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.

Language and Gospel

I try hard very hard to be socially, ethnically and racially sensitive. One of the worst insults anyone could throw at me is to call me a racist. (Well, that and calling me a Cowboys fan). I’m all for truth and justice, but I know that the American way is only one way among many ways. I don’t expect the whole world to speak English. I BOTH regret that so many American jobs have been outsourced overseas AND I admire and respect people in other countries who work so hard and so long to better their lives and the opportunities for their children.

All of that aside... ARGH! I just spent an hour and a half on the phone with tech support at Xerox trying to get our copier/printer/scanner printing and scanning. All the network settings somehow got completely scrambled (I brought up the web interface for the printer, I got our web cam! Fun!) A network printer/scanner that has no network settings is neither a printer nor a scanner. So I called Xerox. The young woman I talked to was eager to be of assistance. Every time I called, she asked, “How may I be of assistance?” (At least, I think that’s what she said.) The problem was that she didn’t have the English skills to communicate clearly enough to walk me through the technical issue. Hey, I don’t speak Hindi or Bengali or Telugu, and I’m not trying to be the ugly American. But when communicating technical information to Americans is your job, you really need to be able to speak English. Or is it just me?

I eventually just let her think that she had solved the problem and then spent 10 minutes on Google and figured it out myself. After setting up a new IP for on the printer then changing the IP in the printer driver on the computers, I had to give it a 139 port number for the scanner driver. I don’t now why, but it seems to work; the copier is now a scanner and printer again. Roger is on his own changing his printer driver—I don’t do Vista. Vista is a foreign language.

When you want to communicate important information, it is up to you to make sure you are speaking the right language. I wonder if that is our problem when communicating the gospel to a world that is totally foreign. We tend to make arguments and stress issues that made little sense a generation ago and that now totally garble the basic message of the gospel. To be honest, postmodern people have little interest in arguments period; they want to see something working. So maybe the more we argue, the less it looks like the gospel is working. I’m not suggesting that we back away from truth; our story (metanarrative in postmodern parlance) is still the greatest story every told. But when we equate this story to our silly-isms and arguments from command-example-inference, we confuse people with what amounts to a foreign language. The world is asking today (even when they don’t know that it’s what they’re asking), “We would like to see Jesus” (Jn 12:21). We need to make sure we use the right words; we need to point to the Word.

Church Problems

A sad but true fact—all of us know of too many stories of churches that became so embroiled in conflict and disagreement that things happened that would be downright silly if they were not true—

• In one church, a leadership disagreement got so heated that a deacon’s wife whacked one of the elders with her purse! I’m not sure, but I think elder-whacking is wrong for most people. I hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas.
  
  
• After one church spent a long time in prayer and preparation, one congregation decided to begin using a praise team in worship. Not everyone was happy with the elder’s decision (if you can imagine that). On the first Sunday for the praise team to lead worship, someone went through and cut every mike cord with a pair of scissors. I hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas.
  
  
• An elder of a storefront startup church in our area became so angry after a meeting that he stormed out, and returned a short time later with a gun. He shot the preacher dead and then burned down the building. Boy, I really hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas!

We sometimes talk about restoring the NT church. We may have done a better job of that than we realize— every church we know about in the New Testament had unity problems! In fact, the reason that we know about churches like Corinth and Galatians is because they had these problems. Paul wrote his letters to help these churches solve their problems. So if there were any “problemless” churches in the first century, we wouldn’t know about them!

I heard one preacher suggest that Philippi was a church that had no real church problems. What book was he reading? Sure, Paul talks about joy a lot in Philippians, but he never really accuses them of having any! Three of the four things Paul tells the church to do in Philippians 2:2 are about having the same mind. Why? They weren’t of one mind. Hey Paul tells Syzygus, the loyal yokefellow, to step between two warring sisters and help settle them down. What are the chances that ol' Syzygus got whacked with a purse?

Philippi had the same church problem that my church has—it was full of people that want to have their own way. I look back at some of the rough spots that we have had here, and I have to admit that I was not always on the side of the angels. Sometimes I wanted my own way too much. After all, I was more consistent in my exegesis and smarter, obviously, because I knew how to say “exegesis.” What I wasn’t smart enough to see is that God was giving me a chance to do the Christ thing and lay down myself as a sacrifice. If I would have done that, I would have been walked on. But I might have also given the Spirit the space to do His holy work on the hearts of others.

I’m beginning to understand that the church will not have unity until we desire it more than we want to be right and have our own way. How do we do that? Paul gets us a long way down the road in what he says in Philippians 2:3-11 (NLT)

3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. 5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.
7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,to the glory of God the Father.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

I spent Sunday night alone in the Sleep Clinic. Lynn finally laid down the law in her gentle but firm way-- either I spend one night without her letting them figure out what can be done about my snoring OR I spend the rest of my nights without her. I chose the one night. As it turns out, I do snore... which surprised no one in our house (or on our block). But I also have sleep apnea, which did surprise us at bit. This is good news. Insurance companies consider loud snoring to be a merely social problem which they don’t cover at all. The surgeries or dental appliances needed to stop problem snoring are not covered, though broken ribs received from flying elbows because of chronic snoring are covered. But insurance companies do consider sleep apnea to be a medical problem, and they will evidently pay for all kinds of high tech machines. I am waiting for mine.

I never really thought I was eithger tired in the morning or sleepy in the afternoons, usually symptons of the condition. Sleep apnea wakes you up continually throughout the night so that you can get a breathe. You never get awake enough to remember waking, but you are not ever asleep enough to get the restorative sleep you need. Well, I never thought I was that tired during. In fact, I checked "no" several times on the questionnaires they give you prior to your sleep clinic stay. I don't get sleepy during the day.

But ever since they told me I have sleep apnea, I am seem to be tired all the time. It's the power of suggestion, I guessssssssssss. Sorry, must have dozed off. Paul said that he had “often gone without sleep” (2 Cor 11:27). Apparently, I have been following Paul’s example and haven’t even know it!

Live Forgiven

You have probably seen the video of a church doing the “Cardboard Testimonies.” Someone somewhere had a great idea, and great ideas usually get copied. And this was a great idea... and a simple one. People share how God has changed their lives by writing what they were (alcoholic, materialistic, selfish, etc) on one side of the cardboard and then flipping the card to reveal what they have become by the grace of God (sober, spiritual, giving, etc.). It is a powerful testimony to power of God change us.

Satan desperately wants us to doubt that God can transform us like this. He tries to create that doubt in one of three ways.

• First, he wants us to doubt we ARE forgiven. If we begin to doubt that God’s has forgiven us, then we begin to doubt God and we refuse to live like forgiven people. After all, if we spend all our energy wondering if we are forgiving and suspecting that we are not, we don't have time to actually live how God wants us to live.
  
  
• Second, Satan wants you doubt that God can forgive you. Sure God can forgive regular people of regular sins. God can forgive the guy I heard one time confess that he was addicted to buying too many neckties. (Too me, that is a big sin). God can forgive that, but he can’t forgive me because of what I have done. Satan wants us to think that it is hopeless to believe we can ever do any better than you are doing right now. You might as well give up.
  
  
• Third, failing those two, Satan wants us to think that forgiveness is easy, simple and no big deal. If forgiveness is as easy as falling off log, then it really isn’t that important, is it?

Notice what Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15-17 and how he helps us to avoid all three of these traps. Paul certainly understand how bad sin is and this how complicated is our forgiveness. He accepts God’s grace and His power to change, and thus he is focused
on the majesty and glory of God. We must see BOTH our continual neediness and God’s eternal power. We need to be forgiven and God has the power to forgive. And once we are forgiven, then we can live forgiven.

Just Dining-Room Talk?

I ran across a story yesterday that I think illustrates the struggle of many Christians today. Ten years ago, a University of Notre Dame senior named Lacy Dodd found herself in a situation that she would never have imagined. Only weeks away from her graduation, she found herself pregnant. The nurse at the clinic confirmed the pregnancy and then told her not to worry because she had “other options.” That is not the message she wanted to hear.

Dodd’s boyfriend also tried to pressure her into getting an abortion. When she pointed to the teaching of her church and responsibility of her faith, he said, “All that talk about abortion is just dining-room talk.” All the pious and moralistic talk was fine for banter around the dining table, but in real life you have do what is best for yourself. Fortunately, Ms. Dodd did not listen to such reason, and today she is the single mother of a ten-year old daughter named Mary.

Why is it that Christians are overwhelmingly opposed to divorce but continue to get divorced at a rate higher than the national average? Why are Evangelical Christians almost 100% against abortion while 18% of Evangelical women had abortions (Barna Research)? Why have the social mores and moral choices of our culture become in large part the social mores and moral choices of Christians as well? Do we see the Bible’s call to a personal holiness that reflects the holiness of God in an unholy world “just dining-room talk?” Or maybe “just Sunday School talk?”

The story I read was reporting on an essay written by Lacy Dodd (the mother in the story above) entitled “Notre Dame, My Mother” timed to be released at Mother’s Day to coincide with President Obama’s visit to Notre Dame. President Obama, of course, has long been an opponent of any restrictions on abortion rights. Some, including Ms. Dodd, wonder at the mixed-message sent by the President speaking at commencement and receiving an honorary degree from a Catholic university opposed to the practice of abortion. Dodd ends her essay--

“Who draws support from your decision to honor President Obama — the young, pregnant Notre Dame woman sitting in that graduating class who wants desperately to keep her baby, or the Notre Dame man who believes that the Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion is just dining-room talk?”

Good question. The more Christians look like the world around us in the moral decisions we make, the less of a message we will have for the world. If Christianity really is “just dining-room talk,” then maybe we just need to shut up.

The Man in Black

One of the highlights of the Pepperdine Lectures each year is getting to hear Dr. Randy Harris, a professor at Abilene University. Randy is a bit hard to explain. He is single, usually dresses all in black, and is the foremost theologian in our movement. And he is one of the funniest guys you’ll ever hear. His new book is entitled God Work: Confessions of a Stand-up Theologian. And Harris knows how to combine the two (humor and scholarship) in a way I’ve never heard before. You are laughing all the way through his presentation, and then realize you have learned some things that are important. It is not often that the smartest guy in the room is also the funniest, but that is the case in most rooms that Harris occupies.

To give you an idea of how Harris teaches, notice few quotes from his new book. OK, my copy is on order (we were so focused on not giving AirTran another $25 for a second bag that we were packed tight in one suitcase and didn’t have room to buy books; I had to make space to bring back the Hallal and Zoe CD’s we bought), so I borrowed these excerpts come from Mike Cope’s blog--

• “My friend Augustine died in 430 (most of my friends have been dead for several hundred years; I’ve found that makes the friendship much easier).”
  
  
• “Here’s the theme of the book of Revelation: God’s team wins. Pick a team. Don’t be stupid.”
  
  
• “My friends refer to me as the Dead Sea of e-mail. I receive and I receive but I do not give.”
  
  
• “I’m not a Calvinist. I do not think that everything happens in the world directly because God has caused it or desired it. I’m tempted to suggest that that makes God a monster. Nor am I a deist. I’m not one of those who think God wound up the world and hasn’t done much of anything since the closing of the last book of the Bible. What I am instead is a panentheist, which is one who believes that in all things God is working — in death as well as life, in sickness as well as health, in disaster as well as rescue.”
  
  
• “Loyalty to country, loyalty to family, loyalty to friends — all of those strike me as commendable things. The problem is when patriotism becomes nationalism. Now this is a different matter. Nationalism is always evil because it is idolatry. It is the point where we confuse the nation with God, where our primary loyalties become aimed at the nation instead of God. This is always bad news. And nationalism is often lurking just under the surface of much of what we do.”

Harris’ class this year was entitled “My Favorite Atheists: Conversing with the Enemy” and he did three presentations on what we can learn from Feuerbach, Sartre and Nietzche. It was very interesting. I remember reading these guys (when forced to in school) and I don’t remember it being particularly interesting. Perhaps I didn't read closely enough... but I passed the quiz.

Pepperdine Bible Lectures

Well, another Pepperdine Bible Lectures has come and gone. We got home Saturday night at 11:15; that always makes getting up and preaching on Sunday an exhausting experience… for both me and the church! This marked the 20th year Lynn and I spent the week in Malibu. What an incredible blessing it is for us each year; we appreciate our elders and church making this possible. It's always better when Denbigh folks go with us (this year it was Randy and Betty Tanner and Mike and Joann Guthrie). Why don't we all go next year? We'll just move services that Sunday to Malibu. What do you say?

What the best part of the Pepperdine Lectures? This year, the main theme lectures were some of the best we have heard—Monte Cox, Rick Atchley, Josh Ross and Mike Cope were particularly good. The theme was Colossians… which I taught here 6 months ago. I wonder if anyone would notice if I preached a series on Colossians… I may give that a try. The worship times were great, especially Songfest at 6:15 (led by Hallal, Zoe and Lighthouse). We actually got there by 5:15 each night to make sure we got a seat on the front row! That happens at church all the time!

If I were completely honest, I would have to admit that the worship times were not as desperately special as they were in years gone by. Our praise team now leads those same songs in that same way every Sunday… better in some cases! But we did bring back a list of songs we want to try... like an a cappella version of "Praise You in the Dance."

This year was a throwback for me in a lot of ways. Thursday night Late Night in Smothers with Hallal recaptured the good old days when I sprinted from Firestone to Smothers to make sure we got a seat. And listening to Rubel Shelly lecture on atheism (his topic was “Why Are Atheists So Angry?”) took me back to Freed-Hardeman days (where it cost Dad a lot of money for me to hear similar material). Spending time with people like Alan and Sueanne Smith, Bob and Lourene Clark, Eddie and Carol Hendrix, Carl Etchison, and many, many more also really took us back as well. When did all those people get so old?

This was a special, special week. We are already looking forward to next year. Seriously, let’s all go next year. Plane ticket-- $200 (AirTran). Room and Board-- $125 (on-campus). Spiritual experience-- priceless!