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

5 Comments

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!

Ministry, Ramblings, Sermon Illustration

Decisions are never easy.

3 Comments

All my decisions no matter how they were made, have not been always the best.  I have made lots of bad decisions in my life.  These decisions were made when I was young and not so young.  Some were made in the ministry, while others were made in the business world.  I have made bad decisions pertaining to my family and even in my marriage.  I have never set out to make a bad decision. My methodology of decision making changed over the years but sometimes one will raise itself up and bite me on the behind.  Some bad decisions I have made resulted in personal despair and some have even been repeated with an expectation of better results; but not very often has the result changed.

So what can I do to improve my decision making process?  How can I make them and significantly increase the quality?

In my experience, there are a few common factors that lead to me making a bad decision.

Haste is the enemy of good decisions – Some would say that the mark of a good leader is the ability to make a quick decision. We want to make the decision to overcome the anxiety of indecision.  I often find myself wanting to make a decision just to get out of the responsibility for making it. I completely understand the need for decisions in a crisis.  When the avalanche is coming your way, it is probably better to run, then to assess the percentage of survivability based on the gross weight of the mass coming in my direction.  But these avalanche decisions are far and few between. I have discovered when the potential outcome is significant, however, the more time I can give to it the less likely I am to make a mistake.  And the vast majority of conclusions should not be made ad hoc. In my experience, taking an extra moment has improved the outcomes. Learning when to wait, seek God, the counsel of others, and for better personal discernment is part of maturing, but can help us avoid some of the costlier bad decisions.

Analysis paralysis  – In as much as we have to slow down in our analysis, so also we must not be set in stone waiting for all the information to be available. Waiting on all the facts to made available slows and even stops progress. There are times when a fast decision is easy; even prudent. If I know the right answer—if it has a Biblical basis, for example, or my conscience is clearly convicted but we become reticent to implement because it would mean a lot of work.  Work for me and work for others. I’ve learned that waiting seldom makes the decision easier and often only complicates the process. There has to be a medium between not to fast and not to slow. Again, from my experience some decisions make matters worse by delaying them.

Happy People – All of the decisions I have made in the past have had people implications.  I have yet to make a decision that everyone agreed with. Management, leadership, decision making is seldom the popular position to take. People pleasing as a decision motivator rarely accomplishes matters of worth. It often makes the worst decision of the options available.

Angry Decisions – I am not a very emotion person in my senior years.  When I was younger you probably would have seen a completely different personality.  I was angry often.  I would lash out in retribution towards all that didn’t agree with me.  In my mind I could hear, “I will be a better friend than an enemy.” Often emotions were the downfall of my process. If I’m angry—or emotional in any other way—I tend to overreact or under react. Emotionally based decisions, especially immediate decisions, are often ones I tend to regret later.

Without consultation – “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Proverbs 15:22). Two things here.  I have worked with committees, boards, councils, and assemblies.  True, I may have an opinion but I also must have the ability to allow others to change my mind.  “Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind has been made up,” is not a good place to be. Secondly, a part of leadership is standing alone at times, never-the-less rarely are we really alone. We should always walk in the counsel of God’s Spirit.  If it is only up to me to stand in the leadership gap and none are included or even allowed to make the decision.  I have come to the realization that God is there.

Reaction or Adhocracy – Ultimately I want to work from a plan. I work best from a script.  A set of absolutes to which I will not move.  And no matter the passion, conviction, and verbiage, there is a line I will not cross. I need to be in a place where decisions are made before before the decision is needed. We want proactive decision-making. That’s obviously not always possible, but in my experience, I’m more likely to make a bad decision when I’m reacting to a situation, rather than having thought about the scenario and my response beforehand.

Perfect Love casts out fear – We are called to walk by faith, yet fear is often a more powerful initiator. But I’ve learned, when I decide because I’m afraid to—or not to—do something, I almost always make a mistake. Following my faith gut, even when afraid, is part of leadership. And part of life.

There are probably a hundred or more different ways to make a bad decision and only a few ways to make a good decision.  But for me this is my decision making list.

Preaching, Sermon Illustration, Theology, Worship

Home Plate and God

Kids today are introduced to sports at earlier and earlier in their lives. Sports teach valuable lessons on teamwork, creates opportunities to get exercise, and gets them out of the house.  When I was young, and that was a very long time ago, my first organized sport was baseball. In our little town, there were two levels of Little League: National League and American League.  All the good kids, the ones that actually had talent were all in the National League and the not so talented were in the lower American League.  The year I started I was in the not so good group.  For some unknown reason the coach decided that I was going to be the catcher.

I played in the American League for two years and finally moved up to the big league.  I never moved out of the role of catcher.  I learned the game from the side of the plate most don’t see.  All the other players had positions inside of the playing field.  Only the catcher has a position outside of the foul lines.

Since that time, I have played both baseball and softball.  Most of the time I always was outside of the lines.  Once in a while I pitched, but most of the time you could find me squatting down behind the batter with a mask, a breast protector, knee pads and waiting on someone else to do something.

The game has changed much from a little kid with a wood bat to modern aluminum double walled nitrogen filled force multiplying bats of vengeance.  But one thing has not changed.  The home shaped base where everything started and ended never changed.  It was always seventeen inches wide.  In the first year of the American League to now that seventeen-inch-wide white home plate has always been the same. Uniforms would change, bats would change, even the ball changed, but the plate stayed the exact width of seventeen inches.

If a pitcher would miss the edge of the plate it was not up to the umpire to make the strike zone a little wider because the pitcher was outside by only an inch.  The strike zone was defined by the width of the plate and the plate was always seventeen inches.  The strike zone was not fungible because the plate did not change.  It was a constant.  No matter what park you went to, no matter what game you saw on the television it was unalterable.

During all of those games and practices, I noticed something.

The plate was one of the most holy things in baseball.  It was holy because it was unchangeable.  It was always an absolute part of every game, the size and position of the plate was immutable.  It was holy because it was set apart from opinion; it was not dependent upon public opinion.  It was holy because majority rule did not dictate the width.  A pitchers preference has no bearing on it.  No one can change it.  It is sacrosanct from the smallest Little Leaguer, to the big show of the major leagues.

So what does this mean to theology?  What can we learn? If a man made game can consider something as small as the width of a piece of rubber being holy, what does God consider as Holy?  What does God set as his seventeen-inch home plate?  What does God consider Holy?  For that matter is raises the question of “Why is it Holy to God?”  And one more step in our rise to understanding, “Are God’s concept of Holy the same as my concept of Holy?”

Quickly here is a list that I believe is on the God’s Home Plate list.

You are holy.

If you are a follower of Christ, you have been bought with a price.  You are united with Christ and you are now holy because God’s holiness is your holiness.  You because of your acceptance of a free gift from God you are “set apart for a purpose.”

Human life is holy.

God’s plan was to create life that would be his.  Every beating heart matters to God.   It does not matter if that heart is in the chest of a prisoner, in the chest of an elderly senior in a convalescent home, in the chest of a great theologian, in the chest of a child in the womb of a mother.  All are holy to God

Marriage is holy.

When the officiant speaks of holy matrimony, it is not by mistake. Marriage is a set apart relationship.  That is true for good marriages or not so good.  It is not stretched to a different dimension just because the pitcher would like to be a little wider.  I believe that marriage even if there has been betrayal, or other circumstances that have broken trust, marriage is still holy.

The Sabbath is holy.

It is God’s dimension of our lives to take a day off.  Six days are enough.  And now that I am older I am thinking one and a half may suit me better.  But at last one day for God as the only focus of my life is what is designed.

Our tithe is holy.

“A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD.” (Leviticus 27:30 NIV) The first ten per cent of everything you earn is, in God’s eyes, holy money. We never give it to God, we return what is already his. The tithe is holy.

The name of God is holy.

God’s name is holy.  It is not to be used in a slur or in a time of frustration.  The use of God’s name in profanity is simply making something holy to extend into the unholy.  It dilutes the holy name of God; it rubs the shine of His Glory of the beauty of God.  The world would like the children of God to be so common that God’s holy name becomes common.

The Holy things of God are few and many.  But they must be the same as they were in the old times and the modern.  As the width of the home plate will always stay at seventeen inches, so God will be the same and with that unchangeability comes the Holy things of God.

Our world around would have us change the definition of life not to include the unborn.  Sex outside of marriage is seen as the normal.  We work every day with the expectation to rest latter and we are rewarded for it by a bigger paycheck.  We want make it a free will offering and not a tithe. People become disposable.  Life becomes more of an existence instead of something to please God.  Everything of the world would have us say “that home plate is old school.”  “We need to make is broader so everyone can get a better shot at winning.”

The width of home plate is not up for discussion, neither is God’s call to holiness.

Life, Ramblings, Sermon Illustration

New Day New Chance

Every day is a new opportunity for a second chance.  In life, God allows and desires U turns. Every day as you wake know that it is not over.  God wants you to be more than you were yesterday.  It is never too late to change.  No matter how far you have come.  No matter what you have become.  It does not matter how big a failure you may thing you are.  No matter what others may think or say about you.

God gives us two gifts.  The first one is choice and the second is chance.  A choice of a good life and a chance to make it the best it can be.

Every morning that you wake up it is a another chance to get it right.

Dear past: Thank you for your lessons.

Dear Future: I am now ready

Dear Now: God thank you for another chance.

Oh God of the second chance and new beginnings, here I am…. again.

Ramblings, Theology

Judgement

There is a difference between discernment and judgement.  Further more there is a fine line between them.  I believe you can and should discern that which you encounter in our lives and things in our lives.  I also believe we should not and can not judge anyone. So what is the difference.  In the process of discernment, if the examination includes a comparison and yourself, you have reached the line.  And the moment you think yourself as being better you have crossed the line.  The difference between examination and condemnation, the difference between discernment and judgement is comparison to self.

The Study of God and Life