This article originally appeared in print journal Mar/Apr 2000.
Which of these things is not like the others?
• Evangelism
• Disciple-making
• Outreach
• A loveless heart
In our ministry, we discovered there is no dichotomy. In fact, we found the first three things can lead to the fourth.
Surveying the Land
In many ways, American Christianity is in poor shape. One notable problem is similar to the struggle faced by the church of Ephesus in
Even worse—they don’t even know it.
But that’s not the only bad news. The bigger problem is what they purchase as a replacement part. Many congregations blindly buy the message of doing over being. “If we do the right things—reach out and make disciples—everything will work out.” Slogans like WWJD become road maps to spiritual health.
But should slogans and “five steps to a more fruitful life” act as road maps to spiritual health? Can something as seemingly positive as the WWJD movement actually keep us from spiritual health?
The answer to the former question?
No.
But as for the latter…you bet.
In fact, constantly wondering about and focusing on what Jesus would do kept me from noticing a cancerous disorder gnawing away at my life and my ministry.
Diagnosing a Loveless Heart
In
A loveless heart sneaks up on many believers just as it took hold of the church in Ephesus. Its deception blurs reality—we do the right things (evangelism, disciple-making, and reaching out) not because we love God, but because we love being right. And then our righteousness turns into a pride issue instead of a love issue. This is a loveless heart.
Diagnosing My Heart
God revealed my loveless heart while I prepared to speak for a conference called Operation Good News (OGN) at Nyack College, just south of New York City. These conferences are unbelievable equipping tools. In the morning, students are trained in evangelism and apologetics. After lunch, they hit the streets (in this case, the streets of the Big Apple) for an afternoon of face-to-face witnessing. It’s not role playing—it’s the real deal. It was a pretty incredible, life-changing week.
With this in mind, I was preparing talks on the heart of a disciple-maker. But I was stuck. The more I prayed and studied, the more I realized I practiced the habits of a disciple-maker without having the heart of one. In my attempt to discover why, I reflected on the previous three years of my life. They were tough years, filled with crises. I had become so used to merely keeping my head above water, it was now my standard operating procedure. I allowed Christian “habits” to slowly push my Christlike heart out of its primary position.
What’s worse, students followed my example. The ministry I led was filled with teens who had good habits but weak hearts. I was asked to speak at OGN because our youth ministry was considered a high-powered, disciple-making machine. Yet how could I speak to other groups about the heart behind a disciple-making ministry when I was discovering we didn’t have one?
Signs of a Loveless Heart
Our ministry had it backwards. We focused on doing the right actions instead of being the right people. And it started with me. As the saying goes, “leaders lead”—and I led my group down an unhealthy path.
What signs showed up in my life?
There were two major symptoms. One was easy to diagnose; the other was not so obvious.
The easy one was that I did devotions out of duty. I spent time with God in order to be a good Christian—because I felt I had to. Although I know God loves me whether I have quiet times or not, deep down I did devotions to score brownie points with God. Long term, the brownie-point system died and my time alone with God became nonexistent.
Second (and more subtly), I was motivated to do the right thing—not because I loved God—but because I cherished correctness. This was difficult to diagnose. But when examining my motives, I realized everything came down to pride. I was in love with myself and valued looking good. I was a modern-day Ephesus Christian who always asked “What would Jesus do?” Did I care about why Jesus would do it? Not really. Because while Jesus did what he did to honor the Father (
Signs of a Loveless Ministry
In the midst of these revelations, I discovered our youth ministry focus of doing became so detrimental that we forgot how to be God’s people. For instance, numbers were always a driving motivation for us. Don’t get me wrong—looking at numbers isn’t necessarily bad. The New Testament put much stock in numbers. Large crowds were constantly reported in the gospels. Jesus also sent out 120. He fed 5,000. And 3,000 were added to the church in one day. In the New Testament, numbers are important because they represent people—so our ministry has never been ashamed of focusing on numbers, especially when they deal with salvation and assimilation.
But there was a problem. Numbers were the only driving point. They stopped representing people and were an end in themselves.
Another problem was lack of passion. Again, this was hard to detect, but the “oomph” in our ministry was gone. Like I said, we did the right things—outreaches, small groups, ministry training, service projects—but no one expected God to do anything. I never heard students ask, “What if God would do this in our group?” or “Wouldn’t it be cool if God blew us away by that?” Those hopes weren’t part of our lexicon. We lacked the passion to see God move.
Before long, guilt became our number-one motivation. Every event was driven by duty:
• “How many invited a friend to the outreach?”
• “How many had a spiritual conversation with a lost person this week?”
• “If you really wanted to grow, you would attend a small group.”
Guilt, guilt, guilt.
The Heart-Healthy Youth Worker
So how could I correct this positional problem in my spiritual life? (Remember…leaders lead!) If I wanted a heart-healthy ministry, I needed a healthy heart inside of me.
While putting together the talks for OGN, I ran across an illustration that turned the light on for me. A number of years ago, a few unlucky volunteers found themselves in an unusual experiment in which scientists strapped odd-looking eyeglasses on their faces. These glasses looked like binoculars. Every waking moment the participants had to wear these lenses. What was so unusual about the glasses? They made everything appear upside down.
At first, the volunteers could barely function. Sitting, walking, even feeding themselves was a challenge. (Imagine trying to eat spoonfuls of oatmeal coming at you upside down!) But after a few weeks, their eyes adjusted. They actually began seeing right side up through upside-down eyeglasses. Not only could they sit up and walk, they rode bikes through parks and even drove in traffic.
Little did they know the real experiment was about to begin. When the glasses were removed, one by one the participants fell down. Their eyes had adjusted so well to seeing through inverted glasses that when removed, they saw everything upside down with their natural eyes.
What an illustration of a loveless heart! This focus disorder snuck up on me, blurred reality, and made me forget my first love. Yet the cure was as simple—I merely needed to replace my “doing” glasses with a pair of “being” specs.
But while this solution seems simple, its application is much more demanding. Everything in my life needed refocusing: My time alone with God, my motives, my passions. I intentionally took time out of my daily routine—not for brownie points—but to be filled with Jesus. These days I look at my time with God as “cup time.” My Master fills my cup with his presence so I can live through his power. And then, when I walk through life and touch others, I literally splash Jesus on them. That’s doing out of being.
I’m not saying doing is wrong. There’s nothing wrong with action. (If that were the case, we’d have to white out the entire book of James!) Doing is necessary; it is a fruit of Christianity.
But after what I’ve been through, I strongly believe doing must come from a healthy heart.
The Heart-Healthy Ministry
As this truth becomes more of a reality in my life, it also becomes more of a reality in my youth ministry. While God met me and woke me up during that week at OGN, he did the same thing with my students. Many of them began looking to God to move in bigger ways (“Wouldn’t it be cool if, when we got home, God did this?” they were asking.)
And the fire is still alive. Here are a few new flames that our “being” glasses have brought to our ministry:
• We still talk about being before doing. Rarely does a week go by without a student or adult reminding us of this truth.
• We now have a healthier perspective on numbers. We still focus on them, but we remember who they represent. During the last few years, numerous students became Christians—but only a handful became part of our ministry and grew in their faith. Those statistics have been changing. Now the majority of kids asking Christ into their lives are folded into our family.
• Outreach nights (where we call for a response to the gospel) are less adult-dependent. Students like Danielle, Ashley, Brian and Emily have led friends to Christ one-on-one after outreaches or the next day at school. They are owning the Great Commission because it’s about who they are in Christ, not what they do for him.
• Ministry training involves more than skill development. We focus on who we are in Christ, which enables us to splash Jesus on people when we bump into them.
• Prayer is a focal point. In fact, every Thursday, 20 to 40 students gather at 6:30 a.m. to pray about being.
• The motivation of privilege has replaced the motivation of guilt. Now we teach our kids that it’s our privilege to serve and minister. And we discourage fakery. In other words, if students aren’t being, we beg them not to do.
In my four-year process of discovering being before doing, I realized that I already knew this truth. No only did I know it, I could have taught it. (I probably did, many times.) But the most important thing I discovered isn’t that I know these truths; it’s that they’re written on my heart. n
