DanL Posted November 11, 2020 Group: Senior Member Followers: 11 Topic Count: 20 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 77 Content Per Day: 0.01 Reputation: 61 Days Won: 0 Joined: 06/09/2009 Status: Offline Birthday: 10/20/1958 Share Posted November 11, 2020 Why I’m not on the board. (In my previous church, I was eventually called to serve as President of the Board of Christian Education. It was during my time in that position that the congregation voted to close the school. It hurt me deeply. I felt I had failed God and I vowed never to be involved in church politics again. But God had different plan for me, so here I am now.) What killed the school at that church was complaining. One person had a problem, they complained, the complaining grew and built, parents pulled their kids out of the school, enrollment started to decline, there were more complaints, and the problem spiraled. Let’s talk about how God views complaining by His people: Exodus 14 10As Pharaoh approached, the people of Israel looked up and panicked when they saw the Egyptians overtaking them. They cried out to the LORD, 11and they said to Moses, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt? 12Didn’t we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We said, ‘Leave us alone! Let us be slaves to the Egyptians. It’s better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!’” Numbers 16:1One day Korah son of Izhar, a descendant of Kohath son of Levi, conspired with Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth, from the tribe of Reuben. 2They incited a rebellion against Moses, along with 250 other leaders of the community, all prominent members of the assembly. 3They united against Moses and Aaron and said, “You have gone too far! The whole community of Israel has been set apart by the LORD, and he is with all of us. What right do you have to act as though you are greater than the rest of the LORD’s people?” 31He had hardly finished speaking the words when the ground suddenly split open beneath them. 32The earth opened its mouth and swallowed the men, along with their households and all their followers who were standing with them, and everything they owned. 33So they went down alive into the grave, along with all their belongings. The earth closed over them, and they all vanished from among the people of Israel. 34All the people around them fled when they heard their screams. “The earth will swallow us, too!” they cried. Numbers 21: 4Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Seac to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, 5and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!”6So the LORD sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. The Half-a-Donut Church. (Blog I wrote for Kinship Christian Radio) Once upon a time, a long, long time ago in a place not unlike Kinship Christian Radioland, there was a wonderful church that held a beautiful Easter Sunday Sunrise Service. After the service, in the church basement of course, they put on an Easter Sunrise Breakfast for anyone and everyone to attend. There would be milk and juice and coffee and perhaps some fresh fruit and eggbake (I’m pretty sure the recipe for eggbake is somewhere in the first part of Genesis, but I could not find it.) and donuts from a local bakery. Now, I’m a big fan of deep-fried pastries with a hole in the center. My affection for them borders on the legendary. It’s not quite an obsession or an addiction, but if I was a fish and you had one of those chocolate-covered tractor wheel looking donuts on your hook, my only hope for survival would be catch-and-release. I tell you this to preface what happened in one particular Easter Sunday morning in the basement of that church. I was helping down in the kitchen and, just as the service upstairs was about to end and the fruit and beverages had all been set out and the eggbake was steamy hot and ready to serve, I found myself standing next to one of the dear Church Ladies with a knife in her hand standing at the counter cutting all of donuts in half! I know. The very concept is horrific. At first I was speechless. As she continued in her relentless slicey mayhem, I managed to stutter, “Why….why are you cutting the donuts in half?” “Some of us can’t eat a whole donut.” And she didn’t stop until every single donut had been cleaved asunder. I said no more to this Lizzie Borden of the donut world, but I have forever lamented that day. I have seethed at the thought. By cutting each and every donut in half, she made every person who took more than a half a donut into a gluttonous fiend. She sent the message that we were the church of half-a-donut, unable to afford to give our guests on the occasion of the Savior of the World rising from the dead more than a measly sample –a half-measure of a full, unmolested, intact and unassailed donut. On the day when we celebrated the most glorious miracle in all of Christendom, this one lady had sent the message to people who perhaps only came to church twice a year that we serve not a God for whom absolutely nothing is impossible, but the God of half-a-donut. The God who made the entire universe and everything in it. The God who split the sea and thundered from Mount Sinai, who made it rain for forty days and forty nights, whose glory is proclaimed by the stars and the planets and the galaxies, who is praised by everything that has breath –is that the God of half-a-donut? For years, I pondered what I should have said to that dear Church Lady on that day. And I have come to the conclusion that I should have said less than I did. In all of my ranting above, I have failed to consider that the lady cutting those donuts in half really was a child of God. Perhaps she really and truly believed in her heart of hearts that she was serving God in the best way possible. There is the distinct possibility that this lady actually and truly loved Jesus and was cutting those donuts in half out of love and service to others. There is also the distinct possibility that my ranting had its roots in Pharisaical pride and a fleshly lust for sugary carbs more so than in bringing glory to God. When Luther wrote his Small Catechism, this is what he said about the eighth commandment: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way.” That is most definitely not the default setting of human beings. We seem to automatically jump to the worst possible conclusion when we hear anything about someone else. And we grow that and build that until we actually believe that people who disagree with us are not just wrong, but evil. In the meantime, we just can’t understand why those evil people think we are the evil ones. And before you know it, there are all these wedges driven between us and there is so much animosity seething in our hearts we won’t even consider forgiving them or (heaven forbid) admitting our sin and asking for their forgiveness. And then one day, we look into the mirror and find we have actual contempt not just for fellow human beings who are made in the image of God, but for brothers and sisters in Christ. How will we be able to stand in heaven shoulder-to-shoulder with people for whom we have contempt? How can that work? Scripture is quite clear: Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 1 John 4:20 (NIV) In the light of that verse, maybe the solution is to love the donuts less and love each other more. Maybe the real enemy is not the lady cutting the donuts in half. Maybe God is more interested in churches where love is not chopped into pieces than churches where the donuts are whole. Communication without condemnation. Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So, who do want to be as a church? Show of hands: Who would like to see more poor people in this church? Convicted felons? More cheats and swindlers? Drug addicts? Drunks? Prostitutes? Are we a resort for saints or a hospital for sinners? “Some want to live within the sound Of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop, Within a yard of hell.” C.T. Studd. 1885. —(Famous missionary to China, India, and Africa, who although born rich, gave away all his money believing God would provide as needed. He did.) “If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.” Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) British pastor commonly referred to as “the prince of preachers.” How to drive a pastor crazy. (Be the congregation that just wants its little sticker that’s says “I went to church.” Then do absolutely nothing and remain unchanged Monday thru Saturday.) Lyrics from Casting Crowns “Start Right Here” We want our coffee in the lobby We watch our worship on a screen We got a Rockstar preacher Who won't wake us from our dreams We want our blessings in our pocket Does the pastor make the church? Is the church all about the pastor? SHOULD the pastor be the star of the church? Is the pastor supposed to be the one saving all the souls, feeding all the hungry, healing all the lame? If that’s what you want, if you want to just put your check in the offering plate and have the pastor do everything for you so you can sleep at night without feeling guilty, what you will end up with is a Joel Osteen church, not a Jesus Church. So, what’s a pastor supposed to be from a Biblical standpoint? John 21:15After breakfast Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?e” “Yes, Lord,” Peter replied, “you know I love you.” “Then feed my lambs,” Jesus told him. 16Jesus repeated the question: “Simon son of John, do you love me?” “Yes, Lord,” Peter said, “you know I love you.” “Then take care of my sheep,” Jesus said. 17A third time he asked him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the question a third time. He said, “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Then feed my sheep. A shepherd FEEDS the sheep. He takes care of the sheep. He leads them to green pastures. He does not eat the grass for them. He will protect them and fight lions and bears for them with his bare hands or fend them off with a sling and a stone. (Think David, here folks.) He will even leave the 99 of us to go after the one lost one---but sheep are begotten by other sheep, not by shepherds. Now, we could have a long talk about the first century church and how the apostles founded churches and then spent a couple years with them, then sometimes left behind a guy like Titus or Timothy to lead them and guide them and mature them until some of the sheep grew into shepherds, but that’s a study for another day. The point is, if we want to be a real church, and not just a bunch of people playing church, even before we call a pastor, we’ve got some work to do. It’s not right to call some pastor in here by telling him what a great church we are, only to have him (or her) find out we messed up and there’s a bunch of unconfessed and unrepented sin among us. That’s a recipe for failure. That’s gonna take some work, and it’s going to involve some pain. Now, I don’t know all of the details, I don’t know if very many of us do, but it sure seems like the resignation of our pastor was not handled in a way that honors God. We’ve got people deeply hurt by what went down, and there is division among us. We cannot have that. A house divided cannot stand. (Mark 3:25 Matthew 12:25) Now, I’m not up here to condemn anyone. I’m not up here to point any fingers. But this stinks. What happens if I bump into Maurice on the street in Mankato? That should NOT be an uncomfortable situation for any of us, but it is. Even more important is what God says about this: Matthew 5:23&24 23“So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, 24leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God. Are we as a church reconciled to Maurice? Where will we be as a church if our offerings to God are tainted? What about the next time we go to have Communion? 1 Corinthians 11:27-30 27So anyone who eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28That is why you should examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking the cup. 29For if you eat the bread or drink the cup without honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking God’s judgment upon yourself. 30That is why many of you are weak and sick and some have even died. That’s harsh stuff, but it’s true. When Tamara stood up and confessed to the whole congregation, THAT folks is why I am a member of this church! THAT took courage and love and trust and faith to do that! And I know there are a bunch of you out there like Tamara. I love you people. I think of you as family. And that’s why I think this church still has a chance. Just last Wednesday, we had two excellent meetings in a row. Jackie and Gay and Jenny and Krissy came to pray. The Holy Spirit showed up and there was this clear vision of what Faith Bible Church should be and could be. Later, there was a board meeting where Jenny and Jackie and Jeff and Brandon agreed to be on the board. That’s huge. Without the required number of people on the board, the terms of our constitution meant we really could not move forward until that happened. There was a good discussion and some things got done. Good. So, we’ve got a chance. God is indeed working among us, but as we found in the prayer meeting, we will not be what honors and pleases God by waging this battle ourselves. The battle belongs to the LORD. We must always remember that other people are not the enemy. Ephesians 6:12 For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Faith Bible Church will only be what God wants it to be if we SUBMIT to the LORD and to each other. This will take humility and obedience on our part. I firmly believe that the love of Jesus Christ is the most powerful force in the universe –and beyond. So, how do we go on from here? Let’s put 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24 in our hearts. 12Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. 13Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. And live peacefully with each other. 14Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy. Encourage those who are timid. Take tender care of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone. 15See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people. 16Always be joyful. 17Never stop praying. 18Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. 19Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. 20Do not scoff at prophecies, 21but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. 22Stay away from every kind of evil. 23Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. 24God will make this happen, for he who calls you is faithful. And, as we move forward, let’s study and really absorb into our hearts these verses found in Ephesians 4:11–16 (NLT): 11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago in a place not unlike Kinship Christian Radioland, there was a wonderful church that held a beautiful Easter Sunday Sunrise Service. After the service, in the church basement of course, they put on an Easter Sunrise Breakfast for anyone and everyone to attend. There would be milk and juice and coffee and perhaps some fresh fruit and eggbake (I’m pretty sure the recipe for eggbake is somewhere in the first part of Genesis, but I could not find it.) and donuts from a local bakery. Now, I’m a big fan of deep-fried pastries with a hole in the center. My affection for them borders on the legendary. It’s not quite an obsession or an addiction, but if I was a fish and you had one of those chocolate-covered tractor wheel looking donuts on your hook, my only hope for survival would be catch-and-release. I tell you this to preface what happened in one particular Easter Sunday morning in the basement of that church. I was helping down in the kitchen and, just as the service upstairs was about to end and the fruit and beverages had all been set out and the eggbake was steamy hot and ready to serve, I found myself standing next to one of the dear Church Ladies with a knife in her hand standing at the counter cutting all of donuts in half! I know. The very concept is horrific. At first I was speechless. As she continued in her relentless slicey mayhem, I managed to stutter, “Why….why are you cutting the donuts in half?” “Some of us can’t eat a whole donut.” And she didn’t stop until every single donut had been cleaved asunder. I said no more to this Lizzie Borden of the donut world, but I have forever lamented that day. I have seethed at the thought. By cutting each and every donut in half, she made every person who took more than a half a donut into a gluttonous fiend. She sent the message that we were the church of half-a-donut, unable to afford to give our guests on the occasion of the Savior of the World rising from the dead more than a measly sample –a half-measure of a full, unmolested, intact and unassailed donut. On the day when we celebrated the most glorious miracle in all of Christendom, this one lady had sent the message to people who perhaps only came to church twice a year that we serve not a God for whom absolutely nothing is impossible, but the God of half-a-donut. The God who made the entire universe and everything in it. The God who split the sea and thundered from Mount Sinai, who made it rain for forty days and forty nights, whose glory is proclaimed by the stars and the planets and the galaxies, who is praised by everything that has breath –is that the God of half-a-donut? For years, I pondered what I should have said to that dear Church Lady on that day. And I have come to the conclusion that I should have said less than I did. In all of my ranting above, I have failed to consider that the lady cutting those donuts in half really was a child of God. Perhaps she really and truly believed in her heart of hearts that she was serving God in the best way possible. There is the distinct possibility that this lady actually and truly loved Jesus and was cutting those donuts in half out of love and service to others. There is also the distinct possibility that my ranting had its roots in Pharisaical pride and a fleshly lust for sugary carbs more so than in bringing glory to God. When Luther wrote his Small Catechism, this is what he said about the eighth commandment: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way.” That is most definitely not the default setting of human beings. We seem to automatically jump to the worst possible conclusion when we hear anything about someone else. And we grow that and build that until we actually believe that people who disagree with us are not just wrong, but evil. In the meantime, we just can’t understand why those evil people think we are the evil ones. And before you know it, there are all these wedges driven between us and there is so much animosity seething in our hearts we won’t even consider forgiving them or (heaven forbid) admitting our sin and asking for their forgiveness. And then one day, we look into the mirror and find we have actual contempt not just for fellow human beings who are made in the image of God, but for brothers and sisters in Christ. How will we be able to stand in heaven shoulder-to-shoulder with people for whom we have contempt? How can that work? Scripture is quite clear: Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 1 John 4:20 (NIV) In the light of that verse, maybe the solution is to love the donuts less and love each other more. Maybe the real enemy is not the lady cutting the donuts in half. Maybe God is more interested in churches where love is not chopped into pieces than churches where the donuts are whole. Today’s Praise Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too. 1 John 5:1 (NLT) I’ve been to Prince of Peace Home for Girls on the outskirts of Guatemala City twice now, and they recently shared a story on Facebook I’d like to share with you. Call it a parable if you will. Prince of Peace home for Girls is an orphanage where over 40 young ladies and girls reside. The love of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit really does change lives for the better there. About ten days ago, on their way to school, the Prince of Peace bus had a little mechanical problem. The orphanage’s beloved bus driver/bus mechanic/maintenance man/carpenter/groundskeeper/kindly jack-of-all-trades guy Don Miguel stopped and quickly got to work fixing the bus. The girls just as quickly noticed that the bus had come to a stop right next to a park with slides and swings and all sorts of stuff young ladies enjoy very much. So they asked the tias (“Tia” is the Spanish word for “aunt” which is what they call the ladies who watch over them, guide them, protect them, and teach them.) if they could get out and play in the park. The tias agreed and the girls got to go out and have fun in the park under the supervision of the tias. Don Miguel was able to fix the bus in fairly short order, so all the girls and the tias got back on the bus when he was done and they were safely delivered to their destination. The End. On a seemingly-unrelated note, I know a guy (Let’s call him “Bob.”) who has been organizing successful short-term mission trips for about 25 years. He and I were recently talking about people who are considering going on a mission trip, but won’t commit to it until they’ve had “a sign from God.” Bob’s usual reply is something like, “Well, okay, I respect that, but why would God not want you to go and tell people about Jesus?” Perhaps you see where I’m going with these two little parables. In the first story, neither the girls, nor the tias, nor Don Miguel sought any kind of sign or confirmation from God that the girls should go play in the park. Nobody asked God if the bus breaking down right next to a park was a sign from God. There was no casting of lots, no calling out to the prophet Samuel for direction, no laying out of fleeces to await a drenching or non-drenching of dew, and not even any mention of prayer. (Although, knowing the tias as I do, I am not going to categorically state there was no prayer. In point of fact, I’m pretty sure those tias are praying continuously.) Now, I will grant you that a mission trip seems like a much bigger deal than more than 40 girls going out to play on a playground in Guatemala, but their are absolutely plenty of opportunities for things to go horribly sideways in a hurry under circumstances like that. And so now we come to faith. If we truly believe that God is who He says He is, what are we worried about? If Jesus can stand up in the boat and calm the storm when the professional fisherman piloting the craft are certain we are all going to die and very soon, why are we of so little faith? Don’t get me wrong here. Asking for guidance and direction from the LORD of heaven and earth who created the entire universe and everything in it simply by speaking it into being is a very, very good thing. We absolutely should be doing that! We should judge the tree by its fruit. We should test the spirits, just like our Bibles say was should. But, there should be a balance. We should also know that not making a choice, or delaying making that choice for too long, is indeed making a choice. The more I roll this around in my head, the more inclined I am to just come right out and say I think our initial response to do God’s will, to bring Him glory, or to bless others should be a nearly immediate and impulsive, “Yes, LORD!” At the very least, I think He deserves an, “Okay, God.” I say that with a crystal-clear picture of Mr. Impulsive himself, the Apostle Peter, in my head leaning over the edge of a boat on a windy night on the Sea of Galilee when everyone in the boat thought they saw a ghost, but the ghost claimed to be Jesus: But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Matthew 14:27-29. (NIV) At this point, I absolutely cannot resist pointing out that Jesus called Peter with one word: “Come.” And Peter did NOT respond with, “Are you sure? Can I get some kind of sign, Lord?” Nope, he was over the side and out of that boat walking straight for Jesus! Now, whenever this story is told, we all rush to the part where Peter took his eyes off Jesus and he started to sink and Jesus had to reach down and catch him, but the point here is that Peter got out of the boat and walked on water! Nobody else got out of the boat and went for a stroll across the waves. Only Peter. And, if you read the story carefully, it doesn’t say Jesus carried Peter back to the boat. Verse 32 says: “And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down.” They climbed into the boat. Peter walked back to the boat with Jesus! We should also not forget that, unlike water-walking Peter, and unlike Gideon, and unlike Samuel and all the Old Testament prophets, we have the entire New Testament filled with red letters and the wisdom of Holy Spirit-inspired guidance and direction from actual apostles to help us make decisions like this. For example: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28 (NIV) As if that weren’t enough, we also have the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide us! I think the problem we have (at least it often seems true for me) is that we often think of God as this big, booming KJV voice on Mount Sinai with a burning bush in the background intoning to Charleton Heston, “MOSES! MOSES! DRAW NOT HIGH HITHER: PUT OFF THY SHOES FROM OFF THY FEET, FOR THE PLACE WHEREON THOU STANDEST IS HOLY GROUND!” (Exodus 3:5 KJV) I do not write that disrespectfully to the Lord at all. I absolutely believe that God spoke to Moses in that way. (No, I don’t mean in fifteenth-century English in all caps.) But I think that there is a part of us that really wants the voice of God to be that dramatic, Hollywood-inspired booming fall-to-our-knees voice because the still, small voice He usually uses is something we are afraid we’re going to miss. I think we want soaking wet fleeces and lakes going flat in the middle of the storm and burning bushes so there can be no doubt, no mistaking what just happened. I think there is a part of us that wants a God of drama. But the thing is, I think what God wants are people of faith. I think God wants people who know His heart and that His love is so wide, so long, so high, so deep that they are willing to impulsively step out of the boat into the crashing waves and walk straight to Jesus, even if it seems impossible or foolish. I think God smiles at the thought of orphans playing on the swings while Don Miguel fixes the bus because the tias trust God to watch over those girls and protect them. I think children who grow up around people who love and trust God enough to not be afraid of what could happen, that they allow what does happen to be to His glory, will grow up to be people who will love and trust God and will eventually raise children who will love and trust God. And from that, I can see the kingdom of God grow from that tiny seed of faith to an enormous tree of life that burns and glows with His love and is never extinguished. From that, I can see a people who make other people wonder and want to know, “Who is this God that these people love and trust so much that they are willing to do whatever He asks, go wherever He sends them, and love everyone He puts in their path?” Today’s Praise Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen. Ephesians 3:21-22 (NLT) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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