What I Learned on My Summer Vacation (2006)

Tom Shrader draws on several passages — including 1 Peter 5:7, Hebrews 4, and Ecclesiastes 3 — to encourage believers to cast their anxieties on God, who cares for them and invites them into true rest once their sin and vulnerability are exposed before Him. He uses the anniversary of September 11th to contrast earthly insecurity with the spiritual security found in Christ, and Solomon's poem on seasons to affirm that God ordains a rhythm to life even amid chaos. He closes with a pastoral challenge about church health, warning against preferred-ministry consumerism and calling the congregation to missional commitment, servant leadership, and unity.

“Cast all your cares on him — not because life is easy, but because he loves you and cares for you, and he can handle them.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

Recorded: 2006 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 47 min

Themes: anxiety, rest, fear, trust, church health, unity, seasons of life, service, struggling with anxiety, feeling spiritually restless, church consumer, pastor, new believer, navigating uncertainty, burned out believer, searching for purpose

Scripture: Matthew 6:34, 1 Peter 5:7-8, Psalm 55:22, Hebrews 3:11, Hebrews 4:1-12, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, James 4, Mark 10:32-45, Mark 10:46-52, Matthew 11:28

Theological Themes: sanctification, divine providence, ecclesiology, casting anxiety on god, sabbath rest, missional living, servant leadership, biblical stewardship

Full Transcript

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

I really like summer vacation. That is the first thing I learned, and I tend to like it more each year. We began up in Flagstaff, which has become a favorite place for us, and then we were at Cannon Beach. That was a mix of work and vacation — I taught fourteen times in six days — but Cannon Beach is a wonderful place. I mention it all the time, and I know most of you have never heard of it, let alone been there, but it is a great place to get away.

Fly into Portland, which is the best airport in the country, and then drive an hour and a half over to the coast. If you are a married couple and you need to relax, or if you are planning a honeymoon, this would be a great place to go. You could leave on a Thursday afternoon and come back Sunday or even Monday, and in those three or four days you would feel like you were gone two weeks.

After Cannon Beach we came back, and then we were over on the ocean in Southern California. I could sit in my chair and look to my right and see the Pacific as far as the eye could reach, and to my left was a large cable TV screen. It does not get any better than that. Those were a wonderful ten days.

Borrowing Problems

I always come back from vacation feeling a little pressure to talk about something meaningful, and I usually have three or four or five things that any one of them could really be its own series. Hopefully there is a nugget here that will be helpful to you. Here is the first thing.

I have been reading fiction for a few years now. I am not interested in the great American novel — I read mystery stories. In one of the books I was reading, a character was dealing with someone who was driving him to frustration, and there was a line that stopped me. The line was: "My friend, you borrow too many problems." The idea was that this person was importing problems, and it made me think of all the people I have met over the years who are like that.

For whatever reason, it is not acceptable to them that everything is all right. They import problems, they borrow problems, and if there are no problems they will create problems. They seem to thrive in difficulty. Jesus spoke directly to this in Matthew 6, verse 34: "Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Casting Your Anxiety on Him

We reference Matthew 6:34 quite a bit, but there is a companion passage nearly all the way at the back of the Bible, in 1 Peter chapter 5. Peter wants to share some genuinely helpful insights and encouragement. Reading from the New American Standard, he says: "Casting all your anxiety on Him because He cares. Be sober of spirit. Be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a lion seeking someone to devour."

The phrase I want to focus on is in verse 7: "Casting all your anxiety on Him." I have watched people on television suggest that you write your problems down on paper, gather around a bonfire, throw the paper in, and burn your problems away. That has never worked for me. I need something bigger than that. Peter says that as followers of Christ, you have something bigger than that — you have Christ Himself.

The word "casting" means to throw onto something or someone else. What we are throwing onto someone else — in this case, Christ — is our anxiety, our discontentment, our dissatisfaction, our discouragement, our despair, our questioning, our pain, our suffering. All of those things. We take them and throw them on Him. Why? Look at the second part of that verse: "Because He cares for you."

David understood this same truth. Psalm 55, verse 22 says: "Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you. He will never allow the righteous to be shaken." Peter is not in denial about the reality of problems. Notice what he says right after this instruction — be sober, be on the alert, because you have a real problem: the devil is after you. He is not saying everything is fine. He is saying cast your cares upon Him, because He cares for you and He can handle them.

Casting Our Cares

Cast all your cares on Him. Don't worry about this. Why? Because He cares for you. He'll take them. He won't necessarily take the pain away. He won't necessarily take the suffering away. But He loves you and He cares for you. He's not blind to the adversity around you. He didn't say, "I'll save you, and that's all you really need — now go face life on your own. You can handle it."

Cast all your cares upon Him. That's what Jesus said. Come to Me. You're burdened, you're heavy laden. Come to Me, and I'll give you rest. This is not because you don't have real problems. Not because there isn't real danger. Not because life doesn't have difficulties. All those things we talked about that we put under the umbrella of anxiety — discouragement, despair, pain and suffering, moments when people lash out at you or you lash out at them, economic suffering as things fluctuate and change and businesses close and fail and people lose jobs, people you care for and love who die or get sick — all of it.

September 11th and the Question of Safety

Tomorrow is September 11th. Even if you didn't know what tomorrow was, all you need to hear is the date, because once you hear it you understand exactly what we're talking about. Five years ago tomorrow, that fateful day when the planes came into the World Trade Center, into the Pentagon, and crashed in Pennsylvania. It just doesn't seem like that was five full years ago. Susan and I were out there and drove all the way back — you remember that story.

Here is the question that all the talk shows have been discussing, and it will be everywhere tomorrow: Do you feel safer since September 11th? Now, I'm not a politician. I don't want to get into the war. That's not my deal. But it's certainly a scary world. On August 15th, here is what the president of Iran said, and this is a direct quote: "If you'd like to have good relations with the Iranian nation in the future, bow down before the greatness of the Iranian nation and surrender. If you don't accept to do this, the Iranian nation will force you to surrender and bow down." Again, I'm not a politician, but you're going to go negotiate with this guy? If that's a negotiating posture, that's a pretty hard line.

So we have all of this on the eve of September 11th, and tonight there's the ABC television special. One side is saying they want to edit the show, pull it back — there's been all this controversy around it. And people are arguing that because of what we've done since then, they really hate us now. Well, I saw a lot of hate on September 11th. But the question remains: do you feel safer now? Universally, every person who called in on the talk show I was listening to said no.

And yet we've taken some extraordinary measures — homeland security, airport security. Susan and I flew the day after that British terror plot broke, when you weren't allowed to bring liquids or anything on board. I had a bag going through the screener, heavy with books and paper. The security agent called his supervisor over, said he wasn't sure what he was looking for, and in the end they let it go. Unbeknownst to me, I had a six-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer in that bag — the very thing they were screening for. And as for the puff machine, the agent waved Susan and me right around it. So we're safer, right?

Vulnerability Exposed

Here is the real point, and the burden is on me to explain it, so stay with me through this transition. We probably are safer. But that wasn't the question. The question is, do you feel safer? And the answer is no — because on September 11th, our vulnerability was exposed.

On September 9th, Susan and I were standing right in front of the Washington Monument. I said to her, "Why would these guys, if they didn't like us, why wouldn't they fly planes into the White House and places like that?" Then on September 9th we were sitting in our hotel room at the Double Tree, right across from the Pentagon, and I said, "I don't understand why these guys don't just fly planes into these buildings." Two days later, it happened. All September 11th did was expose how vulnerable we already were. Now we've tightened everything down, but we feel no more secure.

The Spiritual Opposite

Here is the leap I want to make — over to the spiritual side. The exact opposite happens to us spiritually. Once our vulnerability is truly exposed to us, and once we see that the solution is Christ, He says, "Cast all your anxiety on Me." It works in precisely the opposite direction. Open your Bibles to Hebrews chapter four. The author of Hebrews draws a connection as he speaks about this idea of vulnerability.

Hebrews chapter four, verse 12. The author writes: "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the —"

The Word of God Lays Us Bare

The Word of God is able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of our heart. There is no creature hidden from God's sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. We are laid open to Him, exposed to Him. God sees us and exposes our vulnerability — not just in our actions, but our thoughts, our words, our heart, the picture of our mind.

God knows all the things that you have done, all the things you have said, all the things you planned on doing, all the things you wanted to do. I had that discussion the other day, going through this with some people and talking about my past, and the guy said, "You were kind of a bad guy." I said, "Well, actually, if you knew what I was thinking, I showed a lot of restraint." Things I had concocted that were far worse. But God knows all of that.

When He exposes that and lets us know that He knows — and when He helps us see ourselves that way — we find rest. We don't know that naturally. That is why the series launching next week is so important: we do not have a clue of that on our own.

Years ago, I was watching one night when Oprah interviewed Michael Jackson. I'll tell you why I watch things like that — because I know there is going to be an illustration in there somewhere. And finally, Oprah said, "Michael, what do you know?" And Michael said, "Oprah, I don't know anything for certain." That is not just a picture of Michael. That is a picture of all of us until God opens our eyes to see this truth.

The Word Opens and Exposes the Heart

That is what the Word of God does. When the Word of God is taken by the Spirit of God and applied to our hearts and minds, it lays us open, it lays us bare, and allows us to see ourselves as we really are.

What is really fascinating to me is that as Susan and I were driving home, we were listening to someone teaching on the radio, and they taught this section of Hebrews chapter four, verses one through eleven. I made a bunch of mental notes because I was driving. Then I got home and someone said, "Hey, just listen to a Piper message," and he was doing Hebrews chapter four, verses one through eleven. So I thought, look at this.

Entering His Rest

Look at the context back in chapter three. What the author of Hebrews is talking about is the one rest that we are going to find. He quotes from the Old Testament, and in Hebrews chapter three, verse eleven, this is God speaking: "As I swore in my wrath, thou shall not enter my rest." He quotes that same passage again in Hebrews chapter four, verse three: "As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest." And he quotes it again in verse five: "They shall not enter my rest."

Then there is a real interesting twist in verse eleven, where he says, "Therefore, let us be diligent to enter into the rest." He says, in a sense, let us work hard at our rest. The rest he is talking about, as he refers to the Old Testament, is the nation of Israel wandering in the wilderness, lost through their rebellion and hard-heartedness. Then he fast-forwards and says: that is our case too.

That is why Jesus says, "Come to me, all who are weary and burdened and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." The rest He gives is the cessation of trying to make God happy through your own efforts — trying to earn your salvation or make some kind of compensation for your sin. You cannot do that. Christ did that. That is what we just celebrated at communion. So I can enter into that rest, and I am to be diligent about it.

The whole context is this: I am laid bare before Him, and yet I find rest in Him. Consider whether people feel safer now than they did on September 11th. As a human being, once my sin is exposed and I respond to that and enter into His rest, not only do I feel safer — I am safer. I am delivered.

A Rhythm Even in the Chaos

Let me make this point clearly, because I have two other points for this morning. It is not that life in and of itself is necessarily easy. But even in the middle of what appears to be chaos, there is a rhythm, a sense to it.

Turn to the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter three. If you are my age or you appreciate older music, you are familiar with this passage even if you have never owned or read a Bible, because the Byrds used these verses to give us a wonderful song. Here is what Solomon writes. And I will say, somewhere in this mix, the next book study we do is going to be the book of Ecclesiastes. I have never taught it, so it would be new and difficult and challenging — and that would be good. Here is what Solomon writes, Ecclesiastes 3:1:

The Rhythm of Life

There is an appointed time for everything — a time for every event under heaven. And here is the list: a time to give birth, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to uproot what is planted, a time to kill, a time to heal, a time to tear down, a time to build up, a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, a time to dance, a time to throw stones, a time to gather stones, a time to embrace, a time to shun embracing, a time to search, a time to give up as lost, a time to keep, a time to throw away, a time to tear apart, a time to sew together, a time to be silent, a time to speak, a time to love, a time to hate, a time for war, a time for peace.

We are not going to unpack all of that, but here is what Solomon is saying to us. Remember who Solomon is. He is the man who has everything you ever wanted — everything you think is going to make you happy, he has had it. He sits at the end of his life and writes this, and he is saying there is a rhythm to life.

Look again at verse one: there is an appointed time for everything. Well, who appoints the time? Who assigns the time? Who maintains the calendar? When I am out and I run into people, we will agree to meet, and I will say, "You need to call and get it on my calendar." They will ask who keeps my calendar, and I say, "You need to talk to Karen — Karen keeps the calendar." But every time I say that, I laugh, because really, God keeps the calendar. That is what we saw in James chapter four: we will say, "Let us go to such and such a city and work there for a year and make a profit," but you do not really know what this year holds, because life is like a vapor.

What Solomon is saying is that though the world may seem chaotic, it really is not. There is a rhythm to it. There is a time to plant and a time to harvest, and you cannot get them out of sync. There is an appropriate order to things.

A Graveside Moment

There is a time to give birth, and there is a time to die. I did a funeral years ago, and we were at the graveside. I have always found the graveside to be a very sobering place, because what happens there tends to be very quick and very definitive. Your mind somehow does not bring that reality to bear until the graveside.

We stood there with the casket open over a precisely cut hole — very clear what was about to take place. And I'm standing there almost in an out-of-body experience, watching the widow and her daughter and a three-week-old granddaughter. I thought of exactly this passage: a time to die, a time for birth, a cycle of life. That grandbaby, three weeks old, was saying goodbye to a dead grandfather without even the cognitive power to understand it.

In my own life, I have experienced my dad's death, and I have Sarah, who is hopefully in the process of giving birth in the next few months. What Solomon is saying — and what we need to know — is that there is an appointed time and an appropriate time. Do not fight it. Do not let it get out of sync. Do not mix these things together. God is in control. There is a time to build up, and there is a time to tear down.

Designed for Rest in Him

Let me try to bring all of this together. God has designed you and me as creatures who were placed in paradise — at least our forefathers were. They rejected Him. It was the first real hostile takeover we ever saw. They said, "Let us be God," and we have suffered the consequence ever since.

When God opens your eyes and exposes your sin, you are not only vulnerable at that point, but you then and only then have access to true rest in Him. And it is not just for salvation — it is for life, because I can cast all my cares on Him. This is not a matter of burning a piece of paper and throwing it away. This is the real thing.

My life is filled with things I would not choose. Some of them are big, some are small. If I could write the rules, I would never sit at a red light — I know that sounds trivial, but that is the kind of thing I mean. I would never stand in line. But there is a rhythm, there is a sync to it. God has designed and ordained that. As a result of the fall we have sin in our lives, and God has not forfeited His position.

The Elders' Devotional: Mark Chapter 10

A couple more things. We had an elders meeting on Tuesday — an in-town mini-retreat. We started at one and went until eight. We began with a devotional that Howard led, and he taught from Mark chapter 10. It was a devotional, so we did not unpack it completely, but there is a very clear point here that we have made before, though we can add a twist to it.

Mark chapter 10, verse 35: James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come up to Jesus and say, "Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of You." That probably sounds like some of your children when they come to you, or like people who come to me and say, "Will you do whatever I ask?" The obvious answer is no. Jesus does not reprimand them, but look at His response: "What do you want Me to do for you?" They said to Him, "Grant that we may sit, one on Your right and one on Your left, in glory." And Jesus said, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?"

Now look at the context. There is already tension in the air. If you go back to verse 32, they are on the road going up to Jerusalem.

A New Path to Power

Jesus is walking ahead of them, and they are amazed. Those who followed were fearful. Again, He took the twelve aside and began to tell them what was going to happen. This is the third time He has told them this — this is not new information. Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, they will condemn Him to death, they will hand Him over to the Gentiles, they will mock Him, they will spit on Him, they will scourge Him, and they will kill Him.

Each time He tells them this, it ends with the same phrase: three days later, He will rise again. They seem to not fully understand the first part and have no framework at all for the last part. Yet this is coming. James and John — and Matthew fills in a couple of gaps and tells us their mother is behind this — come to Jesus and ask whether He will do whatever they ask. What they want is honor, power, and position. Proximity to Jesus in rule and authority — left and right — that is what they are after.

Jesus tells them they have no idea what they are asking for, because they will have to experience all these other things first. The cross cannot be left behind. It is not optional — not for Jesus, and not for those who follow Him. What James and John really want is a path to power, and in verse 42, Jesus says He is going to give them a new path.

"You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it is not that way among you. But whoever wishes to be great among you needs to be a servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you should be slave of all." And if you need a role model, verse 45 says that is Jesus Himself: "For even as I, the Son of Man, came not to be served, but to serve, to give His life a ransom for many."

The new path to power is humility. That is the primary lesson. But here is what is worth sitting with further.

What Do You Want Me to Do for You?

What if Jesus actually asked you that question — what do you want Me to do for you? In the exchange with James and John, He is exposing the disorder in their thinking. Whatever they are asking for comes from a selfish and misguided place. But right after this, in verse 46, that same question gets asked again in a completely different context.

They come down to Jericho, and there is a blind man. The blind man cries out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." There is commotion all around, but Jesus calls for him. And in verse 51, Jesus asks him, "What do you want me to do for you?" You do not really need to wonder what a blind man is going to ask for. He wants to see. He asks to see, and he sees.

Here is the thought this raises: God is a really big God who does really big things, and sometimes we simply do not bother asking Him for big things. That idea can be misunderstood and abused — that is acknowledged — but so can the doctrines of grace, and we teach those anyway. The lesson Jesus is drawing out with James and John is not that we should never ask Him for anything. The lesson is about exposing the heart. What they were asking for — power, honor, prominence, glory — was selfish, and it was not going to happen that way.

But the question itself stands: what do you want God to do for you? And why would you not ask Him? God is in the world doing really big things. He is the God of the impossible, and He tends to do those impossible things through people. Why would any of us not want to be part of that?

Ask God for Big Things

You have real problems, real issues, and real fears. It does not matter how big those problems are — God is bigger. And sometimes there is a tendency to sterilize this truth. Reading through the Old Testament, God is doing some remarkably big things in people's lives. Reading through the biographies of those who have walked with Him, God is doing some remarkably big things in their lives as well.

The challenge is this — to ask God for big things. Ask Him what those big things are. This applies to each of us individually, and to this congregation together. God is in the business of doing the impossible through ordinary people, and that is an invitation worth taking seriously.

A Trend Worth Noticing

At Cannon Beach, among the roughly 75 families gathered, two trends became visible. The first one was something entirely unexpected. Three separate families — not every family present, but three distinct ones who came to talk — had each recently purchased larger homes or more acreage in order to move their parents in with them and bring the whole family together under one roof.

Three families is not a coincidence. That has to reflect something happening more broadly. Some people may have had a strong reaction to that idea, but these families are choosing to say: we have parents who need care, and this is not an assisted living situation — it is family choosing to stay together. That is a trend worth paying attention to.

The Phenomenon of Church Consumption

I saw something at Cannon Beach and shared it with Susan and with a couple of the leadership people there. At the time I just thought it was an interesting observation. Then I got back home and received a call from a friend of mine who, as God would have it, had been doing a conference in Iowa while I was doing one at Cannon Beach.

We got together and I said, "Did you notice anything among the people attending the conference?" He said yes. When I asked what it was, he shared with me exactly the second thing I had observed. Here is what he said: everybody there — every single person — was complaining about their church. That is what I saw at Cannon Beach. I could not believe it. It was couple after couple, single after single, all complaining about their church.

I told him the reason I asked was because that was exactly what I had seen at Cannon Beach. Then he said something that made it even more striking: the person leading the other sessions that week was a church consultant. I had the opportunity to talk with that consultant on a couple of occasions.

Preferred Ministry vs. Missional Ministry

The consultant pulled out two things he said he always brings into churches. This is a bottle of Tylenol PM and these are M&Ms with peanuts. The PM stands for preferred ministry, and the M&M stands for missional ministry.

He went on to say that the last Leadership Journal and other publications are all talking about this phenomenon — that the church in America today is being destroyed by the church itself. It is eating itself. It is devouring itself.

The consultant explained the problem this way: everybody wants preferred ministry. They want their stuff, their way — the Burger King approach. I want it now, I want it this way, I want it fast, I want ketchup, I want mustard. That is preferred ministry. Missional ministry says something different: there is a lot going on here, some of it I care about and some of it I do not, but we have a mission, and that mission is not simply to make me happy.

The Nordstrom Illustration

We happened to be having lunch at Nordstrom, which is actually a great place to eat — hardly anyone goes up there. As I sat there I thought, this place is the epitome of preferred ministry. That is why Nordstrom exists. If you want, they will give you a personal shopper whose entire purpose is to make you happy. That is why a store exists, that is why businesses exist — to serve you.

And there is a sense in which that is true within the church as well. We are here to learn and to serve, and as a staff we are here to serve you. But not for preferred ministry. Not so that everything is arranged purely to suit individual preference.

When I walked in here this morning, you could hang meat in this room. I have been gone five weeks, but apparently that is not quite long enough for some attitudes to change. I was told there would be a different temperature at the 8:30 service, and sure enough, every person I passed — you could hang meat in here. I mentioned that the 10:30 crowd would be fanning themselves.

Music and the Church Devouring Itself

Books are now being written about this — about how the church is devouring the church. I cannot leave it alone, and so I kept talking with people about it. Without exception, the number one complaint was — and you can probably guess — music. People could not let the music go. It began with music and then every other grievance followed from there. We used to do this kind of music and now we do that kind of music. We were over here and now we are over there.

That resonates with me somewhat, because we have made those kinds of changes. I have stood up here and said "never, never, never" and then we did it anyway. We have done things differently. If you come at 8:30 or 10:30 in this room, you experience a different worship style than at 8:30 or 10:30 in the conference room. Sunday evening at 4 o'clock in here is similar but more casual, and 6 o'clock is something different again. I believe we are better because of it.

I have no problem with someone saying they prefer one style over another. My assumption is that if you are in this room at this hour, many of you chose to be here — this is your preference. Others who come in the evening do not want this. Here is the point: one is not better than the other. If you are in here, I hope you can say, "I may not like that other style, but I love what God is doing in that service." I say that about the evening services all the time — you may not prefer the morning style, but you need to understand that God is doing great things in the lives of those people.

Five Tests for a Healthy Church

Now that my eyes have been opened to this problem in the church, I began doing a little research. I came across an article outlining five tests for a healthy church. Let me walk through what the author identifies. The first two involve leadership — one concerns the leadership itself, the other concerns the people. One of those leadership issues is what he calls scandalous leadership: immorality, lust, greed. He actually has a sentence in the article about this —

The Wounds Leaders Inflict

Someone observed that it might take a generation to overcome the humiliating scars from grievous sin on just one staff member. Whether it is a breach of trust, sexual sin, someone taking money, or whatever it may be, the effect is enormous. I will confess that I have really learned over the years that leadership can have a disastrous effect on its people, and that is significant.

The Danger of Chronic Discord

The next issue is the discordant member. This is not someone who registers an occasional disagreement. This is the person who sows seeds of discord among the brethren. Such an individual can make life miserable for the pastor, sandbag decisions, discourage members, and repel the lost.

Bill Volchek shared something with me the other day: ten percent of the people love whatever you do, ten percent of the people hate whatever you do, and eighty percent are in the middle. You can watch this dynamic in a business, on a sporting team with one athlete, and certainly in a church — someone who just talks and talks and sows seeds of discord. I have learned over the years that you cannot handle that and you cannot allow it.

Apathy in the True Church

The third issue is apathy — simply not caring. One author writes this: "We have anarchy in the world, apostasy in the professing church, and apathy in the true church." It is the posture of someone who says, I don't care, whatever, it's a church, I'll come and do my thing, drop my load, get the kids, and get out.

Inflexibility as Idolatry

The fourth issue is inflexibility. One author writes these great words: inflexibility leads to idolatry, and change is the only road out of self-centered control to servanthood. We've always done it this way, we don't want to change — these are the familiar refrains.

I was with a man who was complaining about the music in his church and several other things they were doing, and he said to me, "It's clear our leadership is trying to be relevant." I told him the only other option is irrelevance, which doesn't seem like a worthy goal. I understand the fear behind that expression — the worry that being relevant means throwing out the truth. I have even heard a little of that over the last six or eight months, the suggestion that we are trying to move with the culture and compromise for it. But I would point out that we would not be loading up on the doctrines of grace for seven weeks if this were about abandoning truth. This is about how we serve, minister, love, and care for people.

When we say we have always done it a certain way, we are really saying we will do it that way forever, and that simply does not seem wise. You would not operate that way in your own life.

A Church Without Purpose

The final issue is purposelessness. Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish historian, writes: "A man without purpose is like a ship without a rudder. Have a purpose in life, and having it throws such strength in mind and muscle into your work as God has given you to do." The same is true of the church.

What I Hope Is True of Us

All of this really got me thinking about church. What I learned on my summer vacation is that there are apparently a great many people who do not like their church, and I hope you are not among them. I hope we do not have that situation here. If we do, I am absolutely oblivious to it.

I think part of the reason we are in a good place is that we are wide open to change. If something is planned and it does not work, it is gone — no sacred cows in that sense. If we have a sacred cow, it is the message itself, not the form. I also genuinely believe that you own this. I hope most of you do not come to do church, but to be the church. Just look around at all the people in those green shirts today serving in children's ministries, or consider frontline ministry — to pull off a Sunday the way we do it takes somewhere between four and five hundred people serving somewhere today.

For the church to be alive and vital and vibrant, the goal is not to eliminate every problem. We are brothers and sisters, we are family, and like any family there are a few quirky relatives hiding in the basement. That is just how it is. But you do not write off the family because of it. You do not walk away from the dinner table because of the green beans.

Committed to the Local Church

I'm going down the street and someone says, "You got green beans? I don't like green beans. You know I don't like green beans." All of that takes place in a context of relationship — in a place of having that ongoing relationship. So when things come along and the answer is, "I'm out of here," that may happen, but it happens based on relationship and time and effort.

That's what I saw. I was talking to person after person, and when I came back I kept asking, "Well, what do you do? Where's your role? Where do you fit?" And obviously, in many cases, there was no commitment there. I believe that one of the secrets, at least for many of you — and hopefully one day for all of you — is that you are truly committed in time, energy, effort, and money to East Valley Bible Church.

It would kill me to think that we had a large number of people running around at a conference saying, "I hate my church. I hate my church. I hate my church." I was stunned when it happened. I was stunned when my friend saw it. And I was absolutely shocked when he said there is literature everywhere on this subject, because the church is literally being devoured by its own people — people who refuse to participate, who refuse to allow leaders to lead and to do their work.

That is what I learned on my summer vacation.

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*Let's pray together. Father, thank You that as we travel and as we are in all these different places, we still realize that You are Lord of everything. God, our desire is very simple — our desire is to see You glorified in everything that we do. God, to try to put aside our selfishness, to see Your Spirit move with power in our lives. Thank You for Your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank You for salvation. Thank You for using us in this world. We pray this to You. In Jesus' name, amen.*