This issue of the newsletter is an application from my sermon on Psalm 126. If you prefer watching videos, click below.
Christian ministry is an obstacle course; the entire Christian life is an obstacle course. Here, I’m thinking of something like parkour or American Ninja Warrior. This fallen, treacherous world is filled with twists and turns, rises and falls, hills and valleys, dips and bumps. To successfully navigate this treacherous world, we need to be agile.
Psalms like Psalm 126 can really help us. The church father Ambrose wrote that the Psalms are the gymnasium of the soul.[1] Ambrose recommends the Psalms to help stretch and strengthen our faith in this difficult world.
Because of their personalities or backgrounds, some believers emotionally gravitate toward the brighter truths we see in verses one through three. They are optimists, enthusiasts, and experts at celebration. Their mouths are often and easily filled with laughter and joyous shouts.
Other believers gravitate to the darker emotional language we see in verses four through six. They see the ugliness and brokenness in our world and their eyes fill with tears.
Which response is more Christian? Well, the Christian ministry and Christian life need you to be great at both.
Christian ministry and Christian living require agility—the ability to move fluidly through twists and turns, rises and falls, hills and valleys, dips and bumps. The apostle Paul describes this agility when he describes Christian ministers as “sorrowful and always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). Jesus describes ministry as dancing for pipe-players and mourning with dirge singers (Matthew 11:16–17), calling us to lose our lives so that we can find our lives (Matthew 10:39). That requires incredible agility.
A Strong Core
What does it take to be agile? Agility requires us to have a strong core. If we want to be ready for what is ahead in this twisty world, we need to strengthen our core, fortify our fundamentals in the faith.
To change the metaphor a bit, we need to put down deep roots into the Scripture that the Lord has given us and put down deep roots into the Christian communities where He has placed us. We need to be planted by streams of water and meditate on His words so that we can be ready and bear fruit in season and out of season. This way, if you untangle my two metaphors, a tree has agility. It is ready for the new season, ready for what is next.
What’s coming next for the church? Some of you may be old enough to remember during the 2010s, many churches had campaigns called “Vision 2020.” These church leaders cast vision and raised funds to prepare for what the year 2020 was going to bring. But no church who had a “Vision 2020 campaign” had “global pandemic” in their 2020 Vision campaign.
No one saw that coming.
Agility, not Conformity or Rigidity
What new challenges are ahead? I have no idea! But I know we need a strong core. Agility does not mean conformity. The church does not need a gelatinous and spineless adaptability that conforms, contorts, and assimilates to the shifting winds of this changing world.
But I fear that we confuse strength with rigidity. The church does not need a tough exterior shell that appears strong but breaks at unexpected fault-lines, or a callous skin that cracks and bleeds. Christian believers and Christian churches need a strong core that can power and flex through the difficulties and twists of life.
May the Lord help us to develop agility in a world that pushes us toward fragility. This world is failing and fading; this world is shifting and changing, and we need to fix our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
[1] Ambrose called the Psalms the animarium gymnasium in his "Explanatio psalmorurn xii." Cited in Witvliet, “Words to Grow Into,” 10.
Hey Matthew, my dad's been getting into Substack and writing about Gospel-centered mentoring, but he hasn't been able to get many eyes on his work so far.
https://authormatthewdoebler.substack.com/p/gospel-centered-mentoring-believes
Could you take a look and maybe give him some feedback? I think he has a really strong voice he just doesn't put himself out there that much.
Agility—Psalm 18 style—yes.