John Markum

Author: johnmarkum

25 Years of Preaching

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It occurred to me just this week, that I’ve officially been preaching for 25 years! I preached my first sermon at age 15 with my youth group, back when our family was stationed in Hawaii. I preached through the entire book of Revelation in about 15 minutes… and no, it wasn’t “good”. But someone gave their life to Christ in that service, and God did something inside of me through that. As I grew through high school and college, I was given dozens of opportunities to preach in chapels, give devotions, and many other opportunities few people my age were given.

I’ve now written and preached thousands of sermons, seen hundreds come to faith in Christ, baptized many of them, performed counseling, officiated weddings, buried loved ones, started churches, merged churches, served on staff under four other senior pastors, and ordained a small handful. I’ve been on over a dozen missions trips, watched young adults grow in their faith, start families, and add value to the Kingdom.

I’ve also seen terrible divorces, suicides, and breakdowns. Ministry has caused me an immense amount of stress, forcing me to wrestle with my own battle of anxiety and depression. I’ve been lied about, slandered, shamed for not supporting specific politicians. I’ve been betrayed, hurt, and marginalized at times.

I’ve failed – often and repeatedly. I’ve wrestled with guilt, short comings, and inadequacies. There’s a bizarre pressure in the ministry, because we are acutely aware of the gravity of our responsibilities, and the simultaneously the utter weaknesses we manage at times as well. We have to be bold and confident, full of faith. But we can’t get arrogant or narcissistic. I hold this office in the highest human regard… and yet I hold myself – the person in this office – in the utterly lowest regard. The imposter’s syndrome for us pastors is real!

But I’m writing this today, to say that I haven’t regretted a single day of following Jesus into the ministry. The pain, pressure, and politics could never outweigh the joy, security, and satisfaction that has come from the ministry. It is not for the faint hearted, but we need more people to answer the call of ministry, now more than ever. It will cost you everything… and it is absolutely worth it.

Thank you to all of you who have walked with me, served with me, listened to me, put up with me, and grew with me at so many important places along the way. Thank you, for letting me be your pastor. It has sincerely been my most humble honor and privilege.

Onward to 25 more years!

Goals we should all set for 2022

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I laughed-out-loud at the post a friend made about the upcoming new year: “No one claim 2022 as ‘My Year’! Let’s all agree to just walk in to the year slow, humble, cautious!” If we haven’t learned to slow down a bit and see what the year has in store for us by now, we’re never going to learn. Here are a few thoughts and goals I believe we should (and can) all set for ourselves for 2022…

  • Rest more. Slow down, breath, use your vacation time, take a sick day (mental health counts!), praying and meditating more… in fact, just practice sitting silently in God’s presence listening for a change would be great. Do something that actually brings rest to your soul even if it’s still technically an activity – like working out, reading, catching up with friends. We’ve been so drained in so many ways these past two years, but we still need to learn how to gain rest for our souls.
  • Learn a new skill. Rest isn’t always stationary. Last year I began the journey of learning new skills that could help me in the job market. I gobbled up several classes online for a nominal cost and earned some IT certifications in the process. There are several platforms, but I’ve grown to prefer Udemy as a fantastic site/app to learn practically any new skill or even hobby (like professional photography on your iPhone!). I learned so much and enjoyed the content I was taking so much that I began sponsoring their service as an affiliate. Click here to explore course on Udemy that might interest you.
  • See people in person. It’s been two years of quarantining. Vaccinated people outnumber unvaccinated people roughly 2:1 in California. In many ways, our emotional, mental, and relational health have suffered far worse than our physical well-being. While we still have some social distancing protocols in many places, and new variants are seemingly always going to be a concern, we must return to increasingly consistent social contact. If you’re nervous, just start small, but please start somewhere. You need people, and frankly people need you. Even with all our social media, we are in enormous need of real social interactions. Get in a church this year (or back to church). Go back to your gym, form a book club, birthday parties, etc. Heck… get some friends and fly to Hawaii!
  • Exercise gratitude. I’ve worked on journaling more lately and intend to do this a lot more in 2022. My wife recently got a three year journal for me (which you can find on Amazon here). It’s good to review where I’ve come from, and how God’s answered my past prayers. The three year component, makes it so that each following year I can see where I was that day and it actively reminds me of how God has worked in my life since then.
  • Take the easy wins. There’s some low-hanging fruit you can grab. Take whatever counts as an easy win. Make your bed, put your running shoes on, lay your clothes out for the next day, set the coffee pot to begin when you when you want to get up, etc. Have I ever talked about how good it feels to mark anything off a to-do list (Ooooh, the dopamine!)?! We overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in a day. Big change is the result of consistent, little actions. So knock out your resume, update your LinkedIn profile, read one verse in the Bible app – just start with an easy win!
  • See how people are actually doing. I hope this next year doesn’t just become a year of us learning to pay attention to our well-being more, but also that of others. We’ve got to start looking up more, seeking eye contact, and asking each other how we’re really doing. Begin with your immediate circle, but let’s expand to start noticing strangers. When we all begin to see each other, we eventually begin to get seen more as well.
  • Be more generous. When Tiff and I started a family, one piece of advice we were told is that if we waiting until we were “ready” to have kids, we would never do it. The same is true with generosity. We have so many noble goals, like buying a home, starting a business, and actually taking that vacay… all of which are good and we should do. But I sincerely believe that God reward us when we give of ourselves. And if we wait until we’re ready, we’ll never do it. I pray that 2022 becomes a year of unprecedented generosity for all of us – both in regards to our time and treasure. It’s been too easy to hide from volunteering and excuse a lack of generosity these past couple years. But 2022 could stand to be marked by a new commitment to giving of ourselves in such a way that we actually find ourselves in the process.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments! What are some simple, reasonable goals you’ve been thinking of for 2022? Which of the goals that I mentioned are you going to take action on? What did I miss that you would add?

Blessings,
Pastor John

Five Ways Jesus Handled Difficult People

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It’s hard to imagine Jesus having “trouble” with anyone, but we know from the gospels that there were plenty of people who tried to make trouble for Him. After all, He was publicly executed for claiming equality with God the Father. But the Scriptures also give us much insight into His strategy for dealing with difficult people on the regular. And don’t forget, Jesus told us to “love our enemies,” which implies that we have enemies in the first place. Here’s how we see Jesus handling His enemies:

  1. He questioned their questions. In Matthew 21:23-25, Jesus gets asked “By what authority do you do these things?” Getting to pull rank, name superiors, and flaunt authority was big with the Pharisees, but Jesus answered the question with a question: “I will also ask you one thing… the baptism of John, was it from men or from God?” Jesus knew that their question was really a trap. So He turned it on them, as He often did. If they admitted that John the Baptist was from God, Jesus would have asked them why they didn’t listen to him, because John the Baptist pointed everyone to Jesus! If they said he was only from men, the crowd listening in would get angry, because they regarded John as a prophet. So they didn’t answer Jesus. In counseling, this is called “Guided Self Discovery” It’s the tool used to question people’s thinking, and lead them to deeper self discovery. In Jesus’ case, He was revealing their true motives, and their lack of desire to actually understand.
  2. He ignored them. One of my favorite verses in the gospels is Mark 5:36. In some translations it words Jesus’ response to His critics as, “Ignoring them, Jesus continued…” I have to admit as a pastor I find it ironic. I was told most of my life growing up, don’t care about what others think, just trust what God tells you to do! But as a pastor, people often treat you as if you should listen to what everyone thinks! Good news, no matter what your vocation is – Jesus ignored those who didn’t actually love Him, so you can too. And, yes, we do need to listen to those who sincerely love us and care about us. We have to be willing to have and receive difficult conversations. But when a difficult person is trying to make your life more difficult, and distract you from what you know God has called you to do, be like Jesus, ignore them, and continue doing what God called you to do.
  3. He addressed them publicly. Notice that Jesus almost always dealt with the difficult people in His life in a very public setting. He was never afraid to answer their questions, but He only seemed willing to do so in a public context. It’s harder for difficult people to deny what they said, or how you responded when you choose to only deal with them where others are present.
  4. He showed them grace. There is at least one clear exception where Jesus showed incredible grace to one of the difficult people in His life: a Pharisee by the name of Nicodemas. Nicodemas came to Jesus in private, at night, likely to avoid the scrutiny of his fellow Pharisees. It becomes immediately clear by his approach to Jesus in John 3, that he was hungry to actually listen and learn from Jesus, in humility seeking to actually know this miracle worker who claimed to be from God. And as a result of his humility, and Jesus’ grace to allow him, we have some of the most memorable and spiritually significant verses in Scripture. Jesus allowed for anyone, even difficult people, to truly repent and have a change of heart. And humility is the key. It takes humility for someone who has been difficult to us to admit they’ve been hurtful and try to approach us in a repentant spirit. But it also requires humility on our part to extend grace to someone who may have hurt us in the past. I’m grateful God showed us such grace, and we must be willing – when possible and appropriate – to do the same.
  5. He never compromised Who He was. Over countless occasions in the gospels, we see Jesus, very firmly, calling the Pharisees out, asserting His identity as the Son of God, and demonstrating His power right in front of them… often directly to them protesting Him. Likewise, as followers of Jesus, our identity is in who we are in Christ. We should never compromise the person Jesus is transforming us into in order to placate critics. When we stand before God in Heaven one day, He won’t ask us why we were not like our critics or even our mentors… if anything, He’ll ask us, “why weren’t you more like My Son?” Sometimes, the best response to our enemies is to make room for God to show off in our life, and be who He made us to be.

As you reflect on this, may you and I respond to difficult people the ways that Jesus did. Don’t be distracted or discouraged by the people who are letting Satan use them. Overcome them. And in Christ, and like Christ, we must overcome evil, with good.

Blessings,
Pastor John

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