The Right Way to Pray?

I just read an article by a Jewish agnostic writer named Zev Chafets entitled, “The Right Way to Pray?” He decided (as a reporter, not a seeker) to visit different places where prayer happens to see if he could learn what the deal was with prayer. About 75% of Americans report that they pray at least once a week. People seem to put a lot of emphasis on prayer, and Chafets wonders if there was a right way to pray.

He visited a huge evangelical megachurch that stresses prayer in its services by having people stand in groups of three and pray together. He visited an Anglican spiritual director who uses Tibetan prayer bells and candles. He visited a Jewish rabbi who taught prayer through yoga (people in mourning are to say the Kaddish prayer while standing on their heads to acknowledge the upsetting nature of death).

He talked with a seminary professor who taught prayer and once edited a now defunct magazine entitled Pray! Who suggested that there are rules for proper praying—“Keep your prayers brief and clear” [Jesus prayed all night]. “Repeat simple Scripture-based phrases” [Jesus warned about vain repetitions]. “Pray standing up to fight torpor” [Jesus fell with his face to the ground]. “And pray directly facing other” [Jesus said to pray alone in our room]. And finally pray “in a loud, clear voice.” [Remember Hannah’s silent prayer answered spectacularly in the birth of Samuel?]. The problem with coming up with rules for relating to God is that the Bible is always filled with exceptions!

Rabbi Marc Gellman (half of the popular duo “The God Squad”) suggested that prayer is essentially “Gimme! Thanks! Oops! and Wow!” He said, “Wow! are prayers of praise and wonder at the creation. Oops! is asking for forgiveness. Gimme! is a request or a petition. Thanks! is expressing gratitude. That’s the entire Judeo-Christian doxology.”

The last place he visited was an Assembly of God church. He got there early and talkws for awhile with some kids in the children’s choir. When they found out he was writing on prayer, they began to share in childish enthusiasm how prayer had made a difference in their lives-- for the grandmother who broke her leg, the sister who suffered with asthma, the friend who was burned in fire. It was in this child-like faith in God and reliance on Him in prayer at a simple, old-fashioned church that became for Chafets "the right way to pray."

There are some 300,000 churches in America, and I could have picked any one to attend on Easter morning, but I liked being in this one. Especially the kids. They didn’t need Reverend Henderson’s prayer techniques, or the high-tech mantras of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Their prayers weren’t Rabbi Gellman’s suburban Jewish prayers of Thanks! offered to whom it may concern. They didn’t pray to de-center their egos or find transcendence or to set off on a lifelong therapeutic spiritual journey. They prayed to a God with whom they were on a first-name basis, and they believed their prayers gave them power, which they used on behalf of their asthmatic sisters and infirm grandparents and a kid they knew with burns on his body. Sitting in church on Easter morning, I realized that I was probably never going to become a praying man. But if, by some miracle, I ever do, I hope my prayers will be like the prayers of the kids I met at the Love church in Berkeley Springs. Straight-up Gimme! on behalf of people who really need the help.

Of such is the kingdom of heaven!

Party Hardy!

Ever notice that we can get so used to one nuance of a Bible topic that another side sounds like heresy? We are so used to stressing baptism (every sermon ends with a call to baptism, right) that we become suspicious when somebody suggests that we are saved “by grace through faith.” What do they mean by that? Are they denying the place baptism? No, actually they are just quoting Paul! We are so used to hearing one side of a truth that the other sounds like heresy.

We are used to the church being compared to the body of Christ, the kingdom of God, the bride of Christ and the family of God. So sounds like heresy to suggest that the church is also to be a party. In fact, one of the most used metaphors in scripture for the kingdom of God is the party. Jesus often describes, explains and invites us to God’s kingdom by using the example of a feast, a banquet or wedding reception—a party!

• Matthew 8:11-12. Jesus uses the setting of a big party to illustrate that Gentiles were to be included into the kingdom of God.
  
  
• Matthew 22:1-12. God’s kingdom is described as a wedding feast where those invited to come don't, and the master sends his servants to find other guests.
  
  
• Matthew 25:1-13. The necessity of watching for the Lord's return is explained in terms of a wedding party.
  
  
• Luke 15:22-24. The father celebrates the return of the Prodigal Son by throwing a huge party, complete with music and… well, choreography.
  
  
• Revelation 19:9. The celebration to which all are invited and by which all who come are blessed is the wedding feast—party—of the Lamb.

The festive celebration of a party is used over and over to represent the kingdom of God. Remember, God’s people in the Old Testament were a partying bunch. The major religious days—Passover and Pentecost and Tabernacles—were festive parties. Only the Day of Atonement was solemn ritual. Even the sacrifices themselves, those symbols of sin and forgiveness, were often cause for celebration as the priest and the worshiper ate the meat of the sacrifice together.

What's the point? If our experience of relationship with God is primarily one of dourly keeping the rules, humorlessly following patterns and always being so decent-and-in-order that our face would break it we cracked a smile, then we’ve missed something of the kingdom. God is our loving Father and we are to live in his love and reflect that love to others. Life might not to a bed of roses all the time, but we’d better be smelling the roses some of the time. God calls us to a joyful and abundant life, not a slavish, joyless existence. People should be drawn to us because “the joy of the Lord is out strength.” (Neh 8:10).

Yes, the way of the cross is one of denying self (Luke 9:23), but even that becomes a path to joy (see Heb 12:2). Maybe people would take Christianity more seriously if Christians didn’t take the things that really don’t matter so seriously. Paul tells us. “Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice!” (Phil 4:4, NLT).

Baptism and the Sinner's Prayer

Whenever someone comes to faith in Jesus and is ready to begin his or her life of faith and discipleship, they rightly ask, “OK, so what must I do now?” That is a logical question, and all believers in Christ would agree that something must be DONE. OK, salvation is by grace and through faith in Jesus, but when one comes to understand that, then they rightly want to know what they must do.
Many people would encourage the new believer to to say “Sinner’s Prayer.” That prayer might go something like—

Father, I am sorry for my sins and want to turn away from my sinful life. I believe that your son Jesus died for my sins and was raised from the dead. I want Jesus to be the Lord of my life.

There are many different versions of this Sinner’s Prayer, and there a good reason why there are many different versions—it’s not in the Bible. Oh, the sentiments of repentance and commitment are of course very Biblical, but no one in the Bible is ever told to pray the Sinner’s Prayer. There is no example of anyone saying the sinner's prayer. Again, Bible assures us that we are saved “by grace through faith… not of works so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8-9). Nothing we do can add to the work of God in salvation, when we must do something. Praying the Sinner’s Prayer is doing something; repeating this prayer is outward action. To suggest that there is something that we do to receive the grace of God does not mean that we earn our salvation when we respond.

Believers in the New Testament are told to do something to express their penitent faith, but it is not to say the Sinner’s Prayer. They are rather told to be baptized. If we must do something in order to express saving faith, why not do what it is that the Bible says to do? In the NT, baptism is the sinner's response to salvation by grace through faith-- it is the sinner's prayer. It is not a work that earns salvation; it is rather the response of faith that relies on God for salvation. Notice several reasons why this response of baptism should be stressed.

Baptism Was Commanded in the Great Commission

Just before Jesus ascended back to the Father to heaven, He left behind marching orders with his apostles to take the gospel all over the word. They are commanded to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). There were many important things that Jesus did not mention in His Great Commission.

• The apostles were not told to build great churches.
• They were not told to come up with ways to care for the poor.
• They aren’t instructed to conduct worship services or establish Sunday Schools.

He does tell them, “Teach them to obey everything I have commanded” (28:20), and surely covers a great many things! But there are many things that are important to our faith and service that are not specifically mentioned in the great commission.

But Jesus does specifically tell the apostles to baptize those who believe. Of all the things that are not mentioned, surely this emphasizes the thing that is—baptism. In fact, in Mark’s version of the Great Commission, Jesus connects baptism to salvation, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). Yes, it is indeed true that He doesn’t say that all those unbaptized will be lost, and that is a fact that we must respect. But then, Jesus isn’t telling people how they can reject the gospel; He is telling them how to be teach people so that they may be saved. And He specifically mentions baptism. The Great Commission as our foundation for evangelism stresses baptism.

All Examples of Conversion in Acts Mention Baptism

If Jesus told the apostles to go into the world and baptize believers, then we would expect them to go out and do exactly that. Acts is the record of the apostles going into all the world preaching the gospel. Jesus told them to go into Judea, Samaria and all parts of the world (Acts 1:8), and Acts tells of Peter (working in Judea), Philip (working in Samaria) and Paul (going into all the world). Acts tells story after story of people putting their faith in Jesus as their Savior. Sometimes there are huge crowds and many being converted (Acts 2); other times a single family is being taught privately at home (the jailer in Acts 16). And sometimes there is only the teacher (Philip) and a seeker (Eunch) (Acts 8),

Jesus specifically told the apostles to baptize those who believe. And all the conversion stories in Acts end with baptism… always. Every one. Whether there is a large crowd responding or a single person coming to faith, every believer is immersed based on their own active faith in Jesus—

• The first gospel sermon ended, “Repent and be baptized.” (2:28)
• The story of the Ethiopian ends, “and Philip baptized him.” (8:31)
• Paul’s own conversion story, “He got up and was baptized.” (9:18)
• The story of the Jailer, “he and all his family were baptized.” (16:33)

The Acts’ record is absolutely consistent; baptism is always mentioned. In some of these cases, baptism cannot be connected with a public confession before a “church.” The Ethiopian Eunuch was absolutely alone when he was baptized. The Philippian jailer was locked up with just his family in his own house in the middle of the night when he was baptized.

In every cause, people were baptized in the book of Acts when they came to accept Christ and their Lord and Savior. People in acts don’t eat or sleep between the time they come to faith in Christ and the time when they are baptized. Put the first two points together, and the case for baptism seems pretty strong. Jesus told the apostles to teach and baptize those who believe. And in Acts, the apostles went out and started teaching and baptizing people!

Theological Reflections on Baptism

Baptism is never argued to lost people in the Bible. Sure, lost people are taught, but that teaching always focuses on Christ Himself. Peter and Paul’s sermons in Acts put the emphasis on the cross and empty tomb. There are no sermons on baptism or complex arguments for it; people simply believe and their baptism naturally follows. The texts that explore the theological significance of baptism were written to people who were already baptized. These theological reflections on the meaning of baptism stress its importance. Notice some examples.

First, Paul argues in Romans 6 about relationship of grace to holiness. Paul here anticipates an objection by some to his teaching on grace who say, “Why not keep sinning so grace can increase?” (6:1). Paul replies that we have died to sin and therefore can’t continue to live in it (6:2). And his proof is found in baptism (Rom. 6:3-4)

3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:3-4)

Just as Jesus died and was raised to life, so in baptism, we die to sin and are raised in righteousness. This ties baptism to both the cross and the commitment to holiness
Paul’s point here about holy living emphasizes the place of baptism.

Second, Paul’s point in Galatians 3 is one of equality in Christ (Gal. 3:26-28). In a first century world torn apart by racial/ethnic distinctions (sound familiar), Paul proclaimed a gospel where everyone was level at the foot of the cross. He says—

26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Paul’s main point here isn’t baptism; he is arguing against Jewish racism. There are no distinctions between people—social, ethnic or gender. His point is that baptism has brought us into the same relationship with Christ. His proof for equality in Christ and against racism is the rite of baptism.

Third, Paul’s point in Colossians 2 is the all-sufficiency of Christ. The church in Colossae struggled with Gnostic-like false doctrine which perhaps was a blend of Judaism, Eastern religions and Greek philosophy. This eclectic brew was added to simple Christian faith, but Paul argues that they did not need the addition. He points to all-sufficiency of Christ. In Christ is fullness of God (2:9) and in Him we put off sin (2:11). And baptism was the commitment they made to Him and only Him.

having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. (2:12)

They trusted in Christ alone when they were baptized in him. Again, this reflection on baptism’s meaning shows its central place in New Testament thinking.

Fourth, Peter’s point in 1 Peter 3 is about faithful living during times of difficulty and persecution. Peter’s audience was suffering the stern opposition from a world that did not accept their faith or their God. He tells them that they shouldn’t fear (3:14) but rather be ready to give answer when asked about their hope (3:15). But that will mean that they must sometimes suffer for doing the right thing (3:17). But then that is the example of the cross (3:18). Peter next mentions the story of Noah where only a few are saved apart from world (3:20) and sees in Noah a picture of baptism (3:21)

and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

Baptism is said to save us here, but Peter is clear that baptism saves through the power of the resurrection. Baptism points to the cleansing of our conscience as we are raised together with Christ. Once again, this theological reflection points us back to the importance of baptism.

All of this begins to have a cumulative effect as e consider baptism. Jesus told the apostles to baptize disciples in the Great Commission. In the book of Acts, they did just that— they preached the gospel and baptized everyone who believed it. In the epistles, the apostles reflect on the theological implications of baptism.

In addition, there are other allusions to the importance of baptism in the words of New Testament writers—

• Ephesians 5:25- “the washing with water through the word”
• Titus 3:5- “the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit”
• Hebrews 10:22- “having our bodies washed with pure water”
• 1 Corinthians 6:11- “But you were washed, you were sanctified”

So it seems that we are on rather firm biblical ground when stress place of baptism. So we would says to those who would believe on Christ and trust Him for their salvation, “Yes, say the sinners prayer, but then be baptized to receive Christ.

Conclusion

The New Testament presents baptism as the response of faith in the accepting God’s grace in salvation. Peter offers a baptism “for the remission of sins” to believers on Pentecost (Acts 2:38). And we offer believers today the same response of faith. If you have never been baptized based upon your faith in Christ, then we offer that to you. I think we are on firm Biblical ground when we offer it.

But what of people who are not baptized? Many Christians have never been challenged with the importance baptism? Does that mean they are not really Christians? All salvation issues are God’s alone; all we can do is struggle to understand what the Bible says. But the real question here often is, “What if someone is baptized to obey God but doesn’t understand that baptism is for the remission of sins.” Actually the Bible suggests several different reasons for believers to be baptized. All of these are important, but often (always) the person being baptized does not fully understand all of these reasons equally. And they may stress one reason over the rest. Notice just some of the reasons for baptism given in the New Testament—

• To fulfill all righteousness (Matt 3:15)
• To have a good conscience (1 Peter 3:21)
• To commit to a life of discipleship (Matt 28:19)
• To receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38)
• To have sins washed away (Acts 22:16)
• To become part of the Body (2 Cor 12:12-13)
• To put on Christ as a garment (Gal 3:27)
• To be saved (Mark 16:16)

God is not limited by misunderstanding of baptism. All of these reasons are valid; one baptized for any of these Bible reasons is Biblically baptized. One may be baptized simply because one wishes to obey Jesus (“fulfill all righteousness”) without fully understanding the import of “for the remission of sins” or to “receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” As we study and grow in Christ, we will add to our understandings of baptism just as we learn more about any Bible doctrine.

Paul’s argument in Galatians 3:26 is that baptism unifies believers. It would be ironic for people to use this doctrine as a way to divide true Christians from false ones. But faithfulness dictates that we preach and practice His word as best we can, and that is what we seek to do. For all the reasons above, when someone asks me what they must do after they come to believe in Jesus Christ, I tell them, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38, NLT).

A Mouthful of Grace

In 2002, I took a graduate seminar in Boston under John Warwick Montgomery, one of the leading apologists for the Christian faith. Montgomery suggested that apologetics (the defense of belief in God) can be divided into two types--

• He called the first type “Apologetics for the hard-headed.” This is what he did— giving philosophic, scientific reasons why faith is both reasonable and demanded by the evidence. He suggested that modern liberal theologians have adopted a “If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” mentality that makes too many concessions to and compromises with the modern world. He also said that fundamentalists take a “If you can’t beat ‘em, avoid ‘em” approach that isolates itself from the modern world. He suggested that the correct approach, his approach, was “Just beat ‘em!”
  
  
• Montgomery (rather grudgingly) admitted that there is another type of apologetics, one that he called “Apologetics for tender-hearted.” In our postmodern world, many people no longer trust philosophy or science to have an answer. They are rather looking for something, not that they can prove is true, but something that works like its true.These people aren't looking for our arguments, but at our lives.
  

I think both of these apologetic types are important. Faith is reasonable, and we must be able to share reasons why we have accepted those reasons with people who don't believe. But I doubt that our arguments for faith will matter too much if we are living a faith that works. Montgomery's first type of apologetics won't matter too much if we aren't actively living out the second. And if we are doing the second correctly, then maybe the first will be easier.

Whatever it is that we say to our skeptical world, whatever approach we take, it must be done with a mouthful of grace. Whether we are speaking to the hard-headed or the tender-hearted, our speech follow Paul's instruction--

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Colossians 4:5-6)

Back-to-School

Today is the first day of school. Yes, I know that children in other states have been back for awhile already, but Virginia gets one more week of tourist season in by decreeing that schools can’t start until after Labor Day. Students reported for class today for the first time. That means that teachers reported for class for the first time at the regular time— 7:05 for Denbigh High (Lynn generally leaves around 6:30 a.m.). So that means the alarm went off a little earlier this morning than it has been for awhile. Actually, it means the alarm went off this morning… and we got to wake Bella up for a change!

Sunday’s service was our church's blessing over our school children and teachers. We seem to have an extra large number of kids starting new schools, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a service where we prayed over them. I also decided to use several of the soon-to-be-school kids by letting them read the text during the sermon. I was surprised how easily most of them agreed to participate. Then I realized Sunday morning that I hadn’t been completely clear on what I was asking. Some of them didn’t understand that they would be getting up onstage in front of the whole church to read! I got several deer-in-the-headlights looks when realization finally dawned, but they all went up there and did a great job. Nobody remembers anything I said Sunday in the sermon, but everyone remembers Kate, Wyatt, Jay, Alex, Olivia and T.J. doing reading. They all did a great job! Thanks guys!

They other thing that surprised me Sunday was when I did my commercial for our FriendSpeak seminar and then asked if anyone had questions-- we had a lot of people speak up and ask questions. Maybe we ought to have more crowd interaction on Sunday mornings. OK, maybe not. But I do hope all our people are as excited by FriendSpeak as they seem to be. Everyone be there Saturday, September 19 for the seminar!

Honorable Disagreement

A Baptist pastor in Tempe, AZ preached a sermon two weeks that created a bit of buzz. In fact, seriously looking men in black suits who talk into their sleeves are paying attention to it. The sermon was entitled “Why I Hate Barack Obama.” In the sermon, the preacher told his church that he regularly prays for the president's death.

If you want to know how I'd like to see Obama die, I'd like him to die of natural causes. I don't want him to be a martyr, we don't need another holiday. I'd like to see him die, like Ted Kennedy, of brain cancer.

Tell me again why we have such trouble today convincing people that Christianity is a good, honorable and reasonable way to live? We are told to pray for our enemies (Luke 6:27-28), but I doubt Jesus meant to pray for them to die of a horrible disease! You know, if you ask anyone else to kill a person for you, that is criminal conspiracy. We have been assured that the US Secret Service is taking the matter seriously.

It is generally believed that Paul and Peter were both executed during the persecution by Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in AD. 64. According to Roman historian Tacitus, Nero launched these persecutions after blaming Christians for the fire to deflect suspicion from himself. Most Roman historians portray Nero as an egotistical, extravagant and brutal tyrant. Major historical sources like Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio really have few complementary things to say about Nero. Christian writers like Tertullian and Eusebius condemn Nero as the persecutor of Christians and the killer of Paul and Peter. Augustine believed that Nero was the Antichrist.

So maybe Nero was responsible for the deaths of Paul and Peter. Nero certainly was responsible for the deaths of many Christians. So I wonder what Peter and Paul would have said about the administration of Caesar Nero? We don’t have to guess; they did speak about him.

I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king. (1 Peter 2:13-17)

Paul and Peter taught Christians pray for the king and those in authority… even if that king is Nero.

So why do so many Christians seem to be so smug and justified in their constant mean-spirited, demeaning, and vitriolic ridicule and derision of the president? OK, so you don’t agree with his proposed overhaul the health system? Well, stand in line. But does anyone seriously think that the president (this one or any other) is as evil as Nero? Paul and Peter told Christians to pray for and honor Nero. We are given the right by our Constitution to disagree with our leaders. But we are given the commandment by God to pray for and honor them.

According to Nancy Reagan, Senator Kennedy and President Reagan were great friends despite being so far across the aisle on most issues that they could barely see one another! One can disagree with another's politics while remaining honorable. One can be adamantly opposed to a president's agenda while still being respectful. I'm thankful God has blessed us to live in a country where disagreement with leaders is our Constitutional right. We must never think that the Constitution gives us the right to the clear command of God.

Practicing What We Preach

What is wrong with our world today? I was cleaning out my files and ran across the following old quotes from some old articles. All of these quotes were written by the same preacher in the mid-to-late 70's. And though written more than 40 years ago, they serve to illustrate what’s wrong with our world today.

Venereal disease is epidemic in the land. Homes are decaying and marriages are disintegrating at a frightened pace. Personal integrity is rapidly disappearing across our land. (Gospel Light, April, 1976)

An all wise Creator made the distinct sexual natures of men and women and assigned their unique roles in life. True happiness comes to men and women who understand their proper sexual role and observe it. (Gospel Advocate, Jan 1978)

Immorality is brazenly extending its territory. Porno shops, massage parlors and nude bars are in almost every city... Even more serious is the deterioration of marriage and the home. Adultery, desertion, and divorce are now commonplace. (Gospel Light, August 1979)

The face of every large American city is covered with ugly sores. There are massage parlors, adult book stores, X-rated movies, nude bars and gay hangouts. Every faithful Christian is against such vices as these. (Gospel Light, Nov 1979)

These statements were made before the AIDS epidemic or internet pornography or gay marriage. But they seem curiously relevant today, and they illustrate what is wrong in our world. What is wrong is YOU and ME and US.

The preacher who wrote these articles was having multiple adulterous relationships over a long period of time with several different women in churches where he preached. Even as he was known to others as a moral crusader, he was failing at living the moral life he proclaimed. What was wrong was not what he preached but what he practiced.

Maybe what is wrong with out world is that those of us who say we believe the truth are so woefully inadequate at living the truth. It is easy to point at the failings of our culture, for they are many. But maybe we need to deal with the log in our eye so we can better see how to remove the speck in the eye of others.

If the world sees the holiness of God reflected in our lives, then maybe then they will listen when we have something to say about morality. Maybe if the world sees the joy of the Lord reflected in our hearts, then maybe they will listen when we talk about the best way to live life. Maybe of the world sees the love of Christ reflected in how we deal with broken people, then maybe they will listen when we talk about repentance and redemption.

I’m not sure anyone will pay much attention to what we preach until we practice what we preach. But speaking from personal experience, it’s a lot easier to just preach.

School Daze?

Several elementary school students in Gainesville, FL were sent home on the very first day of school last week for violating the school's dress code policy. It seems that these children (one only 10 years old) wore a T-shirts imprinted with the slogan “Islam is of the Devil” to school. Their church decided that this would be a good outreach ministry to the school community. The children weren’t suspended; they were simply sent home to change into more school-appropriate clothing.

Have you ever wondered if it would be much easier to teach people about Christ if it weren’t for some Christians? Come on! Did the Dove World Outreach Center (the church that produced the T-shirts) really think that anyone is going to be positively influenced by such a stunt? Is anyone going to say, “Hey, I wondered where Islam came from, but now I know it's from the devil because it says so right there on that T-shirt?” Did Paul go to the Areopagus in Athens to speak to pagans wearing a “Zeus of is the Devil” toga? Do people really think non-believers will take Jesus MORE seriously because people send their kids to school with T-shirts denouncing other religions? All that sun in Florida must be baking people brains.

Whether we like it or admit it or not, we live today in a multicultural world-- the same kind of world that Paul lived in. It is a world in which every truth is accepted and no truth is accepted, a world where there are many gods and no god at all. In our world, Christianity is just one idea in a marketplace of ideas. Sure, Christianity is different-- it happens to be true. But if we want non-Christian people to ever accept Christianity as true, then belittling other beliefs is the absolute wrong way to go about it! On the Areopagus, Paul was actually rather complimentary and showed a great deal of respect in sharing the gospel with pagan professors (See Acts 17:22-31).

The right way to get people to take Christ and Christianity seriously is to show gentleness and respect toward non-believers as we live a life that shows that Christianity works. That is precisely what Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3:15-16

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

Gentleness and respect. Good behavior. Reason for the hope you have. These are the things that will cause others to respect what we believe. If our Christian faith doesn't work in making us better people, then why should non-Christians believe it anyway?

A Really Good Day

Yesterday was a really good day. Paul Renganathan, a missionary we help to support in Chennai, India was with us. Paul is doing a marvelous work spreading the gospel and building up God’s people there. He shared some of the work that is being done in Chennai and across India in our Bible class time, and then he preached for us during the worship hour. I have uploaded to YouTube a short version of the video he shared with us.

I had to cut the video down to fit YouTube's limitations, so there is actually even more going on in Chennai. Keep this truly amazing work in your prayers. Paul generally is here while Lynn and I are gone to Pepperdine, so it was a treat to hear his presentation this year. It was also a treat to join Paul and several of our members for a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant Saturday. Thanks Cathy and Steve for a great lunch!

We were on vacation last week and Paul preached for us this week… so this was the third time in 30 years that I’ve gone two weeks in a row without preaching. That was traumatic for me. OK, it was probably quite pleasant for everyone else, but I had a hard time. I guess I feel better when I keep this illusion going that Denbigh can’t get along without me, but they always seem to get along just fine.

A Sign from God?

Last week, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America met in Minneapolis to approve a resolution that lifts the ban of practicing gay and lesbian people from their clergy. ELCA churches can now to hire homosexuals who are in “committed relationships” to serve as ministers. This makes the ELCA the second (I believe) large mainline protestant denomination to make this move. I believe this is wrong, but it’s not what I want to talk about today.

It seems that while the ELCA was in Minneapolis for their meting, there was also an unexpected, rapidly-developing tornado that visited the city. The ELCA meeting was to begin at 2:00 p.m. and the tornado touched down at about 2:00 p.m. Two buildings damaged by the twister were the Minneapolis Convention Center (where the ELCA was meeting) and Central Lutheran (an ELCA church across the street). That is a very interesting coincidence, isn’t it?

I read two very interesting blogs that were theological reflections on this event. Both writers disagree with the ELCA decision and believe that homosexually is a sin. Both serve churches in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Both take a totally different slant on their in-town tornado. The first blog is by John Piper who sees the tornado as a warning to the ELCA to turn from their approval of sin. The second blog is by Greg Boyd who wonders what the message is of the other 1300 or so tornados that touch down each year and why so few hit the liberal states that most promote homosexuality (Massachusetts, New York, Vermont) and why so many hit the more conservative Bible Belt states that make up tornado alley. Read both of the blogs and tell me what you think.

As we mentioned last night in class, while we are on firm ground talking about what God has done (as revealed in scripture), it is pretty arrogant to point to a current event (like a tornado for example) and talk like we know what God is doing. Could God send a tornado as a gentle reminder? In the book of Job, a tornado was sent by Satan to kill Job’s family and then later God spoke to Job out of a tornado. Without the book of job, we would have no idea from where those storms came. Could the AIDS epidemic be God’s judgment on sin? Or could the AIDS epidemic rather be God providing his church with a great opportunity to minister to marginalized people?

I think we need to be very careful before we speak as God’s interpreter of current events. Ecclesiastes 5:7 reminds us, "Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore stand in awe of God."

A Mixed-Message?

There is an interesting article in Christianity Today and another on MSNBC on abstinence, marriage and the message that young people often hear in Evangelical churches. Churches do stress the importance of sexual purity in the Christian life. Programs like “True Love Waits” stress the importance of chastity and holiness for Christian young people. While the emphasis on chastity is Biblical and unchanging, what has changed is the church’s attitudes toward marriage itself. Christian young adults are pressured by the culture and often by their parents and church to postpone marriage until they are finished with school, have gained life experience, and are economically stable. So there is this double message of no sex before marriage AND waiting before you get married.

Mark Regnerus, a University of Texas sociologist and author of the Christianity Today article ("The Case for Early Marriage") suggests that while the church has stressed chastity, we have also to a degree devalued marriage by “by discouraging it and delaying it.” He goes on to suggest that the church’s emphasis on chastity without a similar emphasis on marriage hasn’t worked very well. He says that about “80 percent of unmarried, church-going, conservative Protestants who are currently dating someone are having sex of some sort.” Christians aren’t that much more likely to wait for marriage than non-Christians. He goes on “I'm certainly not suggesting that they cannot abstain. I'm suggesting that in the domain of sex, most of them don't and won't.”

So is the point to make get our kids are married by the end of high school? Of course not. We need to do a better job of teaching the Biblical mandate of sexual purity and chastity. We need to do a better job of preparing our kids for the discipline, self-sacrifice, and faith that is required for successful marriage. We need to do a better job of teaching our children that marriage is a covenant and that divorce is not an option. But maybe we need to do a better job of realizing the incredible pressure created by those dual expectations of waiting for sex until marriage and waiting for marriage until after college-and-career launch. And maybe we need to remember that only one of those two messages is Biblical and non-negotiable.

At the Crocodile Dock

The level of excitement and exhaustion just went up a megaton around here-- VBS began last night with a roar. The building was full to the brim with K-5 graders running and hooping and learning. We also have an unofficial toddler class made up of children in our church, many of whose parents are working in the VBS. We can't advertise that class because we already have just about more than we can handle. In fact, we just about had as many kids as we could handle. As Kati was making the “everyone bring your friends tomorrow” speech, there were folks in the back wondering where would put their friends! I’m not sure what the fire marshal would say the limit is for elementary school kids in our building, but we seemed to be pushing the saturation point last night.

I did learn something about communication last night. The question, “Will you do the VBS opening” can have two meanings. It can mean, “Will you do the WHOLE opening, worship, Bible story setup, opening skit and memory verse?” It can also mean, “Will you do the opening dramatic skit.” When the VBS director and the VBS volunteer interpret that question differently, the result is blank stares by everyone. My nomination for sport of the week is Kati Rutherford who jumped in with 3 minutes notice and stood in the gap between a bunch of screaming kids and pandemonium. Great job, Kati!

I remember VBS when I was a kid as being cookies and Kool-Aid, some Popsicle sticks glued together, and some pretty long Bible lessons with a few more flannel-graph visual aids than normal. (If you don’t know what flannel-graph is, it was kinda like PowerPoint made out of an early form of Velcro). In fact, that was pretty much what VBS was for many years after I came to Denbigh. Well, this isn’t your father’s VBS. All kinds of movement and song and dance (literally) that all point to and revolve around a Bible story and application. The kids really seem to enjoy it, and the adult workers I spoke to last night really enjoyed it too. (I was a bit selective and to who I talked to and when).

Watching these little munchkins so excited about being here and singing and learning about God, it’s really worth all the trouble… that other people go to!

A Bowl of Cereal

When I was a kid, we used to have these big family reunions. And I do mean big. My great-grandfather and great-grandmother had 12 kids who survived to adulthood. Most of their children had large families as well, so when the Copeland clan got together for a family reunion, it was a really big deal! This extended family eventually become so extended that these reunions became more and more difficult to pull off. And because that first generation of Copeland kids have almost all gone on to another family reunion, the big one here on earth isn’t the same. I'm not even sure they happen anymore.

Grandmother used to love to tell the story of the social faux pas I committed at our family reunion when I was 5 or 6 years old. The family then met at my great-grandmother’s house (next door to Grandmother’s) during Christmas. It seems that (and mind you that I’ve never had any external verification of this event) we were all standing before the grand table (likely several tables) loaded down with all manner of meats and vegetables (most of them home-grown) of all shapes and varieties. But as I looked over that table containing more food than produced by some small counties, I turned up my nose and said, “I want a bowl of cereal!” Grandmother would just cackle when she told that story… over and over.

OK, only a dumb kid would settle for cereal in the middle of a banquet feast! But I wonder if that isn’t what we do with God. God has placed within each of us a holy hunger for Himself. David writes in Psalm 63:1, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” He goes on to say in verse 5, “My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.” David knew that his deepest hunger was for God and that he only could be satisfied by God. Each of us has that same God-shaped void that can only be filled by God.

And yet we settle for a bowl of Cheerios. That than fill ourselves with God and His goodness, we choose to fill our lives with money, things, pleasure, entertainment and the list goes on. God wants to full us with Himself, and we settle for other things that never quite seem to fill us at all. God wants to us to dine at his table and be filled with this goodness. And we decide to have a bowl of cereal.

Angels and Demons

Tomorrow night, I will close a rather long Wednesday night class series that I shamelessly entitled “Angels and Demons.” It has nothing to do with the Dan Brown thriller (I still haven’t seen the movie yet). This series was a look at what the Bible says about angels and demons, two topics that I have really not been drawn to much over the years. What surprised me (and shouldn’t have) was that angels are all over the Bible. I thought angels kinda kick things off and then show up on special missions, like announcing the birth of Jesus, and then kinda fade off the scene. Nope! Angels are scattered all over the Bible, and they are more common in the New Testament that they are in the Old. For example, a quick count shows that angels are mentioned 24 times in Luke and 22 times in Acts… and 13 times in Hebrews. In the Old Testament, Zechariah (20), Judges (17) and Genesis (15) lead the way. Oh yeah, angels are mentioned 77 times in the book of Revelation. On the other hand, demons are mentioned 73 times in the Bible, and 63 times are in the gospels.

What conclusions do I draw from this? I conclude that angels are mentioned a lot in the Bible. How’s that for profound? OK, I’ll go a little further. When angels showed up in the Bible, people usually didn’t recognized them as angels and were shocked and terrified when they did realize that the man they were talked to wasn’t a man but a messenger from God. In other words, people in Bible times expected angels to show up about as much as you and I expect angels to show up, and yet they showed up… a lot. So maybe angels today are doing more than just strumming harps in heaven and are still ministering spirits to the people of God. If we ever do meet an angels that we recognize as an angels, it would be like meeting Roma Downey with special effects back-lighting.

What about demons? When demons show up in the gospels, they are confronted and overcome by the power of Christ. Demons are also mentioned in the epistles, those instructional letters to the church, but there is no instruction on how to cast out demons, bind demons, or name the demon that’s in control of Cleveland. The emphasis in the epistles is on living holy lives, resisting temptation and not giving the devil a foothold in our lives. We can imagine a world like Ashton in This Present Darkness where demons are flying all over the place and are battled back by angels. But the impact on our lives are the same—we are to pray and watch and live holy lives.

Here is a YouTube of a skit Lynn and Kati’s cabin did that portrays how life our lives may be impacted by angels and demons. Is this how it really goes? Maybe.

Faith in Public Life

Dr. Francis Collins was recently nominated by President Obama to head the National Institutes of Health. There seems to be a growing number of scientists and politicians that believe the President has made a great mistake. No one doubts that Dr. Collins is qualified for the job. Collins discovered in 1989 the gene that causes cystic fibrosis. He became the director of the group that in 1993 would sequence the entire human genome. He has been politically adroit enough to appropriate support and funds for his genetic research, and most people believe that he would make a wonderful director for the NIH.

So what is the problem? Is Dr. Collins an axe-murder? A soviet spy? A Republican? No, he is a Christian. He believes that a person can both be rational and also a believer. He is the author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, and he toured the country pushing his book (as all authors are required to do). There are some who worry that allowing such a vocal believer to head the NIH is too dicey to be wise. After all, the man believes that human morality is given to us by God and that we are ultimately responsible to him. Clearly he can’t be trusted to run a government agency! One critic of Dr. Collins says this

Any scientist who happens to practice a religion and is honest enough to admit it knows that science is based on empirical evidence while religion is based on the ether of faith and it is unlikely under the harsh light of reason and logic for the two to meet and make sense. Together they make (non)sense.

Sorry, but that sounds a bit like “Any one smart enough to know anything at all should know enough to agree with me.” And they worry Dr. Collins is too dogmatic?

We live in a postmodern, post-Christian world where there are multiple worldviews and points of view. Christianity no longer enjoys majority status in people presuppositions— not everyone accepts the Bible as the “Good Book” or believes there is a God. I truly believe that most of Christianity's “intramural” theological squabbles make no sense in this age of many gods and no god at all. We shouldn’t be surprised that our faith is looked down upon. Our job is not, I believe, to use political clout to move the country back to its Christian roots (if it indeed really had such roots).

Our job is to live such holy lives of integrity that the unbelieving world may still quibble with the truthfulness of our faith but can’t doubt the fact that it works. If all Christians lived humble, self-controlled, loving, peaceful lives (as Christ demands), then most of the arguments against Christians in public life would vanish. If we want people to respect Christianity again, then we’re going to have to do something radical. We're going to have to live it!

Camp Idlewild 2009

Another year of Camp Idlewild is in the books. I was at camp for the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing; I was also at Idlewild when Armstrong took that big step for mankind 40 years ago! To say that camp has been a big part of my life is an understatement. I delivered my first sermon (3 minutes long) at camp. I met my wife at camp (in fact, Lynn's first counselor at age 9 was my mother). I made one of the greatest catches in the history of softball at camp (over the shoulder at full speed diving into the weeds… Willie Mays called to inquire about my technique). I took Lynn to camp in 1977 to give her an engagement ring. I have lots of good memories at Camp Idlewild. OK, there are some not so good ones too, but I won’t go into those.

We made some more very good memories this year at camp. For the second year in a row, I directed the Junior (Middle School) week. We had 18 girls and 16 boys and a full compliment of staff-- and everyone worked together to make this one of the best weeks ever. This was the most cooperative and accommodating bunch of middle-schoolers I’ve ever seen. For example, they wanted very badly to play pranks on each other, but I kept telling them “No.” They would shrug and say, “OK,” and they didn't. Well they did pull a little bitsy prank at the prodding of their counselors on Friday night… and then felt guilty about it. What great kids!

Most of my staff and 16 of the 34 campers were from Denbigh (counting some former members now at Carrsville). We also had 4 or 5 camp mascots (staff brats) who really added a lot. When I saw Kate and Emily climbing to the top of a tall tree, they added gray hairs. The kids really liked singing, and we had some great devotional times. We had a bunch of the kids (and a few adults) come up on stage and sing “This is How We Overcome” Sunday morning, complete with the spinning around and yelling Whoop-Whoop, Aye-Aye’s… that was great.

Then there was the “Great Yellow Jacket Incident of 2009.” Have you seen those cartoons where a swarm of bees chase someone? Well, it’s no cartoon. A swarm of angry yellow jackets followed us from the archery range through the amphitheater around the old canteen building and into the dining hall. We had several campers stung—Kacie won the ribbon for most bee stings with 14. But everyone was brave and we survived… many of the yellow jackets did not!

Here's a YouTube video of our week. Hope you like it. Hope you'll join us next year!

Where We Hang Our Hat

In the 1890s there was a small Baptist church in Mayfield County, Kentucky. The church had two deacons who were constantly arguing and bickering over some issue or the other. One of them put up a small wooden peg on the back wall so the pastor could hang up his hat. When the other deacon discovered the peg, he was outraged. “How dare you put a peg in the wall without first consulting me!” The people in the church took sides and the congregation eventually split. Today the residents of Mayfield County still refer to the two churches as Peg Baptist Church and Anti-Peg Baptist Church.

For the record, we’re neither Peg-ite nor Anti-Pegite; we’re Non-Peg-ite, just as the Bible teaches! But before we get too smug, we need to remember that we have something of a history of division in our churches, maybe over things just as silly. At the same time the Peg-ite and Anti-Pegite controversy raged in Mayfield, our churches were splitting over the use of instrumental music in worship and how missionaries could be and should be supported. We have divided over how many cups can be used in communion and how many Bible classes are permitted. We have divided over what we believe will happen at the end of time (rather than just waiting to find out). We’ve even divided over whether or not we should pay preachers! Heretics!

So why haven’t we done a better job reaching the world for Jesus? It seems to me that Jesus did the hard part, right? He loved us enough to die for us. All we have to do is love Him enough to love each other. Ultimately, what the cross was about is reconciliation. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19—

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

Maybe the world looks at Christ’s church and poorly we get along with each other and has decided that this “ministry of reconciliation” stuff just doesn’t work very well!

Watch Your Step!

Fifteen year old Alexa Longueira was just doing what teens do—she was walking along texting one of her friends. And the DEP crew on Staten Island was doing what they do— preparing to enter the sewers to protect (DEP = Department of Environmental Protection) and serve. What they did wrong was to remove the manhole cover BEFORE they put out the orange safety cones. And what Alexa did wrong was continue her walking and text without looking where she was going. Without pausing her texting, she plunged through the open manhole and into the yuck below. She must have been using a Blackberry because iPhones surely have an open manhole app to warn of things like that. Or they should have. Fortunately, Alexa suffered only fright, a few scrapes and some foul smelling clothes. Her family, of course, is going to sue.

The same thing happens to us in our Christian life if we aren’t careful. We can be rambling along not really paying attention spiritual and walk right into one of Satan’s traps. Brian Simmons, in the Pepperdine video we watched Sunday night, told about a man named “Bob” who was just walking along, not realizing that he was becoming more and more friendly with an attractive co-worker until they went on a business trip together. Before he knew it, we tumbled through the manhole into the yuck below. If we aren’t waling carefully, those kinds of tumbles await us all.

In Ephesians 5:15-16, Paul says, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Literally, what Paul says is “Look carefully then how you walk” (ESV). Commentators actually seem split as to whether the adverb “carefully” actually modifies the word "look" or the word “walk.” Is Paul saying we are to “look carefully so we can walk” or to “look so we can walk carefully?” Well, if Alexa had been doing EITHER, she would not have tumbled into the manhole. And if Bob would have done either, he would not have tumbled either.

One of Jesus’ most favorite command was, “What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” (Mark 13:37) He warns us to watch out for a lot of things-- false prophets (Matt 7:15), those who deceive us (Matt 24:4), coming of the Lord (Matt 24:42), not to fall into temptation (Matt 26:41). Spiritual inattention invariably leads to a fall. Ask Alexa or Bob... or yourself.

Revenge of the Folk Singer

What a great way to deal with customer non-service. Last year a musician named Dave Carroll was traveling on to Nebraska on United Airlines. While on the ground in Chicago, Carroll saw his $3500 Taylor guitar being tossed around by airline baggage handlers. Sure enough, the guitar was severely damaged. While United never denied the damage, Carroll got the expert run-around from various and sundry airline employees for nine months. Everyone was to blame except for United, and finally he was given the airline’s official “NO” to his repeated requests for compensation.

What is one to do? Well, most of us would just be out of luck, but Carroll is a musician. So he did what musicians do—he wrote a song and created a music video about his experience. In fact, what he promised the United employee that gave him the final “NO” (Ms. Irlweg) was that he would write three songs about his United experience and make You-Tube videos for each. Well, the first song and video is done, and it has become an Internet sensation. United now knows that you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pulls the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger and you don’t break Dave Carroll’s Taylor guitar.



United has now (after the video received 2.5 million hits on YouTube) admitted its responsibility and offered full compensation, but Carroll has asked that they donate the money the charity. Evidently he is too busy working on his second video to go pick up their check. As Jay Guin (on whose blog I first saw this) put it, “This is satisfying at a very deep level.” BTW, if Carroll would have been flying on Delta, the song would have been “Delta Loses Guitars.”

The Man in the Mirror

I’ve been walking around the last couple of days humming Michael Jackson tunes. I never was really a huge fan, and I am surprised how easily (and often) these songs keep popping into my mind this week. It seems that my favorites (according to what I keep humming) are “Man in the Mirror” (which I’ve always liked) and “Billy Jean” (which I didn’t like, but I keep humming for some reason). Someone has said that Michael Jackson songs have been the “soundtrack of our lives,” and maybe that is true. But if I don’t stop humming these songs, I’m going to break into a moonwalk!

I watched excerpts from the Jackson memorial where a lot of people spoke of their close connection to Michael. But the sad truth seems to be that no one was really close to Michael Jackson, at least over any period of time. Diane Diamond, a journalist who covered Jackson for years and wrote a 2005 biography said it was “absolutely a revolving door” in his life as Jackson fired employees, feuded with family, and shunned collaborates and close friends who dared to disagree with him. Diamond says, “There were constantly new people in his life. He didn't want anyone to tell him what to do.”

Despite what was said at his funeral, Michael Jackson was a strange man. From the cartoonish way he dressed, to his odd (I hope only odd) behavior toward young boys, to the freakish plastic surgery— Jackson was strange. And I can’t help but wonder of some of that bizarre behavior was the result of the fact that no one was in his life to could tell him, “Michael, uhh, that’s really not a good idea.” What he had were enablers and yes-men who took his money and let him be just as strange as he wanted to be. Maybe the drugs that seemed to have killed him would not have been around if he would have listened to people who loved him. No was there to help him really look at the man in mirror and nudge him toward changing his ways.

God didn’t make any of us to live unaccountable lives. We need a relationship with God, but we also need relationships with other people who will call us into account and keep us honest to ourselves and God. James says, “Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed” (James 5:16, The Message). We need to make ourselves accountable to others so that when we get a bit strange, we have people who can tell us.

In the movie Quo Vadis, General Marcus Vinicius rides in triumph through the streets of Rome accepting the accolades and praise of the masses of Roman. Behind him is a slave who holds a crown of olive leaves above his head and repeats the words, “Remember, thou art only a man.” If Michael Jackson has close to him to remind him of that, maybe he would still be with us and making music.

Vacation Church

We have been in Arkansas since Friday and having a good visit with Mom and Dad. The trip was originally supposed to be to escort Angelynn back to Harding, but she got a job offer the day before we were to leave. So there is the answer to the joblessness across the country because of this recession-- just plan a trip to Arkansas. I'm not sure what the unemployed in Arkansas are supposed to do.

We enjoyed going to church with Mom and Dad Sunday. I usually preach 50 or so weeks out of the year, so getting a Sunday off was a real treat. We went to early service, so that meant getting to church by 8:15 a.m. That sounds early, but that is about 2-3 hours later than usual, so I felt like I was skipping church sleeping in so late. Beside the late hour of revival, there was several other differences going to church when I don't preach--

• I feel no frustration when the PowerPoint guys gets out of sync.
• I feel no responsibility when the songs don't fit the worship theme just right.
• I feel no pressure for the service not to last to long or too short
• I had to try not to fall into the "critic mode" that annoys me when I'm in charge. (I could so easily become Simon Crowl, and I really don't want anyone to do that).

In short, it's good occasionally to be able to relax and just let church happen and not feel like I have to make it happen. What I need to learn how to do is to relax and just let church happen when I am doing the planning and presenting. After all, I'm never really the One in charge.

Veggie Tales

Police were called to a church in Florida when two women got into a knock-down, drag-out fight with cucumbers. It seems that the church was giving away free veggies when the two ladies got into a disagreement over which veggie stash belonged to which lady. Soon the two women were pummeling each other with cucumbers, and the police had to be called to break up the fight. It is a blessing the church wasn’t giving away free watermelons!

OK, a fight at church over cucumbers sounds pretty silly. But then, having a fight at church over anything is pretty silly. Or really, it is a "shame" or a "humiliation." That is the world Paul uses to dress down the church at Corinth who were taking each other to court over property issues (1 Cor. 6:1-6). These believers were so interested in getting their way that they didn’t even think how their fights would impact the pagan world around them. In all of our fights over theological issues and church practices (fights that that outsiders could not possibly understand), did anyone possibly ponder how all this plays in Peoria. How can we be ambassadors for the Prince of Peace
when we can't get along with one another?

That church in Florida will forever be known as the place where the two ladies went at it with cucumbers. I wonder how many of our churches have forever compromised their witness because of fights, fusses and feuds that in the final analysis are just as silly as mixing it up over veggies.

A Community of the Cross

I got up this morning, kissed my sleeping wife and went off to work. It kinda felt like I was in an old Father Knows Best rerun. Usually she is up and moving around way before me. But today was the first day that school was out and teachers did not have to report for duty. One of the perks you get as a schoolteacher is getting the summer off; the other perk is a paycheck. So Lynn is now a woman of leisure… for the week or two that we don’t have something already planned.

My sermon Sunday is on the church as a community of the cross. I ran across a couple of quotations that I didn’t use in the sermon. Being a true conservative at heart, and thought I would conserve typing and use them here--

“Christianity has taken a giant stride into the absurd. Remove from Christianity its ability to shock and it is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them. It's when the absurd starts to sound reasonable that we should begin to worry.” (Søren Kierkegaard)

“In terms of human wisdom, Jesus was a perfect fool. And if you think you can follow him without making something like the same kind of fool of yourself, you are laboring not under the cross, but a delusion.” (Frederick Buechner)

If Christians really believe that we are a community of the cross saved by God's grace to love and serve Him and others, then why do we spend so much time acting like it is what we have figured out or have accomplished that really makes the real difference in being the true church. Paul says focusing on human wisdom and strength robs the cross of its power (1 Cor 1:17). When we what we do (say like the format of our church music) a requirement for salvation, then we have robbed the cross of its power.

If we really would cling to the cross for dear life, we would not risk taking a hand away to point a finger at someone else.

You Can't Please Everyone

File this one under, “You can’t please everyone.” President Obama was being interviewed by CNBC when a pesky fly started buzzing around him. He swatted at it a couple of times, but it persisted on interrupting the interview. Finally, the President reached up and smacked it dead. It was a Kung Fu moment (“When you can take the pebble from hand, Grasshopper…”). I think it was rather impressive-- I just hope Iran and North Korea were paying attention.

Well, faster than you can say “animal activist,” there was a statement from PETA decrying the president’s obvious lack of sensitivity. Among other things, PETA said, "We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals. We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals." They also sent the president a “Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher” that allows one to trap a house fly and then release it outside. So we’re supposed to practice catch-and-release on flies. Shooting Alaskan wolves from helicopters is inhumane. The kid torturing cats in Florida is inhumane. But swatting flies?

You can’t please all the people all the time. And you can’t please some of the people any of the time. It seems that every time we do anything at church, there is someone who is not pleased. When we do something just a little bit differently, some people aren’t pleased. But go awhile doing things exactly the same, and other people aren’t pleased. The line from the old Ricky Nelson song “Garden Party” comes to mind, “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself!”

I understand the sentiment. Get enough complaint and criticism, and you just want sing right along, “You can’t please everyone…” God wants us to sing a different tune. No everyone is at the same place in the walk with God. No everyone understands everything the same. There are people Paul calls “the weak” who need to be taught, but in the meantime need to be pleased. Paul says this in Romans 15:1-3

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”

No, we can’t please everyone. But that doesn’t mean we give up trying and just please ourselves. That’s not what God did, and that’s not what God wants us to do. Sometimes we have to bear with the weak. Now, the word for weak is the word incapable or powerless; it is often used to mean impossible—see Matt 19:21, Mark 10:27, Heb 6:4). So when Paul talks about the weak, he is talking about those who are incapable of understanding, those of whom more mature response is impossible. He’s not talking about someone who knows better but refuses to act better. And even cantankerous critics need a break every once in awhile.

Nope, we can’t please everyone. But we don’t therefore just please ourselves; we seek to please God.

The Most Sepcial Day of the Year

Oh, boy, it’s almost Father’s Day. It’s the most important and special holiday of the year… NOT! A recent article by Geoff Williams in Parenting suggests that “Father's Day is an afterthought, a holiday just a few steps above the one that celebrates the groundhog and that other one that promotes trees.” He compares the gift he gave his wife for Mother’s Day (the ornamental weeping cherry tree she always wanted planted in the yard beside a fancy new bird bath) with the gift she got him (some boxer shorts and a tiny reading lamp so he can read in bed without disturbing her). There does seem to be some inequity there, doesn’t it? This reminded me of a routine Bill Cosby did years ago—

On Mother’s Day you break your back working to buy some presents… On Father’s Day you say, “Dad give me some money, I want to buy you a pack of cigarettes.” Then you smoke half the pack coming home… and it’s not even his brand.

Why the difference? Cosby suggested that it is because mothers are so much easier to give gifts to. You can paint a old rock and give it to Mom and she’ll say, “Isn't that so precious; that’s the sweetest thing…” Dad will say, “Get that old rock out of the house!” He may be onto something. Mom is still easier to buy for, largely because Lynn buys her gifts!

But I have an idea the difference in importance between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day has more to do with the importance in the closeness of the relationships. Many fathers remain emotionally distant from their children; many father are just plain distant… as in not there at all. So maybe Mother’s Day is more important because mothers are more important.

Well I never borrowed money from Dad to buy him a pack of cigarettes for Father’s Day. That’s because he gave up smoking when his kids were born because he didn’t think it would be good for them to be around the smoke (that was way, way before anyone knew anything about secondhand smoke). That was only the first of a jillion sacrifices that Dad made and still makes to make sure that my sister and I have had what we needed (and usually what we wanted). If all Dads were more like my Dad, Father’s Day would be a much bigger deal as a holiday!

Catch-and-Release

Ron Hall and Denver Moore teach us something about real friendship in the book Same Kind of Different as Me. This is the true story of the improbable friendship of a rich Texas art dealer and a poor Louisiana sharecropper. Hall and his wife Dorothy began volunteering each week at a homeless shelter, and Dorothy became convinced that God wanted them to befriend Denver. Ron made halting overtures, but Denver wouldn’t even speak to them. Finally he asked Ron, "What do you want from me?" Ron replied, "I just want to be your friend." Denver promised to think about it. And he did.

He later said to Ron, "There is somethin I heard ‘bout white folks and bothers me, and it has to do with fishin." Ron wasn’t much of a fisherman, but he promised to try to answer the question. He said, 'I heard that when white folks go fishin they do somthin called 'catch and release.'' He didn’t understand that. When "colored folks" caught a fish, they would show it off to everybody and then they’d eat it. He just couldn’t understand why anyone would catch-and-release. Then it became clear that Denver wasn’t talking’ about fishin at all—

So, Mr. Ron, it occurred to me. If you is fishin for friend you just gon’ catch and release, then I ain’t got no desire to be your friend… But if you is lookin for a real friend, then I’ll be one. Forever.

Maybe that is what is wrong with our friendships and relationships today—we’re just too good at catch and release. We eschew the brother-and-sister, family-ties fellowship that is talked about in the New Testament for the catch-and-release friendships of which Denver was suspicious. Relationships among believers in the body of Christ are relationships that are forged in blood and bathed in baptism. They are not meant to be catch-and-release.

Is God Enough?

This comes from YouTube via Bobby Valentine through Alan Smith. But you need to watch this. Do we really believe that God is enough?



This is from a sermon by John Piper, and I believe he nails it pretty well. It is easy to sit in our air-conditioned auditorium singing "Blessed Be Your Name" with our praise team and PowerPoint while everything around us seems to be going well. But what about when things aren't going so well. The point of that song and the point of our faith is that God is God during the good times and the bad. We don't serve God so that he will bless us with great cars great jobs, great home, and great families. We serve God because God is God, and God is enough. He may bless us with jobs and homes and cars and families. Or he may bless us with suffering and struggle and hardship. But God is God despite what happens in our and in what happens in our lives. God is enough.

The Old Disappearing Hitchhiker Trick

Patrick Mead has a story on his blog that relates to our study of "Angels and Demons" on Wednesday nights. An abbreviated version goes like this—

A woman is driving down the highway and sees someone on the side of the road. She has the strong feeling God wants her to pick him up, and she does. She and her rider get into a spiritual conversation, and he finally tells her that God sent him to tell people that the Lord is getting ready to come back. The woman didn’t realize that she was speeding until a cop pulled her. She apologized, telling the cop that she wasn’t paying attention because she was talking to the man, but her rider was gone. She started to insist that there was a man riding with her, but the cop stopped her and said, “You are the 16th person I have pulled over with the exact same story.”

Could God have sent an angel in this way to announce that He is coming back? Well, angels have already announced that, right? (See Acts 1:11). This particular story is a pretty common urban legend that dates back into the 40’s (see Snopes.com for more details). Actually, it is a good idea to check out any story you get in an email at Snopes.com to see if it is a documented urban legend. Let me quote part of what Patrick says in response--

It is WAY to easy to get into a one-up battle with people when it comes to healing stories, stories of miracles, numbers of baptisms, success of missions, etc. I repeat — God doesn’t need the help and it makes outsiders laugh at us. I was in a discussion once where a pastor insisted that he defeated a demon and cast him out of a parishioner while the doctor (who actually treated the person) said that medicine brought the man around to his senses. Minirith and Meier (Christian psychiatrists who run a well known clinic) are famous for saying that demons seem to be allergic to Thorazine; their way of saying that many things pastors say are caused by demons are really caused by biology and can be treated by pharmacology).

I believe in demons, angels, healings, and miracles. I also believe that the curtain between our reality and Reality in the spiritual realm usually stays closed. Consider this as an example: I don’t think Daniel saw God every day even though he prayed to Him three times a day for over 70 years. We have records indicating that God showed up in Daniel’s life — pulled that curtain aside — a handful of times. Stephen, the great martyr, saw the curtain pulled back at the point of his death. Forgive me, but I am suspicious when I hear people speak as if God not only twitches the curtain far more often in their lives than He ever did for Daniel or Paul or Stephen, but has pulled it down and snuggled next to them on the couch.

C.S. Lewis in his book Miracles suggests that a world in which miracles happened regularly would be a world of chaos and magic. God doesn’t send angels to everyone or work miracles in everyone. That didn’t happen in the lives of Bible characters, and we shouldn’t expect it to happen today. On the other hand, God just may be a bit annoyed when we start talking about the things that He can no longer do today. As far as I’m concerned, God can do anything He decides to do. I’m sure He is relieved that I have given Him my permission!

What Are Your Giant Hidden Cherubs?

We’ve been studying angels and demons on Wednesday nights. Actually, I title the series “Angels and Demons” to coincide with the new Tom Hanks movie in the theaters now. Cute, huh? The title PowerPoint slide each week is a graphic from the movie poster. Such shamelessness keeps me from having to have original thoughts.

One of the points that has come out of this study for me is that angels are all over the place in the Bible. I never thought about that. Angels don’t just show up with an occasional message for the prophets, announce the birth of Christ to the angels and then rest up for the grand finale in Revelation—they are all over the place in the Bible. Makes you wonder whether or not they are still all over the place.

My reading for this morning from 1 Kings 6 mentions angels. Well, these are really cherubs. Actually they aren’t real cherubs but the huge representation of cherubs that Solomon placed in the most holy place in the temple. He had this huge pair of cherubs carved out of olive wood. They were 15 feet tall, and their wings spanned the entire room, touching the wall on one side and the other cherub’s wing on the other. And the entire cherub carved from olive wood was overlaid with gold. Solomon made these giant golden cherubs with wall-to-wall golden wings… to be placed in a room where they would be seen by only one man only one time each year! These cherubs must have been astonishingly impressive, but no one ever saw them except the high priest... and God! Solomon would have likely said that this was the point—God would see them and thus it had to be perfect.

There are parts of our lives that we rarely (or never) let other people see. There are parts of ourselves that we keep buried deep within us— our failures and our fears, our dreams and our nightmares, our hopes for the futures, our doubts in the present and our pains from the past. Maybe we share parts of these with a few people, but we work very hard to hide them from most. Maybe we hide them from ourselves. If we make enough noise with our frantic, frenetic lifestyles, there is never that quiet time where self-examination takes place

We need to know that God knows. The same God who gazed upon Solomon’s cherubs hidden away from almost everyone else also sees the darkest and most secret parts of us that we keep hidden. After all, we are his temple and He reigns over every part of us. Nothing is secret from Him.

O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. (Psalm 139:1-4)

At the Movies

Lynn and I have been talking about going to the movies. We haven’t actually gone, but are talking about it. Actually, it's more like negotiation, We don't like the same movies. I like action-adventure and sci-fi; she likes romantic comedies. We both liked Titanic and Pear Harbor— romance while stuff blew up! I think the last movie we saw in a theater that we both liked was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But we haven't been in awhile, and so we need to go to the movies (someone gave us an AMC movie card last Christmas and we still haven't used it).

We did agree on last year’s sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire. We both hated it. OK, maybe not “hated it.” Actually, we liked the ending and the music-video-credits at the end, but there was an awful lot of dreary before you get there! That is what makes me nervous about the next movie Lynn wants us to see, Up. Why am I nervous? Because of things like I read in Greg Boyd’s blog today—

For my 52nd birthday I went to the animated movie Up with Shelley and a couple of friends. What a marvelous birthday present!! People, you HAVE to see this show (and in the theaters, not on DVD, and in 3-D, not 2-D…the 3-D effects were incredible!) Second only to Slumdog Millionaire, this show was the most amazing thing produced in the last year.

See? The same people that liked Slumdog are pushing Up. Fool me once, shame on me… Lynn talked me into seeing Slumbog because "somebody" told her it was really good. Now we are supposed to see Up because "somebody" told her it was really good. We only go to the movies a couple times a year, so I’d like for this one to be good (I still haven’t seen Star Trek or Angels and Demons for cryin' out loud). So what am I going to do? Somebody help me out here.

Wait a minute. It was "somebody" who told us to go to the last one!

Wallowing with the Heathen?

Last night I dreamed that I was outside in a fierce storm with the wind blowing in my face. Then I woke up to discover that I had pulled the mask of my new CPAP machine halfway off and it was blowing air in my face! I don’t know about this machine; I felt like I was being smothered. It is a lot easier to inhale than to exhale, so I feel like I’m constantly hyperventilating. I guess smothering on the mask or getting strangled on the hose is better than getting axe murdered in my sleep… which Lynn informed might happen if I didn’t get the snoring thing fixed.

Yesterday, I mentioned in the blog something about deacons smoking outside on the porch after church. Cathy told me this morning that they used to do the same thing at her church as well. I remember that also happening at my grandmother’s church. And this was during the time when preacher’s routinely preached against smoking as a worldly thing that Christians shouldn’t do. Is that a bit strange?

I also remember hearing sermons against “mixed bathing” (swimming with members of the opposite sex) on Sunday and then seeing my church friends at the pool on Monday. Camp still has strict rules against mixed swimming although all of the kids go to the pool and the beach all the time. One local preacher used to preach a sermon each spring on the evils of going to the beach (someone once told me that the title of his sermon was “Wallowing with the Heathen”). The sermon is routine… and routinely ignored!

My point here isn’t that we need to get back to the good old days when we didn’t wallow with the heathen. The point is that we didn’t follow the command not to wallow even when it was routinely being preached. It seems to me that we were training ourselves and our young people not to really take what the church preached too seriously. I mean, we heard that smoking and going to the pool was wrong and then saw Christians smoking and going to the pool. (Not at the same time; the pool had strict rules against smoking). So what was the point of all that?

I wonder what ways that our church today is going out of its way to be irrelevant?

Summertime Sunday Nights

Today is June 2, which makes Sunday June 7. So Sunday is a very important date on our church calendar— it's the first Sunday after the end of small group season. Instead of meeting in various small groups in different homes (some of which are not Sunday night), we will all meeting together at the church building at 6:00 p.m. for Sunday night services. We do different things on Summertime Sunday Nights--

• Old Fashion Sing-Song Night. Here every man (sorry Kati) in the church gets the chance to lead a song or two.
  
  
• Pepperdine Bible Lectures Night. The church watches a DVD of Jeff Walling or Mike Cope or Don McLaughlin preach and see what its like to hear good preaching.
  
  
• Praise Night. The praise team leads us a fast-paced, up-tempo worship and then I preach an inspiring lesson. In other words, we redo Sunday morning.
  
  
• Ministry Night. We break up into teams that sing at the nursing home, make visits, address cards, or spend time in focused prayer. We’ll do one of these right before Upward and VBS to get last minute details ready.
  
  
• Retro-Night. Here we have a throwback service where we do things just like we used to-- two songs, a prayer, a song, a sermon, a song, a closing prayer and then the deacons go out to smoke on the porch (just kidding).
  
  
• Unity Night: We’re hoping to have some joint services with other churches in the area. That is still in the works.

We have all of these things scheduled, or at least tentatively planned. What we don't really know is WHY! Why have a service on Sunday night at all? What is the purpose? We still have people who come every time the door are open; you don’t really have to do much for them except open the doors. We have parents with small children who won't t likely come unless we do something for the children, but most of the people who come on Sunday night work with the children every other service. The only guests we generally have on Sunday evening are people traveling from out of town (not people from our community).

So what exactly is the purpose of having a second service on Sunday night? Before we learned that we are saved by grace and not works, Sunday night attendance was how you separated the faithful from the unfaithful church members. OK, that is not the purpose any more, but it does seem like we ought have a purpose. Right now, the purpose of our Sunday night service is to have something on Sunday night. Measuring success is quite easy here—if we have something Sunday night, then we've succeeded! It seems like we can do better.