Chapter 12: Less Is More
A year or two after I became a pastor, I was floundering a bit trying to find my footing in my new role in our church in Cypress CA. The reality was that we were living in Orange County, California, a very expensive place to live. We were living on an associate pastor’s salary, and we had just had our fourth child. I really did not see how we were going to make it financially.
One night I came home, and Sara and I turned on Jeopardy!. I started playing along, and I was getting a lot of questions right. At one point, Sara said, “You are pretty good at this.” I watched until the end of the show, and I heard the announcer say, “If you would like to be a contestant, call this number.” I thought, “There it is.”
I called and was told when and where to come and try out to become a Jeopardy! contestant. I went up to Burbank thinking that this was an opportunity to win some real money, and when I did, my financial problems would be over. I went to the Jeopardy! set and saw that there were already a couple of hundred very intelligent-looking people there. They gave us a test, which was a little harder than I expected. Someone came and called out several names and thanked the rest of us for coming and told us we were free to go.
As I walked out to the car, I thought, “I hope I don’t see anyone I know because I don’t want to have to tell anyone that the reason I was in Burbank was to try out for Jeopardy!—and no, I did not make it.” I went to Burbank feeling pretty smart. As I began my ride home, I felt like an idiot. The ride gave me time to think and ended up becoming a kind of “come-to-Jesus meeting”. When it came to our finances, I sensed the Lord saying to me, “How about staying faithful, working hard, and trusting me to provide? We have done that through the years, and God has been faithful to do just that.
I also had some thoughts about Jeopardy!. The people who win on Jeopardy! know a little about a lot of different subjects. My thought was that in life, it is more important to know a lot about a little than a little about a lot. The only caveat to that is that the little that you know about has to truly matter.
I began to think about what it means to be a pastor. What is it that qualifies someone to pastor a local church? At that time, a lot of people would have answered that the pastor is the one who knows more about the Bible than anyone else in the church. I would say that, yes, it is important to know the Bible. I have known a lot of people who could win games of Bible Jeopardy! whom I would not want to be the pastor of the church I belonged to.
It is more important to know what the Bible is all about. No other book explains what really matters in life better than the Bible. No other book explains why the world is the way that it is better than the Bible. No other book reveals the answer to life’s greatest problems and our greatest need but the Bible. In the end, the most important thing we can know about the Bible is that it is all about someone—Jesus.
Over the years of doing ministry in Utah, I realized how important it is to make it about Jesus. Keep it simple. The reason it is so important to keep it simple here in Utah is because Mormonism is so complicated. In many ways, Mormonism is the gospel of more.
When you live in Utah for very long, you meet LDS missionaries. In the typical missionary encounter, the missionaries come to the door and tell you that they are missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that they have a message about the Savior that they would like to share with you.
That message is usually one that is inoffensive, something along the lines of, “Jesus is the Savior of the world.” Their words are usually something that anyone from a Christian background would agree with. My reply has always been the same: “I have received Jesus Christ as my Savior. He lives in me, and I am alive in Him. What else do I need?” The answer is invariably, “We have Jesus Christ too, but we have more.”
Spiritually, the LDS Church believes that it has more than other churches. Years ago, I was invited to speak at a BYU world religions class to talk about our church. I described myself as an evangelical Christian and told the class that the purpose of our church was to reach the people of Utah Valley with the good news of Jesus Christ.
A young man raised his hand and said, “Why would you spend your time trying to reach people with the good news of Jesus Christ when those people are already Christian?” He was saying that most people here are Mormon (already Christian) so why are you wasting your time? I knew that this was an incredibly important question, and I wanted the class to think about it so I so I felt led to wait. There was silence until a young woman in the back of the class said, “We do the same thing.”
She understood that when Mormon missionaries go out to spread the Restored Gospel, they generally try to win people who already have some kind of background in Christianity. Their message that true Christianity has been restored makes no sense to people who have no experience with Christianity.
The young man who had asked the question about why we try to reach people who are already Christian replied to her by saying, “Yes, but we have more.” At that point, I joined in and said, “Yes, but we have less. All that we have is Jesus, and He is enough.” Here is the problem with Mormonism: If you say that true Christianity equals Jesus plus more, then you are saying that Jesus is not enough.
As evangelicals, we are Bible people. We believe that the Bible is authoritative because it is where we find the apostles’ teaching. The apostles were concerned that the simplicity of the gospel be guarded. If we hold the Bible to be authoritative and inspired, then the presence of people like the Mormons should not surprise us.
In some ways, their message is nothing new. The first-century church dealt with similar challenges. In 2 Corinthians 11:4, Paul writes, “For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.”
There were people in the first century preaching a different gospel with a different Jesus than the gospel taught by the apostles. Much of the New Testament would not have been written if it were not for the fact that there were groups that were taking what the apostles had to say about Jesus and not only twisting it but adding to it.
There were two great challenges to the early church: the Judaizers and the Gnostics. Mormonism is a blend of the Judaizer and Gnostic heresies. We see Paul addressing the Judaizers in Galatians. In Galatians 1:8, Paul says, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!”
The Judaizers were saying that it is great to believe in Jesus, but you need to do more: you need to follow the Old Testament Law. You need to be circumcised and eat kosher. In many ways, Mormonism is an Old Testament religion. It has dietary rules and regulations (Word of Wisdom). It has special clothing. They have a priesthood. Mormons see themselves as true Israel.
The other great challenge to the early church was the Gnostics. The Gnostics claimed to believe in Jesus, but once again, there was more. There was more knowledge and more revelation. In many ways, Mormonism is Gnostic. Gnostics claimed to have special experiences and special knowledge. These things would often be tied to certain rituals.
Mormonism as a movement began because Joseph Smith claimed to have uncovered more Scripture. Mormons claim to have a living prophet and access to ongoing revelation where there is more knowledge connected to more rituals. Those rituals take place in the temple. In Mormonism, you cannot overestimate the importance of the temple. The temple is the place where you get the more of Mormonism.
Colossians 2:9–10 is an incredibly important passage: “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ…” Jesus is all God. If you have Jesus, then you have all that God can give you. There is nothing more.
That is why Paul says in Colossians 2:16–17, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” The gospel is simple: Jesus plus nothing equals everything.
It is amazing, as you look down through the history of the church, how often and in how many ways people have wanted to add to the simplicity of the gospel. There is something about human beings that makes us believe that more is better. I do not believe that this is just a Mormon tendency. In our own way, evangelical Christians seem to have an appetite for more.
Over the last three decades that I have been a pastor, it seems like there are these trends that pass through the church where people say Jesus is great, but if you want to really do church right, there is more. That “more” can take lots of different forms. It can be a certain way of teaching the Bible, a form of church government, a certain school of systematic theology, the kind of music that you sing or don’t sing, various charismatic expressions, certain discipleship practices, a certain brand of politics, and I could go on and on.
I am all for creativity and thinking out of the box but when the message becomes that if you want to be a real Christian—or call it an “on-fire Christian,” or a “mature Christian,”- then here are the things that you must do. In a subtle way, we are saying that “Jesus is great, but there is more.” When a local church emphasizes “something more,” it begins to drift. It is easy for the message to get muddled.
Where does the tendency to want more come from? It is when local churches see themselves in competition with other churches. I mean churches that would say that “Jesus is enough”, see themselves in competition with other churches that would say that Jesus is enough. We lose sight of a world that is lost and dying that so badly needs to hear the good news that teaches that we are saved by faith alone in Christ alone and we know that from the Bible alone.
You always want to be open to God doing something new. Whenever Jesus works, it has a quality of newness about it. Jesus said in Revelation 21:5, “I make all things new.” I have had the opportunity to see God do something new in this place.
The message of this book is simple. “Find something worth doing in life, then keep showing up to do it.” It has been worth it to be part of a movement of churches committed to sharing the good news that Jesus is enough to the people that live in this place. In order to do that we have to understand the culture of the people that live in this place.