Loaves in the Storm: Navigating the Joy and Sorrow of Multiplication

                                               

Last Sunday we commissioned Ryan and Stacie Macdonald, their children and pre-launch team to plant a church in Portland, Oregon. It was a momentous moment both for them and for us - a dream 8 years in the forming, now became the beginnings of a journey. What a joy it is to send! what a longing fulfilled to join  Jesus in the redemption of that beautiful and broken city. But after the joy of the moment,  I and others, have felt the storms of sorrow blow in. I've never known anything other than leading in a multiplying church, so these feelings of loss and vulnerability are not new to me. But they are no less real.  And they are not uncommon.

I’ve heard few people talk about the emotional storm that can brew after multiplication, both for those who are sent and for those who send. 

 How do you maintain emotional buoyancy in a post-multiplying storm? I have returned to a chapter I wrote on this in my book, Broken for Blessing, in order to steady my soul. Perhaps it will help steady yours too?

Mark’s Gospel describes the disciples navigating through a storm immediately after the feeding of the 5,000. I’d never noticed any connection between the loaves and the storm, but Mark certainly makes one.

 Jesus tells the disciples to get into a boat and go to the other side after the multiplying miracle. Meanwhile, He goes up on a mountain to pray and watches as they make painful progress in the boat because a strong wind is against them. Jesus waits all night before He walks on water to them, and when they see Him they are terrified, thinking He is a ghost. They call to Him, He gets into the boat and the wind dies down to a whisper.

 This is the verse that caught my attention: “And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, for their hearts were hardened.”(Mark 6:32)

They did not understand about the loaves. Sometimes in Scripture, storms are a result of disobedience. When Jonah disobeyed God’s call, the ship he was on went through a terrible storm until Jonah repented. This was not that kind of storm. It was a God-ordained storm of obedience. Some of us have been taught that obedience to Jesus will ensure fair weather and plain sailing. This storm of obedience rips that idea to shreds. Mysteriously, Jesus sent the disciples into the storm to reveal Himself to them. He wanted them to understand about the loaves in the storm. What they learned about Jesus from the high of multiplication was meant to be carried with them into the low of the storm. He was still compassionate. He was still powerful. He was still able to provide for them, this time not with bread to fill their empty stomachs but with bread to nourish their fearful souls. This is true of every storm of obedience. 

But I have found it particularly true of post-multiplication storms. No matter how many you send, it seems to me that you make headway painfully for a while after multiplication. You lose some momentum, which can cause you to lose heart. It’s one thing to lose resources in the process of multiplication, but these losses are another thing altogether.

This is a natural consequence of sending people from your congregation. It’s not just how many you send. It’s who you send: your volunteers, your encouragers, your givers, your worshipers, your leaders. These are all the qualities that make church compelling. Not surprising, then, that it feels like the wind is against you after you send. For those who go, the excitement of the new journey can make way for the storm of loneliness, unfamiliarity, the lack of a large, warm encouraging gathering. 

In the storm of obedience one can start to second guess God's calling.  Didn’t we do what He told us to do? Mark's gospel is clear that Jesus sent the disciples into this storm of obedience.

Over the past 15 years at Southlands, we’ve sent over 300 people to plant 9 churches. Remember, we were a church of around 500 adults and 100 kids when we began sending. Each time we began to recover from the last sending, we felt called to send again. While it’s been a joy to see how the newer churches have experienced growth and life, sometimes it’s felt like we were going backward as the primary sending churches. Other times it was like we were rowing just to stand still. Most of the time it has felt just like Mark’s Gospel describes it. 

"They were making headway painfully with the wind against them."

If you do the math, they had been rowing from the first watch of the night to the fourth. That's about 9 hours. They had gone 3-4 miles, about halfway across the Sea of Galilee. That's about 300 yards an hour! I think it's funny that they were going so slowly Jesus could catch up to them and walk right past them, walking! But it wouldn't have been funny to these disciples, who were terrified and discouraged. 

Losing momentum after multiplication can cause a storm of discouragement and fear to brew in the hearts of the church  and its leaders. Jesus’ command in the storm to “Take heart” was not just an exhortation to the disciples. It was a description of their inner weather system. They’d lost heart: lost their inner buoyancy, something that esonates with me deeply. I should know better by now, but, every time we send, I experience an inner storm and begin to lose heart.

This passage about the storm has helped me enormously in my inner storms after multiplication. I have come to treasure the first three words of verse “He saw them.” Jesus saw the disciples making headway painfully. The word in the original Greek is deeper than simply viewing them. It means to possess significant vision. In other words, Jesus understood the significance of what they were experiencing. He empathized with them and was able to do something about it. The Matthew account of the same storm says that Jesus prayed while He saw them. The truth that Jesus is a sympathetic Savior who is touched by our weaknesses, and that he lives to pray for us in our storms, is a real comfort in heavy weather. I have also learned to take heart in the post-multiplying storm by trying to understand the loaves. The disciples lost heart in the storm because they did not understand the loaves. They were blind to the connection between Jesus’ bread miracle and the deeper significance. Jesus was crystal clear that the miracle was, in fact, a sign that He is the Bread of Heaven. He Himself would be given to fill the emptiness of the human heart. On the cross, His body would be broken to heal our fragmented souls. At the Last Supper, He took the bread, broke it and said, “This is my body, broken for you.” The prophet Isaiah describes the implications of Jesus’ broken body for our souls.

“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”  (Isaiah 53:4-6)

Christ’s body was broken to give us peace in our crushing anxieties. His broken body

holds us together when we feel like we are being torn apart in a storm of self-pity, doubt and despair. Because He bowed His head into the ultimate storm on the cross, His broken body is like ballast in the hull of our souls, keeping us afloat when the wind and waves threaten to sink us.

An Anchor for our Souls

The second verse of Edward Mote’s hymn, “On Christ the Solid Rock” is one of my favorites:

“When darkness seems to hide His face, I rest on

His unchanging grace, in every high and stormy

gale, my anchor holds within the veil.”

What a vivid description of how Christ is an anchor for our souls. But what does that mean? What is the basis of that promise? 

It’s taken from Hebrews 6:19 “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

 Christ is an anchor for our souls because he has weathered his storm of obedience on the cross,  and can strengthen  us as we weather ours. But don't miss that He is a High Priest in the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek was the priest who blessed Abraham, confirming God’s oath to bless him and multiply him. "I will surely bless you and multiply you." So, the promise that is an anchor for our souls is not just a personal, priestly promise. Rather, it is a commissioning promise with global implications. It is a promise that God will lead us on a multiplying mission to all nations! The storm of commission includes the pain of sending and leaving people you love, the cost of giving of your best, the insecurity of uncharted waters, the cold wind of stretched resources, the icy fear of possible failure or rejection.

But God’s promise is that as we obey Jesus our Great Commissioner, we experience Jesus our High Priest,

who calms our fears, undergirds our insecurities and strengthens our frailties. Christ has gone before us, completing His mission on earth. He is a wise forerunner who can now help us navigate the same journey. Not only does He help us in the storm of temptation, but Christ also strengthens us in the storm of mission!

This is a sure and steadfast anchor for our souls. We may still have moments of panic or discouragement. However, I have found real comfort in the even-keeled presence of Jesus, which in turn has made me more even-keeled. The One who slept through storms with his head on a pillow in the bow of the boat is able to give us anchored emotional buoyancy, whether we are the sent ones or the sending ones.

And mark my words, in His time, the storm dies down to a whisper and the wind fills our sails again.  

More than a Prodigal: a tribute to Carl Tuttle

Yesterday we hosted the memorial of my friend, Carl Tuttle, at our church. Carl was world renown in the Vineyard movement and beyond, for writing worship songs that became standards in the Charismatic renewal of the 70's and 80's. Gifted with an ability to write simple, intimate choruses of adoration to God, they birthed a waved of contemporary worship around the world that accompanied the powerful ministry of John Wimber. His songs were anthems that breathed the Vineyard movement. Carl travelled with Wimber extensively, writing and recording albums that sold hundreds of thousands of units. When I am in the UK, I still hear stories of how powerful their conferences were, marked by Carl's worship, the Wimber's teaching and signs and wonders that followed them. Carl and his wife Sonya spent a season leading a church in Santa Maria, which Carl always told me was the happy time of their marriage and ministry. But after Wimber died afrom an aggressive form of cancer, they moved back down to Southern California for Carl take the role of senior pastor of the movements' flagship church, Anaheim Vineyard. 

This was a large and famous church and Wimber's shoes were impossibly big to fill. Carl writes in his book, Reckless Mercy, that he did not have the structural integrity to cope with the pressure of it all. Tragically, he fell into harmful patterns of addiction, losing his marriage and eventually his ministry. 

 I first met Carl at one of our Sunday evening services. He had been literally and spiritually in the desert for 15 years. He was living out in Palm Springs painting houses and was a worship leader for hire out in a little church there. After a few subsequent connections he decided to move from the desert back to his old stomping ground in Orange County, to re-establish his painting business and join our church. There was no offer of ministry at all. Carl desperately desired restoration to God and his people, more than to ministry. I really got to know him when he painted our old  house. It was a massive job to strip and re-paint  a 110 year old house with lead paint. He gave me a great deal and didd a fine job! During that time I came to know a man carrying a huge weight of sorrow and regret, but who also had a fantastic sense of humor. He was easy to be around but I wondered whether his was genuine repentance or merely regret. 

At this point Carl was persona non gratia in Vineyard circles and the rumors about his notoriety made me quite wary. The thing was though, I saw a genuine humility and contrition in Carl. He never asked for formal ministry. In fact, he was willing to leave a paying ministry gig to land at our church. (That right there is always a telling sign of genuine repentance. The other telling sign was that he was willing to go through our membership process. I remember a few ex-Vineyard people arriving at our church, partly because Carl was there, and grumbling to Carl about the formality of the process. Carl wouldn't tolerate it. He would reply, "Just look at us? You don't think us Vineyard people need a little bit of discipline in our lives?" He had a humorous candidness about him. Eventually he co-led one of our community groups and I can remember him leading one song on stage - but he never grasped for it. He was simply one of us, and he was deeply loved. 

I remember calling Sonya, Carl's ex-wife,  one day. I wanted to hear the truth about Carl from the person who had experienced him at his worst. She was amazing. She simply went through the list of rumors about him saying, "That and that is true, but that and that is not true. He never did that. don't believe them. she added that in all his ups an owns, he had always been a faithful and generous provider to her and the children." That clarity meant so much to me, and I am grateful to Sonya for refusing to bless the rumors, even though she had been the most hurt by Carl's actions. 

One day Carl came to me and asked if I would help to mediate a meeting between him and Carol Wimber. I have written about this more extensively in my book Broken for Blessing. Carl carried 15 years of guilt and shame and he wanted to ask for Carol's forgiveness for his destructive actions towards her and the broader Vineyard family. Marvelously, Carol was quick to forgive him. She had had a dream around that time about welcoming back prodigal sons. I watched her from that day appeal to her church and broader family to welcome Carl back with mercy and love, which they did with open hearts. I realized that many had been offended on Carol's behalf.  So, when they realized that she was no longer offended, they dropped their offense. It was marvelous to see. What I did not realize, is that this would mark the end of his time at Southlands Church. Carl loved us, but longed to be united back with the spiritual family that had formed him so deeply. How could I stand in the way of such a family reunion? He was restored to ministry in the Vineyard soon after that and spent a number of happy  years co-pastoring a church in Costa Mesa and traveling as a speaker and worship leader. 

But Carl's deepest longing was to be reconciled to his flesh and blood family. By God's mysterious grace, this happened. Carl moved to Colorado after a series of debilitating strokes. His ex-wife Sonya, nursed him until his death and he was surrounded by his children and grand children. Strange that it would take illness for this to take place. God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Chatting briefly to Sonya yesterday, I could see that though they were not re-married, the reconciliation with Carl was deep and genuine. what a remarkable woman of grace she is to welcome her prodigal husband back like that. 

I spoke briefly at the memorial about how Carl is more than a prodigal. Without underplaying the damage he caused to church, family and friends, Carl stands as a powerful model of reconciliation to us. For many of us, stuck in relational stalemates, we can learn from this humble, broken man, some powerful gospel lessons that will get us unstuck. I see 6 ways Carl pursued reconciliation that are a model for us to follow. 

1.Carl owned what he could own without excuse. No blaming others for his sin. His sin was bigger in his eyes than the sin of those against him. He genuinely looked at the speck in his eye as more serious than the log in the other's eye. This is rare. We get stuck when we cry "Mercy!" for ourselves, and "Justice!" for those who have wronged us. That results in a relation stalemate.

2. Carl refused to play victim himself and make others villains. He knew it was more messy than that. Carl overlooked offense without bitterness saying he deserved it. When people would say terrible things about him he was not overly defensive. He didn't agree with them all, but he would shrug and say, "I kinda deserve it."

3. Carl extended much mercy because he had received it. Although he had a lot to repent of, he also forgave those who had wronged him, knowing Christ had forgiven him generously. He resisted offense like the plague. He uprooted bitterness and banished vindictiveness over time through repeated forgiveness and remembrance of God's kindness to him.  He allowed God to vindicate him where he was not guilty. 

4. He paid the price of reconciliation Carl knew that forgiveness was one thing, but reconciliation was another. It required the wronged party to desire relationship. I saw this happen over time in profound ways because he was willing to make restitution to those he had wronged. I saw this first of all with his ex-wife, Sonya. She told me personally that he was financially generous to her and their children. He was not into cheap grace.  I think this is one reason why reconciliation was possible.  

5. He treasured intimacy in his final years with those from whom he had been estranged.  Carl longed to end his days with his spiritual family and his flesh and blood family, and God granted him his desires.  He died surrounded by family and friendships that had spanned more than 5 decades. In the truest sense, he died a rich man. 

6. He didn't waste the pain. He realized that some would not reconcile but he did what he could to live at peace with all people. He had this saying, "Don't waste the pain." He didn't expect his sin to be absolved in a pain free life. Instead, he lived with consequences, and learned from them. He was genuinely a softer, more humble, more grateful man at the end of his days. 

I watched God break relational stalemate after stalemate in Carl's life. This is not primarily because of Carl. It is because Christ himself is our peace, having destroyed the dividing wall of hostility between those traditionally hostile to each other. (Ephesians 2:14) The reconciling power of the cross is what I want to magnify here, more than Carl's reconciling powers. But Carl was willing to navigate through the rubble of that hostile wall that Christ has broken down, and so must we if we are to enjoy reconciliation in our strained relationships. In this sense, Carl is more than a prodigal. He is a model of reconciliation, worthy of imitation. 

Rumors of the Quiet Revival

Walking under a London bridge near Waterloo, covered with artful graffiti, I spot a Bible reference verse amidst the vibrant urban colors. 

John 14:6 

No verse attached. Just the reference. For those who have eyes to see and hearts to explore, the reference is the famous claim and invitation of Jesus in John's gospel. 

"I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me."

The quiet, yet unmistakable truth claim amidst the graffiti speaks of a deeper movement afoot across the UK and Europe. They are calling it The Quiet Revival. 

The UK Bible Society was the first to coin the phrase after ground breaking research data released a few months ago that church attendance in the UK was experiencing a drastic up-swing. 

Co-author of The Quiet Revival report, Dr Rhiannon McAleer writes, "The Quiet Revival shows that the most dramatic church growth is among young adults, particularly young men. In 2018, just 4 per cent of 18–24-year-olds said that they attended church at least monthly. Today, says The Quiet Revival, this has risen to 16 per cent, with young men increasing from 4 per cent to 21 per cent, and young women from 3 to 12 per cent.  

The report shows that what people believe about Church decline is no longer true. ‘These are striking findings that completely reverse the widely held assumption that the Church in England and Wales is in terminal decline. While some traditional denominations continue to face challenges, we’ve seen significant, broad-based growth among most expressions of Church – particularly in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. There are now over 2 million more people attending church than there were six years ago." (the whole article here The Quiet Revival)

Here in the USA, at least in the circles that I run in, the rumors of the Quiet Revival abound. Some are skeptical. Many abound. I was curious to see what it felt like being on the ground as we visited the UK this past month. We spent 10 days investing in around 50 churches from 13 different UK and European nations. 

Here are 8 signs that the rumors are not an exaggeration.

1. I saw young men walking the streets of London carrying Bibles. I’ve never seen that before in the 30 years I’ve been visiting here. We know that Bible sales are on the up, but the boldness to carry a Bible publicly seems remarkable.

2. Every church we were with said that their Alpha courses (exploring Christianity) were better attended than ever and Christians were more bold in inviting people to church and sharing the gospel.

3. We witnessed a growing hunger for God in prayer, especially prayer between churches. In our Advance Movement family of churches 85 leaders from about 20 churches travelled from Wales, N. Ireland, Scotland and all over England for two days of prayer and fasting.

4. Regular testimonies of salvation and healing. We saw one lady at a @newgroundchurches conference arrive on crutches and leave carrying them. No smoke and mirrors. Her friends vouched for her. She had been healed by Jesus.

5. A significant increase in cultural diversity in churches and leaders from different cultures being raised up.

6.Churches were all leaning freshly into multiplication: of disciples, leaders, meetings & churches.

7. Churches taking big steps to serve their cities through compassion with favor from civic leaders

8. Worship was unpolished, passionate, participative, not performative. A genuine hunger for God’s presence.

May the quiet revival spread deeper and wider and spill over into the nations!