Author: Tim Ehrhardt

I'm just a common ordinary pastor, chaplain, father, grandfather, and dog owner who loves the smell of a genuine leather Bible and the aroma of its message. I'm on a quest to track down the best Bibles, how to best read and use them, and to discover the encouragement inside.

True Community

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
Not all communities of Christians are alike.  Some churches are vibrant, open, and caring; some churches are downright grumpy as if they were all baptized in pickle juice.  Churches are at different places with each other because to be a genuine God-honoring community takes much work – community cannot be cheaply gained or maintained.
 
M. Scott Peck was a psychiatrist and the author of one of the most read books of the 20th century, The Road Less Traveled.  He wrote many other books, including the lesser known, but just as significant work, The Different Drum, where he argues that we all must march to the beat of a different drum when it comes to community.  He observed and described 4 stages a community must move through in order to become a true authentic loving group of people:
 
1. Pseudo-community.  This is a community where people are polite, nice, friendly, and well-behaved, but say very little about themselves because they are guarded with each other.  They speak in generalities and platitudes.  “How’s it going?”  “It’s going fine.”  Community at this stage, if the people have been together for a long time, is a mile wide and an inch deep.
 
2. Chaos.  Peck labels this stage chaos because it is here that every group of people must experience the out of control feeling (chaos) of doing conflict together.  This stage is doing the irritating work of accountability, and loving each other enough to confront and not let each other stay in the first superficial stage.
 
3. Emptiness.  Peck means here the act of self-emptying love.  In this stage we let go of our ego, and put down our personal demands, so that we can respond to others’ needs.  This is a stage of genuine listening to each other and responding in grace and love, instead of just making dogmatic statements toward each other.  This is where we hear one another’s stories, and extend forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration.  We seek to bridge our differences with integrity, kindness, and concern for the other.
 
4. True community.  Everyone belongs to each other, and we all belong to Jesus.  We give to each other the encouragement that is needed no matter what.  This is a stage of deep honesty, and deep caring.  Sin in the Bible is not so much breaking the rules; sin is giving up on Jesus and/or giving up on his church.  Apathy and lethargy are the twin demons that destroy Christ’s Church.
 

 

What I am stating is neither easy nor popular.  There is more pain in community than outside of it.  But there is also more joy.  And there cannot be life apart from the church.  The perspective of the Christian Scriptures is that we must act Today, because there may not be a tomorrow.  Grace and forgiveness are to be the rule of Christian community, because this emulates the behavior of our Savior, the Lord Jesus.  That cannot happen apart from true community and the work it takes to become one.  So, it is high time to get another perspective on community, a face to face one with real people, rather than a view of the back of people’s heads.  It takes much personal courage to gain community.  Are you willing to do it?

I Am My Brother’s Keeper

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment


It is a common misconception among some Christians today that what others do is none of my business.  Therefore, any bad attitude, each morsel of gossip, every tidbit of running another person down behind their back, and a person’s spiritual lethargy or half-hearted commitment is just politely ignored.  But Christian love will not allow this without a word of exhortation and a helping hand of encouragement.  Every believer is to have a personal interest in the spiritual well-being of others.  It is the spiritual obligation of every Christian to promote the growth in grace of every other Christian.
            Love cannot be expressed in isolation, but only in community.  Proverbs 27:17 says:  As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.  And Proverbs 27:5-6 says:  Better is open rebuke than hidden love.  Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.  There is to be a care, concern, warmth, and willingness to speak truth and grace into the life of others and not leave them wallowing in a superficial Christianity with toxic relationships that are of no benefit to others.
            The Church is to be a gymnasium of the soul where we dig in with a group of believers, be it hell or high water, and commit ourselves to the way of love and good deeds, rather than only having a personal concern for what benefits me.  Even though Cal Ripken, Jr. is one of the greatest individual players in baseball history, what mattered most to him was succeeding as a team. In one interview, he said: “I’d much rather be referred to not as an individually great player, or someone who tore up the record books, but someone who came to the ball park and said: ‘Okay, I’m here. I want to play. What can I do to help us win today?'”   He went on to say:  A lot of people ask, “What is your greatest play—your greatest accomplishment?” I say, “I caught the last out of the World Series.” It wasn’t a great catch—I didn’t dive, I didn’t do a cartwheel and throw the guy out at first base. People’s mouths didn’t drop open on the play. We all want to be part of something bigger. But we all have our little jobs that we have to do as a member of a team. Everybody has their individual responsibilities, but they all have to come together for a main goal, and that’s to win. I’ve had great years when we haven’t won, and they have not been really fulfilling. I’ve had not-so-great years, but we’ve had a good success as a team, and they were more fulfilling. So the most fulfilling moment I could ever have, again, was catching the last out of the World Series—knowing we did it!
            Christians are to consider one another, to pay thoughtful attention to other believers, take an interest in their welfare, and think about how to encourage them (Hebrews 10:24-25).  We are to put some effort into it.  A major opportunity for this occurs at corporate gatherings.  Believers in Jesus are to not be in the habit of skipping opportunities for growth in grace.  Attendance to church services and other Christian gatherings is not an end in itself, but is the means to the end of practicing love and good deeds toward one another.  This implies and requires us to not think solely in terms of what I personally get out of the meeting, but also what we have to offer others.  And what we offer to each other is, quite literally, to spur one another on.  We are to give each other a loving kick in the pants when we need it.  We are to be provoking, inciting, even irritating each other to spend our lives for Christ.
            Please note that this does not mean we lay a guilt trip on people, because Christ’s blood cleanses us from a guilty conscience.  Rather, it means we lovingly come alongside another person and help him/her be effective in walking with Jesus and being a faithful follower of Christ.  If left to ourselves, we end up becoming disillusioned and bitter.  Hebrews 12:15 says: See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.  If you are in a conversation that ends up leading to gossip, or slander, or back-biting, or tearing another down, then you need to step up to the plate and lean into that discussion and call it for what it is.  And after shutting it down you need to not just walk away but turn that conversation into something that encourages and builds up and helps and spurs and incites each other to godliness.  If you are not willing to do that then you had better start fasting and praying for God to grow you up so that you can do His will.  After all, I am my brother’s keeper. 
            How is your Christian community characterized?  What level of accountability exists between one another in your group?  Do people love each other enough to confront?  Is restoration and reconciliation pursued at all costs, or not?  What can you do to help spur others on toward the way of love and good deeds?

Why We Christians Do What We Do

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).  When is the last time you have sat with this verse of Holy Scripture and let its truth wash over you?  Notice that this use of the term propitiation (atoning sacrifice), which means to satisfy God’s wrath, comes in the middle of a discussion of God’s love.  In other words, sin arouses the wrath of God because God is love (by the way, Scripture says clearly that God is love, and never says that God is wrath).  God stands against everything that damages and destroys and hurts others.  God is just, and seeks to overthrow injustice.  His great love is why his anger is kindled – he has no toleration for things that separate him from people, and which separates people from each other.
 
The wrath of God does not mean that God ‘flies off the handle.’  What it does mean is that God is steady, unrelenting, and uncompromising in his antagonism toward evil in all its forms and manifestations.  I am often asked the question, “where is God?” when a tragedy or calamity occurs.  But God is not found in the calamity; He is found in the remedy.  He is found in the thousands of people who risk their lives to rescue others in the rubble of an earthquake or in a blazing inferno; God is in the giving of supplies and money to tornado victims; God is always in the solution to the tragedy.  But we often look for God in the wrong place.  God provided the ultimate remedy in sending Jesus Christ as a propitiation, an atoning sacrifice, for our sin.
 
What is amazing about sacrifice is that God himself makes the propitiation – the satisfaction for appeasing God’s wrath does not come from us.  God is offended by sin, and nothing we can do can overcome the offense simply because our sin is so evil and heinous.  We cannot talk our way, or work our way, out of trouble.  God himself presented Jesus as the solution to the sin problem once for all.  Because of God’s love, Jesus came to die for us; he took our place on the cross.
 
People are alienated from God by sin and God is alienated from people by wrath.  It is in the substitutionary death of Christ that sin is overcome and wrath averted, so that God can look on people without displeasure and people can look on God without fear.  Sin is done away with, and God is satisfied.
 

 

It is this love of God which is the basis for our own love toward others, and the solution to the dark places of our own hearts.  Because I am able to love at all tells me that there is a God who lives in me.  As we live and minister and love, it is necessary to never lose sight of why we do what we do as pastors, church leaders, and committed laypersons.  It is all about the person and work of Jesus – and at the center of it all is the cross, the atoning cleansing blood-soaked cross.  Here is the life that is truly life.

Speak to One Another with Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry Blog3 Comments
 
 
You have probably noticed that when a person gets drunk, that person says and does things that he does not typically say and do when he is sober.  When it comes to being filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18-20), instead of doing and saying stupid things, we are to be so filled with God that we do things and say things that we would not typically do and say if we were not filled with God – that is, good things.  Apart from God, apart from being full of God’s Spirit, we will tend toward not singing, but mumbling; we will not make music in our hearts, but will worry and fret about everything; and, what comes out of our mouths will be complaining and grumbling instead of giving thanks.
 
            God has called his people to be filled with the Spirit.  Singing is part of being filled with the Spirit of God.  Singing is what happens when we experience God’s overflowing grace in our lives.  Having been predestined, elected, adopted, and redeemed by Jesus leads to a joyful overflow of praise which comes out in song.  Music is powerful.  Music is not only a means of expressing our praise and commitment to Christ and each other, it is also a powerful means of being impressed.  When children first learn the alphabet, it is taught to them in a song; just trying to teach letters in a rote fashion typically doesn’t work well for pre-school kids.  This is why we remember certain words for a lifetime.  It is why we still remember words from old TV shows, because those words were set to a catchy tune.  I still know all the words to the Gilligan’s Island theme song, as well as The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, and Underdog. Music is powerful.  It is why an Alzheimer’s patient may not remember who her daughter is, but can flawlessly sing the words of Amazing Grace.
 
            It is important for us to understand this power of music and song, because singing is not to be exclusively a matter of expression; it is to be a powerful means of being impressed.  Singing is to be both an offering, a sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15) that is given to God; and, singing is to be a vehicle whereby we are taught and encouraged and built up in the community of believers.  We are to sing; and, we don’t only sing to God, but we also sing to one another, and even to ourselves.  Church music, then, is to be both a means of praising God and a practice of encouraging each other.
 
            If we are to speak to one another with singing, it is necessary for us to know what psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are.  When we think of the word “psalm” we may rightly think of the bible book of Psalms.  Singing the psalms is an ancient practice that goes all the way back to the Israelites singing psalms in the temple and synagogue.  The early church maintained this practice, especially as a means of being faithful to praying without ceasing.  However, over time, medieval congregations did not sing psalms.  In fact, the congregation did not typically sing at all.  Almost all the singing was done by church choirs and professional musicians employed by the state (since there was no separation of church and state) to write, compose, and perform in worship services.  500 years ago, when the Reformation came in all its force, one of the reforms made, especially by Martin Luther, was giving music back to the people.  One of the results of this change was putting the book of psalms to song in what we know as the Psalter.  For many Protestant denominations, the Psalter was the primary means of singing.  The Psalter was chiefly setting prayers to song; it was both a means of expressing prayer to God, and a means of learning Scripture.
 
            There had always been hymns in the church, but it was not until the Reformation that hymns began to be written and sung by congregations by the thousands.  Hymns for the Reformers were used to both impress sound doctrine and theology on Christians, and be a means of confessing the faith together.
 
 
            Spiritual songs are the present day equivalent of praise and worship choruses, or what some refer to as contemporary songs.  These are songs that are purposefully designed to be emotional, to be expressions of praise to God and give powerful testimony to what God has done or is doing for a person on a very feeling level.
 
            So, then, psalms are used to pray and learn scripture; hymns are used to teach us sound doctrine and confess the faith together; and, spiritual songs are an important way of expressing praise to God, and being encouraged in the faith.  Church music is to serve, then, as both a revelation from God, and as a response from God’s people.
 
            There are two important deductions from the admonition in Scripture to sing to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs:  1) a variety of songs is inferred and expected; and, 2) Paul commanded their use.
 
            The reason worship style is such a hot topic, and always has been so, is because we all have our personal preferences.  Yet, if we are to be faithful to this passage of Scripture we will not just lock in on what I want.  The truth is that we are selfish people when it comes to music.  We want what we want and we don’t care what somebody else wants.  And we will persist in that selfishness until somebody calls us on it.  That somebody is the Apostle Paul.  The Word of God is calling us to encompass psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs – all three of them – in our worship.
 
            Last year I asked a trusted Christian musician and pastor some questions about worship and music.  I asked him how I can lead among a variety of preferences concerning music.  One of his responses I have not forgotten.  He answered my question with a question:  “How highly do people, including and especially your musicians, value the unity of the church?  Do they love each other so much that they can allow for a wider range of style, and do so without vocally complaining about it?  When I arrived at our church, some people were in a rather bad habit of saying very openly, ‘Oh I hate that song,’, or, ‘If I hear this song one more time I’m walking out.’  What I tried to do was teach people that this is not the most loving or mature approach, and does little to build up the rest of the Body of Christ.”
 

 

            If the music in your church is being done well, and is faithful to Scripture, yet others or even yourself thinks the music is lifeless, or dull, or strange, the real issue is not one of style.  The place to look is in the heart.  Is that heart filled with the Spirit of God?  If it is, we will speak to one another using the Psalter, using time-honored hymns, and utilizing fresh contemporary praise songs.  The result will be that the Body of Christ, the Church, will be built up in the faith.  And that is my desire and my prayer.