I believe that the preaching of the Word of God changes the world.  I believe individuals, neighborhoods, cities and nations are changed by the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  For in preaching the good news of Jesus Christ (which is ultimately what any biblical text preaches), it turns out that we are participating with the living God in God’s ongoing transformation of the world.  –Darrell Johnson, The Glory of Preaching

Have you ever thought about the fact that the Bible makes much of the activity called preaching? 

Isaiah was a preacher, as were Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and a host of other Old Testament voices.  When John the Baptist shows up, he is preaching (Matthew 3:1).  Jesus claims at the outset that he was sent to preach (Luke 4:18-19), and eventually he sent his disciples out to do the same (Luke 9:2). Look at the early church and you find a high priority placed on preaching.  Paul sees his very conversion as a call to preach the gospel to the nations (Galatians 1:16).  And later in his life, the apostle passes the mantle to his young friend Timothy, exhorting him to preach the Word in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2).

And now, twenty centuries later, preaching is still a world-shaping, disciple-making, soul-changing, and church-driving gift from God to his people.  A healthy church is built on its preaching, on the steady and systematic proclamation of God’s Word.  It is really quite shocking if you think about it.  With all of our technology, with our dazzling media, with the colors and sights and sounds available to us, thousands upon thousands of believers nevertheless gather each Sunday and sit still and listen.  Why?

Something happens in preaching that happens nowhere else.  Again from Darrell Johnson, When we preach, when we dare to say again what the living God says, the Word and Spirit make something happen.  The going forth of the Word and the breathing by the Spirit are God coming to make something happen, to make salvation happen.  Preaching is to the church what ballast is to a sailboat.  A sailboat goes forward and doesn’t tip over because as the wind fills its sails, the sails are counterbalanced by a lot of weight in the hull.  Churches move forward into the world, into mission, into compassion ministry, and into a thousand other activities, in large part because these activities of the church are driven by the ballast of preaching!

Last month, I went to Ethiopia and taught a class to several seminary professors on the how-to’s of biblical preaching.  Somewhere on the flight home, I found myself thinking, If my class was about the art of preaching, what about the art of listening? Since there is a gift of preaching, does it not follow that there is a gift of listening?  If preaching is so important biblically and historically, how then should we listen?  I offer the following:

Come prepared.  Probably the best way to listen to a sermon, to receive from it what God has for you in it, is to come prepared.  And, to be deliberately redundant, coming prepared requires some preparation.  It means getting a good night’s rest before the early service; it means not coming frantic and frazzled to whichever service we attend.  If we try to squeeze in a run to Costco or are fighting traffic on the way back from Camarillo before we come to the afternoon service, we are in no position to really hear what God has to say to us through his Word.  It is difficult to hear God speak when you come to worship fatigued, famished, and frenzied.  Hearing God’s voice when his Word is proclaimed usually requires the three Rs of preparation: rest, read, and request.  Show up having rested on God’s Sabbath.  Read the passage several times and meditate upon it.  And request that God speak to you through the preacher.  Ask that he will use this ancient medium to incline your heart toward him.

Bring and open your Bible.  And bring a Bible made out of paper.  The Bible is God’s Word to us and for us.  Bring your Bible, look up the cross references, circle important words, jot a note or two in the margins.

Listen like a Berean.  On Paul’s second missionary journey, he was chased out of Thessalonica.  His next stop was Berea, and, as was his habit, he continued to preach the gospel.  The author of Acts tells us that the Bereans received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so (20:11).  In other words, they tested the words of Paul against the rest of the Scriptures.  The Bereans were critical thinkers, and they were commended for their circumspection.  They wanted to make sure that what Paul said was consistent with what the rest of the Bible said, and so should we when we listen to preaching and preachers.  That’s why our Bible needs to be open along with our mind.

Listen like a child.  Jesus said that to get into the kingdom of God, we have to be like little children (Matthew 18:4).  If you think about it, children ask lots of questions.  They are, indeed, little Bereans.  What separates children from so-called grown-ups is not that children don’t ask questions, but that they accept the answers.  There is a receptivity in children that Jesus commends.  When we hear the preaching of God’s Word, we need to listen receptively, asking, God, what do you want to say to me in this moment?

Take note, not notes.  If you listen better by jotting things down, fair enough: take notes.  When I listen to Steve or one of our other preachers open God’s Word, I always take notes. At all three services I take notes!  And then I promptly throw them away.  A sermon is not to be a lecture, and I am not to listen like a student.  But I am to take note of what God said:  What is God saying to me?  How will I employ and apply what God says to me?  This is what it means to take note.

Test your listening.  The Scriptures are full of passages that speak of God’s Word going forth and not coming back void.  God promises us, for example, that his Word will accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:11).  But this accomplishment must pass through the doors of a soft heart, a receptive spirit, an alert mind, and an eager soul.  The test of our listening is found in our living.  Are we hearers of the Word only? Or are we doers of God’s will as revealed in his Word?

Scottish preacher James Stewart pondered the benefits of godly preaching.  He concluded that such preaching aims to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.  May it be so in our church and in our lives.

A central tenant of SBCC has been what we have referred to as the priesthood of the believer or every member ministry.  These two terms, which we use synonymously, reflect a crucial teaching of the Bible that cuts to the core of our belief, practice and spiritual self-image.  To understand the problem, we need to review some church history.

The early church began as a band of brothers and sisters set free to function as the ministers of this new community. The ministries of evangelism, service to the poor, spiritual encouragement, confession, discipleship, prayer, mission, teaching, etc., were performeded by average believers who knew they were empowered and gifted by the Holy Spirit for these areas of service. Unfortunately, through a long and rather complex series of events and a certain mindset, what began, as a beautiful new community where every member of the church understood himself or herself to be a minister, morphed into an unbiblical hierarchal structure that robbed God’s people of their priestly identity.  By the 16th century, this drift toward a divisive distinction between the clergy and laity, the priest and common believer, the spiritual professional and the lowly amateur Christian, had created such a gulf that the Biblical teaching that all Christians are ministers was largely lost. It was the 16th century Protestant Reformation that began to salvage the authority of the Bible and the identity of God’s people. 

It was the iconoclastic Augustinian monk Martin Luther who began to upset the religious status quo.  Luther’s rediscovery of biblical teaching on the priesthood of every believer was explosive.  Luther plainly stated, Everyone who has been baptized may claim that he already has been consecrated a priest, bishop or pope.  (Luther was not a friend of the Pope or of church hierarchy!)  He went on to assert, Let everyone, therefore, who knows himself to be a Christian be assured of this, and apply it himself—that we are all priests, and there is no difference between us.

The application of the every member ministry was twofold.  First, all believers have direct access to God.  It is in the Protestant air we breathe that Christians do not need a human mediator to plead our case before God.  Jesus is our high priest and has opened the way to God by presenting himself as a sacrifice for our sin.  As Greg Ogden puts it, We are all drawn into the priesthood in that we represent ourselves before God through one intermediary, Jesus Christ.  (Unfinished Business: Returning the Ministry to the People of God, p. 18)  Second, the priesthood of all believers means that we are also priests and ministers to each other in the church and in the world.  In other words, it is the average believer such as, the homemaker, the business person, those in sales, in construction, school teachers, and mechanics who have gifts and a calling from God to function as ministers.

One of the key New Testament passages that point to an every member ministry is Ephesians 4:11-12.  It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service (ministry), so that the body of Christ may be built up.  The apostle Paul is saying that works of ministry or service are to be done by all of God’s people who are the church.  (The Greek word translated service is derived from diakonia, which is also translated ministry)  The apostle Peter refers to all Christians as a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5) and a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) who have both the right and the responsibility to declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9).  Paul’s first letter to the believers at Corinth affirms to this immature church that they are in fact all saints who are gifted and empowered by the Holy Spirit to minister in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12).

The New Testament teaching that all Christians are ministers is both comforting and demanding.  It is comforting in that the believer can be confident of his or her new identity, calling, and giftedness to actually function in the church in a life-changing way.  Once the believer understands that he doesn’t have to go to seminary, or have a title, to serve Jesus there is a true liberation.  On the other hand this teaching can be demanding, even troublesome.  Many of us would prefer to just go to church and leave the work of ministry to others, or even to the paid pastoral staff. Going to church happens when we reduce the Christian life toan hour and a half of Christianity on Sunday morning or afternoon. We can sing a few songs, hear a palatable sermon, pray a little, take the Lord’s Supper, chat on the patio with a cup of coffee and then go home and on to real life.  Repeat this religious ritual next Sunday.  Here is the wonderful and uncomfortable truth.  The health of SBCC is contingent on its members understanding and functioning as ministers.  To the extent that our church understands and lives out this delightful reality, SBCC will be a healthy growing body of believers.  The day we forget who we are and give up on this life-changing truth, we will fade into religious institutionalism. 

Practically speaking, what does the priesthood of every believer, every member ministry mean?  Quite simply it means that each one of us are Holy Spirit-gifted and empowered to evangelize our next door neighbor, teach the Bible to your co-worker, work with a Young Life club or Alpha group, visit our fellow believer in the hospital bringing comfort and prayer, hear the confessions of a fellow sinner, lead a Homegroup (or any other small group), disciple a fellow believer, direct the church in worship, start a prayer group, begin a ministry outreach to your neighborhood, mentor someone at the Rescue Mission, and a hundred and one other ministry ideas that I don’t have space to list.  Why can you do all this?  Because you are a minister!

It is important to mention what every member ministry does not mean.  It does not mean that all believers are gifted in the same way.  It does not mean that everyone is called to the same ministries.  There are a variety of callings and giftedness. 

Every member ministry does not mean that all Christians are pastors.  It was Elton Trueblood, a champion of every member ministry, who pointed out this fallacy: 

There is always the temptation to suppose that the early Christian emphasis required then or requires now a denial of difference of function.  Why not say that all Christians are supposed to be ministers and leave it at that?  Why not deny the need of pastors at all?  The earliest Christians were far too realistic to fall into this trap, because they saw that, if the ideal of universal ministry is to be approximated at all, there must be some people who are working at the job of bringing this highly desirable result to pass.  The office of pastor is for those, who possess the peculiar gift of being able to help other men and women to practice the ministry to which they are called. (The Incendiary Fellowship, p. 40)

There is a crucial question every believer must ask. Who am I?  How do you see yourself actually functioning in the church and in the world? Do you see yourself as a second-class citizen in the church, waiting for others to take care of the business of the kingdom of God?  Or do you see yourself as a vital member of church living out your new calling as a minister?  The extent to which the priesthood of the believer has teeth at SBCC will be dependent on how you answer these questions.

This wonderful and liberating New Testament teaching is dependent on each believer understanding his or her spiritual identity.  Greg Ogden suggests that when Christians get a firm grasp on their priestly calling as ministers it will result in a new Reformation.  The New Reformation seeks nothing less than the radical transformation of the self-perception of all believers so that we see ourselves as vital channels through whom God mediates his life to other members of the body of Christ and to the world.  (Unfinished Business: Returning the Ministry to the People of God, p. 18)  So I ask each member of SBCC:  Do you know who you are?

First came recreational sex.  With the advent of the birth control pill in 1960, women could now—the argument went—enjoy sex without the threat of conception. The pill was thought to be a savior to women weighed down and held back by the burden of childrearing.  Sex was set free from the shackles of pregnancy.  But these same women were betrayed with a kiss.  Men enjoyed, so to speak, a free ride from responsibility.  They began to marry later, if at all.  Sexually transmitted diseases increased exponentially after the advent of the pill, and many of these diseases led to infertility.  Women have, in fact, borne fewer children since the advent of the pill (3.6 in 1960 vs. about 2.1 today), and their chances of getting married have declined substantially.

The recent book Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think About Marrying shows that there is a whole lotta matin’ going on among today’s college-aged men and women—and it also shows the sheets are not always made of satin!  Sociologists Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker claim that three-fourths of 18- to 23-year-old women are in some kind of relationship, and 94 percent of those are sexually involved with their partner.  But as one reviewer noted, while love and marriage no longer go together, promiscuity and depression do. The authors’ research revealed that a hook-up culture is particularly consequential for women.  Young women who have multiple “sexual partners are eleven times more likely than virgins to report elevated depression symptoms.”  Furthermore, Regnerus and Uecker see a link between premarital sexual activity and a decline in marriage.

The second strand of the cord came with Roe v. Wade. Pill or no pill, sex tends to make babies, and many women found themselves with unexpected pregnancies. The pill was intended to prevent pregnancy, but it gave birth to the abortion industry as a culture of promiscuity came to be. Between 1960 and 1972, abortion rates skyrocketed in the United States.  Then came Roe v. Wade.  The 1973 Supreme Court found a right to privacy in the Constitution and allowed abortion during a woman’s first trimester.  Then Doe v. Bolton, another court decision handed down simultaneously with Roe, gave women unrestricted abortion rights until the baby was born.  Essentially, the Supreme Court outlawed laws against abortion.  The numbers are staggering.  About one-third of all pregnancies in America end with an abortion, and American women have had over 50 million abortions since Roe v. Wade.  Like the pill, this court decision is replete with irony. Specifically, Roe was intended to settle the issue of abortion in the United States, but we have been fighting about it ever since.

In recent years, pro-life advocates have employed an incremental, step-by-step strategy in seeking to overturn Roe.  As a result of that strategy, 37 states now have on their books fetal homicide laws that treat the unborn as full human beings.  This means, for example, if a drunk driver swerves into another car and kills a pregnant mother and her baby, he will be charged with two homicides, not one.  Ironically, that same mother could have, by law, been driving to an abortion clinic to terminate the life of her child.

Consider how much Roe has muddied our logic and confused our thinking. For example, on Sunday, January 22, 2012, the Santa Barbara News-Press ran an editorial by Richard Solomon and Christine Lyon to commemorate the 39th anniversary of Roe.  Early on, these authors did some handwringing over Republican presidential candidates who might seek to overturn Roe.  Why does this matter? The authors say this:

It matters because government simply has no business interfering with the intensely personal decision of how to respond to a pregnancy.

So abortion is a personal decision, but notice what Solomon and Lyon say next:

For millions of women, the embryo and then fetus is a baby, and abortion is not an option.  For millions of other women, abortion is the best and perhaps only option at that point in a woman’s life.

So, it is a baby if the mother wants it to be a baby, and it is an option if the mother has no other alternative. Since when does being wanted determine one’s personhood?  How can we say in one hospital room, We will abort your fetus since you do not want to give birth but in the room next door say, We will take whatever measures we can to keep your baby alive?  How can we live with these contradictions?

Then came the third strand in this cord that won’t be easily broken: a declining birthrate.  We are having far fewer babies than our grandmothers had and thus doing less childrearing than ever.  As previously mentioned, as recently as 1960, the fertility rate of U.S. women was 3.7 children.  Today, it hovers at about 2.1 (1.7 for non-Hispanic whites, 2.0 for African Americans, and 2.3 for Hispanics).  Children, we believe, are inconvenient and expensive.  According to one calculation, it costs $1.1 million to raise a single child.  As Jonathan Last wrote in the Weekly Standard, The median price of a home in 2008 was $180,100.  Having a baby is like buying six houses, all at once.  Except you can’t (legally) sell them—and after thirteen years they’ll tell you they hate you (9/27/2010).

So what began as an experiment in liberation with the advent of the birth control pill has resulted in the braided cord of Roe, recreational sex for its own sake, and an increasingly child-free society.  What kind of a knot this cord will tie has yet to be determined, but we have been moving into unexplored terrain.

Consider, though, what the posture of the church is to be in such an environment. How are we, as the disciples of Jesus, to behave in a culture of death?  The answer is, simply, wait till marriage, get married, and then make babies!  In other words, let’s show the world the deeper joy of holiness rather than the shallow thrill of promiscuity.  As God’s people, we need to create and enjoy a marital and sexual counterculture that cherishes the things God cherishes and loves the things God loves.  God loves marriage, he loves fidelity, he invented sex, he made it very pleasurable, and he loves children.  God designed us for these things.  Those of us who truly follow Christ will find ourselves living in a world of wonder and witness.  We will wonder at the beauty of marital love, even when it is difficult.  And we will witness to the greatness of God as we trust his instruction and live accordingly.  In other words, we are to live holy and godly lives and enjoy the fruit of both.  As C. S. Lewis said,

How little people know who think of holiness as dull.  When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.  If even 10 percent of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year’s end?

After graduating from Oxford, Hitchens became a voice for the left, avowing the doctrines of Trotsky and Marx.  He found himself gifted in both writing and debate, once saying, If you can give a decent speech in public or cut any kind of figure on the podium, then you need never dine or sleep alone.

Hitchens was especially notorious because he seemed to be an equal-opportunity offender.  He called Bill Clinton a pathological liar and a rapist and, in a book he wrote on Mother Teresa, called her a fraud. He attacked Sarah Palin on the political right even as he attacked Noam Chomsky on the political left.  He called the Dixie Chicks fat slugs—and later admitted he had never seen a picture of the band. In Vanity Fair he wrote a column entitled “Why Women Aren’t Funny,”arguing that women essentially have no need for humor because they are objects of men’s desire.  Humor is, Hitchens argued, a male mating call by which a man distinguishes himself from other men and thereby attracts a lady’s attention.  Feminists were not amused.  After 9/11, Hitchens came to despise the political left because it blamed the atrocities committed by Osama bin Laden on American foreign policy.  AsSaul Bellow once said, Hitchens was a playboy thriving on agitation.

Christopher Hitchens is best known for his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.  Published in 2007, the book is essentially a defense of atheism, kind of a Mere Christianity for unbelief.  In that work, Hitchens made much of the oft-used argument that religion is simply outdated in the modern world.  On the one hand, Religion comes from the period of prehistory where nobody… had the smallest idea what was going on.  On the other hand, in our scientific age, Religion has run out of justifications.  Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important.

And then came the phone call.  Early in 2010 Hitchens learned he had esophageal cancer that had spread to his lungs and lymph nodes.  His cancer was classified as stage 4.  Writing about his cancer, the 62-year-old iconoclast said this:

I have more than once in my life woken up feeling like death, but nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse.

Hitchens was indeed shackled to his own corpse but, sadly, he refused the free grace of the only One who could loose the chains that bound him (Romans 7:24).

In April 2011, Hitchens was supposed to speak at the annual American Atheist Convention.  His cancer was advanced to the point that he had to cancel his appearance.  His letter of regret stated, Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death.  His letter ended with the words, And don’t keep the faith.

Hitchens was the center of attention during the last months of his life.  Believers sent him messages that they were praying for him, and others wondered if this iconic voice of our times would, in the end, turn to God.  But the British-American curmudgeon remained defiant to the end, stating that redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before.

His last book, Hitch-22, is a memoir of his life as a public intellectual, a writer, a debater, and an apologist for atheism.  In the opening pages Hitchens reaffirms his defiance of the inevitable.

I personally want to “do” death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.

Christopher Hitchens was smart, quick witted, articulate, and proud. He was what the scriptures call afool.  He said in his heart, There is no God, and he appears to have been faithful to his creed to the end.

There is a story told of G. K. Chesterton going to the funeral of an atheist early in the twentieth century.  Someone standing nearby noticed how poorly dressed the deceased looked as he lay in his open casket.  The onlooker commented, “All dressed up, with nowhere to go!”  Chesterton replied, “I bet he wishes that were true.”  I bet Christopher Hitchens also wishes it were true.

In the end, Hitchens’ defiance came with its own reward.  As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce,

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

Christopher Hitchens was impertinent to the end, and he reaps his reward.  May we be found among those who say to God, even to the end, Thy will be done!

Although Scripture is filled with examples of mentorship/discipleship, the most notable may be Paul’s relationship with Timothy. Particularly in II Timothy, the last letter Paul wrote, he is guiding Timothy in his role as a pastor in Ephesus. Paul writes from a prison cell in Rome, likely within weeks of his own death. The wisdom of this letter is tailored to Timothy’s difficult assignment in Ephesus, and takes into account the specific challenges Timothy is facing.  Paul could have been writing a memoir, collecting his best teachings – he had some time on his hands.  Instead, what he chose to write was a simple letter of encouragement and guidance to his young protégé Timothy.

Another examples comes in Titus, chapter 2, where we are given the counsel that older women are to not only be good examples to younger women, but to actively disciple them. 

Mentorship is to be purposeful on both sides of the equation – mature believers seeking those to mentor, and younger, less “seasoned” believers seeking the wisdom of a mentor.

As one who is on the pastoral staff at SBCC, and as one who is growing increasingly “seasoned,” I hope you’ll indulge me in a few observations:

1.      Some of the most significant spiritual growth at SBCC takes place in homes and coffee shops around Santa Barbara in the middle of the week.  Intentional, personal discipleship – whether one-on-one, or in small groups – is a huge component to spiritual growth, a great encouragement towards living out our spiritual gifts, and can sometimes provide a valuable challenge, admonishment or warning.  All of it serves to grow us.

2.      The culture of mentorship seems to be waning. As the culture around us changes, so the church changes.  Some things are fine to let go; some things are worth fighting for.  We now live in an age of information at our fingertips.  Sometimes that information (and how easily it can be accessed) can supplant actual people.  Online banking replaces contact with the tellers; Wikipedia replaces asking the librarian (sometimes); Google has become a verb we exercise every day in lieu of asking another person a question, etc.  You get the idea.  The subtle shift is slow, but it is a gradual turning from relationship. Instead of seeking out those who are older, more mature and wise, we have the “immediacy” of turning instead to the quick and efficient answers.  For younger believers, it is much easier to seek the “pooled wisdom” of peers, or that of technology.

3.      Older Christians, we are not off the hook.  At the risk of offending, I have to say that it is sometimes disappointing to me to see so many wise and gifted Christians among us who have never sought out a younger believer to encourage.  And yet, this is our responsibility and our privilege as followers of Jesus!  I have often asked various people in our body if they would be willing to mentor another believer.  The number one answer I get is, I just don’t think I’m qualified.  While I understand where this is coming from, I also think it is a misunderstanding of the gospel of Jesus.  There is nothing we can do to “qualify” ourselves for anything.  Jesus paid it for us; he gave us responsibilities to encourage one another and to build up his church.  This is our qualification. If we truly believe that the good news of Jesus – His death and resurrection for sinners – is the world’s only hope, then the passing on of that message should be our life’s work.  As Josh Harris says, …if we can teach, train, and disciple men and women to trust in, love, and proclaim the message of Christ and him crucified, then we’ve accomplished something worthwhile.

The best mentors I have had in my life were the ones who knew they weren’t qualified, and that is precisely why they felt such freedom pointing to the sufficiency –not of themselves—but of Christ.

4.  Mentoring is about connecting the spiritual to the practical.  This may be one of the main reasons why we need mentors more than ever in the church.  The nuclear family of the “Ozzie and Harriet” days has all but vanished – not quite gone, but definitely not the norm.  The everyday things that some of our older generations learned from parents, relatives and family friends are increasingly learned elsewhere.  Sexuality, singleness, dating, marriage, juggling career and family, navigating losses in life, financial decisions – these are all practical realities that need Christ at the center.  The safety of healthy mentoring relationships can sometimes be both rudder and compass.

If we agree that mentorship is indeed something worth fighting for in church life, where do we begin? 

•      Be intentional right where you are.  Are you in a homegroup or other small group?  Start praying about mentoring connections God might have for you there. The place where your relationships most naturally overlap is the best place to start thinking about a mentoring relationship.  Simply showing up to a group isn’t mentorship – in either direction.  Mentorship involves the risk of asking (either to give or receive mentoring) and committed investment.

•      Keep realistic expectations:  Mentors, you supply encouragement and significance in the life of your “mentee” only to the extent that you point them to Christ.  Mentees, no one person will ever give you all that you want.  In fact, they will likely disappoint you.  The point is to grow deeper in your relationship with Christ, and to keep your eyes fixed on that.

•      Pay it forward:  A “culture” of mentorship is one where we are mentored and then, in turn, mentor another.  We should all be striving to mature in Christ so that we can encourage other believers. 

One of my earlier mentors was my high school Young Life area director.  He was charismatic, zany, crazy, and he exuded love for the Lord.  He walked a hard road as a leader, and remained steadfast through some losses in his personal life.  He had many young eyes watching.  I recently saw him at a Young Life banquet, now much older and using a cane.  As I saw him across the room, it occurred to me that I had never told him how much his leadership and love for God had influenced my life.  After several decades, I knelt down next to his chair and told him.  I was so thankful for the opportunity.  The sweetness of that exchange may or may not be experienced in our mentoring/discipling relationships. Perhaps heaven will be full of scenes such as that.  I don’t know. What I do know is that Jesus didn’t tell us to make converts; he told us to make disciples.  I am so grateful for the mentors in my life, and also acutely thankful for what I have learned about the heart of God as I bring my own flawed self alongside those younger in the faith.  Let’s press on to be people who are intentional about our own growth in Christ, and just as intentional about passing that along to others.

I am not one of those persons. Don’t get me wrong! I love to pray, but I need help.  I need help from friends, some who are living and active in my life and others who are long dead but are friends nevertheless.  And I need help because, for me, prayer is both refreshing and hard work.  Prayer is like a good, long jog, both exhilarating and painful, invigorating and tiring. 

Have you ever watched a group of people run?  Skinny people appear to run effortlessly, but the rest of us labor under the burden of our own girth.  When I pray, I am anything but spiritually skinny.  I pray under the girth of my own sloth, my distracted mindset, and my unbelief that wonders if prayer actually accomplishes anything at all. But I pray nevertheless. I pray because I like to pray—and I pray because I must.  I pray alone, and I pray in groups.  And every time I pray, I need a little help from my friends. 

For those of you who are like me, I’d like to share a few insights from some friends who have motivated me in recent years.  The voices of these friends have spurred me on to a greater devotion to prayer.  I am a better disciple because of these men and women and their ability to articulate the nature and value of prayer.

On the nature of prayer itself:

New Testament scholar William Barclay writes, Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us.  It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little.  When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God’s voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.

Thomas Watson, one of my favorite Puritan writers, says, Prayer as it comes from the saint is weak and languid; but when the arrow of a saint’s prayer is put into the bow of Christ’s intercession, it pierces the throne of grace.

On the necessity of prayer:

Author Catherine Marshall writes, One can believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and feel no personal loyalty to Him at all—indeed, pay no attention whatever to His commandments and His will for one’s life.  One can believe intellectually in the efficacy of prayer and never do any praying.

The Victorian-era preacher Charles H. Spurgeon said we can measure the vitality of a church by how it prays: The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings.  So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people.  If God be near a church, it must pray.  And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.

J. C. Ryle, bishop of Liverpool in the nineteenth century, said,To be prayerless is to be without God, without Christ, without grace, without hope, and without heaven.

An the power of prayer:

Methodist pastor Samuel Chadwick once said, The one concern of the devil is to keep the saints from praying.  He fears nothing from our prayerless work, or prayerless religion.  He laughs at our toil, he mocks our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.

A. C. Dixon, Baptist pastor and staunch critic of theological liberalism, wrote early in the twentieth century, When we depend upon organizations, we get what organizations can do; when we depend upon education, we get what education can do; when we depend upon man, we get what man can do; when we depend upon prayer, we get what God can do.  Pastor Dixon was right, and we want what only God can do.  So let us press on in prayer.

An invitation and a plan

Do you want to grow in your prayer life in 2012?  I hope so.  I know I do.  To pray is to keep company with God(Clement of Alexandria).  To pray is to get to God (E. Stanley Jones).  Prayer is the fuel for church renewal.  Prayer is what keeps the church from becoming a mere institution.  Prayer keeps us coming to God like a persistent widow before an unjust judge (Luke 18).  Prayer will shape our church, and prayerlessness will be the ruin of our church.

To that end, as we move toward a new year, let us pray.  And let us keep praying. Make some friends who will teach you and help you pray.  In 2012, read a book on prayer that will encourage your prayer life.  Try God’s Prayer Book by Ben Patterson or Deepening Your Conversation with Godby the same author.  Read Charles Spurgeon’s The Power of Prayer in a Believer’s Lifeor—possibly my favorite—The Soul of Prayerby P. T. Forsyth.  Andrew Murray’s classic With Christ in the School of Prayer is very valuable.  Buy or one of these books, read it slowly, and don’t worry about finishing it.  But let these friends lead you to prayer. 

And then… pray!  Pray alone in the morning even if for five minutes….  And pray with your church.  Come on Tuesday mornings if possible and pray with your church.  Let Ben Patterson show you a model of prayer you may never have seen….  See your homegroup as a place of prayer…. Consider forming a prayer group that meets regularly….  And learn how to pray.  Find a mentor and begin praying. 

I will let J. C. Ryle have the last word:  Faith is to the soul what life is to the body.  Prayer is to faith what breath is to the body.  How a person can live and not breathe is past my comprehension, and how a person can believe and not pray is past my comprehension, too.

Lord, teach us to pray!

Let us press into God’s goodness to us and remember His grace is what brought Jesus into our world. It’s not our right practices or excellent theology.  HIS GRACE will bring Jesus into our homes, but the trick is letting His grace into our hearts and minds as parents first. Can you trust that He wants to enter the dusty closets of your mind and bring in His light? That He wants to meet you in your disappointments and failures? That He longs to be close to you so you can reflect His gifts to your children? We ourselves are God’s children and need to remember this as we guide our children during Advent. There is much brokenness in our own lives that needs to see the Light of the World. This is the joy we can have in God’s provision for our families: His coming is for each of us.

As we enter this Advent season, let’s commit ourselves to inviting God to reveal the gifts of Advent to us as parents/adults so that we can truly guide our children toward them for themselves. Shed all the guilt of not having the “Hallmark” family and embrace the God who came in the most humble of wrappings: that of a helpless baby. The fact that Jesus came in this disarming form can remind us of the need to humbly receive help from God as we celebrate the season.

•      Take time for prayer and honesty with God, especially when you feel extra pressure to adopt some new tradition or press on with old ones that simply don’t work…maybe it is time to stop and find real joy. Let His Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love seep into your dry and needy pores.

•      Read an Advent devotional that resonates with real life (not unrealistic “Norman Rockwellish” ones) or simply read a Gospel and ask Jesus to reveal Himself to you for His birthday. (Preparing for Christmas by Richard Rohr; God is in the Manger by Deitrich Bonhoeffer; and Advent and Christmas Wisdom from Henri Nouwen, are a few suggestions.)

•      The memory work for the children during Advent is Psalm 80:7, Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved. Bring this up during the season with your family and ponder what comfort and hope it offers.

•      Go on the offensive with the overwhelming number of choices for celebrating the season by  trying on an Advent activity that you think you would enjoy with your family. Be gracious with yourself if it doesn’t “fit.”  Laugh together as a family and commit to trying something new next year. If nothing else, you have modeled that it is important to you to bring Jesus into your home.

•      Talk to a trusted friend or counselor when the disconnect becomes too great. Our sin-pocked lives are the road map to our need for Jesus.  God longs to give us hope (not earthly perfection) as we face the places where we hurt.

•      Most of all, allow Jesus into your real families, not the ones you wish you had. Use the disappointment to catapult you into Jesus’ presence and find the real Jesus of Christmas.

Wishing you and your family the Hope, Peace, Joy and Love of Jesus this Advent season…even in the messiness of your real lives. God is with us – Emmanuel.

At this point, if you are still reading, you are probably expecting to be beaten and bloodied a bit. You probably think I am going to begin citing statistics about how wealthy we are in North America and how little we, the world’s most affluent denizens, give to those in need. You probably think I’ll tell you that over half the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day while Americans, who live on considerably more, give away, on average, only 1.5% of their income. Or maybe you think I will drag up some UNICEF statistic such as the oft-cited claim that about 30,000 children die daily due to lack of basic nutrition and medicine. Or maybe the truth that, as an American, you are roughly seventy times richer than people in the poorest countries of the world. There is, indeed, a place for this kind of essay in Community News ... but you’ll not find it this month. Instead, let’s ponder together what might be called the joy of money.

The joy of money? Isn’t the love of money said to be the root of all kinds of evil? Don’t we learn in Scripture that people who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires

(1 Timothy 6:9)? If these things are true, how can money be something that leads to joy in the life of a believer? Should we not shun money, live on as little of it as possible, and decry the evils of riches, gas-guzzling SUVs, and meat eating? Well... yes. But money can, does, and should also bring a Christian disciple great joy—and I learned this truth from the Puritans!

It turns out that the Puritans agreed with their predecessor John Calvin who said that money in itself is good. Now, because of what you were taught about the Puritans in high school, this may be hard to believe, but the Puritans liked money because, with it, one could enjoy life more. If we happen to have inherited much property, we are to enjoy these in good conscience as blessings and gifts of God, wrote William Perkins.^[1] Richard Sibbs went so far as to say, Worldly things are good in themselves and given to sweeten our passage to Heaven.

What, specifically, were the Puritans’ convictions about money?

First, these disciples—who appeared around the middle of the sixteenth century and faded from the scene at the end of the seventeenth—understood money and wealth to be gifts from God. Cotton Mather said, In our occupation we spread our nets; but it is God who brings unto our nets all that comes into them. The Puritans sought to avoid the sin of pride over worldly wealth by ascribing all earthly success to the providence of God.

Second, the Puritans taught that money should be held loosely. Consider this Puritan statement about work:

Success with equanimity... failure without despair. In other words, if one is prosperous, that prosperity is to be understood as a gift from God. But if one’s hard work leads only to subsistence living, that too is to be seen as the blessing of God.

As the Puritan John Hull said when he lost his fortune, The loss of my estate will be nothing, if the Lord please to join my soul nearer to himself, and loose it more from creature comforts.

Third, the Puritans would agree with Spiderman, who said, With great power comes great responsibility. When God gives us money, we are to use it responsibly and generously to help those in need. Edward Browne said, Riches may enable us to relieve our needy brethren, and to promote good works for church and state. He went on to say that money exists for the glory of God and the good of others. In other words, the joy of money is found, supremely, in magnifying the God who gave it to us in the first place.

Fourth, the Puritans preached that money would never satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts. In Puritan theology, money was put in its place. Specifically, money was seen to be a good gift, but an insufficient god. Consider Henry Smith’s poetic critique of wealth:

Riches are like painted grapes which look as though they would satisfy a man, but do not slake his hunger or quench his thirst. Riches indeed do make a man covet more, and get envy, and keep the mind in care.

Wealth and riches in the Bible swing on hinges that go both ways. On the one hand, the biblical writers see money as dangerous. Money is constantly viewed circumspectly. Wealth, or even the desire for wealth, is a potential idol in the lives of God’s people. The prophets speak more loudly about the dangers of wealth addiction than they do about the dangers of sexual promiscuity. And, of course, the Puritans would agree. John Robinson warned that both poverty and riches have their temptations.

... And of the two states, ... the temptations of riches are the more dangerous... . If a man be rich, and full, he is in danger to deny God and to say in pride, and contempt of him ... , Who is the Lord?

Wealth does bring with it an appetite for more—for more exotic vacations, larger numbers in our savings account, more comfort at home, more clothes, more digital technology. Wealth never says, Enough! Instead it cries loudly,More!

On the other hand, wealth in the Scriptures is understood as a blessing from God. Money and wealth are gifts to be enjoyed for the pleasure they bring. As the writer of Proverbs has it, The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it (10:22).

So how are we—who are, to be sure, among the wealthiest people who have ever lived—to think about money and riches in our time and place? I make two obvious suggestions. First, let us take care to enjoy the bounty with which God has entrusted us. Let us eat and drink and spend and save and give to the glory of God and to our own pleasure. Second, let us be vigilant to remind ourselves of the snare of riches. As contemporary author John White says, Riches corrupt anyone who is in the least corruptible. And, if the truth be told, all of us are corruptible.

When everything is said, money is a dangerous joy. Yes, money is a gift to be enjoyed, but money whispers in our ear, I am what you really want. Get more of me, and you’ll be happy and satisfied. That is, of course, a lie. And so we ought to pray with Samuel Hieron, a Cambridge Puritan, the following:

Oh, let not mine eyes be dazzled, nor my heart bewitched with the glory and sweetness of these worldly pleasures... . Draw my affection to the love of that durable riches, and to that fruit of heavenly wisdom which is better than gold, and the revenues whereof do surpass the silver, that my chief care may be to have a soul enriched and furnished with Thy grace.

I find it difficult to write a Community News essay warning of the days to come without sounding like Scrooge—and when it comes to Christmas, I really don’t want to sound grumpy.  I actually love Christmas. 

I’ve surprised many, though, when I tell them that Christmas, for Lisa and me, is a relatively quiet time.  I love our Advent Sundays at church, and I am deeply moved by the special music we hear in December, the Westmont Christmas Festival, and a family walk on State Street with the lights and greenery.  I especially love the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  The Jolley house goes semi-comatose as we wind down another year.

It is Xmas that really bothers me.  Like it or not, the season is upon us.  The catalogs are coming in the mail every day, the stores are vying for our attention, and television ads are telling us to spend, spend, spend.  Two months from now we will be breathing a sigh of relief that Xmas is over.  Many of us will dread the coming VISA bill, and most of us will welcome the fresh start of another calendar year. 

C. S. Lewis, the Oxford professor of literature who had something to say about almost everything, was a sharp critic of the way we observe Christmas.  He once described Christmas as the holiday that gives, on the whole, more pain than pleasure:

Long before December 25th everyone is worn out—physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them.

In 1954 Lewis penned a brilliant parody comparing the annual Christian observance of the birth of Jesus with the commercial enterprise that comes in the month of December.  His essay was titled Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus.  Xmas, Lewis wrote, is celebrated on an island in the north Atlantic called Niatirb (read it backwards and you see Lewis’s point).  In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call Exmas.  The people of Niatirb have a sense of obligation during this festival to send each of their friends a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called an Exmas-card.  But the pictures on the cards are of birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs.  

After buying as many of these cards as they think they will need, they return to their houses and find there the like cards which others have sent to them.

And when they find cards from any to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods that this labour at last is over for another year.  But when they find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card for him also.

Then there are the gifts.  At Christmas the Niatirbians buy things for one another that they would never think of buying for themselves.  The sellers, long ago recognizing this custom, sell all the things that they haven’t been able to sell during the rest of the year.  Bah humbug.

Again, I don’t want to play the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.  I hope each of us has what we commonly call a good Christmas.  But how?   How can we get to December 26th and be neither spiritually fatigued, physically bloated, fiscally troubled, nor socially spent?  I offer the following suggestions:

1.          Spend some time during Advent reading the Christmas portions of the Bible.  Read some of the great prophecies of the coming Messiah (Isaiah 9:1-2, 7:14, 9:1-7, 11:1-10).  Then read the Christmas Story in Luke 1-2 and Matthew 1-2.  Read these portions of Scripture slowly; memorize a favorite verse or two.  Meditate, ponder, pray, and soak in the wonder of the coming of our Savior.

2.          Get out your calendar in early November.  Schedule some times to be quiet and do little in the months of November and December.  Plan to listen to Handel’s Messiah in one sitting or watch The Nutcracker on DVD.  Have someone over for dinner.

3.         Be proactive in your gift giving.  Shop early and shop sparingly.  Decide how much money you should and will spend on Christmas gifts.  Ask how much of His money God would have you spend to buy gifts for your friends and family.  Make a commitment not to buy what no mortal would ever buy for himself.  Better to simply say, Merry Christmas! I love you! than to waste God’s money on mere stuff.  And have the courage to receive.  If someone gives you a gift for Christmas, dare to say, Thank you and forgo the temptation to buy a pay-back present.

4.          Focus your expectations. As far back as I can remember, I’ve heard people say, Christmas is a hard time for me or I’m looking forward to January because Christmas is kind of depressing.  Xmas often reminds us of what we don’t have: a large, extended family, a blissful marriage, Lake Wobegon children.  Xmas is a time when unemployment seems all the more painful and depression becomes all the more acute. 

But what if we focus on Christmas instead of Xmas?  What if we truly celebrate Advent?  Then we will, with wonder, look forward to the coming of the Christ child and long for His coming.  Advent moves our focus from what we might have had in this life, to what we will have when Jesus comes again.  A true Christmas observance will cause us to realize that our hearts are, indeed, restless until they find rest in Him.  When we observe Christmas and not Xmas, we will find ourselves saying with delight, This is the One we have waited for! This is the Lord! Let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation!

I have a memory of my husband, Todd that I’ll always treasure.  We were attending the wedding of one of his co-workers on the campus of a retirement community where Todd served as a physician.  The grounds were beautiful, canopied in oak trees, and the day was warm and sunny.  As we were headed to the large lawn where the wedding was to be held, we passed the unit that housed many of the patients with Alzheimer’s disease.  A bell was going off, and we noticed a woman clothed in a pink bathrobe and slippers walking away from the building and down the perimeter road, her long gray braid swinging down her back to her waist.  Even stooped over, she walked with purpose away from the clanging bell.  Todd said, “Oh it’s Ruth; she’s gotten out again.  I need to go get her.  Just wait here.”

Now, in my mind, what would happen next looked like this:  Todd would walk over and take her by the elbow, and explain that she needed to come back with him.  She would be confused, maybe agitated, and he would soothingly convince her to come with him, and they would turn, Todd leading her into the building. 

What really happened was this:  Todd walked up beside her and took her hand and kept walking beside her.  I saw them smiling and talking, and Todd just walked along next to her, hand in hand under the dappled light shining through the oaks, until they were both out of sight. 

He never turned her around.  They walked and talked until he had taken her all the way around the perimeter road which naturally returned to the building where the nurses (and I) were anxiously awaiting her return.

Why is this memory so vivid and so precious to me?  It is precious because it says so much about my husband, who is the kindest person I know.  It is vivid to me because it paints a picture in my mind of what it is to be an encourager.  Specifically, this…

We join people on their “path.”  What a different picture this would have been if Todd had been more “direct.”  He could have directly turned Ruth around and taken the short path back to where she belonged.  He saw, though, a woman taking a moment to enjoy a piece of normal life – a walk under the oaks on a beautiful day, surrounded by sunlight and birdsong – instead of buzzing fluorescent lights, wheelchairs and weird smells.  And so, Todd joined her…and held her hand.  They took the long way.

Joining people where they are has another name – compassion.  Meaning literally to feel with, compassion takes energy and effort.  It is not just a spontaneous thing that washes over us; it is something that requires training and habits.  Over and over again in the gospels, we see Jesus responding in compassion – to the sick, the lost, the sinful, the grieving.  He is our example of what it is to be compassionate.  Jesus acted with compassion, not just when he was well-fed and well-rested—but when he was exhausted.  Jesus’ march towards the cross was punctuated by acts that encouraged, whether it was by a miracle, or simply a well-timed word.  And he commands us to do the same in Luke 6:36: You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.

We take the time it takes.   I don’t remember precisely, but I’m pretty sure this scenario cost us some promptness to the wedding.  I am a clock-watcher.  Efficiency and multi-tasking are important to me.  (There’s a reason I’ve gotten speeding tickets.) To be an encourager, we need to slow down, and take whatever time is required.  Hasn’t God done that very same thing, and more, for us?  If we look at the scope of history, we see God in loving pursuit of his children – children who repeatedly wander from him or reject him.  Our patience with others will never match God’s patience with us, but we are certainly transformed by trying.

We are blessed in the blessing.  If Todd had returned and then complained about Ruth’s escape, or how long these things take, etc., this whole scenario wouldn’t be a sweet memory.  Instead, when he came back, he told me what they had talked about when they walked the perimeter road together – what a remarkable woman Ruth had been in her younger days, and what a privilege it is to care for those that the world often forgets.  Todd blessed Ruth by taking the longer route with her, and he blessed her with his time, unhurried and “present.”  In turn, God blessed Todd with a glimpse into His own heart for his children, inviting Todd into the sacredness of encouraging another human being.  

Pastor Tim Keller was once asked what he thought was the most important evidence of growth as a Christian disciple.  He gave a one-word answer: gentleness.  Gentleness is the mark of a disciple’s growth….  I don’t remember his explanation for this answer, but the answer itself has stayed with me.  Maybe it is because I am personally convicted by it.  Maybe it is because all encouragement of others in the name of Christ, requires it.

Galatians 5:22 (NLT) says, When the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.  To join another human being on their schedule and in their circumstances – and to prayerfully take the time it takes to encourage them – is Holy Spirit work indeed.  All of the theology and apologetics and doctrine that we learn intersect as we attempt to “be Jesus” to another person in want of kindness, material help, or a Savior.  Todd exemplified that for me that day under the oaks.  His example pointed to Jesus, who took the “long way” to save me.

Lessons from L’Arche: “A community where people with and without disabilities share life together”  

I’m thinking,” Barbara muses. “I’m thinking.”
“What are you thinking about, Barbara?”

“I’m thinking that I want to live with Stacy forever!”

Oh, that we could all find this kind of acceptance and love in our lives! This scene played out at the all-important dinner conversation at L’Arche, Portland. L’Arche is a worldwide community of homes that exists to meet the needs of people with disabilities. I became acquainted with L’Arche through the writings of Henri Nouwen’s In the Name of Jesus. All of the core members in this home have intellectual disabilities, the population most often served by L’Arche. I had the incredible privilege of spending some time this Fall with four core members and their assistants as part of my sabbatical project as a professor at Westmont College. The conversation described above took place between two women who live in this community together. I left L’Arche with lessons humbly learned and a desire to share this experience with members of my own church family.

While there, I experienced powerful lessons about becoming a “welcoming presence” in the lives of others, particularly those with disabilities. Most churches, ours included, have sought to remove physical barriers that prevent full participation and acceptance for all. We have ramps leading into our sanctuaries, access to the stage for wheelchairs, help during Communion and devices available for those with hearing impairments. What we sometimes fail to consider, though, are the attitudinal barriers that can cause more pain and exclusion than physical barriers. Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, describes this best: What I am discovering is that the greatest suffering is not that man with the handicap, not that boy who is blind, who is deaf and severely brain damaged, but the greatest pain is in those who reject them.

How do we do create these barriers? First of all, we do this with our language. Scholars in the area of disability studies have encouraged us for over a decade to use “person-first” language. When we refer to “that blind person” or “that intellectually disabled” person, we focus on their disability and not who they are as people. Just as you or I would not want to be labeled by the many things we cannot do, people with disabilities deserve to have their identity rooted in their individuality, not in generalizations. Some might hesitate at this attempt at being “politically correct,” but it is more accurately described as being “respectively correct.” If we can do this, “people with disabilities,” not “disabled people” will feel more welcomed in our church.

My first week at L’Arche was restless and awkward. What should I say or do? How do I interact with people with intellectual disabilities? The assistants serving at L’Arche became my mentors. To watch them in action is to watch the hand of God care for the most vulnerable of His creation. They modeled for me how to be present with the core members.

Sitting beside a core member, I learned that sharing a quiet moment has great value. In doing so, I am communicating, “I like being with you.” People with disabilities can offer us the gift of patience/steadfastness in this fast-paced world. Simply “being” and not “doing” can benefit all of us.

Reinders writes, Despite the success they have found in strengthening their status in the public sphere, people with disabilities – particularly intellectual disabilities – experience loneliness and isolation in the sphere of their personal lives. In our church community, each of us, young or old, can provide the gift of friendship, especially to those we perceive to be different from us. Invite someone with a disability out to the park, a meal or for a walk.

It is important to teach our children to respect and embrace difference. We struggle with this because we have grown up in a world that has not modeled seamless integration of people with disabilities in our lives. Invite a person from Young Life Capernaum to your home for a visit. Model to your children how to be comfortable around disability by encouraging interaction, whether in the neighborhood or in a restaurant, when the opportunity presents itself to engage in natural conversation.

In Luke 14:13, Jesus tells us whom we should invite to our banquet table. Vanier reflects on this passage and reminds us:  If you become a friend of somebody who is excluded, you are doing a work of unity. You are bringing people together. You are doing God’s work.

References

Reinders, H. S. (2008). Receiving the gift of friendship: Profound disability, theological anthropology, and ethics. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub.

Vanier, J. (1995). Seeing God in others. Catholic Education Resource Center. Retrieved from http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/social_justice/sj00196.html

Vanier, J. (2008). The fragility of L’Arche and the friendship of God. In S. Hauerwas & J. Vanier (Authors), Living gently in a violent world: The prophetic witness of weakness (pp.21-42). Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Books.

My journey into foster care began nearly ten years ago, when I worked at the Instituto Evangelica de Goias, an orphanage in Anapolis, Brazil. During my time there, I met a little two-year-old girl who called me Tia (auntie). Each day we snuggled for hours in the courtyard of the orphanage – her head buried in my chest, one of her hands stroking my face. She had a family, but they could not care for her. They dropped her off at the orphanage when she was just an infant. The need she had for love was so clear. All she wanted was someone to hold her. On that trip I wrote in my journal that I wanted to be that little girl’s mother. In fact, I wrote that I wanted to be the mother to any child that needed one. That desire has been in my mind and in my heart from that time.

Since early on in our marriage, my husband and I talked and prayed about the way in which God would grow our family. For the most part, we have always known that our family growth would include adoption. We feel very strongly that the family God has for us is not limited to biological children. About a year and a half ago, we came to the conclusion that our first child should be adopted. As we talked and prayed about the manner in which we would adopt, we kept circling back to Angels Foster Care (www.angelssb.com). The need for foster parents in Santa Barbara is great. Because so many children right here in our county need homes, we felt that it would be best to begin our process with Angels.

As of this summer, our plan was to finish our certification, provide short-term respite care for a couple of months, and then accept a long-term placement in possibly December or January. Well, six weeks ago we got a call that put our plan in fast forward. We were two steps away from completing our certification when our social worker called to see if we were interested in taking a two-month old baby boy. We said Yes. She said that we could meet him that afternoon.

Let me clarify and add that we were unprepared. We didn’t really have anything for a baby, and neither of us have ever been parents before. I was worried about bonding and attachment, and I was concerned that he would feel too much like someone else’s child for me to feel like a mother. And then we met him. We walked into the respite care home where he was staying. He’d just been dropped off and was still in his car seat. I lifted him out of the car seat and looked at him. In that moment I felt flooded with a love that I cannot explain or describe, but I’m going to venture to say that it’s the love all mothers feel for their children. It’s God-given and all encompassing.

We’re calling this darling boy Mason, and we’ve definitely grown quite attached to him. Thankfully, he’s grown quite attached to us as well. People often ask if this attachment is too hard or too scary. While it is hard and it is scary, what’s scarier to me is that fact that if Mason were not placed with us, he would have gone into a temporary placement or even a series of temporary placements until he was given a long-term home. The thought of an infant being bounced around from place to place without ever attaching is much harder and much scarier to me.            

As foster parents, attachment is our goal. Our job is to love the children placed with us so that they will learn how to bond and love and form healthy relationships. As parents and as Christians, we have the ability to heal from the pain of losing these children should they reunify. A child cannot heal from the pain of never feeling loved or attaching to a parent or caregiver. Furthermore, as Christians, we believe in the power of redemption, so reunification is not a bad thing or a “horror story,” as I’ve heard it described. Our goal is for children to not be orphaned at any point, and for them to feel love no matter where they are. 

Part of our decision to foster/adopt was based in our belief that God would give us the children we were supposed to have. We still believe that. Now, we don’t know if Mason will be our “forever” child or if we will be his “forever” family, but we do know that he’s ours to love right now and for that we are so thankful.

Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, “Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.   Numbers 11:4-6

It seems foolish to forfeit the glory of the Promised Land for the joy of grumbling, but that is what happened. 

The people of Israel had been delivered from slavery, miraculously and dramatically. They left Egypt trusting in the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey.   All they had to do was make an eleven-day journey across a dreadful desert.  Yes, God delivered his people, but those same people missed the fullness of his blessing because they complained about the menu. 

Well, there is a bit more to it than that.  Actually, the Lord’s people grumbled in the wilderness again and again, thus missing the joy of being grateful for the greatness of God.  These same people also died in that desert wilderness.

Thank you are words we teach our children to say, and these two little words contain a whole universe of meaning.  Thank you draws us into a world of wonder.  Thanksgiving compels us to see things from God’s perspective.  Giving thanks sharpens our focus.  These two little words lead our heart in the right direction.  They move our soul toward the God from whom all blessings flow, toward our heavenly Father who is the giver of every good and perfect gift.

But perhaps I am being overly simplistic.  Is gratitude always appropriate?  Is thanksgiving always possible?  In the face of suffering and pain, am I expected to put a smile on my face and say, “Thank you” to God?  Wouldn’t that be a bit superficial?

I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.  Perhaps she is your friend, too, for she has been a part of our church for many years.  Her disease causes her chronic pain. In fact, she feels quite miserable most of the time.  Her body tells her, moment by moment, that all is not well.  The disease often forbids her the gift of sleep.  It has caused her to quit her job and has affected just about every area of her life.  Nevertheless, my friend has made a habit of thanksgiving.  When diagnosed with this malady, she made a choice to be grateful to God.  Her gratitude is not the sugary sweet variety.  Instead, she is choosing to be grateful for the little things in life as well as for the big things.   Somewhere in the early stages of this affliction, she began making an actual list of the people, events, tastes, sights, and sounds in her life for which she was thankful.  Her goal was to get to 1,000.  My last email from her concluded with Thanksgiving #1238!  I don’t expect this grateful enumeration to stop any time soon.  Gratitude makes the heart glad even when it is burdened by life in a fallen world.

Grumbling, on the other hand, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The grumbler complains about the menu, never pausing to give thanks for his daily bread.  The pessimist is always disappointed, partly because things are never as bad as they could be and partly because they probably won’t get any worse! 

Grumbling leads us to grumble.  G. K. Chesterton—who had no room for those who grumble—once said, “I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.”

And the apostle Paul could not say enough about the value of thanksgiving and gratitude.  When he writes about the dynamics of unbelief, he says that it is characterized by dishonoring God and an absence of thanksgiving (Romans 1:21).  So, over and again, he tells the church to be thankful.

Be thankful for what?  Sometimes the apostle doesn’t even say.  In his letter to the Colossian church, Paul writes, Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful (3:15).  We are summoned to a life of thanksgiving regardless of our circumstances or our experiences.  So start your list and send it to me when you reach a thousand.  Thank God for your salvation. Thank Jesus that he is coming again.  Thank God for the crisp air of the Santa Barbara autumn.  Thank him for the children in our church.  Thank God for the food on your table, for the socks on your feet, and for the dawn of a new day.  Thank God for the breath in your lungs and the water that comes out of the faucet.

I think it is right to say that both grumpiness and gratitude are as much dispositions as they are deliberate acts.  It is also right to say that we become what we practice.  Those who grumble become grumblers, and those who give thanks are numbered among the thankful.  If we reach the age of fifty or sixty, our face will testify to whether we led a life of thanksgiving or a life of complaining. 

I have been blessed by the presence of two very thankful men in my life, and they both have caused me to be more grateful than I might have been.  I’m thinking of my father-in-law who died in July.  Bob almost lived to his 86^th birthday.  Tethered to oxygen due to his emphysema , he spent most of his final years simply staying alive.  Every day was a struggle.  A basic task for me might take him thirty minutes to complete.  Bob suffered, but he was thankful.  He was thankful not for his suffering, but in his suffering.  Thankful for his family, thankful for every day of life, and thankful for God.  Thankful. 

The other thankful man I look to is my own father, who is in his 83^rd year. He is very healthy, but his legs don’t work very well and he is losing the ability to walk.  (The medical term for his condition is neuropathy.)  Nevertheless, my dad, Bud, lives a life of gratitude.  I love being around him because he is always—and I mean always—thankful.  When I asked him about this he chuckled and said, “I’m too lazy to be grumpy.  Grumpiness takes too much energy.  It’s easier to give thanks!”  He doesn’t complain about the menu, he gives thanks for his daily bread, and he looks forward to the feast that is coming after the business of this life is complete.  Hanging around with my dad makes me think about the greatness of God and the bounty of his blessings.  I become more thankful whenever I spend time with him!

It is said that when those in the early church met and conversed, they would never part without saying, Deo gratias!, Thanks be to God.  May it be so in our lives.  Thanks be to God!

I have a favorite treadmill at the gym. I prefer the one all the way to the left, against the wall. In terms of features, this treadmill is just like any other in the room, but its location makes it very different. From the extreme left side of the room, a pillar blocks my view of the television that shows ESPN. I love sports more than most people you’ve met, which is precisely why I can’t run on a treadmill with even a partial view of that television. Picture me, distracted by the television one moment, crumpled on the floor in a heap the next moment. Perhaps great hilarity for you, but not part of my ideal workout.

While my treadmill selection plan keeps me safely upright, it also comes with its own cost attached: the television in front of my chosen treadmill stays tuned to HGTV.  All the time. Which means that the shows that accompany my run typically involve people (usually young) shopping for homes (usually recently renovated) and turning up their noses at the lack of a fourth bedroom with a view of the adjacent park, the fact that the master bathroom doesn’t come with a heated floor, or some equally grievous design flaw. And, in the process of trying to keep my body healthy, my soul gets a little sicker.

At the end of his letter to the church in Philippi, Paul praises them for their financial support of his ministry. But, he includes this important caveat: I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want (4:11-12).

I wish I could say, along with Paul, that, I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation. But, I haven’t yet, and I’m reminded each time I hit the treadmill.

As I watch the prospective home buyers ridicule and reject various features of the homes their agents show them, I think to myself, You’re crazy! Take the home, you perspectiveless, entitled ingrates! I would not only take it, I would love it as it is! This state of mind does not help my run feel any faster nor help me feel any more content. Instead, in the height of irony, I begin to ridicule my own house. As I run, I compare my home with the ones I see on the TV and a growing part of me really longs to live in a modern, spacious home with an open floor plan and a backyard that actually features grass. But, we don’t. We live in a cozy, “veteran” place with a backyard featuring various weeds that function like the landscaping equivalent of a combover.

It can be easy for me to excuse my thought process as simple dreaming, but, in truth, I am grumbling in discontent. And, as a believer, I face a far more serious condition than the people on HGTV. Sure, they may be picky and overly pretentious, but I’m flat-out sinning. And, as with most sin, the issue is one of perspective.

I can never hope to find contentment if my sights remain set so low. If I put my hope, my desires, and my longing into earthly things, then my desires will remain unfulfilled. No amount of earthly things will ever pacify my capacity for desiring more. No, if I want to learn real contentment, I need to learn that my true desires can only be met in Christ.

These TV shows take my eye off of what really matters, and the secret that Paul embraces: Christ matters more than stuff. More than homes, more than cars, more than jobs, more than health, more than children, more than spouses, more than anything. Paul says as much in chapter 3 of the same letter to the Philippians:  I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord (3:8). In light of salvation, all else not only pales in comparison, but fades in significance. When I realize, in increasing measure, how incredible my salvation is in light of the magnitude of my sin and the glory of Christ, then any gift that God chooses to give is that much more incredible. Contentment begins by considering the cross.

As I learn to desire and treasure Christ more and to consider how truly stunning grace is, I will find my truest desires met and my perspective shifted and I will begin to see clearly. And, as I begin to see, I can truly be content and thankful that God has seen fit to bless our family with the wonderful gift of a cheerful, safe, plenty-of-space-for-a-family-of-three home with a backyard with lots of “character.” Because God doesn’t owe me a thing. Instead, he chooses to bless out of his love and kindness. And, when I can lift my eyes up long enough to take in the reality of what God has done for me, I can’t help feeling content.

I want to be known for treasuring Christ above all else, and because of the resulting contentment, trusting in the goodness, timing, and sovereignty of the God who feeds the sparrows and knows exactly what I need. Then, with God’s help, I can watch HGTV without the poison of discontent creeping in–which I need to learn how to do, because there’s no way I’m changing treadmills.

As we continue to endure these struggling economic times, what are you thankful for this year?  Your health? Your family? Your church? Your friends? Your home? Your job? Food on the table?  If you have been blessed with these things and more, I am sure you are thankful for each of them.  But simply being thankful for God’s many blessings should happen daily… so what makes the Thanksgiving holiday special?

I believe the Thanksgiving holiday should be about more than being thankful for your own blessings, but about blessing others; giving others something to be thankful for.

In Matthew 25, Christ calls us to feed, clothe and welcome those in need.  The Thanksgiving Meal Bag ministry is one way we as a body of believers can work together to meet the physical needs of families in our local community.

James 2:15-16 says, If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?  So let us work together to help our community go in peace, be warm and filled.

The majority of the families served by this ministry will be given a bag of ingredients to prepare a Latino-style dinner including rice, beans, corn flour, and other non-perishable items, along with a gift card to purchase meat and perishables.  We also give out a small number of traditional style Meal Bags including potatoes, yams, stuffing, gravy, canned vegetables and cranberry sauce, etc,. and a gift card to purchase a turkey.

Each year, we coordinate with Isla Vista School, Cleveland Elementary School, Franklin Elementary School, McKinley Elementary School and the Eastside Kids Club for the bulk of our distribution.  But, we also have a smaller number of families each year from El Camino School, Harding School, Adams Elementary School, and Kellogg School.

This ministry has grown over the years in the number of families wanting to participate, but unfortunately we are never able to collect enough bags.  Two years ago, we collected over 400 bags.  But last year we were only able to collect 366. Let’s put this ministry back on track, aiding families in our community that need help putting food on the table!

So, what can you do?

Start TODAY by talking with your Homegroup and committing to a minimum number of bags you will prepare. (Homegroup leaders will email Kate at ThanksgivingMealBags@gmail.com with a commitment.)

During October 23rd through November 13th there will be Thanksgiving Meal Bag ‘drop boxes’ at the church to collect money to purchase gift certificates ($20 per dinner) for meat for each Meal Bag being donated.

November 13th completed bags are brought to church.

*Not in a Homegroup? You can still participate by donating money for gift certificates and then bringing completed Meal Bags to church on November 13th.

**Don’t have time to shop for groceries?  You can donate funds to help cover the costs of the completed Meal Bags.  Please make sure to write “donation” on any checks not associated with a completed Meal Bag.

Do you want to volunteer to help count Meal Bags OR help deliver Meal Bags on November 17th? Have questions?  Email Kate at ThanksgivingMealBags@gmail.com.

We try to have an idea of the number of bags anticipated by coordinating with each Homegroup.  Homegroups give between 1 or 2 bags collaboratively all the way up to 50 bags donated from one Homegroup.  We use this information to let each school know about how many bags they can expect. Start talking with your homegroup now!

In the August Community News we looked at the purpose of homegroups. They are designed to build community and to develop disciples—discipleship in community. All group members are involved in both of these intertwined aspects of their homegroup. How is each and every person (not just the leaders) involved in making a homegroup thrive? How does someone function well as a homegroup member?

First, and foremost, you must join a homegroup. Second, and really more important, you must show up to the homegroup meetings. If you do those two things, you are well on your way to becoming a good homegroup member!

The role of a homegroup leader is to facilitate the group through the stated goals, which include studying the Bible, worship, prayer and building community. Leaders also coordinate various forms of service. All homegroups are assigned on a rotating basis to serve with the Children’s Ministry during Sunday worship services. In addition, most homegroups participate in providing Thanksgiving Meal Bags each November, twenty-four groups provide either lunch or dinner to Transition House residents each calendar year, and various other service projects take place. Leaders also coordinate homegroup meals and, of course, weekly dessert.

Although leaders play an important role in a homegroup, without member participation the group will fall flat. Leaders provide a structure and members fill it in. Each week, homegroups study a specific Bible passage assisted by a study guide. Leaders come prepared to lead a discussion, but that is only fruitful if the members have prepared to participate. Similarly, leaders may come prepared to lead a time of prayer, but if no one participates it is simply an awkward several minutes. Homegroup prayer time is a wonderful place to learn to pray aloud with a small group of people. God is glorified as we lift our voices in concurrence to him. Likewise, the Bible discussion is a safe place to study God’s word and ask questions about its meaning and application to your life.

Homegroup membership is most meaningful for a person, as well as the rest of the group, if there is personal investment in the group process. Engaging in the community aspect of homegroup is important. As you build relationships and connect with others in the group, all of the elements of a homegroup become more meaningful and you are further formed as a disciple. This is why weekly attendance is essential, and participating in the social aspect of homegroup is important. Many groups spend the first portion of their meeting enjoying dessert and talking. This is not an optional part to skip or a time cushion to be tardy! Hanging out and enjoying one another’s company—getting to know each other—is all part of building community, which is a key part of homegroup. Remember, the purpose of a homegroup is discipleship in community.

A rich homegroup experience is the responsibility of each person in the group, not just the leaders. Our gracious and merciful God has created us all as unique and valuable individuals. On account of diverse life experiences we will each contribute to our group in a way that no one else can. Leaders facilitate the core elements of a homegroup.  Yet it is only when homegroup members invest themselves that they will experience deeper fellowship, enjoy homegroup more, and grow closer to God. It is our hope at SBCC that group members embrace homegroup in a way that produces commitment and enthusiasm to make the homegroup experience excellent for all involved.

Just over the hill from parking lot “B” you will find the Santa Barbara A Rocha Five Loaves Farm. The entire 3 acres have been planted out with veggies ranging from Anaheim peppers to zucchinis. Over the past four months (May–August), we have been blessed to be able to donate approximately five tons of top quality organic produce to the hungry poor of Santa Barbara –that’s at least $20,000 worth of fresh food! The farm is a beautiful sight to behold, and it is uniquely filling real needs in our community.

A little over 12% of the families in Santa Barbara live at or below the federally-defined poverty level. To give you an idea as to what that means in terms of dollars, a family of five would need to make less than $26,170 annually. Just over 21% of all children in Santa Barbara live at or below this level. That number is effectively larger when you take in the high cost of living in our area. One of the greatest needs among the poor is access to healthy food. By our donations of high quality, nutritious, organic produce, we communicate that the needy of our community are loved and as valuable as any other member of our society. It’s a concrete way of sharing the love of Christ.

Santa Barbara A Rocha continues to distribute food through the Santa Barbara Community Development Center in Isla Vista on a weekly basis. We have also been distributing produce through Querencia’s Eastside Kids’ Club and Garden Court, an assisted living center for the elderly poor of Santa Barbara, and due to our increase in productivity we have expanded our distribution through Foodbank Santa Barbara. This ensures that the food gets to people who need it most around our community. Organizations and people that currently use our produce coming through the Foodbank include the Organic Soup Kitchen (healthy meals for the homeless, Transition House, and pregnant moms), Food From the Heart (providing meals for hospice and the critically ill), and St. Vincent’s (meals for single moms and their children). What a blessing to be able to tangibly give of our “first fruits.”

Over the summer we also hosted three weeks of Creation Care Camp for 60+ children ages 6-13. Kids experienced a bit of the wonder of God’s creation while learning about local geology, entomology, agriculture, botany and more. We hiked, dug, explored, ate, and planted our way around the area. Each day opened with a memory verse that touched on the topic of the day. For example, the day we studied Entomology, we learned Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! (Proverbs 6:6). We then were led in an activity with a community specialist for that topic. In all, over a dozen community specialists volunteered their time to share with the kids each week.

By now you are probably asking, “How can we get involved in what is going on with A Rocha?” (1) Come volunteer on the farm any Monday evening from 5-7 pm. It was fun having Dave and Paige Chase’s homegroup join us last month; maybe your homegroup would like to get dirty, as well. And there are individuals, like our friend Debbie, who come out almost every week. (2) Contact Emiko Corey (emiko.corey@arocha.org) and bring your family or coworkers to the farm some day to help with harvesting, like the Hislop family did a couple of weeks ago. Your high schoolers can get community service credit by helping us in this way. (3) Check out our blog to learn more about what is happening (http://santabarbaraarocha.blogspot.com/). (4) Pray. Pray for the hungry poor who receive this food that their daily needs would be met and that they would experience a deepening sense of God’s love and care for them. Pray for the organizations that we work with throughout our community that our expressions of care and stewardship would reflect well the love of Christ for all creation. And pray for us (Marty Robertson and Emiko Corey) that God would provide our every need as we continue to work in this ministry.

Young man, sit down, you are an enthusiast: when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.

Carey was not deterred.  He left his comfortable life in England for India in 1793 in response to the call of God to evangelize those who had never heard the gospel.  Five months later, Carey arrived in India and he never went home.  The father of modern missions stayed 41 years until his death at age 73.  Along the way, Carey founded churches, translated and printed the Scriptures into 40 languages and worked for social reform among the Indians.  

William Carey didn’t go to Urbana.  He didn’t read material from Operation Mobilization.  In fact, there were no missions conferences, there were no prayer letters, summer missions, or career missionaries.  William Carey simply studied the Bible and he couldn’t ignore what he saw.  Everywhere he looked he found God’s mandate to mission, to evangelism!  So he wrote a short book with a long title: An Enquiry Into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen.  The book caused a stir but it led to the formation of England’s first foreign missionary organization, with William Carey as their first missionary.  Before leaving for India, Carey preached his most famous sermon, Expect Great Things From God.  Attempt Great Things for God.  William Carey had both great expectations and great aspirations and he endured over four decades of suffering in India for the cause of Christ.  The fruit of his ministry endures to this day.

What does William Carey have to teach us on the 250th anniversary of his birth?

First, Carey was willing to pray.  And prayer led him to his life’s calling. In his cobbler’s shop he took some spare leather, made a globe of the world and began to pray over the whole world.  Finally he said, If it be the duty of all men to believe the gospel… then it be the duty of those who are entrusted with the gospel to endeavor to make it known among all nations. Carey cried out, Here am I; send me!

Second, Carey was willing to plod in ministry.  What do you think happened when this British shoemaker landed in India?  Did multitudes of Hindus flock to him eager to hear the gospel?  Hardly.  Carey labored seven years before he saw his first conversion to Christ!  Once he was asked how he persevered in such a difficult environment.  He said, I can plod.  And plod he did.  His story is a tale of triumph and tragedy.  His first wife lost her sanity, in part due to the deprivations of life in India.  At one point he lost 12 months of translation work due to a fire in his printing office.  (Twelve months!  How did you feel the last time you lost a single document on your computer?)  Bitterly disappointed Carey wrote, I wish to be still and know that the Lord He is God, and to bow to His will in everything.  He will no doubt bring good out of this evil and make it promote His interests, but at present the providence is exceedingly dark.

Third, Carey was willing to see.  As he saw the plight of the Indians, he understood that evangelism means more than evangelism.  Carey’s goal was to win Indians to Christ.  But he didn’t show up in India and present the gospel in a vacuum.  He understood the gospel to be a society-shaping, world-changing force.  Accordingly he worked in other areas of Indian life.  He watched the de-forestation practices of the natives and worked to prevent the 18th century equivalent of clear-cutting.  He was horrified at some of the practices of the local Hindus.  One custom was to burn to death a husband’s wife (or wives) upon his own funeral pyres.  This allowed his wealth to be passed directly to his sons.  Over 500 such widows had been recently burned in the area where Carey worked!   This missionary labored for 30 years to make this practice illegal.  He also surveyed and helped abolish the practice of throwing babies into the Ganges River during an annual festival at the Island of Saugor.  Each year hundreds (thousands?) of families would offer a child to the gods.  With Carey’s help the practice was outlawed.  

Fourth, William Carey was willing to use the gifts God had given him.  There is no question that this uneducated shoemaker was a gifted linguist.  By the time he was 21, Carey had mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Italian.  He was moving on to Dutch and French.  Once in India, he employed his gift for languages to translate the Scriptures.  If nothing else, we learn from him that when God calls us to himself he will use the gifts he has already given us to glorify his name.

Fifth, Carey was willing to stick to his strategy.  He knew his calling and he refused distraction.  His aim was threefold: to preach the gospel in the people’s native tongue, to translate the Scriptures into the local dialect, and to start schools to educate the young.  His vision kept him on course for four decades while a thousand distractions threatened to take him on a detour.  

By the time William Carey died, the doors of modern missions had been flung wide open.  Carey was a world-renowned linguist and something of a celebrity back in England.  The former shoemaker was unmoved by his notoriety.  He cared only for Christ and the work of spreading his kingdom.  While on his deathbed, Carey was visited by a missionary named Alexander Duff.  The young Duff sat next to Carey’s bed and whispered effusive praise into the dying missionary’s ear.  Duff reviewed Carey’s faithfulness, his accomplishments, and his missionary success.  As Alexander Duff got up to leave he heard the feeble voice of the famous missionary.  Mr. Duff, you have been speaking about ‘Dr. Carey’, ‘Dr. Carey’.  When I am gone say nothing about ‘Dr. Carey’—speak about Dr. Carey’s Saviour.

A few days later William Carey died.  He wrote the epitaph for his own gravestone.

William Carey
Born August 17, 1761: Died—
“A wretched, poor and helpless worm,
On Thy kindness I fall.”

About sleep: do you find that the great secret (if one can do it) is not to care whether you sleep.  Sleep is a jade who scorns her suitors but woos her scorners.

  C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady (27 November 1953)

I read recently that if someone has significant trouble sleeping three or more nights a week, he is officially an insomniac.  I qualify—and that news kept me awake later that evening. 

In case you are gifted with the grace of falling asleep the moment your head hits the pillow, you need to know something about those of us who endure the night.  Being sleepless through the night is miserable.  Perhaps Job is the chief insomniac of the Scriptures:

When I lie down I say, “When shall I arise?”

But the night is long and I am full of tossing till the dawn. (Job 7:4)

Insomnia is different from both sleep and non-sleep.  Insomnia is not a subset of being awake, nor is it a form of sleep. It is more like the Old Testament concept of Sheol, the place that is hard to define and where no one wants to go.  Insomnia is that murky world halfway between the aliveness of midmorning and the wished-for deadness of 1:30 a.m.  It is not exactly hell, but when you go to the land of sleeplessness, you can see flames of Gehenna if you stand on your tip-toes. In the words of Poppy Z. Bright, The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4:00 a.m. knows all my secrets.  But before we think about insomnia, we must consider sleep.

Sleep.  My dictionary’s first definition for the noun sleep is The state of not being awake.  The third definition says, Same as death.  We are supposed to sleep about one-third of our lives.  A good night’s sleep rejuvenates body and spirit—as I vaguely remember.  Sleep is the place we find rest.  When we get a good night of sleep, the world looks pretty good in the morning.  We are ready to take on the day.  But you might have noticed that sleep gets mixed reviews in Scripture. 

If we sleep too much, the Bible calls us a sluggard.  The sluggard turns on his bed the way a door turns on its hinges.  He sleeps in, complaining that there is a lion in the road.  When he wakes up for breakfast, he is too lazy to bring his hand from the dish to his mouth.  He’d rather be back in bed, sleeping.  The sluggard, in the Proverbs, is a very close cousin of the character called the fool.  Neither is industrious; neither fears God.

On the other hand, sleep is also presented in the pages of Scripture as a blessing from God.  Sleep gives rest not only to our body, but to our soul as well.  When David, fearing for his life, was on the run from his son Absalom, David slept!  And his sleep put the strength of his woes in perspective.

I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.

I will not be afraid of many thousands of people

who have set themselves against me all around. (Psalm 3:5-6)

Sleep is such a great gift from God that at least one psalm seems to recommend going to bed early and sleeping in: 

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil;

for he gives to his beloved sleep. (Psalm 127:2)

I hate insomnia, and I am jealous of those who don’t understand it.  I’ve had people tell me, Just roll over and go to sleep.  Clearly these sleepers are challenged by different monsters.  But I digress…. Although I desperately wish I were among those who sleep without hindrance, I’ve learned over the years to tease some good out of my restlessness.

First, insomnia carries with it the potential blessing of watchfulness and prayer.  Many of the Puritans spoke of the discipline of watchfulness.  By watchfulness they meant, essentially, paying attention to your spiritual life, paying attention to your relationship with God.  The best watchfulness and the best prayers are, indeed, uttered not in the misty hours of the night.  We watch and pray best when our mind and our body are fully awake.  Nevertheless, I’ve shared many great hours with God in middle of the night.  As I toss and turn I pray for our church, for people in our church, for my family.  And I pray I might get back to sleep.

Second, insomnia contains the hidden opportunity of listening.  I will often ask, at 2:37 a.m., What is it, Lord that you want to teach me in this season of life?  And sometimes God speaks.  Sometimes he tells me about my weaknesses and his strength.  Don’t think me too weird, but sometimes I actually listen to God speak audibly.  I really listen to his voice.  No kidding.  I plug in my iPod and listen to the New Testament read to me by a professional.  And sometimes, not always, I am encouraged by a chapter or even an entire book of the Bible that I might not otherwise have heard.

Third, insomnia compels me to yield, once again, to the God I love.  As I toss and turn, I remind myself that every good gift in my life is from my heavenly Father. Even the good gift of sleep.  Puritan Joel Taylor wrote a helpful poem-prayer on sleep.  Its beginning boldly states a great promise for this insomniac to claim:

Thou hast promised thy beloved sleep;

Give me restoring rest needful for tomorrow’s toil…

Homegroups. What are they? Many churches have some kind of small groups: Covenant Groups, Family Groups, Core Groups, Cell Groups, Men’s Groups, Women’s Groups, Recovery Groups….They can be called many things, and have many purposes. At Santa Barbara Community Church the purpose of a Homegroup is discipleship in community.

As Christians, we are not intended to follow Jesus alone. Throughout Scripture there is community. In the Old Testament God’s people were called the nation of Israel. In the New Testament Christians are a grouping of people referred to as the Church. To believe truly in God assumes membership in a faith community.

The apostle Paul uses the analogy of a human body to describe the church—a body that individual Christians are linked and connected to in order to function together.  Just as the parts of the human body interact with one another, so do the members of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12). In 1 Corinthians 12:27, Paul writes that, you are the body of Christ and each one of you is part of it. Believers live alongside one another and they influence each other. Paul instructs the New Testament churches on how to live life together as the body of Christ. Paul tells them, amongst other things: to be kind and compassionate to one another, and forgive each other (Ephesians 4:32); to submit to one another, and serve one another in love (Galatians 5:13); to encourage one another, and build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11); and to carry each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).

You may have noticed as you read through Paul’s directives for how believers should interrelate that he uses the words one another and each other over and over. If we are not in relationship, we cannot be encouraged by, or encourage other believers as Paul is describing. Without community we will not love others, have anyone love us, have help carrying our burdens, or receive forgiveness… You get the idea. We cannot do these things on our own. The concept of Christian community Paul is advocating happens within the context of the church. We believe that homegroups are a crucial means of promoting this community.

Discipleship, another key component of homegroups, also works best when we are in relationship with other Christians. Discipleship, technically speaking, means being a follower, a devotee, or a student. As believers we are people who follow Christ.  When he walked the earth, Jesus gathered the original group of disciples and they traveled with him—watching, listening, and asking questions. Nowhere in the New Testament is there a description of a Christian disciple who is out there on his or her own.

Consider some specific teachings about discipleship in the New Testament: Paul says that believers are to let the word of Christ dwell in them richly while teaching and admonishing one another (Colossians 3:16) and they are to restore each other when one is caught in sin (Galatians 6:1). James writes that if one should wander from the truth, someone should bring him back (5:19). The author of Hebrews instructs us to spur one another on to love and good deeds, and to meet with each other for mutual encouragement (10:24-25). Each of these New Testament instructions regarding discipleship requires community.

Santa Barbara Community Church takes both discipleship and community seriously. Homegroups are designed for a group of people to meet weekly for two hours. During that time, group members study the Bible together, they pray and worship God, and they intercede for one another. Homegroup is a place where members of SBCC can build relationships and connect with people in a smaller, more personal setting than they encounter at Sunday worship services. Homegroup members can get to know each other, enjoy their time together, and spur one another on to live their lives to the glory of God, despite life’s circumstances. If you consider SBCC to be your church, please, join a homegroup this Fall and enjoy the gift of the Body of Christ.

Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, “I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.“ (Deuteronomy 29:18-19)

Heart.  The physical heart is the organ that pumps blood.  Lots of it.  About 5,000 to 6,000 quarts of blood a day. Every day of your life.  Your heart will pump about six gallons of blood while you read this brief essay.  If your physical heart grows stubborn, if it ceases to pump life-giving blood, you will die. 

Spiritually, your heart is the center of your person.  Your heart is the control center of your life.  Your spiritual heart directs your spiritual life.  You are called to love God with all of your heart(Deuteronomy 6:4-5) and to serve God from your heart (Deuteronomy 11:13). In order to do either, you need God to give you a new heart.  You need him to replace your heart of stone with a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 11:19). 

But if your new heart grows obstinate, if you say, I shall be safe though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart, spiritual destruction is around the corner. If your heart grows cold or, worse, if it grows stubborn your life before God is lost. 

What, then, are the indicators of a stubborn heart?  And how do I know if my heart is growing obdurate, hard, and intractable?  What are the marks of a stubborn heart?

First, a stubborn heart is casual about sin.  The stubborn heart says, This sin is only a little one. At least I’m not ____.  [And I fill in the blank with some sin that I don’t struggle with and congratulate myself that I’m not doing that.  I say to myself, I waste time on video games, at least I don’t ____.]  Truth be told, there are no little sins.  The Puritan Philip Henry was right when he said, Sins are like circles in the water when a stone is thrown into it; one produces another.  When anger was in Cain’s heart, murder was not far off.

Second, a stubborn heart thinks sinners can separate themselves from the sins they commit.  A stubborn heart says, This sin is not really me; this sin is just something I do.  This is the transaction in the heart of a Christian leader who embezzles money from his mission while soliciting donations or, of a pastor who cheats on his wife while preaching against infidelity.  This is not me… it is just something I do.  But is sin really just what you do and not an indication of what you have become?  Thomas Guthrie, a Scottish pastor from the nineteenth century, called sin a painted temptress that steals our virtue, a murderess that destroys our life.  He was right.  Read the tantalizing tale in Proverbs 7 that shows how the stubbornness of a young man’s heart leads him to succumb to the temptations of sex outside the covenant of marriage.  He thinks he is in for a great night of perfumed passion; he does not know that it will cost him his life (verse 23).

Third, a stubborn heart convinces itself, This sin is a passing phase.  I’m working on it, and I’ll work through it.  I remember talking with a man in Christian leadership who had developed and tolerated the sin of enjoying pornography.  Lots of pornography.  He was married and had children.  He confessed to me his sin, but then he said, almost casually, Since it took me a long time to get to this place of being addicted to pornography, I have to assume it will take a long time to break this addiction.  His plan for a gradual repentance, for a sustained enjoyment of the pleasures of sin in the meantime (Hebrews 11:25), is the sin of stubborn defiance.  It says, I can enjoy this sin until I get sick of it. Then I will repent.  God says, Fool! This night your soul is required of you! (Luke 12:20).

Fourth, a stubborn heart sees sin as a reward for obedience.  There is a frightening, unconscious calculus that takes place in a calcifying heart:  I’m a good person, I deserve a break from time to time, and a bottle of wine helps me to relax. Or I am a faithful giver, I tithe even more than 10 percent, so what is a little gossip here or there?  And even, I do a lot of good, I give a lot of my time to help disciple people in my church, and I’ve been wronged by the very people I’ve cared for.  So a little bitterness is my prerogative.  John Owen, perhaps the greatest of the writing Puritans, said, One sin willingly lived in is as able to destroy a man’s soul as a thousand… Where God is not loved above all, He is not loved at all.

Is your heart stubborn?  I know mine is, and I need your help.  John Trapp (yes, another Puritan) said, If the best man’s faults were written on his forehead, it would make him pull his hat over his eyes.  If the sins of my heart were on public display, well, you would spit in my face.  And that is precisely why I need you.  Not to spit in my face, but to point my face toward the Redeemer who both forgives my dark heart and changes it into his wonderful likeness.  The writer to the Hebrews, who was not a Puritan, puts it nicely:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:12-13)

As people committed to God and to one another, let’s take care of one another’s hearts.  Let us guard one another from the poison of bitter fruit, from the stubbornness of heart that would allow us to coddle our sins and say, I shall be safe nevertheless.

Whether it is the19th century followers of William Miller, who put on ascension robes and stood on the roofs of their houses awaiting Christ’s return several times, or those who are wondering what to do with a year’s worth of freeze dried food bought during the Y2K scare, or those who are gearing up for yet another end of the world scenario as we approach the Mayan 2012 prediction, what is really needed is a healthy dose of discernment.

The Bible calls Christians to use discernment, especially when it comes to the teachings of Scripture. Discernment is the ability to scrutinize, examine, distinguish, question, and ultimately judge right from wrong, truth from error.  When Paul and Silas showed up in Berea preaching in the local synagogue, we see an example of discernment. Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined(discerned)the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true (Acts 17:11).  At the end of Hebrews 5, the author is expressing his frustration with believers who remain spiritually immature as evidenced by their lack of discernment.  But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernmenttrained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil (Hebrews 5:14 ESV).  The book of Proverbs could be read as one long plea from a father to his son to exercise discernment.  Wisdom is found on the lips of the discerning . . . (Proverbs 10:13).  The apostle Paul, advocating the discerning analysis of what comes into our minds says, we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

It is easy to make light of a quirky octogenarian like Harold Camping or even the misguided 19th century Millerites and their lack of discernment. Unfortunately, though, such gullibility often strikes closer to home.  Let me give two examples of how discernment has been found wanting in the evangelical world, and possibly in your own thinking.

The Evangelical church is being flooded with a new group of very hip, articulate, and persuasive pastors, authors, musicians and leaders. Discernment is needed.  At the forefront of this vanguard is Rob Bell, the hugely popular and immensely gifted pastor (Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan with 10,000 attending weekly).  Bell is the author and creator of the Nooma videos and has been on his own lecture circuit reaching enormous crowds. No doubt many reading this article have listened to his sermons, watched his videos and read his books.  Bell’s latest book, Love Wins, has landed him in considerable hot water creating a firestorm of controversy (he made the cover of Time magazine).  In his book, Bell ponders the question of universalism, (the idea that all people will eventually be saved), and then seems to advocate his own unique version of it.  While Bell never uses the term universalism, (Bell is consistently and frustratingly opaque in his writing), he essentially challenges the idea of a final judgment by God that leads to hell. Bell also challenges other settled and central Christian doctrines including the substitutionary atonement of Jesus, opting instead for the model of the cross where Christ’s sacrificial death simply inspires us to live the Christian life.  As Kevin De Young has commented, Love Wins demeans the cross and misrepresents God’s character. 

My point here is not to enter into a full discussion of Love Wins, but to plead for discernment in the Christian community.  Some years ago when Bell’s very popular book, Velvet Elvis, was making the rounds at SBCC, I picked it up to see what so many in our church were reading.  I became troubled on two fronts.  First, I was very concerned with some of what I read in this otherwise winsome book.  Central tenants of historic Christian faith were challenged or demeaned as unimportant (such as the virgin birth of Christ).  Second, and most troubling: no one I talked to seemed particularly bothered by what they read.

My second example comes from the political world. No doubt you have heard of Glenn Beck, the popular television and radio talk show host who is best known for his conservative political views. Let me say very plainly, I am not commenting on Beck’s political views.  Politics aside, I am trying to discern his theological statements. Beck’s pronounced influence among evangelicals is rather odd and may say more about the state of evangelicalism than about Beck’s engaging personality.  Beck recently spoke at Liberty University’s Commencement 2010 (Liberty is the largest evangelical college in the U.S.).  Beck talks a lot about God and Jesus.  He claims loudly and unambiguously to be a follower of Jesus Christ.  This, of course, endears him to many Christians, especially those who share his political views.  The problem, however, is that Glenn Beck is a committed Mormon.  The Mormon understanding of God, Jesus, and the atonement, is actually quite different than the historic Christian teaching.  Beck uses the same words –God, Jesus, salvation– but the meaning he gives these words is very different than the meaning found in the Bible and the historic creeds of the Christian church.  Many believers, lacking discernment, have simply assumed that since Beck uses the words, God, Jesus and salvation he means the same thing as they do when they talk about God, Jesus and salvation.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Mormon theology and Christian theology are not in sync.  Mormons and adherents of historic Christianity do not believe the same things.  It takes discernment to realize that Glenn Beck’s Jesus is not the same Jesus found in the New Testament.

I am not arguing for Christians to become heresy hunters, or to define Christian faith so narrowly that it becomes a rigid club for just a few who think they are always correct. An ugly judgmentalism that lacks humility and grace is not the antidote to error.  What I am advocating is a discerning mind for believers as we listen to sermons, read Christian books and wander the blogs. What I am pleading for is a loving, and yet critical stance, that examines the content of our reading and listening habits.  Many of the sermons, books, blogs, and videos that are now being promoted in the larger evangelical community are very, very clever, well done, and captivating.  Much of it is slick, entertaining, professional, and creative.  But, before we are completely swept off our feet by the latest rock star Christian celebrity, let’s pause and ask one very simple question.  What is this person really teaching?  When we ask this question: we are entering into the process of discernment.  Practicing the art and discipline of discernment will guard our minds from naively swallowing whatever comes our way.  In the process, as discernment is learned, spiritual maturity will be the by-product.

Now, fast forward a few months: you’ve cleared off and prepped the land, you’ve poured a foundation, and you’ve got a few walls and beams up.  Unfortunately, things aren’t going quite as quickly as you’d like.  You’ve had to wait for various shipments of parts.  Your workers don’t always act as efficiently as you’d like.  Maybe you’ve even had particularly nasty weather wreak havoc on the exposed parts of your house-to-be.

In fact, you’ve had so much trouble that one day you look at that unfinished house and think to yourself, this is good enough. Despite the lack of a roof, electrical circuits, windows, or really anything that would provide shelter, you decide that the hassle of completing the project just doesn’t outweigh your desire to live there.  So you bring all your things and set up shop in your new house without giving a second thought to its very pronounced lack of completion.

Anyone watching this would think: Um… idiot alert.  Right?  Nobody in her right mind would look at a half-finished house and say, “This is ready to be lived in.”

So why do we do this with our faith?

Sometimes as Christians we look at our lives and think, “Eh, this is good enough.”  We say things like “I just want to take it easy this year,” or “Isn’t it good enough that I go to a Christian college?” or “Look at how much I’ve grown already by coming to church!”  We talk about these things as though they themselves were the goals; as though resting in God’s creation or being in a Christian community or developing virtues were ends in of themselves, instead of simply the means of bringing more glory to God.  We build a few walls and pour some concrete, and call the temples that are our bodies finished.

The further along you get with building, the more tempting it can be to say, “Done!”  You’ve got a roof; you’ve developed persistence in life’s storms.  You’ve got windows; you’re getting better at being transparent in your community.  You’ve even got plumbing … and whatever spiritual boon that equates to.  In both cases, however, the goal isn’t simply function, it’s excellence in form.  An excellent house will provide shelter, yes, but will also be inviting to guests, environmentally efficient, and so on.  An excellent Christian will hopefully not be simply a morally justified automaton, but will live well in community, be a great steward of God’s creation, and many other things.  The point here is that there is almost certainly something we can be doing at any moment to bring our lives more in line with Jesus’ teachings, regardless of how far along any one of us might be along that track.

Before we get carried away with all this action! action! action!, let me say that just like with building a house, it’s important to realize that always pursuing spiritual growth doesn’t necessarily mean always doing heavy lifting.  There are spans of time while building a house that are characterized primarily by planning, or by thinking, or simply by waiting or even resting.  But, no house is built on these things alone; all building projects require a mixture of reflection and action.  And if in my reflection I discover an error in my construction, my best action is to work toward the removal or transformation of that impropriety, so that proper building may commence as soon as possible.

Pursuing growth, whether the growth of a house or a life worthy of Christ, emphatically does not mean a constant, frenzied stream of not-good-enoughs.  What it does mean, however, is a setting of one’s will toward the completion of a task, and for Christians, we have to realize that task is not complete until we are with God in his perfection.  We have the opportunity right now to build, by the grace of God, temples that will endure for all time.  I would love my temple to be a place worth living in – wouldn’t you?

1.      Be humble: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment…(Romans 12:3)  If we have someone who has wronged or hurt us, shouldn’t we remember that we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12)?  My “enemy” is a messed-up person – just like me.  The path of humility throws us to our knees, because we know we’re broken; we know that this forgiveness business is bigger than ourselves; we know that the darkness of our own hearts would love to exact pay-back.  The opposite path – the path of pride—leads us to quietly nurture and feed resentment.  We tend to it with the fertilizer of our rights to fair treatment and respect.  We allow this resentment to grow and, before we know it, we are entangled and bound to the very one who has wronged us.  Humility cuts us free from this prison.  God tells us “justice is His.”  Do we believe him?  We are told to “humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.”  Will we?  Humility helps us to reclaim the notion that God is sovereign over the situation, and I am not.

2.      Be generous:  Forgiveness is releasing a debt.  We get messed up when we focus entirely on the debtor (see point #1 above).  Sometimes the debtor (the one who has wronged us) has no idea of the weight of debt we are releasing.  True forgiveness doesn’t demand acknowledgement and apology and repentance.  Be generous.  And remember that, in releasing the debt, you are making a choice. Because it is aligned with God’s will for us, forgiveness comes from a position of strength, not weakness.  It is a decision to walk in his will and release what shouldn’t be binding us.  Release generously.

3.      Be brave:  Jesus told us to pick up the Cross and follow him. (Matthew 16:24). What is that cross we’re supposed to pick up?  Is it really a vague, fill-in-the-blank  --“your challenging category here”-- kind of thing?  (Is it the “financial worry” cross?  The “dysfunctional and painful relationship” cross?  Is it the “persecution in the workplace” cross?)  To what is Jesus referring when he tells us to pick up our cross and follow him?  Could it be that Jesus is asking us to follow him on that road to Golgotha?  The death road?  Jesus begged the Father, as he prayed through the night in the Garden, to please not have to go down this road.  But he did it.  He endured it.  Why?  To forgive us.  Our forgiveness cost Jesus his life.  Why then are we surprised when forgiveness is costly to us?  To forgive another is to be brave, because we know that it involves dying to ourselves.  Our consolation is in the fact that we know a Savior who walked this road before us, and he promises to never leave us or forsake us.

4.      Be persistent:  Whoever coined the phrase “Forgive and forget,” probably never had to forgive anything of gravity.  Forgiveness is a process of relinquishment, taking back, then surrendering again. We’re flawed.  We’re weak.  We’re sinful.  Of course, we’re not going to “do” forgiveness perfectly.  The whole point is that we simply cannot forgive apart from God working in our hearts.  When we try to do the mental calculations of forgiveness, apart from the empowering work of the Spirit, then we take the helm and go off course.  Our natural gravitational pull is towards ourselves.  To be persistent in forgiveness is to be persistent in prayer. 

5.      Be thankful: The labor of forgiveness is a deep ongoing reminder of God’s forgiving love of us.  Thankfulness provides a compass of sorts for us as we forgive others. It keeps our eyes open and our minds awake to the renovation work he is doing in us –and around us—as we work to forgive.

Philip Yancey says, “…in the final analysis, forgiveness is an act of faith.  By forgiving another, I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am.  By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out.  I leave in God’s hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy.”

For His sake then, and for our growth, let us be people who choose to fix our eyes on Jesus, the one who went before us on this cross-bearing road to forgiveness.

At the beginning of the sabbatical, I read the story of the Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36). I was drawn to the fact that Peter’s response to that holy moment was to want to take action while God simply said: Listen!  I chose to keep coming back to that word during my time away and feel so thankful for the time to listen.  It was in this spirit that I visited a mega-church in Georgia, known worldwide as having a unique model of ministry to children and families.  I had an admittedly biased impression that it was somehow suspect simply because of its size. I was grateful that God graciously reminded me He is at work in His people outside our SBCC model for ministry. Donna Sugano (my partner in Children’s Ministries) and I, in fact, chose to attend a conference in April sponsored by this church (see the short article later in this issue, “Seeing Orange for SBCC”). We both heard stimulating words from others and from the Lord that week. We were glad for the chance to listen together.

My husband Norm and I then spent 8 weeks in the Dominican Republic for rest, reading, and reflection.  It was wonderful to have time to read and study the Word in anticipation of the coming year of ministry. We also wanted to explore how God was making Himself known in yet another unfamiliar context. We knew there were many needs in the DR and, meeting them is a complex process. Talking with missionaries and Christians there about the situation made us that much more aware of the role of God’s grace in using us to help others-it’s just not that simple!

We visited the Frohlings, our church missionaries to Argentina after our time in the DR. They continue to cling to the Hope of Christ as they adjust to the difficulties of beginning a ministry in faraway place.  We had a chance to meet some of the godly people with and to whom they minister, and to play lots of games with the three Frohling boys (see pictures). We feel so thankful to have seen them and to have been able to encourage one another in what we are all called to:  trusting that Jesus has something to say to us and through us.

I did not have a “mountaintop experience” but I did do a lot of listening. So what did I hear? We as believers are broken and yet the hope of Christ compels us to believe that He wants to make Himself known through us, just as He did through Peter. I want these two truths to sustain me and inform our church as we go forward in ministry. May we keep listening to Jesus and marveling in His revelation to us while we were yet sinners. This allows us the humility to hold out hope to the world even in the midst of our brokenness. The glory will go to God, not our tabernacle.

As you may or may not know, Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, has written a book entitled Love Wins.  In that book Bell sounds quite a bit like a universalist, meaning, he seems to doubt that anyone will actually go to hell, much less live there for eternity enduring the wrath of an angry God.  The brouhaha surrounding Love Wins and Bell’s suspect theology propelled him and his book all the way to the cover of Time magazine, numerous network television interviews, and countless editorials on the blogosphere.  It turns out that questioning the virtue and the value of hell can launch one into fame and fortune. Who knew?

Full disclosure: I have always been more than a bit suspicious of Rob Bell.  His books and especially his Nooma videos concern me greatly.  While I am anything but a Bell scholar (I haven’t read Love Wins), in everything I have read, in most of the sermons I have heard him preach, and in most of the videos I have watched, Pastor Bell seems intent on dissuading me from my biblical, orthodox convictions.  He seems determined to untether me from my evangelical moorings in order to set me adrift on the wide-open sea of inclusivism, skepticism, and, now, universalism.

But enough on Bell. Let’s think together about hell itself.  Does the Bible teach that every person who lives and dies actually has a destiny in either in heaven or hell?  Could a good and loving God really consign His people to an eternity separated from His presence and His glory—and still be considered a good and loving God?  The answer to both questions is, in a word, yes. 

Now I am a happy man with a God-given joyful temperament.  I find humor in almost everything.  If laughter is good for the soul, my soul is doing just fine.  Accordingly, I would love to tell you, Hell? Hell is for the Middle Ages and for a few snake-handling fundamentalists preaching fire and damnation deep in Mississippi on a hot summer night.  But I cannot say that.  Instead, I have to say, Hell is the destiny of all people whose sins separate them from a holy God.  This is what the Bible teaches.

Scripture clearly teaches that we live, then we die, and then we face the judgment of God (Hebrews 9:27).  Consider a few examples from the New Testament:

•        This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wickedfrom the righteousand throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. – Jesus in Matthew 13:49-50

•        [God] will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.  They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of His power.  -- The apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9.

•        The apostle Peter speaks of God’s coming judgment that will bring about the destruction of the ungodly (2 Peter 3:7).

•        Jude warns of a coming day of judgment by eternal fire (Jude 7).

•        James calls the rich to weep and howl because of the miseries that are coming in the future (James 5:1).

•        The writer of the letter to the Hebrews warns that those who persist in their sins will face a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume these who are impenitent. (Hebrews 10:27)

Do such teachings mean that our God is unloving?  Are people sent to hell because God doesn’t care—or worse?  Is God a sadist who enjoys dispensing His wrath?  No.  God is love (1 John 4:8).  The Father wishes no one to perish: He wills that everyone come to saving faith in Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:9).  So how can God’s love and God’s wrath exist side by side?  How can the same deity dispense both unimaginable wrath and incomprehensible love to the people he created?

Scottish journalist and theologian John MacLeod points out that the biblical doctrine of hell flows from the heart of the Bible’s story of creation:          

Man is created in the image of God. He is above all other creatures. He has self-awareness, self-knowledge, the capacity to relate, the capacity to create, the capacity to dream. He is immortal. The soul–they think–must live forever. It cannot cease to be, because God created it. In our hearts we all know that death is unnatural and change appalling, the grave obscene; but when man has rejected God in this world, when he has gone His own way, when he has rejected God’s instruction, His moral Law, what then? The logic of God precludes eternal fellowship with such a being, who has despised His Law and defied His will. And when the gospel itself is spurned, the way of Christ’s atonement, what can there be at the last but for God to grant such a soul its own heart’s desire?

Or, as C. S. Lewis put it more succinctly, A man can’t be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam.

And so we have both the virtue and the value of hell.  First, hell is virtuous because it allows our sinful rebellion to run its course.  Hell thereby honors our freedom.  As G. K. Chesterton said, Hell is God’s great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.  The impenitent shakes his fist in the face of God, and God gives him over to his rebellion (Romans 1:18ff). 

Second, hell is valuable because if we understand its reality, we will never want to go there.  The biblical teaching is that the coming judgment of God and His just punishment of those who are in rebellion against him will be…hell.  Jesus said it would be better to rip your eye out and be half-blind than to persist in lust and go to hell.  He said that because of the coming judgment of God it would be better to have never been born than to have led a young person astray.  And several times Jesus spoke of a furnace of fire where there is eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Hell is not where we want to spend forever. 

Brothers and sisters, let us place our faith in Jesus and so live our lives before him that, at the last day when he comes to judge the living and the dead, we will be as far removed from hell as the east is removed from the west.  And that place is heaven.  Let us take care that we meet there at last.

On March 11th, a 9.0 earthquake shook the Earth near Japan.  This was the world’s fifth strongest earthquake since 1900, and it moved the island of Hoshnu eight feet east!  The ferocity of the quake was such that the Earth shifted on its axis by 6.5 inches.  The planet actually spun a bit faster for a moment or two.  And then came the tsunami, a 30-foot wave of destruction that hit Japan with seemingly unconcerned force and indiscriminate destruction.  Buildings were demolished, a nuclear power plant began its self-immolation, farms were destroyed, cars floated like ping-pong balls in a swimming pool, and people died.  At this writing, some 10,000 are confirmed dead, and 17,000 more are unaccounted for.  Over 500,000 people are cold, hungry, and homeless.

The question we ask is, Why?  Why earthquakes, tornados, monsoons, and forest fires?  Are these “natural disasters” purposeless?  Are they simply the result of impersonal geological forces and therefore devoid of meaning?  Did the earthquake “just happen”?  Is a seismic explanation of what took place in Japan the only answer we get?  Is the breadth and depth of the human suffering we have witnessed the result of the impersonal forces of nature—or do these calamities have a guiding hand?  Is there a God who controls even the shaking of the ground?  And if God had something to do with what happened in Japan, what was it?

These are hard questions, and people give many and varied answers. Their thoughts, however, tend to fall into two categories. First are those people who blame the Earth itself.  The universe may have been created by God, or it might be the result of accidental evolution, but either way, those who take this track understand the Earth to be on its own.  God is not pulling any strings, ordering any events, or changing the course of what we call “nature.”  As Rabbi Julie Schonfeld said in the aftermath of the tsunami, “I live in a real world of science and technology.  We know that these things happen, and we are humbled by them.”  These things happen…. 

Others who muse about the why blame the victims:  the Earth shook because the people deserved it. Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo, said Japanese politics was “tainted with egoism and populism” and caused “tembatsu, or divine punishment.”  Glenn Beck hinted at the same answer when he said, “Whether you call it Gaia or whether you call it Jesus, there’s a message being sent… and that is, Hey, you know that stuff we’re doing?  Not really working out real well.”   Hindus and Buddhists give similar versions of this blame-the-victim answer to the question of suffering and natural disaster.  The law of karma in Hinduism teaches that we get what we deserve.  My sin, committed either in this life or a previous one, must be paid for.  My suffering is the consequence of my behavior.

But how do Christians who know the Bible and the God of that Bible understand so-called natural disasters?  Ours is a third way.  We neither blame the forces of blind chance, nor do we blame the victims.  Instead, we understand that God’s governance extends even to the trembling of the Earth.  When pondering God’s role in the earthquake of March 11th, we should therefore be both comforted and stirred.

We should be comforted because the God we worship never goes on vacation. The God we meet in Scripture is a deity who controls everything.  His providence and control extend to all things at all times.  From God’s perspective, there are no “accidents,” and everything that we call “nature” is directed by his guiding hand.

The book of Job, for example, tells the story of a man who loses his children and his wealth to wicked marauders, lightning strikes, and a “great wind.”  But in the final analysis, Job doesn’t attribute his loss to the forces of nature, to the evil bandits, or even to Satan himself—although Satan clearly plays a role in Job’s suffering.  Job attributes his calamity to God and God’s providence.  When Job learns of his loss, he says, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.”  Later, Job loses even his health, and at this point his wife invites him to “curse God and die.”  Instead, stunningly, Job expresses hope, saying, “Shall we accept good from God and not receive evil?”

Again, God never goes on vacation.  He never takes a day off.  He controls the rain (Psalm 105:32).  He sends famine and abundance (Psalm 105:32-34).  God directs the flight of the flies and the locusts (see the Exodus 8 and 10 description of those plagues).  Even the wind and waves obey God (Mark 4:41).  When Paul says that God works “all things” according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1:11), we need to know that “all things” includes the outcome of every gambler’s bet (Proverbs 16:33), the lifespan of every sparrow (Matthew 10:29), every decision President Obama makes (Proverbs 21:1), and even the magnitude of an earthquake in Japan.  As the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism put it, “Yea, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” 

The next question in the Catechism asks, “How does the knowledge of God’s creation and providence help us?” We can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love. All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.

Earthquakes, though, and tsunamis, tornados, and even train wrecks should also stir our hearts to repentance.  In one of the most startling passages of all Scripture, Jesus is told of some Galileans who were offering sacrifices and were massacred by Pilate (Luke 13:1-5).  We don’t know much about this incident (neither history nor the Bible mentions it other than in this passage), but Jesus’ response to the news takes our breath away:

Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Are you gasping for breath? Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish!  What can Jesus mean by that?  Instead of trying to explain the problem of suffering, Jesus says, “Repent!”  Instead of trying to justify how a good God could allow such a thing to happen, Jesus points to the fundamental truth about every human being who has ever lived: we all deserve God’s wrath.  Every day we live, every meal we eat, every sunset we see, every time we laugh—each of these is a gift of God’s kindness.  The apostle Paul tells us that this kindness is designed to lead us to repentance (Romans 2:4), but in Luke 13, Jesus tells us that the suffering of others has the same purpose.  With just a few words, Jesus points out that God owes us nothing and that our only hope before God is to repent.  Our sins have separated us from the unimaginable holiness of God; even our good deeds are as “filthy rags” in his sight (Isaiah 64:6).  And Jesus invites us to repent.

Of course, we are to both grieve with those who grieve and give to those who are groaning in Japan.  Jesus calls us to weep with those who weep, and the Bible is full of commands to share generously with the poor.  Our hearts should break when we see the intensity of the human suffering.  We should be praying daily for those who have lost family, friends, and possessions.  But here, in Luke 13, Jesus gives a meaning to such political and “natural” disasters that we might not otherwise have thought of.  The fall of that tower in Siloam and the murderous violence of Pilate on those offering sacrifices in Jerusalem are wake-up calls for each one of us to come before the living God and say, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  The rabbi is wrong.  These “natural disasters” do not “just happen.”  They happen so that we might repent and cry out for the mercy of God.  Repentance is the place God wants us to be.

We have been friends for close to two decades.  Donna and I have enjoyed laughs, hikes, Bible studies, conversation, cross-country skiing and fabulous meals together with John and Jane Doe.  It was the sort of friendship that all Christian couples long for, a sharing of life in the context of faith in Christ. 

Their marriage ended rather abruptly, at least from the perspective of a friend experiencing it from the outside. Anger, frustration, distance, baggage, and eventually betrayal lead to the dissolution of what began as a Christian covenant more than twenty years earlier.  In the midst of coffee and conversation with John and Jane, I learned there was a bit more to the story.  It seems that Jane was struggling with her sexual identity.  Thoughts, feelings, and desires that she said had lay dormant were beginning to surface.  Jane had decided to live a lesbian lifestyle.

We talked, argued, and cried.  Our conversations, which were numerous and protracted, were laced with grace and gentleness.  Our dialogue traveled considerable distance.  We spoke of past pains and hurts in Jane’s life to how the Bible spoke of same-sex desire.  I marshaled the best biblical thinking I could so as to deter her from the course she was on. This was not theoretical theology.  I was talking to a dear friend that I loved  In the midst of our conversations, I learned, painfully, that it is one thing to present a convincing case based on biblical truth and it is still another to have that truth translate to the will of the individual. Yes, the teachings of Scripture seemed clear enough, but for Jane not strong enough to deter her from pursuing her new lifestyle.

The tone of our discussions changed.  The coffee seemed bitter. As Jane and I talked about our friendship, SBCC, the biblical teaching regarding homosexual practices, and the decisions that Jane was making, it was becoming increasingly obvious that we were coming to a dead end.  Unfortunately, the language of our conversations was subtly beginning to sting.  She began to use words such as intolerant, judgmental, narrow, not accepting, and unloving to describe my position.  Jane had decided to go to a new church, one that was open and affirming of her newly chosen lifestyle.  Her new church home would be a place of non-judgmental loving.  You see, Jane wanted more than a dialogue with a friend.  Jane wanted approval of the decisions she was making.

I want to be friends with Jane.  I realize, however, that our relationship will never be the same.  Jane and I do not share the same biblical convictions concerning sexual practices.  These convictions go to the heart of how we interpret the Bible and how God created us.  I want to be compassionate and yet still hold to biblical convictions.  How can I be loving and tolerant about behavior that is sinful and intolerable to God?  How can I be non-judgmental and still call sin what it is . . . sin?  How can SBCC be an affirming and accepting body of believers and hold firmly to convictions that seem clear from the pages of scripture?

We live in an era where any disapproval of alternative lifestyles, restrictions of personal freedoms or Christian critique of homosexual practices is seen as bigoted and hateful. Everyone wants to define his own moral code.  In our particular cultural and intellectual climate, it is seen as an insult to attempt to persuade others of universal truth.  This mindset becomes especially stubborn when discussing religion and morality.  What we end up with is personalized truth where the needs and desires of the individual rule the day.  Moral decisions are based on subjective internal prompting rather than external objective standards.

Alongside this personalized view of right and wrong is a deficient view of love.  Love becomes synonymous with kindness.  To be loving of another human being and his actions and lifestyle decisions means that you must be accepting and kind to any choices he is making.  To withhold complete acceptance is equated with a lack of love.  This understanding of the nature of love has a profound affect on how Christians, and non-believers, understand Jesus and his teachings.  It is this type of thinking that leads to a diminished view of Jesus.   Philosopher Peter Kreeft puts it like this.  Why have we reduced him to ‘meek and gentle’ Jesus?  Because we have reduced all virtues to one, being kind: and we measure Jesus by our standards instead of measuring our standards by him.

I am in a dilemma with my friend Jane.  How can I talk about same sex practices in a way that is both true and gracious? How can I love Jane?  How can I love Jane and not be accused of hateful narrow-minded bigotry? How can I be a friend and still maintain my biblically derived convictions?  Jane and I have deep differences.  My understanding of the Bible prohibits me from condoning the lifestyle she has chosen. For Jane, however, love is predicated on an acceptance of her new lifestyle.

So I remain resolute in my convictions and steadfast in my love.  I am convinced that God loves Jane infinitely more than I do, yet God is deeply grieved by her behavior.  I want to see Jane with the eyes of Christ. The Russian novelist Dostoevsky was correct when he said, To love a person means to see him as God intended him to be.

I turned 40 this year.  I know it’s not written anywhere, but I just kind of thought that once you hit 40, you KNOW things. You are more spiritual, more discerning….those kinds of things. All I noticed was that my body started not working, but I attributed that to getting older and having a stressful summer.

I am a teacher. I love teaching, it’s one of those things I just know. I wake up every morning happy to go to work. Even though I didn’t feel good, I enjoyed getting my room ready for my second graders and I even taught the first two days of school. When I could hardly stand up at the end of the second day and Rich said he would meet me at Urgent Care, you would think that it would hit me –“Slow down”– but that didn’t happen. I ended up in the hospital and spent my waking moments reminding every doctor who came in my room that I needed to get better because I needed to teach my second graders. In my mind, this was an emergency.

When I got out of the hospital, I was so weak I couldn’t walk to the end of the block, but that was ok, because I was going back to teaching. And God was whispering, “be still” and “I am enough” and “trust Me”, but I couldn’t hear Him because I was too busy getting better.

Eventually I did go back to school (with the help of some really high powered drugs), and I taught.  Some weeks it was four days, some weeks it was only one, but I taught. And God continued to talk to me, but it was a one-sided conversation. I didn’t have time to listen; I was trying to catch up from all that I had missed those first weeks of school. I was trying to be the best teacher I could be. And then on Monday, October 25th I knew in the deepest part of my heart, as I was taking pain meds in the middle of the day, I couldn’t go on. I just couldn’t. 

I left school that day and I started weeping, and I wasn’t sad, I was mad. What in the world was going on? Didn’t God know those kids needed me? Didn’t He know I had a whole lot of people praying for my healing? Didn’t He want to heal me? I reluctantly began a two-month medical leave the following Monday, November 1^s..  I was sure I would be back in January. So I spent November going to appointments and continuing to eat a special diet and trying so hard to keep control of the situation. And God continued to talk to me, and I would read my Bible but I didn’t really absorb what I was reading because I was still so confused. Why was I at home? What good could I possibly be at home? Then, on December 23rd I met with my doctor, and he said, you aren’t well enough to go back, your meds are all over the place, your symptoms are all over the place, you are underweight, you will need to talk to your principal about extending your leave. I was devastated.  How could this be happening?

It wasn’t until the middle of January that I realized that what I was doing –trying to control everything– wasn’t really working. In complete frustration I said, “Ok, fine, I will be still, I will trust you, it’s all I can do anyhow.”  And God met me there, and I felt peace.  Peace that I had not felt before. And I started asking God each morning after I had driven the kids to school, ok, what do you want me to do today? And some days He said, nothing. Just be. Be still and know that I am God. Wow, be still. That was not something I was accustomed to doing. I thought God wanted action. He wanted me doing things for His kingdom. And here He was telling me to be still. And that was hard, because I am an extrovert and I find my worth in DOING things, especially for others. So to “just be”– this was counterintuitive.

I continued to read my Bible, but this time, instead of reading it to check it off my list of things I had to do, I found myself looking forward to that time each morning with God, and I found that God was meeting me there, in that quiet place, and He was filling me up.  With Himself.  Yet I still thought, this is good, but when I get back to the classroom, that will be the best.

We saw a specialist at Cedars-Sinai at the end of January.  He not only concurred with everything my doctor in town said; he actually thought I was in a more severe situation, requiring more drastic therapy. And this felt like another emergency. And, again, I forgot what I had been learning about being still, and trusting. I asked the doctor how long it might take for these two new medications to kick in and he said four weeks, more likely twelve. And I thought, twelve weeks, no Lord, not that. Please not that. I had just received a letter from my class saying that they missed me and that they hoped I would come back before they went to third grade. And I remember thinking, “well, of course I will be back before then.” But now I am not so sure.

I have started taking the two new medications, and I understand better what the specialist meant. I am completely exhausted, I feel sick most mornings and while it feels like an emergency situation, I am reminded of something I read recently.  I am starting to realize “Life is not an emergency. Life is brief and it is fleeting but it is not an emergency. Emergencies are sudden, unexpected events –but is anything under the sun unexpected to God? Stay calm, enter the moment, give thanks. And I can always give thanks because an all-powerful God always has all these things –all things– always under control. I breathe deep and He preaches to me, soothing the time-frenzied soul with the grace river in whisper. Life is not an emergency“ (Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts)

And that is what I am learning, and re-learning on an almost daily basis. God is good, God is here, God is with me, He knows me, He created me, He wants me to spend time with Him, and I find myself agreeing with Ann Voskamp when she said, “it’s not that I want more time; I just want enough time. I just want time to do my one life well.”

Have you noticed how difficult it is for us moderns to utter the word death?  It seems we will substitute just about any euphemistic word or phrase before we speak this epithet that insults our secret hope that we will live forever. We reverently speak of passing, the deceased, or of someone’s demise.  Sometimes, because of our discomfort with death itself, we go the other direction: we get down to the brass tacks (sort of) and refer to death as kicking the bucket, pushing up daisies, joining the invisible choir, being six feet under, and so on… Whichever verbal path we choose, we make it quite clear that we are troubled with the word death, and I believe we are more troubled still when it comes to mourning the dead.

When I’m dead and gone, please don’t celebrate my life; instead, mourn my death.  Wear black, shed a tear, sing some great hymns, proclaim the resurrection of the dead, and worship God because death is the last enemy to be destroyed.  But please don’t let my funeral be life affirming.  Yes, tell some jokes about me when you reflect on my life; maybe show a few pictures of what I looked like while I was living. Review my life and then give thanks to God for any good in me that you call to remembrance on the day of my memorial service.  May my funeral, however, be depressing because I have died… yet joyous because I placed my faith in Jesus Christ.

In The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, Thomas Lynch, both an undertaker and a writer, points out the obvious: We don’t like funerals. He says this: Most folks would rather shop dry goods or foodstuffs than caskets and burial vaults.  Given the choice, most would choose root canal work over the funeral home.  Lynch makes a fascinating point in his book about a significant shift in the modern world.  Once upon a time we went outside to do our business (another euphemism) in what was called an outhouse.  The sights and sounds and odors reminded us of the corruptibility of flesh.  Ever since, though, Thomas Crapper’s invention of the toilet was popularized, all we do is pull a lever, and the evidence of our decay and fallibility disappears in seconds.  About the same time the toilet was brought indoors, the parlor was pushed outdoors.  The parlor became obsolete, giving way to the living room.  Do you know what a parlor was?

The parlor was an important feature of the large, multigenerational home, where Grandmother slept upstairs during the last years of her life and babies took their first breath as they were born.  The parlor was the room where much of the intersection of the generations took place.  It was in the parlor where the young couple sat on a love seat, wide enough to sit next to each other, but short enough to keep them upright.  The parlor was the place where the family played games. And it was also the place where Grandmother’s body would rest in a casket when she died.  Friends and family would come to view her body until she was buried a day or two later.  All the common ventures of life—from birth, to courtship, to marriage vows, to death—were likely to take place in the parlor.  In recent times, though, we moved these ventures of life outside.  Now many of these things take place in the presence of experts.  We are born in the hospital, we date in our cars, we die in our retirement community, and our body goes to the funeral home—and it is likely we will never be seen again.  As Lynch puts it, Bringing the [toilet] indoors has made feces an embarrassment, pushing the dead and dying out has made death [an embarrassment].

So, when we come together for what once was a funeral, now we celebrate life.  We give closure to a person’s life.  That is good and necessary.  But, from the Christian’s perspective, isn’t something missing?  With your permission, I’d like to plan my own funeral.

First, let my death be bad.  Don’t sentimentalize, institutionalize, or normalize my death.  Don’t say, Well, everyone dies. We should have expected this.  Death is horrible: it is an enemy to dread, a curse we endure. Our days are, according to the psalmist, like grass: we flourish like a flower of the field and then we are gone (103:15-16).  There is nothing good about death.  When I die and you gather to talk about me, let death itself be held up as the enemy Christ came to destroy.   Death is the great democrat who, in the end, levels all our pretentions, wrote Elton Trueblood in The Common Ventures of Life.  If you come to my funeral, may Christ’s victory over this great democrat be the focal point.

Second, proclaim the gospel.  Let the fundamental law of the universe be heard loudly and clearly: The wages of sin is death, and Reed Jolley wouldn’t have died had there been no sin.  Yet then say, with equal clarity and increased volume, The gift of God is eternal life for those who place their faith in Christ. 

Third, be careful with the eulogy.  The word eulogy means to speak well of someone, and most funerals include them.  They are necessary and appropriate.  Historically, however, the eulogy was saved for later, for after the funeral.  When the church gathered to mourn the end of someone’s life, the gathering was for worship.  The church focused on God, not on the person who died.  So, when I die, keep it short. Don’t let Reed Jolley be the main thing. Worship God.

Fourth, proclaim the Resurrection.  When the emotions come, go ahead and mourn.  Let the tears flow.  And don’t feel like you have to resolve those emotions by the time you get in the car to drive home.  But in the midst of any sorrow you feel, proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ and then rejoice over what that resurrection means for my dead body.  The Christian’s hope is not that, when he dies, his soul goes to heaven.  It does that, and that is good news.  But that is not our hope.  The Christian hope is that we have the promise of future resurrection after we die.  One day, the apostle tells us, this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.  Then, and only then, will we say, Death is swallowed up in victory! (1 Corinthians 15:53-55).  So, when you grieve at my funeral, grieve as friends and family who have hope.  Grieve as people who know that death is not the last word.  And then, worship the God who numbered my days even before I was born.  Imagine that!

If you’re anything like me, when you hear the call to prepare for the Lord’s Supper by confessing your sins, you never think, “Golly, I did pretty well this week.  I can’t think of a single thing I would’ve done differently!”  Unfortunately, each week brings its own list of sins I need to confess and repent of—sometimes actions that happened even on the way to church.

How about the sins we commit, though, while sitting in the Sanctuary?  Do you ever need to repent of things done during the worship service itself?   What I’m thinking of in particular is refusing to worship God with your whole heart in the presence of the congregation… lip-syncing your way through the singing; text-messaging your way through the sermon; pondering the rest of your day’s plans during communion; mentally checking out during share times because you sure aren’t going to stand to share anything and don’t expect to glean much from those who always do.

A disclaimer or two is in order before I go any further… I don’t pretend to know what’s in anyone else’s heart, the place from which true worship emanates.  And I realize the condition of our hearts varies from week to week.  There are times when the best we can do is to just show up.  But I also know my own heart which is described well in the hymn “Come Thou Fount” —prone to wander.  That’s me.  And I’m sure there are at least some of you who can relate.  So perhaps a reminder is in order as we begin another year together as to what we’re doing when we come together and the importance of fighting the tendency to wander our way through a time of corporate worship.

Worship is about both giving and receiving.  I’ve heard people try to make a case that it is solely about one or the other, but I don’t buy it.  When we gather to worship, we come to receive.  God doesn’t need anything that we have to offer him.  Unless we come ready to acknowledge our poverty before God and humbly plead for what we most desperately need and what only he can give, something has gone terribly wrong with our worship.  It is also true, however, that worship is about giving.  Like the saints of old who came with sacrifices and offerings, so too, we must come ready to give to God.  He doesn’t need anything from us, but he instructs us to come with an offering for our benefit and for his glory.  The form of our sacrifices and offerings have changed since Old Testament times.  The one sacrifice for sins has already been offered and we need not, and cannot, bring anything that will merit his acceptance.  But nonetheless, worship is still about offerings and sacrifices.  Romans 12:1 says, Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.  Likewise, Hebrews 13:15 exhorts us, Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.  This is true of our worship all through the week, but no less so on Sundays as we gather together in Jesus’ name.

So, as we come to worship, we ought to come ready to receive from God and to give to God.  And there is a way to receive from God that glorifies him and a way that does not.  If we come with the understanding that God is the giver of every perfect gift (which he is) and that what he has to offer us is truly precious (and it is), we will come expectantly and eagerly for his wisdom and comfort and guidance. 

Thus, as was true for the Israelites thousands of years ago, so too for us:  there is a way to give to God that is honoring to him and a way that is dishonoring. For the Israelites, not just any lamb would do for a sacrifice.  It was to be a spotless lamb, without defect.  The firstfruits of the harvest were to be offered, not the left-overs.  The principle holds true for us—we are to bring our best (which varies person to person and day to day). 

It bothers me (and it should bother you), when I see someone half-heartedly engaging in worship or when I realize that I am only half-heartedly engaged.  If we’re going to sing together, let us offer our best.  Our musicians should do their best and so should the rest of the church.  Come prepared to sing with your mind, and heart and voice.  Don’t hold back!  If God is the recipient of this gift of praise, give him what he deserves.  I would hope that when new people arrive at SBCC, the first thing that jumps out at them when it comes to the music is not the musicians on stage, but the voices of the church members.  They must think God is truly great, to sing so passionately to Him. Whether we can sing on key or not, let us pour out our hearts in song!

If we’re going to listen to God’s word and grapple with its meaning and implications together, let us give ourselves fully to the task.  If your mind tends to wander, bring something to write with and jot down lines that stick out to you or evoke questions in you.  Sit in a place in the Sanctuary where you won’t be bothered by as many distractions.  Ask your friends or family members afterwards about what stuck out to them and be willing to share your thoughts.

You get the idea… We have 90 minutes each week when we come together to worship God—to hear his word proclaimed, to sing together of his majesty and grace, to eat and drink together at Christ’s table, and more.  Let us do so in a way that proclaims the worthiness of the One we worship!

Twenty-five years ago, Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, a short book about what television is doing to us.  In short, this professor of communication arts and sciences worried that television has had a devastating effect on serious social discourse, politics, religion, sports, education, news, and commerce.  The author argued that each of these enterprises has been transformed by our insatiable thirst for amusement.  He lamented that the medium of typography—the written word—had given way to the medium of television.  Typography encourages rationality and analysis; the reader engages in critical thinking.  A society that reads is a society marked by coherence and dialogue; it is a society that interacts with ideas.  But a video society, Postman suggested, encourages passivity and receptivity at the same time that it exalts the trivial and exults in the banal.  One of Postman’s most salient sentences in his book is this: When a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture death is a clear possibility.

Those insights were written in 1985.  Postman’s worry about television almost seems quaint today.  In the intervening two and a half decades, we have seen the development of all things digital.  Not only do our television sets come equipped with 900 channels, but it seems that all of life is governed by dazzling media that is prone to entertain.  When Postman wrote his essay, we didn’t have in our vocabulary iPod and HDTV.  We didn’t surf the net, order online, or Tivo.  We didn’t know what a DVD was, and Twitter was a bad note played on a trumpet.  Blogging hadn’t been thought of, the word Facebook would have suggested a photo directory, and email was a thing of the future.  When we had a conversation in 1985, our friends actually listened to what we were saying without constantly being interrupted by text messages and phone calls.  Cell phones, in fact, were for Dick Tracy and the few wealthy people willing to pay a fortune to call their broker in New York to see how the portfolio was doing.

But that was then… and this is now.  Digital communication has invaded every waking moment. Again, much of our vocabulary would have been indecipherable to Neil Postman in 1985.  We watch movies on our iPhones, text during our college courses, and tweet trivia to whoever will follow our daily activities.  Laptop refers to a device that we take with us because we can’t stand the thought of leaving our PC at home, and now the very cool iPad makes entertainment even more portable and ubiquitous. Perhaps something has been gained since Postman wrote his prophetic warning.  We can download books onto our Kindle and listen to sermons and lectures while driving in our car.  We can keep up with friends on the other side of the globe with a few clicks of a mouse.  But are we amusing ourselves to death?

Indeed, digital technology has produced a world of wonder. I’ve received emails from people sitting on a ski-lift at Mammoth, and I’ve made reservations for a room 9,000 miles away without any long-distance charges to my telephone bill.  With the internet I can check the weather in Cape Town and see how the surf is in Indonesia.  My iPod carries as much information as a small library, and my home phone “remembers” the last 100 people who have called me just in case I want to call them back.  But this digital world of wonder comes with a price.

First, our connectivity carries with it the danger that our relationships will become flimsy, thin, and shallow.  My friends on Facebook compete for the time I can spend with real flesh-and-blood friends in Santa Barbara. Every YouTube video I watch competes with a conversation, and every blog I read takes the place of a more carefully written book.

Second, digital devices promote idolatry.  I will make a prediction for 2011: Google or Microsoft or Apple will introduce a new product in the coming year of which you have heretofore not heard and which thereafter you will not be able to live without.  In the coming year there will be some must-have thingamajig that will demand your time and your treasure.  Yes, this dazzling world of digital technology entices us to worship created things rather than God. As social critic Jacques Ellul noted, It is not technology itself which enslaves us, but the transfer of the sacred into technology.

Third, digital technology takes up as much time as it saves.  My life is full of time-saving devices that my grandparents couldn’t have imagined, yet I am far busier than they were. Technology and technological gadgets are increasingly viewed as Messiah!  We convince ourselves that these devices really will save us.  At least they will save us time and—we as a society have convinced ourselves—they really will make our lives better.  But, in fact, they merely make our pace of life more frenetic.

Fourth, amusing ourselves to death is not good for our brain.  A recent New York Times article by Matt Richtel shows that the research is increasingly conclusive: constant multitasking breaks down our ability to focus.  This is especially true for young people whose brains are still developing.  Neuroscientists are discovering that multitasking has a lingering effect.  One Stanford scientist says, The scary part… is, they can’t shut off their multitasking tendencies when they’re not multitasking.

Most important, amusing ourselves to death impedes our relationship with God.  Discipleship is something that takes place over a lifetime.  We plod along in the Christian life and fall in love with God very gradually.  We grow gradually in our faith, our confidence, and our trust in our heavenly Father.  The world of instant digital gratification teaches us that if a reward doesn’t come immediately, it must not be worth the long pursuit.

So what are we to do twenty-five years after Neil Postman?  I offer three modest challenges:

Dare to disconnect.  I mean it.  Disconnect.  Take a Sabbath from email, Facebook, your cell phone, and all things digital.  Don’t take your cell phone to homegroup or to Sunday services! Don’t text during the Lord’s Supper or one of my sermons.  Go to bed without that last check of your email.  You will still have friends and relationships when your digital Sabbath is over, you will still have your job, and your soul will be the better for your disconnecting.

Dare to have digital-free devotions.  Don’t check your email or phone messages; don’t turn on your computer.  Seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal said, All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.  Dare to do just that.  Sit still, open God’s Word (a version with real ink printed on real paper), read, meditate, and pray.  Afterward check your email and messages.

Dare to converse.  I mean this too.  When you meet with a friend… talk.  Leave your phone in the car or turn it off.  Have a conversation without interruption.  Listen, laugh, interact.  You might be surprised by how delightful this is.

In the end, we need to know that we are made to connect with God, not with machines.  Yes, the tools of modern technology are wonderful, they make our lives easier in many ways, and they thrill our senses.  But we should use these tools with caution lest they take from us more than they give to us.  As we move into a new year, let us beware lest we amuse ourselves to death.

Other than during a church service, when is the last time you sang in a public setting?  Possibly it was at a birthday party, a Karaoke game or a sporting event?  A birthday party is incomplete without the singing of “Happy Birthday”.  Karaoke is a socially acceptable way (for some with marginal social skills) to sing in front of friends and strangers.  Fans of European soccer know that singing is a huge part of enjoying the beautiful game.  When you think about it, though, there just are not that many venues for modern Americans to sing with others. 

Yet, most people reading this article come to SBCC and gather with a group of people and sing for thirty minutes almost every Sunday.  That is a lot of singing, especially in a culture where we sing very few songs.  Why do Christians sing in a corporate worship service?  What is the point of spending roughly a third of our hour-and-a-half worship service in song?

From the birth of the church, believers have sung to express their love and adoration of Christ.  Singing is commanded in the Bible.  Paul encouraged the young Christians in Ephesus to speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.   Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord.  (Ephesians 5:19)  The Psalmist tells us to Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.  (Psalm 100:2)  For the past two thousand years, however, congregational singing has waxed and waned a great deal.  There have been glorious moments in church history followed by long periods of drought and church bickering as to the propriety of corporate singing.  There have been squabbles over style, musical instruments, emotionalism, and content.  While the road has been rocky, still the church has sung.

Consider a few of the pivotal points in the history of church singing.  Bishop Ambrose of Milan, who was influential in leading Augustine to faith, helped to reintroduce hymn-singing to the Western church in 386 AD.  What we call the Gregorian chant was introduced in the year 600 by the influential Gregory the Great.  The first organ was installed in the royal chapel by Charlemagne’s son in the year 826.  During medieval times hymns were not sung by the congregation, but by the nuns and abbots, and hence most innovations in singing sprang from their ranks.  It took the iconoclastic Reformer Martin Luther, loudly proclaiming the priesthood of the believer, to reintroduce congregational singing to the church.  In 1524, Luther produced the first German hymnal, scandalizing European sensibilities by taking common folk tunes sung at the local pub after a few pints of beer and simply adding Christian words to well known tunes.  Soon Pietists, Moravians and other Reformation groups followed Luther’s lead.

It is worth noting that hymns were generally written by and sung by Christians involved in renewal movements or those that lived for Christ at the margins of institutional Christianity.  The institutional church was painfully slow to embrace congregational singing.  The renegade Luther led his revival with a return to the Bible and singing, saying: I place music next to theology and give it the highest praise.  Luther went even further making the claim, If any would not sing and talk of what Christ has done for us he shows thereby that he does not really believe.  Ponder that next time you don’t feel like singing some Sunday! 

It took some time for the English-speaking church (those reserved Brits) to catch up with their continental brethren.  It wasn’t until the early 1700s that Isaac Watts started the flood of hymn-writing that would last for three hundred years.  Watts, a Calvinist Dissenter who had separated himself from what he felt was a dead Church of England, gave English-speaking Christians such great hymns as, Joy to the World and When I Survey the Wonderous Cross.  It wasn’t long before others such as Charles Wesley, John Newton, and William Cowper began a prodigious output.  Charles Wesley alone wrote 8,989 hymns!  Together, with his more famous brother John, he published fifty-six volumes of hymns.  The singing of these songs played a huge role in the Wesleyian-Methodist revivals of the eighteenth century.  Ironically, these hymns were outlawed in the Church of England until 1820!

Anglicans were fearful of the Wesleys’ emphasis on singing because they feared it would lead to enthusiasm (emotionalism) and breed an irrational religion.  In 1740, John Scot wrote a critique of these revivalist songs claiming they were irrational.  In his book, A Fine Picture of Enthusiasm, Scot lamented that in these songs, today considered the great hymns of the Faith, God is represented as much more friendly and compassionate to the human world than God the Father ever was—such that their singing is calculated to engage the passions.  If you are not smiling at this point in your reading of this article, you are missing the point!

So back to my original question:  Why do we sing?  Why does the Bible endorse, command, and prompt worship through singing?  It is here that we can rely on the wisdom of Jonathan Edwards, the great pastor-theologian of 18th century revival in America known as the Great Awakening (John Wesley was born three months before Jonathan Edwards in 1703).  Revivals can be full of excesses and get messy and certainly the Great Awakening was no exception.  As spiritual fervor swept New England, Jonathan Edwards set out to both examine and defend this movement of God.  In his book, The Religious Affections, Edwards had this to say about singing.

And the duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections.  No other reason can be assigned why we should express ourselves to God in verse rather than in prose, and do it with music, but only that such is our nature and frame that these things have a tendency to move our affections. 

This was Edward’s way of saying that singing is designed to move us emotionally toward God.  We sing in corporate worship so as to excite our hearts as we ponder His greatness in saving us from sin and death.  Singing is meant to promote enthusiasm and engage our spiritual passions!  These are not manipulated emotions, but rather religious affections that spring from and respond to the truths of God’s word.  Put succinctly, it is not enough to simply proclaim the gospel; we must also sing it.

Every Christian has experienced times of coming to a corporate worship service on Sunday only to find his or her heart cold, hard, or indifferent. The cares and worries of this world, or even our own spiritual pride and stubbornness, can make God’s chosen people look much more like his frozen people.  Life’s disappointments can choke out thankfulness. That is why we sing.  Singing is meant to melt away our icy indifference to God.  It is as we sing to God that the things we know to be true in our head will have the opportunity to invade our heart.  The best time to sing is when you don’t feel like singing.  So, brothers and sisters, Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord! (Psalm 95:1)

Addendum.   The Wesleyian revival in England eventually resulted in what we know today as Methodists.  At first, the term Methodist was a put down to those in the movement.  They were, to say the least, methodical, and hence their name.  John Wesley developed very particular strategies for discipleship.  He even had a strategy for how to sing.  Enjoy, laugh, and ponder ponder how the directions outlined below might enhance your own worship through song. 

Directions for Congregational Singing

Quoted from John Wesley

THAT this part of divine worship may be more acceptable to God, as well as more profitable to yourself and others, be careful to observe the following directions:

1. SING ALL.

See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find a blessing.

2. SING LUSTILY & WITH A GOOD COURAGE.

Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.

3. SING MODESTLY.

Do not bawl, so as to be heard above, or distinct from, the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.

4. SING IN TIME.

Whatever time is sung, be sure to keep with it. Do not run before, nor stay behind it; but attend closely to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can. And take care you sing not too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from among us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

5. ABOVE ALL, SING SPIRITUALLY.

Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing; and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve of here, and reward when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

The announcement of the angels at the first Christmas proclaimed “peace on earth.” 2,000 years later, most of us would find the word “peace” low on our list of adjectives to describe the Christmas season. Instead, we would choose words like “rushed,” “overscheduled,” “full,” and “expensive.”

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to speak at Westmont’s chapel service in the early days of December and found that the campus was mostly devoid of peace, as well. The crush of impending finals, travel arrangements, and spring semester registration added up to a sense of manic desperation in the student community.

As I reflected on all that I saw around me and what Christmas had become, I thought back to the announcement of the angels in Luke 2 and the irony of our present experience of the holiday. I decided to speak in chapel on the topic of “peace,” and wrote the following poem to not only start my talk, but also to humorously describe some of what I saw and experienced around me. Hope you enjoy it.

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‘Twas a week before Christmas and down at the mall,

People were rushing to purchase it all.

Some clothing, some toys or the newest Rock Band,

Each shopper, it seemed, had their prize tight in hand.

A Christian was shopping, though not glad about it,

And his frown sent the message, should anyone doubt it.

This mall with its Santa and glib decorations,

But no mention of Jesus, an abomination.

Although quite appalled by this spiritual plight,

He came into this place prepared for the fight.

The Bible he grasped, he could turn to Luke 2,

Faster than workers could ask, “How are you?”

But the Bible remained snugly stuffed in his pocket,

As he looked for the store with the fancy toy rocket.

His grandson had gotten swept up in it all,

And had asked for the shiniest toy in the mall.

The man thought the prior year’s gift had been great,

A red homemade sweatshirt for his grandson of eight.

With bright-colored words that were true Christmas themed,

“Jesus is better than Santa,” they screamed.

But this year, the grandfather trudged to the store,

A temple of worship to Mammon, no more.

He would find what he needed and rush home again,

Not wasting his time in Beelzebub’s den.

Once in the toy store, the heart of it all,

He glared at the shelves filled with signs of the fall.

There was Batman and Barbie, and Lego, as well,

From Disney and Hasbro, Fisher-Price and Mattel.

Past Diego and Dora, and one sing-songy elf, 

The old man scoured every inch of each shelf.

At last with the rocket, he went to the cashier,

His mood spreading a new kind of Christmas-y cheer.

The price for the item came up right away.

The rocket would cost more than he’d like to pay.

But he reached in the pocket where his Bible was stashed,

And got an idea as he pulled out some cash.

“What’s the real meaning of Christmas?” the man asked with intention,

But the kid at the counter wasn’t paying attention.

So the man changed his tactic, he would not be shut out,

“It’s all about Jesus!” he proclaimed with a shout.

People looked his direction from every toy aisle,

And inside, not outside, the man had to smile.

His message had gone out, indeed it reached many,

This rocket, it seemed, would be worth every penny.

But the worker had orders that he had to follow,

So he steeled his nerves, and took a hard swallow.

“Happy Holidays,” he said. O, what would the man do?

He grabbed the rocket and left, shouting, “I’ll pray for you!”

The man raced to his home, straight to his PC,

And crafted an email for the whole church to see.

In all caps and red letters he told them the story,

How some punk teenage kid stole the Christ child’s glory.

Each one of his contacts received the email,

And soon everybody was discussing the tale.

In light of the young man’s outrageous offense,

The church has boycotted the mall ever since.

Now the man sits at home by the fire’s warm roar,

And he thinks of his Christmas time trip to the store.

He opens Luke 2 and re-reads of the birth,

And smiles at his efforts to spread peace on earth.

So why would my true love want two turtledoves and three French hens?  Are French hens better than English or American hens?  And how long will the eight maids-a-milking milk?  And if my true love gives me seven swans-a-swimming, where would they swim?  I don’t even have a pool, let alone a lake.

We all know the traditional song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” The tune is used today to lampoon and parody many things and various people.  But the original song, first published in England in 1780, has proven to be something of a prophecy of Christmases to come.  The storyline is simple enough. A man gives to his beloved an array of gifts that become increasingly more extravagant and less useful, culminating with twelve drummers drumming.  And so the die was cast for the commercialization of a day celebrating the birth of Jesus.

As you read this, Christmas is just around the corner.  In about seven weeks we’ll be asking one another, Did you have a good Christmas? How was your Christmas?  What’d y’do for Christmas?  Or perhaps we’ll be a bit more probing: How’s your after-Christmas diet coming along?  Did you survive your visiting in-laws?  Is your VISA bill like mine!?!?

Christmas, of course, isn’t just a holiday; it’s a season.  A season that we both enjoy and endure.  We attempt to make merry, but too often the season means misery.  So, with November underway, it’s a good time to plan how to turn the Christmas rush we endure into an Advent season we will enjoy.  To this end I suggest we rethink the twelve days of Christmas. In fact, listed below are twelve gifts that might make your Christmastime a season to savor rather than a rush to suffer through.

1.   Prepare to read the Christmas Story by studying some of the Scriptures that look forward to the coming Messiah. Read Isaiah 9:1-2, 7:14, 9:1-7, 11:1-10.

2.   Read the Christmas Story.  The longest New Testament version of the birth of Christ is found in Luke 1--2.  Read and ponder these chapters.

3.   Read the other Christmas Story.  Matthew gives us his slightly different version of the same story.  Read the first two chapters of his gospel account, which is the first book in the New Testament. 

4.   Set a limit on your gift giving.  Sit down with yourself or, if you are married, with your mate and ask these important questions: How much should I spend on Christmas gifts?  What dollar amount would reflect both good stewardship before the God who owns everything and at the same time express my love for special friends and family?

5.   Shop early and shop sparingly.  Okay, I’m a guy, and, for me, spending time at the mall is worse than having surgery without anesthesia. Nevertheless, shopping malls should be approached with a bit of fear and trembling.  The message of the mall is to spend, buy, and consume.  But these messages have nothing to do with Christmas and everything to do with a materialistic culture that thrives on promoting the lusts of what the Bible calls our flesh.

6.   Decide that when a gift comes your way, you need not repay. After all, Christmas is really about receiving, isn’t it?  It’s about receiving the ultimate gift from God, the gift of Christ.  So let’s not shop to pay back friends who surprised us with an unexpected gift. You need not rush out to the store feeling resentful that so-and-so bought you something.  Simply say, “Thank you” and leave it at that.

7.   Listen to Handel’s Messiah in one sitting.  Watch The Nutcracker on DVD.

8.   Re-gift.  Do you know about re-gifting?  It’s kind of recycling with a purpose.  The idea is to pass along a gift you’ve received but don’t need or want.  In the past few years I have been given a few re-gifted gifts, and I have loved them.  Instead of finding them insulting, I’ve been honored that someone was thoughtful enough to pass the gift on to me.

9.   Get out your calendar.  Schedule some times to be quiet and do little in the months of November and December.

10.  Curtail your expectations.  As far back as I can remember, I’ve heard people say, “Christmas is a hard time” and “I’m looking forward to January because Christmas is kind of depressing.”  Too often the season reminds us of what we don’t have.  We see a commercial on TV featuring a family with seven children sitting around a warm fire while the snow falls gently in the night (all this to sell an electric razor or a line of clothing at Sears).  As we watch, we are reminded of our own fractured family that doesn’t look at all like the one in the advertisement.  And, yes, we get kind of blue.  So, as we look forward to Christmas, let’s reduce our expectations and be thankful for our blessings.  Let’s focus on what we do have.  If we know and love God, each of us has the greatest gift in the universe: we have Jesus Christ, and we are waiting for his return.

11. Celebrate Advent. Santa Barbara Community Church is once again going to devote four Sundays to the Advent season.  Together, we will look at Scriptures, ponder them, and prepare our hearts for the One who comes at Christmas.  So give yourself a gift this Christmas:  come worship with God’s people.  Plan to go to the Dave LeMieux concert (December 3 at SBCC), see The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (December 17 in our Sanctuary), attend a Westmont Christmas performance at First Presbyterian Church (December 3 and 4), or go listen to Handel’s Messiah at the Granada.  

12. Rejoice! Christ is born!  Celebrate Christmas!

It is no secret that many evangelical churches have struggled with music and worship styles. And it is no surprise that this struggle sometimes erupts into a full-fledged church fight. These worship wars have plagued the best of churches and have often sucked the joy out of singing and praise from corporate worship.  The battle lines get drawn:  The music is too loud or not loud enough, we never sing the hymns or all we sing is hymns, the lyrics are trite or the lyrics are antiquated.  “I like a choir” or “Choirs are so 1950”. James Dobson of Focus on the Family once commented on his radio program, Of all the subjects we’ve ever covered in this radio program, from abortion to pornography to whatever, the most controversial subject we’ve ever dealt with is music.  You can make people mad about music more quickly than anything else. Whatever our own personal preferences, from rock to Bach, church music and singing has the potential to be divisive.  For thirty-one years SBCC has been able to avoid church-fracturing worship wars.  Put more positively, we have enjoyed singing and praising God together as a united church. I think much of the credit goes to those who lead us in corporate worship. I want to say “thank you” to you, our worship leaders and teams, and to tell you specifically what I appreciate about your leadership.

Thank you, SBCC worship teams, for understanding that our worship services are about God and His glory and not about those who lead.  The spotlight, Sunday after Sunday, is focused on God.  You understand that it is not about you, but rather it is about Him.  What we get on a consistent basis from you is not a performance, but rather a redirecting of our attention away from the horizontal to the vertical.  You know that worship is about God and not you.

Thank you, SBCC worship teams, for working together. I have never seen a whiff of competition or jealousy. I have never seen you guard your turf.  As your various teams take leadership at different services, I have witnessed you encouraging one another even when it is not your Sunday to lead.  You know that your individual teams are a part of a larger group of worship teams that lead three services and set the tone for the entire church.

Thank you, SBCC worship teams, for responding well to the pastoral leadership of Mike Willbanks.  Organizing, correcting, directing musicians and artists is not always very easy.  You have embraced his leadership.  This is a gift to both Mike and the church.

Thank you, SBCC worship teams, for not falling prey to the false division often found in evangelical circles between contemporary Christian music and more traditional hymns.  Our worship services are laced with the best of both. 

Thank you, SBCC worship teams, for writing songs.  Recently, at our two Sunday morning services, four of the songs that were sung were written by SBCC worship leaders. They are good songs! What a gift to our church.  You did this quietly and humbly to the extent that few who enjoyed these songs were even aware they were written by the very people leading them.  Speaking personally, it warms my soul when we move seamlessly from singing songs by Charles Wesley (historically famous), to Chris Tomlin (recently famous), to Chris Mundell (Rev. Karl, soon to be famous).  From our own church we are currently singing songs written by Dan Hislop, Matt Knoles, Chris Mundell, Kathleen Sieck, Curt Crawshaw, Andy and Angela White, Joel Patterson, Dan Bos, and Mike Willbanks.

Thank you, SBCC worship teams, for practicing and striving for musical excellence and yet knowing at the same time unless the Holy Spirit is present, even the most polished professional worship team around will fall flat.  You know that even on a Sunday when chords are missed, when harmonies don’t quite harmonize, when the sounds system is having a bad day, the song slides are wrong, or your team is not quite in sync, that God can and does still work and melt the hearts in the congregation as we sing of His greatness.

Thank you, SBCC worship teams, for variety.  Sometimes our worship is quiet and contemplative.  At other times it is loud, exuberant and celebratory.  One service will have a full band and another will be led with just a piano and a voice or two.  Variety is good.  It keeps us awake and focused.

Thank you, SBCC worship teams, for thinking biblically and theologically.  In considering the content of what we sing, you help us to avoid the trite, the silly, and the sappy.  You know that what makes worship sacred is not the musical style but the message of the song.

Thank you SBCC worship teams for helping us to embody the sentiment of the Psalmist.   Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Psalm 100:1

In 1983, Steve Jobs, founder of a relatively small upstart computer company called Apple, barely 4 years old at the time, strides into the office of then Pepsi-co President John Sculley and pitches the idea for Sculley to come work for Apple as their chief executive. This was not the first time this opportunity had been pitched to Sculley but it may have been the last. Steve Job’s pitch, as Sculley recalls it in his own words, went something like this: “He looked up at me and just stared at me with the stare that only Steve Jobs has and he said, “do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?”

We now stand 27 years after this event and look back on what has been accomplished by one visionary man who wanted to change the world of computing as we know it. And if you look at the picture above, you will see the hands of hundreds of students raised either with an iPhone or iPod or in confirmation that they own an Apple product. You see, Steve Jobs and Apple did much more than just start a cool, trendy computer company. They not only changed the computing and communication landscape forever, they launched a movement, one that made their products not just fashionable to own, but essential to our lives (or at least the lives of our youth). Steve Jobs set out to change the world but did he really accomplish his goal? Approximately 13 years after the launch of Apple Computers, in February 1996, Wired Magazine interviewed Steve Jobs on where technology had advanced to and where it was going. This is what he said:

Wired: What’s the biggest surprise this technology will deliver?
Jobs: The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.
Wired: That’s going to break people’s hearts.
Jobs: I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much –if at all.

Steve Jobs and John Sculley launched a movement that changed the computing and technology landscape as we know it, but in Jobs’ own words, that stuff doesn’t change the world.  Jobs had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t about computers, it was about people. It turns out that Steve Jobs, as well as John Sculley, had been selling sugar water all along.

I told this story at our first weekly meeting for the new school year. My talk was about the Message and the Movement that changed the world. There have been many movements in this world and throughout history that have promised change. These movements have worked to change societal systems, economic systems or political systems while all the while overlooking the real problem, the true flaw in it all, the broken human system. There has been only one movement that has sought to remedy the root of the problem and demonstrate the power needed to accomplish this, that is the movement of Jesus. Jesus came announcing that God was doing something new, something radical, and that a new kind of Life was available to anyone who thirsted for it, the kind of Life that we all longed for but could never come by on our own and that this Life was only found in Him. The message that he was announcing was the gospel, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes… (Romans 1:16).

This gospel is the power of God displayed in Jesus the King, beaten, bleeding, and crucified on a cross, absorbing the effects of all our sin and mistrust of God, and then three days later conquering Death with resurrection Life. My goal for the evening was to make sure these students knew how unique and radical the gospel message was, that God was rescuing his creation, starting with human beings, from Sin and Death. Whether the student was already a Christian and needed to be reminded of this amazing fact, or had very little knowledge of Jesus and the gospel message and needed to hear it for the first time, I wanted these students to understand the fact that Jesus had launched the greatest movement the world has ever seen and the only movement that would bring transformation to the world.

To conclude the evening, I gave them a challenge. I believe that Jesus is asking each one of us the same question as Steve Jobs, and so I asked all 350 of these students sitting in their comfortable theater seats… Are you going to be content selling sugar water during your college career… Or do you want to be a part of bringing this campus, this city, this world the only thing that can truly transform lives and change the world?  Just as those students wrestled with this question, my hope is in reading this, that you would, as well. For Jesus is not just asking college students to come with him to change the world.  The invitation is for us all.

Reflections from Life and Ministry in Guatemala

I think I have often defined poverty as not having enough material things or possessions. While there is obviously some truth to that, I am learning that sometimes poverty is having too much and being too busy and too distracted. There is something that is lost when we live life with too much.

For the past 5 months I have been serving with Mission Impact and learning from the people of Guatemala about my own poverty. It is relatively easy to come serve in a third world country where many people live in extreme poverty; lacking access to clean drinking water, education and basic medical needs. However, I am learning that it is much harder to confront some of my own areas of poverty; a spiritual poverty that makes me falsely believe the myths of self-sufficiency and materialism. Too often I buy into the subtle messages that say, “buy one more thing” and “get one more thing done.” I realize how often my dependence on God is not based on my own spiritual need and humbleness, but rather on my fickle wants and desires in any given moment.

Our culture tends to value productivity, competency and accomplishment, but these three traditional “American” values don’t leave much space for contentment, peace and a joyful spirit. As I have been working at Vida y Esperanza, a K-9th school about 15 minutes outside of Antigua, God has been teaching me that maybe we (North Americans and Guatemalans) need to both acknowledge our brokenness; our poverty, in whatever form it takes. 

It has been a privilege to serve in Guatemala because I see God reshaping my life and my understanding of what’s important, but also because I see Guatemalan kids who are already learning these very same things. I am extremely thankful to our church family because you are choosing to support me and the ministry here. Psalm 16:11 declares, you [Lord] will fill me with joy in your presence and I believe that God does just that. No matter where we are living, He fills us with joy when we are in His presence. And I am learning that in order to be in God’s presence we have to acknowledge our own spiritual poverty.

May the God who fills us with joy, fill you today.

Michelle is serving with at Vida y Esperanza in Santa Lucia, Guatemala. She will be teaching English and developing a special education program at the school in the year ahead. To find out more please visit: www.missionimpact.com/Staff_Acker.html

On November 7, 2010 Santa Barbara Community Church and hundred of other churches will participate in Orphan Sunday to rally church, community and friends to God’s call to care for the orphan. Community ONE:27 is sponsoring this event with the hope that our community will respond in a purposeful way.

Community ONE:27 is a ministry of Santa Barbara Community Church.  We are dedicated to mobilizing our community to care for the orphan.  We are building an intentional orphan care culture through international orphan care, adoption and foster care.  Our mission is to defend the cause of the orphans by declaring God’s mandate for their care. Our passion is to equip believers from every stage of life to “defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow (Isaiah 1:17).”

As a community of believers we want to see lives of children transformed for the glory of God.  We are learning that love transforms! It transforms a child who is loved and nurtured maybe for the first time.It transforms us as we seek out God’s heart and learn to rely on him while we do His work. It transforms our community as we wrap around one another and offer support and love for a common cause.  Finally, love transforms the world as they watch Christians pouring out God’s love for those who are called “the least of these” according to the world’s standards.  Join in the journey to transform lives through loving orphans.

Jedd Medefind, the President of Christian Alliance for Orphans and a Westmont graduate (1997), wrote this about the four key reasons we should care for orphans.^[1]

Caring for orphans reflects the heart of God.  From Isaiah’s call to “defend the cause of the fatherless” (1:17) to James’ placement of orphan care at the heart of “pure and undefiled religion” (1:27), the biblical mandate is clear.   But this is not merely God’s expectation of us; it is a mirroring of His own character.  “He defends the fatherless,” declares Deuteronomy 10:18.  Describes the Psalmist, “He places the lonely in families.”  To be like our heavenly Father, we’re invited to do the same.

Caring for orphans makes the Gospel visible.  At the heart of the Christian story is the God who pursued us when we were destitute and alone.  He adopted us as His children, and invites us to live as His sons and daughters.  Perhaps nothing makes this truth more tangible than when Christians follow in their Father’s footsteps, opening heart and home in unconditional affection to the child that has no claim upon them but love.

Caring for orphans defies the gods of our age.  Darwinism’s sole ethical imperative is to ensure one’s own genetic material carries forward.  So like Gideon tearing down his father’s idols (Judges 6), we assault this dictate when we seek to ensure the survival, and thriving, of a child that does not share our genes.  Meanwhile, the purposeful sacrifices required to love this child flout the demands of other gods also, from materialism to self-actualization to comfort.  The cost must be counted.  But—compared to the depth and richness found along the path of caring for orphans—these false gods are shown to be as lifeless and unsatisfying as statues of bronze or wood.

Caring for orphans invites a journey of discipleship.  “I see these kids changed,” explained a woman who helps Christians get involved with foster care, “But I think the parents are changed even more.”  It’s true.  Every family I know that’s opened themselves to parentless children has not gone unaltered.  And though the road can be hard, even painful, virtually always it leads closer to Jesus.  Expressed one adoptive mom recently, “People have said, ‘Oh, aren’t they lucky, you rescued them from whatever.’  And I think, Are you kidding?  I’m the lucky one.  I get to be their mom.  And I get to be daily rescued from my selfishness, and my impatience, and things that are just as disease-ridden in my soul.”

Community ONE:27 strongly believes that every person can contribute to help the orphan.  We aim to make known various different resources to accommodate diverse spiritual gifts and seasons of life. Please take the time to read our 10 ways you can help, and then pray about where God is leading you on His mandate to care for the orphan.  Your act demonstrates Christ’s love and glorifies God.

For any church that has some history behind it, as SBCC does, there are among its members an accompanying number of “whys?” that are asked about the brokenness and loss that have been experienced in life.  There are no easy, and seldom palatable, answers in the middle of the night, nor, I dare say, can they be found in the Bible in the middle of the day…!  As the life of Job confirms to modern day sufferers, there is little solace in cerebral musings.  Brokenness and loss are painfully severe because the solace one really wants seems  only to be found in the hope or person that was lost to us. Jesus himself suffered in this same way: we learned from recent preaching that the true suffering of the Cross was the relational separation of Christ from God.  And we, likewise being relational beings, suffer similarly and terribly when relationships are broken or even lost to us through death.

This is where our family’s history intersects with Uganda.  Our son died 5 years ago and we still have no answer for this “why”.  In the wake of the tragedy, we set up a scholarship fund in his honor through Sports Outreach. It made no sense to our hearts that we would be setting up a memorial for our 18 year old boy, but it seemed a way to stand against the tide of darkness surrounding his death. 

We were grateful for those involved in Sports Outreach who had demonstrated their commitment to reaching the poor and needy and whom we could trust to administer funds responsibly. This past year, though, my husband Norm and I felt we needed to go to Uganda to see for ourselves how the Popp Scholarship Fund actually works. We came back full of gratitude for having seen many lives changed in the name of Christ through the scholarship team at Sports Outreach. We were so humbled by the faithfulness of the leaders who go into the slums, identify needy children and mentor them through school. They are the real heroes of the scholarship fund. The young men who have given their time and lives to care not only for the education of these children but also for their whole lives/families were such a gift to witness. We saw the joy on these children’s faces and on the faces of the staff working with them and felt blessed.

The mystery of finding blessing in the midst of suffering in the lives of the people Sports Outreach is serving, simply confirmed to me the mystery of God’s grace. Even while we stumble about in this broken world, He invites us to join with Him in the mystery of redemption.  I don’t understand it, nor does it mollify my sense of our loss, but it is a blessing.  Mother Teresa said it well: “There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is so much suffering and pain. Then suddenly, the Spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways”. (From The Heart of a Volunteer)  The work of Sports Outreach is indeed a reflection of the Spirit coming into the darkness – both ours and the lives of the slum children. For more information on the scholarship fund, check out the link, http://andrewshope.org.

It was preacher and bishop of Liverpool, J.C. Ryle (1816-1900), who challenged the lackadaisical, half-hearted, lukewarm churchgoers of his time against slouching into hell from the pews of their church buildings.  In his book Holiness Ryle wrote the following:

Let me warn all careless members of churches to beware lest they trifle their souls into hell.  You live on year after year as if there was no battle to be fought with sin, the world, and the devil.  You pass through life a smiling, laughing, gentlemanlike or ladylike person, and behave as if there was no devil, no heaven and no hell.  Oh, careless churchman, or careless dissenter, careless Episcopalian, careless Presbyterian, careless Independent, careless Baptist, awake to see eternal realities in their true light!  Awake and put on the armor of God!  Awake and fight hard for life!  Tremble, tremble and repent.

As you read this essay, another anniversary of Santa Barbara Community Church is upon us, and how tragic it would be if we ever find ourselves trifling our souls into hell after thirty-one years of being a church. What calamity would come on the spiritual life of our church if we put things on ecclesiastical cruise-control, convinced ourselves that we have pretty much figured things out, and ceased to cry out to God for his power and his blessing?  How long would it be before Jesus spit us out of his mouth (Revelation 3:16)?  How soon after we refrained from pleading for his presence would God remove his blessing from our congregation?

September is a good month for our church to take inventory, to be a bit introspective, to reaffirm what we believe about God’s church and his call on our lives.  For as many years as I can remember, we’ve devoted three Sundays in September to reteach passages from the Bible that speak of the glory of Christ in the church.  We remind ourselves that when we are called to Christ, we are not called alone. Instead, we are called into a community of believers who are bound to one another even as we are bound to God.  We usually meditate upon Ephesians 3:10 and Paul’s over-the-top claim that God delights so much in his church that he shows his trophy-bride to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. That is, to the angels!  Furthermore, it is through the church that God puts his wisdom on display.  Stunning!

So, in the anniversary month of our thirty-first year, I offer three truths for us to ponder lest we trifle away our souls on the way to our thirty-second anniversary.

First is the truth that you can’t go to church.  The church is no more a place that you can go to than a bicycle is a meal that you can taste.  The church is not a location, much less a building.  Instead, the church is a people called out from the world and called to God.  This group of people becomes a band of brothers and sisters in Christ.  Brothers and sisters is a metaphor, but it is a strong one.  The church is a people glued together by the work of Christ on the cross.  To put it starkly, when we come to Jesus, we are stuck with one another.  John Ortberg, a pastor in central California, wrote a book with a title that is probably worth the price of admission: Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them.  He’s right.  And in the church we get to know one another.  We get to know one another’s quirkiness.  We see one another in our moments of fussiness.  We tolerate each other’s rancorous moods and misplaced comments.  We extend grace after being wronged.  We are, to say it again, brothers and sisters to one another.  Are we serious about wanting to avoid trifling our souls to hell as we begin another year of church life?  One way to determine how we are doing is to look at how we are treating one another.  Jesus put it strongly: the world will judge our faith by the manner of our love for one another (John 13:35). 

Second, remember the truth that Christ never calls you to himself without calling you to the church.  Again, the church is at the center of God’s plan for salvation.  According to Paul, the very mystery of the gospel is the creation of a people comprised of natural-born enemies, the Jews and the Gentiles (Ephesians 2:11-22). As the Westminster Confession puts it, the visible church . . . is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.  Put more simply—and I’m borrowing from John Stott—a churchless believer is a gross anomaly.  When we come to Christ, we are not invited to do so with a few like-minded friends.  We are called into a loving relationship with a community of believers, some whom we might not even like much!

C.S. Lewis was one of the most famous Christians of the twentieth century.  He came to faith when he was in his thirties and already a professor at Oxford University.  He already had a tight circle of scholarly friends, some of whom were Christians and who would encourage him in his newfound faith.  In the early days of his Christian life, Lewis avoided the church down the street from his house, claiming he hated the hymns (he considered them to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music) and didn’t care much for the people.  But then Lewis realized that he needed the church:  I realized that the hymns were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots.  It gets you out of your solitary conceit.

The third truth worth reviewing at this time is that we must join our church.  It is all too possible to hang around the margins of church life—to come for corporate worship when it is convenient, to join a homegroup when the time is right, and to let someone else do the serving.  This tendency is especially evident in a growing church where it is possible to hide.  You may think I’m not really needed, but, in fact, you are essential to the life of your church.  So choose a local church, any church, and know that if you join that body of believers, you will be needed.  But we also need to make a commitment to a church for our own sake.  After all, marginal church involvement is often the path to trifling our soul away from Christ.  When we convince ourselves that we aren’t necessary for the life and health of the body of Christ, we will soon be right.  We will have so marginalized ourselves from the give-and-take reciprocity of body-life that eventually we won’t even be missed.  In time, we will begin to speak of the church with telling pronouns that lack ownership and buy-in, pronouns such as they and their as opposed to we and our.  When the people of a church begin to speak of their community as something that doesn’t belong to them, a red flag should go up signaling trouble.

Santa Barbara Community Church, these are good days for our community.  God is blessing us, corporately and individually.  We should be thankful and joy-filled.  But as we go into Year 32, let us never drop our guard, cling to the past, or be overly confident that last year’s experience should be this year’s expectation.  To quote Ryle once again, Let me warn all careless members of churches to beware lest they trifle their souls into hell. . . . Tremble, tremble and repent.

May God make his face smile on us as we begin another year together!

It’s amazing what God accomplishes through us when we roll up our sleeves. That’s true for any service or ministry, but for the Five Loaves Project, in which A Rocha volunteers help to tend and to cultivate the land owned by and adjacent to Santa Barbara Community Church, the hard work of many is bearing fruit (…and vegetables). If you stroll into the valley adjacent to the church you might be surprised, even if you were at the groundbreaking in May. Since then, volunteers (hundreds from our church and others, and many individuals) have been hard at work tilling, planting, and tending land that is now an honest-to-goodness farm. You’ll find rows of crops, a profusion of fresh vegetables: carrots, cilantro, corn, cucumbers, onions, peppers, radishes, tomatillos and tomatoes. They are to become ingredients for family meals on the tables of those who could not afford fresh, healthy produce on their own. The Lord of the Harvest is blessing our modest farm, so that we in turn can express the love of Christ to those who are hungry and weary from poverty.

Our volunteers engage in work that is fairly straightforward, such as planting, harvesting, and weeding. “Farmer Ron” (SBCC’s very own Ron Davis) is the man in charge—he directs us on farming best practices for each day’s tasks. Helpers arrive each week from every age and stage: from preschoolers, to college kids, to mature adults, to multi-age families. Thanks to a creative in-kind gift from members of our church body, a tractor now hums down the rows, increasing our efficiency tremendously. Five Loaves is a bustling site for work and education: a new greenhouse and welcome center greet visitors and volunteers. Mark Caswell, one of the farm’s advisors, jumped in to make the idea of a children’s garden a reality. In fact, there are a lot of people within this body who play key roles in this ministry. Just one other person I’ll mention for now is Marty Robertson, who has come on board to oversee all the science and education elements we weave into this project site, such as the Creation Care Kids Camp and valuable field research.

What do you see for your efforts as a volunteer at the Five Loaves farm? Literally, you see rows of crops. But what the crops represent is more profound – we will be offering this pesticide-free produce to support 150 families who depend on Santa Barbara Community Development Center’s (SBCDC) food distributions. One of the mothers who will be receiving this healthy food is Maria*. Maria is a single mother who lives with her children in dense multi-family housing in Isla Vista. She works hard to support her family by selling tamales from door to door. Maria is also a sister in Christ, active in the home church that meets in her apartment complex. Our partnership with SBCDC will allow us to put this food into her hands, so she can serve healthy meals to her children. Incredibly, we will be SBCDC’s only reliable source of fresh produce. It’s a humbling thought …

If you haven’t already joined us for an afternoon to work or view the site, I hope you will come soon. If living for Christ sounds vague, and if meeting the world’s needs seems overwhelming, take heart.  As a Five Loaves volunteer, you will meet a pressing local need with practical action, while also enjoying the glory of God and discovering (or rediscovering) satisfaction in such earthy work.

Jesus told his disciples, The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers… Remarkably, God invites us to participate in the work of extending His mercy to all who will receive it. As an extension of that call, I invite you to join in on this ministry, and yes, we will literally be harvesting at times! An online volunteer sign-up form is available at: http://tiny.cc/fiveloaves. You can print and fill out a volunteer waiver form here: www.arochasb.org/VolunteerWaiver.pdf. Whether you come out alone, with your family, homegroup or a non-believing friend, we have meaningful work ready for you!

*name changed

I will confess at the outset that I consider myself something of a language lover. I love words, and, as Greta can attest, I use many of them. I will often choose a more obtuse word when a simpler word would do, simply because I can. The screensaver on my computer teaches me new—often obscure—vocabulary words (and hinders my productivity as I study my screensaver instead of attending to the work beneath it). I love language, and consider its proper use of high importance. So, it comes as little surprise that I have recently noticed a pattern in our vocabulary that has me a bit unsettled.

In the last few years, I have witnessed an increasingly disquieting trend, primarily among the young people with whom I have worked and continue to work. In speaking to them, it would seem that most things in life are, in a word, “amazing.” This word has morphed into some sort of a catch-all term that serves to describe pretty much anything that they find even slightly pleasing. From seatback in-flight movies to guitar riffs, shoes to toenail polish, everything in life seems adequately summed up as “amazing,” despite compelling evidence that such things do not, in fact, inspire any amazement whatsoever.

In perhaps the most extreme example, while at Forest Home this summer, one of the staff members encouraged us to thank the kitchen staff for the “amazing sandwiches that we just ate.” Granted, social conventions likely prevented him from more honestly labeling the sandwiches as “moderately edible.” But how about “tasty,” “satisfying,” or even “yummy?” My crankiness stems not from the fact that the sandwiches were displeasing to the taste buds, but rather from the fact that, at other times in the week, we would gather and sing, in all earnestness, about God’s “Amazing Grace.” Amazing like lunch?

I will concede that our students possess enough linguistic savvy to distinguish between a hoagie and the grace that frees us from our bondage to sin, but I wonder why we feel the need to ascribe such greatness to our sandwich in the first place. I think it is because, at base, we have lost a sense of what truly deserves our admiration and wonder. This is partly so because we live in a marketing-saturated world in which every new product is “incredible,” “fantastic,” or, yes, “amazing.” We have all heard, over the course of our lives, thousands of sales pitches in which whatever product flickered before our eyes was described with any number of superlatives available to the copywriter. The sum effect of such a barrage is that, on some level, we really want to believe that we have purchased no less than “amazing” shampoo.

This impulse, I believe, speaks to the fact that each of us, created in the image of God, has an innate ache for the transcendent, the truly amazing. And, like no other time in history, the truly amazing seems so far away. When we can explain anything with science and technology, we have little need to sit in wonder. Instead, science and technology themselves become the objects of our awe (just watch the clamorous response to Apple’s next product launch). And, in the created things, we find something that finally—albeit briefly—satisfies our craving for wonder, and we respond by elevating such things far beyond what they deserve.

This tendency comes with spiritual consequences. We read in Romans of the wicked who, “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (1:23) and “worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (1:25), and we shake our collective head in scorn. We marvel that humanity as a whole could have traded in the majestic Sovereign of the universe for a lifeless, wooden carving. All the while we ignore the nagging feeling that Romans 1 describes not some far off and distant people, but us. As we go through our lives giving honor to the creation as interchangeably and effortlessly as we give “honor” to God, our lives serve as a 21st century illustration of the truth of Romans 1. In so doing, we practice a more subtle form of idolatry, one in which we don’t try to replace God with the banal things of our everyday lives; instead, we uncritically reduce him until he is on par with the banal things. And it begins with our words.

It should not surprise us that the God whose presence inspired Moses to fall face down, Isaiah to lament his sinfulness, and Paul to stagger blindly through the streets of Damascus, evades our linguistic capacity to sum him up. Yet, when we give up trying, resorting instead to cheapened and empty clichés, we have ceased to truly appreciate the One who has saved us. We sit comfortably with the idea that God deserves our best time and service, but doesn’t he also warrant our best thoughts and words?

Certain things naturally elicit—almost demand—a response of awe and wonder. A brilliant sunset splashed across the sky above the Channel Islands. The star-speckled night sky as witnessed from an enclave protected from light pollution. Even the latest technological wonder that does things unimaginable just years before. But as Psalm 19 reminds us, all of these things speak not of their own glory, but “declare the glory of God.” And it is for this glorious God that we ought to reserve our highest praise.

Let’s be a people who resist the hyperbole of the day, seeing the dangers latent within it. Let us fight against the dulling of our sense of wonder at the person of God. Let us remain committed to celebrating the Almighty as best we can while we continue to look through the glass darkly. Until the day when faith becomes sight and even the most obscure words my screensaver could offer will fail in comparison to the glory and majesty of the Creator. On that day, as no other before it, we will truly know what it is to be amazed, whether or not they serve sandwiches for lunch.

I wonder if you have ever thought about Jesus as a husband crazy in love with his bride.  You know the type. The groom who cries at his wedding. The doting newlywed who leaves a card on the kitchen table as he dashes off to work in the morning.  The guy who meets his wife for lunch every Wednesday and brings home flowers every Friday.  That’s the way Jesus feels for his church, and I wonder if you sense his white-hot passion?

I also wonder if you’ve ever thought about Jesus’ love for his bride as the necessary inspiration to keep the sizzle in your own marriage, or at least the staying power in the covenant you made with your spouse so long ago.  After all, the apostle Paul said, Husbands, love your wives, not Men, marry your lovers.

We don’t have to look too far or think too deeply to understand that marriage is in trouble in our society.  Cohabitation is on the rise, and divorce is inexpensive and popular.  A recent Newsweek essay, written by two unmarried women, bore the title “I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage.” The authors do a pretty good job of showing that—from a legal, financial, sexual, and cultural perspective—marriage is increasingly a relic of the past.  Indeed, a deep cynicism about the institution is growing.  Andrew Cherlin, author of The Marriage-Go-Round wrote, The question is not why fewer people are getting married, but why are so many still getting married?

Once upon a time, marriage was undergirded by numerous props and supports.  Marriage was an economic necessity.  Marriage was the gateway to sexual pleasure. Marriage was the only socially approved place for the begetting and rearing of children.  Marriage provided tax benefits.  Marriage was understood to be a place where a woman was protected and a man was domesticated.  Et cetera.

But today, in 2010, marriage. . . Well, what is marriage for anyway?  We’re not too sure.  Marriage is just one option among many for those who are single, and staying married is just one option for those who have tied a very loose knot.  In June, for example, Al and Tipper Gore, formerly the second couple of the United States of America, announced that they were separating.  The news was met with a yawn; it was neither scandalous nor salacious.  One editorial almost celebrated the breakup of this marriage.  The writer pointed out that the Gores had been married forty years:  The fact that they both can look forward and see a promising future by not being married [is] a celebration about how much optimism they have for the rest of their lives.

So what does this have to do with Jesus’ ravenous love for his bride, the church? And what does his love have to do with our personal discipleship and our troubled marriages?  Everything!  When we grasp even a tiny bit of Christ’s love for his church, our marriages and our discipleship will be changed almost beyond recognition.

Consider how Paul spelled out in Ephesians 5:25-33 the overflowing love Jesus has for his people.  Read and ponder these verses and you’ll see that Jesus loves his bride, even lays down his life for her.  Jesus purifies his church and has a future for his church.  Jesus cherishes the church in the same way a man cherishes his own body.  He nourishes and cares for the church.  In short, Jesus is not a polygamist.  He doesn’t court other lovers on the side.  He doesn’t have a wandering eye.  Jesus is all in for the church.  He’s even coming back to consummate his marriage with the church (Revelation 19:11ff)!

As I said above, when we understand the overflowing love Christ has for us, everything changes, both in our discipleship and in our marriage.  Marriage and discipleship, you see, are two sides of a single coin. After all, keeping our marriage vows and fulfilling our vow to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, and mind work nicely together.  Furthermore, the issue for the believer is not usually raw adultery.  It is not that we will forsake Jesus explicitly and knowingly.  The issue is that we want to enjoy a flirtatious relationship or two on the side.  We don’t want a divorce; we want to fool around.  We want a dalliance, a trifling affair.  We want to court cars and gadgets. We want status or wealth or even privacy and spare time.  Far from taking up our cross and following Jesus to Golgotha, we want to mess with 401ks and promotions at the office.

So also in marriage: it is not usually adultery, much less polygamy, that will destroy our union.  Instead, it is plain ol’ garden-variety sin.  Subtle, unnoticed, not-overtly-evil sin.  The 10th commandment is more likely to get in the way of a healthy marriage than the 7th.  Specifically, I am much more likely to covet my rights, my time, and my way than I am to break my marital vows with another man’s wife.  But the accumulation of what we might call 10th-commandment sins is not to be underestimated. To borrow from C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, the road to hell is a gradual one: Murder is no better than cards if cards do the trick.

Paul Tripp has written an excellent book on marriage called What Did You Expect: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage.  The title alone is worth the price of admission! Tripp wrote, You both bring something into your marriage that is destructive to what a marriage needs and must do. That thing is called sin.  Sin is, according to Tripp, essentially antisocial and therefore it dehumanizes those around us.  Sin puts our self at the center even after we have pledged to put our spouse before ourselves.  That same sin will cause us to betray our heavenly bridegroom, Jesus himself. 

Lisa and I recently celebrated our 29^th wedding anniversary.  Even though we are both quite adept in the practice of sin, and even though we are very saturated with sin itself (Romans 7:18), we have enjoyed almost three decades of marriage.  It has been a great run, and we’re looking forward—Lord willing—to another 29 years together.  I’d even go so far as to give myself at least a B+ in the art of husbandry. Okay, maybe a B-.  I love my wife, and there is no one else I’d rather be with.  I’m not a polygamist either in deed or in my heart.  But, when I think about it, any merit I have as a husband flows from Lisa’s unconditional, exuberant, enthusiastic love for me.  She loves me, she likes being with me, and she gets excited when we meet at the end of the day or, for that matter, at the beginning of the day.  Her enthusiasm for me and her love for me have a marvelous boomerang effect.  Her unconditional love motivates me like nothing else.  In the shadow of her love, I find myself loving her more and more.

And when I think about and enjoy Lisa’s love for me, I am led to think about the perfect Lover.  I find myself pondering the One whose passion compelled him to die for his beloved so that love itself might flourish and thrive.  Jesus was not a polygamist, and neither should we be.  Not because polygamy is so bad, but because monogamy is so good.  G. K. Chesterton agreed:

It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy.

We love God because he first loved us, and monogamy is two thousand times one.  Let’s stay there in both our relation to Christ and in our marriage.