never be the first time again.” I had better remember this because this is the kind of thing parents talk about when they say cliches like “Before you know it, they will be grown” or “You will turn around and wonder where all those years went.” So I decided to watch and appreciate it and let him fall, and get up, and fall, and get up. Undeterred, this went on for a long time. Until his big brother discovered what he was doing.

Jacob went nuts. He ran full-steam toward Joseph and hit him like a linebacker. The blood and carnage ensued along with wild screams and lots of tears. Daddy swooped in for the rescue. I cuddled Jospeh with kisses and hugs. I threatened Jacob with dismemberment and a removal of cartoon priveleges until his adolescence.

In the erupting chaos (which I have learned just kinda comes out of nowhere with children) it dawned on me. Jacob already knows how to run, but Jospeh is just learning to walk. You have to walk before you can run. So, that is what that means…

We use “walk” and “run” to describe how we relate to God. We call it our “walk with The Lord.” Paul called the faith a “race” and said “we run this race with patience.” Things as ordinary as walking and running are how we talk about the relationship we have with God. But we have to learn how. We must start somewhere.

I am pretty sure of this…Joseph will never go backwards. Crawling is so old-school for him now. Once he tasted of the pleasures of walking upright, he was ruined on its goodness. And “before I know it, I will turn around and he will be running around the house!” Then he will be driving, and getting married, and having his own children.

Why do we regress with God? Why do I sometimes move backwards? Why do I crawl so often when I have learned to walk and I have learned to run? The answer? Because I am still a baby. I am weak and undisciplined. At times I cannot find the strength it takes to stand up or move forward. So like a baby, I just wait on my attentive daddy to come pick me up and help me get back on my feet. He holds my hands, helps steer me around dangerous objects, and gives me the support I need to do something I should already know how to do.

I am just like my boy. I am still learning to walk. When I think I have it figured out, I collapse. But that’s allright, too, because I have a PERFECT daddy who is overflowing with grace for me, and He never takes His eyes off of me, not even for a minute. With Him in the room, I am going to be just fine.

Thanks for entertaining the sappy musings of a ruined and proud daddy.

This is a very religious nation or ours, and this is not a bad thing. Not always.

Because of our freedom to choose to believe in something or nothing, which was the God-inspired genius of those men who framed our little governing document called the Constitution, religion has flourished in our democracy. Actually, only one religion has flourished. All the others have had the chance, but none has found the privileged place that Christianity has. Setting all debates aside concerning whether or not we ever were a Christian nation, no one with a lick of common sense would argue that all the other religious groups, sects or cults combined could rival the numbers or the influence of the religion of Christianity. This brings me to my question…

Have most professing American Christians been EXPOSED to the RELIGION of CHRISTIANITY or have they EXPERIENCED the REALITY of CHRIST? The difference between these two is staggering.

Exposure to the religion of Christianity is something that we all have in common. Exposure comes in all flavors and forms. Vacation Bible School as a kid. A sleepless night tuned into a TV preacher on a local cable access channel. A CNN special on The Evangelicals and politics. Seeing Billy Graham adress the nation at the National Cathedral after September 11. A Switchfoot song played over the speakers during a meal at Chic-Fil-A. All of these things expose the individual to elements of the Christian religion, and in a nation such as ours, we can expect this type of exposure to continue.

But when someone confuses Exposure with Experience, the results are not just devastating. They are deadly. Eternally.

Experiencing the reality of Christ brings more than feelings of religious liberty or even a sense of goodness. One can be Exposed to facts about abortion, stories about how long Noah’s ark was, testimonials of deliverance from addiction or voting habits of Baptists in Tennessee, and never once personally Experience the breath-taking grace of God.

It’s like this. My entire life I wanted to go to the Grand Canyon. It became an obsession. My Exposure to the Grand Canyon began in books I read in elementary school. The pictures mesmerized me. Then later I watched specials on PBS where they actually showed videos of it; covered in snow, during thunderstorms, people hiking to the bottom. I had taken everyone else’s word on how magnificent it was. But until I Experienced it for myself, it was just a shadow and a rumor.

In 1994, I drove to Arizona with two good friends, and when I got my first glimpse of the Grand Canyon from our moving vehicle, I nearly hyper-ventilated. When I stood atop the edge of the North Rim and let the breeze hit me in the face off the Colorado river, I was ruined. 24 hours and 15 miles later, I had my sore, blistered feet submerged in those icy cold waters. Every day for the next two years, that giant hole in the ground called me back until the summer of 1996 when I rafted the upper half of the Grand Canyon. It still was not enough. I returned in 2000 with my new wife. We hiked the South Rim and rafted the lower half. And I have been back 5 times since 2000. The Experience surpassed the Exposure.

Exposure to something great is not the same as Experiencing it for yourself. Hearing the stories of Jesus does not mean you believe them to be true. You will never know how good Jesus is until you quit looking at pictures of Him, watching movies about Him, and listening to others talk about Him. Until you Experience His grace, He is nothing more than a shadow and a rumor. No matter how much Exposure you’ve had in this religion-saturated culture we live in.

Don’t take my word for it. Experience Him for yourself. Taste Him and see that He is good. The real Jesus is even better than the stories and the pictures.

One of my great joys over the past 20 years as an itinerant preacher has been the opportunity to meet pastors. These men are my heroes. I have grown to love and respect not only what they do, but the ability God gives them to do it year after year for His glory. And it does not matter if they are pastors of mega-churches or small rural congregations that cannot afford to pay them a salary. Pastors are front and center in the life and death battle between light and darkness. Because of the difficulties and pressures of the pastoral calling, I have tried over the past few years to give them the benefit of the doubt, pray for them in all circumstances, stand up for them when they are mentioned in a negative fashion, and be less critical of them when I preach. After all, I may preach in 200 different places in a year. A pastor usually preaches in one place to the same people, week in and week out. Bottom line: I love and respect pastors and they live under a scrutiny that most of us can never understand.

That is why this story is such a hard one to tell. But it must be told. And I pray that this never happens to your pastor, and that your church never allows this sort of destruction to take place in the life of the person God calls to shepherd your congregation.

Several years ago I ran into a pastor at a store while shopping. I had preached for him a decade earlier and asked how his church was doing. Here is the conversation that followed.

“Well Clayton, I really can’t say how the church is doing because they fired me 2 years ago and I have not been back, or even heard from anyone since I left. I was there for 13 years. Attendance doubled, we built a new sanctuary and added 4 new staff positions. But what I did not realize is that I let church work become my life. It came before my family and it even became more important to me than Jesus.”

“I figured out who the power players were in the church, and a deacon told me to make sure I did not make any of them mad because they had the 2 things that mattered most; family and money. So I made every decision based on them. I preached for them, made sure I did not offend them, and made special efforts to cater to them and their families. This brought short-term success, but I was burning out. I had no passion left. I was just working for a paycheck and health insurance for my family.”

“I did not realize how much I had negelcted my kids until one became a drug addict and the other one slipped into deep sexual sin. I did not even know my own children, and it was my fault. Then one day I came home from a church meeting and my wife had taken all of her stuff and left a note on the table that said she was tired of it. She hated me for ignoring my family and she blamed me for everything, for putting the church before them.”

You can imagine the lump in my throat as I stood there and listened to this grown man choke back tears over the family he lost. He was broken; a ghost of the leader, pastor, and shepherd I had met 10 years earlier. Then the saddest words to ever leave his lips landed on my ears.

“So what did my church do when all of this happened? The people I had served and pastored called a business meeting and they fired me. No discussion. They said they could not have a divorced pastor with rebellious kids leading their congregation. They gave me 2 months salary and wished me luck.”

No grace. No counseling. No support. Maybe they felt he was unable to lead them any further. Fine. But not even a reception with cupcakes and juice to say thanks for 13 years? This is way too common. I see it more than most anyone else because my calling carries me so many places, and when I hear these stories, I cry out to God to protect pastors, and the churches they serve, from shooting the wounded. Of course not every church is like this and not every pastor suffers such a fate, but this man did. And he is not the only one. God help him, his wife, and his kids. And God help the Body of Christ to offer mercy and compassion to our own wounded who lay on the side of the road, in a ditch, waiting on anyone, even a Samaritan, to come to their aid.

(Note: This story was shared in a sermon called “Protecting Your Pastor” this past weekend at Newspring Church in Anderson, SC. To view or listen to the sermon, visit newspring.cc)

I love to read. All sorts of things. Fiction and Theology. Fantasy and Sports. I really enjoy the newspaper, if for no other reason than to practice a mindless task that allows me a momentary escape from the pressures of my own world.

I read an editorial recently that essentially said American culture was broken and beyond repair. It cited our consumerist mentality, skyrocketing divorce rate, obsession with entertainment, and the willingness of many to camp out for days to buy a Playstation III, then turn around and sell it on Ebay for $10,000 to someone who could not wait til after Christmas to have one. Part of our problem, according to this editorial, is our corporate, personal, and even religious obsession with the bottom line; numbers.

This perspective caused me to ask a very important question…do the numbers really matter?

Of course, the answer depends on the context of the question. Are we talking about interest rates or the price of college tuition? Are we talking about attendance at Sunday School or the statistics of our favorite quarterback? (Tony Romo followed by Brett Favre, in that order, in my opinion).

In one sense, when numbers become the bottom line something very valuable is lost. If all a church ever does is count bodies in seats on Sundays, they will soon find those bodies disappearing for a lack of substance in the services. If a corporation only cares about profit margins, they soon lose sight of issues like professional excellence, the quality of their product, or employee and customer relations. So in one respect, I am forced to conclude that numbers, by themselves, do not really mean that much.

There is another side to the equation, though. If the numbers only represent dollar signs then they become a success-o-meter by which, in business work or the church, we feel more profitable or holy than our competitors. But if numbers represent things we value, like people and relationships, suffering and injustice, or those who have never heard the gospel, then I suggest they indeed matter greatly, not just to us, but to God as well.

Let me illustrate my point. How many years have I been married? Five? Two? Does it matter? Of course it does. I have been married eight years, and that number is important because it represents, in a diluted yet significant way, my relationship with Charie. And anyone who forgets how long they have been married, or what day they celebrate their anniversary, will be quickly reminded how important those numbers are.

How many children do I have? One? Four? Actually, I have two (Jacob and Joseph) and I had better know that, because the number of offspring in my home means something.

How much is your monthly mortgage? Your monthly health insurance? Your weekly salary?

All of these things are represented by numbers. Of course the actual numbers mean nothing, but they symbolize the things in life we love (our family) and the things we need to survive (a home, income, etc).

So when I often hear people, especially Christians, comment on how we should not get “hung up” on numbers, I think I understand what they mean. They probably mean that we should not make numbers the measure of success or the means to happiness or that people should never be lost in a spread sheet or an attendance report sent into a denominational office. And yes, anyone can make the numbers talk a certain way or sing a certain tune by embellishing or stretching them to accomplish a selfish goal or to push a self-serving agenda.

Yet I sometimes feel a bit awkward when I return from a church or a conference where many people have made decisions to repent of their sins and confess their faith in Christ, not because I doubt their sincerity, but because I know the skepticism by which many Christians view “the numbers.” Figures have been so abused by so many that even I am reluctant to believe some of the reports I hear about the unexplainable growth of the church in China or the numbers of people converting to Christianity right now in Africa. Occasionally I will comment on how many people made a decision to be saved at an event, and I see smirks, sideways glances, or even chuckles. Maybe the reason it is so hard for some Christians to believe that God is really active in our world and that people are still being saved by His grace is that we are embedded in a culture obsessed with figures, dollars, and impressive statistics. We don’t trust them anymore. We are not impressed by them.

God is not impressed by them either, but the numbers do matter, because the numbers are a shadowy representation of people; people that God loves and people that Christ died to save.

Consider for just a moment some of the numbers that should matter to all of us.

Over 5 million Jews were murdered under Hitler’s Germany. Do they matter?

At least 200,000 people have been killed and another 500,000 have been displaced in Darfur, Sudan by the Janjaweed militia and a corrupt government run by Islamic fundamentalists. Do they matter?

In the next 24 hours, over 30,000 human beings on this earth will die because they did not have sufficient food to eat or clean water to drink. Do they matter?

A little boy in the slums of Detroit will watch his mama shoot heroin today that she bought with her son’s lunch money. Does she matter?

A 15 year old girl will walk into a doctors office scared to death and broke, wondering if she will be able to care for the baby growing in her womb. Does she matter? Does the baby?

Often times, the same people who say the numbers don’t mean anything when it comes to evangelism and missions are the same people who are quick to throw out the numbers of soldiers killed in battle, the number of children with AIDS in Uganda, or the number of families living in poverty.

Here is my point…THEY ALL MATTER. ALL OF THEM.

There are nearly 2 billion people on this planet who have never heard the gospel, and they matter.

Since June, our ministry has seen God save over 2,000 people, and they matter.

A church in SC pastored by a close friend just baptized over 500 new Christians and every last one of them matters.

Over the last 10 years, students at Crossroads camps have given over $400,000 to orphans in India, and every dollar given matters.

And every single person that sits in that pew at a little country church on Sunday matters, all 80 of them. And every single person that sits in those plush theatre seats at your mega-church on Sunday matters, all 12,000 of them.

Please, let’s stop saying that the numbers don’t matter. People that are made in the image of God, loved by Christ, and set free from sin and bondage by the Cross were so important to God that He took drastic measures to win their salvation. If they matter to Him, they should mean something to us, too.

So as my 35th birthday approaches, does that number mean anything to me? Sure it does. My car insurance will likely go down. My health insurance will likely go up. My knees and shoulders hurt more frequently and a cheeseburger stays with me alot longer than it used to. But what really matters is not the number, but the lovely bride that sits in the next room and those two precious boys upstairs taking their afternoon naps as I type. Thanks be to our Almighty God for giving us the ability to live for the things that matter eternally.