An Unshakable Jesus Kingdom (Even in Dallas)

A Word About Fallen Pastors and How Our Faith is Built to Last

As a new transplant to Dallas, Texas, I recently settled on a new church, and I love it! It’s a mobile church called Social Dallas in the heart of the Dallas metroplex.

Pastor Robert and Taylor Madu are gems in this city. The church is young and growing fast and has the typical challenges that come with that. The teaching resonates with me, and I love how Pastor Robert illuminates the word.

Here’s a great sermon on money, but it really ends up being about the gifts God has given you to serve. Every week of this sermon series called Hidden Figures, we think it’s about money, but it ends up being about the heart:

The church also has a word of the year, a scripture that the whole church stands and recites every Sunday and is encouraged to memorize. I love this and wish more churches did this:

Do you see what we’ve got?
An unshakable kingdom!
And do you see how thankful we must be?
Not only thankful,
but brimming with worship,
deeply reverent before God.
For God is not an indifferent bystander.
He’s actively cleaning house,
torching all that needs to burn,
and he won’t quit until it’s all cleansed.
God himself is Fire!

Hebrews 12:28-29 The Message

What I find to be only the cleansing holy fire of God is the torching he is doing in the Church, even in Dallas.

It’s been a tough past week for the body of Christ in Dallas. I keep wondering if it’s a coincidence that I am here for such a time as this. Two megachurch pastors, Tony Evans and Robert Morris, with large and influential followings in Dallas and around the world, stepped down from their preaching positions due to sin.

What affected me was that I wrestled with joining both these churches, Morris’ Gateway Church and Evan’s Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, before settling on Social Dallas. I remember thinking that those two pastors and churches had withstood the test of time. They each had decades of teaching and preaching experience, had been tried and tested by time, and were, for the most part…. scandal-free.

Conversely, I also remember thinking that Robert Madu had not really been tried in the public eye for that long. Yes, he was not new to preaching as an itinerant preacher, but he had only led the church for five years. Compare that to 40. Imagine the knowledge and wisdom that comes with leading the same church for decades.

Yet, as with all things Gospel and the way of Jesus, what we see with our eyes is not always what God sees in the hearts of people—especially our revered leaders. Also, it’s important to say that there is nothing wrong with the members of the church; many of them were in the dark about the truth, I’m sure.

Rather, we judge by what we think are the criteria we should use to measure fruitfulness and success by size, influence, connections, location, and wealth. But Jesus says in the end, those don’t last anyway:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust destroy
and where thieves break in and steal,
but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust destroys
and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19-21 NIV

I keep thinking about Robert Morris and how everything he built (notice I didn’t say God built) is shattered. It’s such a cautionary tale of what happens when you build your house on a lie:

But everyone who hears these words of mine
and does not put them into practice
is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
The rain came down, the streams rose,
and the winds blew and beat against that house,
and it fell with a great crash.
Matthew 7:26-27

Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

1 Corinthians 10:12

All this is true…and yet!

We have a Savior who is mighty to save!

We belong to a kingdom that is unshakable!

Do you see what we’ve got?
An unshakeable kingdom!
And do you see how thankful we should be?

These are beautiful words for me this week. When all around is shaking and sinking sand, we have a Kingdom that has endured 2000 years of hostility and rejection, and yet it’s growing, expanding, and thriving.

He won’t quit until it’s all cleansed.

Dear Jesus,

We know you can turn tables in your house
when sin is rampant.
We see your cleansing torch at work in your bride, the Church, today.
Help us stand and endure to the very end,
lest we fall.

Amen