Without Fear of Molestation

"Without fear of molestation from the civil authorities." That's a prayer phrase that I heard growing up in many (if not most) of the prayers prayed in church on Sunday mornings. It was right up there with phrases like "ready recollection" and "guide, guard and direct" (which usually came out as one word "guideguardndirect") and other things that I really didn’t understand but repeated in my own prayers nonetheless. Well, I knew what the words "without feat of molestation" meant, but I didn’t really understand that this was really a big problem for churches this side of the Roman empire. After all, I when started to Deer Park Elementary School back in the early 60’s, we still began each day by reciting the Lord’s prayer and absolutely no school activities were ever scheduled on Wednesday nights because that was church night. We didn’t fear molestation from the civil authorities. Even after Madeline Murray O’Hare’s work to remove prayer from the schools (much of which seems to have taken place after her death, if you believe the bulletin articles and email that still occasionally find distribution). The idea of the civil government actually molesting (OK, I always found that word a bit strange) people because of their faith seemed rather remote. And to a degree, it still does.

But it doesn't to Jamie Murray, the owner-operator of the Salt and Light Café in Layton, England. As you might infer from the name of his establishment (Matt 5:13-16), Murray (no relation I trust to Madeline Murrat O’Hare) is a Christian who operates his business in a way that gives honor to God. Since the café opened eight years ago, Murray has been playing Bible texts over the TV screen that can be seen by patrons. Just Bible verses and Bible messages running innocuously on the wall mounted screen. Well, these messages weren’t innocuous to one patron who was offended by the message, and rather than just going to some other establishment for fish-and-chips, he complained to the police who responded by forcing the TV’s to be turned off as a violation of Section 5 of the Public Order Act. When Mr. Murray prays about "molestation by the civil authorities," it is no stock prayer phrase to him!

Neither is it a stock phrase to Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian minister and leader of a network of Christian house churches in Iran. Bro. Youcef is in prison in Teheran and might possibly be executed by the time you read this for his refusal to recant his faith in Jesus Christ and convert to Islam. In Iran, it is not technically illegal to be a Christian, but it is a hanging offense (literally) to convert from Islam to Christianity.  The Iranian government insists that because Nadarkhani's parents (or perhaps grandparents) had been Muslim, then he was under law Muslim… even though he had not ever practiced that religion. While there are many others in Nadarkhani's position in Iran, none is so prominent in leading Christian churches, and thus the fundamentalist Islamic government is going to make an example of him because of it. Pray for our brother believer in Christ and all our brothers and sisters who live in a situation where "molestation by the civil authorities" because of faith in Jesus is simply a way of life.

We take so much for granted, don’t we?

The Greatest Love of All

Several years ago, Robert Schuller sent me a copy of his book Self-Esteem: The New Reformation. (Actually, he sent it to thousands of preachers, but it made me feel better about myself to think he'd sent it to me personally.) In that book and other writings, Schuller redefined the gospel in terms of self-esteem. Jesus came to give us us back the proper view of ourselves that God intended for us from the beginning. Schuller defined sin as "any act or thought that robs myself or another human being of his or her self-esteem." He suggested that "a person is in hell when he has lost his self-esteem." Thus salvation is being saved from this loss of self-worth, "To be born again means that we must be changed from a negative to a positive self-image--from inferiority to self-esteem, from fear to love, from doubt to trust." Well, if that is the gospel, then perhaps we should see Whitney Houston as a new-gospel singer as she croons, "Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all."

Not only was Schuller wrong, he could not have been more wrong.  The central act of Christianity is the cross where Christ "made himself nothing" (NIV) or "emptied himself" (NET) as He died on the cross (Phil 2:7). The cross was not about self-esteem; it is about shame (Heb 12:2), a shame that we also bear as we follow Jesus outside the camp (Heb 13:13). We are given a new identity as children of God, and that does indeed recast how we view ourselves (1 John 3:1-3). But God calls us to "share in His holiness" (Heb 12:10), and our self-esteem often takes a beating when we see just how short of that we are able to come. Paul is not pumping us our self-esteem when he says, "What a wretched man I am!" (Rom 7:24). The fact that God loves us and that Jesus died for us and that the Spirit indwells us DESPITE our wretchedness does not change the fact that we are indeed wretched. And the greatest love of all is learning to lay down our lives for others (John 15:13, 1 John 3:16).

I really enjoy reading Experimental Theology, the blog of Dr. Richard Beck, a professor of psychology at ACU.  In his most recent blog, he dealt with the idea of self-esteem and Christianity as it relates to the second great command. "Love your neighbor as yourself." Beck suggests that as it is often taught in churches, Jesus is teaching two things here: (1) we must love ourselves and (2) we must love others as ourselves. Thus as Schuller argues (though not to the same degree), the gospel is concerned about pumping up our self-esteem as a platform for loving other. I liked the way he addressed that idea--

Actually don't think Jesus has this very recent, Western psychotherapeutic situation in mind. I don't Jesus is saying anything at all about self-esteem in the second Greatest Commandment. And it worries me a lot that churches are leading with messages of self-love. I don't think Americans need to hear a message that starts like this: "The first thing you need to do is work on loving yourself. And when you've got that down then you can turn to loving others." Because, as best I can tell, a lot of Christians are spending their whole lives just working away on the first part of that equation. Year after year American Christians are spending all their spiritual formation energy on learning to love themselves. And that seems a bit screwy. 

What I actually think Jesus is trying to say in the second Greatest Commandment is that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. As I argue in Unclean, Jesus is trying to blur the boundary between Self and Other. Jesus is trying in the second Greatest Commandment to form an identity relationship between Self and Other, to see our lives as intertwined. The hallmark of this fusion is empathy, the ability to stand in another person's shoes and ask a simple question: "If this were me, what would I want?" Basically, "love your neighbor as you love yourself" is just another version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Click over to Experimental Theology and read his entire post; I think it will be informative. Let me sum up with how Beck sums up, "The secret, I think, isn't to try to go from a low self-esteem to a high self-esteem. The secret is to just stop playing the self-esteem game altogether. The key is to get out of your head." I like that... I'm just not very good at it.

The Ten Commandments

Message to My Devoted Fans (both of them):  I have comment moderation on the blog set so that anytime anyone comments, I get an email that allows me to allow or disallow the comment from being posted.  This is not so that I can keep disagreements to a minimum (which I'm not opposed to) but a practical necessity sense 90% of the comments I get are spam (somehow I've picked up quite a following of people selling wedding dresses!).  I noticed last week that it had been awhile since I received any requests, and sure enough GMail (by Google) decided that all notices from Blogger (by Google) is all spam.  Anyway, I'll either change the moderation settings or manually check the Blogger dashboard to approve comments.   Sorry if you thought I was ignoring you.

At present, my Sunday morning adult class is undertaking a study of the Ten Commandments and I'm also leading my Sunday night Middle School small group through the same study.  After an introductory lesson setting up the series, we're taking one of the commandment each week and  trying to unpack it for our world today.  Since Middle School students live in a different world than do their parents, the commandment unpacks a little differently.  And we're having much more fun on Sunday nights.

One of the things the kids seemed to enjoy was this video on how to learn the ten commandments in order by using your fingers.  I gave them a pretest at the beginning, and we couldn't as a group name them all in any order.  After they watched the video once, they had them nailed.  Pretty cool.

On Faith and Being Sensitive

People of faith must often navigate mine fields to live our beliefs in our progressively more and more secular culture. Just ask Dr. Richard Scott, a Cambridge-trained doctor who practices in Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate, Kent in England. He was in a consultation with a young man who was suicidal and had several medical and personal issues. At the end of that consultation, Dr. Scott suggested that he might consider faith in Jesus Christ, a faith that meant a lot to the doctor through the years. Several months later, the young man complained (actually, it was his mother who complained) to the medical authorities that his own faith (likely Islam) had been demeaned. Dr. Scott was called before a medical board hearing, and he must now defend his actions or he could lose his medical license. “A line was crossed because Dr. Scott expressed his personal religious belief to a person who he knew was a vulnerable patient in a way that was plainly liable to cause the patient distress.” Dr. Scott responded, “He had an awful lot of problems, and the thing to know, that God loves us and Jesus loves us and you can deal with stuff in the past, in terms of hurt or guilt or fear of failure, stuff you can only really find through Christianity.”

It strikes me as ironic that Dr. Scott works at a hospital named for the place in John 5 where Jesus healed an invalid, and yet just mentioning the name of Jesus in a conversation with a patient in the context of healing got him brought up on charges!  The good doctor asked the patients permission before sharing his message of faith, and he only offered it at the very end of the medical consult. Religious faith can clearly have a positive impact in dealing with medical issues (see 1, 2, 3, 4).  If that is the case, then how is it inappropriate to offer a faith-based message as a possibility to consider.  Of course, I do understand that the patient was particularly "vulnerable" because of his illness, but it was precisely that vulnerability that caused him to need something else in his life; what he had was clearly not working for him.  The problem here was not the the doctor offered some sort of extra-medical advice to this patient; the problem was that this man of science suggested that there may be something of value in the idea of God.  And those other men and women of science who make up the medical board don't want to admit that God... or at least that they aren't God.

Christians must be sensitive in bringing up the topic of faith in a world where we can no longer assume that most people have it.  There have been more than enough uninformed and insensitive proponents of faith who act like they are spoiling for a fight as they run roughshod overs in a rush to win arguments and defend positions.  But the idea that seems to have become the status quo in our multicultural word is, "It's OK to have faith as long as you don't try to share it with others."  That is impossible for Christians to accept, because one of the tenets of out faith is "Go into all the world and preach the gospel."   Sure, we have to find ways to be sensitive as we share our faith, but we MUST still share it.

Pat Robertson and Nicholas Sparks

Pat Robertson recently made headlines by suggesting that it was Biblically acceptable for the spouse of an Alzheimer’s patient to divorce them and then remarry someone else. Robertson said that he wouldn’t "put a guilt trip" on someone for divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer's disease, arguing that Alzheimer's is itself "a kind of death." So Robertson told a caller asking about struggling with the disease, “if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but to make sure she has custodial care, somebody looking after her.”

His reasoning seems to be that because the Bible teaches that widows and widowers are allowed to remarry (Rom 7:3). Alzheimer’s “is a kind of death,” so the spouse of one Alzheimer’s should also be allowed to divorce and remarry (as long as arrangements are made for a caregiver). By his reasoning, the “Christian” thing would have been for James Garner to have kicked Gena Rowlands to the curb and started dating other women, turning “The Notebook” into “The Little Black Book.” Am I the only one here who thinks that this makes Nicholas Sparks sound more Christian than Pat Robertson?

I can imagine some exasperated wife (maybe mine?) reasoning, “When my husband flops on the couch all day long on Saturday and Sunday watching college and pro football, it’s like he’s DEAD, so that means…” I do know of a Christian wife who divorced her husband because he had lusted after another woman (not sure how she knew that) and thus he had “already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:28). Everyone knows that adultery is grounds for divorce, so she got rid of her husband and felt perfectly sanctified in doing so. Pretty convenient, huh?

Pat, if you want to give people permission to white out the “in sickness and in health” clause in their marriage vows, please don’t blame that on the Bible. Every page of scripture reveals to us the faithfulness of God. The reason that God hates divorce is not simply because God wants to preserve the family as the foundation of society and a safe place in which raise children. No, God hates divorce because God is Himself faithful— His “faithfulness reaches to the skies” (Psalm 57:10). Unfaithfulness contradicts the perfect nature of our Almighty God. When we are faithful, we become participants in the divine nature of the God we serve (2 Pet 1:4). Faithfulness isn’t always easy, but it is always divine.

The Gift of Time

Shelli Eldredge was on vacation in Hawaii, touring with her husband and two sons on mopeds when a terrible accident left her in a coma. She had about fifty broken bones, including a shattered pelvis, broken spine and a crushed skull and facial bones. She was not expected to live, and one of the doctors told her husband that he should seriously consider disconnecting her from life support. She remained in a coma for weeks, and Shelli’s husband Stephen, himself a doctor, thought that it was "pretty apparent that she wasn’t going to wake up." He decided that he was not going to give up, and his "gift of time" allowed what can only be called “a miracle” to take place.

After several weeks in a coma, one of Shelli's doctors walked from one side of her bed to the other and noticed that she tracked his movement with her eyes. Later, after her husband joked with one of the doctors, Shelli laughed out loud. They were all stunned, and Stephen asked, “Shelli, did you hear that?’” She responded by raising her eyebrows. That started a process of recovery, and today, three months after the accident, Shelli is walking and talking and determined to come all the way back. Shelli, Stephen and the boys were recently on the today show telling their story to Matt Lauer.

The gift of time.  I wonder how many troubled marriages that seem to be flat-lining or limping along on life support with no hope of reconciliation could be brought back from the brink if only we would give the gift of time so that God could do His work?  How many struggling Christians who give up on their church and maybe even on God would be given new life and vitality if they just gave themselves and others the gift of more time.  Friendships, jobs, family relationships, church ministry-- sometimes what we need is to give ourselves and others the gift of time so that God can heal and restore.

13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.
14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD. (Psalm 27:13-14)

Army of the Lord

OK, it HAS been awhile sense I've posted anything here. I'm still mourning the end of a summer that ended abruptly with VBS, vacation and Hurricane Irene. Lynn and the girls are back in school (Angelynn as a brand new teacher at Warwick High). Summer's gone; I have to deal with it. So it's back to the old routine... which I plan on including a blog post or two or three each week.

We just ended a short sermon series on Spiritual Warfare Sunday. When many people hear "Spriitual Warfare," they think of angels, demons and exorcism. So... do demons possess people today like they did in Jesus’ day? I really don’t know. I doubt Satan would want top do that much our modern world where most people don’t believe that Satan even exists; it would be silly for him to disabuse them of that notion. What I do know is that the Bible never commands us to exorcise demons. There is no passage that outlines an exorcism. Jesus told them to go away, and they went away. It didn’t always work that way for the apostles (Matt 17:14), which probably is why they were so hacked off when they came across the unknown exorcist (Mark 9:38). Of course, it really turned out badly for the sons of Sceva when they tried to cast out demons in the name of Jesus (Acts 19:14).

No, we are not told to cast our demons or how to go about casting them out. But we are told some specific things that we are to do concerning spiritual warfare.

• We are told to “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7)
• We are told not to “give the devil a foothold” through our anger (Eph 4:27)
• We are told to “Resist him, standing firm in the faith” (1 Pet 5:9)

The emphasis on our participation in spiritual warfare is not on how to get the devil out of others; it is rather the necessity of resisting the devil’s hold on us.

The problem is that many of us have come to believe that sin really doesn’t matter that much anyway. After all, how many were brought up thinking that a lot of things were sinful (dancing, drinking, going to movies, mixed-swimming, and the beat goes on) that they now believe to be no big deal. In fact, the whole idea of sin is pretty much no big deal any more, which is a bit awkward on Sunday morning when we remember the price Jesus paid for our sin, a price that makes no sense if sin isn’t that big of a deal any more. You really do get the idea that sin isn’t nearly as gnarly as we once thought it was when you consider the following factoids:

• Christians vote against abortion, but we get as many abortions as others
• We say we believe in sanctity of marriage, but divorce at higher than culture
• We can fuss over social drinking, but we  are alcoholics at rate as culture
• Polls say as about 50% of our men and 20% of women use pornography
• Barna suggests as many Christians as non-Christians cheat on marriage
• 51% of Christians admitted on one poll they lie (were they being truthful?)

What’s going on? We can defend the reasonableness of faith with philosophic and scientific evidence, but if make no difference in how we live our lives, then why would anyone want it? When we become just like the world around us in every recognizable way, then why would they want to become like us. In fact, HOW can they become likes us—they already are like us?

The old Acappella song “Army of the Lord” asks the question, “Are we walking into the enemy camp laying our weapons down?” More and more of us don’t even know there’s a way going on!

Bitterness Is... Bad

In Ephesians 4:1, Paul says "I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." Actually more literally, what he says is “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (ESV). In chapters 1-3, Paul reminds his readers (probably a wider audience than just Ephesus) of their identity in Christ. In the second half of the book, he calls them to live or “walk” in a manner that is worthy of their calling. They were not to “walk” like the pagans (4:17) but to rather “walk” in love (5:2) as children of the light (5:15). This will require making choices between good and evil, so they were to “walk” as wise, not unwise, people. Once we understand our calling by God, then we are to walk in a way that is worthy of our calling.

Paul gets pretty specific in that this walk entails—he talks about things like living in unity, speaking truthfully to each other, stealing from others and dealing constructively with our anger. Living (walking) like the people of God changes the way we respond to those things. And dealing with anger seems to be a particular issue for Paul. He tells not to sin in our anger but to rather process quickly, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry" (v. 26). He then warns that a failure to process our anger will give the devil a "foothold" or "opportunity" (ESV). The word here is literally "place." It’s the same word used for Jesus praying "at a certain place" (Luke 11:1). We give the devil a place in our lives when we allow anger to go unresolved. This must be important for us because Paul returns to anger later in the chapter (Eph 4:31-32)

31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Bitterness, rage, brawling, slander and malice are all just different incarnations of anger. Brawling and rage happen when you act on anger immediately without thinking. Bitterness, slander and malice happen when we hold anger in and let it simmer in our hearts before it bubbles to the surface. We may think that rage is more honest as we blow up and then justify ourselves with, "Hey, I just say what I think."  Paul would respond, "That’s fine, now repent don't do it again." Bitterness is what happens when we fail to work through (and pray through) our anger so that we can release it (even if the other person does not properly repent). Bitterness is a very dangerous thing; it twists us spiritually and emotionally.

And bitterness can also twist us up physically. Researchers from Concordia University in Montreal report that constant bitterness can lead to physical illness, affecting everything from organ function to immune response and vulnerability to disease. In other words, bitterness will make you sick. Researchers Carsten Wrosch and Jesse Renaud have written a book based on their studies entitled Embitterment: Societal, Psychological and Clinical Perspectives. There study suggests that bitterness affects many different systems in the body that prevent them from working as they should. Bitterness causes people to blame others for their problems rather than looking side themselves, and this process over time litter makes them sick.

Paul’s advice may help us physically as well as spiritually, "Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry.” When an offense is serious enough to rise to the level of sin, then Jesus’ process in Matthew 18 ceases to be optional— we must go to the person directly (without talking to others) to resolve the issue in private. If that doesn't solve things, then we go back and take someone with you as a mediator. If that doesn’t work, then involve the church to mediate the issues. What we can’t do is allow things from personals slights to actual sins to fester and grow in our hearts and turn us into bitter people. When that happens, we are crippled spiritually and give the devil a place in our lives

The True Grace of God

Successful politicians become successful politicians because they are adroit at telling people what they want to hear. Unfortunately, sometimes that is also the case for preachers. Churches sometimes grow because they become skillful in finding what people want to hear... and they tell them. What passes as church growth is too often more stealing sheep from other folds rather than saving the lost lambs. Maybe you do that by having building better programs or bigger buildings. Or maybe you do that by convincing people that your church is “the one true church” while others are simply pretenders. Or maybe you convince them that God will make them healthy and wealthy if they listen (and give) to you. Why do so many of the T.V. preachers stress this health-n-wealth, name-it-and-claim-it heresy? Well, it’s not because the promise to make us rich is writ large on every page of the Bible. No, it’s because that message plays well in the mass market! Paul speaks of this market-driven church growth model in 2 Timothy 4:3 (NLT)

For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to right teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever they want to hear.

People want to hear about the grace of God, but not necessarily about the true grace of God. Too many see  God’s grace as license. Oh, maybe not to the point of some of Paul’s critics who saw grace as excuse to keep on sinning so grace could increase (Rom 3:8, 6:1). But they (maybe we?) see grace as permission  not to sweat over the details of faith. All we have to do is get close and grace will male up the difference. All you have to do is make a somewhat honest effort and grace closes the gap.  And then when it comes down to making the hard choices of discipleship, we can defer and play the grace “get out of jail card.”  Grace means that we don't have to sweat the small stuff and that it's all small stuff.

Peter seems to have a different idea.  He calls us to “the true grace of God” in 1 Peter 5:12, and in the verses that precede, he describes this true grace with a hard edge--

8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. (1 Peter 5:8-10)

The true grace of God is about standing firm in the face of the opposition to the devil and suffering hardship and persecution as you entrust yourself to His eventual vindication and salvation. That is the true grace of God. That grace comes to us through the cross and that grace calls us to the cross. And that kind of grace doesn't attract huge following on religion television. James Thompson in his marvelous book on 1 Peter entitled The Church in Exile, says this—

Whenever Christians have forgotten that walking in the steps of Jesus is costly, 1 Peter has been a forgotten book. The "true grace of God" hardly seems necessary for communities which are rich in their own resources. Where membership in the family of God is offered at bargain-basement prices, the message of 1 Peter is sure to be irrelevant, for only alien communities will find that this book still speaks a word of encouragement.

Several years ago after one particularly difficult time in getting people to volunteer for church ministry and even having several drop out of church almost-altogether, my wife sighed, "Maybe you've preached too much on grace." I don't think I over-preached  grace.  But I am afraid that I didn't preach well enough on the true grace of God. The true grace of God is the grace of the cross—not just the cross that Jesus died upon but the cross we are called to die upon along with Him.

Blast from the Past

We’re in the middle of "vacation season" at Denbigh. Roger and Keri are gone this week; Lynn and I will be gone will be gone next week. And we aren't alone. Most of our church is from other places, so when they get time off they go to those other places. It looked like half the church was out of town yesterday, but we also had a ton of guests as well.

One of our guests yesterday told me, “I was in on the vote on whether to hire you.” Steve and Linda Howell were members at Denbigh back in the early eighties.  Lynn and I came to Denbigh in May of 1980 to work as the youth minister and intern under Lloyd Unsell, but Lloyd left Denbigh several months after I got here to move to Oklahoma to be nearer his family. The elders asked me to preach on an interim basis while they found a new pulpit guy. They never found a new guy largely because they never really looked, and I kept filling in.  After a year or two or three (memories of the timeframe vary), they decided I was doing an OK job (given their low expectations,), and offered me the position. And Steve was evidently here for that vote.  So thanks, Howell's for the vote of confidence all those years ago. And thanks for all the nice things you said yesterday.

Steve and Linda represent a large part about what ministry at Denbigh have been through the years. Because of our close proximity to multiple military installations, we have had a steady stream of people coming in and going out through the years. Several years ago, Roger did a congregational study and discovered that almost half of our church had been here 2 years or less. So we have people for 3-4 years and then start all over with a new batch. Sometimes it seems that just when everyone is on the same page, the book changes, and we start all over again. So it’s good to run across people you haven’t seen for 30 (or more) years that say they appreciate what you did and what you are doing.

Camp Idlewild 2011

Another Middle School Week at Camp Idlewild is in the books. This was a watershed week for many of our campers; the huge Middle School group with which we started three years ago had their last hurrah.  Next year they move up to Teen Week. In fact, several of them didn't wait for next year-- Rachel, Olivia and Kristina all went back for a second week. In the 40 years or so I have been going to camp, I never went back-to-back weeks.

We had a great week. With the exception of Wally Nooner (our head cook extraordinaire), our entire staff came from Denbigh and almost half (15 of 31) of our campers were either from Denbigh or recent Denbigh alumni. So camp week is a big event for our church family (we cancelled services Sunday and Wednesday night and invited our people over to camp). My thanks foes to our staff volunteers Roger Brown, Annette Vitello, Lynne Bean, Beverly Becker, Jennifer Glaspell, Bruce Gaynon, Joann Guthrie, Betty Tanner, Wally Nooner, Lynn Tucker, Sarah Mattingly, Angela Johnson, Mark Becker, Nathan Tanner, Dawn Tanner, Tressa Tucker, Angelynn Tucker and Tori Light. (This was the first year ever that Lynn, Tressa, Angelynn and I were all at camp together.)

The week was HOT. Temperatures at the beginning of the week were in the low to mid 90's, but it didn't take long for us to get over 100, and the heat index was near 120 on several of those days. We changed around the schedule so that outside activities were in the morning and Bible classes were in the afternoon. The kids were great; they went along with all the activities as if the heat didn't bother them. Last year we had all kinds of camper drama and trips to the emergency room; this year was pretty quiet and boring... just like I like it.

If you have never spent time at a Christian camp during the summer, then you have missed one of life's special experiences. And if you have never spent a week at Camp Idlewild... let me know and I'll add you to the staff waiting list for next year!

Should We Stop Evangelizing?

I was once in Zhitomir, Ukraine as one of the speakers in a seminar for Ukrainian Christians and church leaders. We had a good group of Ukrainian believers, several of whom had traveled cross-country by train, to hear some Americans teaching about a Jewish Messiah who came to save the whole world. Right before the seminar was to begin, a delegation from Kiev showed up demanding to know why our little church in Zhitomir allowed women to speak in church as our translators (well, because they were fluent in both English and Russian) and why we used alcoholic wine in communion (well, because that is the “fruit of the vine” that we could actually purchase in Zhitomir; the one time we tried to buy grape juice, it turned out not to be grape at all but some kind of strange “banana-juice” concoction). We were there to talk about Jesus, but these defenders of the faith wanted to talk about their version of church that could not include female translators or fermented wine.

I thought about that story as I read a CNN editorial by Carl Medearis entitled “Why Evangelicals Should Stop Evangelizing.” The general idea of the article is that Christians have spent so much time recreating their churches on the mission field that we have become impediments to actually talking about Jesus. Medearis is a former missionary and church planter who thinks we should stop spreading "Christianity" and spend more time talking about Jesus himself. Medearis seems to be saying that we need to stop trying to make Muslims into Christians and spend more time encouraging them to be more like Jesus. Among the Lebanese people he worked with, the most violent and fierce of the armed militias driving the violence there were the “Christian” militias. They didn’t look anything like Jesus, of course, but they were “Christian.” Sometimes missionaries (and preachers) like my friend in Keiv, simply recreate their own church structures and compete with other groups who are recreating their own church structures. In other words, they become just like churches back home—competing for converts to their system and not looking too much like Jesus in the process.

I think Medearis has a point. He’s wrong, of course, but he has a point. Jesus is still the only other name under heaven by which people are to be saved (Acts 4:12) and faith in Jesus means accepting him as “the way, the truth and the life” that is the only way to the Father (John 14:6). No Muslim can be Muslim and believe that about Jesus. For while it is true that “there is no God but God,” it is not true that “Mohammed is his prophet.” Getting Muslims to think and act more like Jesus is great, and getting Christians to more gentle and patient with non-believers is not only great but gospel (Col 4:6). But getting people to heaven requires faith in Jesus.

But over the course of history, nothing has gotten in the way of faith in Jesus more than has Christianity. When believers in Christ do things that are not at all Christ-like in the name of Christ, then that just isn’t helpful. We have to live like Jesus to give meaning to our message about Jesus. Maybe we do need to get over some of our fixation on the external structures that go along with our experience of Christianity (which sometimes create barriers where none should exist) and spend more time pointing to the crucified one and living the crucified life.

Medearis says that evangelicals should stop evangelizing. That’s not right. What evangelicals (whoever they are) should stop is seeing their traditions, politics, or economic ideology as having anything to do with the gospel. Christianity is Christ. And maybe there is a sense in which Christianity is Christ alone.  Maybe we should make our evangelism more about Christ?

That's Just Nuts

I must begin by confessing that I don’t really follow politics all that closely. Well, that’s not completely true; I generally spend some time reading/skimming through articles on the web from such varied sources as Fox News, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post. I consider myself pretty much a political  moderate, and while I have always voted Republican in national elections, I do occasionally cross the aisle in  state elections. When really pushed for my philosophy on politics, I’d probably describe myself as a “Progressive Lipscombian.” (If you don't know what that means... good).  Politics is ultimately about power, and power is generally antithetical to the Kingdom of God. I also suspect that Will Rogers was onto something when he suggested that anyone who could be elected president is probably not qualified to serve.

OK, I say all that because I don’t want it to seem that I’m coming at this from any political perspective. I am definitely not a tea-party member (though if someone starts a coffee-party, I’d be more interested). But the latest brouhaha (and there have been many) over Michele Bachmann caught my attention. It seems that Bachmann has touted her presidential qualifications by pointing out that she and her husband are small business owners and that small businesses are the key to getting our economy back where it needs to be (no argument there). But CNN’s Jim Acosta and Erika Dimmler jump on the fact that the small business being referred to is a Christian counseling clinic where, along with many other things, counselors make use of "reparative therapy." This is where homosexuals who don’t want to be homosexuals are counseled in such a way to help not practice homosexuality. Things like prayer, Bible study, and personal mentoring are used to help people who so desire to "rewire" themselves sexually. If these people can't overcome the homosexual orientation, they they are given tools to help them live celibate lives. That, of course, proves that Michele Bachmann is a kook and not qualified to be president.

Bachmann may be a kook and not qualified to be president, but to use her counseling clinic as proof of that fact is just nuts. What if a homosexual person truly believes that their homosexuality is a sin before God? What if they would like to stop practicing homosexuality? It’s a free country, right? Don’t they have the freedom to NOT be homosexual if they can do that? No one is suggesting snatching gays and lesbians off the street and forcing them into reparative therapy, right? People are making the free-will choice that, based upon their religious belief, they don’t want to practice homosexuality. And to help them with their free-will choice, they are looking for counseling help in changing their sexual orientation (which is very hard) or their sexual behavior (which is very possible). The editorial stance of the article seems to be that if you are gay then you have NO RIGHT to try not to be gay or to get help in not being gay. The culture seems to believe that homosexuals must be free to be gay but cannot be allowed to choose not to be gay? That’s just nuts.

I’m not going to vote for Michele Bachman (unless she names Bob Turner of NY as her running mate. I’d HAVE to vote for a “Bachmann-Turner” ticket, especially if they had “Taking Care of Business” as their campaign song/slogan). But the idea that it is someone wrong to providing counseling to homosexual people who don’t want to be practicing homosexuals? That’s just nuts.

A Hill Worth Dying On

Earlier this year, 11 Iranians Christians were arrested and charged with “activities against the order of the country.” Specifically, they were charge with drinking wine… communion wine during a Christian worship service. These Christ-followers knew that they were risking their lives and freedom to remember Jesus in this act of worship. They were released in May, thanks in large part to public outcry from the West. These persecuted Christians believed that communing around the Lord’s table with other believers and with the Lord Himself was important—important enough to risk all.

Contrast their solemn faith with some of the disagreements that believers have had over the observance of communion through the years.

• Presence: Is the body and blood of Jesus literally present? Is it spiritually present? Is bread and wine only a visual aid to focus our thoughts or does something spiritually happen in communion?
  
• President: Who is qualified to administer communion. Must one be ordained? Must one be a bishop or can a deacon preside over a communion service. Can anyone preside? Can a woman preside?
  
• Participants: Who can eat of the Lord’s Table? Must one be a member of the local body? Can visitors partake? What about the children of members?
  
• Providers: Must deacons distribute communion after it has been blessed? Can only baptized believers “pass the plates” or can the “pre-baptized” participate? Can women serve at the Lord’s table?
  
• Presentation: Must there be only one cup? Must that cup contain fermented wine? Can the cup contain fermented wine? Must unleavened bread be used?

This list of communion issues is by no means exhaustive, but it is indeed exhausting. The kinds of things we have invented over which to feud and fuss is amazing. This picking of nits over communion split the Reformation itself, and it has split many churches through the centuries, some of which I have personal knowledge. But those 11 Iranian Christians never would have even considered those kinds of issues. When you are risking your life for something, you make sure that it counts. If you are going to take a bullet (literally or figuratively), you need to make sure it’s worth it. You must choose carefully the hill on which you’re willing to die.

Jesus died on the hill of Calvary. There is no issue worth taking a bullet for that is not directly connected to what Jesus did there. May God forgive us for all the blood we have spilled on hills that were not worth dying on.

Soaked in Blood

I remember reading of one denomination that undertook a major revision of its hymnal. Churches revising hymnals is certainly nothing unusual. In fact, if we tell people to take out a hymnal, we have to explain that we mean the old maroon book covered in dust underneath the chair in front of them (we usually just sing “off the wall.”)  But the reason for this particular revision of this particular denominational hymnal was to remove or revise all of those old hymns that seem so fixated on “blood.” You know the hymns—“Nothing But the Blood,” “Power in the Blood,” “Alas! And Did my Savior Bleed,” and “Have You Been to Jesus” (“Washed in the Blood of the Lamb.”). Their thinking was that modern sensitivities are too prim and proper to respond or relate to this obsession in these old hymns with blood. Most modern urban people can't relate to “Bringing in the Sheaves,” and neither can they relate to this emphasis on blood.  So we'll just avoid those songs altogether.

Frankly, there are some biblical allusions that I try to avoid. For example, I can’t remember ever preaching on the spiritual significance of the dowry Saul required of David for the hand of his daughter Michal (1 Sam 18:25). And then there’s the story of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 18 that is pretty gross as well. But as offensive as the topic of blood might be to modern sensitivities, there is simply no way to tell the gospel story without stressing the fact that the whole story is saturated in blood. Patty Kirk puts it this way in her spiritual memoir Amateur Believer--

The problem of Jesus' blood—what Catholics would appropriately call a mystery—is that it means everything. Not merely the blood covering Jesus when he suffered at our hands, but the gorier blood of our uncleanness—our urges and our hatreds, our humanness—that Jesus assumed when he died for us. It is the blood of our sin as well as the blood sprinkled to cleanse us of sin. The blood of the Israelites' sacrifices. The blood they smeared on their doorjambs to protect their firstborn children from death when the Lord passed over Egypt.

The blood we drink in celebrating communion represents the very essence of Jesus' dual identity as God and man. From his earthly beginning, even as a fetus deep in Mary's uterus, nurtured by the nutrients from her blood, Jesus drew life from his own unique blood, blood mysteriously human and divine simultaneously, special blood that made him the living Son of God and also, incomprehensibly, one of us, the Son of Man.

Communion evokes the bitter wine vinegar offered Jesus on the cross and also the wine we will drink with him in heaven. His death and his resurrection to eternal life. The spilled blood of our guilt and the pulsing blood of our hope. Sin. Sacrifice. Celebration. Blood is at the very core of our faith.

If people really are offended by the story of the blood of the cross, then you just might be telling the story correctly. Paul talks about “the offense of the cross” in Galatians 5:11. (That’s the verse before Paul wishes those who insisted that all be circumcised to follow Jewish tradition would just go ahead and castrate themselves; evidently Paul wasn't too concerned with our sensibilities, modern or otherwise).

The gospel is a story that is soaked in blood; you can't tell the gospel without it.  And you can't sing the gospel with the blood either.

A Truly Forgettable Sermon

Someone told me Sunday that while they thought that my sermon was particularly well done (thank you very much), they were pretty sure that no one would remember the sermon (so why should last Sunday be any different from usual?).  Nope, what people would remember was the YouTube Father's Day video "Dad Life" that I "borrowed" (ripped off) as a tribute to our fathers.  This was actually last year's video from Church on the Move in Tulsa, OK.  I'm sure their video this year was also well done and perhaps I'll "borrow" it next year.

Well the prophecy came true this morning when someone (no names, Michele) Face-booked me and asked for-- not my sermon notes or mp3 of my SERMON-- but the link for the video so their hubby could watch it.  So here it is.  Maybe if I made my own videos people would remember my sermons better!

Heart Improvement

You might recognize actor and comedian Jim Labriola from his recurring role on the hit TV show “Home Improvement.” These days Labriola makes his living as a Christian comedian, performing for people who specifically are looking for "clean entertainment." But in his bad old days, Labriola did stand up comedy the way it is expected from stand-up comedians— "injecting a few curse words here and there with a mixture of sexual innuendos added to the punch line."

And then he met Jesus. He was invited by his sister-in-law to a non-denominational church "where people raised their hands and were happy." He said of the preacher, "I never heard a guy talk so much about Jesus almost as if he knew him personally." He continued to go to the church, got to know some people and a few months later decided to give his life to Jesus. But when you give your life to Jesus, Jesus doesn't just leave you alone. Jesus takes us "Just As I Am," but He never leaves us this way. Labriola read from Ephesians 5:4, "Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving." He decided that this verse was speaking directly to him. "I can't just read the Bible and go up on stage and do the opposite." So he cleaned up his act… literally.

Today he performs for churches and Christian gatherings, but also in secular settings. He was surpsied how many people appreciated his “clean humor.” People come thank him for the option of taking their families to a comedy show “without the overlaying fear of listening to an uncomfortable joke while sitting next to your grandma.” His newest CD is entitled "Heart Improvement."

The problem with going to the doctor is that he doesn’t want to just fix whatever ache or pain we are complaining about that day. He also wants us to lose weight, get our blood pressure and cholesterol under control and a myriad of other things we just as soon he not mess with. And that is the way it is with the Great Physician. When we come to Him, he wants to change everything about us that is contrary to our spiritual health. We can’t compartmentalize our lives so that we have one set of values for work and career and entertainment and another one for church and family. Jesus wants us all, and that means that everything has to change. That’s not easy, but that is the deal.

Reasons for NOT Not Going to Church

We had a very blessed day at Denbigh yesterday.  We had a larger number of people present, which is good since we are getting into our summer-slump time.  We had former members and down-the-street-neighbors (the Birkenbuel's) back visiting with us, and that was good.  We honored a family that was leaving us (the Higgins); it's sad that they are leaving but good we got to thank them.  Mary Robinson made a presentation of an beautiful quilt to Janice Barker to let Ben and Janice know we are thinking of them.  And we prayed with Brenda and Sammy for them to get through their grand-baby's funeral today (and raised more than enough money to pay the cemetery). The worship was great (we sang all Fanny J. Crosby or Dennis Jernigan songs, an interesting combination that somehow seemed to work). My Bible class was on sex and I got to wear a funny hat in the middle of my sermon.  It really was a great day!

We began the service with this YouTube video entitled "Reasons (Why People Don't Come to Church)."  The video is produced by the Central Christian Church in Las Vegas (hey, if you don't want me borrowing your creativity, then don't post it on YouTube).  I thought it was a pretty good summary of what we are called to be as a church.



After yesterday, I felt very blessed that God has placed me in the church here at Denbigh.  We are far from perfect, but I think we do a pretty good job of meeting people where they are and letting them know that while socks are optional, grace isn't... and that it's OK not to be OK... really.

My How Time Flies

Lynn and I were blown away yesterday as our church honored us for our 31st anniversary at Denbigh with a dinner after church (including two HUGE cakes) and a painting-style picture of our Denbigh church family (now hanging in my office). Lynn and I came to Denbigh as the associate/youth minister in May of 1980 (this picture was taken a few months after our arrival).  Lloyd Unsell, the pulpit preacher, left about 2 months later to return to Oklahoma, and I received very quick and unwelcome promotion. (My Dad was one of the elders at the time, and some expressed concern that this was a conflict of interest; we decided that nepotism was OK… as long as you kept it in the family.) Technically, I served for several years as the "Interim Evangelist" while the elders looked for a new pulpit guy. But they hated going through a selection process and kept putting off actually looking for a new guy. After several years, they decided I was doing an OK job… and no one else was willing to work for $200 a week. After 31 years, Lynn and I are still here.

Denbigh is an area dominated by military and government service workers, so while we’ve been here 31 years, almost no one else at church has been. We did a survey several years ago and found that almost half of our people had been at Denbigh less than two years! That is one of the secrets of our longevity… the church keeps changing. Another secret may be wrapped up in an old “preacher story.”

There was once a church which had a reputation of firing their preacher every year. But then they hired a new guy and after his year was up, they extended his contract. They extended it again after his second year. And after the third year, they offered the guy a lifetime contract. Well, he was flattered and asked them why they once changed preachers every year and now had offered him a lifetime contract. One of the elders said, “Well, to tell you the truth, we don’t like preachers and we don’t really want a preacher; you are about as close to no preacher as we have been able to find!"  

So there may be several explanations for my ministerial longevity. Whatever the reasons, Lynn and I feel so blessed that we have been able to work with the Denbigh Church of Christ for all these years. From the very beginning, Denbigh has given me the greatest blessing a preacher can every hope to receive from a church—an openness to preach messages from scripture even when those messages don’t necessarily fit within our comfortable church tradition. The church has not always agreed with what I have preached, but they have always been willing to listen and to love me anyway. Sermons that at some places would have been “moving sermons” (sermons where the preacher has had to move afterwards) has been met at Denbigh with “you make me think today and I’ll have to do some more study on that.” There is no greater blessing a church can give a preacher than the willingness to listen and be driven back to the Book. Many preachers have to move all over the country in order to grow in their understandings and change their basic stances on basic issues; I have been blessed to stay at one place and grow and change and watch the church grow along with me.

Jesus said that “a prophet has no honor in his own country” (John 4:44). But then sometimes a preacher can be honored in his own country... much more than he deserves to be. “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14).

A Pinch and a Sip

OK, so maybe I’m not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. The clock ran out on my class Sunday before I got to this controversial point, so instead of being thankful that I was this “providentially hindered” and dropping it, I'm going to bring it up on my blog.  As they say, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

First, some background. We practice baptism by full immersion in water, not sprinkling or pouring water. Paul in Romans 6 speaks of baptism as a burial, “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.” Baptism is a recreation of the Christ-event in our lives as we die to sin, are buried in water and then rise out of the water to a new life. The Greek word “baptizo” from which we get the transliteration “baptism” originally meant “to dip repeatedly, to immerse, to submerge.” Sprinkling or pouring a little dirt is not a burial; sprinkling or pouring a little water is baptism.

I never know who (if anyone at all) ever reads this blog, and this emphasis on immersion may be news to you. But everyone in my class Sunday would have “amened” this point on baptism. Churches of Christ really stresses baptism; it’s a good thing someone else already had the copyright on “Baptist Church” or else we may have been tempted to call ourselves that! We stress baptism!  I remember listening in on a conversation while some of our folks debated whether or not a baptismal candidate who was standing in the water waiting for his turn to be baptized and then was eaten by a crocodile before his turn came would be saved, (After all, the croc pulled him completely under the water, so…). We do stress baptism, and baptism (baptize) means immersion.

Here’s the question for which I ran out of time and that I now foolishly ask. The word “Supper” as in “the Lord’s Supper” is the Greek word “deipnon” which (using the same lexicon I used above) means “supper, especially a formal meal usually held at the evening.” In other words, the word “supper” means “a full meal” just like “baptism” denoted a full immersion. So (do you see what's coming?) why is it NOT OK to use a little water sprinkled or poured on someone as a symbol of a burial but it is PERFECTLY OK to use a little pinch of cracker and sip of grape juice as a symbol in the Lord's Supper? Do we lose something of theological significance when we replace a meal eaten communally around a table (the model Jesus used) with a symbolic “pinch-and-sip” which we eat in private meditation with no real sharing or communion going on around a table?

For further study, let me recommend a book by my friend John Mark Hicks (most of my friends don’t even read books let along write them) entitled Come to the Table. His take is that we have, to our detriment, turned the Lord’s Supper from a table into an altar.

If you'll excuse me, I have to get ready for the new class I'm teaching Sunday based on Rob Bell's book Sex God.  His first chapter is entitled "God Wears Lipstick."  What on earth was I thinking?