Failed Internship? Or, an Opportunity for Growth: Part 5 - Kingdom Building

The year of our Lord 1096 marked the beginning of a 200 year period of Crusades that saw hundreds of thousands of European Christians travel to Jerusalem to take back the promised land. Amidst the cries of Peter the Hermit, men all over Europe left everything for sake of the kingdom of heaven and, of course, to gain even greater wealth and power. Army after army of self-proclaimed Christians traveled to Jerusalem to loot, kill, and claim power and land fighting anyone who could satiate their greed. Many Muslims were slaughtered by crusaders. Many Christians were slaughtered by crusaders. Many innocent men, women, and children were slaughtered by crusaders. Christians built vast empires and gained power and fame during this time. These are kingdoms that will not pass through the fire on Judgment Day.

The second Sunday of August, I met with the lead pastor, Joe, and the two elders at Village Inn Restaurant at 9:30pm. I had gone into the meeting simply wanting to know if I would be leading the week's missions team that had come to help. I was blindsided when Joe and the elders told me that there was no more work left for me to do at Wormwood Church. "For us to just keep making up things for you to do would be a waste of your time and our time." I was told that I had the week to "make arrangements to leave." Furthermore, I was told to tell no one that I was leaving, I was to just leave.

I sat there in shock and silence. When these three had said what they came to say I was nearly speechless. The only words I could muster were a weak "thank you for your time" as I excused myself from the table. As I sat in my room that night, Joe's words echoed in my head, "We want to be completely honest with you, there is just no more work for you to do here." This did not make sense to me, the church had just hired two new interns to come in and help with the youth and media aspects of the church. I was leading three Bible studies a week and sometimes getting together with kids that had questions in between. I was a key leader in the youth group and had just taken on the roll of reforming, organizing, and re-energizing the Sunday morning children's ministry. Not only that, the church paid me nothing! I was free labor.

As I was making my arrangements that week, I emailed Joe five times asking him to meet me face to face. Finally, my fifth email, sent Wednesday morning, provoked a response. In this email, I informed him that I would not book a plane ticket out of Kansas until he met with me face to face. It was Wednesday afternoon when he finally responded via his blackberry that received email anywhere. He wanted to meet that night at 10:30pm at Applebee's.

After sitting and waiting for five minutes, Joe walked into Applebee's at 10:35pm. Behind Joe came his wife and volunteer coordinator, Michelle, the 21-year-old administrative assistant, Amanda, the 21-year-old worship pastor, Jordan, and the discipleship pastor, Rich, a Christian for the past three years. I asked Joe if we could talk alone and he responded by making me aware of how great an inconvenience this meeting was to the church staff. To this I responded by laying out the contradiction between the actual level of my involvement with the church and his words from Sunday night. For the next 40 minutes, I endured a constant barrage of one-sided accusations and Scripture-less rebukes for everything I had done wrong over the past two months. They attacked my character, my discipleship methods, my personality, and my work for the summer. Like a good soccer team, everyone touched the ball multiple times, everyone but me.

Some of my "shortcomings" I shared in my previous posts. These charges included starting four Bible studies behind the pastor's back, taking the youth out to teach them how to do street evangelism, and being "divisively against the church's vision". Some of my shortcomings were valid; I made mistakes as the leader of the childrens' program. But, these mistakes were not the trumped up disasters that the staff threw in my face. These were rookie errors that I certainly would have repented of had they been brought to my attention one-on-one, in love.

What really caught my attention was this statement made by at least three people and agreed upon by all: "We live and die by this vision. We have sacrificed for this vision. Nothing will stand in the way of our vision; anything that does must go."

Everyone is building up a kingdom. Some people build their kingdoms with material things such as stone, brick, and mortar. Some build their kingdoms on immaterial things like fame and a well-known name. Others build onto the kingdom of heaven by faith and hope in what is unseen. The kingdom of heaven has already been founded. This kingdom has Jesus Christ laid down as the corner-stone from the beginning of time.

The kingdom of heaven is not built upon by marketing one's own name and gaining popularity. Paul teaches in II Timothy 4 that "the time will come when [the people] will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths."

The kingdom of heaven is not built upon by living according to II Timothy 3, but I Timothy 3. Paul warns, in the former, against men who are "lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these."

But, on the contrary, these are the qualifications of an elder from I Timothy 3: "An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money,... and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil."

The kingdom of heaven is not built upon by standing firm upon one's own vision, but on Christ as the firm foundation. A man who wants to start a club may do as he pleases, but a church is different. There are parameters for a church and the authority rests squarely on God's revealed Word. When one man begins a church and runs the show his way without yielding to wise counsel or the Bible itself, the kingdom of heaven is not being built, but man's kingdom; Wormwood's kingdom.

John warns against a man named Diotrephes in the book of III John. Diotrephes was a man who started off on the right foot and was placed in the position of leadership in a particular church in Asia Minor. John says, "I wrote something to the church; but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say. For this reason, if I come, I will call attention to his deeds which he does, unjustly accusing us with wicked words; and not satisfied with this, he himself does not receive the brethren, either, and he forbids those who desire to do so and puts them out of the church. Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God." Diotrephes was building his own kingdom and any man who stood in his way was cast out along with those who agreed with said man.

Now, I myself may not be the wisest of counsel, or the most godly of brethren, but I am one of three staff members who were asked to leave this church. The youth pastor, a College at Southeastern graduate, and his wife were also asked to leave despite the success they had seen in youth ministry. The common denominator between the three of us was:
1. We held to Scripture as the complete and final authority.
2. We challenged the pastor to seek Biblical solutions to major church issues.
3. We followed the great commission to make disciples at every opportunity available.

History and experience teach that not every evangelist, pastor, elder, or deacon builds on the firm foundation of Jesus Christ. What allows these men and their churches to go astray? Lack of accountability. When the church and its leadership maintain a healthy, Biblical accountability relationship, the church will prosper to the glory of God and the advancement of the kingdom of heaven. The Diotrephes' of the faith who dodge and forbid accountability will lead the church into error every time.

In His sermon on the mount, Jesus gives clear teaching on the kingdom of heaven and who belongs:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

"Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."