church leaders — BLOG — Trevor DeVage

My dad, calling Monday to check up on me and our weekend, offered a word of encouragement. “The Monday after Easter is a beautiful letdown,” he said, and I knew what he meant.

After the emotional high of Good Friday and Easter-morning services . . .

After all the weeks and weeks of planning every element to perfectly communicate truth and hope. . .

After the energy spent setting up, tweaking technology, and expending every possible ounce of energy again and again for the several services and every age group in multiple locations . . .

It was good to rest.

I thought about the day after Christmas or the day after our wedding. Such days are often just another normal day, except we’re more tired than usual. But I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t settle for that after Easter.

Actually, Monday was a celebration for me. The tomb was still empty Monday. It will still be empty this Sunday. In fact, the empty tomb of Christ will remain as proof of his power and provision until the day I die. And it seems to me we should see the days after Easter as a beautiful opportunity. The ground has been plowed. Now is the time to nurture growth and hope in the hearts of all those quickened by the message of Jesus.

Church, Leadership, LifeTrevor DeVageApril 7, 2021jesus, easter, notjustanothersunday, lead, leader, church, church leaders, cross, beautiful, opportunityComment

HAVE YOU LOST THAT LOVIN' FEELING?

Nobody tells you in Bible college that some church people are just not nice. But I quickly learned how difficult they can be in my first ministry as youth pastor at a small church a little way from the school I was attending in Illinois.

I remember one time in particular. I had just gotten home from a night class I needed to finish up my degree. It was 11:30, and when I checked my email, I discovered a rant from a guy complaining that the decibel level of the music in our student gatherings was too high. (The youth group had swelled to about 60 in a church of 170, and he wasn’t the only one threatened by the growth.)

No sooner had I shut my computer than I got a phone call from a 15-year-old kid in the group who said, “If you can’t get here in the next 20 minutes, I’m going to kill myself.” And I was 40 minutes away from her.

I stood in a corner and said out loud, “God, I didn’t sign up for either one of these things.”

I almost walked away from ministry that night. But in answer to my prayers, six months later my wife and I had moved to Compass Christian Church in Dallas. The leaders there cared about lost people and gave me freedom to go reach them as I saw what would work. But even there, in that positive environment, there were days when passion was hard to come by.

In fact, I can point to dozens of times, if not hundreds, since then when I’ve just gone through the motions of ministry. I knew theology. I had learned how to do church. But doing church and being the church are two different things. I remember times when I’ve stood on the platform and put on a face that said, “Things are OK,” because people couldn’t handle it if I didn’t.

I thought about all of this week as I re-read what God told the church at Ephesus, “Look how far you have fallen from the love you had at first” (see Revelation 2:4, 5). If the last year of pressing through a pandemic has taught me anything, it is that we must fall back in love with the God that transforms us, not the world that informs us. His remedy for the Ephesians and for us was a three-part approach I know I must pursue in my own ministry.

THE CHURCH OF THE DO WHAT YOU WANT

Almost three decades ago a mission trip with my high school youth group changed my life, but not in a way you might expect. It wasn’t the people we served or the work we accomplished that helped define my path. Instead, it was the words sung by a second-rate band at a cheesy “Christian nightclub” that I want to tell you about.

We were in Virginia Beach, maybe a dozen of us students, and in our free time we went exploring to see what we could find in the resort town. We happened upon this club where the band was singing about “the church of the do what you want, the church of the do what you please.”

The words struck me like a thunderbolt. And even though I was only 14 years old when I first heard them, I’ve never forgotten. In fact, that indictment of so much represented by Western church culture has colored my whole ministry and purpose in life.

WHY AND HOW YOUR CHURCH CAN AVOID BEING AN INSTITUTION

It’s usually sad when a person is institutionalized.

When your aging grandmother becomes too confused to take care of herself, her children institutionalize her.

When your elderly uncle becomes too weak to live alone, your cousins institutionalize him.

When a child with a physical or mental disability can’t function in normal society, he or she is institutionalized to keep them safe and help them survive.

Institutionalization is about protection, not propagation; guarding, not going; building a defense, not mounting an offense.

It’s often necessary for the weak—or the wayward; we institutionalize criminals, too. But when thriving enterprises become institutionalized, it’s never a positive sign of strength.

WHAT WE NEED MORE THAN ANYTHING IN 2021

Two years ago, I received a Facebook message on Christmas Eve that I’ve been thinking about this week. A member of our church, a young woman who would not live to see the next year, wrote to thank me for our service that night and one song in particular. All of us hear “O Holy Night,” every Christmas, again and again. But that year, one lyric lifted my friend’s spirit: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.”

That hope is what she needed that Christmas.

That hope is what her husband and kids would need just a few short days later.

That hope is what we preached at her funeral a week later.

That hope is what every reader of this blog needs in 2021.

Trevor DeVage

copyright 2018

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