When it comes to Easter- Size Matters.

Welcome to Mastering Monday —where I hope to tackle some often experienced but not often talked about personal and professional issues affecting leaders. 

Since today is the day after Easter, which is basically the World Cup of the big “C” church, I want to talk about what I read on almost every church leaders social media feed this past weekend.

It was painful to read the amped up messaging from around the globe regardless of what group they represented or whose feed I scrolled through.

I’m not throwing stones. I’ve done the same thing.

But as Easter weekend progressed more and more leaders posted things like: “2 services down, 5 more to go…”  or  “Check out our great volunteers serving today in the Esther overflow parking lot.” or ” Praise God we ran out of chairs @ the 11:00 service!” After reading a number of comments like that…

my stomach turned… my head hurt…and my heart ached.

I’ve lost count of the times I made similar boasts. 

A few years ago, we were in the middle of a ton of Easter services at several different campuses.  I required myself to speak at most of those services. I totally remember thinking and saying publically:

“We’ve already done 4 services, pray for us, we’ve got seven more to go.”

Today I think I can see more of what was behind that statement– I needed people to notice all our/ my heroic efforts for Jesus.

Hold on, last I checked, Easter is supposed to be about celebrating Jesus’ historic heroism, but, there I was trying to make some part of it about me and mine. 

I did this. And it really does sadden me nuow.

And then come the conversations with the staff and pronoucements to the congregation that go something like…

“Yay team! You guys were amazing! ( and, my gosh, they were! You can’t pull off an event like that without a mass of hurculean effort by a LOT of dedicated people.)  Let’s give a shout out to God! We had a boatload of services with X number of thousands of people attending!! God was glorified and X number of hundreds indicated they now want to follow Jesus!!”

The stats must be announced. That stuff matters to people! But, truly, which people? And, why the urgent need to broadcast it to the ends of the earth? I was pointing at the wrong stuff and, on several levels, missing the point.  Easter is about the “success” of a victorious Jesus and yet this past weekend I saw post after post of “look at all we did at our riculously, amazing church as we talked about our risen Savior.”

Even though Jesus’ Easter weekend journey was a supernatural phenomenon, upon closer examination we see his  ‘success’ came by way of a failure methodology. 

One post “Easter Monday” from a well-known international church leader who had ten’s of thousands at his services, read like a joking lament that though his church HAD, indeed, gathered a whole lot of people —it was nothing compared to what his pastor friend in another part of the world had done… by packing out the largest soccer stadium in the country!

I saw myself in that pastor who was already serving more people than most churches in the world—yet, still seems concerned on some level that there is yet a higher attendance number to attain. 

In defense of my brother and, even, if I may, myself —I truly believe the majority of his and my motives have been good and God-honoring… my heart—as well as I could know it—has always been to draw as many people to Christ as possible while at the same time glorifying him.

But, if I’m  brutally honest, there was some part of me that wouldn’t have minded a little acknowledgement for myself and our efforts for his cause. 

When you think about it, the “ways” of Jesus are really not all that attractive.

Yet, it seems so much of what we do in our churches is to make ourselves and Jesus look as exciting as we think our culture needs us to be.

Jesus was constantly saying that the first on earth will be the last in his kingdom—that those on the top will end up on the bottom. And though it’s recorded that he spoke to large crowds on several occasions, he didn’t seem enamored with it. Gathering ever-growing crowds was never his concern or emphasis. You’d think he would have exhausted himself getting the word out to as many as possible  since his time was short.

Bob Goff frames the situation beautifully:

“When Jesus rose from the dead he didn’t make a speech, he made breakfast for his friends.”

Jesus just keeps inverting our whole equation of worth and significance.  He seems to initially hand us a losers script not a champions cup. Pure genius. He keeps trying to get across in some pretty demonstrative ways how fleeting, distracting and self inflating the nature of “more” is if our true intention is to follow him.

So, here are a couple of things I’m working on these days to better right-size my understanding of success, and to help me further participate with God in the on-going transformation of my true motives:

1.  Stay aware of my ‘shadow self.’  All of us have both virtues and vices operating in us ALL time.  We have both, of what Jesus called, “wheat and weeds.”  The more I’ve come to recognize the “weeds”  lurking in my shadow, the less power they have to influence me.

You’ve heard the expression- “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”  From my experience that’s spot on biblical advice if we know our worst enemies are really our own inner demons.

We have to be able to see something before we can name it, and we have to name something before we can change it.

2.  Admit when my shadow self is at work- I’m finding the more I can declare to at least one other person or even publicly (whenever appropriate) some hidden motive in me, it takes much of the power out of it. The more I keep bringing any darkness in me into the light, the less chance it has to affect me. 

I love church leaders.  I know each one of them is, in some way,  hoping to make a dent of a difference in the world for Jesus.   I am deeply grateful and so often proud of what they do.

But, I also know there are other things stirring, undetected beneath the surface of every leader’s ( every persons) soul.. a few of which, ultimately brought devastation to my life. 

That’s why I’m intent on doing whatever I can to help leaders not just avoid a catastrophe, but to help them find the deepest levels of satisfaction and true success that I’m experiencing  more and more of these days.

There is an ancient spiritual metaphor that encourages us  to see our life with God like a finger that points to the moon… We are to merely point people to the power and splendor of God. We, being reminded of Paul’s teaching on the body of Christ, are just one of the fingers.

Religion seems to get obsessed and overly identified with being THE FINGER while it tries to point to the moon. 

It defines itself in comparison to other fingers, other leaders, churches, groups, companies, etc.

When we do that we forget that we’re just a pointing finger, we’re not the point.  We’re actually pointing to Someone far greater... The One who is the whole point.

It’s not about the size of the finger

but the splendor of the moon it points us to.