Archive - June, 2009

Just keep swim-ming

June 30, 2009 in Student Ministry with 2 Comments

dandelionA couple Fridays ago an answer to prayer walked up to the front doors wondering if we were a furniture store.

A handful of the students had re-gathered on the floor in front of the stage a half-hour after the [redefined] service ended to pray. They prayed, in part, for their student ministry and that new students would find their way to [redefined] by whatever means necessary.

When they exited the sanctuary there were four high school senior girls at the front doors. Timothy took them back outside to chat and for probably 20 minutes no one had any idea what was going on. Timothy doesn’t do sermon prep very well a lot of times, but Holy Spirit moves on him when a spontaneous sermon is needed. I refused a couple of other students who wanted to go outside too. Just let him and Holy Spirit do their thing.

The rest of us had retreated to the cafe to close out the evening when Timothy and the girls came inside. He introduced us, and left them with me while he ran back to the office to get Bibles. They’re from Indiana. In town on a rugby tournament, and they were blown away by our passion for our faith.

One of the girls even told me, “There are 48 churches in our county, and I feel like I’ve been to most of ‘em. I think every pastor in my town is bored with his job. But Tim? He makes it interesting. I was really about to give up on this whole thing, but now … I don’t know.”

No props. No strategies. Just prayer and obedience. We loaded them up with Bibles (a Spirit-filled Bible for each of ‘em), CDs (music and sermons), and a couple other little things. Timothy prayed over them, and they ran across the parking lot to try to make lights out at their hotel. We prayed, and committed them to the Lord.

This morning I got an email. Continue Reading…

Who will sound an alarm?

June 29, 2009 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

the-end-is-nearHow do we awaken the body of Christ to the reality of the times?

That question has been pressing me since Friday morning, and I haven’t come up with much. I’m genuinely looking for ideas, here. Let’s talk about this, and see if we can’t come up with a good first step at least.

‘Cause Friday morning, a rather popular and well-respected pastor  (whose ministry and preaching I, personally, really enjoy and appreciate) Twittered a link to what he thought was a ridiculous website declaring that – without doubt – Jesus is coming back in 2012. I didn’t look at the website because I was on my cell at the time, and it doesn’t support big websites … and because I’m sure I could well visualize what was going on: bad HTML, bold declarations with little scientific or scriptural support, vast assumptions, and some silliness about the Mayan calendar.

And I’m sure that the whole thing is pretty ridiculous – as said pastor commented.

But then, he followed it up with another 140-character comment about how Jesus said no one would know when He’s going to come back, and he proceeded to mock people who believe otherwise. For the next several hours, he would occasionally shoot off sarcastic Tweets about the idea.

On the one hand, I agree. Jesus said no one would know the day or the hour (Matt 24:36, Mk 13:32), and some of these groups and websites are unfounded and really, really out there.

At the same time, though, Jesus made it clear that He expects His people to know the general time frame of His return, and to be prepared for it. He called the religious leaders of His day hypocrites because they could discern weather patterns, but not the season of His visitation (Matt 16:3, Lk 12:56). Scripture contains more prophecy about the time of His second coming than His first, so how much more will He expect us to recognize it?

I could go on, but my object today is not to convince you that we can and should know the season of Jesus’ return. My object today is for those who believe that it’s possible to know the season: how do we convince the body of Christ that it’s worthy of our time/study?

There seems to be this over-riding default mentality that we can’t know, that the Bible studies are too hard, or that the topic is irrelevant anyway. How do we break through that without becoming sensationalists? Without bad HTML? Without being the “The End is Near” guy?

Do you see this in your churches or Christian social circles? This avoidance of all things eschatology? What do you do?

Use the L-word with caution

June 26, 2009 in Discipleship with 7 Comments

I love talking with atheists and agnostics and fence-sitters about matters of faith because they teach me so much. Or maybe the Holy Spirit uses them to teach me. I’m pretty sure they have no idea what’s going on. Los shared a great example a short while ago ala a barista.

I was hanging out with my brother a week ago at Taco Bell.

zack

I can’t really think of a better afternoon than my brother, Taco Bell, and some spiritual conversation. He was telling me about some obnoxious kid who has entered the perimeter of his social circle recently who calls himself a Christian, but doesn’t really act like one. (Side note: Yes, people, the non-Christians notice when you don’t act like a Christian. And they don’t think it’s cool. They think it’s weird and annoying.)

As Zack was telling me about his conversation with the pseudo-Christian, I was choosing my battles. I think I grabbed about every other incorrect statement he made about my faith and tried to gently correct it. The others I just let slide. I wasn’t about to pick apart the entire conversation. Not the point.

He started to tell me about the pseudo-Christian insisting on his salvation while spewing some sort of I-voted-Jesus-so-now-I-can-do-whatever-I-want thing (which even my non-Christian brother knows is B.S.). I was listening and trying to consider how to address a topic that’s a bit strange even among believers when Holy Spirit plucked two verses out of scripture and put them beside one another in my heart. Oh.

First, there’s Romans. We know this one. It’s the quintessential salvation verse:

If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

That’s what pseudo-Christian-boy was leaning on, while ignoring the pieces about taking up his cross and a myriad of others on Christian conduct. This is where it gets sticky a lot of times. Romans 10:9 makes it sound so simple, but the rest of the New Testament seems to demand a bit more. Which is it? The sinner’s prayer or the cross?

The other verse that He placed just beside it – that I saw beside Romans 10:9 for the first time – was Luke 6:46,

“But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?”

And this light bulb went on. I’d reasoned context within myself concerning Romans 10:9, but overlooked the word “Lord.” Maybe this is just an extension of Biblical concept that faith without works is dead, but it suddenly made so much sense to me.

It’s not just the sinner’s prayer. It’s not just raise your hand and repeat the prayer on a Sunday morning. Paul did not write, “Flippantly acknowledge that Jesus is cool, and believe it, and you will be saved.” He used the word “Lord” because he understood the word. I don’t think we understand the word when we use it.

Jesus gets it, though. And He seems to assume that if you’re going to acknowledge Him as “Lord,” you’re going to treat Him like it.

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