The Antidote for Pride
Yesterday I spent some time talking about the issues of pride within house churches. In that post I suggested that receiving the love of God and letting that free you from comparison drives out pride. Today I’d like to focus on a practical method of dealing with pride: confession.
If, when I talk about confession, you start to see pictures of confessional booths and men with collars, you’re probably thinking of the wrong thing. When the Protestant Reformation happened, Luther and his allies announced that all believers were priests and therefore you didn’t have to to a priest to get forgiveness of your sins. But the unfortunate side effect of the Reformation is the practice of confession was all but lost to Bible-believing church.
The apostle James, who as the brother of Jesus obviously believed in direct access to God and the priesthood of all believers, encourages believers to confess their sins to one another because it results in both spiritual and physical healing (James 5:16). At least one aspect of spiritual healing that confession offers is the ability to be healed of our pride. If we are honest with ourselves about our sin, it’s hard to be judgmental towards others.When we expose the darkness in our own hearts to another human being, it becomes much harder to create masks of greatness that feed our pride. If we do, we have brothers or sisters that aren’t deceived by the masks we wear.
Now this is a bit of a chicken and egg sort of problem: Does confession create humility or does humility cause someone to confess their sins to another person? I would tell you the answer is “Yes!” Obviously humble people confess their sins to others, but there are times when confession becomes an act of the will and true humility is birthed in the heart of a believer afterwards. It’s both/and. I can tell you, though, that those who are transparent and honest about the weakness are generally some of the more humble people that I know.
I’ve talked about confession at length here on the blog, both about how confession creates brotherhood and how true transparency births transformation. There are tons of benefits in addition to keeping us humble. The first step is to find someone: another man if you’re a man, another woman if you’re a woman, and begin a regular practice of confession with him or her. If you need a model for this, you can use one we’ve found helpful here.
The point isn’t that you do it perfectly, it’s more important that you start. You may notice a difference immediately, but if you don’t you’ll definitely notice a difference in a year or two. It’s a long game to protect your soul and keep you safe from pride that so easily corrupts spiritual things.
It’s also the place where transformation happens.
Pride in House Churches
I had a friend text me a few days ago and ask me one of the most beautiful questions I’ve been asked in regards to house churches. Part of the question is quoted below:
I know what pride & arrogance looks like inside the traditional church. What does it look like outside the traditional church?
What’s so beautiful about this question is that it assumes pride exists and has dangerous implications within organic house churches. The reality is, it does*.
In fact, pride is probably a greater danger for those who have left the traditional church setting. The idea that we have a ____________ (fill in the blank, better, more biblical, more effective, etc.) model of being church can having a damaging effect on believers. Believers who meet in homes are certainly not the first in the body of Christ to struggle with this reality. I’ve certainly witnessed believers who are part of house churches turn on the churches they have left with the same kind of judgment that they feel they have received from traditional churches. The reality is you can be right about something in the Kingdom and it still damage your relationship with God.
But pride creeps in in other areas as well. Often house churches suffer from many of the same problems that the early churches in the New Testament suffered from (because they were house churches as well). John wrote to his co-worker Gaius about Diotrephes, who loved to be the leader, and because of this he refused to work with the apostles and traveling workers that the Lord was sending to the church (3 John 5-10). This love of being known as the leader is simply another form of pride that crops up among house churches, even among churches that profess not to have leaders.
The fact of the matter is pride is a condition of the fall. We shouldn’t suspect because we are part of house churches, that religious pride can’t creep in. Rather, because humans are involved and all humans are broken, we should expect pride to creep in, especially where God meets us powerfully, the lost are brought to Jesus, and disciples are made.
Jesus calls us away from understanding our relationship with Him by comparing ourselves to others and into a glorious freedom where we become aware of the goodness of God in the person of Jesus. Jesus becomes our standard and our sufficiency, so we find in Him that we are both horribly insufficient and yet gloriously sufficient because the cross and the resurrection. When we are truly set free in the love of God, we no longer have to live in comparison to others and pride withers and dies.
Friends, when we are loved by God and experience His love deeply, the opinions of others matter little to us. We can love people without fear of being less than them and without having to be better than them. Because we serve Jesus, none of this matters. What matters is that God has poured out His love in our hearts and we get to share it with others.
Photo Credit: Peacock by Jarod Carruthers
*No doubt I will get someone who writes a comment about how bad pride is within the traditional church and why this article is misplaced. Let’s make sure we pull the log out of our eye before we offer to take the speck out of someone else’s eye (Matthew 7:3).
Hope for Churches Facing Closing
I’ve sat across the table and listened to the stories of discouraged pastors describe in great detail where the ministry took a wrong turn. Often it wasn’t from an evil decision or a judgment from God. People stopped coming. The recession happened and people stopped giving. The church plant didn’t work out like they thought. In all of these cases, the result was the same: We’re shutting the church down.
My heart breaks every time this happens. Sometimes there are good, godly men and women doing their best in whatever capacity the Lord has called them to serve the church and circumstances cause there not to be enough money. Sometimes other resources are the issue, like a lack of volunteers. Regardless, the point is that churches with true believers and well meaning hearts close down all the time. Current statistics estimate roughly 3,700 churches close their doors every year.
But there is good news! First, because of the Gospel of Jesus, no matter what capacity you served your church in the past, you are not a failure. God loved you regardless of the outcome of your work for Him. His death and resurrection means that the work that you carried on for Him was not in vain. Paul, after spending an entire chapter in 1 Corinthians on the subject of the resurrection says this: “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless,” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
But there’s even more good news: Just because the money and the volunteers and the resources dried up, doesn’t mean your church needs to close. It might mean the church needs to change. The fact of the matter is the Kingdom of God doesn’t run on money, so even though resources are tight, the ministry can continue. Just because the resources have disappeared doesn’t mean the relationships and family of an existing church need to end.
How does this happen? For a church that wants to continue on but doesn’t have enough money to pay for a building or staff or the have the resources to support such things, house churches are a viable option. The existing church would transition to a church or a network of related churches that meet in the homes of its members and continue the work of sharing the gospel, building up the church, and making disciples.
This would mean a lot of changes for a church that was used to meeting as a traditional church on Sunday morning. It will most likely mean the pastor would forsake a salary (if he or she hadn’t already), it will mean that the format of the meetings you’ve become accustomed will change, and the ministry of the church will have be taken up by whatever members of the church remain, not just the pastor. Also, not everyone will want to make this jump, so be prepared for some who would be okay in any other traditional context to not make this jump with you. For those who feel God isn’t done with the church yet, but don’t see a way forward, it’s a viable alternative.
If you’re facing this moment in the life of your church, feel free to contact me at PursuingGlory at gmail dot com or check out my resource page featuring the best books on house churches.
More than that, don’t give up hope in God, the gospel, or the family of God. God loves you. You and your church haven’t failed. He has a plan that continues regardless of the cash flow. God, who raises the dead, can take what seems like has died and transform it into something new.
Photo Credit: Closed by Exarchlzain
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Pursuing Glory 