What James MacDonald Forgot

Can we stand yet another post on the James MacDonald debacle?

I first watched a video of James MacDonald teaching back in 2010. He was a mighty fine speaker: eloquent, passionate, and well-prepared. He had charisma and humor, to boot. He loved the Word of God.

He seemed so much like so many other charming and well-spoken pastors with big names and bigger platforms, thanks to publishers driven to capitalize on their books and social media outlets that stand in as a worldwide pulpit. Less like shepherds, more like celebrities.

Power trips and the root of it all, pride, are the tip of the iceberg according to insiders. Honestly, I wish the festering pimple would just pop so we could have it all out and be done with it, swabbing the whole mess with a gigantic cotton ball soaked in alcohol.

Or the gospel.

Because, see, that’s what’s been missing for a long, long time. Back when he began, back when I heard him speak, back when he was running an organization that touched the lives of thousands all over the world, I can believe that the gospel was the goal. But as the personality and the ego begins to serve one person—James MacDonald— the gospel becomes painfully absent from the mission. Oh, it might take the forefront in word, but in heart, it becomes, shall we say, nonattendant.

The gospel that reminds us of Whose we are and what He did for us. The gospel that reminds us that God is more than enough, that Jesus paid it all and declared “It is finished”, and that what He did was more important than what we do. The gospel that reminds us that we don’t have to go anywhere else to look for our value, worth, acceptance, or fulfillment. 

That’s what James MacDonald forgot, and I am just like him. Because I, too, leave the gospel behind daily in my quest to feel accepted. I have to remind myself of the finished work of Christ on my behalf daily, hourly. I have to bask in the love of a God who cannot ever fail to love me. 

So really, we’re not so different, James and I. Perhaps now that he’s left with a deep, hemorrhaging, gaping, festering wound, he’ll remember why he loved Jesus in the first place. It may mean isolation and a profound loss of relationships and at the very least, the complete collapse of that pathetic little empire he built apart from the gospel. But that would be the greatest thing James could ever do in his life. Return to Jesus and be filled up with Jesus’ value and worth and significance. It’s all about Jesus. 

Because empires built on anything less than the gospel aren’t worth the tiny men who’ve slaved tirelessly to erect them. In the end, what they had put up as a prop for their own inadequacies fails them miserably, and they become slaves to the very things they might have used to point people to Jesus instead of themselves. 

The gospel. That’s what James forgot.

By the way, if this article sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because you read my post called What Doug Phillips Forgot or heard our podcast episode called What Josh Duggar Forgot. James MacDonald shares a lot of company, unfortunately. Us, too.

If you happen to be one of those Christian leaders who find yourself increasingly all about yourself, find a place to start here: In Light of Fallen Men: How Christian Leaders Can Avoid the Abyss.

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Grace-Based Parenting Isn't a Fad (But It Isn't An Excuse, Either)

 I don’t often write parenting posts. The reason is threefold:  

1.

We aren’t done parenting yet. While we have four adult children and one about to be so, we are also still raising a high schooler, a junior higher, and an intellectually disabled 10-year-old. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that we don’t call the game at half time. The story isn’t over. 

That’s a lot of kids, but we’re even missing our oldest son and his wife in this one.

2.

Our best parenting moments have been entirely led by the Holy Spirit. I’m not kidding when I say the most helpful, loving, and life-transforming things to come out of my mouth have been uttered after I’ve cried out to God and told him I have no idea how to handle the present situation. Some of those are doozies, like when the loudest, most contentious yelling shakedown occurred above my head on the second floor. . . between two sisters. Even the older brothers had never had such an altercation, and there was no cupboard of experience into which I might peer and draw acquired wisdom.

I could tell you how to parent and what to do, but the better guide is the Holy Spirit in your life. I’d want you to take my ideas with that in mind.

Always keep your eye on the one with the biggest smile. Sisters, 2004

3.

Our family dynamics, marriage, home culture, and children are all different than yours. I can tell you where we have failed miserably and where we have had huge successes, but really only in relationship to the people in our home.  

If you can keep those three things in mind, then keep reading!

This is what 27 years of marriage looks like for us. Lots of hiccups, lots of love.

Prior to leaving legalism, we were a rules-based family. There was a lot of fun and monkeying around and kids splashing in the pool and people everywhere, but the bottom line was the bottom line: “Shape up or ship out.”

Then one sweltering June morning I tiptoed into the big master bedroom walk-in closet to check on the baby and discovered that my tiny beautiful boy had slipped into a life-altering coma. It’s a story I tell often, because it was the beginning of transformation. How could it not be?

As God began to gently nudge us out of our rules-based, religion-heavy, good behavior-driven stupor and toward a faith centered solely on what Christ had accomplished on our behalf, our relationships began to change, too. Our parenting changed.

There are nuances that have been the result of that change, nuances that are still refining themselves within each relationship and interpersonal interaction we have with each individual child. That could fill a book. But this is a lowly blog post and I want it to pack a punch in fewer illustrations and absolutely no chapters, so here we go:

Showing children grace does not cancel out showing them how to be decent human beings.

I want to like my kids. I want you to like my kids. Therefore, we still teach them to treat each other with kindness, be grateful for everything that’s been given to them, be others-centered and unselfish in their care of people, and to wipe the pee off the toilet seat.

We still discipline when there’s defiance. We say what we mean and mean what we say. We still take away technology when it begins to steal a child’s ability to focus on anything but a screen, assign appropriate chores, get irritated when dishes are dumped in the sink or snuck to a bedroom, and curtail privileges like hanging out with friends when attitudes are tossed our way or schoolwork is ignored.

But grace. Grace allows us the space to also communicate that doing everything perfectly—schoolwork, relationships, chores, obedience—does not make God love them any more than he already does. Grace is a gift, given and bestowed because he loves them so. Grace allows me, the sinful mother, to say, “Oh man. Look at how I blew up at you. I am so sorry. Can you forgive me? This is why I need Jesus. This is why you need Jesus.”

It’s a subtle shift in how we view sin, our children, and their savior, but it packs a critical punch. It allows a giant space for the gospel to swoop in and communicate that he isn’t angry, vengeful, or wrathful with the redeemed. He loves and showers grace over the hearts of his beloved people, including our children. We get a lot of do-overs because of Jesus.

Special needs or not, we all “strugol”.

The Bible is still the Word of God, whether or not we believe God’s commands are for our good.

It’s funny. The more I talk about grace, the more I’m met with the response, “But what about swinging the pendulum too far? I mean, God has rules.” Folks, we are obsessed with the rules.

Obsessed.

So much so that I spent one whole chapter of Leaving Legalism addressing this very topic. Rules. Pendulums. The law/grace equation.

You’re right. There are rules. But let us never, never, never forget that those rules (commands, principles, imperatives) always, without exception, follow God’s outpouring of love and his communication of who he is and who we are because of who he is.

I’ve just finished reading through the first four books of the Bible this year, and I have been struck repeatedly by the fact that God, without fail, tells his people who he is and then tells them who they are because of who he is before he hands over the rules etched into giant stones. Their identity—who they are—is established before they get the list of how he wants them to move forward.

If God has found it necessary and consequential to remind us who he is and who we are because of it, then we must do the same. Do you want something to do? Do that. Remind yourself, over and over and over, of who God is and who you are because of it. Redeemed. Justified. Whole.

Out of the knowledge of who we are flows the desire to do what he tells us to do. If we reverse the order, we are precluding God’s Word. We are telling him we can keep his law all by ourselves. We can’t. You cannot.

We teach our kids first who they are in light of who God is, and then we tell them why our loving God gives us so much wisdom and some really helpful guidelines in Scripture. People can get all up-in-arms about displays of the 10 Commandments in public spaces, but I bet there isn’t a one who disagrees with “Don’t murder”, “Don’t lie”, or “Don’t steal your neighbor’s stuff”. God, in his infinite wisdom, tells us the rules because he knows what is best for humanity.

Imagine that.

This daughter teaches me what grace looks like.

Grace is a glorious, God-shaped gift. It lives eternally. It isn’t a popular parenting paradigm.

How you decide to dress your kids, feed your kids, talk to your kids, or steer your kids is entirely up to you. Fads abound. Parenting built on a foundation of the understanding of our salvation by faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone isn’t one of them.

You do you.

As you do you, remind yourself and your children that we have been given much grace, and in light of it, we want to follow Jesus Christ as closely as possible. We don’t get points for following. God doesn’t love us more because we spent lots of time focused on him today. We aren’t super saved or more cherished because of anything we do. We are all of those things because of what Jesus did.

Can you imagine growing up in a home like that?

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What To Do When You Just Can't Do Church Anymore

What To Do When You Just Can't Do Church Anymore

If you read the title of this post and immediately identified with its sentiment, you may not be surprised to know that there is a growing number of church people out there who just cannot bear the thought of involving themselves one more time in a church community. We identify with that red-blooded hero of American independence, Tom Sawyer, who quipped, “I've been to the circus three or four times—lots of times. Church ain't a circumstance to a circus.”

You’re also well aware, I’m sure, that we are in an era of Western Civilization that has largely rejected the truth of Christianity and exchanged it for all manner of post-modernism. I won’t be addressing those who have rebuked a faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ entirely in this post. This one is for those of us who still love and want to follow Christ, but who are just so very weary of the gathering of his followers.

I’m going to give you some things to think about and hopefully a way forward, but I want to preface it all with a statement I know to be 100% true:

I am not the Holy Spirit.

Take everything I write with that big sentence ringing in your ears.

So while I am not your Holy Spirit, I can stand here as a compassionate reminder that you can listen for him and seek God’s truth, and being one of the people who points you back to Jesus is my heart’s deep desire and the reason I write in the first place. I’m no substitute for God.

That having been established, these are the truths I know about being in an emotional space where you just can’t do church anymore:

1.

You don’t have to do church anymore.

For some of us, church attendance was a non-negotiable weekly imperative with many assumptions attached to it. Our attendance and involvement has been linked to our faithfulness, our commitment, and our spiritual depth. Church attendance should be none of those things.

It’s entirely okay to step out. Just do me a favor and read the rest of this post before you tell someone, “Well, Kendra said I don’t have to.” That’s not the whole story (and I shouldn’t have that kind of power in your life anyway).

2.

You may have been doing it wrong in the first place.

And here’s why: What is the reason you were going to church all that time? Family obligation? Habit? Because you’d heard that we aren’t supposed to neglect meeting with one another?* Because it was an essential part of your religious behavior? Because you were performing for the eyes of others?

Really think this one through, because although potentially shocking, it may reveal the deepest reason you may have for not wanting to be there anymore. Legalism and/or bad religion are like that. The thing we thought was going to bring us {joy, freedom, acknowledgement, fulfillment, friendships, satisfaction, __________} never, never, never does, unless it’s Jesus himself. Church isn’t Jesus. Church can become just as big a prop and idol as drugs, alcohol, power, and sex.

And here’s why you don’t need to do church for the time being: If you were doing it for all the wrong reasons, you need time to examine all of that, parse it, root it out, and discover the real reason the church is supposed to be gathering. That statement in Hebrews 10 about not neglecting to gather together is not about adherence to a behavior. It was said because the author was a human, too, and as a human, he knew our profound privation in regards to encouragement, relationships, and community. Each are essential elements to emotional and mental health, and as Christians living in a time and place that showed only animosity toward their beliefs and practices, the writer was letting the Hebrew believers know that being together was crucial to their survival.

Us, too.

*Hebrews 10:25, 26

3.

God will meet you right where you are.

Literally. In your apartment, in your car, lost in the crowd of a megachurch, in the doctor’s office, face down on your bed. He’s not bound by space and time.

Existentially. In your pain, in your fear, in your abject weariness, in your loneliness.

He’s not judging you for pulling out of church for a time. He’s not mad at you for taking a break and breathing some pure oxygen. He might just show you himself in a fresh, powerful way.

4.

The timing to exit a church or return to a church may not be your timing.

Go (or return) when you know you need to. When you begin to understand that you need to go or stay, then go or stay. There isn’t a right or wrong. God is just that kind.

Friends or family might voice their concern if you haven’t plugged into a church community yet, but you only need to listen to the Holy Spirit. Going back because guilt or obligation have been the impetus may do you more damage in the long term than good.

5.

Church can be all about one thing for the time being.

Church is all about one thing: worship. Yes, of course we gain and give many peripheral benefits by our attendance and involvement, but the bottom line is, we gather to worship God together. We do not go to focus first on people, being social, or doing stuff. Going to the service to focus on worshipping and connecting with God and then heading quietly out through the back door is absolutely acceptable, and maybe even necessary. Answering a concerned or critical question about why you aren’t involved/serving/plugged in/part of a community group can be answered with a simple, gracious, “I’m working through some stuff and just need some time, thanks.” Then walk out the back door.

6.

There is a community somewhere for you.

You might not even find it for a long, long time. You might need to create it. You might need to spend a year or two or more praying that God will show you exactly where he wants you to be and when. In the meantime, use the same response as above: “I’m working through some stuff but I know God will direct me when the time comes. Thanks for asking. How are the kids?” I threw that last line in there because some people are tenacious and it’s a great idea to change the subject and move on.

You’ll find your community. And if you never do, God’s working in that, too. In my loneliest seasons, I find myself wanting more of Christ. It’s such a great place to be.

It seems there’s plenty to do when you can’t do church anymore, but our faith is at its essence about being, not doing. Out of our being, out of what Christ has done, we are compelled to do. He makes that happen. He enables us. It’s his work, not ours. In the meantime, know how loved you are by God. Understanding his love for us changes everything.

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