Gaining By Losing

J. D. Greear, a pastor in North Carolina, is the author of Gaining By Losing:  Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send.  He asks:  if we thought of all our blessings (e.g., here at Goshen) as seeds, how many of them are we planting for kingdom growth, and how many of them are we keeping in storehouses to feed ourselves?  “Jesus measures the success of our ministries not by how large we grow the storehouse, but by how widely we distribute its seeds” (p. 16).

Greear draws on Jesus’ counterintuitive teaching that “He who loves his life loses it” (John 12:25); it’s only by giving away our lives (i.e., planting that seed) that we really save them (Luke 9:24).

But pride seeps in.  Greear confesses how he once only wanted to see “my church, my kingdom, my name” magnified (43).  And that self-serving attitude prompts us to clutch at God’s gifts rather than spread them about freely.  In fact, a true passion for Jesus’ mission can grow only out of deep, personal experience with the gospel:  when we’re amazed at God’s saving grace toward us (undeserving rebel sinners that we are), we’ll yearn to see the glory of our saving God spread throughout the earth.  “The gospel is the helium that fills the heart with passion and propels us to soar in mission” (59).

Another big emphasis in Gaining By Losing is that every Christian is called to mission.  “Every believer is sent” (19).  Knowing Jesus always involves joining him on mission (47).  “Every believer is called to leverage his or her life for the spread of the gospel… the question is no longer whether we are called, only where and how” (70).

Greear admits that outreach means risk.  But in Jesus’ parable of the talents, he only commends those who risked in order to get a return; to the one who took no risk Jesus says, “You wicked servant” (Matt 25:26).  Think of it:  burying and sitting on God’s blessings is wicked. “Risking for God is dangerous; but not risking is more dangerous” (183).  Esther took a risk.  So did Daniel.  The three men thrown in the furnace took a big risk (Dan 3:18).  Not to risk means wasting your life (185).  “Where do you need to take a risk?  Is the Spirit of God leading you to start the application process, or write the check, or walk across the street and knock on the neighbor’s door?” (188).