Three Big Challenges in 2005

Here are three very reasonable challenges for 2005...

1.  Several men have told us they are tired of being overweight and out of shape.  The guy in the picture here used to be 100 pounds overweight.  Just kidding, brothers!  Here's the deal.  Karl Geissler from Gill Athletics has agreed to help us do something about being overweight, lethargic and overweight.  We're starting a once a week men's fitness program starting Jan. 12 from 6-7 am here at the Vineyard.  Karl says it will be a non-traditional program, where more natural concepts are applied ... "Some of the same concepts used in many Olympic training programs."  It will be tinged with God's wisdom, to boot, Karl says.  Hey, I've never done anything like this before.  It's worth a shot.  Why not join us and try it.  Wear athletic clothes, Karl says.  It's early but lots of us have to work.  No, you will not look like the guy in this photo on the right, but you might lose some weight and feel a whole lot better about yourself.

2.  Mark Saturday, February 19th on your calendar.  We have planned a Saturday (9am-3pm) seminar called:  "God, Men and Sex."  Our presenter is Dr. Doug Weiss from Colorado Springs.  The men from the Evanston, Illinois, Vineyard told us they had this seminar and it brought dramatic change to the lives of scores of men in their fellowship.  Watch for the coming brochures.  I'm hoping for 150 men.  As I've been thinking about this seminar, I've been trying to collect different kinds of information.  Just yesterday I read Steve Gallagher's "Out of the Depths of Sexual Sin."  I ordered the book off Gallagher's web site.  It's a fast read but a really gripping story of how God dealt with Gallagher's sexual addiction and lead him into a ministry to help men who struggle with sexual addiction.  Be forewarned.  Gallagher lived a wild life.  But that's the story's beauty.  God saved him.  God changed his hard heart, giving him a heart of flesh.  God literally saved Gallagher's life many times.  I strongly recommend you go to: purelifeministries.org and check out Gallagher's ministry.  You can get the book from his web site.

3.  I'm just finishing reading a great little book recommended by Dave Schmelzer (pastor at the Cambridge, Mass. Vineyard) at the regional Vineyard conference this past summer here at the Champaign, Illinois, Vineyard.  Published in 1944, it's Dale Carnegie's "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living."  I was skeptical, but Schmelzer was shooting straight.  It's really good and lots of fun to read.  Talk about staying power.  This book is as pertinent today as when Carnegie wrote it 60 years ago.  Lots of inspiring stories and time-tested methods for conquering worry.  Want to stop worrying?  Buy this inexpensive little book in any bookstore for a few bucks and read it. 

The Power of Bible Study

I want you to be a regular Bible reader in the coming year.  The words of the Bible have power.  Why? Because God's Spirit actually directed humans to compose and record without error God's revelation to humans. 

For centuries and centuries God's words have been accurately transmitted and to this very day you can read the Words of God in your own favorite translation. 

Doesn't this just boggle your mind?  The Holy Spirit literally led humans in the production of the Bible so that what they wrote was precisely what God wanted written.  The very breath of God came out of human writers.

As I read the Scriptures, I am very much committed to the revelation of the Holy Spirit, while staying completely anchored to the historical Word of God.  Indeed, it is the expectation of the Scripture that God speaks to humans in clear, revelatory experiences without ever altering the biblical authority.

This Bible reading plan promoted by the Navigators is a good one.  I like it because it's grace filled.  Notice that it doesn't start with January.  It starts with month one.  That's grace.  If I need to start in, say, April, then April becomes month 1 or month 2 or whatever.  Most years I have lots of false starts.  Additionally, the plan has you reading the Bible just 25 days a month.  Frankly, I often miss my reading on Saturday and Sunday.   So 25 days for me is about right.

As you read the Bible in the coming year, may the Holy Spirit allow you to know and love Jesus more and more.

Lord, give us revelation

As good Jewish parents, Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple on the eighth day to have him circumcised.  There they met an old and very devout man named Simeon.

Luke 2:26 says of Simeon:  "It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ."  Seeing Jesus, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God.  This all happened because Simeon received revelation from God.

I encourage you to be people who read and study the Bible because the Lord continues giving revelation to this very day.  Indeed, it is the expectation of Scripture that God speaks to humans in clear, revelatory experiences, just as He did to Simeon long ago.

As we read and ponder the Word of the God, the Holy Spirit gives us the subjective experiences of revelation and enables us to grasp the inner meaning of historical events and of Biblical texts.

No wonder the Vineyard statement of faith says the Bible is "our final, absolute authority, the only infallible rule of faith and practice."

The Great Saints experienced doubts, too

To me, today's Gospel reading for this third Tuesday of Advent is perhaps the most gripping of any during Advent.

Matthew 11:3:  "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"

John the Baptist had been arrested and faced beheading.  So he sent his disciples to Jesus with this poignant question.  It's important for us to know that John the Baptist, the New Testament prophet of Jesus, faced doubts in view of his grave circumstances.  And how could it have been otherwise?

Belief in Jesus does not guarantee that we will not face hardship, even during this joyous season.  Just remember that Jesus took on human nature in order to share all we experience and identify more closely with each of us.

We are not alone, brothers.  May we find hope from James 5:8 that reminds us:  "You must be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near."

Where should our children go to school, anyway?

It's fascinating to me to watch the struggle and dance of Christian parents and what to do with their children when it comes to schooling.  Before I had children, I was an expect on raising children and could give thoughtful analysis to  the advantages of Christian, public and home schooling. 

My best friend from college and his wife home school their 9 children.  Yikes!  Most of them are turning out pretty darned good, too.  Other good friends here in the Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, area are sold on Judah Christian School right here in Champaign and shown in the picture here.

Some of the pastors I respect the most in Champaign-Urbana feel very strongly that if we don't keep our kids in public schools, we won't be the salt and light we need to be in the world.  (Their one caveat is that parents must stay involved, which they have been.  These pastors had all their children in public schools through high school.)

The Southern Baptists, especially in the South where they are strong, have literally started hundreds of new Christian schools in the past 10 years.  This on top of the hundreds of Christian schools they already have.  Check out this story. 

I'm not nearly as positive about this trend as are the Southern Baptists.  Fear is a great motivator, as you well know.  But so is love, and it lasts longer.  So what is it that is motivating the starting of these hundreds of new Christian schools?  Fear? Love?  Educational excellence?  Confusion?

I was the PTA president at Thomas Paine Elementary School in Urbana when my children attended there during elementary school.  Each week for years I went to the children's classrooms and volunteered to help in the writing classes.  I coached basketball when my son attended Judah School during Junior High School.  When my daughter attended Urbana Middle School, I volunteered in the English class once a week, mostly helping with writing.  One year I mentored a young man each week.  My son attended Urbana High School for four years, and my daughter is now a Sophomore at Urbana High.  We never home schooled but we thought about it years ago.

One of my friends says, "Raising kids is easy.  Just do whatever they say."  I laughed, too, when he said that.  I'll tell you.  It ain't easy...  God bless anyone trying to do right by their children's education. 

Lord, may our children come to know you and love you more every day.  These children are yours and only on loan to us.  May the Holy Spirit powerfully descend upon the schools where our children are attending.

What do you expect at Christmas, anyway?

Yesterday I saw two muscle men talking at Gold's Gym.  One said he wasn't particularly pleased with his upper body.  "These pecs are not what they ought to be," he complained.

"Good grief," I thought.  "When would you be satisfied?"  His muscles ripped across his upper torso.  "Nothing would satisfy these body builders," I said to myself.

I think that's exactly how it is during the Christmas season.  We get our expectations way out of wack and then nothing satisfies us. 

So this warning. If you've had wonderful holiday experiences in recent years, don't necessarily think it will be the same this year.  On the other hand, if your experiences have been horrible, don't be a scrooge by doing nothing.  Come on.  There's always some risk involved.

People are under lots of stress during this season.  Just keep your expectations to a realistic minimum.  For example, you may have had a great conversation with your mom last year, but you might not this year.  If you have low but realistic expectations, it will be gravy if it goes well.  You'll go home saying, "That was better than I thought it would be."

Do you ever Long for the Return of Christ?

"Longing" is Advent's most sobering theme.  Here we embrace the tension of longing for the coming Christ-child in a manger while longing for the return of Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. 

This longing has caused me to ponder some of the atrocities in the world (as noted in the picture of Jewish children in a Nazi death camp), and thus live my short life on earth with as few regrets as possible.

It was announced this week that 1,000 American troops now have been killed in Iraq.  Reports are that tens of thousands more Iraqi soldiers and civilians have died.  It's a sad mess.  During the Vietnam War the U.S. averaged 150 dead a week for seven years.  In World War II, we lost 200 men every day for four years.  In the Civil War, 400 Americans a day, Union and Confederate, died from the fall of Ft Sumter to Appomattox.

Consider the genocides of the 20th century.  Germans killing Jews during WW II (6 million); Turks killing Armenians in 1914-1915 (1.5 million); Stalin killing 60 million people in Russia during his Communist regime in the 1930s and 194s; the Khmer Rouge killing Cambodians from 1975 to 1979 (2 million); Saddam Hussein's troops killing Iraqi Kurds in 1987 and 1988 (100,000); Serbs killing Bosnian Muslims from 1992-1995 (200,000); Hutus killing Tutsis in tiny Rwanda in 1994 (800,000), and that in an African country largely Christianized by well-meaning Western missionaries.

You might look back on the horrors of recent decades and ask, "How can God allow such things?" or, "How can there be a God if such complete moral anarchy reigns?"  Would any argue that the Nazi death-camps and Soviet Gulags were utterly anti-God?  And though Hitler was born and brought up a Roman Catholic and Stalin was once a Russian Orthodox apprentice-monk, it is hard to imagine any two men in history who were more bereft of basic Christian instincts or more systematically committed to the destruction of Christian values.

And yet, experience shows that very few people do actually ask the above questions.  Most people react to the horrors of war by turning to God for protection, solace and comfort, not cursing Him.  When I think of the terror of recent decades or the on-going quagmire in Iraq, it makes me tremble at the prospect of living a trivial, self-serving, comfortable, middle-class, ordinary, untroubled American life.

I sometimes wonder why God hasn't destroyed this world yet.  II Peter 3 says the destruction of the world by fire is coming.  Still, the text insists that God is patient, not wishing to destroy anyone.  A thousand years to us is just a day to God, says II Peter 3:8.

The delay of Christ's return actually is an act of mercy and patience.  Reflecting on this dreadfully broken world during the Christmas season makes me exceedingly thankful for God's mercy toward my family and me while longing for his imminent return. 

Emmanuel, Christ child, Savior of the world, king of kings and Lord of Lords ...  Come and save your people...

What present does Jesus want?

On November 21, the Sunday before the beginning of Advent, my wife and I facilitated a class here at the Vineyard on how to celebrate during the Advent season.

We gathered ideas and props we have used for more than 15 years and had a fun give and take with the 20 people who attended.

During the class, we had each class member share a Christmas tradition.  One couple said that each year they make a birthday cake for Jesus.  Later, I wondered what Jesus might want for a birthday or Christmas present.  What would Jesus ask for? 

Happily, I found the answer in one of His prayers.  The prayer in John 17 reaches its conclusion with Jesus praying, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” (v. 24)

Amazingly, and wonderfully, Jesus wants Christians across the globe to be with him.  Is this because Jesus is lonely?  Clearly, there’s no doubt that He does want to be with us.  But it’s not to alleviate his loneliness.  No, it would be a strange way to express loneliness by saying he wanted us to see his glory, “the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” 

Jesus is not lonely.  Pastor and writer John Piper says, “He and the Father and the Spirit are profoundly satisfied in the fellowship of the Trinity.”  We humans are the ones yearning for something.  What Jesus wants for Christmas is for us to experience what it is we were created for, namely to see and take pleasure in his glory.  This and this alone, satisfies our deepest longing.

We take pleasure in his glory as we love Jesus with a deep love.  Jesus’ prayer in John 17 climatically ends with Jesus praying, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

Jesus wants us to love him with the same love that God has for him.  In some beautiful, mysterious way the Father’s love for the Son becomes our love for the Son.

This Christmas may we see Jesus Christ in all his fullness, seeing him with the eyes of God and enjoying Jesus with the heart of God.

Evangelical, born again, empowered evangelical or just plain old Christian?

Ask almost any Christian, at least in the United States, who they admire most in the Christian world, and you may likely hear:  Billy Graham.  With good reason, too.  Graham has been faithfully preaching the gospel for 60+ years.  Now in his mid-80s, he's still preaching, having just completed a crusade in Kansas City a few weeks ago.  No accusations of being money hungry.  Nobody accusing him of sexual immorality.  The man truly is incredible.

Graham has been called the world's most influential evangelical.  With Bush now back in the White House for four more years, we are told that we have returned a conservative evangelical to the White House.

How about you?  Would you consider yourself a conservative evangelical or just a regular old evangelical?  Billy Graham has said there are conservative evangelicals in both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches.  I have friends who look at the war in Iraq and say, "Bush is no conservative evangelical."  Hmmm...

Well, okay, how about this view of an evangelical, as spoken by some of the Vineyard pastors I run with.  They refer to themselves as empowered evangelicals, taking their cue from Vineyard pastor Rich Nathan's fine book "Empowered Evangelicals."

Back when I was in college President Jimmy Carter didn't use the word evangelical.  He called himself a "born-again Christian."  Those engaged in evangelism, me included, went around asking people, "Are you born again?"

Chuck Colson, one of President Nixon's aids, wrote a hugely popular book back in the 1970s about his  conversion called "Born Again."

But Billy Graham has stuck with the word evangelical.  In one interview Graham referred to an evangelical as someone who believes all the doctrines in the ancient Nicene Creed.  That's fine.  I can certainly say the old Nicene Creed with a clear conscience, if I could find a copy.  Honestly, how many people these days know the Nicene Creed? 

Graham has stressed the centrality of the resurrection and the belief that salvation is through Jesus, alone.  "Ah ha," you say.  "Now I get it.  That's what I believe, too.   That's evangelical.  And furthermore, I believe that the Holy Spirit heals people today and all kinds of miracles are possible." 

Fine by me.  Does that then make you an "empowered evangelical"?  Pity the other evangelicals.  I guess they are unempowered.  I wonder if there are 12-step programs specifically designed for unempowered evangelicals?  "Hi, my name is Fred and I am an unempowered evangelical."

We in the Vineyard are doctrinally conservative, although even Vineyard folks argue about what are the doctrinally conservative issues.  For example, in some Vineyards women can preach and teach.  In others they can't.  Believe me, there are wonderfully brilliant, empowered evangelicals on both sides of that issue.  (By the way, the Vineyard Statement of faith is outstanding in my opinion!) 

Essentially, we in the Vineyard emphasize the need for a definite commitment to faith in Christ.  Conversion is real and crucial.  We further affirm that faith is very important to our daily lives.  We believe Satan exists and that there is a battle raging between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness.

In my ministry experience, I would say that most people use the terms born again and evangelical interchangeably. 

I don't pretend for a second that navigating all the nuances of these terms is easy.  Meanings change as cultures shift and as time inexorably marches on. 

So how about this, brothers?  We are Christians -- Christ followers.  Christ with the Latin ending ... followers of.