Anush A. John Podcast
Anush A. John Podcast
Mandates and Means - On Vision and Strategy
Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, October 2023
https://www.anushjohn.com/post/mandates-and-means
anushjohn.com
Thank you, good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. I recognize some faces from Spain a few years ago and some other faces from Greece a few years ago, and some new faces. That's great. Thank you to Mark for this privilege. I emailed him and then, before we knew it, we were booking tickets and scrambling for this sermon. So we've divided the next four days. The first morning, today, we're going to look at vision and strategy. Tomorrow, we're going to look at competency and authenticity. And the third morning, we will look at discipleship and mentoring. And the fourth morning, we will it's Sunday morning we will look at a leader's failure. The leader's failure.
Speaker 1:French, swiss artist Sépi specializes in land art paintings, and so he did this land art painting representing a child drawing in the Col d'Bretagne in Switzerland. If you're Swiss, I'm sorry for what I just said, but it's at this mountainside that he did this painting and if you focus in close to the painting, you're not going to see much. But as you back away, you will see the work that he did on this mountainside. This morning we will be stepping back and as we step back, we're going to try to get a bigger picture. Many times we deal with the small details, but today we're going to step back and look at the big picture that will help us guide in the fine details.
Speaker 1:This morning, in a sermon entitled mandates and means, we are going to look at the vision and strategy. In the first part of the sermon we will look at what is a mandate, and the second part we will look at the means of getting to that mandate. First let's look at the question what is a vision or what is a mandate? And I'm going to be rushing a little bit because this is stuff that you all know already and I'm just refreshing your memory. What is a mandate? It is an overarching goal or a theme, and in the secular world there are some, there are some terms that are used for strategic planning, what is called as Vimosa. And let me just outline those five steps of strategic planning. The first one is called a vision, and vision is answering the question who you want to be in, let's say, 30 years. Who do you want to be? And the key verb there is to be. And the next is mission who you want to be in three years, and this is a shorter duration and it fits with the long-term vision. And this is actually the most important part because it it faces reality. It looks at what we have, what we are working with and what we can reasonably achieve. Next is objectives what you want to have. The first two were what you want to be and the next two are what you want to have. So objective is what you want to have and strategy is how you want to have Okay, what you want to have and how you want to have. And the fifth part of the strategic planning in Vimosa is action, or methods, the five it can be three to five or three to four to six or whatever the few tasks, the few steps that you need to get there. So these are terms from the secular field, but obviously we can use it in the Christian field as well.
Speaker 1:Let's look at a couple of verses. In the interest of time, I'll be showing some of the verses and I'll just read the rest of the verses and I'll have you turn to only a few of them just to save time. Let's see what the Bible talks about a broad vision. In Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 10, it says, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth. So as far as God is concerned, everything is moving towards this grand vision, this grand plan of uniting everything in Christ. Let's look at an example from the life of Jesus. In Luke, chapter 9, verse 51, it says when the days drew near for Him to be taken up, he set His face to go to Jerusalem. So now this is Luke 9, and there's still 14 more chapters before the crucifixion. But Jesus has already set His face toward the vision of what he came on earth to accomplish.
Speaker 1:Don't your Bibles to? Proverbs, chapter 29 and verse 18. Proverbs 29 and verse 18? It says where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. Is that interesting? Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. That is, if you don't have a vision, then you're free to do whatever you want, but having a vision helps us to focus our resources, help us to get rid of the distractions and help us to focus on the task at hand.
Speaker 1:Now, in the second part of this section, I want to look at the mandate for the church. Okay, the mandate for the church and I want to use the word mandate for church because, more than a vision that we have to try to get, it's a mandate that God has given us. So, essentially, the vision for the church is something that God has mandated to us and I'm going to go very quickly through this because it's something that we all know. The first mandate of the church is salvation for unbelievers. This is evangelism. God desires salvation. So in 1 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 4 it's a verse that we all know it says who desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. The fact that God desires people to be saved doesn't mean that everybody is going to be saved, because the desire of God doesn't force free will. Okay, if that were the case, adam and Eve would not have sinned. But God has given people free will and given them the option to choose away from him, to not choose him, and God wants repentance through kindness, not through force.
Speaker 1:An atheist journalist and former British politician, matthew Parrish, wrote this in the Sunday times in December 2008. This is what he wrote. Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa, sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa, christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malin fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
Speaker 1:The gospel has been changing lives and changing cultures for 2000 years, and that's the first mandate of the church. The second mandate of the church is the maturing of believers and this is discipleship, maturing of believers. And we call this discipleship A key passage that talks about what spiritual maturity is in Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 13. So if you can turn your Bibles to Ephesians 4, verse 13 and 14, we will read a couple of verses and look at what it says about spiritual maturity. Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 13, reads until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Now, in this verse, there are three aspects of maturity that I want to talk about. First is it says maturity to the fullness of Christ. That is a Christ-like maturity. Honestly, that includes everything, doesn't it? If we had to become like Christ? That includes His character, his impeccable character, his relationship with God. It includes His life lived with purpose. It includes His holiness, it includes everything and that is what we are trying to achieve with discipleship. It is a seemingly impossible goal to be like Jesus. It is an impossible goal when we consider when we were saved and how long we've been saved and how much progress we've made. It seems like an impossible goal to reach the holiness and the character of Jesus.
Speaker 1:I met Mark and a few of our brothers here back when I was in Kansas City. Back when I was there during my surgical residency, we used to deal with a lot of medical students. During the cases we would work with the medical students and then between cases I would go down to the cafeteria and chat with them. One such day I was down in the cafeteria with a few medical students and we were having lunch and if you're from Kansas City, it's Truman Medical Center down at the cafeteria. It wasn't a great cafeteria, but it was something for us hungry folks. So we were down there and I was sitting and talking with these medical students and I asked them this question, because it came up in conversation who would you want as a role model for your kids? Who would you want as a role model for your kids. So they sat and talked amongst themselves.
Speaker 1:Now, in the medical school in Kansas City, 60% of them were Indians. In my group, about 80% of the 8-9 people that were talking with me were Indians. So I asked them this question who would you want as a role model for your kids? So they talked and said I want some athlete, because they are famous and they play football or basketball or whatever. I talked about it. But their family life sometimes need not be great. Just because they are great on the field doesn't mean they are great parents or spouses. And so they said, okay, maybe a film actor or a movie star, some kind of celebrity. And then I said we still don't know the background, how they are, their relationships are. Unfortunately, a lot of it is a mess, so that's not really what we want. So then they talked about it. And then three people from my side was a Hindu girl who piped up and said how about Jesus Christ? Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one person who can take that title of being a role model, whose character is impeccable, whose holiness is unparalleled, and that is Jesus Christ, and it is towards him that we are all growing.
Speaker 1:The second aspect of maturity it says here the knowledge of the Son of God. It's knowing about Jesus. This was Paul's prayer for the Ephesians In chapter 1, verse 17,. You don't need to turn to it, let me just read it for you that the God of our Lord, jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. God wants us to grow in our knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:When I was younger I thought if I just read the Bible, the Gospels, I'll know everything there is to know about Jesus. If we memorize the Gospels, would we know everything there is to know about Jesus? No, because Jesus is infinite and we are finite, and what the Gospels and what the Bible has is just a sliver of who he is. If spiritual maturity means increasing in our knowledge of Jesus, let me ask you a question what do we know about Jesus today that we didn't know last week? And if Jesus is infinite, there is always something to know. What do we know about Jesus today that we didn't know last year? The third aspect of maturity, he says, is attained to the unity of the faith. The unity of the faith, and that leads me to the next mandate, the third mandate of the church, which is formation of a community and that is fellowship. Formation of a community and that is fellowship.
Speaker 1:Turn your Bibles to Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 14 and 15. So I call this an elevated community, because the church, the community that Jesus came to establish, is not like any other community. It is an elevated community. Let me read Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 14. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility Verse 15, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace. So I'm going to look at the three verbs in that first verse, in verse 14. And I'm going to go backwards for the sake of continuity. So there are three verbs in this verse. Let me read the verse again. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. The first verb is broken down the dividing wall. It is breaking down the middle wall of partition.
Speaker 1:Paul is likely referring to the temple at that time when he refers to this in the temple of Herod, called the second temple. The first temple was by Solomon. The second temple is by Herod and he spent years making it and at that time it was the biggest land structure that existed the temple, the second temple. It had five parts to it. The outermost part was the court of the Gentiles and it surrounded the temple complex. The Gentiles could come no further than the court of the Gentiles. Then there was a court of the women, and the women could not go further than that. Then there was a court of the Israelite, then the court of the priest and finally the Holy of Holies. Now, between the court of the Gentiles and the rest of the complex was a low wall and it ran all around the temple and no Gentile could cross this wall and go closer to the temple complex. It was a low wall and all around it there were, in three languages, a warning that said that if any Gentile crosses this, they can be liable for instant death. It was written in three languages. In fact, one such piece has been archaeologically found and is in a museum in Istanbul, turkey, but there were 13 doorways that went through this wall, through which every other Israelite could walk through, and it is this wall that separates the Jew from the Gentile that Paul is likely talking about, and Paul had an intimate idea of this wall.
Speaker 1:Why do I say that? What was the incident that caused Paul's arrest, that ended his ministry in the Book of Acts? The incident that caused Paul's arrest, that ended his ministry in the Book of Acts, that caused him to go to Rome, was because there was an Ephesian Gentile by the name of Trophimus and Paul was falsely accused of bringing Trophimus past this wall that he should not have entered according to Jewish custom. He was falsely accused and tried and sent to Rome. And it's interesting that was an Ephesian Gentile, because Paul is writing this to the Ephesians. It is possible that Trophimus was there in Ephesus reading, having this read to him and he knows aha, I know that wall that Paul is talking about.
Speaker 1:What is Paul saying? Paul is saying when Christ died, when the veil of the temple tore into, signifying the axis that humans have to guard, the wall between the Jews and the Gentiles also broke down. The dividing wall of hostility also broke down symbolically, so that there is no division between human and human. And then the second verb is made us both one. Made us both one. It says verse 14, for he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down. Now believers are no longer Jew and Gentile, but now they are Christian. This was the mystery that Paul talks about in this book. The mystery that he says has been written for ages is the unity of the Jew and the Gentile as one new person, the Christian. This was not a new concept. Back in Genesis, chapter 12, when God talks to Abraham, he says that he will make him a father of many nations. The concept of multiple nations coming into the kingdom of God was known from them. Verse 15 says he created himself one new man, one new man.
Speaker 1:There are two Greek words that are used for new. The first one is the word neos. That means new in terms of time. It doesn't need to be different in terms of quality, but it is new in terms of time. So, for example, back in the day there was this. There still is this this doughnut company called Krispy Kreme, krispy Kreme doughnuts, and if you walked into their store, they would show you how these doughnuts are made. Have you guys, anybody see? Okay, you've gone there and you've seen these doughnuts, it's not much anymore. And you see these doughnuts. It goes through a conveyor belt and you see the frosting bathing it. Now, with every moment in time, there is new doughnuts being made, that is, neos, new in terms of time, but they are identical to each other. So the identity of the doughnuts is not identified with this word neos, but Paul uses another word here, called Kainos, which is new in terms of identity or quality. So, for example, if you take red and yellow, you get orange. It's orange is a new identity that wasn't there before.
Speaker 1:In Christ, the Jew and the Gentile, they come together to form a new identity, a new community that is beyond every other community. But what is it that unites us? And now we come to the third verb in that sentence he is our peace. Now, of these three verbs, the first two verbs are in what is called as the arist tense, which means a singular action in the past. A singular action in the past, and we know that singular action in the past was the death of Christ, and because of the death of Christ, he has made us both one and broken down the dividing wall. But he himself is our peace. That phrase is in the present tense. What does that mean? It means that we will stay united as long as we are in Christ. It is in Christ that we have our unity.
Speaker 1:A few years ago we went to a concert by YouTube. So from Maryland we drove four hours at a conference in New York City, and so while I was there, there happened to be this concert by YouTube, the Irish band, and so my wife and I decided to go for it, and so we went to the YouTube concert at Madison Square Garden. There were just thousands of people there. We were all sitting there waiting for this. It was the seventh concert that they had at Madison Square Garden and still it was just packed to capacity. And so we talked to the lady that was next to us and she said that she came from California, and California six hours away by flight. So we said, wow, were there no concerts in California for you to come here to New York City for this concert? And I said no, in this tour that YouTube had, they had 34 concerts, and I've been to all 34. And then she added I'm not crazy or anything, I just love YouTube. And we were like it sounds a little shady.
Speaker 1:And yet when Bono and the team rushed in for the concert. All of us were on our feet, even the obsessive person and the non obsessive us, and all of us, who were different, were all on our feet, screaming for Bono and YouTube. You know what, ladies and gentlemen? It is because of our unity in them that we were all united. Our unity is in Christ, and other than being in Christ, there is no other unity that we have.
Speaker 1:All these three things need to be in balance Evangelism, discipleship, fellowship need to be in balance Because those are the three mandates for the church. In the, in the seeker services of the 90s and the 2000s, they focus a lot on the evangelism part, but they couldn't handle the fellowship and the discipleship part. There are small churches. They focus a lot on the discipleship part and the community part and the fellowship part, but the evangelism part is not addressed. There are small groups that we have in our churches where the community, the fellowship, is developed, but there's not much discipleship going on. As leaders of churches, we need to have all three proportionally and find ways to make sure that we have all three in proportion as mandates.
Speaker 1:Then let's look at the means to the mandate Now. I first wanted to come up with some ideas of how to get to the mandate, but instead I'm just going to say five random thoughts about how to get to the mandate. You all already know how to get to the mandate. I'm just going to give five suggestions, five unrelated suggestions. The first one is the importance of planning and preparation. There are numerous verses in Proverbs that talk about planning and preparation. In Luke, chapter 14, verse 28,. You don't need to turn to it. It says for which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost? Planning is very important. All the planning that we need to do, that we're supposed to do, should be in line with the long-term mandate. Any planning that doesn't fit in line with the mandate should be discarded, no matter how good it seems. The mandate is our key focus and all the planning needs to be done toward it.
Speaker 1:We know planning takes longer than the project itself. God planned for at least 4,000 years for a 33-year-old project. Jesus prepared for 18 years for a 3.5-year-old project. We're having a four-day conference here. We plan for more than four days. The planning always takes much more time than the project itself, but we need to plan and we need to prepare.
Speaker 1:The second one is variations in the journey. Having a plan is good, but we need to be open to the fact that God is going to constantly change those plans. At the end of the day, it's not about how well I stick to my plan. At the end of the day, it is following where God is going. And if that means I'm constantly changing the plan, that's what it is and we will be constantly changing the plan. We should be constantly asking where is God going next so that I can keep up with God? In Proverbs 19, verse 21,. It says many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is a Lord's purpose that prevails.
Speaker 1:I used to think that God's ways were the most efficient ways. I used to think that if God were guiding it, I would save the most time, the most effort and the most money. Even in the last few months I thought I'm not sure, because if that were true, god would have done creation in a nanosecond. He didn't need to drag it out for six days. And when you let the people of Israel from Egypt to Canaan in three days, they could have been there. And if you're talking about efficiency, jesus could have come today. With social media, the message would have gone all across the world. Instead, he came at a time when everybody had to walk around and speak one by one, and for 2,000 years the Church has been struggling for evangelism. It's not about how God fits in with my concept of efficiency. God does not need to fit in with my concept of efficiency. God does His work. It need not be efficient from my standpoint, and that is why I need to be willing to change plans all the time. God does not need to try to save us money or time or effort.
Speaker 1:Third, we live in the path to the mandate. Is this mandate realistically achievable in our lifetime? Are we going to see worldwide evangelism completed in our lifetime? I don't think so. I'm not being negative, it's just realistic. Are we going to see worldwide spiritual maturity in our lifetime? Are we going to see worldwide unity in our lifetime? We are not going to come to a point where we say, aha, we've reached the goal. Therefore, we are all, for the rest of our lives, going to be living on the path to the mandate. We are not going to reach there in this earthly life. So our task is to head toward the mandate, even though we will never reach to it, humanly speaking. Our goal is to head toward it, so that we are spiritually more mature than we were yesterday. We are more united than we were yesterday. We are doing more evangelism now than we did yesterday. Paul says in Philippians, chapter 3, I press on toward the goal, I press on, he's still pressing on. He's still pressing on.
Speaker 1:Fourth, distractions are inevitable. There is no planning or no journey that we undertake where there are no distractions. And there are at least three kinds of distractions. I'll call the first one core distraction. A core distraction is distraction that's related to me my sin is derailing God's plan for me, or my temperamental weakness is derailing or detouring God's plan for me. That's a core distraction. Then there can be an inner distraction, where it can be within the family or within our core group of people around us. So when Jesus said that he needs to die, his disciple Peter said not. So Lord Jesus said get behind me, satan. You can have distractions in reaching the goal from the inner group. And then there's obviously the outer distraction from everybody outside the church. Mandates are long journeys with plenty of distraction and finally, managing resources.
Speaker 1:In this I want to mention three things working with available gifts and abilities. There is a tendency for us sometimes to downplay the gifts and abilities God has given us. God has given us certain gifts and abilities and we wish oh man, I wish I had that other gift and if I had that gift I could have done that better. But we have what God gave us and so what do we do in a church setting? We try to find people that have gifts that can supplement what we don't have. You can find out in the church setting. We can use different gifts from different people. You can find out what your church can be good at by the gifts you have. So in my church, in the church that I attend in Maryland, one of the ministries that we have there is a disability ministry. It's a very robust ministry. We have almost like a parallel Sunday morning service where a lot of disabled people come Because of that. From miles around there are families that come on a Sunday morning because they can come and worship God, knowing that their disabled relative is also able to participate in the worship, and that ministry was started in a church by a woman that had a disabled child. So it's not that every church does everything well no church does everything well but every church can do some things well, and what those some things are depends on the need of the community and the gifting that we have. We find a match and we make it work really well. We don't need to do stuff that we are not gifted for and we will talk about that in the next couple of days but if we focus on the things that we are gifted for, we can do a lot of things in our churches.
Speaker 1:Second is working with available finances. This is always an issue, isn't it? Working with finances? The finances are never enough. My family is involved in a ministry called Life Challenge International where we deal with drug and alcohol addiction, and we've done for about 20 years. We have about 6 or 7 centers in India where between 20 to 40 men come and stay for a year. We teach them the Bible. They have decades of alcohol or drug abuse. They come, their lives are transformed and they go away.
Speaker 1:We have ministry opportunities in Sri Lanka and Nepal and Burma and some countries in Africa, but there are no funds. So what do we tell God? We say, lord, if you gave us the funds, we will expand. God doesn't expect us to expand without the funds. We will go as far as you want us to go as far as you give us the funds. We will be honest with the funds that you've given us. We will be diligent with the funds that you've given us, but we can only work with whatever you've given us, and God does not expect any more than that.
Speaker 1:Then he's working with available time. Working with available time, making use of even the most mundane parts, making use of the most mundane parts of the journey. When Jesus went from town to town, there was a lot of dead space between His ministry, but that was not really dead space, because it was time that he spent with His disciples and he was building them up for the work that had to be done. We don't need to try to feed people that are not hungry. We need to either create a hunger and then feed them, or look for people that are hungry If the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few. If we don't see the need, it's because we are not looking in the right place, because there is a need, and even Jesus said if you go to a town and they don't welcome you, shake the dust of your fate. So we don't need to waste time on people that are not yet ready for the Gospel and we have only limited time. Part of our ministry is to search and find hungry people. Sam Schumacher was a prolific preacher and, I think, an Episcopalian priest, and he was a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm going to end with this poem that he wrote.
Speaker 1:I stand at the door. This is what he said. I stand by the door. I neither go too far in or stay too far out.
Speaker 1:The door is the most important door in the world. It is a door through which men walk when they find God. There is no use my going way inside and staying there when there are so many still outside and they as much as I crave to know where the door is, and all they ever find is only the wall where the door ought to be. They creep along the wall like blind men with outstretched groping hands, feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door, yet they never find it. So I stand by the door.
Speaker 1:The most tremendous thing in the world is for men to find that door, the door to God, and the most important thing for any man to do is to take hold of one of those blind groping hands and put it on a latch, the latch that only clicks and opens to a man's own touch. Men die outside the door as starving beggars die on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter, die for want of what is within their grasp. They live on the other side of it, live because they have not found it. Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it and open it and walk in and find him. So I stand by the door.
Speaker 1:I admire the people who go away in, but I wish they would not forget how it was before they got in, for then they would be able to help the people who have not yet even found the door or the people who want to run away again from God. You can go into deeply and stay in too long and forget the people outside the door. As for me, I shall take my old, accustomed place near enough to God to hear him and know he is there, but not so far from men as to not hear them and remember they are there too, where Outside the door, millions of them, millions of them, but more importantly for me, one of them, two of them, ten of them, whose hands I am intended to put on the latch. So I shall stand by the door and wait for those who seek it. Thank you.