ABHE Session #3 – David Ireland

The Speaker is David Ireland of Christ Church in Montclair, NJ. (http://www.christchurchusa.org)

We should applaud ourselves for being involved in biblical higher education and serving the church of North America.

“A Life-Changing Conversation”
(Mat 18:1-4) At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” {2} And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, {3} and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. {4} “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Can you imagine that the disciples had the audacity to ask this question? Jesus comes back with an illustration of a child without voting rights or legal impact. The kingdom is not for people who think in a proud, egotistical, self-serving way. It is for people who are willing to live with a sense of brokenness in their lives and depend on the Lord.

“Unless you change” – means to make the future form or content of something different than what it would be on its own. Nothing stops an organization quicker than people who think that the way you used to do things is the way you have to do them tomorrow. One person said, “The most useless are those who never change through the years.”

Deep Change is a rudimentary change that means you can’t go back to the way you were before. 3.5 years ago, he was invited to speak at a New York City church that is a major congregation. They used to drive an hour and a half to go to the services of this church, that was racially diverse. As a young Christian, he would leave with a dream that God could use them in some capacity like that. So 20+ years later, he was going to speak at that church. There were still thousands of people, but they were still singing the same songs, still with the same ministry orientation. It was like the pause button had been pressed and they were still in the 1980s. He wasn’t judgmental, but was convicted to ask the same question, “David, are you guilty of the same?” Have we stopped changing and growing? Just because there’s a measure of success in what you do, has that made you stop pursuing God for a fresh way of pursuing the gospel?

There were a lot of great things going on, but they were steeped in a past. Sometimes when we come to the Lord, we get stuck in that era and don’t even realize it. It’s like going back to your parents’ home. Would you wear the same suit you wore 30 years ago in the 70s? It wouldn’t fit.

Principle #1: We must change. The Christian community, higher education, the body of Christ, members of the local church must change. David Kinnamon’s book unChristian poses this question when he polled people aged 16-29. His three words were Christianity, Evangelical Christianity, and Born-again Christians.

1. Do you have a bad impression . . .? 38% were bad about Christianity, 49% bad about Evangelical Christians, and 35% bad of born-again Christians.
2. Do you have a neutral impression?
3. Do you have a good impression? 16% good about Christianity, 3% good about evangelical Christians, and 10% good about born-again Christians.

Why are they like this? We may perceive that this generation has too much swagger, egotism, pride. It’s not a theological or doctrine issue. We are the ones that are guilty of swagger. We talk too much about the great things we have done rather than how we have served. We brag up our success instead of presenting humility.

Why must we change? Sometimes we’re caught up in producing students who will have lasting impact, but we have not looked at our methodology and seen if we are really changing things. The creator of Betty Crocker said, “When you’re through changing, you’re through.”

We must change because times have changed. One church Father said that the gospel must always have a forwarding address. We have to deal with the society in which we live. Relevance is the ability to say the same thing in a fresh way.

The church is to engage society with Christ’s message of love. The place of change has to start in the place of prayer. Samuel Chadwick said that he was trained to preach, craft sermons that were intellectually engaging. After several years of ministry, he was in prayer (see his book The Path of Prayer) and he became convicted that he was filled with pride and blindness. So he took his pile of precious sermons and burned them. Looking at that moment of his life, revival began to break out in his church.

It’s not just enough to raise up people with homiletical skills and administrative ability. But we have to raise up people that are transformers, agents of change.

The world is not interested in smart people and is not going to be changed by rich people. It will be changed by deep people.

Principle #2: You must change. Those are fighting words. Imagine Jesus saying it to the disciples and them saying it to each other. His church formulated a “change committee.” John Connor has a book called “Leading Change”. You create a sense of urgency. Unless the leaders recognize there is a crisis, those who serve alongside won’t recognize it either.

When we hear this, we may get defensive. If we are going to see systemic change in higher education and in our institutions, it’s about how do we see ourselves? It takes someone else to see us and instruct us.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne was asked by Spurgeon, “What makes you so effective in pulpit ministry?” His answer was “Being armed by the lamps of God”, a reference to Leviticus. He would prepare his sermons by putting his face in his hands and weeping. He would preach the same way.

The institution cannot change unless the leaders are in touch with God, weeping over the student body and the staff.

When his daughter first text messaged him, he was resistant to trying to text back. He didn’t like it. His fingers were big and the keys were small. He was trained by his mother to be particular about writing, grammar, penmanship. And the texting has its own language and grammar. It took him 10 minutes to write it just perfectly. If he had taken the approach that his daughter needed to adopt a more adult-like form of communication, he would be guilty of not being willing to change to stay connected to her.

Principle #3: I must change. Change must appear when we look in the mirror. We aren’t all that we think we are. Our degrees, accolades, manuals, classes aren’t enough to make us what God wants us to be. Unless I change, I’m in a whole lot of trouble. We need outside eyes to help us see what we have gotten used to, but that really needs to be updated. I had to realize that things have changed since I started pastoral ministries 24 years ago.

More statistics from Kinnamon’s book.

Questions were asked of two groups: Young Christians aged 23-41 or young Christians aged 42+ (still young in their faith).
Do you think cohabitation is morally acceptable? 59% yes – 33% yes

Do you think gambling is morally acceptable? 58% yes – 38% yes
Do you think lusting sexually about someone else is morally acceptable? 58% yes – 35% yes
Do you think having sex outside of marriage is morally acceptable? 44% yes – 23% yes
Do you think that getting drunk is morally acceptable? 35% yes – 14% yes
Do you think same sex sexual relationships are morally acceptable? 41% yes – 14% yes

These are troubling findings, because it means that I have to start my pastoral ministries at a different starting point than I did years ago. It’s a different climate and culture today, even among the young Christian community that we serve. We have to start the conversation at a different point.

I don’t know when you got into higher education, but it’s a different group now. It’s a different society, values, and presuppositions. The way we think about doing church and higher education must change.

Sometimes we are scratching where people don’t itch. We are only scratching where we want them to itch. The John Wayne method of schooling (shoving it down their throats whether they want it or not) won’t work.

Kinnamon says that sometimes people have a negative perspective towards us because we teach one thing and live another. That throws our students off. We need to look inside and see what we will do to make necessary changes. We want to be an institution with a fresh touch of God on it, so we can be effective and relevant.

ABHE Session 2 – Francis Chan

ABHE has started the Student Leaders Network, which is the first time we have invited students to be part of our annual meeting. About 40 are in attendance from twelve different institutions.

Growth Awards were given by Evangelical Training Association.
0-199: Carolina Christian College, which grew by 48%. This school is reaching adult learners in urban and metropolitan learning communities.
200-399: Somerset Christian College, located in Zarephath, NJ, grew by over 50%
400-599: Beulah Heights University (Atlanta, GA), grew by 43%
600+: Ohio Christian University, grew by 33%, doing lots of construction. They are a 5 time winner of the growth award in this decade.

Francis Chan is the founder of Eternity Bible College (www.eternitybiblecollege.com) and Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, CA. His book Crazy Love is a Christian bestseller. He is a man of God, a Spirit-emboldened, Scripture-filled man of God. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Chan). He is a graduate of the Master’s College and Master’s Seminary, where John MacArthur is the president.

There are moments when you are so close to God and then you know yourself and how easily pride can jump in there.

When you know how the Bible is going to end, you can go through life and say, “It’s ok.” Is the type of student coming out of our college someone people would want to hang around and be like?

His testimony:
His mom died giving birth to him. His step-mom died in a car accident when he was 9. His dad died when he was 12. In high school, he fell in love with Jesus. When he saw the reality of Hell in Scripture, it terrified him for his friends. He would cut class to invite people to youthgroup. One night he brought 50 visitors to church. He started a Bible club on his high school campus. His junior year, he looked at the yearbook of all the seniors he would never see again and he started calling every one he knew to tell them the gospel because he was worried about them going to hell.

He was a youth ministry intern while a junior college student. And he was sharing with friends at junior college. He wasn’t perfect, but was fired up.

Then he went to Bible college. Then he went to seminary. And those are the five years of his life that he would redo, if he could. Not blaming the college or the seminary, because it was his sin. “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.”

The Bible college environment is a very difficult one to live out biblical Christianity. It was the first time in life he was surrounded by just believers that you eat, drink, play, go to chapel, class, and live with. At that point, he lost his concern for the Lost, because they weren’t there.

In Romans 9, Paul talks about his great sorrow and unceasing anguish for the lost Jews. That was Francis until he got into Bible College. The worst day of his life was when his grandma died, who wasn’t a believer. He was hurting for her, but he lost it when he was living with people who are saved.
Spending time with professors and administrators didn’t help, because they were no longer living with the world, either.

He was mentored by a youth pastor who gave him lots of help studying the Bible and asking questions of accountability. In Bible College, you learn to study the Word without obeying it.

The President warned them that if they weren’t careful, they would study the Bible just to study it and not obey it. One day in seminary class, two policemen came in and handcuffed a student and took him out of class. That student, who worked in the seminary bookstore, was stealing money to pay his tuition and become a pastor.

Those years were the height of his hypocrisy. Studying and memorizing commands without doing them is hypocrisy. It’s like playing Simon Says. Jesus Says go make disciples and we just memorize it. We just study it. In our houses, we wouldn’t let our children get away with just memorizing what we say, even in Greek! We wouldn’t let them study what it would look like if they were to clean our rooms.

How many disciples are we making? How many people are we telling, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”

It wasn’t until he became a total hypocrite that the elders of a church made him step down from his position as a youth pastor, that he figured this out. At age 23, he was humiliated by this. He started waiting tables and fell in love with the waiters and waitresses he was working with. That was the first time he had cried since high school. Then the fire started coming back.

When his church started their own Bible college, then he knew what mistakes to avoid. Several habits to get people to break.

Indebtedness – His Chinese mind says that you should never owe anyone and have things tie you down.
Extravagance – Instead of building an extravagant church for millions of dollars, he was thinking about the people who were hungry around the world and the need to fill the room with people to pay the bills.
Comfort – Once you’re used to being comfortable, it’s hard to take risks. Once you have been in the environment where everyone has made you feel good, are you going to the ends of the earth to risk your life? Comfort isn’t good for us. Does the Holy Spirit lead us into a comfortable life on earth? Who are the popular prophets? Why would we need a comforter if we are already comfortable?

In Korea, he met with a group of people that were taken hostage by the Taliban. They had one Bible and split it into 23 pieces for everyone to have. They were arguing over who would be killed first if the Taliban came after them.

After they were released, everyone who had once been captive came to the pastor privately and said “We wish we were back there, because we were so close to Jesus.” They felt so close because they were in danger.

Some circumstances make you feel like you are with Jesus, in a place of danger, where you have to truly be a disciple. When Stephen saw Jesus, he had no fear of being stoned.

There’s an intimacy we get with Jesus in the middle of the fight that we don’t get when we’re in the middle of comfort. We aren’t at peace when we are comfortable.

When Christians start talking with one another in Christian circles, we get weird. Many Bible college graduates are socially challenged, because they haven’t been in the world enough to understand how to interact with their next door neighbor. They couldn’t go to a party like Jesus could and hang out with them and talk to them. So they get job in Christian organizations and institutions, further separating themselves from the world. There are very few people I want to hire out of a Bible college because of their lack of experience in life and how they have been pulled out of and separated from the world.

I don’t want our students weird. They need to be in the world, and 4 years is a long time for them to be out of the world.

If we’re going to reach the lost with a generation that’s radical and is going to follow us, what will they see?

Once he went back to Hong Kong to visit family. Even though he was 5-9, they said he was so big. But the truth is that they are all so small. When we are lifted up as spiritual leaders, is it because we are spiritual giants or because we live in one of the most spiritually desolate places on earth. When you look elsewhere in the world, they are the giants. If you live in Laodicea, how do you know that you are lukewarm?

Watching video of persecuted Christians being beaten to death makes him think, “Would I endure that?”

Would your students say, “The day I spent with you is the closest thing I have experienced to walking with Jesus.” It’s so much easier to lift up leaders, speakers, and authors, because they all have flaws we can surpass. But when we lift up Jesus, we see how much more we need to live up to. They persecuted and hated Jesus. They will do that to us and our students, too.

So what am I trying to be? A popular author, teacher, or speaker? Or the closest thing our students have experienced to walking with Jesus.

ABHE Main Session #1 – Wayne Cordeiro

The opening session of ABHE happened Thursday afternoon. The theme of the conference is “Moving in step with the Spirit and the Church.” All of the speakers are from churches who have joined the role of biblical higher education.
The first speaker was Wayne Cordiero of New Hope Christian Fellowship, Honolulu, Hawaii. He started the Pacific Rim Christian College.http://www.enewhope.org/aboutus/pastorwayne/

This is one of the fastest growing churches in America, with satellite campuses around the world. Over 80 churches have been planted by this church. Relevance magazine named the church one of the top 5 churches in church growth, church size, influence on other churches, and church innovation. George Barna said that Hawaii was one of the only states where evangelism numbers grew faster than the population. He has authored several books, including Leading On Empty. Above all, Wayne is a servant-leader.

You know I love the Bible colleges to leave Hawaii in order to fly 5,000 miles to stay in a hotel.

You never dim the light of your candle by lighting the candle of another. The church started on the big island and moved to Honolulu in 1995. They call themselves a “homeless” church, because of the economic needs in Hawaii. 1 acre of land outside the city limits is $2.5 million. To build the church that they would need would cost $110 million. Their monthly mortgage to do that would be $370,000 per month. They rent a high school with 1200 inside an auditorium and tents outside in tents. Collectively there are 21 services every weekend and 1500 volunteers to set up and tear down.

They own 6 shuttle busses running during services to get people where they need to go. It isn’t a lack of resources that kills churches, but a lack of resourcefulness.

Will this recession be remembered as the great recession or the recession that made us great? Recession times pulls away all the extra stuff and gets us back to “fighting weight.”

One woman showed up there thinking it was a craft fair, but accepted Christ at the end of the service.

Matthew 13 is the reason I’m here. “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

The New and the Old
Our greatest ministry will be in the next generation. 1500 people are leaving the ministry every month. In the next decade, 1/3 of the churches will have a leadership changeover. That’s 126,000 leaders that will change in the next 10 years. The baby boomer pastors are retiring. There is an attrition in the churches, because everything rises and falls on leadership. One denomination last year recorded zero conversions. Another denomination spent $369 million in the last 5 years and planted negative 21 churches (with those who closed). God is calling more leaders to churches (John 4, Luke 10; Matt 9).

Right now we are moving 66,000 miles an hour through space, which is faster than the spin cycle on a washing machine. Job says we’re like a sigh, the Psalmist like a breath, James says we’re like a vapor.

God could have had us born at any time he wanted. But instead, he has taken us and placed us right here, almost at the end of time. We are running anchor in the relay of the saints. It’s a great privilege, but also a great responsibility. God has asked us to be part of training that 126,000 new leaders for the next 10 years. God believes in us, so we have to think carefully about our role.

The great theologian Dr. Seuss talked about how important we are: “If you had never been born”

You are so important to God’s plan, but we forget about it and miss the very reason we exist. One day we will stand before the throne of God, and he will ask how many did you bring with you? What will you talk about? The buildings, the choir, the programs? Our reason is to evangelize those on a course to hell, turn them around, disciple them, and send them into the harvest.

A friend turned in a college term paper with the comments: great bibliography, stellar illustrations, excellent grammar. Grade: F. Wrong assignment. In the end, God will not hold you accountable for what you have done as much as he will hold you accountable for how much you have done that he has asked you to do. This is why the mission statement of a Bible college is so important.

Your heart should pound with the most compelling vision you can arrange, and you set your sights accordingly. In the movie Terminator, someone from the future comes back to alter history by killing a lady and her son. Another person comes back from the future to protect that person who will be born. In our schools are people like that, who are going to change history. They have the potential to do great things. The Enemy is doing anything possible to distract them from their call, give them head knowledge without heart knowledge, and to keep them from obeying. God is using us to protect them, make sure that they get what they need to be successful.

Russell Christof was walking down a supermarket aisle one day and he saw his picture on the Folgers Coffee can. Ten years earlier, he had gone in for a preliminary photo shoot. They took some pictures but never called him back. They had been using his picture for 10 years. He sued and the court awarded him $15.3 million. It pays to recognize who you are!

Something New . . .
A new starting point: You are the shapers of tomorrow’s leaders because you are teachers and mentors. You hold in your hands the DNA of tomorrow’s leaders. Tomorrow’s leaders will become just like you. There is a deep tendency to respond or make decisions according to the way you have been mentored. Even in four years, there is a lot that we can inculcate and contribute to them. If we do it wrongly, we will be passing on a mutated baton for the future.

You and I must remember that we may teach what we know, but ultimately we will reproduce what we are. If we want our students and disciples to be devoted to God, we must be devoted to God. If we want our students to love their spouses, we must love our spouses. If we want our students to be genuine life-long learners, we must be genuine life-long learners. Students don’t need more brains, they need more motivation. They will only receive motivation from sources that are credible.

If your relative needed a life-saving operation and your parents said they would pay for it if you made straight A’s, every student would make straight A’s. They just need motivation.

The first day of Bible college, having been a Christian only 3 months, he cut his hair and went to Eugene Bible College with a paperback New Testament. He sat down for a devotion in class, and the teacher asked him to turn to Jeremiah. He turned around and said, “Who is Jeremiah.” A student said, “In your Bible, stupid.” So he looked in the NT, but couldn’t find it. So he felt like quitting. The second class was taught by a lady who taught Old Testament History and asked the class to share what their dreams were with fellow students. She assigned them to write down what their dream was. He wrote his and turned it in. When he got the paper back, her comments said, “I noticed from your comments that the hand of God is on your life. You keep walking strongly. We are so honored that you are here. The kingdom of God has been waiting for you.” He read it a dozen times before he went to bed that night. That gave him enough purpose in his life to continue with school and finish it well. Whatever we want them to be, we have to become. No one wants an heirloom that is oak veneer on pressed board. You need to be oak all the way to the core if you are going to pass down to another generation. They need their motivation from credible sources.

If you want to walk through this life and leave the footprints of Jesus behind, then who has to be in you all the way to the core? It has to be the light of Christ. And all you do is walk. You don’t leave your footprints behind, you leave his.

A new learning style: We used to learn through our brains. Now students learn through their thumbs. Email, phone calls, or text messages. Right now in America, there are 4.1 billion text messages sent every day. This is the way we communicate today. For us not to harness and use that is to miss something. As fishers of men, we don’t start at our starting point, we start at their starting point. Then we redeem it in such a way that they can understand.

There is so much new technology that we have to start learning again. Twenty percent of brand new knowledge enters the workforce every year. If you are in computers, there’s 100% new knowledge every 18 months. If we don’t start learning again, then you are intellectually instinct in 5 years. Those who have stopped learning have become very territorial. They are afraid of new people coming in and taking their job. So start learning again. Learn something new this year. If we are telling our students to learn, then we must be learners also. Learn a new computer program.

Ever since the beginning of human existence, the key to human survival has been to do things just like your ancestors did. For instance, farming isn’t something that was reinvented every five years. If you messed up, you would have a crop failure. So you did it exactly like earlier generations. The hay baler was invented in 1850 and it’s basically the same now. The pneumatic nail gun was only invented in 1990. For hundreds of years before that, people drove a nail the same way. It can be devastating to education when we refuse to change. It leads to extinction if we fail to change. Technology and science are moving forward.

“May you stay in one place the rest of your life” is the ultimate curse for a Bedouin group.

What is old . . .
The old time gospel is the unchangeable truth. People are not tired of the gospel, they are just tired of tired presentations of the gospel. Isaiah 40:8.

There is a trend in some colleges to dilute the gospel. But you have to hang on to the word of God. God does not honor delivery systems, curricula, or programs. He honors His Word. If we don’t have the hand of God in our work, we are impoverished. Looking at revivals in different countries, you can see God with his hand on certain institutions at points in time and then moved to elsewhere. Why does one place give audience to the hand of God and the other ceases to experience it? It comes down to whether we are bringing delight to Jesus Christ. As we are learning so many new things, we are doing it for an audience of one.

At New Hope Church, if they have to move to a location where everyone can come together at one point, they plan months or years in advance. So they then found out on short notice that they weren’t going to be able to have church. The only place they could go is an outdoor park. Rain is a concern with sound and lights and things like that. So they were praying and fasting that there wouldn’t be rain at this service they were about to have. Their Saturday night / Sunday services were coming. It was drizzling on Saturday at noon and raining by Saturday at 5:00 pm. So they prayed constantly not to have rain. After the evening service with rain, they prayed more that there wouldn’t be rain. The next morning it was pouring. He continued to pray and it continued to rain. People were still worshipping. The closest he came to hearing God’s voice was in the midst of that rain say, “You’re praying for the absence of rain, but you aren’t praying for my attendance today. You are more concerned about the absence of problems than you are about the presence of God. I could stop the rain and bring the sun out, but without my presence, this would be a barren dessert. Or I can start a revival in the midst of the rain.”

Instead of praying for the absence of problems, pray for the presence of God. We are called to be anchor saints, to mentor these young John Wesley’s, Billy Graham’s, and other workers. They don’t need more brains, they need more motivation from credible sources because they can see what’s in our core. If we reproduce what we are, it will be a natural thing. When God sees the old-time gospel, his presence will be attending to our colleges, and we will see what God can do. There’s nothing greater than that. Wait, watch, and you will see.

I thought this message was very challenging to the issue of staying relevant and sincere in our teaching of students. They are looking through the surface and will see what is in our hearts and in our minds.

What are your responses? Feel free to comment on the blog or write back to this email.

Preparing for Meetings

After a weekend of relaxation in Florida, we are ready to go to work here at the ABHE meetings. Thanks to everyone holding down the fort in Moberly while Ron, Rick, and I are learning and sharing here in Orlando.

As I prepare for my participation in the ABHE communication committee on Wednesday, what is on the agenda is a re-evaluation of the purpose for ABHE. If you are interested, in the comments of the post, please share your opinion of what the most valuable things ABHE has to offer Central Christian College of the Bible. I would love to think through that meeting with any ideas you have already in my mind.

More updates to come. Hope you enjoyed the break from faculty meeting this week!

David

ABHE is coming

Time to resurrect this blog for ABHE! I’ll be posting information from meetings, sessions, and discussions that I participate in while in Orlando. I hope you will find it enlightening and may even want to participate in the conversation.

This is a test post, but other posts will be forthcoming, delivered to your email inbox.