Last week I shared a story of a man who drowned in a pool full of lifeguards to illustrate what it’s like in the church when someone who comes in need of God yet is overlooked by all the Christians around them.  One of the comments I received pointed out how that metaphor could apply just as well to the cities, where there might be a church on every block yet still the same issues that destroy people while the church is afraid to get their hands dirty and jump in to help.  In light of that comment, I thought it would be interesting to share an article I read last week about an organization called Family Promise and the difference it is making in Lawrence, Kansas (among many other locations).  Family Promise is a partnership of congregations in a community that help families who are homeless get back on their feet.  For all those people who ever looked at big empty church buildings that stay empty night after night and wondered if they could somehow be used to help those who are homeless, this article is for you (the article can be found at http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/jun/14/program-helps-homeless-get-back-their-feet/).

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In September of 1985, there was a celebration held at a New Orleans municipal pool.  The party was being held in order to celebrate the first summer in memory without a drowning at the pool.  In honor of the occasion, two hundred people gathered, including one hundred certified lifeguards.  As the party was breaking up and the four lifeguards on duty began to clear the pool, they found a fully dressed body in the deep end.  They tried to revive Jerome Moody, 31, but it was too late.  He had drowned surrounded by lifeguards celebrating their successful season.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
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Over the past two days, there have been two events which have caused serious reflection on the second most important relationship in my life (after God).  The first happened Sunday night, when I read of a young pastor of a fast-growing evangelical church who had resigned that morning due to an emotional and physical affair he had gotten into with his assistant.  News like this is always devastating to me, as it is agonizing to see how years of service to God can be undone in a moment by sinful choices.  It reconfirmed in me the need to guard myself against compromising situations, and reminded me of how Satan will come hardest as the leaders of a church, because he knows that if he can take them out, the whole thing will be shaken.  I know that Michele and I would covet your prayers and your support in making sure that our marriage and family are protected.   

Most importantly, however, that event reminded me how much I love my wife and how desperately I never want something like that to happen to our family.  Read more »

Father’s Day is fast approaching, and I want to pass along to the men of the congregation a sermon by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle called “Marriage and Men,” based on 1 Peter 3:7 (you can watch the sermon at http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/trial/marriage-and-men).  Pastor Driscoll is becoming more and more influential and widely known, usually for his Calvinist theology, his macho man image and depiction of a manly Jesus, and for occasionally crossing the line into inappropriate or crude humor.  But one thing I have always admired in him is that he appears to me of a man who knows how to love and protect his wife, love and train up his children in the Lord, and teach immature men what it means to be a real man – not a macho American man or an immature wanna-be man, but a man like Jesus.

The one word Pastor Driscoll uses to sum up what it means to be a man is this:  Read more »

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

In our pluralistic society, it is one thing to have faith in the God of the Bible and to commit your life to being a disciple of Jesus Christ.  But it is another thing entirely to be a missionary and to spend your life trying to live out Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:18-20, to go and make people of other nations, cultures, and faiths disciples of Jesus Christ.  Seeking to “convert” people, while true to the last words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, will win you few friends in the world, where thinking your religion is superior to another is in many minds one small step away from being a terrorist. 

 But if Jesus was right, and if His life, death, and resurrection is the only cure for our broken world, then we have a lot to learn from those fearless men and women who devote their lives to reaching those who have never heard of Jesus, even if they may be anonymous or even hated in the eyes of the world.  One such man was Ralph Winter, a great man of God who died this past week at the age of 84.  I would encourage you to learn more about this man and his contributions to the modern missions movement and to the kingdom of God (you can learn a lot about him at www.ralphwinter.org).  Let me briefly share two of the ways Ralph Winter impacted the kingdom of God.
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Two of the most influential voices in my life during my youth pastor years were Mike Yaconelli and Ron Luce.  They were two men who loved Jesus, loved teenagers and youth pastors, but could not have been more different in their approach to youth ministry.  Yaconelli was the co-founder of Youth Specialties, an organization that provided tons of resources and training to youth pastors across the world, but during his later years became a man with an almost singular focus on the importance of helping teens and youth pastors develop intimate relationships with Jesus.  He hated how youth ministry had become so focused on big events, big numbers, and attractive personalities, and loved to honor those men and women who may not have fit the stereotypical mold but because of their willingness to love teens were making an eternal difference.  He would tell stories about 75 year-old grandmothers, rough-around-the-edges truckers, and scared youth leaders everywhere who just wanted to love young people to Jesus.  Yaconelli frequently boasted about being the pastor of the “slowest growing church in America”, a small community church out in California that had shrunk since his arrival, but based on his stories seemed to be made up of a lovable band of misfits who would dare to follow Jesus wherever He led, even if it involved doing things that normal churches might not do.  His message was a simple message that always reminded me of Jesus’ incredible love and grace over us, no matter how far we fell short of the ideal.

 And then there was Ron Luce.  In some ways, Ron seemed to epitomize everything that Yaconelli was speaking against.  Read more »

One of my favorite quotes comes from the C.S. Lewis book The Four Loves, an exploration of affection, friendship, eros, and charity.  In his section on friendship, he uses an illustration about his relationship with two of his closest friends, “Charles” and “Ronald” (J.R.R. Tolkien) to make a larger point about the importance of Christian fellowship to our knowledge of God.  This is how Lewis puts it:

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out.  By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.  Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke.  Far from having more of Ronald, having him ‘to myself’ now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.  Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves.  Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend.  They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, ‘Here comes one who will augment our loves’… In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious ‘nearness by resemblance’ to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God.  For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest.  That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ to one another (Isaiah 6:3).  The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we all have.

There are so many beautiful insights in this passage.  Read more »

Matthew 6:5-6 - “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

This Thursday is the National Day of Prayer.  This event has a long history that goes all the way back to the founding of our country, although its official recognition happened more recently in a bill signed in 1952 by Harry Truman.  The White House had occasionally hosted prayer gatherings on this day up until our last President, George W. Bush, who hosted a gathering every year on the first Thursday of May.  These gatherings included the National Day of Prayer Task Force, chaired by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. 

This past week, the National Day of Prayer has made news as many, including the Interfaith Alliance, have been clamoring for President Obama to support a “National Day of Prayer and Reflection” “that restores and respects our nation’s best values by explicitly inviting clergy from diverse faith traditions to participate equally and fully – especially in events held on government property.”  As they see it, the day had become hijacked by the Religious Right, and represented by Dobson and the Task Force, and the day should instead be more inclusive of other faith traditions.
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I’ve heard it said that “God made man in His image, and man returned the favor” (I’ve seen that quote attributed to a few people, but Voltaire seems to be the first to have said it).  There is a lot of truth to that sentiment, and I think it’s worth reflecting upon.  We can all be too guilty of assuming that God is like us in the way He thinks, the values and issues that are paramount to him, and the people he likes and dislikes.  For example, far too many American Christians seem to believe that “God is love” means that God accepts everyone as they are and would never dare tell anyone that they need to repent of the way they are living, when in reality His love is a holy love that can not stand sin.  And just look at Christians and politics – some people are convinced that Jesus would vote Republican; others that He would vote Democrat; and still others that He would stay as far away as he could from politics.  I think it’s safe to say that too often we can be guilty of assuming that God is just like us.

But He’s not like you. 
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I recently completed a sermon series on the Song of Solomon, a beautiful collection of love poems in the Old Testament that have a lot to encourage us about in the areas of love, sex, and romance. My first interaction with this book was back in 2000, when I went through a study on the Song of Solomon that had been done by a Texas pastor named Tommy Nelson with three teenage boys that I was discipling. That study was an excellent and unforgettable time of teaching these teens what it means to love someone Biblically, and is especially meaningful as one of those teens just had his first baby and one of the others is getting married this May.

The impact that study had made on those teens was one of the reasons I wanted to do a sermon series with the whole church. However, as I studied the book, read commentaries, and listened to other sermons on the Song of Solomon, I found myself moving away from the Tommy Nelson-style of preaching, which in many ways treated the book as a how-to manual for Biblical love, dating, and marriage. Read more »

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