Maybe I Got It All Wrong

I was pastoring full-time when “What Would Jesus Do” emerged onto the church scene. I remember thinking: How can we do what Jesus did if we don’t know what Jesus actually did? In other words; people need to get a better grasp of the four gospel accounts contained within the Scriptures. I used to think: If I could just get the Scriptures into the minds of people; then God would take his word and begin to change them to look more and more like His Son.

I would have backed up my philosophy of ministry by using Rom. 12:2 and 2Tim. 3:16-17. The first passage exhorts me to change the way I think so that I don’t resemble the world and instead resemble God. The second passage clearly teaches that Scripture is completely trustworthy because God is the author and since the Bible is God’s word to us, I should read it and obey it.

I have completely abandoned this philosophy of ministry because (1) it overlooks the central teaching of the New Covenant and (2) it pours an Old Covenant model of sanctification into these New Covenant verses.

If you have been going to church in the last twenty years, you have been exposed to the philosophy on ministry I just described. Maybe, just maybe, you’ve gotten it all wrong. I know I did. Twenty years of being a Christian, two bible degrees, and over ten years in the ministry and I realized I had it all wrong. Let me just say this abandonment did not come quickly nor easily. Reaching that third paragraph was a very painful.

Come with me on a journey. Partly my journey and partly others who have gone before me and see if maybe the way you have been taught to grow and mature in Christ has been built upon the wrong covenant. The one Paul taught against in his days, what he called the “old way of the written code,” because there is a “new way to live by the Spirit.”