Better Late than Never

Today is June 19. For most of us, that doesn’t mean much. But to our African American brothers and sisters, this day rivals July 4. On July 4, we celebrate our independence as a nation, but even after we declared our freedom from England in 1776, not everyone in America was free. It would take another 87 years and a civil war before black men and women were also granted their freedom in America. On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation officially declared the end of slavery in America. On that day, everyone in America was technically free. The only problem is, not everybody knew it.

Bad news travels fast, but good news tends to take a more scenic route. That’s why over two years later, there were still slaves living in rural parts of America who still hadn’t heard that they were free. Every day, they got up and went out to labor in the fields as slaves. It didn’t matter that Abraham Lincoln had declared them to be free – until they’d heard the good news, they were in every way still enslaved.

That’s why June 19, or Juneteenth, is such a big deal in the African American community. It wasn’t until June 19, 1865 that word finally reached the last pocket of slaves living in Texas. On that day, they learned that the great civil war was over, and so was their bondage. They were free.

Admittedly, there’s a big difference between being free and living in freedom. And as the current racial unrest so powerfully reminds us, we still have a long way to go as a country. But as a pastor, I can’t help but think of some other people who are still living in slavery waiting to hear the good news that the means of their freedom has been secured.

I’m talking about spiritual freedom from sin and death. Ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed and sin came crashing into God’s good creation, humanity has lived in bondage to sin, separated from the one who created us in His image. And no amount of sin-management or rule keeping could ever break those chains. But then, two-thousand years ago, Jesus took up his cross and signed an Emancipation Proclamation in his own blood, declaring emphatically that sin no longer needs to be our task-master, shame no longer needs to shackle our hearts. We prodigals can come home.

This is good news of great joy for all humanity. And many of us have embraced this truth and begun to live out of it. But despite the effort of countless generations before us to carry this message across oceans and continents, there are still people living on this planet who don’t realize they can be free. And they’re not just in remote villages. There are people living in our own neighborhoods who have yet to hear the good news.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul wrote the following words: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:13-15)

The Emancipation Proclamation was life changing for the men and women enslaved all across America, but the message of freedom that Jesus entrusts to us to proclaim is so much greater than that. It has eternal ramifications. And He’s entrusted it to those of us who have tasted and seen that life in Christ is true freedom.

This is the best news ever. Let’s not keep it to ourselves.

A few years back, I was introduced to Fantasy football. Suddenly, I found myself with a vested interest in every game, not just the one in which my team was playing. But it came at a cost. Fantasy sports completely altered the way I watch a game. Instead of rooting for my team to succeed, I ended up rooting for individual players on my roster irrespective of what team they’re on.

This has led to a whole slew of conflicting moments, like when I find myself cheering for certain players on a team to succeed while rooting for others to fail. I’ve even caught myself celebrating when a player on another person’s roster is sidelined because of an injury, completely forgetting that this is a real person and that injury has real life consequences.

Lately, it feels as if we’re approaching life as if it’s all a big game of Fantasy Football. We have divided the world into categories – have’s/have not’s, Democrat/Republican, black/white, citizen/non-citizen. And then we pick sides. This causes us to construct our own roster of players and causes that we root for and others that we root against.

Unfortunately, this leads to all sorts of self-defeating desires: we may find ourselves cheering when a politician stumbles, even though their misstep hurts others and has real life consequences. We may decry certain injustices, but overlook others because to acknowledge them could undermine our side’s grip on the moral high ground or, worse yet, cost us an election. Sometimes we even start to look at people who hold different perspectives than us as the enemy.

The problem with approaching life in this way is that it blinds us to an important truth: there’s only one team. We’re all in this together. 

This is especially true for those who claim to follow Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul said as much to believers living in an equally fractured First Century context: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) His point is not to deny our differences or pretend they don't exist. Rather, he reminds us that despite our different cultural, political and socioeconomic backgrounds, our relationship with Jesus supersedes those natural dividing lines. While the world says we are on different teams with conflicting goals, if we're following Jesus then we're on the same team and we've been entrusted with the same goal - to reflect His heart into our fractured world. This means doing what he did: binding up the broken, moving towards the marginalized, praying for those who persecute us and serving others rather than seeking to be served.

I know that it may sound naïve to speak this way. You might be thinking, "That’s not the way the world works! We have competing perspectives that conflict with one another, so the only way to ensure that our values are championed is to do whatever it takes to get our representatives into positions of power, and to speak forcefully enough that our perspective is heard, right?!"

But that’s like a team’s defense publicly criticizing the offense, or the quarterback complaining about the receiving core. It doesn’t help the team succeed against the challenges that they face; instead, it tears a team apart from the inside and weakens their ability to rise to each challenge they face.

That’s certainly what is happening in our country right now. We’ve been blindsided not once but twice, first by COVID-19 and then by a series of racially charged deaths. We’re hurting. And rather than uniting to face these challenges head on, we’ve pointed fingers and blamed one another. We’ve been yelling our heads off, but few of us are willing to stop and listen to another perspective – so the volume and the frustration just continue to grow.

What are the solutions to the myriad problems we face as a society? I don’t know. But I know that we won’t find them when we’re trying to shout over one another to be heard. And if we keep blaming one another instead of working together every time we get blindsided, then before too long we won’t have the strength or the resolve to get back to our feet.

Worse yet, if we keep rooting for one another to fail, eventually we’ll wake up and realize that we’ve all lost. Because we’re on the same team.

"Therefore, let us make every effort to do what leads to
peace and to mutual edification." Romans 14:19

“Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” (Ephesians 6:10-18)

Our world is at war – I think we’re aware of that fact now more than ever. But I fear we’re looking at the wrong enemy. We are yelling at one another across the racial, political and socioeconomic fault lines of our society, when our true enemy is spiritual. The same enemy that convinced Adam and Eve to doubt their creator sows discord into our hearts. The same enemy that convinced the Jews to murder their Messiah now seeks to deaden our hearts towards our neighbor who looks or thinks or votes differently than us. And right now, it seems our enemy is winning.

It may feel overwhelming to battle an ancient enemy whom we cannot see. It’s easier to point at the rioting looters or the self-righteous bigot than it is to confront Satan and spiritual forces. But I’ve got good news: it’s not our job to vanquish them. That’s Jesus’ job, and He’s fully up to the task. Our job is simply to stand against the devil’s schemes. Read through the passage above one more time and pay attention to how many times Paul tells us to stand.

Thankfully, we’re not powerless in this fight. God has provided a number of defensive weapons to guard our hearts and minds from an enemy who attacks from the shadows, using lies and accusations, stoking fear and agitation. An interesting detail that is often overlooked when we discuss the armor of God is that each piece is primarily defensive, not offensive, in nature. Each piece protects us from the attacks of the enemy, from his underhanded schemes. Even the Sword of the Spirit (the word of God) is used primarily to defend ourselves against the temptations and manipulations of the enemy. That’s how Jesus used it when Satan tempted him, and it’s one of our strongest protections against his attacks.

In fact, the only truly offensive weapon Paul mentions in this whole list is prayer. If the rest of the armor is intended to help us stand our ground against an enemy who comes at us from every angle, then prayer is like the field phone by which we can call in air strikes against an enemy who is deeply entrenched. When we feel overwhelmed and lost within the fog of war, when the bullets are flying and we don’t know what to do, the most powerful and effective way to stand our ground is on our knees in prayer.

People often mistake prayer as a passive way of dealing with our troubles, but from a spiritual perspective, prayer is calling in the big guns. And we could sure use the help right now. That’s why I’m so grateful to those who surrounded City Hall on Wednesday to intercede on behalf of our city and our nation. I’m so grateful to those who begin their days in prayer. And I’m grateful that our God hears our cries for help. 

No, prayer isn’t passive. In this spiritual war we find ourselves embroiled in, it’s the most powerful way we have to take the fight to our spiritual enemy. So please don't stop praying. Our enemy won't stop attacking, so let's not give him a breather. 

I am weary.

I started 2020 with such high hopes and lofty goals. Instead, I found myself in a marathon that I never signed up for. Of course, I didn’t realize it was a marathon going in. At first it seemed like a short sprint, and I was running on adrenaline. But as the days turned into months and I’ve had to let go of all my best laid plans time and again, my energy started to diminish and discouragement set in. Can you relate?

Runners talk about hitting the wall. For marathons, it often happens somewhere around mile 18. It's that moment when the physical exhaustion of what has come before and the mental exhaustion of what still lies ahead begins to grow overwhelming. It saps a runner’s will to continue, especially since the finish line is nowhere in sight.

I have officially hit the wall. I’m tired of being separated from my friends and church community, tired of how every issue seems divisive, tired of Zoom meetings and air hugs. And as we head back into a new round of quarantine, I don’t see the end in sight.

One of the most psychologically devastating aspects of hitting the wall is how lonely we can feel in our suffering. It doesn’t matter that we’re surrounded by other runners. We can’t see beyond our own exhaustion. We can’t feel their pain. And so we feel isolated, as if we’re the only ones who are struggling to keep going.

But I’m discovering that I’m not alone. As I speak with other pastors, friends and neighbors, I’m finding that they are also weary. They are also lamenting the myriad losses that this season has brought upon us all. Just knowing that I’m not the only one struggling has somehow eased the weight of my weariness.

God never intended us to run this race alone. He designed us to do life in community, to spur one another on and bear one another’s burdens. So may we fix our eyes on Jesus, the one who guides our steps and sets our pace. And may we lean on one another through this marathon. If you’re feeling lonely, isolated, discouraged or depressed, please don’t try to gut through it on your own. Please call someone. Process what you’re feeling and ask them how they’re doing. Share the weight. Hold one another up.

Just don’t let the wall be your finish line. 

"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Galatians 6:1

Putting the Pieces Together

On the night before Jesus was crucified, he prayed for his disciples, knowing that difficult times lay ahead for the fledgling church. But he didn’t just pray for them. He also prayed for us:

“My prayer is not for [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one…so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-21, 23)

Several times in this brief prayer, Jesus prays that the church would be one – that we would be unified through the Holy Spirit and our commitment to love one another. But this unity wasn’t just something He wanted for us because it would make our lives easier. Jesus suggests that the Church’s unity would serve as proof to a skeptical world that He truly was from the Father and is the head of the Church.

Our unity is pretty important to Jesus.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t always seemed to be as important to the Church.

More often than not, it feels as if the Church is a 37-million-piece puzzle, fractured by countless disagreements pertaining to things like theology, liturgy, and worship preference. Sadly, rather than unifying around our shared faith in Jesus, churches have historically tended to fixate on the differences and propped up their own sense of superiority by pointing out the flaws in the other church communities around them. We’ve perpetuated this disunity by competing against one another, speaking negatively behind one another’s backs, and stealing one another’s members to swell our own ranks.

Now don’t get me wrong – despite our fractured state, churches have done a lot of good. We’ve shared the gospel, started ministries in our communities, and sent missionaries around the world. But at the end of the day, our disunity has undermined our efforts, because we were never intended to reflect the heart of Jesus by ourselves.

We’ve been acting like a puzzle where all the pieces yearn to reflect the picture on the box, but rather than doing so together, each piece is trying to do so on its own. What a futile endeavor. Think about how much time and resources have been poured into duplicate ministries, when we could have been working together; think of how much effort we’ve expended simply trying to outdo the churches down the street, rather than coming alongside them to care for the city together.

Every church community is a unique and valuable piece of God’s Kingdom. But if we hope to faithfully reflect the heart of our Creator into our community, then we need one another, because together we form a far greater, more comprehensive image of God than we ever could on our own.

That’s why, despite the frustration and uncertainty of this COVID-19 shutdown, I am encouraged. I’m seeing the Church in my city unite in ways I could have only dreamed of a couple months ago.

Before this shut-down, the pastors in my city were scheduled to share lunch once every couple months. Now, we’re connecting, planning and praying with one another every week via Zoom.

At the beginning of the year, we had hoped to get representatives from 10-15 churches to participate in the National Day of Prayer. Instead, we had over 150 churches from across our county join together in a 5-day round-the-clock prayer initiative, which included nightly online worship and prayer gatherings.

And there is no end to the generosity, not just towards the city but towards one another: churches with live streaming equipment are helping churches that don’t have their own. Churches who own their buildings are opening them to church communities who had been meeting in schools, so that they'll have a place to meet once we get the go ahead. Rather than competing with one another as church leaders have traditionally done, pastors in our city are sharing resources, finances, ideas and expertise with one another.

It’s an exciting time to be part of the Church in our city, and I know it is affecting the way our community looks at us. More importantly, it is affecting the way our neighbors and our civic leaders look at Jesus, because we are finally reflecting His heart together.

The Church Is Best Beyond the Box

I have a friend who collects Star Wars toys. He keeps them all in pristine condition, safely wrapped within their original packaging. And while his collection is expansive (and expensive), I can’t help but think he’s kind of missed the point. I mean, what good is a toy if you never take it out of the box? 

I suppose the same could be said for the church.

We have some beautiful church buildings in this city, and I know there are a lot of people who lament the fact that we can’t use them right now. I do, too. As a pastor, I look forward to the day we can worship face-to-face in our sanctuaries again. But while our buildings stand empty and unused, I want to remind us that our buildings have never been the church – they are just the boxes that hold the church when its gathers. WE are the church, and I have to admit that the church has been far more active and effective at loving our community since we’ve been forced out of our boxes.

During this time, we don’t have the luxury to sit back and wait for our neighbors to come wandering into our doors on Sundays. We have had to get creative. And let me tell you, I’m in awe of the myriad ways the Church in Costa Mesa has united to care for our neighbors.

For instance, several churches in our city united together to organize a fund to help the most financially impacted members of our city, and they seeded it with $80,000 of their own money. Then they got the word out, and people from the church community all across our city added over $400,000. To date, nearly 500 hurting families in our city have been helped with grants because of the Enough For All Fund (see enoughforallfund.com to donate or apply).

We also rallied together to provide basic resources for neighbors in need. Currently through an initiative called Love Costa Mesa, we are providing hundreds of boxes of food to needy families in our community each week. This has been done in partnership with local nonprofits like Trellis and Fresh Beginnings Ministries (see LoveCostaMesa.org for more details).

Then there are the prayer initiatives. Early on, when it dawned on many of the pastors that we would still be quarantined through Easter, we launched a 3-week prayer initiative. Dozens of churches participated and hundreds of people prayed for our city around the clock for three solid weeks. Then, after Easter, we broadened the invitation to the churches in our County. Ultimately, over 150 churches all across Orange County joined in a 5-day prayer gathering, which included nightly worship and prayer gatherings hosted by different cities.

Talk about unity!

I guess we had to get outside of our boxes to start being able to play well with one another. I’m glad we have, because we’re so much better when we work together.

It’s kind of sad that it takes a pandemic like this one to think outside of the box, but it’s nothing new. Even the early church struggled to get out of their box. Shortly after his resurrection, Jesus told his followers that once His Spirit empowered them, they would be his witnesses starting there in Jerusalem, and radiating out into the wider region of Judea, to the untouchables of Samaria, and eventually to the ends of the earth. But even after the Spirit came, the believers stayed put in Jerusalem. I suppose it was more appealing to congregate with people who thought and acted like they did than to move into unfamiliar territory. But that wasn’t what Jesus had called them to do. He’d called them to GO! In the end, it took major persecution to push them out of their box and into the wider world, but once that happened the church exploded.

I sense that something similar is happening here. God has ripped open our boxes, shaken us out into our neighborhoods and said, “Now do what I made you to do. Love your neighbors, move toward the hurting, bind up the broken, share with the needy. Don’t just talk about it – do it!” 

And we're actually doing it! The church is radiating the love of Jesus into our city like I’ve never seen before. I pray that we won’t stop once this crisis passes. I pray we will continue to work together irrespective of what “church building” we call home. After all, there’s only one Church in our city and Jesus is the head of it, so we might as well stop competing against one another and keep working together.

In short, I look forward to the day we can gather in our churches again, but I don’t want to just go back to how things always were. The stakes are too high; there are far too many hurting people in our communities to simply rush back into the safety of our buildings and get comfortable.

We were never made to stay in our box.

When Can the Church Reopen?

As a pastor, one question I’m getting asked a lot lately is, “When can we reopen the church?” I get it. I miss the gathering of our church family on Sundays and throughout the week as well. But I also want to be wise about when and how we do this, because the stakes are simply too high, both health-wise as well as in regards to the church’s relationship with our neighbors.

Some within the larger church community (outside of Costa Mesa) have been pushing for a restart to gatherings at the end of the month regardless of what the directives from our Governor and other civic leaders happen to be. I understand that they see the mandated closure of the churches both as an unconstitutional and unbiblical limitation. After all, the First Amendment of our Constitution affords us the freedom of religious expression, and scripturally when the Jewish leaders demanded the Apostles stop preaching in the name of Jesus, Peter’s response was, “We must obey God rather than human beings” (Acts 5:29).

However, I would suggest that these current limitations are not about freedom of religious expression so much as they are about public safety. We are still able to spread the gospel and connect with one another. In fact, through live streaming and Zoom, the church has actually been reaching a much wider circle of people than we had been able to when we relied solely upon meeting in the church building on Sundays. So we are not being told to stop sharing the gospel. Rather, we are being asked to stop gathering in groups for a season in order to stem the spread of a virus that can severely impact the most vulnerable members of our population. That’s a different story altogether.

The Apostle Peter also called on believers to “submit yourself for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor [in our case the Federal government] or to the governors” (1 Peter 2:13-14). He explains that our submission and our witness go hand in hand; by submitting we are removing a potential obstacle between unbelievers and the gospel. The Apostle Paul made a similar argument in Romans 13. So unless we are being asked to disobey God, which we are not, then we have a moral obligation to obey those in authority over us.

Furthermore, I cannot help but consider what it would cost us to defy our public officials’ directives and gather early: not only would we be exposing our members to possible exposure, but we’d be declaring to our neighbors that we don’t value their health and safety. Infected people infect people, and one particularly frustrating aspect of COVID-19 is that people are infectious long before they exhibit symptoms. So gathering prematurely not only endangers our own health, but the health of our neighbors. On top of that, we’d be communicating to our city officials that we are not willing to limit our freedoms out of love for our fellow citizens. In effect, by gathering early we’d be sending the opposite message to the one we’ve been working so hard over the years to communicate through our actions: namely, that we love our city and are willing to serve them. Our waiting is an act of service.

This is the first time in my lifetime that the authorities have asked us to stop meeting in order to help protect the health of our community, but it’s not the first time the church has faced it. Back in the 1600’s, Richard Baxter, who was a puritan pastor, wrote, “If the magistrate for a greater good such as the common safety forbids church assemblies in a time of pestilence…it is our duty to obey him.” However, he goes on to explain that if any authority were to outlaw the church gathering “as a renunciation of Christ and our religion, then it is not lawful formally to obey them.”1  That seems reasonable to me.

So we are in a holding pattern, waiting for the day we can gather again in our church buildings. But we are not waiting passively for the go-ahead from the city. In fact, a large number of local pastors including myself are actively working with our city council in order to draft guidelines for the eventual reopening of our church buildings. I will keep you informed on any developments. But for now, we will wait and pray and live stream and gather in Life Groups over Zoom and radiate the love of Christ into our Spheres of Influence. After all, our buildings might be closed, but WE are the church, and we never close.

1: Practical Works of Richard Baxter, V.5, Question 109.