Regroup

I’ve heard communications and marketing experts believe people have to hear things 17 different times before it sinks in. Maybe it was 16 times; I’m not sure. The person who told me this told me only once.

Ten years ago, our pastors started talking to each other and to anybody else who knew anything about small groups. What we quickly discovered is that no church like ours saw small groups as a ministry pillar like we envisioned small groups should be. On the rare occasion where some church had something that resembled what we envisioned, the practice of that particular church was more in line with a random gathering the evening of a 5th Sunday. We wanted more for our church because we believe the New Testament calls for a greater level of commitment among the people of a local church.

In 2011 the move to a church of small groups may have been the biggest philosophical change in the history of our church. This is 2020 where we are experiencing the consequences of Covid-19. One consequence was a blow to the gathering and ministry of our small groups. In rebuilding our ministries, we need to relearn what it means for small groups to be a core value at our church, and why every member in our church should be a part of small group. We need to regroup.

Small groups are about discipleship. Our Lord gave us the responsibility of making disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:18-20). We are to teach new disciples everything that Jesus taught, and that cycle is to continue from one generation to the next (2 Timothy 2:2). The reason we made such a big change and the reason we expect every member to be a part of small group is discipleship. We are trying to do what Jesus commands us to do – make disciples.

Since Acts 2 and the formation of the church, disciples of Jesus Christ do the same things through the centuries. Some people call those timeless activities one thing, while another person calls them something else. We call them the 4 C’s. For the last 2,000 years, true disciples of Jesus Christ CONNECT, CARE, CONVERSE, and CHASE. Those words guide us as we pursue discipleship, and those words evaluate our attempts to produce disciples.

The 4 C’s teach you what should occur in your small groups, both at your weekly small group meeting and after your meeting ends until it begins one week later. You will know if your small group is producing disciples if the members of your small group CONNECT with each other, CARE for each other, CONVERSE with each other, and CHASE after others.

Members of a small group know each other’s names, histories, strengths, gifts, weaknesses, passions, struggles, dreams, and fears. We believe Christianity is personal, but Christianity is not private. When we CONNECT with other disciples, we move into the realm of contributing to and receiving from other disciples. Contributing to and receiving from is the meaning of the body, building, and family word pictures in the New Testament that describes the community of Christians in a local church.

Members of a small group provide the front line for physical and spiritual CARE of each other. Members of a turn to each other for spiritual help. They seek out another in their small group for spiritual help. Accountability occurs among the members of a small group. The members of a small group help each other become more like Christ. Members of a small group view themselves as a necessary part of the spiritual growth of all the others in their group. Disciples CARE for each other.

Members of a small group CONVERSE with each other about God and His Word and CONVERSE together with God in prayer. Some of that conversation happens in small group meetings but not all of it. Small group members CONVERSE with other group members throughout the week. Small group members CONVERSE with others about God’s working through His Word in their lives. They CONVERSE together in prayer at times other than the weekly small group meeting. Disciples CONVERSE with each other about God and His Word and together with God in prayer as often as they possibly can.

Jesus’s disciples CHASE other people. We CHASE the lost, the fringe, and the wandering. CHASE means we pursue people. Disciples CHASE those who do not know God through Jesus Christ, beginning with those in their own web of relationships. Disciples CHASE those in our church who are on the fringe. Disciples CHASE other disciples who have wandered from the Lord. When someone in a small group misses a small group meeting, small group members make efforts to find out the reason. When someone in a small group misses a Sunday morning worship service or the education hour, small group members recognize this and do something; they send a text, make a phone call, write an email, or make contact to find out what was the cause for that person’s absence. Maybe it’s a simple matter like bad roads. Maybe it’s a more significant matter like hiding from the body. Whatever the reason, faithful disciples of Jesus Christ CHASE each other.

The separation of the church caused by the coronavirus decimated many of our small groups. We need our small groups for the growth of the disciples in our church. Let’s commit to the growth of other disciples by committing to a small group

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

Mike VerWay
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Hi Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go

If you had the day off yesterday because of the Labor Day Holiday, I hope you enjoyed the day. For many, it’s back to work today.

Among the favorite gospel songs of my childhood pastor, Bill Schroeder, was We’ll Work ‘Til Jesus Comes. We sang it enough at my home church that I sing the chorus with easy recall. It is a toe-tappin’ folk tune that prompts the singer to labor for Christ here and rest when with the Lord in heaven. I hope we will work for the Lord every day, but I want to think for a moment on whatever other work you’re doing now.

Whatever work you’re doing today, thank you. Thanks for going to work today, and last week, and last month. And thanks for going to work tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. I get to write because you go to work today. We have a full-time pastor at our church because you have a job, and you work. I do not take that lightly, and I fully respect what that means for me.

I am able to live and provide for my family because you give your hard-earned-money week after week, month after month for the support of the ministry here at First Calvary Baptist Church. That’s sobering to me. Obviously, I should not slack off or give minimal effort because the Lord sees all I do or…don’t do; however, another motivator should be what you do. I should not slack off or give minimal effort because your work makes it possible for me to read, to write, to study, to dream, to plan, to visit, to be in the community, and to pray.

Not all pastors have it this way or want it this way. In some rural communities where there simply are not enough people to support a pastor full-time, that pastor must be bi-vocational. Bi-vocational means he fulfills his pastoral responsibilities and works a second job to make ends meet. A pastor friend in Stillwater does this. Many church planters do this.

Other pastors are bi-vocational by choice. The church is large enough to support him, but he chooses to hold another job for a variety of reasons – he wants the contact with unsaved people, or he desires the church use its financial resources a different way, or he just likes doing that kind of work (like teaching at a seminary maybe), or he was in a career before becoming a pastor and wants to maintain his job. There are any number of reasons.

My musing today isn’t very long nor all that deep. I just want to say thank you for getting out of bed today and going to work, thereby making it possible for me to be your pastor. What you do that allows me to do what I do means a great deal to me.

Most of you work really hard, and some of you work at stress-filled jobs. By God’s grace, it is my intention to do right by you by working hard at my job. Thank you, and I love you.

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

Mike VerWay
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Do You Know For Sure?

Pastor Bill Schroeder entered the joy of the Lord August 14 at the age of 89. Brenda and I had the pleasure of attending a memorial event for him last Friday in suburban Chicago.

William F. Schroeder, it seems odd that a kid would know his pastor’s full name. I do not recall when I first met Pastor Schroeder. I was probably four-years-old. My parents and my younger sister started attending Calvary Baptist Church in Oak Forest, Illinois. My best guess is my family migrated to Oak Forest as my recently married parents tried to establish a new direction for their family. The influence of Pastor Schroeder set my family on a trajectory that continues for generations.

If preachers are given to envy, Bill Schroeder’s legacy might be the envy of many. From his lifelong marriage to Kit came children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren who are faithful to Jesus Christ. Beyond the doors of their modest home, the number of faithful women and men across the world led to Christ by Bill Schroeder or trained in the Scriptures by Bill Schroeder are legion. Without exaggeration, there are few regions in the world where someone who received the Word of God from Bill Schroeder has not lived or served Jesus Christ. The extent of his impact is truly remarkable.

He loved Chicago. As a graduate of one of Chicago’s Southside high schools, he was committed to the White Sox and the Bears. As a child, I remember hearing sermons peppered with illustrations from his own football playing days at Harper High School. On Chicago’s Southside Billy Schroeder came to faith at the influence of his fourth grade Sunday School teacher. From there God molded him into the faithful pastor I knew and loved.

Soon after graduation from Bob Jones University, a small group of believers asked Bill Schroeder to become their pastor in suburban Oak Forest. The small white building that served as their meeting place would not hold their numbers for long. Pastor Schroeder was an aggressive and fruitful evangelist. His pulpit preached the gospel, and his routine method of ministry in the community was purposeful “soul winning.” More than a handful came to Christ because of the door to door evangelism of Bill Schroeder.

At his funeral, his daughter Dawn remarked how he never stopped telling people about Jesus. As his memory and strength failed in the last years and months of his life, he remembered to talk about Jesus with medical personnel and caregivers. His standard line to any and all was, “If you died today, do you know for sure you’re going to heaven?”

That phrase was both taught and caught in my home church, so much so that it became my mom’s standard question to people. My mom was soulwinner unlike any I have ever known. She could turn a conversation to the gospel with minimal effort and routinely asked strangers and new acquaintances the question she learned from our pastor, “If you died today, do you know for sure you’re going to heaven?” Like her pastor on his deathbed, my mom redeemed the time made available to her in her final days. As hospital staff from custodial to surgeons entered her room, I’d her say to them, “I want you to go to heaven” followed by her standard question that led to a gospel conversation.

I came to faith in Jesus Christ as a four-year-old boy at the knee of my mother. I am confident my salvation came at the tutelage of her pastor.

The church grew rapidly and steadily under his leadership. New buildings and additional staff were necessary to serve the church family and surrounding community. Some of those ministry efforts were cutting edge. Under his leadership, a K-12 Christian school opened in the fall of 1973 where my sister and I were second and third grade students. He was a visionary saw the potential to reach the masses of Chicagoland through television broadcasting. Our church produced The Chicago Gospel Hour every Sunday night for rebroadcast, with the potential to reach millions over the airwaves of channel 38. A vibrant Sunday School, a bus ministry that brought hundreds of children and many parents to the church building, “Shepherd’s” a ministry to developmentally challenged women and men, boys and girls, and on and on the list goes.

The ministry thrived through the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The 90s brought significant change.

By the summer of 1988, Brenda and I were living in Alton, Illinois, where we served in a local church made possible in no small part by the connection of Pastor Schroeder. My mom and dad continued on the staff at my home church. In conversations with my parents, they conveyed something was wrong in the church. Where unity once flourished, disunity had taken residence. Weekly Sunday morning attendance that was well over 1500 had plummeted. Staff and ministry cuts were necessary. Morale was horribly low. I don’t know what all happened. I do know Pastor Schroeder did everything humanely possible to right the ship and get her back on course. Try as he might, he could not. He would resign his position and leave the people he loved with all his heart.

He did not leave ministry. Instead of trying to resurrect his brand in a nearby community, this one-time megachurch pastor migrated to Northeast Wisconsin where he served a rural church family with the same enthusiasm and faithfulness that he served when in a city of many millions. Humility on display in a grace-filled man is beautiful to see.

Pastor Schroeder was a capable but not extraordinary pulpiteer. Many on his staff and many of his preacher boys surpassed him in the handling of God’s Word, but none have surpassed him in influence. All who taught by him and who served with him recall with appreciation lessons learned from him in the pulpit. One stands out to me.

Pastor Schroeder was preaching in our Christian school chapel. I think I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I did not know then, but he was teaching us worldview. The 1970s were a time when truth and absolutes were under attack and mostly abandoned, and he determined to teach us the nature of absolute truth. Among the absolutes he taught, I recall with clarity this: “It’s never right to betray a friend.” As I have moved into the second half of my life, I’ve witnessed again and again the veracity of that statement, both as a recipient and as a friend.

I owe much to this servant of Jesus. Brenda and I are high school sweethearts, a love birthed at the Christian school he began. Most of my mentors were trained by Bill Schroeder. Dick Baker, Mike Harding, Tony Phelps, and Steve Schroeder learned from him and continue to teach me in the present. My lifelong friendship began in my church’s Sunday School where Mark and I first met. I love the local church because I watched my pastor love the church in times of plenty and in times of need.

My pastor is now with the Jesus whom he loved and preached. He is gone, but the work of Christ continues in the fruit from his tree. And I suspect somewhere in some children’s Sunday School class is another young boy or young girl that our Lord intends to use for his glory and for the good of people. May God bless our children’s teachers who faithfully serve our Lord without knowledge of what God will do with those weekly lessons.

I loved my pastor and have wanted to be like him since my earliest days. May God grant me and all who received from Bill Schroeder the necessary grace to be faithful until the end as was he.

Mike VerWay
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Back to School or Whatever We Are Calling It Now

My niece and nephew are 15-year-old twins and sophomores in high school. They’re typical kids who think zits are the worst thing that can happen to someone, who want to stay up late and roll out of bed around lunch time, and who are navigating high school. Except this year high school is nothing like high school was for you.

Along with their older brother, my niece and nephew are students at a suburban Chicago high school, but they have started the tenth grade from the shores of the Chippewa Flowage in Hayward, Wisconsin, as their school begins the year under distance learning guidelines. Now that may sound like a great gig if you can get it, but the woods don’t provide highspeed broadband, and cabin space is small, so you set up a classroom wherever you can get it. And, well, as hard as mom tries, algebra and geometry were never her thing.

In our church the beginning of a school year will deliver to families harsh realities unlike anything previously experienced. I’ve listened to many of you who express anxiety about what awaits you in the days, weeks, and months to come.

Many in our church will enter a hybrid learning environment. Some in our church begin with distance learning. A few in our church return to the classroom where full-time in-person instruction takes place, complete with face masks and shields, social distancing, and whatever daily adjustments take place in a classroom or school building. Maybe those in our church who are longtime homeschoolers will not be impacted, but I am not even sure about that.

While I am not in a position to affect the options offered by your local school, I want to offer some suggestions as you navigate these new waters.

Bring God Into the Situation

If you are not in the habit, begin the school day with prayer. Before distance learning from home, before the pickup on the school bus, before unloading in the drop off line, pray to God who loves your children more than you ever could. Pray out loud so your children hear you asking God for his protection and for his grace for both students and teachers. Your prayer need not be long, but pray you must before the school day begins.

You Are Not Alone

In our church are people riding the same turbulent seas that you are. Identify one of them and pray regularly with them for their children and yours. Look in your small group or look outside your small group. Who in our church has children learning like yours will in 2020-2021? Initiate a day and time to pray with each and for each other. A note to our men, I am talking to you not just your wife. Your children’s educations are not the obligation of her only. It belongs to you, so find a man in our church to pray with.

Parent First

You and only you are uniquely positioned by God to direct your children’s education. God made your child with the intent that you would be their parent. He has equipped you, and he will provide for you. Therefore, be a parent first and a school facilitator second. As a parent, you remain patient when tears flow, and the tears will come. You know that, right? Some of those tears might be yours. Your task as a parent is to train your child how Christians respond to failure, to temptation, to upheaval, to criticism, to anxiety, and the list goes on. Learning Christian truths and gaining spiritual training will serve your children much longer and in far more superior ways than identifying one of the eight parts of speech or reciting a geometric theorem.

Exercise Common Sense

God gives us his wisdom which serves to make a day better. Before the first day of distance learning, determine where each child will “do school.” That may not be easy with multiple children in the home. I get it. When Michael was a twelfth-grader, Jeffery was in the third grade. The girls were in-between. We discovered the more preparation we did before the school year, week, or day, the better the environment for learning.

Set some expectations. Get dressed for the school day; no pajamas allowed. No pets in the space where you do school. Do not put chores on your children when they are supposed to be doing school, like, “Can someone please let the dog out!” Get everything ready before school starts. All this requires discipline. Soon after our kids were learning from home, I discovered distance learning / homeschooling requires someone to be disciplined, and it’s not likely to be the kids. These expectations are simple acts of common sense but will likely require a parent’s endeavor.

Pray, Pray, and Pray Again

During the day when things are going well, pray. During the day when things aren’t going well, pray. During the day when you have no idea how things are going, pray. When the kids hop in the minivan and tell you about the day or come through the front door loaded down with a backpack, pray silently to God in thanks and rejoicing or in lament and request over what you’ve heard. When the day is drawing to a close and tomorrow is full of apprehension or anticipation, pray aloud with and for your child. The power of in hearing a parent pray aloud is beyond description. Soon ask your child to pray too as the next school day approaches. End the day as you began it by bringing God into the situation.

One last thing, involve your pastors. We don’t have all the answers. We may not have even one answer. But we love you, and we love your family. We want to help, and we want to intercede before God on your behalf. We want to encourage your children and your spouses, so invite us in to your world and allow us to bear the burden with you.

I am confident you have other counsel you can and should offer to each other. I hope you will. For now, please know that I am praying for you.

Mike VerWay
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Self-Awareness: I Have None

It was back-to-back days of humiliation, first my dad and later my uncle. Several years ago, standing with my dad on my grandmother’s deck, my dad tapped my stomach and commented something like, “Getting a little pudgy there, boy.” The very next day my uncle made a similar comment about the extra weight he thought I was carrying.

I was dumbfounded, not that they said something but that they were right. I see me every day. My dad and my uncle living hundreds of miles away from me saw me a few times a year or less. The changes to them were much more obvious. I remember saying out loud, “How did this happen?” How did others see my significant weight gain, but I didn't?

I had been warned. John Abbott, a former marine, workout enthusiast and 25 years my senior, told me, after an amazing meal prepared by his wife, that my eating habits would catch up with me one day. In my early 30s, I scoffed. They hadn’t shown up yet. A decade later my dad and uncle confirmed John's prophetic words.

I had been warned about other matters too. My freshman year of high school I mouthed off to a senior. He could have popped me upside the head; instead, Juan said, “Mike, one day your mouth is going to get you into trouble.” I thought I was funny. I wasn’t. I was mean, hurtful, and sometimes vicious. Juan was right.

One consequence of the fall is a lack of self-awareness (James 1:22-23). Self-awareness is how an individual consciously knows and understands their own character, feelings, motives, and desires. Therein lies the problem: the Bible teaches us we are incapable of knowing and understanding self accurately.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9).

• We think our character professes a righteous quality, but it doesn’t. So, we justify our actions when confronted about our behavior. We conclude we are better than we really are and that we are right when we are wrong.

• We think our feelings – happy or sad, mellow or angry, hurt or trusting – are right because they are our feelings, and no should ever be able to tell us how to feel.

• We think our motives are honorable, but are they? Is the motive the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31) or is the motive serving self?

• We think our desires are righteous, but are they? Could the desire come from jealousy, hatred, greed, revenge, or pride?

The lesson over time is not How I Became Self-Aware and How You Can Too. The lesson over time is I’ll never be self-aware if awareness of self comes from me. I can be self-aware if awareness comes form outside of me. The Bible gives at least two aids for self-awareness.

The James text referenced earlier describes the Bible like a mirror, reflecting to its reader what the reader actually is. Proverbs 27:6 lauds the benefits of a friend who aids another in becoming self-aware, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”

Somewhere along the way I picked up the line, “It’s not the lies people say about me that bothers me; it’s the truth they say about me that bothers me.” The reality is I am not as aware of myself as I confidently assert. I need the Word of God and the input of Christians to show me what I’m really like so that I can become what I want to be like – I want to be like Jesus.

Father,

Before you gave me new life, I was dead in my trespasses and sins. And I had no idea of my condition. You opened your word to me. You showed me my real self, a rebel against a holy God. You offered life to me. You instilled faith in me. You made me your own. Thank you. Would you continue the work you began to make me like your Son, my Savior, Jesus? Use your word to expose what remains unchanged. Use my brothers and sisters-in-Christ to prod me toward Christlikeness and away from the delusion that I am good like I am. This making me aware of self will be more expressions of your grace. And continue to do this until I am with you in heaven. Don’t let me fool myself as an old man, thinking I know me without need of the mirror of the Word or the input of the church.

Mike VerWay
Pastor for Preaching & Vision