In a healthy church, family or business people have the gift of wrestling through issues that arise in navigating life together.
Best practice of this is when you have an issue you talk to the person themselves. Give them the ability to hear your concerns or conflicts and respond. This creates space to be heard and work towards understanding and resolution if there needs to be something worked out, forgiven or changed. I am grateful that people in my personal and pastoral life have the confidence and security to do this in our relationship. I think everyone is healthier when this can happen in relationships.
When things break down or break out in a dysfunctional or destructive way it’s usually because this hasn’t happened. Instead people find others to talk to and expand the circle of offense and nurse or nudge one another towards resentment instead of resolution and reconciliation.
Regardless of how these interpersonal moments unfold, good or bad, we should take the time to reflect afterwards. Prayerfully listen to God, search his Word and process the conversations to better understand others and ourselves. This is healthy practice in community.
In life everybody…parent, professional or pastor in family, business, ministry or mission wrestles with how to rightly justify themselves and their work.
2 Corinthians 3:1-6 “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
“Do we need…letters of recommendation to you or from you?” Vs 1
As a Pastor, I find this verse to be an ongoing reality over the almost 30 years of full time pastoral service.
The explanation of one’s ministry within Churches and ministries we serve is regularly required.
On one hand this comes from the nature of our work being that much is unseen and often unnoticeable. Handling the seeds of immortality with mortal hands isn’t a work that’s easy to explain.
On the other hand, we are saints that sin and we will need repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation throughout lives. Offenses, misunderstandings and mistakes happen and that’s why grace, mercy and speaking the truth in love is essential to maintaining good relationships.
In Church and ministry an unhealthy grid of trying to determine if one is “doing good” can surface in pastor’s or parishioners' minds and hearts.
It usually gets reduced to: “Butts, Budgets and Buildings”…how many people do you have in a service, how much money does your church have and what is your building like? Many people will recoil at the charge that they are judging the work of God by such metrics, but it is often happening.
We judge one another in relation to how good someone is or isn’t performing in these spheres.
Performance is part of human life.
The deep temptation at the heart of this reality is how will one judge their personal or professional success? How will we gain or maintain approval? Who or what determines that we are living good, meaningful and fruitful lives?
Living for “letters of recommendation” can drive people to exhausting levels of personal justifications for existence. Are you worth the time, cost and care required? This haunts many people to some degree or another in their marriages, friendships and work lives.
Sometimes we are searching for “letters of recommendation” from those around us to bolster our defense against critics attacking us from the outside. We look to those closest to us to assure us that we have a meaningful existence. We hope someone near will stand up and tell the outside world that our lives matter.
At other times we seek “letters of recommendation” from the outside world when those closest to us wound, weary or weigh us down with courtroom-like anxieties.
Being on trial is a common human dynamic that erodes peace and joy in interpersonal relationships. The practice people have of building a case against one other by collecting offenses is at the heart of so much dysfunction and divorce culture.
Such challenges drive us to find our “witnesses” to prove we are not the people others say we are or didn’t do the things we are being charged to have done.
All of us have to navigate these issues, even Jesus and his Apostles did. Learning how they tackled these temptations is essential to living a sane, sustainable and even successful life.
1 Corinthians 9:1b-2 “…Aren’t you all the proof of my ministry in the Lord? Certainly! If others do not recognize me as their apostle, at least you are bound to do so, for now your lives are joined to the Lord. You are the living proof, the certificate of my apostleship.”
Connecting people to Jesus is at the heart of biblical ministry. We make disciples first and foremost by helping people come to know, love and obey Jesus. He is their hope for living healthy and fruitful lives.
Jesus changes lives. He is continually working from the inside out by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. You can’t do better than getting inside someone and changing them from the inside out.
Philippians 1:6 “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”
Another thing I’ve learned is that love is the strongest building element in the construction of meaningful and fruitful lives. Paul points to people’s lives when defending his ministry.
“The only letter of recommendation we need is you yourselves. Your lives are a letter written in our hearts; everyone can read it and recognize our good work among you.” -2 Corinthians 3:2
“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stay true to the Lord. I love you and long to see you, dear friends, for you are my joy and the crown I receive for my work.” -Philippians 4:1
Paul’s defense was the good work read in the lives of the people he loved and served.
2 Corinthians 3:3 “Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the result of our ministry among you. This “letter” is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts.”
“Writing with the Spirit of the living God” isn’t always an easy endeavor to discern when it’s being penned. We are writing a story whose ”author” is God: “…looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…” -Hebrews 12:2
Writing on hearts isn’t read as easily as a letter written with “pen and ink”. We need to have spiritual eyes and hearts to see, hear and judge rightly when examining and judging people’s lives, ministries and churches.
Last of all, the older I get I’ve had to come to peace with the truth that only time and trial will truly tell the quality of each person's work or witness.
Quick growth or fast results look good, but don't last, mostly because deep change or transformation hasn’t taken place on the inside.
Jesus taught that we have to “dig deep” to lay a foundation for a life that can withstand the storms that will beat against it (Luke 6:46-49).
The real responsibility for building good lives is in each individual's hands. We are the ones that will stand before Jesus to give an account for own lives, not anyone else.
“Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ. Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.” -1 Corinthians 3:10-15
“The fire will show if a person’s work has any value.”
I believe all people have value and the quality of my investment in them is ultimately going to be best judged by the Lord.
2 Corinthians 3:4-5 “We are confident of all this because of our great trust in God through Christ. It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God.”
This is where at the end of the day I rest my heart and mind: my trust is “…in God through Christ.”. He is my hope for anything that’s meaningful to be accomplished for time and eternity.
I’m not “qualified” to do anything of eternal value, only God enables that work to be done. My qualifications are not my performance, but my position in Christ.
To that end I labor as a pastor and as a fellow Christian and pray that God will find gold.