All posts by ljmonson

Life, Sermon Illustration

Kids and Grandkids – Prayer

My kids now have kids of their own.  My prayer is the same.  I want so much for them and I know the only answer to their modern situations, their modern pains, their modern struggles is God.

Heavenly Father, thank You for my kid’s salvation. Thank You for a plan that included them and part of that plan included You. Thank You that You have lavished Your riches and Your inheritance on them, although they could do nothing to earn it or deserve it.  They have their own wills, yet I am praying that you reach out to them and grasp them in your hands.  Provide your grace.

I pray for my kids’s legs to walk in step with your will. Always with You, not racing ahead, not lagging behind, not wandering off, but day-by-day walking with Jesus, so that He is their constant companion. God, take them where You want them to go and keep them from the places they shouldn’t go. Give them strength to continue when they feel weak. Give them courage to keep on walking with You, even when the road ahead looks uncertain and dim. Give them grace to bridge gaps, to leap walls, to span the separations between people and groups.

I pray for my kid’s feet, that You would place them where You want them to stand. Plant their feet on the immovable rock of Jesus. Talk to them when storms come or the world’s attractions try to lure them down its path. Whisper in their ears and to their spirits, “Stand firm.”

Through my kid’s arms, always do Your work. Strengthen them, hold them up, and direct them to do whatever You want them to do. Make their time valuable for eternity, not just the quick flash that is the span of their days on earth.

I pray for my kid’s hands that they will often fold them in prayer. Make them mighty in prayer. Teach them to pray after Your own heart. Enable them to live their lives so that everyone will see Your signature, “This one is the Lord’s.”

Give my kids the patience to wait on You, Lord, so that You may renew their spirits and they may soar as on eagle’s wings.

Give me the strength to continue in prayer for my kids.  I trust in your mercy and grace.  I live in faith that you will make a mighty difference in their lives.  My prayer is that they may know You.

AMEN

Bible Study, Preaching

Are we missing something here?

Open Letter to all that Preach and teach

There is an ongoing epidemic in church pulpits across the nation.  This sickness is not being addressed by preachers and teachers who are simply not willing to address the need for a cure. The pulpits rarely preach and teach about the greatest soul killer.  Subjects are hedged and avoided.  Here is a list that just is not heard anymore:

  • “Stop sinning!” — Jesus, John 5:14
  • “Flee fornication” — the apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 6:18, KJV
  • “God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” — Hebrews 13:4
  • “If you owe taxes, pay taxes” — the apostle Paul, Romans 13:7
  • “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature together with its passions and appetites.” — the apostle Paul, Galatians 5:24, Amplified
  • “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” — Jesus, Matthew 5:28
  • “…all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone” — the apostle John, Revelation 21:8
  • “Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error” — the apostle Paul, Romans 1:26b-27
  • Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery…” — the apostle Paul, Ephesians 5:18
  • “Do not let unwholesome [foul, profane, worthless, vulgar] words ever come out of your mouth…” — the apostle Paul, Ephesians 4:29, Amplified

I just don’t understand.  Why is it like it is? In Romans, Paul proclaims, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel.” Is that due to the fear of man? Is it a desire to please the hearers? It is that cowardly preachers are afraid of offending people? It is a conscious attempt to speak only uplifting things?

I leave that to your judgment.

2 Timothy 4:2-3  Preach the word… [3] For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

Life, Personal, Ramblings

Church growth and electric screwdrivers

1 Comment

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I often see something that needs to be fixed around the house.  I have all tools, I have the ability to look up the solutions, and I have the desire to get it done.  The results are not always the best; if you looked at my work the new braces on the fence may not be very straight, and that engine on the old truck finally gave up after working on it for six months.

But what I would like to vent on today is often in the middle of one project, I get distracted with another.  While working on the fence and putting new slats with an electric screwdriver, a distraction presents itself.  The very tool in my hand becomes a distraction.  Reminders of other screws that need tightening are brought to mind.  Matter of fact everything around me seems too need my screwdriver touch.

The church, it seems to me, is caught in the same trap.  There have been volumes of writings on Church Growth.  Seminars, educations, blogs, denominational studies on church growth abound.  They have become the electric screwdrivers of Evangelical Christianity.  “We can solve all our problems with increasing numbers.” Massive outputs of time, talent and treasure have been invested in this Church electric screwdriver.

Why is bigger always better? Why has it become the go-to answer for every church.  For that matter, has church growth become a solution looking for a problem?

I look at the Bible for answers.  What should be the pattern for today’s church?  There are amazing similarities between the first century church and the church today.  They had large churches and small churches.  There were healthy, sick and dead churches. There were churches with strong leaders, weak leaders, and even sinful leaders.  These churches worshiped God in imperfect ways.  There were arguments over beliefs and practices.  Some were in homes while others were big enough to gather in communal gatherings.

If there ever was a picture of variety, it was in the early church.  The church in Jerusalem, Corinth, Laodicea, Thessalonica and Ephesus had little in common outside of following scripture and practicing communion and water baptism.  Their goal was not building new edifices to gather in.  Church growth was never a solution.  It was a natural evidence of something else.

When a church was in trouble, when a church was not living up to the standards of Jesus the New testament writers did not exhort them to get bigger.  They were told the argumentative to get along.  The immoral church was told to repent.  The sinning church was warned of impending punishment.  Not once did Paul, Luke, John, or Peter ever tell a church in crisis to expand.

No New Testament writer ever told a sick, dying, sinful or hurting church to get bigger.  Church growth and church health are not equal.

Church growth is not the electric screwdriver that can fix a church that is not what it should be.  No early church leader ever pointed to church growth as the fix for problems.

Yes, I know that Jesus said to go out and make disciples and that would mean growth.  But a sick church is not helped or maybe even harmed by an in swell of more people.  John, when he addressed the challenges, sins and blessings of the seven churches in Revelation, never told any of them to grow.  No early church leader ever told any church – sick or healthy – to structure for growth. Not every church was growing. Many were barely hanging on, while staying faithful. But there’s not even a hint that the apostles saw their lack of numerical growth as evidence of a problem.

In fact, unless you’re looking at the New Testament through a modern, western church growth lens, it’s impossible to miss the fact that small, suffering churches were given far more praise for their faithfulness than large, growing churches were given for the numerical increase.

With my electric screwdriver in hand and everything around me needing a wood screw, it is easy to be distracted from the fence that needs fixing.  I believe that churches are supposed to grow.  But I do not think then next Church growth tool is the answer.  I believe that health not size is the emphasis of the first church and should be the emphasis of my church.

I’m merely raising a much-overlooked point about where we place our priorities.  The fence needs to be fixed before we worry about that new deck that is planned.

Have to go, the battery on my electric screwdriver is now charged.

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Life, Ramblings, Sermon Illustration

Hello Weekend with an Angel..

Not long ago my family joined in a long weekend in Bodega Bay, California.  One of the participants is the sweetest angel of a grand-daughter that God has ever given to a proud Pop Pop.  On the outside porch we were all talking, and being the demonstrative family we are our voices were verging on being loud.  The family was all looking out over the ocean in the distance and my grand-daughter was staring at us with the ocean behind her.  Well my little angel realized there were voices coming from behind her.  It was an echo.

She turned and at the top of her lungs she shouted, “Hello.”  And in rapid response came that same sweet voice right back.  It was a discovery of the innocent.  There was wonder in her eyes and her joy that gave me joy.  Her smile made me smile.  The rest of the weekend, she took every opportunity to stand facing the far distant ocean and shouted over and over, “Hello.”

She is yet too young to understand that while most people call this event just an echo, but it is much more than that.  It really is about life.  It gives back everything you say or do.  Our life is simply an echo of our actions and attitudes.

If you want more love in the world, create more love in your heart. If you want more joy in your family, improve your own joy. This relationship applies to everything, in all aspects of life; life will give you back everything you have given to it.”  My sweet angel’s smile was reflected by my smile.  Her joy was reflected back by my joy.

Life is not just a number of coincidences.  Life is a reflection of you.

 

Life, Music, Ramblings

Good News

In a day of depressing headlines and uncertainty all around us, good news is always welcome. The entertainment industry would have you believe we should be watching out for zombies, phasers, tooth decay, and the dreaded two-year-old car. If there was ever a time that society and my soul needed good news it is now.

I am a product of the Hymnal and some of the greatest thoughts outside of the Bible were ingrained into my mind was from hymns. What better news could there be that came from the old hymn : “The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives?” When Christians refer to the “Gospel” they are referring to the “good news” that Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for our sin so that we might become the children of God through faith alone in Christ alone. In short, “the Gospel” is the sum total of the saving truth as God has communicated it to lost humanity as it is revealed in the person of His Son and in the Holy Scriptures, the Bible. Truly Good News.

Ramblings

Just Saying!

Contemporary worship is framed by the simple definition of the word “contemporary” – “Of the times” (Webster). A contemporary song has a brief shelf life, and was intended to pass away, with the rare exception of a song that passes into “timelessness” because of its lyrical content and extraordinary musical composition.

Just Saying!

Life, Sermon Illustration, Theology

Absurd

ab·surd

adjective

    wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate.

   “the allegations are patently absurd”

    synonyms:      preposterous, ridiculous, ludicrous, farcical, laughable, risible, idiotic, stupid, foolish, silly, inane, imbecilic, insane, harebrained, cockamamie;

It just does not make sense.

I am a man without parents.  They are both deceased. I am an orphan. But, you would say, “most people out live their parents.”  Sure, but it is more than that.  I am an orphan in other ways. To my knowledge man, (and I use that as a generic term for human kind), is the only creature in the universe who asks, “Why?” Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has learned to ask questions. “Who am I?” man asks. “Why am I here? Where am I going?” Generations have come and gone. There have been repeated efforts to eliminate anything that would amount to authority. More and more are trying to throw off the metaphorical shackles of religion.  But the questions still exist.  If there is no God, “Shy am I here? And Where am I going?”  still need answers.

If we take God out of the answer, if we try to answer the questions of life without reference to God we are faced with dismal answers. The answers are not hopeful, helpful, encouraging, but dark and terrible. Without God in the answer then man is nothing more than the accidental by-product of nature, a result of matter plus time plus chance. There is no reason for your existence. All you face is death.

Modern man thought that when he had gotten rid of God, he had freed himself from all that repressed and stifled him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had also killed himself. For if there is no God, then man’s life becomes absurd.

The absence of God means that both man and the universe has but one end.  And that end is death.  Man like a bug hiding under a rock, must die. Without a hope for immortality there is just bleakness and despair.  Might as well “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow die.” Like Shakespeare said in Macbeth:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Without God we are just food for the worms, a flash amid the thousand stars, lost amid the blackness. If you push out God you also push out eternity.

Call me absurd but, for me there has to be more than that.

I know not why God’s wondrous grace to me he hath made known,

nor why, unworthy, Christ in love redeemed me for his own.

But I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able

to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.

I know not how this saving faith to me he did impart,

nor how believing in his word wrought peace within my heart.

But I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able

to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.

I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing us of sin,

revealing Jesus through the word, creating faith in him.

But I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able

to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.

I know not when my Lord may come, at night or noonday fair,

nor if I walk the vale with him, or meet him in the air.

But I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able

to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.

Words: Daniel W. Whittle

Music: James McGranahan

Church, Sermon Illustration

Church and Grace

The minister in a small town who stopped one Sunday at a café to eat something and had his Bible and sermon notes to read through. A man sitting in the corner yelled out “are you a preacher or something?

“Yes” he said,” I preach at the Christian Church here in town.” 

He got excited and said,”Hey, I’m a member of that church.” 

The church was small and the preacher knew all the regulars .. “I’ve been preaching there for about three months and I’ve never seen you there.”

The other man looked a bit puzzled and said to the Minister ..  “I said I was a member of that church.  I never said that I was fanatical about it!”

The church may be seen as old fashioned or boring, but it still is God’s plan. Let me quote Philip Yancey “Yes, the church fails in its mission and makes serious blunders precisely because the church comprises human beings who will always fall short of the glory of God. That is the risk God took. Anyone who enters the church expecting perfection does not understand the nature of that risk or the nature of humanity. Just as every romantic eventually learns that marriage is the beginning, not the end, of the struggle to make love work, every Christian must learn that church is also only a beginning.”

The church with all its foibles is still filling the gap that no one else seems to want to step into.  The church should and has to provide a place for grace. It is a place where the past does not dictate the future.  It is a place where acceptance is first and foremost.  Grace, the unmerited favor of God. It is the free offer to the hopeless for hope.  It is a free offer of love to the most unlovely. It is a free offer of peace in a world trying to pull itself apart.  The one thing the church should do is offer grace .. that wonderful God quality that lifts people up to a new life full of hope and joy.. something that can change their lives forever.

I am just trying to discover why people who need Jesus the most don’t like being around us? Why do we make them feel so uncomfortable, so out of place? In what ways is God calling us in the church to be a more grace-full community when the wounded are in our midst? If only we could share the truth of Jesus to more people in the words of John 1:14 “The Word became a human being and lived here among us. We saw His true glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father. From Him all the kindness and all the truth of God have come down to us”. That’s the message of the church that people need to hear.

 

Church, Ramblings

Exodus and the Chosen leaving the church

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I was just reading the story of the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt. You know the story. It started with “Let my people go” and the stubbornness of Pharaoh followed by plagues. Finally, after God killing off the first born of Egypt, Pharaoh let them go. The chosen people packed all their stuff and left.
But Pharaoh had second thoughts when he realized there would be no one to build his temples, no one to clean and keep up the property. There would be no one to harvest the crops. It was a bad thing to be on the other side of that great Exodus. I can see the panic in the faces of all the Egyptians because the very people they had depended to do the menial and the mundane were moving out.
Sort of like what is happening in the American Church today. Those who have been the ones to carry the burdens are dying off, and the next generation is not there to pick up the slack. The Church looks out the palace window and only see a massive exodus.
Like the Egyptian’s, the church has seen the warnings. Great plagues of modernism, relativism, and entertainment was not enough to keep the keepers of the kingdom placated. I can almost hear the travail of the ones left behind as they see the numbers dwindle, the cash flow slows, and the talent was disappearing. Like Pharaoh, the leaders figured if we do one more program or one more campaign we can make do with what we have. New efforts are made to entice the fence sitters to become the new servants now in the desert on their way to the promised land. Pharaoh tries to manufacture passion from the shrinking faithful.
There have been hundreds of surveys, papers, books, and studies as to why the numbers are just not the same. Some would blame the culture. The all permeating, all powerful perversity of the media is poisoning the culture in which we live. When people move out, or even silently simply walk softly into the night; you think that the gays and the Muslims and the Atheists and the pop stars have so screwed up the morality of the world that everyone is abandoning faith in droves.
Church this is not the reason there are fewer seats in the pews.
The world is not the problem it is the church. The world in which the Church lives has always been bad. If anything, it is easier now than any other time in history.
So what is the problem?
First the church has imperceptibly moved from its very foundation. We have become one more infotainment venue. The stage, and the lights, and the bands, and the video screens, have all just become white noise to those really seeking to encounter God. In the effort to be more relevant we have become more irrelevant. The morning service has become no more than ear and eye candy for an hour, but they have so little relevance in people’s daily lives that more and more of them are taking a pass.
Yeah, the songs are cool and the show is great, but ultimately Sunday morning isn’t really making a difference on Tuesday afternoon or Thursday evening, when people are wrestling with the awkward, messy, painful stuff in the trenches of life; the places where flashy video displays simply don’t help.
We can be entertained anywhere. “I can get more entertainment on TV.” Until you can give us something more than a Christian-themed performance piece—something that allows us space and breath and conversation and relationship—many of us are going to sleep in and stay away.
Second on the list of problems is the very language we use is exclusionary. There is a spiritualized insider language that puts distance between the haves and have nots. And putting them on a big video display does not make it better.
Our language should be very simple. Churchy words and about eschatological frameworks and theological systems don’t help. Talk to them plainly about love, and joy, and forgiveness, and death, and peace, and God, and they’ll be all ears. Keep up the church-speak, and you’ll be talking to an empty room soon.
We need you to speak in a language that we can understand. There’s a message there worth sharing, but it’s hard to hear above your verbal pyrotechnics.
Next in my list of issues is that the church sees itself as a building. The walls are not sacred. The high tech sound system, and video displays are not the church. Hiring a children’s director because no one seems to love children is not the church. All the money seems to be spent on the things inside of the church, but the 140 some odd waking hours a Christian has cannot be met with one or two hours of entertainment in well-appointed pews with the temperature just right to keep us from falling asleep.
If our goal is to have better Jesus-stuff than the church down the street’s Jesus-stuff, then we have missed the mark. Most of the churches money, time, energy seems to be about luring people into the church instead of reaching people where they are.
The church needs to reach out, to forsake the family centers and go to the families that are hurting. The greatest mission field is just a few feet outside of the walls.
While I am on my soap box, let me tell you the church is fighting the wrong battles. I know from firsthand experience that the church likes to fight. Onward Christian Soldiers. We know you like to fight, Church. The problem you are fighting the wrong battles. The fights you choose are just not worthy of your energy. It is easier to put up a sign against the latest social injustice. Or even worse, you pick fights between yourselves in the name of theological orthodoxy. We make stands against all kinds of evil. From homosexuality to what entertainment should be viewed by the masses. And in the meantime there are hungry on our streets. Every day we see a world suffocated by poverty, and racism, and violence, and bigotry, and hunger; and in the face of that stuff, you get awfully, frighteningly quiet. We wish you were as courageous in those fights, because then we’d feel like coming alongside you; then we’d feel like going to war with you.
I don’t know where I found this but it rings true, “Church, we need you to stop being warmongers with the trivial and pacifists in the face of the terrible.”
The last reason the pews are slowly becoming empty is that church love doesn’t look much like love. It is terribly selective. The pattern of the through the ages has followed a simple formula: 1. BELIEVE, 2. BECOME 3. BELONG. You had to believe before you allowed to become a part and once you get to a place in your life where you have arrived (become) you could find a place to belong. It was spawned out of the persecution of the church where you had to be extremely vetted to enter into the church. But I would submit we need to change. Jesus did it differently.
Jesus hung around the riff raff of society. The disciples did not believe Jesus was God until the last. They saw Him as the Messiah but not until the resurrection did they finally figure it out. Jesus’ methodology was to include everyone provide them a place to BELONG. He created a place of acceptance. Belong, Believe, Become
It feels like a big bait-and-switch sucker-deal; advertising a “Come as You Are” party, but letting us know once we’re in the door that we can’t really come as we are. We see a Jesus in the Bible who hung out with lowlifes and prostitutes and outcasts, and loved them right there, but that doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea.
There seems to be an unwritten list of do and don’ts that must be checked off before you will include some. The church seems a little exclusionary. Can the church love those that cuss and drink and get tattoos, and God forbid, vote Democrat? Is there a place for the great unwashed? Is there a place for the broken family? Is there a place for those who are sinners?
Now before you get all in a huff and label me a person that just doesn’t get it. Or start to judge me for my opinions, remember that is the problem. There is no place for disagreement, there is no place of discussion. It is your way or the highway.
Even if we are the woman in adultery, or the doubting follower, or the rebellious prodigal, or the demon-riddled young man, we can’t be anything else right now in this moment; and in this moment, we need a Church big enough, and tough enough, and loving enough; not just for us as we might one day be then, but for us as we are, now.
Maybe you’re right, Church.
Maybe I am the problem.
Maybe it is me, but me is all I’m capable of being right now, and that’s where I was really hoping you would meet me.

Church, Denominations, Music, Ramblings, Worship

Rightly Dividing

9 Comments

I am human.  I have likes and dislikes.  I have preferences and predilections. I like historical understandings over hypothetical surmise. I would rather see real people in real situations over contrived and grandiose stories of dubious relevance.  I want the real over perception.

I have been accused to stirring up a little dust once and awhile.  But sometimes I become dissatisfied with all the plans and programs that live in the dusty edges of the church.  They become the more important.  The process of church growth seems to leave out the offer of God’s grace. The vital understanding of God is not in the forefront any more.  I thirst after the teachings and personal encounters with God and not another emotional pulling at my heart strings by one more repetition of five or six words.

The problem is that everyone of us want to “feel good.”  Bless the hearts of preachers and leaders of the church today.  They have a weighty calling and ever increasing pressure to “increase the flock.” At issue is the easiest way to get people to come the doors of a church and keep that attendance is cater to the “feel good” motive.  Ministers would rather empower with strength than to point out the foibles of a congregation.  No one wants their pet sin to be pointed out.  Much like the story of the Pastor in a rural farming town as he was shaking every hand as the congregation was going out the back door.  One unkempt farmer came up to the Pastor and said, “That was a great message Pastor, it was short and about someone else.”

It is all about programs and studies.  If we make the right graph in the monthly board meetings it will be enough to steer the church to success.  If we can categorize, pigeon hole, and delegate enough to keep the doors open, then that is good enough.  We don’t need spirit filled bible warriors.  We don’t need to study to rightly divide the Word of Truth.  We just need another subjective well-presented current psychobabble in three points with fill in papers in the bulletin.  Don’t ask me to think, just do what is expected and that should be good enough.

Youth and children’s programs are stressed because if kids can be kept happy and entertained, mom and pop are much more likely to stay put. Serious in depth deep dive bible study and sermons about bible doctrine are avoided! Let’s cut down on all that prayer time.  The Hymnal is just not relevant anymore. Crank up the canned and amplified music; made up of repeated lyrics set to the world’s latest music. Get toes to tapping and watch visitors come pouring in each Sunday. Then be sure to accentuate the emotional. Touch every psychological button possible with “feel good” sermons and viola! pretty soon a building program will be necessary. If declaring the whole counsel of God while at the same time trying to avoid the flesh is not enough to fill the pews, then let them remain empty! A few grains of wheat should be treasured above a ton of tares!