Philippians 1:6: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

Hebrews 10:23: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

I could be wrong about what I’m about to post. I have given it some thought and decided I would write about it despite the fact that I usually do my wrestling internally and with good friends rather than post my young thoughts on the Web. So grace would be appreciated. Before I get started let me give you a little background:

It’s been 16 years since God, in His predestined, powerful plan, allowed my soul to experience “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”  He grabbed hold of every part of me and has absolutely ruined me for anything but Him.  The process of sanctification has been and still is quite often a very difficult one. No one told me (or maybe they did) that Jesus wanted my heart. I thought there was going to be some behavior modification and some new friends but I didn’t understand how aggressively, ruthlessly and passionately He was going to search and destroy in me anything that wasn’t of Him. Nor did I understand how dark my heart truly was and how out of fear, pride and arrogance I would argue, complain and resist almost every advance of the Holy Spirit to reconcile every part of my being into holiness. Let me give you some family background. Most of my dad’s life has been difficult. He was abused and neglected, abandoned and ignored by the people who should have loved and seen in him the beauty that’s so easy to see. He raised me the best he could for where he was. He loves me, and I love him. I know this deeply. But what his dad struggled with, he struggled with and although I feel like by God’s grace alone I walk in an unbelievable amount of victory over the things that have destroyed Chandler men for the last 100 years, I do at times feel those things warring in me which brings me to my thought.

Audrey and Reid, my two children, have been such gifts to Lauren and me. That little girl and little boy grabbed a hold of my heart the second they took in the gift of breath. I don’t know where you are in life or if you have children or not but I find the fact that my sin directly effects my children to be mortifying. I ask our great God and King almost nightly that He would protect my children from my sin, that they would never see in me hypocrisy or feel provoked to anger. I ask Him to help me with patience, gentleness and to hide from them my pride and idolatry while giving me the grace to acknowledge often that “God is still working on Daddy.”  I want the specific struggles that have haunted my bloodline to go into the ground with me. I want to fight, wail and pray.  I want to “hold fast the confession of my hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” I know that Audrey, Reid and the child growing in Lauren’s womb will have their own fights. The world is fallen, depravity is real but these specific struggles…I want, I hope, I pray that I might, like Moses, die on the mountain as they walk into the promise land.  I hope this post makes sense.

I spend a good portion of my week in dialogue with pastors.  They are from different denominations and tend to be different ages (although most of them are young).  The conversations range from theology to philosophy, church growth to how to lead a staff.  I enjoy them.  I love robust discussion over things that matter.  I like it when the unanswerable questions are asked and wrestled over; it somehow feeds my soul. Lately though I have been somewhat disturbed by something I am hearing or maybe sensing in the questions and directions of the conversations in which I find myself.  When I exited itinerant ministry to become a pastor, I left crowds that were in the thousands and finances that more than provided for my family to go to a small (160 people) church that cut my annual salary in half.  There wasn’t one person who thought that taking the position at The Village was a “smart” move.  In fact, several actually sat me down and told me they thought I was being disobedient and a bad steward of the gifts that God had imparted to me.  The truth is I didn’t become the pastor of a church in the suburbs of Dallas because I had a grand vision for growing a dynamic, life-transforming, church-planting, Gospel-preaching, God-centered church. I took the position because after a great deal of conversations, prayers and fasting, my wife and I felt it was the direction God, through the Holy Spirit, was leading us.  I came to The Village because I thought that by doing so I would get to see more of Him, experience more of Him, sense more of Him, see more of me die, more of my flesh perish, the old man in me lose more power…He is the great end that I am after.  He is why.  In 1 Timothy 4:10 Paul writes “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.“  I love that verse.  We toil, yes. We strive, yes, but where is our hope?  What, or rather, who is the goal?  I love preaching the Gospel and I love planting churches but I do those things because in them there is this unbearable weight of His presence.  This crushing majesty that makes me want to cry, sing and scream all at the same time.

The thing that disturbs me lately is that it seems that the goal is something else all together.  The goal is growing our churches to a certain size or our platforms (pulpits, blogs, books) to a certain fame.  How hollow is that? And, how dangerous?  Just because men love Jesus and follow Him doesn’t mean that they get to grow or reach a certain level of “success” (I use that word loosely).  Here are a few men who loved our great God and King and were obedient beyond the norm:

• Moses spends his whole life with grumbling, whiners and dies without getting to walk into the promise land.
• Samson suicide bombs the Philistines and when the dust settles he is dead and the Philistines still rule over Israel.
• David’s son rapes his sister and leads a rebellion against David, dethroning him for a season.
• Jeremiah ends up in exile with the rest of the country after repeatedly getting beaten for preaching what God commanded him to preach.
• John the Baptist is beheaded by a pervert who gives his head to a 15-year-old stripper.
• Peter is killed, reportedly crucified upside down.
• Paul is killed in Rome but only after he spends his life (with thorn intact) being beaten, rejected, lost at sea, and consistently dealing with people coming in behind him and destroying what he built.

If your hope is set on anything other than Him, how do you survive when it goes bad?  How do you remain passionate and vibrant when no one comes or the baptismal waters are still for long stretches?  How do you maintain doctrinal integrity or teach hard things if He isn’t the treasure?  How do you worship when your wife gets sick or your son goes for a ride in an ambulance?  If He is the goal, the treasure, the pursuit, then those things are fuel that presses you into His goodness and grace all that much more.  I am not saying they are pleasant or enjoyable but only that if He is your goal you will find your faith sustained.

May God bless you and keep you.  May you see that He is the treasure, He is the pursuit, He is the goal…and may you press on toward the goal for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

It has been my experience that inspirations are brief, sporadic and rare.  By inspiration I mean those moments where our souls are stimulated to a high level of feeling, thinking and doing. I love those brief, sporadic and rare moments. I am addicted to the vitality I have, the love I feel, and the clarity of thought that occurs when I am inspired. I have tried for years to pay attention to these moments, to dig into them, excavate them, and figure them out. What is it that inspires me? Who is it?  What stirs my affection…for my wife? For my children? For life in general? This to me is one of the major ideas that demand an answer. To solve this arduous riddle means more energy, richer life, deeper relationships and greater self-awareness.

Several years ago I started applying this line of thought to my relationship with Christ.  Instead of asking myself what inspired me to be a good man (what’s that anyway?) I started asking what stirs my affections for Christ. What, when I’m doing it, when I’m around it or dwelling on it creates in me a greater hunger for, passion for and worship of Christ and His mission? The first list was a strange one. It looked something like this:

1. Early mornings and hot coffee
2. The writings of John Owen (at the time it was The Mortification of Sin)
3. Listening to Lauren sing
4. Walks through graveyards (I know this is weird but it reminded me of mortality)
5. The book of Hebrews
6. Robust dialogue on ecclesiology or missiology
7. Sermons by John Piper
8. Angst-filled music

I also wrestled with and paid attention to what robbed me of affection for Christ. What, when I was doing it or spending time around it created in me an unhealthy love for this world? The first list was a strange one because the majority of things that robbed me of zeal for Christ and His mission were morally neutral things. It looked something like this:

1. Watching too much TV and spending too much time online
2. Staying up late for no reason
3. Following sports too closely
4. Being physically lazy
5. Empty conversations (talking for hours about nothing)
6. Idleness

For the last few years I have updated this list often. In fact it has changed quite a bit. I want to pay attention to life. I want to be keyed in to what feeds my zeal for our great God and King and what kills that zeal. My hope is that I could flood my life with Christ-exalting, worship-creating things and avoid anything that would rob me of that.

What inspires you? Better yet, what stirs your affections for Christ, truth and holiness? If we can fill our lives with the things that stir our affections and avoid and flee those things that rob us of inspiration, we have a better shot at dwelling deeply. What and who inspires you? Stirs you? What presses you into holy places? What robs you of joy and vitality? What robs you of your affection for Christ and holiness?

This week’s entry is a little long, so forgive me. Michael Bleecker is a dear friend of mine, one of those men that God truly gifted me with. We worked together before The Village, and he has been here with me since day one. When we met, we were both doing itinerant ministry (traveling around and teaching or singing) and were making a decent living. After I accepted the position as Pastor of The Village I continued to travel some and was making money outside of my salary as Pastor. As the opportunities grew, the crowds got bigger and influence grew and so did those outside checks. My spirit really began to struggle with making money outside of The Village. Bleecker was struggling with some of the same things as he was looking to record a CD. The following is a letter I wrote him hashing through what was heavy on my heart:

Bleecker,

It was Martin Luther who said that “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe” in the end this letter is about conscience. Although I hope to supply an ample amount of scripture to explain why my conscience operates the way it does, I am not yet confident enough in those thoughts to teach or demand of others. I have, however, thought and studied enough that conviction has laid hold of my heart and forced me to view things as this letter will read. I start with this because I want you to know that if after a careful and prayerful searching of scripture you land in a different spot than I do I will not view where you land as sinful or disobedient…at least at this time.

This letter is not about money, CDs or books. Instead it is about “our” calling and “our” gifts and more specifically where that calling and those gifts come from and what we were given them for. I believe that in seeing this clearly we can wrestle through the other issues more carefully and more fearfully. I use the word fearfully here on purpose. When all is said and done in our lives the scriptures are clear that men like you and I will be judged by a greater strictness (James 3:1). We teach people the Gospel by word and by song. Whether we like it or not we also teach them the gospel by how we live out our lives. These truths should stir a holy fear in us, lest we impart to others what is sinful or erroneous.

I am always overwhelmed when I think of the life Christ has gifted to me. I get paid and paid well to study the scriptures and teach them to men and women. The Church He asks me to serve is dynamic and fast growing. My gifting is unique and popular. I am healthy and well liked, almost famous in some circles (I still find it weird). My children are safe and healthy, my marriage strong and filled with the same lustful passion that existed in our first year of marriage if not more. These are gifts He has imparted to me. This is the life He chose for me. What grace and mercy He has lavished upon me (I think these are very, very dangerous gifts, but I’ll go more into that later). What gets even more overwhelming is when He imparted these things. In the scriptures the bible says that every good and perfect gift comes from Him (James 1:17), He is the owner and decider of all things, and that each person is given their own gifting and their own calling by Him (1 Corinthians 7:7). According to our sacred literature He does this before they are born (John 1:14-15, Ephesians 1:3-6, Galatians 1:15, Ephesians 2:10) and designs people according to His purposes (Psalm 139). You and I were called, gifted and placed…before we were. This is truly remarkable. Our vocal folds, your strong hands (that felt weird to type), my passion, your aptitude for music, mine for story all in place literally forever ago. God was thinking about you and me and The Village and all that He would accomplish in and through us when our great, great, great, great Grand Father was a sperm. Even the level of gifting that was given to us was decided by Jesus forever ago (Romans 12:6). The question we have to answer next is why He has gifted us and placed us before the foundation of the world was laid at The Village (Ephesians 1)?

The answer to this question is easy because the scriptures say so much about it. I’ll come out of one primary text here. Ephesians 4:11-16:

“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, (12)to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, (13)until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, (14)so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. (15)Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, (16) from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love”.

This text is a pretty easy read. God gave and trained us in our gifts and placed us at The Village for the building up of His Church. We must continue in this work until the Church (The Village) grows unto the fullness of Christ. Our work won’t be done until Jesus returns. Paul calls us slaves to the church and says that we must die, die to our self, die to our desires, die so that the church might live (2 Corinthians 4:12). Now I know you know these things; we have talked at length about them. The scriptures say that some, however, will not get these things. Some men are going to use Jesus to make themselves rich, others think it’s about them, some will like being popular, others will take advantage of women with the authority given to them, some think they created the gifting, others will be “peddlers of religion” (Matthew 23:3, Romans 15:20, Philippians 1:15, Colossians 2:22, 1 Corinthians 15:14, Galatians 1:9, 2 Timothy 4:3, Hebrews 8:11, Hebrews 13:9). There is a dark side to all of this that will be trying to woo us away from a healthy understanding of who we are, why we have been gifted and what we have been gifted for (2 Timothy 4:1-8). We must guard and defend its purity at all cost.

Bleeck, I believe with my whole heart that “our” ministry, “our” calling is as much a gift of undeserved mercy as was our salvation (2 Corinthians 4:1). How amazing is all of this? How much fun? Doesn’t our positions as leaders of this body force us into Him? Force us to pursue Him? Where would we be without this calling? I understand what Paul means when he says “Who can attain to all these things”?

So what does all this mean? Here is the part where my conscience takes over. If I have been uniquely called by God, uniquely gifted by God, and uniquely placed by God to be a slave to His bride in order to build her up to maturity so that she is not lacking in anything (Ephesians 4), how can I use those gifts given to me by God for His bride for my own monetary gain? Would not any monetary gain that comes from “my” gifting belong to the bride that He commanded me to build up? Now, I know that the scriptures command that you shouldn’t muzzle the oxen (1 Corinthians 9:9) and that a worker is worth his wages (Luke 10:7), but with so much at stake, shouldn’t the bride that I have been called to build up determine what I should receive for my work? Isn’t the safest thing to do before God and the best way to guard against the wickedness in my heart that wants riches and comfort be to give all that I have and am to the church and let her then compensate me as she sees fit? My conscience screams “yes”! This is where I feel safest. Knowing that I am going to stand in front of our great God and King and give an account for whether or not I used my gifting for their purpose or for my own purposes. I would rather know that any money that came from my sermons, articles or books went back into building and maturing His bride than to have to answer that I gained. I sought. I wanted. How terrifying would that be? In my more foolish moments, I think about how good I am, about how unfair it is that the church has made so much money off of me, about what I should get, about what I deserve. These are damning thoughts and reveal how wicked my heart still is, Christ help me. I would rather the weight of all of this be on the church and not me. Let the church be judged on how she loved and provided for our families or didn’t. Let us seek the Gospel and the glory of Christ at all cost regardless of our pay and regardless of whether things are fair or unfair. The truth is I love how unfair the Gospel is. If I get fair, I get hell.

I know this will create more questions on the subject so let’s talk. I think that in the end the songs are yours and the CD belongs to The Village. I’ll buy you lunch this week and we can talk.

Having fun on our 40,

Matt

What came out of those following conversations was me signing all external earnings over to The Village. Whether it’s a conference or a book, all monetary gain that comes from the gifts God has given me goes to His bride. The weight of all of this is now off of me and onto the elders of the church. I feel safe in this place.

For the past four years I have heard at least weekly how much I need to enter the world (more like universe) of bloggers and blogging. Up until this point there have been several things that have kept me from the endeavor:

• I have plenty to do already and don’t want any new tasks.
• I am not sure that writing is a strength of mine.
• I don’t want to debate with a hyper fundamentalist from Idaho who thinks that because I don’t use the King James I am leading people to hell. (If I got a letter from that guy you know he’ll find me online.)
• Last but not least, I desperately want to continue to make fun of blogs and bloggers. If I enter the blogosphere then it would be hypocritical to continually mock them.

I think that about sums up my fears. But despite those, here I am writing my first blog entry. So what happened? What overpowered my fears and reservations? Simply, The Village happened. Almost six years ago I became the Pastor of The Village Church. I didn’t know how long I would be there and at the time hoped it wouldn’t be long. My life playing out in the suburbs of Dallas (a city called the “center of the evangelical world” by Christianity Today) was never my plan. But God has a funny way of placing us where He wants us and not where we think we need to be. Over the last few years our great God and King has birthed in me a deep passion both for the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and The Village in particular. How does all this equal a blog?

First, I preach on average around 45 minutes each weekend and can get even longer if provoked. I know that is longer than the averages of most sermons but there are weekends where I still can’t get to everything I want to teach because of time. This past weekend I desperately wanted to show the seriousness of God concerning the poor and oppressed by walking through the entire Bible and show God’s acts, commands, rebukes and wrath concerning the issue but we ran out of time. Since this happens nearly half the time I preach, the blog will give me a place to point people for the rest of a message or more on a point in a message.

The second reason my love for The Village Church has birthed this blog is the size of our church and my desire to be known as well as know. I want to know everyone at the church God has asked me to lead. I want them to know me, my flaws, my strengths, what I am thinking, struggling with, hoping for and celebrating. Unfortunately at 5,000 and growing, this isn’t possible. It brings me a great deal of grief to know that there are men and women who have powerful testimonies of God’s grace and mercy that I will never hear or know this side of heaven. There are these great personalities and creative, beautiful people who I won’t get to know deeply because of how many of us there are. I want them to know me because I have been a part of large churches and desperately want to be seen and known. To be “Pastor Matt” instead of “Matt Chandler”. The blog gives me a venue to be seen and heard.

So…here I am blogging…God help me…God help us all.