Two Are Better than One!

Two are better than one,  because they have a good return for their labor:  If either of them falls down,  one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.  But how can one keep warm alone?     Though one may be overpowered,  two can defend themselves.A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. -- Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

The adventure started in a local jail in Rio Verde, a medium sized farming community in the interior of Brazil.  Carol and I had traveled to Rio Verde with Alexandre to visit a signifcant recovery ministry launched by Pastor Junior and his small congregation in Rio Verde.

While we stood there talking in the courtyard of the jail, one of the inmates approached us and asked if we could contact a friend and let him know that he was in jail.  He described his friend as a German Baptist Brethren farmer who lived and farmed in a Mennonite farming community about 30 miles west of the city.

German Baptist Brethren?  Mennonite farming community?  In the interior of Brazil???  I definitely had to check that out!

So we left the little jail and headed west on our quest to find the German Baptist brother.  Forty Five minutes later we entered the area where a number of Mennonites families had move to farm the land about twenty years earlier.  They moved to Brazil from the Midwest, mostly Ohio, Indiana and Iowa.  When we left the paved road and turned onto a well manicured dirt road we entered a vast farming empire where corn was king.

We drove for what seemed like half an hour before  seeing the first building on a few acres carved out of the undulating sea of corn.  It was a Mennonite meeting house, and a local farmer had just arrived to cut the grass in the picnic grove next to the church building.  It felt a little like discovering life on a deserted island.

After introducing ourselves and sharing our quest, the local farmer give us directions to the German Baptist brother's farm and invited us to return to the meeting house later that evening for special services conducted by a visiting preacher from Pennsylvania.

After driving several more miles further down the evenly graded dirt road we turned off onto a sandy lane for several more miles before turning onto an unmaintained, narrow passage through the sea of corn. 

At some point along that dusty, deserted roadway Carol noticed the needle on the gas gage was on E and suggested that we might want to think about getting some gas. "No problem," our driven assured us, "The gas gage is broken." Less than five minutes later the engine spit and sputtered a couple of times and we quietly drifted to a full stop.

After a couple of hours in the cramped backseat of a small vehicle on bumpy, unpaved roads we were glad to get out and stretch our legs.  There was a cool, refreshing breeze, some breathtaking views and we were on a quest... in Brazil!  Amazing!  Never the less, there were a couple of concerns in need of some attention. First of all, we were in a cellular dead zone and couldn't call someone to bring a jerry can of gas.  Pastor Junior offered to walk down the road until he either picked up a cell signal or found someone who could help us.  But this led to the second problem.  There were animal tracks in the sand and Pastor Junior thought they looked like Jaguar tracks.  We thought he was joking, but the next day he confessed that as he made his way down the road he prayed, "Lord, please don't let me be eaten by a Jaguar and abandon my guests."

Good News!  Pastor Junior eventually picked up a cell signal, was able to call a friend who brought us some gas AND he was not eaten by a Jaguar!

Carol and I had an amazing time in Brazil.  We saw the sights of Sau Paulo, Rio De Janeiro, Campanis and Rio Verde.  We met some beautiful people in Campinas and Rio Verde and saw the preparations for the FIFA men's world cup in Sau Paulo and walked along Copa Cabana Beach and took the train up to the statue of Christ the Redeemer that keeps watch over Rio de Janeiro.  But the most memorable part of our journey was our quest to find a German Baptist brother.  We never found him.  But we found once again that two are better than one and a cord of three strands in not easily broken. 

Christian Peacemaker Teams will accompany Stephen Colbert to Columbia, SC

(Here's an interesting post from the Christian Peacemaker Team's website.  You can view the site here.)

The terrorist attack on black Christians at prayer in Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Church has left many white Christians asking what they can do to support their black brothers and sisters. 

“Stop white people from killing us,” has been the overwhelming response.

Another response has been that they want the Confederate flag on the Columbia capitol grounds to come down.

 Accordingly, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is calling on Stephen Colbert as a native white Christian son of South Carolina—who marched in solidarity with his martyred brothers and sisters in Charleston on Sunday—to travel to Columbia and take down the flag in any way he sees fit. 

CPTers have accompanied people working for social change in zones of lethal conflict spanning the globe: peasants resisting displacement from their land in Colombia; refugees forced from their homes by ISIS who are building relationships with people outside their ethnic groups; Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and Indigenous communities fighting multinational exploitation of resources on their traditional lands.  They are more than willing to accompany Colbert to South Carolina to help him respond in a very small way to what black Christians are asking of white Christians.

Jesus is the Rock... All Other Ground is Sinking Sand

Someone has said, "There is a grain of truth in every joke." Sigmund Freud held that while jokes may serve the outward purpose of making people laugh, they often disguise aggression, hostility and unconscious desires.  As someone else has said, "A joke is the truth wrapped in a smile."

If that is the case, what "truth" is being revealed by the producers of "Kingsman: The Secret Service" by placing the most violent scene in the movie within the worship service of a church in Kentucky. Oscar-winning actor, Colin Firth, plays secret agent Harry Hart who, in the films most ambitious action scene, takes out the entire congregation of a "hate group" church in Kentucky.

Jen Yamato, who writes for The Daily Beast, didn't have any trouble identifying the "truth" revealed in that scene.  She says that Kingsmen, "takes aim at ultraconservative America by setting a brutal, madcap massacre scene within a church filled with hate-spewing fundamentalist Christians."

If the film is saying "There are hate-spewing people in American," it clearly names an unfortunate "truth" within American culture.  However, a literal translation of the word Χριστιανός, or Christian is "Christ follower," and I don't believe it is possible for a Christ follower to be a hate-spewer.  To take the name of Christ without following the ways of Christ is to take the name of Christ in vain.  Christianity is not a philosophy or even a religion.  Christ followers are committed to a lifestyle that seeks to live and act, talk and walk like Jesus.

There are hate-spewing people in America, and some of them call themselves Christians.  But unless their ways and words, prayers and priorities reflect those of Jesus the Christ, they really can't be called Χριστιανός, Christ followers, Christians.

Here is a brief snippet from a typical day in the life of Jesus.  These are the kinds of things Christ followers long to do:

Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness.  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields” (Matthew 9:35-38).

•  Jesus traveled - he took his message of hope and grace to the people... where ever hurting people could be found, that's where you would find Jesus.

• Jesus taught in the synagogues - he didn't teach from the Religious Life 101 lesson plan, he taught about serving by washing feet, he taught about forgiveness by forgiving haters and adulterers and other sinners, he taught about love by laying down his life.  And he said when we love each other that way "It will prove to the world that you are my disciples" (John 13:35).

• Jesus announced Good News - even though he was constantly surrounded by every other kind of sinner you could name, Jesus always had good news for them.

• Jesus healed every kind of disease and illness - healing the blind and the lame was like asking a world renowned thoracic surgeon to do a tonsillectomy.  Jesus could heal the blind and the lame in his sleep.  He also took on more difficult human maladies: the loss of hope, self loathing, hatred, fear, doubt, hardened hearts and many other symptoms of the human conditions.  

• Jesus had compassion on people - as the psalmist promised, "The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love" (Psalm 103:8).

• Jesus kept his eyes on the harvest - “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields." Jesus understood his mission.  He knew he hadn't come to promote a lofty humanitarian cause. Jesus came to save humanity itself.

Because there are hate-spewing, power-seeking, hard-hearted, self-centered, pain-inflicting, greed-driven, people in the world -- who call themselves Christians -- those who are committed to following Christ need to do Just That!

Let's Build a Hate-proof Church

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  --  Galatians 3:27-28

When I did a couple of posts last week about the faith and work of Clarence Jordan, I had no idea how timely those posts would be. Brother Clarence devoted his life to building a community of faith where those who were Red and Yellow, Black and White could come together and worship the one who believes we are all precious in his sight.  

In a sermon entitled, "The Substance of Faith," Jordan tells a story about a Baptist congregation in North Carolina that had really worked at being a "Hate-proof" Church. This and a number of other powerful sermons by Clarence Jordan can be found in a book entitled The Substance of Faith: and Other Cotton Patch Sermons.  Here's the story:

A number of years ago, I was invited by a Southern Baptist church in North Carolina to come and speak.  I looked the place up on the map and found that it was a little suburb of a big city in North Cqrolina and I figured that it was some swank, aristocratic, liberal church that wanted somebody to come to it and pat it on the back for its liberal views toward race.  So I figured that I'd get me up a sermon and I'd hold those folks over the brink and singe their eyebrows.  I wanted a chance to really preach to a Southern Baptist church because I hadn't had that chance since a Baptist church had turned me out five years previously.  There was just a little bit of revenge, I guess.

I went over there and instead of it being a big swank suburban church, it was a little mill-town church that was on the edge of the city and the city had grown up and engulfed it.  The church would seat about three hundred and I think they had about six hundred in it. The thing that amazed me was that these people were white and Negro just sitting anywhere they wanted to sit.  And back of me was a choir with about fifty voices in it and over half of them were Negroes.  Well, I had to change my subject.

When I got through, the pastor got up and said, "Now, we're going to have dinner on the grounds."  I really trembled then, because it's one thing for black and white folks to worship together; it's another thing for them to eat together.  Here the man was advocating social equality right there in the South.

The choir got up and sang, "Let us Break Bread Together on Our Knees," and we went out and I thought sure those folks would go out to the back yard of the church, but they went out on the front yard and spread their tables right out on the main street of this little town, and started eating together.  When they started eating together and talking together, I knew this wasn't an unusual thing.  I knew they had been doing this a long time.

I went over to the pastor, and I said, "You know, this is a rather amazing thing to me.  Were you integrated before the Supreme Court decision?"  He said, "What decision?"

He explained, "Well, back during the depression, I was a worker here in this little mill.  I didn't have any education.  I couldn't even read and write.  I got somebody to read the Bible to me, and I was moved and I gave my heart to the Lord, and later, I felt the call of the Lord to preach.  This little church here was too poor to have a preacher and I just volunteered. They accepted me and I started preaching. Someone read to me in there where God is no respecter of persons, and I preached that."

I said, "Yeah.  How did you get along?"

"Well," he said, "the deacons came around to me after that sermon and said, 'Now, brother pastor, we not only don't let a nigger spend the night in this town, we don't even let him pass through.  Now, we don't want that kind of preaching you're giving us.'"

I said, "What did you do?"

"Well," he said, "I fired them deacons."

"How come they didn't fire you?"

"Well," he said, "they never had hired me. I just volunteered."

"Did you have any more trouble with them?"

 "Yeah.  They came back at me again."

"What did you do with them that time?"

"I turned them out.  I told them anybody that didn't know any more about the gospel of Jesus than that not only shouldn't be an officer in the church, he shouldn't be a member of it.  I had to put them out."

I said, "Did you have to put anybody else out?"

"Well, I preached awfully hard, and I finally preached them down to two.  But," he said "those two were committed.  I made sure that any time after that, anybody who came into my church understood that they were giving their life to Jesus Christ and they were going to have to be serious about it.  What you see here is a result of that."

Isn't this the kind of church Jesus had in mind?  God is looking for those of us who are willing to become the answer to Jesus' prayer, "Father, may your kingdom come and your will be done; on earth as it is in heaven." 

Amen! 

Lamenting the latest massacre in Charleston

I have cried until the tears no longer come;
    my heart is broken.
My spirit is poured out in agony
    as I see the desperate plight of my people.(Lam 2:11)

This should be a time to weep with those who are weeping in Charleston, a time to sit with those whose hearts are broken.  I thought I had learned how healing can come to a community as the community gathers to grieve together.  This was our experience   when our family lived in a little village hidden deep in the bush of sub-saharan Africa.

You could always tell when someone from the village had died because all of the neighbors would gather with the family who had lost a loved one to sit and grieve with them. People didn't stop by for a few minutes to pay their respects and drop off a plate of potato salad like we did in the town where I grew up.  

In our little village in Nigeria neighbors would sit with the grieving family for days, often a week or more. Few words were spoken. This was a time to mourn with those who were mourning, to weep with those who were weeping, and sit with those who had "cried until the tears nolonger came."

I briefly thought about driving up to Charleston to sit and weep with those who are grieving the loss of Pastor Clementa C. Pinckney and eight others from the Emmanuel AME Church.  But I have to be honest.  I am too angry to sit and grieve.  

I confess, I am angry at Dylann Roof, the alleged shooter.  But my anger runs much deeper than what could be provoked by the godless violence of one disturbed shooter.  I am angry at those who are using the tragedy in Charleston to start a stampede to the local gun store to buy more ammo or a bigger gun. And I am angry and agonizing over all the Christians who claim to know and love Jesus, but will choose to carry a gun rather than trusting in Christ alone as Savior and Lord.

Less than 24 hours after Dylann Roof allegedly shot and killed 9 people who were gathered for Bible study and prayer, Charles L. Cotton, a board member of the NRA blamed the pastor of Emmanuel AME church for the deaths.  He said, "[Rev Pinckney] voted against concealed-carry.  Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead.  Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue."

I would be less angry with Mr Cotton for using the misery of those families in South Carolina to try to sell more guns if he was just honest about it. Jesus talked more about greed than almost any other kind of sin.  And Jesus will surely forgive Mr Cotton for the sin of greed if he will only confess his sin and then go and sin no more. Unfortunately, there are many Christians in America who would rather wave the flag than bear the cross. How easily they allow themselves to be seduced by those who pay lip service to the second amendment while getting rich on the soaring profits a 300 billion dollar firearms industry. 

To support the gun industry in the name of greed is sinful but forgivable.  To support the gun industry in the name of Jesus is inexcusable.  

Years ago I knew a man who operated a tow service along Interstate 81 in Virginia.  One day he responded to a call by a woman whose Buick broke down while driving from Florida to New York.  When he pulled up to her car and saw that she was well into her 80's and all alone he said, "Ma'am, you shouldn't be out here on the highway all by yourself."  She said, "Oh, I just trust in my Jesus."  He was taken by her faithfulness until he looked into the car and saw the long, steel blue barrel of a Colt 45 revolver sitting next to the drivers seat. He chuckled to himself, "So... this is her Jesus!"  

Here are a couple of things to remember before you are tempted to believe that a Colt 45 or any other revolver can actually save you:

1. The Battle belongs to the Lord and cannot be fought and will never be won with the weapons of the world:

In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 Paul writes, "Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

2. Jesus made it pretty clear that the surest way to lose your life is by trying to save your life:

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?" (Matthew 16:24-26)

Here is a final word of encouragement, "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ," (Philippians 3:20).

The Cotton Patch Gospel

In the 1940's, Clarence Jordan brought the books of the New Testament to life with his unique "Cotton Patch" version of the Gospels. As a New Testament Greek scholar, he used original Greek manuscripts to translate the texts into the southern idiom of his day. He set the gospel stories in the towns, roads, and farms of twentieth century southern Georgia.

Here is how Clarence Jordan translated the familiar Parable of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10:25-37:

One day a teacher of an adult Bible class got up and tested him with this question: “Doctor, what does one do to be saved?”

Jesus replied, “What does the Bible say? How do you interpret it?”

The teacher answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your physical strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

“That is correct,” answered Jesus. “Make a habit of this and you’ll be saved.”

But the Sunday school teacher, trying to save face, asked, “But … er … but … just who is my neighbor?”

Then Jesus laid into him and said, “A man was going from Atlanta to Albany and some gangsters held him up. When they had robbed him of his wallet and brand-new suit, they beat him up and drove off in his car, leaving him unconscious on the shoulder of the highway.

“Now it just so happened that a white preacher was going down that same highway. ‘When he saw the fellow, he stepped on the gas and went scooting by.

“Shortly afterwards a white Gospel song leader came down the road, and when he saw what had happened, he too stepped on the gas.

“Then a black man traveling that way came upon the fellow, and what he saw moved him to tears. He stopped and bound up his wounds as best he could, drew some water from his water-jug to wipe away the blood and then laid him on the back seat. He drove on into Albany and took him to the hospital and said to the nurse, ‘You all take good care of this white man I found on the highway. Here’s the only two dollars I got, but you all keep account of what he owes, and if he can’t pay it, I’ll settle up with you when I make a pay-day.’

“Now if you had been the man held up by the gangsters, which of these three-the white preacher, the white song leader, or the black man – would you consider to have been your neighbor?”

The teacher of the adult Bible class said, “Why, of course, the nig – I mean, er … well, er … the one who treated me kindly.”

Jesus said, “Well, then, you get going and start living like that!”

Clarence Jordan... Radical Follower of Jesus

Clarence Jordan is one of my faith heroes.  He was a walking, talking, living, breathing example of authentic Christian faith.

Jordan grew up in a Christian home in the deep south. From an early age he was troubled by the poverty and racism that afflicted the black community, even though blacks and whites served the same God. He decided to study Agriculture at the University of Georgia with the aim of helping poor, black sharecroppers.

During his years in college however, he discovered that the roots of poverty and injustice were not merely economic but spiritual as well. So he decided to go to seminary after completing his bachelors degree. He earned a Ph.D in Greek in 1938.  

Following his marriage to Florence Kroeger, the Jordans wanted to find a way to combine an interest in agriculture and a passion for the Gospel of Jesus. They moved to Sumter County, Georgia to live out the teachings of Jesus in the midst of the poverty and racism of the rural south.

The Jordans envisioned a place where blacks and whites could live and work together in a spirit of partnership.  They sensed a radical call to live as disciples of Jesus, and wanted to create a community that was committed to racial integration, nonviolence, a simplified lifestyle, sharing of possions and stewardship of the land and its resources.  The blueprint for this community came straight out of the Bible in the Book of Acts.

This experiment was called Koinonia, from the Greek word for community.  Koinonia Farm was developed as an interracial Christian community in Americus, Georgia. Jordan referred to the adventure as a "demonstration plot for the kingdom of God."

Clarence Jordan believed that the incarnation was the only effective method of evangelization. He said, "We haven't gotten anywhere until we see the Word become flesh." Jordan's understanding of the incarnation became a major theme of his life. 

Here's an example of the incarnational theology of Clarence Jordan taken from "The Subsance of Faith and Other Cotton Patch Sermons."

What the virgin birth is trying to say to us is not that a man became divine, but that God Almighty took the initiative and established permanent residence on this earth!

Now we, today,…have reversed the incarnation. Instead of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, we turn it around and we take a bit of flesh and deify it. We have deified Jesus and, thus, effectively rid ourselves of him even more than if we had crucified him. When God becomes a man, we don’t know what to do with him. If he will just stay God, like a God ought to be, then we can deal with him. We can sing songs to him if he’ll just stay God…. We can build our cathedrals to him. This is the bind we get in today. We reverse the action—from heaven to earth—and we turn it around and build it from earth to heaven. And salvation becomes something that we will attain someday, rather than God coming to earth to be among us. So we build churches, we set up great monuments to God and we reject him as a human being.

A church in Georgia just set up a big $25,000 granite fountain on its lawn, circulating water to the tune of 1,000 gallons a minute. Now that ought to be enough to satisfy any Baptist. But what on earth is a church doing taking God Almighty’s money in a time of great need like this and setting up a little old fountain on its lawn to bubble water around? I was thirsty…and you built me a fountain. We can handle God as long as he stays God. We can build him a fountain. But when he becomes a man we have to give him a cup of water. So the virgin birth is simply the great transcendent truth that God Almighty has come into the affairs of man and dwells among us.

Three Things I Learned from my Father

1. Learn to laugh at yourself - My dad loved to dance for his son and daughters.  Sometimes on Sunday afternoons while Mom was finishing our Sunday dinner, Dad would entertain us with his version of an Irish jig or a Polka.  He taught me to do the Polka by placing my feet on his feet and we would hop-step-hop around the living room.  

Dad didn't go out dancing with my mom.  The only time he ever danced was on Sunday afternoons for our amusement.  He knew he looked a little silly, and that's why he loved to dance for us.

By learning to laugh at himself, Dad was less likely to be offended when others laughed at him.  And that was an important life lesson.  Those who are easily offended spend way too much time trying to defend themselves.  They become defensive, argumentative, conflicted.

The scriptures have a lot to say about avoiding conflict... "Yanking a dog's ears is a foolish as interfering in someone else's argument" (Proverbs 26:17). "Avoiding a fight is a mark of honor; only fools insist on quarreling" (Proverbs 20:3).

2. Don't let others use you... use yourself for others - Dad was a skilled plumber and should have been able to earn a good living at Krouses Plumbing and Heating. But he did too much work for free.

If a boiler broke down and there was no heat in a neighbor's house, Dad fixed or replaced the boiler, whether or not they could afford to pay him.  And many times when we were out of town visiting friends or family, Dad spent the entire visit in the basement fixing something.

Some people have a way with words, others speak through their actions.  Dad was the later.  His life was a kind of proverb that declared, "Selfishness invites misery but selflessness summons contentment."

3. Nothing is ever so broken that it can't be fixed - Long after others might have given up, Dad would continue tinkering and tweaking until what was broken got fixed.  

I worked as a piano salesman in Philadelphia for about a year while I was in college.  The piano store was in the first floor of a two story building on Germantown Avenue.  The second story had several neglected apartments and one of the apartments developed a signifcant leak in the sewage line right above the piano showroom.

My boss called a plumber who was unable to fix the problem, but that didn't keep him from sending a sizable bill for his trouble.  After paying three plumbers to fix the problem, sewage from above still dripped on the pianos below.  

I said, "I wish my dad was here.  He'd be able to fix things."  Dad and Mom lived several hours away in western Pennsylvania.  My boss said, "Tell your dad I'll give him $200 just to come and look at the problem.  Back then, $200 was a lot of money.  A starting school teacher in those days made around $6,000 a year.

Dad came to Philly, diagnosed and fixed the problem in a couple of hours and then didn't want to take $200 for a few hours of work.  So my boss found a number of other things that needed to be fixed until Dad thought he had done enough to earn the money.

I didn't grow up to be a plumber.   God saw fit to pass my dad's ability to fix "things" on to my sons.  But if Dad believed "Nothing is ever so broken that it can't be fixed," I grew up to believe "No one is ever so broken that they can't be fixed."

When John the Baptist was imprisoned and realized that his days might be numbered, he sent some of his disciples to Jesus to ask if he was truly the Messiah or if they should wait for someone else.

Jesus told them, "Go back to John and tell him what you have heard and seen - the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and Good News is being preached to the poor" (Matthew 11:4-6).

Then a little further down in that passage Jesus continued with this invitation, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heaven burdens, and I will give you rest" (verse 28).

Jesus was devoted to fixing broken lives. Sometimes they had "things" in their bodies that needed to be fixed.  But many times it was their faith that needed to be restored or a relationship that needed to be healed, or a corrupt heart that needed to be cleansed. 

Jesus probably never uttered the phrase, "No one is ever so broken that they can't be fixed," but his life shouted those words!

Carmen Sandiego and The Mystery of the Missing Horse

Carmen Sandiego is the name of a series of educational computer games developed by Broderbund software back in the 80's.  My sons loved to play "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego," the first game in that series.

The game followed the exploits of Carmen, a cunning international thief who committed crimes all around the world.  Each game provided a series of clues that would help the gamer find and arrest one of Carmen's accomplices. To find the clues the gamer needed to answer questions about history and geography.  It was a fun, educational game.

I thought about the game this morning after reading the story of Paul's conversion in Acts chapter 9.  I've read the story dozens of times and was sure that Paul fell from a horse after hearing the voice of Jesus and being startled by a blinding light while on his way to Damascus. But when I read the story this morning, there was no mention of a horse.  That's when "The mystery of the Missing Horse" began to take shape.

I was sure I could solve the mystery by turning to my Greek lexicon. Apparently the Bible translation I was reading didn't translate the word "horse" from the original Greek text.  But the mystery went unsolved because the original Greek text doesn't mention a horse.

Then I remembered that the story of Paul's conversion is retold in two other places in the Book of Acts (Acts 22:6-7, Acts 26:12-14). But neither of those texts mention a "horse" either. So where did I get the idea that Paul fell from a horse on his way to Damascus?

It turns out that one of my favorite paintings "The Conversion on the way to Damascus," painted by Caravaggio in 1601 shows Paul on the ground beneath a horse. I have admired the painting from the first time I saw it in an Art History book during college.  Years later I was staggered when I saw the actual painting in a tiny chapel in Rome when my wife Carol and I were there for our 25th wedding anniversary.  

It had started to rain one evening as we walked through the Piazza del Popolo, so we ducked into a tiny, nondescript chapel... and there was Caravaggio's  masterpiece.  Amazing!

So what's the point?

The point is this: how many times and in how many ways have we embellished God's story with personal biases and inaccurate details that were never part of the story?

This may not seem to be much of a problem in the story of Paul's conversion.  The main point of the story is neither harmed nor enhanced by the appearance of a horse.  Paul still heard the word of the Lord and did great things for God.

On the other hand... most of the religious leaders back in the first century rejected Jesus because they had a different version of the messianic story than the story Jesus came to proclaim.  And they didn't just disagree with Jesus' version of the story, they had him killed to keep him from telling his story. 

The story of Jesus and his love is a life changing story... when we get the story right and keep the story straight. It has been 54 years since I first embraced his story, and it continues to convict, challenge and change the way I think and act. I've never felt the need to add anything to his story, and never wanted to delete anything from the story.  

Here's my challenge: Let's take the story in, keep the story straight, live the story out and pass the story on.  Amen!

Measuring the Effectiveness of Our Mission

Edgar Schein, Professor of Management at MIT, says that whatever an organization measures and how it measures it becomes its de facto culture.

Churches and ministry organizations write mission statements that sound good on paper. But these only articulate wishful thinking if the way they measure success is contrary to those lofty mission statements.

Here is a random church’s mission statement taken from the internet:

“Our church seeks to make disciples for our Lord Jesus Christ through Christ-centered worship, Bible-centered spiritual growth, and evangelistic service.” 

Okay. That sounds pretty good, but how do you measure that?

The most widely used tools for measuring success, according to Thom Rainer and Ed Stetzer, are  “bodies, budget, and buildings,” in other words, how many people attend on Sunday, how much is collected in the offering, and how large the church facilities are (see Rainer and Stetzer’s Transformational Church: Creating a New Scorecard for Congregations)

However, if these are our primary measuring tools, this mission statement should read:

“Our church seeks to get as many people as possible to commit to attending our Sunday morning worship services and tithing.”

Hmmm…

Is that a good mission statement? How does that align with God’s mission in the world?

The mission that God has sent us on is not to attract people into the church. No, the goal is to send people into the culture as incarnational “little versions of Jesus” invading every institution and sphere as God’s instrument for bringing all things under the Lordship of Christ and His Kingdom.

The Gospel of Matthew offers this brief, telling outline of Jesus Mission:

Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.” (Matthew 9:35-38)

What would happen if we faithfully followed this outline to measure our faithfulness to the mission of Jesus? 

(most of this was taken from a blog by Bob Robinson)

Will Grandma's Church be there for the Grandkids?

WHY CLASSICAL CHURCH PLANTING IS FAILING

The increasing failure of traditional church models to engage the millennial generation, coupled with the reality that our churches’ memberships are literally dying out, is the new reality of the Christian religious environment in America. And so, as I have continued to take a look at the future of church planting while asking innovative questions about what it will look like, a couple statistics have stood out to me as particularly relevant:

• According to a study on church planting sustainability by the Center for Missional Research from 2007, only about 68% of churches are still around in their 4th year of operation.
• Congruently, in a recent Pew study, those who now self-identify as Christian have dropped nearly 8% since 2007, and those who self-identify as atheist, agnostic, or non-religious (the ‘nones’), have risen 33% up to 56-mil from 19-mil in the US in the same amount of time.

To be fair, although Christianity in America is by no means disappearing, with around 70% of Americans still claiming it and making it the US’ leading religion, the numbers themselves insist that the trend is unavoidably on the decline. Whether or not about 32% of new church plants are failing because mother churches drop their funding after year three is unclear, but it seems likely that it’s a root cause when coupled with a classical model of church that is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the up and coming generations.

One branch of the church wants to attribute the rising numbers of the “nones,” and the falling number of Christians to mere lukewarmness playing itself out. But, another hypothesis suggests that one of the more prevalent causes is actually an old and ineffective model of church that is attempting to engage a new generation in communities and practices that may have worked 40 years ago, but are no longer compelling.

MILLENNIALS AREN’T INTERESTED IN YOUR HOUR-LONG SERMON

The idea that you can preserve a 40 year-old model of church in a church plant in 2015 and give it a little money, hire a secretary, and parachute drop it in to a city, has become a tired methodology for our churches. The crazy thing is, people still try it! Again, to be fair, there will always be anomalies and places where this may work because the cultural consciousness is still 40 years in the past. However, today we need to ask more questions about what thriving communities with replication built into their DNA will look like. In other words, if our hour-long exegetical sermons are putting millennials to sleep (and that is not a knock on good biblical scholarship), how can we awaken an enlivened, self-sustaining, reproducing church model for the future?

3 SUGGESTIONS FOR A WAY FORWARD

Here’s a threefold methodology for the first year of a new plant that may point us in the right direction and offer us a way forward:

1. Take the first year to understand the community you are engaging. Ask questions and learn about the local people and their needs instead of expecting immediate results in the form of new baptisms and membership.
2. Become aware of the costs associated with your community coming in. This could be everything from the price of your housing to what it will take to make your community a viable financial option for you and your family.
3. Whereas church planting can often be a lonely scenario, instead plant in an area with a cohort of other innovators. This will remediate the loneliness-factor and give planters instant solidarity in a time where most pastors struggle to find deep community.

(Written by Spencer Burke, Founding Executive Director of Hatchery LA, an incubator for Common Cause Communities.  For more information check out http://hatcheryla.com)

God is doing a New Thing

It is happening again. A new species of church is emerging throughout North America and other western nations. Both in major cities and in rural areas, a unique kind of church life is peeking through like the fresh growth of new crops pressing through the surface of the soil each spring.

Hungry for community and relationship, people are learning the values of the kingdom by first-hand participation. They meet in small groups in homes, offices, boardrooms or restaurants. Church becomes a way of life where discipleship and growth occurs naturally as everyone develops their gifts and “learns by doing,” under the mentorship of spiritual fathers and mothers. I like to call this fledgling grassroots phenomenon “house church networks.”

Within the next years, I believe these new house church networks will dot the landscape of North America just as they already do in other nations of the world. Places like China, central Asia, Latin America, India and Cambodia have experienced tremendous growth through house churches that disciple and empower each member to “be the church.”

They are called house churches because each one functions as a little church. They are networks because they work together to foster accountability and encouragement. Although the terminology house church networks, sometimes called micro church networks, may sound like a contemporary concept, they are not really new; in fact, house churches are as old as the book of Acts.

The New Testament church was defined as the people. Believers did not go to church or join the church; they were the church. All members functioned as priests because everyone served as ministers. Each person got on-the-job-training and learned how to make disciples. These followers of Christ practiced their faith in spiritual families, met in homes and radically changed their world. They grew in number as they obeyed God’s Word and shared resources and spiritual blessings. They multiplied into more and more groups of believers meeting in homes, all networking together. This was the original house church networks!

Recently, new house church networks have sprung up throughout North America—from Denver, Colorado to Austin, Texas; from Richmond, Virginia to Indianapolis Indiana; from Toronto, Ontario to Edmonton, Alberta, and dozens of places in between.

(This is an excerpt from an article entitled, "House Church Networks - A Wave of the Future" written by Larry Kreider, former member of the White Oak Church of the Brethren)