Robert's Ramblings

When God Calls a Woman

2011-09-21T18:08:00.001-07:00

Vetting the new candidate for ministry

2011-06-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

2nd Timothy 2:2 implies that a person ("a faithful person") has demonstrated faithfulness prior to being discipled. The apostle Paul, in choosing to take Timothy under his wing, knew enough of his background to determine that he was well-grounded in his beliefs prior to being taken on by Paul as a disciple. There certainly has to be some evaluation done at each stage in a person's spiritual journey to in order to move forward.
The requirements for deacons/deaconesses and elders demand vetting, particularly at an early stage in ministry because they have to be approved by others as having been faithful at an earlier stage of ministry before being considered for greater leadership in the church.

God does not call us to forbidden ministries

2011-06-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

How do we prevent women from involving themselves in ministries forbidden to them? How do we prevent men from involving themselves in ministries forbidden to them? Those questions are irrelevant if we do our work right as we evaluate candidates for ministry.
Usually, we start off with restrictions; but what if we told every candidate that the sky is the limit within the will of God? By evaluating the calling at the outset, and watching the candidate, man or woman, in preparatory ministry, we would be able to vette them at the beginning of the process.
What we must remember is that God will never call someone to a ministry to which He has forbidden them. If we do our evaluations up front and well, we need never even consider what is open and what is closed.

Is a pastor an office in the church?

2011-06-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

Much of the confusion regarding women in ministry (particularly public ministry) comes from the erroneous assumption that the word pastor refers to an office in the church.

In Ephesians 4:11-12, Paul refers to a group of five people who are themselves the gifts. These apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are given to the Church to build up the body of believers so that they may do the work of the ministry, not simply to do the work of the ministry themselves. Nowhere is there any reference to these given people being men or women, simply people given by God to the Church to accomplish His work in the lives of those who will do the ministry.

Certainly, in reference to pastoring, we know from Titus 2:4 that older women were to admonish the younger women in loving their husbands and keeping a home—these older women were clearly performing a pastoral function. Our problem with this word is that we have irreversibly connected this ministry of shepherding to the office of elder, to our endless confusion when discussing the issue of women in ministry. As a result, we have made ourselves incapable of having a clean, uncluttered, biblical discussion on the ministry of shepherds in the Church.

By studying the New Testament, one will find only one person referred to as a pastor, apart from the reference in Ephesians 4:11, 12. That one person is Jesus Christ. Every other reference to officers of the church uses the term in a verbal form, rather than the nominal. The verbal describes what an elder would do; the use of the noun would imply an office.

The biblical evidence is missing for the term being used to describe the office. More to follow.

I look forward to your commens.

Paul the misogynist, or is he?

2010-10-27T18:45:00.000-07:00

Truly, Paul is the fly in our evangelical ointment. Ecco homo, “behold the man” who demands that women remain silent in church. All would have been fine in the Church if he had just kept his trap shut: this man who apparently couldn’t get a date telling the rest of us how to keep women under our thumbs. Paul is the writer who presents us with the thorniest passages regarding women outside of the Old Testament.

This man, who, on careful study, was the best friend of women and a strong advocate, is accused of the worst misogyny by many women and, among men within the Church, has engendered an entire subspecies of He-man Woman Haters, the religiously motivated kind.

Where do we start with Paul? Will he take the fall for God’s command regarding women and men in the Church? Is he to become the poster child of domineering males? If, however, we accept the premise that all Scripture is inspired of God, then Paul must get an exemption from blame and the onus must fall upon God Himself. If you believe that Paul was writing independently of God’s authorship, then you have greater problems with the Bible than merely determining how women must minister in the Church.

Although Paul always expressed in his own words what was on his heart after personally assessing the situation in the various churches to which he wrote, he never wrote anything that was not the settled word of God. If all Scripture is God-breathed, then Paul is guilty of nothing; the blame, if there is blame, must rest fully upon God’s shoulders. Anyone with a clear understanding of inspiration of Scripture must accept the teachings of the contested Pauline passages as the intent of God, not simply an earthly writer telling it like he thought it was for his time and place. Paul was not trying to jury-rig a solution to a problem with problematic churches. Inspiration does not work that way.

What we must do is determine what was actually said. This rules out interpretations based upon speculating upon lengthy back-stories.

Some cannot bring themselves to blame Paul (or God) for his views and therefore give him the best whitewash, the best cover-up, known to guilty sinners. We exempt him from peccability as someone merely responding to a temporary cultural need that has long-since passed away. Such commentators add too much back story in order to set up Paul’s alibi, stating that Paul’s restrictions upon women were solely for the time and place in Corinth and Ephesus.[1] As a result of this type of interpretation, we are assured that we can safely disregard the restrictions upon women as mentioned by Paul: they do not apply to us today. To give Paul and God an alibi for their oppressive restrictions, these interpreters have stripped the passages of any transcultural implications. If we were to strip away the transcultural implications of every passage that we could not comfortably live with, we would have a very small section of the Bible to which we would have to pay attention; the balance discarded as mere historical oddities.

Actually, neither response (blame Paul or God, or excuse Paul or God) is required. Paul, it turns out, was as gracious and accommodating to women as was Jesus. The trick here is to demonstrate it. We will do this by walking through the Pauline corpus and demonstrating the various points he was trying to make at each step of the way.

Part of our problem in understanding Paul’s instructions regarding women is that we often miss a grammatical gimmick in the text that does not simply say that women are to be silent in church, but that wives are to reflect the relational nature between Jesus, the Bridegroom, and His Bride, the Church, according to Ephesians 5:22-33, by demonstrating their submission to their own husbands. All but one of the restraints upon women in the Church have their genesis in this concept. To get to this understanding, let us walk through the Pauline writings and build a foundation of practical, biblical theology as Paul lays it out. But that is for the next post.

[1] The two churches to whom Paul wrote placing the greatest restrictions upon women were Corinth (1 Corinthians) and Ephesus (Ephesians 5, and 1 Timothy 2).

Pastors and elders: are they the same?

2010-10-16T11:05:00.001-07:00

One crucial understanding or misunderstanding in considering the role of women in ministry is the connection of the term pastor with elder. If you look carefully in the New Testament, only God the Father or Jesus Christ are referred to as shepherd or pastor (same word). In 1 Peter 5, elders are instructed to shepherd the flock but that is a verbal form implying an action that defines their office. Just because it is their primary task, does not restrict other shepherding from going on. Older women in Titus 2 are to shepherd younger women.

Ephesians 4:11 includes pastors in a list of ministers given to the Church for the building up of the body of Christ. We know that there were women who were apostles (Junia), prophets (the daughters of Philip), and teachers (Priscilla). Is it such a stretch to assume that there might be women who were pastors (but not elders) and evangelists? In this passage in Ephesians, there is not the slightest hint of gender restrictions. The burden is on those who would restrict the pastoral role alone to elders to prove their point. The passage does not require it.

Don’t run after your kids

2010-07-22T15:36:00.001-07:00

Panic, it is what happens when the Nazis blitzkrieg their way through the Ardennes forest at Christmas of 1944, kicking off the Battle of the Bulge. Panic, it is also what happens when parents realize that their sweet little dears are fully engaged in being teenagers. What happens then? In war soldiers either retreat, surrender, or die. The same is true in families. A panicked parent will attempt to regain the path of happy parenthood; scurrying away in two different directions; both directions only increase the sense of panicky lostness. The first direction is to take away things: batten down the hatches, so to speak. Try to regain control and return the child to manageable childhood. It never works, the teenager will only resent the effort and resolve to manipulate the parents so that he gets back what was taken and provides sufficient suffering for the parent to show who is really in charge. The second direction follows closely upon the first. We parents start running after our teens hoping to be allowed to be the parent again; albeit at the discretion of the child. Although it might appear that our kids want us to cater to them, what they want most are parents—parents who know their roles and will provide a secure stability for them. Read the following letter from the late actor, Ricardo Montalban, to his son, and see if you get what I am suggesting:

Dear Son,

As long as you live in this house, you will follow the rules. When you have your own, you can make your own rules. In this house we do not have a democracy. I did not campaign to be your father. You did not vote for me. We are father and son by the grace of God, and I accept that privilege and awesome responsibility. In accepting it, I have an obligation to perform the role of a father. I am not your pal. Our ages are too different. We can share many things, but we are not pals. I also am your friend, but we are on entirely different levels. You will do in this house as I say and you must not question me because whatever I ask you to do is motivated by love. This will be hard for you to understand until you have a son of your own. Until then, trust me.

Your father

Montalban knows who he is and, more importantly, what his son needs. This is not a man who plays "take away" with his children to get them in line, nor is he one to try to win his son's friendship and approval by running after his son's whims. He is providing what his son needs most during those teen years: a dad who is a man and is steady in the storms of life. Give it a try!

Hierarchy in Eden

2010-06-22T11:01:00.001-07:00

In a perfect environment, with perfect people, do we really need to demand that wives to submit to their husbands? The nature of the Fall and the federal headship of Adam say "yes!"

Hierarchy is a dirty word if you are an egalitarian, believing that women are the absolute equals of men and not to be restricted in the Church in either offices or gifts. Using Galatians 3:28 as their mantra, egalitarians believe that the hierarchy between men and women (or husbands and wives) was the result of the Fall and, in the words of William Webb, an egalitarian, in his otherwise excellent book, Slaves, Women & Homosexuals, cries out that we "fight against the curse." For the complementarian, who holds that women were created to serve or otherwise facilitate man's tasks in life, hierarchy is a touchstone for all restrictions upon women. The more-severe restriction upon women in Genesis 3:16 was instituted to prevent women from worsening the situation through continuing in Eve's rebellion.

Both sides of the argument, therefore, believe that the hierarchy between men and women is the result of the Fall. The egalitarian believes it was a restriction placed upon women as a result of stepping out from under the authority of her husband, and the complementarian considers it a hobble against the woman's foundational sin of rebellion against authority. The complementarian is correct, but most complementarians do not know why they are right.

What actually happened in Genesis 3:16 is that God made what was once a delight (submission to her husband, her own husband and not to all men) a social rule to protect her from further harm. Fighting against the curse is a catchy battle cry but, until the sin nature is completely done away with, we will need our bits and bridles to help us through life.

As a young Christian, I was taught that all were "in Adam" when Adam sinned. Certainly that is true but it was taught in the context of seminal involvement (see Hebrews 7:9, 10). The author of Hebrews, however, was merely using an ad hominem argument in making his case. Our seminal involvement in Adam was not the reason we possess a sin nature. The reason goes to the federal headship of Adam, not to our DNA that existed in Adam. One thing is certain, if seminal involvement is the means of our failure, then Eve, not "being" in Adam did not receive Adam's sin nature. Or even worse, if she gained her sin nature through her transgression, then there would have been one person who would never have had the option of salvation. In Romans 7:12-14, Christ died only for those who had received a sin nature through Adam, leaving Eve out.

Eve shared her husband's sin nature because, although she was not seminally "in Adam," he represented her as her federal head even before the Fall and his disobedience brought her ruin as well as his own and ours.

The egalitarian view misses this Edenic hierarchy and, as a result, makes numerous errors as they build their argument on a poorly constructed foundation. The complementarians are only partly correct. Yes, there was a hierarchy before the Fall, and, yes, the restriction of Genesis 3:16 was to be applied to ameliorate the on-going damage of Eve's sin. But the complementarians have also made a big mistake in their foundational thinking. That's for the next blog. Tune in tomorrow.

2010-03-11T09:57:00.000-08:00

Mine says Holy Bible on the leather-bound cover. A very intimidating book, indeed. It talks of people who went up on the roof to have a barbecue, sat down to preach, lived in a land flowing with milk and honey, and their religious practices would cause animal-rights activists to have a cow. Why is this book sitting on my desk in the twenty-first century?

To explain why I have a two-thousand year old "holy book" sitting on my coffee table, I must invite you to join the army. The first two months of army life is spent on an activity called basic training, an opportunity for learning a colorful new language filled with expletives, learning about food groups you never before thought could be food groups (I always thought SOS was an emergency signal), and learning all this from a group of men who considered kindness to be a social disease.

During your basic training, you will be instructed in such sophisticated maneuvers as standing still without scratching an itch or moving, walking in harmony with several hundred others without stumbling into them, turning left and right by pivoting on one foot or the other, and saluting officers without sticking your thumb in your eye: a cornucopia of relevant and useful habits none of which translate into job skills once you return to civilian life.

All of this wisdom came from a little paperback book called FM-5 (Field Manual #5). FM-5 told us how to survive on the parade ground and on the battlefield. The Bible is just like FM-5.

The Bible is not a holy book, it is a field manual. The word holy means separate or separated. Sadly this is usually all too true: the Bible is separated from most sermons, separated from the lives of most who profess to be Christians, separated from the real world. But God gave us the Bible in order to understand life and to succeed at it, not just survive. The worldview described in the Bible helps us make sense of the people and issues of our day. Through it we gain wisdom to evaluate the political movements of our day, why nations war with each other, and how to live in a toxic moral environment. The Bible teaches us how to make moral judgments regarding the curriculum our children are to learn in school, how we are to relate to our government, and how far we go in obeying our government. This God-given field manual describes our infinite, individual value as persons created in God's image and it explains the purpose of life.

Here is what the Bible says about itself: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16, 17). If you want to be complete as a person and thoroughly equipped for every good work, the way to do it is read God's field manual.

2008-10-07T10:36:00.000-07:00

Mean Old Harold landed in Oubangui-Chari in central Africa as a young and visionary servant of God in the same year that I landed on Planet Earth like a small, bald, parboiled monkey. World War II had just ended and there was built-up pressure in the areas of missionary service and procreation. Twenty-six years later, he returned from Africa, having planted seventy-two churches. That same year, I began driving a Sunday-school bus. MOH was on the pastoral staff and I in the motor pool of the same church in Southern California.
MOH got his name from the secretarial pool of the church because he always sounded gruff, harrumphing about the office whenever he had a deadline for the typing pool, and yet he was the gentlest and kindest of men. I am now the teaching pastor of a church in Northern California but, had it not been for Mean Old Harold’s involvement in my life, I might still be driving a Sunday-school bus.
After a few years of volunteering in the children’s ministry of that church, I was asked by the elders to quit my job and work part time at the church as I prepared for full-time ministry. Although I had a great job working at a nearby university, having completed the coursework for a Master’s degree in Medieval Literature, I gladly jumped at the chance to earn $2.35 per hour as a general-ministry flunky in a large church as I went back to school to earn a completely different Master’s degree. In all of this, I did not hear the still, small voice of God telling me what to do.
I loved literature and I loved my job at the university. Literature I have always loved, knowing that it made my world a much larger world than I would have ever known otherwise. But in the fall of 1975, I started becoming dissatisfied with my job without knowing why. There had to be something more to my life than this. It was simply a feeling disconnected from any divine pronouncement from heaven.
I saw this change as dramatic and complete and decided at that time not to bother to take my final comprehensive exams to complete my MA in Medieval Literature. At this point, MOH stepped in, suggesting I finish the first Master’s since, “it is an additional key in your tool bag that will possibly unlock doors out in the world that a theological degree will not.” Since then, I have told every young person who has come within my gravitational field to “pick up every tool you can come across because you do not know where God will ultimately lead you." The Apostle Paul considered everything that had come before as rubbish as he pressed on to his upward call, but I was instructed to shoulder all I had ever learned and trudge on.
Once I was on the church staff as an intern pastor, MOH began to play a greater and greater role in my life. I began taking some classes from him, I remember particularly his class on the book of Romans. My young wife and I both took the class and it has had a lifelong impact on us. I hear myself saying some of the same things I had heard from MOH.
I have only once been thrown out of someone’s office. It was the office of MOH. It started off innocently enough. He asked me how I was doing in my classes and ministry and I told him. Then he asked, “what is God calling you to do with your life?” I believe I stammered. He began to press, “what are you going to do?” I knew I had to say something bold and spiritual. “I wish only to serve the Lord.” As you might have guessed, it was the wrong answer. To recover lost ground, realizing that he was getting ready to earn his name with me, I determined that he was wanting my future job description. “I think I would like to do something in Christian Education.” He began to stand up behind his desk. I did not realize how big he was nor how small I was becoming. He pointed to the door behind me and said, “Get out of my office and don’t come back until you know what God wants you to do.” Hardly a burning-bush experience in spite of getting my tail feathers burned as I retreated from his office.
Two years later, I was licensed to the gospel ministry in that church and left one year after that to plant a church in Ventura, California. I had been offered a church in Los Angeles, but, when MOH heard of the offer he called me aside and said simply, “You don’t want to go there.” I didn’t. After a year, I was ordained to the ministry and MOH preached the word for my ordination service.
Anyone who knows me realizes that the skill set needed to plant a church (a winning personality, a constant smile, and the ability to gather a crowd) is not part of my makeup. In my sense of mission as I prepared to leave the many comforts of a large church for the insecurities of a church plant, I made a rash vow to God that I would stay there ten years to plant the church. In the fifth year, I knew I was in the wrong place doing the wrong thing. But I had made a vow to God and it would be fulfilled. Was my rash vow a distraction from God’s call on my life or part of “The Plan”? In other words, did I step through the wrong door and was that ministry God’s “second-best” for me? Another question to be answered was whether or not my wife and children merely tag along or were they uniquely called as well?
Ten years and thirty seconds after I arrived in Ventura, I was unpacking my furniture in Tracy, California, in a small but established church. I remain there to this day, happy in the knowledge that I am in the center of God’s will.
In all of this time, through all of these events, I never heard God say, “Go through that door right there, and, whatever you do, don’t go through that door.” How then did I get here?
On the wall of my office is a single document, my ordination certificate, signed by a number of men who confirmed by their signatures that God had indeed call me to the ministry. The first name on the list is Dr. Harold Dunning, Mean Old Harold.
My wife had a more-straightforward course to traverse, at least once she married me. In some ways, I was her ticket to ministry. I know it sounds awful but she was in effect the women’s auxiliary of the Robert MacMillan franchise. At our wedding, we had the congregation sing our dedication hymn, “Take My Life and Let It Be, Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.” We meant it even though we did not know what it would someday mean to us. After the wedding, she finished her degree in music and I finished mine in medieval literature. God led us to a Bible-teaching church in a most-pedestrian way. As poor (read impoverished) college students, we had no car and there was no Bible-believing church within bicycling range. One Sunday morning, as we despaired of ever getting to church, we noticed a Sunday-school bus going down the street outside our apartment. We called the church and they agreed to stop the following Sunday outside our apartment. And that is how I became a Grace Brethren pastor. The sovereign call of God was not quite a Damascus-road event, but it was a road, and there was a bus on the road. Hardly the material to inspire a hagiography, though. My wife and I got on the bus, and so the call to the Grace Brethren Church of Long Beach was effectual in my life and my wife’s.
Over the years, Sharon has been a faithful and active pastor’s wife, discipling women, schooling our children, teaching Sunday School, singing and playing in the worship team of our church. But has God called her or did she simply follow me?
I have four children, a first-born son and three daughters. My son is an engineer being paid obscene amounts of money to keep U. S. Navy ships from sinking out from under their captains. It is a manly occupation and he is good at it. Did God lead him to it or was it just part of my son’s plan: “Dad, I want to earn white-collar money for blue-collar work.” He and his wife now live in Japan believing that God has led them to the Western Pacific and the life they are now living.
My three daughters all graduated from Christian colleges, two of them graduating from seminary. When my oldest daughter began attending college, majoring in a ministry degree, I asked several denominational leaders, including the president of the school, if there would be a place of ministry for my daughter in our fellowship of churches. The response was silence and a wry smile. Two of my daughters (the seminary graduates) live and work overseas. My youngest, the only one of our children living in the same hemisphere with my wife and I, just got a job in commercial property management, using the degree in marketing and business she had just received three days before her first day of work. Was she called to this?
Were my children called? Was my wife called? Or is there some plain-vanilla default for people who have been included in someone else’s burning-bush experience?
I got saved in the incipient days of the Jesus Movement. The woman I was dating, and later married, often witnessed to me, but the tipping point was the Four Spiritual Laws published in the Hollywood Free Paper. God loved me, it said, and had a wonderful plan for my life. And here is the focus of this blog—how do you learn what that plan is, or do we simply muddle through, and is it any different for wives and children when the husband and father is called? Does a wife have a call to ministry independent of her husband’s call? Does God call a wife to ministry when her husband is unconcerned with the will of God?

2007-05-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

Love, So Called
By Robert MacMillan

His sweaty, probative palm lurking beneath her peek-a-boo bra
after a lengthy stealthy approach;
Her untouched heart well-beneath, hoping for something that won’t happen.
She, resisting and hoping against all evidence.
He, rejecting her every plea for innocence.

Assuming Aphrodite although her name is Clair;
Sailing for Byzantium, and yet his mind a scow of lust.
He wouldn’t know, but neither would he care.
Hands in the suburbs wishing but a trip downtown.
Her treasured innocence elicits only a frown.

Both in a black-and-white world of getting and spending,
but pretending a world of Kodachrome.
Her father failed her but still she dreams;
His father trained him or so it seems.

He offers love to get her sex;
She offers sex to get his love.
Neither will get though both will falsely give.

Both pretending:
She, romantic love and a match made in heaven;
He, claims to fallacious manhood falsely won.

She will never gain; he will never be.

Nor did they learn the ancient verities that made sex sex;
Nor met the Source that made love love.
They conjoin in a glandular glut of limbic excess
And so they try to mate in weightless confusion.
Joined together in selfish sad isolation.

And he will continue to sweat and press and she to allow;
And well beneath, her heart will beat,
Not knowing what else to do.

Walking with Jesus

2006-11-29T09:43:00.000-08:00

"Walking with Jesus."It is so easy to say--it comes trippingly off the tongue; but it takes an entire lifetime to do. In our apostate days, legions of those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ are walking away and Jesus asks us, as He asked His disciples in Capernaum, "Do you also want to go away?" Our problem is that many who are walking away from Jesus are not walking away from church. They still attend, still participate; but their hearts have left the building.
Oddly, God's purpose in Jesus Christ has always been to restore us to intimate fellowship with Him--fellowship we lost at the Fall when Adam and Eve hid themselves from God in the cool of the evening, a time when they habitually would go for walks with Him.
What did they talk about? The question is intriguing but only slightly more intriguing than what He would say if we were having a quiet walk with Him in the cool of our evenings.
Everything God did prior to the Fall was to establish a race of beings who could have intimate fellowship with Him, people made in His image, people to whom He could express His infinite love. Now, mind you, He had no need for this (He wasn't lonely!); He simply, as a being of infinite love and kindness, desired to express Himself outside of the Triune Godhead.
Adam's sinful rebellion against God ruined all of that and, since that time, man has been hiding from the presence of God. As an act of unbounded grace, God has taken the initiate to restore what had been lost.
In preparing us, for His great act of reconciliation, He taught Adam, and every true worshipper since, that only by blood could man approach God. An admission of sin that was concomitant with that blood sacrifice was mandated. What was once a pleasant walk in the Garden, now became a grievous, bloody march towards Calvary.
The day is quickly approaching when God will finally dispense with sin in His Creation and complete His restoration of fallen man; but, the closer we get, the worse sin becomes and the separation grows greater and greater--and not only between God and man. It is seen in the alienation of children and parents, husbands and wives as divorce rampages through our society and our churches, and warfare among nations and people groups is the order of the day. Strife is a constant and all differences are irreconcilable.
The restoration is eschatological (dealing with end times), but we can realize some of that end-times joy by abiding in Christ and allowing Him to abide in us. 1 John 2:6 states, "He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked."
Please don't waste other peoples' time by telling them how active you are in your church or how much you read your Bible. Are you walking with Jesus?
Would you like to hear a message on this topic? http://www.tracygrace.org/media.html.

Voting in a Democracy, Living with a sovereign God

2006-11-14T09:53:00.000-08:00

Each time I pressed the screen on the voting machine at our most recent election, it was like the kiss of death for the candidate for whom I voted. Few candidates I voted for won. Few propositions I supported won. But the perfect candidate for the job was elected every time.
How can I be so much at peace about an election that "didn't go my way"? Easy. I know that it went God's way.
In Daniel 2:21, Daniel, in his prayer, states that God, "removes kings and sets up kings." Nancy Pelosi will probably be the next Speaker of the House because that is the person whom God wants. Does that mean she is a godly example of a humble servant of Jesus Christ? Not necessarily. It means that, as God prepares the nations for His return, He does whatever He desires to arrange the governments of the Gentile nations (including the USA) to accomplish His sovereign will on earth. Will the Democrats, who now control Congress, be more submissive to God than the Republicans? Not a bit! Surely you didn't think that the Republican party was God's party?
Although I do not expect an overflowing of righteous actions from Washington now, I know that God's will is going to be done and I can take great comfort in that even if I grieve over some of the legislation that will come out of that benighted city.
How important is my vote in light of the sovereignty of God in democratic elections? Very. I am not responsible for electing certain representatives over others, but of acting in a Christian manner in all that I do and of honoring the government (read Romans 13), and, in a democracy, that means I most vote. In voting, I vote primarily on moral and ethical issues. Sadly, too many Christians vote on pocketbook issues. That should be the last thing we should consider. Most candidates and propositions, however, do have a moral or ethical basis upon which we can make a biblical decision.
Next time there is an election, vote; but take comfort in the fact that God is still sovereign and the candidates whom He chooses for His own purposes will win.

Being Jesus in our marriage

2006-10-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

Is there nothing more to a marriage than a primal need to procreate? Does it not represent something eternal even though marriage itself is temporal?

What if a marriage were representative of something greater than merely the joining of two people? Or did you think it was all about you?

Marriage between believers represents the relationship we have with God. For the married women: If there is anything tentative in your marriage relationship, then the world will see that you can’t trust God! For the men: If there is anything tentative in your marriage relationship, then the world will see that God cannot be trusted!

Marriage represents the integrity of God’s word. By “God’s word,” I mean His promises. If God’s word to us can fail on any point, then He cannot be trusted in anything. In your marriage vows, you have represented God and He holds us accountable for the vows we made. “For richer, for poorer, for better, or for worse; in sickness and in health, so long as we both shall live.” We glibly speak our wedding vows, but they are more than just something that is expected at a wedding: they are contractual agreements attested to by God as the executor of the contract. They are holy promises that we make, not just to our intended spouse, but to God. And they bring His good name into the contractual arrangement of marriage between Christians.

Some of you have divorce in your background—you have broken vows before God and man, thereby misrepresenting His faithfulness as unfaithfulness. Isn’t grace a wonderful thing! That in Christ you can be a delight to God and His particular treasure in spite of your failure?

Marriage also represents God as a restorer. And, as we see in God's dealings with us, restoration is not based on the merit of the one restored. Calvary is the epitome of such restoration: Christ dying for those who not only needed to be restored but for those who were actively hating Him, not wanting restoration, even while He was dying for their sins (Romans 5:8). Can you talk of love for God and thanksgiving for His salvation and still not be able to forgive and restore your spouse?

As the product of God’s restoration we are made reconcilers. Such restoration must be initiated without thought to the response. You cannot say, “I will forgive and restore if she will . . . .” Or, “He can move back in if certain commitments are made.”

God did not wait until we were repentant, sorry for our sins. And He certainly didn't wait until we had made the necessary corrections in our lives before establishing a relationship with us. In your marriage, do you forgive your spouse only after he or she has suffered enough to mollify your bruised ego, or to reestablish your control?

Marriage represents the gospel of salvation. To establish an intimate relationship with us, Christ humbled Himself by becoming a man and submitting Himself to a shameful death on the Cross. Many of the problems we face in our marriages are the result of a refusal to humble oneself before another.

Christ loved us unconditionally as He gave Himself for our salvation. We are called to love our spouses unconditionally: no strings attached. A women can put up with a lot if she is unconditionally cherished by her husband. Do you love your wife unconditionally? A husband can put up with a lot if he is respected unconditionally by his wife. Do you respect your husband unconditionally?

The Church is the bride of Christ and, as such, everyone member of the Body should know he or she is treasured by God.

Friendship and Marriage

2006-10-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

We are a society of lonely people, regardless of how many people we have surrounding us.

Thomas Wolfe (writer): "The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence."

We learn from the Bible that loneliness, even aloneness, was not God's plan for us: Genesis 2:18: "It is not good that man should be alone."

Man and woman were created to have fellowship with God and each other, but, through sin, became estranged and therefore lonely.

If the gospel redeemed us from the effects of sin, then why are we still alone and lonely? Could it be that the implications of the gospel are only partly known to us.

John 15:13-16
13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.
14 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.
15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.

Please note the following about these verses in light of your marriage:

1. The extent of the Lord’s friendship is sacrificial love: v. 13.

2. The effect of the Lord’s friendship is change: v. 14.

Note that Jesus is not saying, “You become My friends, if you do whatever I command you,” but “You are My friends, if you do what I command you.”

Our obedience is evidence that we are His friends, not the means by which we become His friends. Most Christians get this wrong and they get it wrong for most of their lives, and they live in defeat, running on a treadmill of works, in the hope that by doing the wrong thing, they will achieve the right end.

Are you doing it wrong? Are you doing it wrong in your marriage?

3. The expression of the Lord’s friendship is intimacy: v. 15.

God calls us friends: that is the nature of the relationship He establishes with us.

4. The initiative of the Lord’s friendship is His love: v. 16a.

We did not choose Him, but He chose us!

Can we exercise the love of God in our marriages by initiating love that demanding nothing in return?

5. The goal of the Lord’s friendship is fruitfulness: v. 16b.

Is your spouse reaching his or her full potential because he or she is loved by you?
“If the life of my spouse is barren and fruitless, is it because I am not loving?”

The disastrous statistics and the general unhappiness in most Christian marriages tells me that most Christians have a truncated gospel: it might be sufficient to get them into heaven, but it produces hell on earth. The gospel is a relational issue, not only a judicial determination by the Judge of the earth. But we don't get that, do we?

God loves the single-parent

2006-10-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

When a single, custodial parent finishes work at the end of a day, her work is only half over: she now becomes mother and father, counselor to her children, house keeper, and cook.

Three issues hit a divorced woman hard: loneliness, a nagging sense of failure, and personal rejection by the one person who had known her best.

Kids (particularly boys) are desperate for attention; especially someone who will acknowledge that they are suffering, too. Delingquency gives them that attention.

Description of child of divorce: withdrawn, cynical, hardened, sarcastic, and angry (if a boy).

Possible baggage carried by those who have gone through a divorce: self-pity (self-healing is accelerated by self-denial, not self-pity), depression, guilt, fear, economic devastation, anger, envy, exhauistioin, loneliness, frustration.

"Act" yourself into new feelings, do not try "to feel" your way to new actions.

Self-pity does no good! It mires more people in a wallow that prevents healthy action. Are you involved in self-pity? How much time do you spend asking the question, "Why me, why now?" The sooner you say, "Lord, heal me," the quicker you will begin healing.

No form of rejecction begins to compare with divorce. In divorce, the one who knows you best says you're not worth keeping anymore.

Jeremiah 29:11: For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Parents were not designed to raise children alone.

God is not just a father to the orphan and a husband to the widow: He is a good Father and a good Husband.

Every single parent should note what Hagar called God (Genesis 16:13): "the God who sees."

Three facts about the single-parent home:
1. The single-parent home is still a family.
2. There is no reason for a single-parent home to produce children deswtined for emotional illness, antisocial or self destructive behavior, or personal mediocrity.
3. Your chldren will reflect your personal values based on the way you demosntrate your beliefs.
Every practical solution to life's problems begins with prayer.

A single-parent needs: Time for rest, relaxation, and exercise. Time away from the children.
Time for friendship. Time for personal growth. Time for spiritual sustenance.

For more information: www.tracygrace.org, where you will find audio messages on marriage, family, divorce, and single-parenting as well as documents to guide you into the Bible for more information.

Wail, O cypress

2005-09-27T15:21:00.000-07:00

Who is to blame for these terrible storms that have ravaged our Gulf Coast and caused such loss of life and property? We need to start out by crossing Mother Nature from the list of usual suspects since she already left town with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. There is no Mother Nature! Although it has been attempted, neither can we blame President Bush because he is simply not that powerful. Who is responsible? The correct answer is God. God is the One who creates all natural disasters, from earthquakes to tsunamis, to hurricanes. He has told us so: “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the LORD, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). The Hebrew word for calamity includes all natural disasters and all that we would call evil, except for the moral evils, those are all ours.
What could His purpose possibly be in doing this to us? He didn’t say specifically but I know that God does things that get our attention, refocusing our thoughts on Him rather than ourselves. He will not let us continue ignoring Him and that is a good thing for us. We have so much stuff and most of us use our material wealth to dull the aching void in our hearts caused by God’s absence from our lives.
Now what should we be thinking here in sunny California? Surely we do not have to think about our hurricane emergency kit. We only have to worry about the “Big One.” But that seems so far away, doesn’t it? Here is what we need to be thinking: “Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen (Zechariah 11:2). If God is getting the attention of Southeast Asia with a tsunami and the Gulf-coast states with two monster storms, does He love us any less than to get our attention in some way we can no longer ignore?

The Great Danger of the Seminary Student

2005-09-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

Seminaries are designed, hopefully, to equip God's servants with some basic tools to be effective in teaching and leading within the Church. One thing that cannot ever be dispensed by a seminary is wisdom, and wisdom is what is needed for anyone who wishes to teach or to lead in the Church.

Seminary students, while receiving valuable information, do not yet have the wisdom to handle the data properly in a local-church setting. Such education can easily get in the way of a student's usefulness in the Church due to a sense of "knowing more than the local yokels" that develops with the first class in hermeneutics.

Seminaries must inculcate a sense of grave humility in their students to prevent this defect. A recent graduate from a seminary is barely (I repeat, "barely") functional in ministry and must be watched constantly by those in the church or parachurch ministry in which he or she serves who may not have the education of the graduate but do have the humility that comes only from walking with Jesus for many years.

In the seminaries one finds a willingness to experiment with doctrinal issues. The front lines are not like that. If a graduate brings his trial balloons to the front line, he will not only get himself killed but will kill off many who entrusted their spiritual well-being to his or her care. What can be passionately or casually discussed over coffee in the student lounge is of no value to the people who are bleeding to death in the pews.

This is particularly important to those who desire to be pastors. When I teach from my pulpit, I picture myself as a waiter--simply serving up the food. It is my job to make sure that it is hot from the kitchen and is attractively served, but it is certainly not my task to change the menu. God has charge of the menu. If you cannot handle such a simple job as serving it up hot, then get out of the pastoral ministry now before you poison someone!

At the modest age of 59, I find that I am only now becoming even of slight use to the Kingdom of God. I also realize that, because of this awareness, my best years are ahead of me.

My counsel to anyone in seminary? Three things: Realize you know less than you think; you are a danger to yourself and others in your present state; and silence in the presence of your elders is to be preferred to pontificating about your most recent academic conquest.

Might as well get murdered there as here

2005-08-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

In 1939, Andrew Higgins, a builder of fishing boats on the Louisiana coast, bought the entire annual production of Philippine mahogany and stored it in warehouses throughout the Louisiana delta. He knew there was a war coming and he also knew that metal would be unavailable in the amounts needed to building landing craft. He also realized that the war would have to involve invasions. And invasions would require landing craft, thousands of landing craft. In 1940, he hired 20,000 additional workers, a year before he had a government contract. The flat-bottomed landing craft that carried the 1st, 4th, and 29th divisions ashore on D-Day were called Higgins boats. After the war, General Eisenhower said that Andrew Higgins was the man who won the war by making the victory at Normandy possible.

Please note Jesus' warning in Luke 12:54-56:
54 Then He also said to the multitudes, "Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, 'A shower is coming'; and so it is.
55 And when you see the south wind blow, you say, 'There will be hot weather '; and there is.
56 Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?

Andrew Higgins knew the signs of his time. Do we know the signs of the times in which we live?

I believe we do. There are men and women in our Fellowship discerning the times in which we live. Have you read what Women of Grace are projecting for their commitments to being women on mission?

The Association of Grace Brethren Ministers is reviewing what makes a minister and how our membership reflect those realities.

Consider Equip '05. This was a big risk. I was all prepared to say goodbye to our leaders who first suggested and later planned this effort, and wish them all the best in their new ministries.

Look at all the new and different types of ministries within GBNAM. Home Missions is working outside the United States. GBIM is working within the United States. Can anyone tell me where foreign starts and home ends? I certainly don't know! I am tempted to think they are becoming one and the same organization, but what do I know?

General Eisenhower, the commanding officer of the Supreme Headquarters, Allied European Force, developed "The Purpose Driven Invasion." All the allies had to do was buy the videos and books and voila, instant victory.

But he knew that all of the carefully laid-out plans for D-Day wouldn't be worth a can of K-rations as soon as the first Higgins boat hit the beach.

He was right. The success of D-Day, particularly the effort on Omaha Beach, was directly the result of small squads of men, led primarily by noncoms and lieutenants, determining to get on with the war; thinking that they were going to get murdered anyway, so they decided they might as well get murdered up on the bluff as down on the sand.

Can we adapt so readily? Because, as our National Moderator stated, we would be much better to jump rather than remain standing on the brink, to be murdered down here on the beach. We might as well get murdered extending the Kingdom of God through the engagement with the enemy, than nostalgically hanging on to our extrabiblical traditions.

We have a great mechanism in the GBIF for funding church extension in the United States, but what are we going to do when the newly formed Sumulong Grace Brethren Church in Manila asks for a loan of $100 to put a tin roof on a building in which they meet? Are we ready? Do micro-enterprise loans that aid in the establishment of churches in Cambodia or Africa qualify for our consideration? Need we develop new agencies to cover these new opportunities? We need to answer such questions.

Are we ready to answer the call in our times, relevant to our times, connected to our times? The Japanese lost the Battle of Midway because they were not clear what they were in the eastern Pacific to do? Were they to destroy the four remaining American carriers in the Pacific or to take Midway Island as a prelude to invading Hawaii? They had not resolved that dilemma and, as a result, they made many halting missteps during that battle that cost them their four carriers and sent them reeling back to Japan. The Americans saw only one thing: get those carriers!

Worldly men can see that the times they are a-changing. Do we see as well? On D-Day, the shipyards of America had their first layoffs since 1939. They saw that the war was ending and we would not need liberty ships.

The New York Stock Exchange went through the roof that day, not on the basis of good news from the European Theater because it was too soon to know whether or not the landings had been successful, but because investors knew that the American economy soon would be converting back to a peace-time economy. The stocks of Sears, Roebuck and other retailers went through the roof (Dow Jones closed June 6, 1944, at 142, a record high), because investors knew that pent up demand for washing machines and stoves and houses would be unquenchable.

Are we that smart? Are we that visionary? In ten years, the National Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches will either be sitting on the sidewalk watching the parade go by or we will be marching along at a lively pace establishing churches and processing souls into the Kingdom of God at such a rate that we will have neither the time or presence of mind to sweep up after the elephants.

The choice is entirely ours. When Jesus rebuked the Jews for discerning the weather but being unable to discern the times in which they lived, was He also asking us a question?

"I don't know what to do!" can be a good thing

2005-03-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

In Larry Crabb's book, The Silence of Adam, he believes that, until a man comes to the place where he looks into the chaos of life and says to God (or anyone who will listen), "I don't know what to do!" he cannot begin to find God's will in his life. As long as a man can solve a problem with a quick fix, he will not truly need God's help nor will he desperately cling to the hem of God's robe: he will always think he can manage. With this attitude, God is only allowed to tag along as a helper to this man, and, until the man is without hope of solving his problem or problems, he will never know what it is like to rely completely and solely upon God.

Laugh, Clown, Laugh; Or the Use of Self-deprecating Humor in the Pulpit

2005-01-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

In twenty-four years in the pulpit, I have never told a joke. I may have fifteen more years and anticipate never telling a pulpit joke during that time, either. I know what you’re thinking, “No wonder his church is small!” I do, however, use a great deal of humor because I am convinced that laughter is a healing salve and all the people in my church are harboring private griefs, fears, discouragements, and disappointments. Doesn’t Proverbs 17:22 tell us this very thing: “A merry heart does good, like medicine . . . “ They need a break from the seeming hopelessness of their situations and part of my task as a preacher is to help them take a time out from the discouragements of life while giving them good counsel from the Bible and hope for the future. They need a break from their heartaches, and I mean to give them that from the pulpit. They also need to know that the person lecturing them on the Bible understands them and relates to them in the flesh. Humor allows us to connect on difficult issues concerning our common humanity without undue awkwardness.

When dealing with sin, disappointment, failure, or discouragement, humor can help us swallow hard truths from Scripture by sweetening to taste. One of the foremost theological writers of two generations ago, St. Mary of Poppins, in her Summa, wrote that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. I believe she was right.

The laughter for which I am looking is that which is self-deprecating, humor that makes me the focus of the joke. This can be dangerous if carelessly done: you may come off looking like a fool, and no one wants to listen to a fool, let alone follow one. In dealing with sin, you may inadvertently portray yourself as a pervert with a high reading on the yuck-o-meter, in which case you will, within weeks, evacuate your church. The balance is to describe an event in your life in a funny way that helps people identify with you as you describe one of your foibles. If they can laugh at you while seeing themselves, it is because you are giving them cause to believe that you understand them and that, if you see hope and victory for yourself, there is the same for them. All of a sudden, you are Everyman. This is the secret of self-deprecating humor: people will identify with you and laugh at themselves as they laugh with (not at) you. “If my pastor struggles with this problem or carries this pain and can still live in victory, then perhaps I can as well!”

This is equally effective when identifying with your church family in the universal struggle with sin and disbelief. Again, you do not want to expose yourself as an inveterate and hopeless sinner, but they must see you as a godly man who struggles against the sin within him, who lives in a Romans 7 world, but finds victory in spite of the intractable power of his fleshly sin nature. Self-deprecating humor allows us to admit to the reality of living in Romans 7 while enjoying the victory of Romans 8.

For the past year, I have been preaching my way through 1^st Corinthians. In teaching on the last half of chapter six (“flee sexual immorality”), I was reaching out to the men, some of whom are addicted to pornography or masturbation rather than meeting their God-given sexual needs by loving their wives sexually. One of my calls to action was for every man to read Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker’s book, Every Man’s Battle. One of Arterburn’s principles is that most men, ninety percent by his estimation, struggled with sexual purity: from an improper thought life, to pornography, to adultery. In my sermon, I referenced the passage in Job in which Job makes a covenant with his eyes (a man’s primary sex organs, by the way) that he might not look upon a young woman. Having done so, I described a scene in which I was at the gym and happened to forget that admonition and, staring at one of the mega-babes who inhabit World Gym, stumbled into one of the weight machines, making it obvious to all present what I had been doing. As soon as the laughter died down in the church, I knew then that I had the men where they needed to be because they identified with me, seeing themselves doing the very same stupid thing. All of the other “ninety-percenters” identified with my comic embarrassment. I could see it in their eyes. I could also see the looks of bewilderment in the eyes of the women. At the end of the service I had men coming forward simply to identify with me as a fellow “ninety-percenter.” Their coming forward was not an admission of guilt so much as an admission of their commitment to sexual purity when their sin nature was constantly striving to bring them down. Humor in the pulpit made their admission of need possible.

Since then, I have seen the eyes of the women in our church turn from bewilderment about what makes men tick to thankfulness that their pastor was willing to take the lead on admitting that he was a “ninety-percenter” and that their husbands felt they could now strive for victory over an ever-present sin. I do not know how many of our men are reading the book, but I do know that, since that Sunday, the local Christian bookstore has not been able to keep it in stock.

With Everyman in the pulpit, your congregation will be able to identify with you and see that you understand them and are not so far above them in holy perfection that there is no use in even making the attempt to be a super-saint like their pastor. Self-deprecating humor will make the connection without picturing yourself as a revolting, bottom-feeding pervert.

The pulpit is that place in which the most serious, heart-wrenching issues of life are covered. A healthy dose of comic relief makes it easier for people to hear what you are saying and to handle the issues you bring up. Your people do not want to come to church and hear their pastor decry the miseries of his endless failures; they face that despair every time they look in the mirror. They need a new perspective: victorious, godly people have the same sin nature and the same failures, and the same discouragements, and the same tendencies to hopelessness; but they live in victory because of Christ. Humor helps change that perspective for them.

Interestingly, the funniest scenes in Shakespeare’s plays are not found in his comedies, but in his tragedies. Shakespeare understood!

Self-deprecating humor takes skill to walk the fine line between identifying with others in a humorous manner and becoming a ridiculous clown or a despised and hopeless sinner. Such humor has a marvelous way of connecting with your congregation, showing them by your example that, in spite of being just like them, you can experience great victories over sin while admitting to the undeniable reality of an active sin nature.

Are we missing the big picture on relief of suffering?

2005-01-10T14:51:00.000-08:00

The tsunami that hit southern Asia recently has caused an enormous outpouring of aid, as it should. My question is, "what makes on disaster worthy of world aid and another unworthy?"
Numbers alone cannot be the determining factor. If such were the case, Cambodia during the time of the Killing Fields would certainly be right up there, but the West was largely unconcerned while 1.2 million Cambodians were systematically murdered. I have walked the Killing Fields and seen bones and clothing sticking out of the ground and wondered, "was this done in secret that it was allowed to continue for so long?"
Bangladesh, which suffered devastating losses during this recent disaster, has killing floods every year. We grow numb and unfeeling for the Bangladeshis because they are always being drowned." What else is new?" we ask.
Certainly the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Rwanda was not worthy, nor is the ongoing slaughter of tens of thousands in Dharfour worthy of help. Somalia was worthy of a little aid until President Clinton got cold feet and did not adequately support the military who were delivering the aid.
Here is my thinking. If God causes the suffering (such as the tsunami), we provide aid and some aging rock star writes a warm and fuzzy song about our common humanity which makes millions for charity and also revives his career. If man causes the suffering, then you're on your own: you don't get a song, you don't get a C-130 full of rice; you get bupkiss! I think the West is bored with warfare and the resultant suffering. We cannot get our minds around the universality of "man's inhumanity to man." Such constant wars and suffering are a constant reminder to us of our fallen state: we do not know peace! Helping out refugees caught up in a war only reminds us of how constant our evil remains and how hardwired its causes are in our lives.
Perhaps the disasters that receive the world's outpouring of aid are those which are media friendly or occur during a slow news week.
There must be a psychology behind which disaster receives help and which is ignored or given only a kiss and a promise, but I surely am unclear of the principal behind it.

Small Groups are a big thing

2005-01-07T11:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening, I met with our elders and discussed the establishment of a ministry of small groups within our church. Small groups are old news to most ministry-active churches, but I am always a little slow on the uptake.
Small groups is such an old idea in the Church that it is found in Acts 2 (especially verse 46). Even Martin Luther (in the German Mass, 1523), the patriarch of "alternative church," made a case for the small group meeting in the home:

[Those] who want to be Christians in earnest and who profess the gospel with hand and mouth… should sign their names and meet alone in a house somewhere to pray, to read, to baptize, to receive the sacrament, and do other Christian works. According to this order, those who do not lead Christian lives could be known, reproved, corrected, cast out, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ, Matthew 18. Here one could also solicit benevolent gifts to be willingly given and distributed to the poor, according to St. Paul’s example, II Corinthians 9. Here would be no need of much and elaborate singing. Here one could set out a brief and neat order for baptism and the sacrament and center everything on the Word, prayer, and love.

In an excellent web article on small groups, R. Neighbour gives five essentials for a small group (http://www.christianitytoday.com/smallgroups/articles/5essentials.html); they are:

· Relationships must be a priority.

· Leaders need adequate training.

· Everyone should be viewed as a leader.

· Healthy groups divide and multiply.

· The focus of the group should be living out the Gospel.

This obviously does not describe a home Bible study, but it does describe church in a very real sense. Tracy Grace Brethren Church will start with one small group and we will practice for a month until we feel ready to start groups two and three and beyond.
What an exciting opportunity to reinvent church the way Christ, the Head of the Church, originally designed it.

Reading books as ministry

2005-01-06T15:17:00.000-08:00

As a pastor of a medium-sized church (150-200), I often find myself behind the curve when it comes to innovative ministry; specifically, incorporating new people in the fellowship of the local church and reinvigorating the old timers.
One ministry opportunity that seems consistently to be missed is the reading of books. The impetus for this idea came from a lengthy discussion recently with an old friend. We started discussing Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and had a great deal of pleasure as we recounted the joys of reading Lewis. A week earlier, a friend in church gave me a book of short stories and essays by our most American of all curmudgeons, Mark Twain. There is so much in enjoyable literature that I hate to see the Church miss the opportunity to fellowship over a book that is not the Book.
Would it be possible to have a book club in a relaxed setting such as a coffee house in which a book is read and discussed by the participants? Would Christians join or are we as anti-intellectual as those in the world would like to think we are?
Such a book club would extend beyond a local church since you cannot find that many people in one church who would be willing to read and discuss books for pleasure.
Just a thought.

Christian community in a post-christian culture

2005-01-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

By what means does the Church continue to reach out to a culture that has rejected "church"? What the Church has to offer has always been needed by all humanity, but the interface of the Church with the world oftentimes prevents the world from hearing the message of life that the Church freely offers.
What we must do as followers of Christ is find the key that opens the door to our culture. I believe that key is found in a simple word that is used aggressively in the advertising of Starbucks and McDonalds. The word is "community." People want to belong. Remember Cheers? The place where everybody knows your name? Nothing has changed except for the greater need to feel as if one belongs in spite of living in a more and more alienated society. I hang out almost daily at a local Starbucks and everyone who works there knows my name. I realize that their world wont end if I stop coming in for one of their liquid candy bars, but it gives me a sense of community just sitting there with a book or working on my laptop on some project. Starbucks studiously learns the names of their customers and makes their customers feel like friends.
How do we establish such a sense of community within the Church, a Church not known by the world as friendly? The means is through small groups. Note that I did not say "home Bible studies." Small groups can produce a love for God's word, effective intercessory prayer, strengthening of families, members living out Christian service to each others and to others, members actively seeking the welfare of others, and the production of leaders for the Church. All of that done while providing a safe entry point to the Church: living rooms are less intimidating than sanctuaries.
The small group ministry is thoroughly discussed in nearly endless web sites, but one that I have found very helpful for me, a beginner, is http://www.christianitytoday.com/smallgroups/articles/whysmallgroupsareabigdeal.html.
Check it out!

2005: More of same or movement to destiny?

2005-01-01T10:41:00.000-08:00

Reading the opinions of many journalists, 2005 appears to be simply a repeat of 2004, only worse. For the Christian, history does not simply repeat itself, it is moving inexorably in a direction of God's intervention into man's history with the culmination leading to the establishment of His righteous Kingdom and the destruction of all wickedness. If such is true, we are one year closer to such a joyous time, making 2005 a year to embrace, not one merely to weather.
2004 ended with a terrible destruction caused by an earthquake and its resultant tsunami. The numbers being banded about are beyond anyone grasping: over 100,000 dead now and many to follow, and over five million made homeless, destitute, and hungry. As they start drinking the polluted water, deaths will rapidly increase from cholera and other such diseases.
How do we explain this great disaster in light of our understanding of a God of love and justice? The technical term for such a discourse is theodicy, the justification of a good God in the light of the presence of evil.
Christians, in describing such natural catastrophes, often couch their responses as, "God allowed this evil." But I believe that the Bible clearly teaches that God "caused the evil." And I can prove it!
Look at God's admission in Isaiah 45:5-7:
5 I am the LORD, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me,
6 That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting That there is none besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other;
7 I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the LORD, do all these things.'
The Hebrew word for calamity is translated "evil" in the Authorized Version but refers to natural calamity or evil, and certainly not moral evil. God caused, not merely allowed, the earthquake and tsunami. What were His purposes in bringing such suffering to so many people? I wish I could tell you. I know, however, that God does all things well and is motivated by love and righteousness. Thanks to a godly woman with whom I spoke at our Watchnight service yesterday, I gained a small insight. We, as Christians, have been praying for God to open up the 10-40 Window to the gospel. That window is from 10 degrees north latitude to 40 degrees north latitude and contains the greatest number of unreached people groups in the world. Could God be answering our prayers by knocking down idols and destroying pagan temples with a wall of water. Did we, through our prayers, cause the tsunami? I will answer that question with certainty within the next forty years when I shall be safely in heaven and knowing a great deal more than I do now.

Thinking out loud

2004-12-31T15:28:00.000-08:00

The affrontery of it all! Thinking that my cranial ramblings were worth the publishing to the world! What are my intentions for this blog? First of all, to express unrelated points of Christian doctrine or practice that do not automatically come up in my preaching and teaching schedule. Also, I wish to comment on the cultural news that always seems bad to us who are Christians. How should we respond to the issues that face us today such as same-sex marriage, the terrible tsunami (caused, not just allowed, by God) that devasted South Asia this past week, and the extent of inreach the Church has to the greater culture around us.