Corby Stephens

At the end of Psalm 139 David prays, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.” It’s a good thing to ask the Lord to shine His searchlight of love and holiness into our hearts to root out the junk that messes with us. It’s also a good thing to do this on our own, for us to look at ourselves to see how we are doing. Taking this a few leaps further, I think it’s a good thing for an organization to do as well. An organization like a church, even an organization the size of Calvary Chapel. Have you done this lately? I seem to do this 24/7. Has your church done this lately? Seeing as I’m stepping into an established church it seems a good time to do so. And if I’m picking up on the vibe, I think CC is beginning to do the same. What will they find?

I’ve travelled to 31 states and 3 foreign countries. To some that sounds like a lot. To others, no biggie. I’ve always tried to visit CC’s when I travel just to see what other parts of the movement are doing. One thing I have learned is that you can’t lump the entire CC movement into one box. Some are charismatically loose, some are tight. Some are legalistic, some let things slide. There is, however, one thing that many seem to share. I call it Calvary Complacency.

The primary, defining characteristic of CC is teaching the word, the whole word, and nothing but the word. If you teaching it they will come. “Simply teaching the word of God simply.” That’s the model laid out for us in scripture and that’s part of the model that CC espouses. But what does it mean the teach the word? Is that all it takes, just teaching?

Calvary Complacency is the idea that if I as a pastor just teach the Bible, that people will grow, the church will grow, and everything will be great. As I look at the word and as I examine my own ministry and that of others, that’s just not the case. “Are you saying that we shouldn’t teach the word?” Not at all. I’m saying that the word needs to be the strong, sturdy, unshakable, unmovable foundation that everything else is built upon. This leads to a brief discussion on what it means to teach the word. Disclaimer: I in no way claim to be some great, inspirational, eloquent, teaching machine. I’m still working on it as I hope every pastor is. I also understand that there is a spectrum between preaching and teaching. Preaching tends to be more inspirational and teaching tents to be more educational. Guys like Greg Laurie and Bob Coy are great preachers. Guys like Chuck Missler are great teachers. What they all do in common is they take what the word says, let it speak to them, then turn around and teach it from their own God given personality, strengths, and perspectives. Expository teaching.

Usually, those who are victims of Calvary Complacency have never learned or drifted away from this kind of teaching. I’ve been there so I’m speaking from experience. It seems that the study is a kind of Bible story time or its a classroom where the teacher is just repeating facts. And because the pastor thinks he is teaching the word he just expects growth to happen. While no growth is happening he gets frustrated but doesn’t know why. What’s missing? The rest of the story. Getting the word into the pastor’s heart and then teaching that to the flock. It isn’t enough to teach from the word. It isn’t even enough to teach the word. It has to be taught from the heart, not the head.

This is part one in a series. I’m not sure how long the series will be but it has to start somewhere, right? Calvary Complacency exists. Are you a victim of it as a pastor or a CC member? I’m exploring this in my own heart and hope to root it out with that Holy Spirit spotlight over the next weeks, months, years, as long as I’m here it seems.

I confess that I have not been the most responsible blog and podcast caretaker in the past. But that’s changing! I do have a Q&A podcast. However the last time it was updated with and actual question and answer was October of 2005! So, throw those Bible questions my way and I will do my best. Who knows? Perhaps another listener will be blessed by your question…

People who are genuinely, seriously, deliberately engaged in a relationship with Jesus Christ, people who regularly top off their Holy Spirit tanks, who are led by and walk in the Spirit, have a common desire; they always want to be answering God’s call on their life. Unfortunately, hearing, discerning, interpreting and acting on that call can become difficult. Why? Depends on who you ask.

I have tried to maintain a mode of operation over the years. It has always been my desire to be doing what the Lord wants me to be doing, when and where he wants me to be doing it. Sounds noble doesn’t it? Let me tell you it can be frustrating sometimes trying to live out that flexibility, especially with a family. I find myself in a situation that I’m sure will spawn many other entries on many different topics. I am in the process of stepping into a vacant pastor position at an established Calvary Chapel. When I say established I mean it has been around for 9 years. The decision to take this position has caused me to question what it means to be called.

Calling was a big deal at Bible college. “Where are you being called to?” “What are you being called to do?” The big follow-up question then becomes, “How do you know that’s God calling you to do that?” And that’s kinda what it boils down to, doesn’t it? How do I know if this is God’s will for me? How did I come to this conclusion? What resources did you use? Was it circumstances? Was it written in sky? Was it a burning bush? The answer is that there isn’t one answer. As we read through the word we see that God called all kinds of people in all kinds of ways to do all kinds of things. There isn’t just one pattern. There isn’t just one way.

There are those who subscribe to the idea that you know God’s calling you when He has put the desire in your heart in advance then He opens the door for you. Is that true? I think it can be. But I also think that’s the bottom line. I’ve known people for whom that has been the case. Of course the problem with it then can become, how did you know if it was your own desire or God putting it in you? I could say God is calling me to Hawaii to server over there because I like Hawaii. Is that really from the Lord or is that just my flesh? How do you tell?

Can God call you to do something that you don’t want to do at all? He sure can. Let’s look at Gideon for example. There he was, minding his own business, when God shows up and gives him his marching orders. God had a call on Gideon’s life. Gideon didn’t like what he was called to do. He didn’t want to do it but he obeyed. Even while he was obeying the call he didn’t like it. So does God’s call on a life always include a positive “feeling” that says “This is what I was meant to do.”? It doesn’t appear that way.

When I was at Calvary Chapel Bible College I was all fired up to get out there and be a pastor. It is what I believed God had called me to do. It was in my heart. It was my desire. It’s what others told me I was gifted to do. When I got done with school I found myself as a youth ministry intern working for someone who had about as much experience and training as I did. Possibly less. It was a bit frustrating. I finally decided to go and make my own opportunity to fulfill my calling. Didn’t work out. Then I found myself out of vocational ministry all together because someone spoke very falsely of me. It was at that point I think I lost all my joy in my calling and I’m still recovering almost 8 years later (I had to stop and do the math there).

Six years after that bad experience it seemed that God had pulled me off the shelf. I felt the call again and pursued it. One day I’m working in Pittsburgh, PA, the next I find myself the pastor of a church in South Dakota. Sweet! I’m back in the saddle again baby. As it turns out the Lord used that 7 month experience to simply get me warmed up again. It didn’t work out and we moved back to Washington State were we are originally from. That was August of 2006. In December I got a call that I would have peed myself over had I received it just after Bible college. “We want you to go and pastor this Calvary Chapel.” At first I resisted. I didn’t want to. We had just moved cross country twice in a year. We had settled into a house. We had just gotten into a groove at the church I was Associate Pastor of. Coming in we knew it would be temporary, just not 6 months temporary.

So how did I know this is what I was supposed to do? At first it was this sense in my heart that said, “This is what you need to do.” At first my wife was frustrated because we had just settled down. As a few weeks went by she felt the same. I kept changing my mind. So I did the same wrong thing Gideon did; I put out a fleece. Why is that wrong? Because God had already clearly told Gideon what to do. There was no need to test anything let alone test it twice. God had already told me but I wanted to test it anyway. I got in the car and decided to drive until God clearly spoke to me. I said, “Lord, if this is what you want me to do, have (blank) call me and talk to me about it.” I had no reason to expect this person to call me so it sounded good. About an hour and a half goes by and (ring ring), guess who? Yup, it was him. D’oh! So I went home. About an hour after I go home, the pastor (who is my dad) who had been initially reluctant to let me go, out of nowhere comes in and says, “I think you should take it.” Man! Before he was all “You can’t go, we just got the youth group really going, you’re doing a ton with the computers, what will we do for a bass player on the worship team?” Now he says, “I think you should take it.”? OK, Lord, I get the hint. I wasn’t even asking for that one.

I have another friend who is going through a similar period of life, wondering if God is calling them to pack up and move. She keeps wondering, “But how do you know it’s the Lord and not you?” You can test the motivation of the heart for one thing. If the motivation is pure then it becomes a matter of faith and obedience. See? There isn’t always a simple formula for discerning if God is calling you to something or not. It seems like it’s easier to tell when He isn’t calling. but we’ll save that for another blog.

(This blog entry is also cross-posted at SimpleMindedPreacher where I am a contributing author.)

In an earlier blog entry I ranted on about how some people ask, “Where is God?” because their lives seem to be spiraling out of control. A lot of it had to do with perception. Perception of God, perception of our own circumstances, perception of God’s responsibility for things. But there is another side of the coin to consider; our responsibility to choose.

I’m not going to get into the whole free will predestination thing here except to say that from our human perspective of eternity we make choices. We choose what to wear, what to eat, to turn left or right at the intersection. Again, I’m speaking from our perspective of time not God’s. That’s a whole other ball of yarn for another thread (haha).

In the other blog people ask, “Where is God?” Perhaps the question also needs to be, “Where am I?” Our American culture has adopted a very strong victim mentality. Nothing is our fault. When we do something wrong we aren’t really responsible for it. Pressure at home, from friends, our culture are blamed for all kinds of things. My own kids seem to be falling victim to the victim mentality. “I hit him because he did this.” Now people who murder other people get off the hook because it really wasn’t their fault, they are just the product of a violent and selfish society.

While these things are true to a degree there is something called personal responsibility. If we feel distant from God, who moved? Not God. Who does that leave? If we decide to disobey God and have sex with anyone we choose and we get an STD or pregnant (or both), whose fault is that? God’s? Nope. If we take that fist “innocent” hit of pot and end up being a full-blown drug addict, is that God’s doing? Not at all. “Why didn’t God stop me from doing it? If He loves me He would stop me.” That’s just not how it works. That’s not love. Love is providing us a way of escape from every getting caught up in all this junk in the first place. Love says, “You don’t have to go there. There is something better.” His name is Jesus.

We don’t have to be slaves to this stuff. We can choose, we can draw on God’s strength, we can die to ourselves and be brand new creations through Jesus. I still have a burden to see people freed, but they have to choose to be freed. Slavery is an unfortunate fact of American history. The forced servitude and abuse of one human being to another. Spiritual slavery is different. We can choose to not be slaves of sin, of society, and be slaves to God’s love and grace instead.

Let my people go, by choice.

In the last hundred or so years some of finds labeled as “prehistoric” have been released. Animals and plants that were determined by scientists to be extinct really aren’t. They found a kind of rat/squirell thingy last year. In 1994 (I think) they found the walimi (sp?) pine tree alive and well in Australia. Before that it was the lobe-fined fish found in the India Ocean. They had fossils for all of these supposedly millions of years old but in reality they are alive and surprisingly unevolved even after millions of years (duh).

Here is another one. A very funky shark that seems very much “present historic”.