It was preacher and bishop of Liverpool, J.C. Ryle (1816-1900), who challenged the lackadaisical, half-hearted, lukewarm churchgoers of his time against slouching into hell from the pews of their church buildings.  In his book Holiness Ryle wrote the following:

Let me warn all careless members of churches to beware lest they trifle their souls into hell.  You live on year after year as if there was no battle to be fought with sin, the world, and the devil.  You pass through life a smiling, laughing, gentlemanlike or ladylike person, and behave as if there was no devil, no heaven and no hell.  Oh, careless churchman, or careless dissenter, careless Episcopalian, careless Presbyterian, careless Independent, careless Baptist, awake to see eternal realities in their true light!  Awake and put on the armor of God!  Awake and fight hard for life!  Tremble, tremble and repent.

As you read this essay, another anniversary of Santa Barbara Community Church is upon us, and how tragic it would be if we ever find ourselves trifling our souls into hell after thirty-one years of being a church. What calamity would come on the spiritual life of our church if we put things on ecclesiastical cruise-control, convinced ourselves that we have pretty much figured things out, and ceased to cry out to God for his power and his blessing?  How long would it be before Jesus spit us out of his mouth (Revelation 3:16)?  How soon after we refrained from pleading for his presence would God remove his blessing from our congregation?

September is a good month for our church to take inventory, to be a bit introspective, to reaffirm what we believe about God’s church and his call on our lives.  For as many years as I can remember, we’ve devoted three Sundays in September to reteach passages from the Bible that speak of the glory of Christ in the church.  We remind ourselves that when we are called to Christ, we are not called alone. Instead, we are called into a community of believers who are bound to one another even as we are bound to God.  We usually meditate upon Ephesians 3:10 and Paul’s over-the-top claim that God delights so much in his church that he shows his trophy-bride to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. That is, to the angels!  Furthermore, it is through the church that God puts his wisdom on display.  Stunning!

So, in the anniversary month of our thirty-first year, I offer three truths for us to ponder lest we trifle away our souls on the way to our thirty-second anniversary.

First is the truth that you can’t go to church.  The church is no more a place that you can go to than a bicycle is a meal that you can taste.  The church is not a location, much less a building.  Instead, the church is a people called out from the world and called to God.  This group of people becomes a band of brothers and sisters in Christ.  Brothers and sisters is a metaphor, but it is a strong one.  The church is a people glued together by the work of Christ on the cross.  To put it starkly, when we come to Jesus, we are stuck with one another.  John Ortberg, a pastor in central California, wrote a book with a title that is probably worth the price of admission: Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them.  He’s right.  And in the church we get to know one another.  We get to know one another’s quirkiness.  We see one another in our moments of fussiness.  We tolerate each other’s rancorous moods and misplaced comments.  We extend grace after being wronged.  We are, to say it again, brothers and sisters to one another.  Are we serious about wanting to avoid trifling our souls to hell as we begin another year of church life?  One way to determine how we are doing is to look at how we are treating one another.  Jesus put it strongly: the world will judge our faith by the manner of our love for one another (John 13:35). 

Second, remember the truth that Christ never calls you to himself without calling you to the church.  Again, the church is at the center of God’s plan for salvation.  According to Paul, the very mystery of the gospel is the creation of a people comprised of natural-born enemies, the Jews and the Gentiles (Ephesians 2:11-22). As the Westminster Confession puts it, the visible church . . . is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.  Put more simply—and I’m borrowing from John Stott—a churchless believer is a gross anomaly.  When we come to Christ, we are not invited to do so with a few like-minded friends.  We are called into a loving relationship with a community of believers, some whom we might not even like much!

C.S. Lewis was one of the most famous Christians of the twentieth century.  He came to faith when he was in his thirties and already a professor at Oxford University.  He already had a tight circle of scholarly friends, some of whom were Christians and who would encourage him in his newfound faith.  In the early days of his Christian life, Lewis avoided the church down the street from his house, claiming he hated the hymns (he considered them to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music) and didn’t care much for the people.  But then Lewis realized that he needed the church:  I realized that the hymns were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots.  It gets you out of your solitary conceit.

The third truth worth reviewing at this time is that we must join our church.  It is all too possible to hang around the margins of church life—to come for corporate worship when it is convenient, to join a homegroup when the time is right, and to let someone else do the serving.  This tendency is especially evident in a growing church where it is possible to hide.  You may think I’m not really needed, but, in fact, you are essential to the life of your church.  So choose a local church, any church, and know that if you join that body of believers, you will be needed.  But we also need to make a commitment to a church for our own sake.  After all, marginal church involvement is often the path to trifling our soul away from Christ.  When we convince ourselves that we aren’t necessary for the life and health of the body of Christ, we will soon be right.  We will have so marginalized ourselves from the give-and-take reciprocity of body-life that eventually we won’t even be missed.  In time, we will begin to speak of the church with telling pronouns that lack ownership and buy-in, pronouns such as they and their as opposed to we and our.  When the people of a church begin to speak of their community as something that doesn’t belong to them, a red flag should go up signaling trouble.

Santa Barbara Community Church, these are good days for our community.  God is blessing us, corporately and individually.  We should be thankful and joy-filled.  But as we go into Year 32, let us never drop our guard, cling to the past, or be overly confident that last year’s experience should be this year’s expectation.  To quote Ryle once again, Let me warn all careless members of churches to beware lest they trifle their souls into hell. . . . Tremble, tremble and repent.

May God make his face smile on us as we begin another year together!

It’s amazing what God accomplishes through us when we roll up our sleeves. That’s true for any service or ministry, but for the Five Loaves Project, in which A Rocha volunteers help to tend and to cultivate the land owned by and adjacent to Santa Barbara Community Church, the hard work of many is bearing fruit (…and vegetables). If you stroll into the valley adjacent to the church you might be surprised, even if you were at the groundbreaking in May. Since then, volunteers (hundreds from our church and others, and many individuals) have been hard at work tilling, planting, and tending land that is now an honest-to-goodness farm. You’ll find rows of crops, a profusion of fresh vegetables: carrots, cilantro, corn, cucumbers, onions, peppers, radishes, tomatillos and tomatoes. They are to become ingredients for family meals on the tables of those who could not afford fresh, healthy produce on their own. The Lord of the Harvest is blessing our modest farm, so that we in turn can express the love of Christ to those who are hungry and weary from poverty.

Our volunteers engage in work that is fairly straightforward, such as planting, harvesting, and weeding. “Farmer Ron” (SBCC’s very own Ron Davis) is the man in charge—he directs us on farming best practices for each day’s tasks. Helpers arrive each week from every age and stage: from preschoolers, to college kids, to mature adults, to multi-age families. Thanks to a creative in-kind gift from members of our church body, a tractor now hums down the rows, increasing our efficiency tremendously. Five Loaves is a bustling site for work and education: a new greenhouse and welcome center greet visitors and volunteers. Mark Caswell, one of the farm’s advisors, jumped in to make the idea of a children’s garden a reality. In fact, there are a lot of people within this body who play key roles in this ministry. Just one other person I’ll mention for now is Marty Robertson, who has come on board to oversee all the science and education elements we weave into this project site, such as the Creation Care Kids Camp and valuable field research.

What do you see for your efforts as a volunteer at the Five Loaves farm? Literally, you see rows of crops. But what the crops represent is more profound – we will be offering this pesticide-free produce to support 150 families who depend on Santa Barbara Community Development Center’s (SBCDC) food distributions. One of the mothers who will be receiving this healthy food is Maria*. Maria is a single mother who lives with her children in dense multi-family housing in Isla Vista. She works hard to support her family by selling tamales from door to door. Maria is also a sister in Christ, active in the home church that meets in her apartment complex. Our partnership with SBCDC will allow us to put this food into her hands, so she can serve healthy meals to her children. Incredibly, we will be SBCDC’s only reliable source of fresh produce. It’s a humbling thought …

If you haven’t already joined us for an afternoon to work or view the site, I hope you will come soon. If living for Christ sounds vague, and if meeting the world’s needs seems overwhelming, take heart.  As a Five Loaves volunteer, you will meet a pressing local need with practical action, while also enjoying the glory of God and discovering (or rediscovering) satisfaction in such earthy work.

Jesus told his disciples, The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers… Remarkably, God invites us to participate in the work of extending His mercy to all who will receive it. As an extension of that call, I invite you to join in on this ministry, and yes, we will literally be harvesting at times! An online volunteer sign-up form is available at: http://tiny.cc/fiveloaves. You can print and fill out a volunteer waiver form here: www.arochasb.org/VolunteerWaiver.pdf. Whether you come out alone, with your family, homegroup or a non-believing friend, we have meaningful work ready for you!

*name changed

I will confess at the outset that I consider myself something of a language lover. I love words, and, as Greta can attest, I use many of them. I will often choose a more obtuse word when a simpler word would do, simply because I can. The screensaver on my computer teaches me new—often obscure—vocabulary words (and hinders my productivity as I study my screensaver instead of attending to the work beneath it). I love language, and consider its proper use of high importance. So, it comes as little surprise that I have recently noticed a pattern in our vocabulary that has me a bit unsettled.

In the last few years, I have witnessed an increasingly disquieting trend, primarily among the young people with whom I have worked and continue to work. In speaking to them, it would seem that most things in life are, in a word, “amazing.” This word has morphed into some sort of a catch-all term that serves to describe pretty much anything that they find even slightly pleasing. From seatback in-flight movies to guitar riffs, shoes to toenail polish, everything in life seems adequately summed up as “amazing,” despite compelling evidence that such things do not, in fact, inspire any amazement whatsoever.

In perhaps the most extreme example, while at Forest Home this summer, one of the staff members encouraged us to thank the kitchen staff for the “amazing sandwiches that we just ate.” Granted, social conventions likely prevented him from more honestly labeling the sandwiches as “moderately edible.” But how about “tasty,” “satisfying,” or even “yummy?” My crankiness stems not from the fact that the sandwiches were displeasing to the taste buds, but rather from the fact that, at other times in the week, we would gather and sing, in all earnestness, about God’s “Amazing Grace.” Amazing like lunch?

I will concede that our students possess enough linguistic savvy to distinguish between a hoagie and the grace that frees us from our bondage to sin, but I wonder why we feel the need to ascribe such greatness to our sandwich in the first place. I think it is because, at base, we have lost a sense of what truly deserves our admiration and wonder. This is partly so because we live in a marketing-saturated world in which every new product is “incredible,” “fantastic,” or, yes, “amazing.” We have all heard, over the course of our lives, thousands of sales pitches in which whatever product flickered before our eyes was described with any number of superlatives available to the copywriter. The sum effect of such a barrage is that, on some level, we really want to believe that we have purchased no less than “amazing” shampoo.

This impulse, I believe, speaks to the fact that each of us, created in the image of God, has an innate ache for the transcendent, the truly amazing. And, like no other time in history, the truly amazing seems so far away. When we can explain anything with science and technology, we have little need to sit in wonder. Instead, science and technology themselves become the objects of our awe (just watch the clamorous response to Apple’s next product launch). And, in the created things, we find something that finally—albeit briefly—satisfies our craving for wonder, and we respond by elevating such things far beyond what they deserve.

This tendency comes with spiritual consequences. We read in Romans of the wicked who, “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (1:23) and “worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (1:25), and we shake our collective head in scorn. We marvel that humanity as a whole could have traded in the majestic Sovereign of the universe for a lifeless, wooden carving. All the while we ignore the nagging feeling that Romans 1 describes not some far off and distant people, but us. As we go through our lives giving honor to the creation as interchangeably and effortlessly as we give “honor” to God, our lives serve as a 21st century illustration of the truth of Romans 1. In so doing, we practice a more subtle form of idolatry, one in which we don’t try to replace God with the banal things of our everyday lives; instead, we uncritically reduce him until he is on par with the banal things. And it begins with our words.

It should not surprise us that the God whose presence inspired Moses to fall face down, Isaiah to lament his sinfulness, and Paul to stagger blindly through the streets of Damascus, evades our linguistic capacity to sum him up. Yet, when we give up trying, resorting instead to cheapened and empty clichés, we have ceased to truly appreciate the One who has saved us. We sit comfortably with the idea that God deserves our best time and service, but doesn’t he also warrant our best thoughts and words?

Certain things naturally elicit—almost demand—a response of awe and wonder. A brilliant sunset splashed across the sky above the Channel Islands. The star-speckled night sky as witnessed from an enclave protected from light pollution. Even the latest technological wonder that does things unimaginable just years before. But as Psalm 19 reminds us, all of these things speak not of their own glory, but “declare the glory of God.” And it is for this glorious God that we ought to reserve our highest praise.

Let’s be a people who resist the hyperbole of the day, seeing the dangers latent within it. Let us fight against the dulling of our sense of wonder at the person of God. Let us remain committed to celebrating the Almighty as best we can while we continue to look through the glass darkly. Until the day when faith becomes sight and even the most obscure words my screensaver could offer will fail in comparison to the glory and majesty of the Creator. On that day, as no other before it, we will truly know what it is to be amazed, whether or not they serve sandwiches for lunch.

I wonder if you have ever thought about Jesus as a husband crazy in love with his bride.  You know the type. The groom who cries at his wedding. The doting newlywed who leaves a card on the kitchen table as he dashes off to work in the morning.  The guy who meets his wife for lunch every Wednesday and brings home flowers every Friday.  That’s the way Jesus feels for his church, and I wonder if you sense his white-hot passion?

I also wonder if you’ve ever thought about Jesus’ love for his bride as the necessary inspiration to keep the sizzle in your own marriage, or at least the staying power in the covenant you made with your spouse so long ago.  After all, the apostle Paul said, Husbands, love your wives, not Men, marry your lovers.

We don’t have to look too far or think too deeply to understand that marriage is in trouble in our society.  Cohabitation is on the rise, and divorce is inexpensive and popular.  A recent Newsweek essay, written by two unmarried women, bore the title “I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage.” The authors do a pretty good job of showing that—from a legal, financial, sexual, and cultural perspective—marriage is increasingly a relic of the past.  Indeed, a deep cynicism about the institution is growing.  Andrew Cherlin, author of The Marriage-Go-Round wrote, The question is not why fewer people are getting married, but why are so many still getting married?

Once upon a time, marriage was undergirded by numerous props and supports.  Marriage was an economic necessity.  Marriage was the gateway to sexual pleasure. Marriage was the only socially approved place for the begetting and rearing of children.  Marriage provided tax benefits.  Marriage was understood to be a place where a woman was protected and a man was domesticated.  Et cetera.

But today, in 2010, marriage. . . Well, what is marriage for anyway?  We’re not too sure.  Marriage is just one option among many for those who are single, and staying married is just one option for those who have tied a very loose knot.  In June, for example, Al and Tipper Gore, formerly the second couple of the United States of America, announced that they were separating.  The news was met with a yawn; it was neither scandalous nor salacious.  One editorial almost celebrated the breakup of this marriage.  The writer pointed out that the Gores had been married forty years:  The fact that they both can look forward and see a promising future by not being married [is] a celebration about how much optimism they have for the rest of their lives.

So what does this have to do with Jesus’ ravenous love for his bride, the church? And what does his love have to do with our personal discipleship and our troubled marriages?  Everything!  When we grasp even a tiny bit of Christ’s love for his church, our marriages and our discipleship will be changed almost beyond recognition.

Consider how Paul spelled out in Ephesians 5:25-33 the overflowing love Jesus has for his people.  Read and ponder these verses and you’ll see that Jesus loves his bride, even lays down his life for her.  Jesus purifies his church and has a future for his church.  Jesus cherishes the church in the same way a man cherishes his own body.  He nourishes and cares for the church.  In short, Jesus is not a polygamist.  He doesn’t court other lovers on the side.  He doesn’t have a wandering eye.  Jesus is all in for the church.  He’s even coming back to consummate his marriage with the church (Revelation 19:11ff)!

As I said above, when we understand the overflowing love Christ has for us, everything changes, both in our discipleship and in our marriage.  Marriage and discipleship, you see, are two sides of a single coin. After all, keeping our marriage vows and fulfilling our vow to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, and mind work nicely together.  Furthermore, the issue for the believer is not usually raw adultery.  It is not that we will forsake Jesus explicitly and knowingly.  The issue is that we want to enjoy a flirtatious relationship or two on the side.  We don’t want a divorce; we want to fool around.  We want a dalliance, a trifling affair.  We want to court cars and gadgets. We want status or wealth or even privacy and spare time.  Far from taking up our cross and following Jesus to Golgotha, we want to mess with 401ks and promotions at the office.

So also in marriage: it is not usually adultery, much less polygamy, that will destroy our union.  Instead, it is plain ol’ garden-variety sin.  Subtle, unnoticed, not-overtly-evil sin.  The 10th commandment is more likely to get in the way of a healthy marriage than the 7th.  Specifically, I am much more likely to covet my rights, my time, and my way than I am to break my marital vows with another man’s wife.  But the accumulation of what we might call 10th-commandment sins is not to be underestimated. To borrow from C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, the road to hell is a gradual one: Murder is no better than cards if cards do the trick.

Paul Tripp has written an excellent book on marriage called What Did You Expect: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage.  The title alone is worth the price of admission! Tripp wrote, You both bring something into your marriage that is destructive to what a marriage needs and must do. That thing is called sin.  Sin is, according to Tripp, essentially antisocial and therefore it dehumanizes those around us.  Sin puts our self at the center even after we have pledged to put our spouse before ourselves.  That same sin will cause us to betray our heavenly bridegroom, Jesus himself. 

Lisa and I recently celebrated our 29^th wedding anniversary.  Even though we are both quite adept in the practice of sin, and even though we are very saturated with sin itself (Romans 7:18), we have enjoyed almost three decades of marriage.  It has been a great run, and we’re looking forward—Lord willing—to another 29 years together.  I’d even go so far as to give myself at least a B+ in the art of husbandry. Okay, maybe a B-.  I love my wife, and there is no one else I’d rather be with.  I’m not a polygamist either in deed or in my heart.  But, when I think about it, any merit I have as a husband flows from Lisa’s unconditional, exuberant, enthusiastic love for me.  She loves me, she likes being with me, and she gets excited when we meet at the end of the day or, for that matter, at the beginning of the day.  Her enthusiasm for me and her love for me have a marvelous boomerang effect.  Her unconditional love motivates me like nothing else.  In the shadow of her love, I find myself loving her more and more.

And when I think about and enjoy Lisa’s love for me, I am led to think about the perfect Lover.  I find myself pondering the One whose passion compelled him to die for his beloved so that love itself might flourish and thrive.  Jesus was not a polygamist, and neither should we be.  Not because polygamy is so bad, but because monogamy is so good.  G. K. Chesterton agreed:

It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy.

We love God because he first loved us, and monogamy is two thousand times one.  Let’s stay there in both our relation to Christ and in our marriage.

I’m writing this on June 23rd, the half-century anniversary of the birth control pill.  The pill, as it soon came to be called, shifted the world on its axis.  Life in the developed world would forever be measured BP and AP (Before the Pill and After the Pill).  This revolutionary prescription drug was the first medication invented for people who weren’t even sick, and the women who swallowed the tiny pill ingested a new universe.  Now sex could be free from the constraints, responsibilities, and the joys of pregnancy.  Children, for single and married women alike, would now be a choice, not a consequence of sexual intercourse.  Sex itself was liberated from child-rearing responsibilities.  Pleasure became its sole purpose.

Oh, the ironies…  The pill was invented by a conservative Roman Catholic who was trying to cure infertility when he stumbled onto a drug that prevented conception.  The pill was intended to prevent pregnancy, but it gave birth to the abortion industry as our culture of sexual promiscuity was born.  The pill was thought to be a savior to women weighed down and held back by the burden of child-bearing.  Sex was set free from the shackles of pregnancy.  But these same women were betrayed with a kiss.  Men enjoyed, so to speak, a free ride from responsibility.  They began to marry later, if at all.  Sexually transmitted diseases increased exponentially after the advent of the pill, which also clearly promoted infertility.  Women have borne fewer children since the pill: 3.6 in 1960 versus fewer than 2 today.

Think also of the irony of how the pill affected the institution of marriage.  In pre-pill America, marriage was seen, at least in part, as the gateway to the pleasures of sexual intimacy.  More often than not she said, No. . . Not until we are married.  He said yes to the responsibilities of marriage, in part, because of the allure of her smile.  But in post-pill America she is liable to say yes on the first date.  Marriage, then, becomes accessory to romance, not the consummation of a couple’s attraction to each other.  She and he are likely to get married, if at all, when they desire to have children.  The pill brought about what might be called the great reversal.  Formerly marriage was the institution that provided the environment for sexual pleasure, but now marriage is viewed as a confining institution, the environment that greatly limits sexual activity.

Of course, all of the above can’t be blamed solely on a drug, but surely the pill contributed to the climate of indulgence called the sexual revolution.  As a 1966 U.S. News & World Report cover asked, “Can its availability to all women of childbearing age lead to sexual anarchy?”  It seems so. . . . Hugh Hefner wrote the Playboy philosophy, publishing it in his magazine in eighteen installments.  But Hefner’s philosophy really boiled down nicely to the credo of the revolution: If it feels good, do it.  Morality itself was up for grabs.  Ernest Hemingway, who took his own life in 1961, put it like this: What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.  As a society, we found that C. S. Lewis was right: Repeated disobedience to conscience makes conscience blind.  There was very little we felt bad about the morning after.

So, the obvious question: How should evangelical Christians view the pill?  A few points for us to ponder…

First, let us cultivate a healthy, celebratory understanding of sex and sexual intercourse that doesn’t allow sexual pleasure to become another idol we serve.  The world has enshrined sexual pleasure as a necessary component of a fulfilled life.  The French philosopher Rene Descartes famously said, I think, therefore I am.  We have upended Descartes and said, I copulate, therefore I am.  Christians need to laugh at such a notion.  Sex is a gift, and like all good gifts it must be received with the understanding that the gift is not ultimate, the gift is not God.  The greatest man ever to live, Jesus of Nazareth, never got married and never had sex.  This fact alone should disempower the notion that sex is a prerequisite to a significant life.

Second, as we approach the issue of sex and sexuality, we must revere and make room for its potency.  In the late 1970s, Dr. Ed Wheat wrote Intended for Pleasure.  It was something of an evangelical sex handbook extolling what Alex Comfort popularized in The Joy of Sex.  Wheat’s book sold over a million copies!  Fair enough, sex is intended for pleasure.  But Christians must realize that sex was intended by God for something else too, and that would be the making of babies.  It is probably accurate to say that people in the Western world are having more sex than anyone at any time in history.  We give condoms to young people so they can do it early, and we have invented drugs for older people so they can do it late!  But it is also accurate to say that we are having fewer babies than any generation heretofore.  We have all but severed the link between sexual intercourse and procreation.  Christians should be highly circumspect about this severed tether.

Third, we should understand procreation as one goal of marriage.  The Bible teaches that children are a blessing from God and that it is a good thing if our quiver is full of them (Psalm 127:4-5).  This is not to say that birth control is completely off limits for Bible-believing Christians.  It is to say that every marriage should be open to the blessing of the Lord in the conception and begetting of children. Children are not impositions to be endured but gifts to be enjoyed.  If we are not open to the bearing of children, we shouldn’t be getting married in the first place.

Fourth, we should take care to select birth control devices and methods that don’t destroy life.  There is a world of difference between a contraceptive (something that prevents the sperm from fertilizing the egg) and an abortifacient (a device or drug that prevents a fertilized egg from being implanted in the womb).  There is a debate about whether those birth control pills prevent ovulation or prevent implantation.  Because we revere life that God creates, we should choose carefully between the two.

As we enter the brave new world of designer babies, family planning, and genetic engineering in this age of population control and general acceptance of the role of the pill, it is high time that the evangelical church puts into practice the convictions we profess. We live in a world that has a mentality of contraception.  Our mentality, however, must be shaped by Scripture and guided by the wisdom of the church throughout the ages.  Only then will we think clearly about the times in which we live and the technologies that we are allowing to shape our lives.

Whether we’re popping the latest Hollywood mega-hit into the DVD player, downloading the runaway bestseller onto our Kindle, or buying front row seats for the Tony Award winning drama, we all love to get immersed in a good story. We see ourselves in the characters, get lost in the plot, and try to envision how we would respond in similar circumstances.

At Forest Home during the week of June 20th-25th, our high school students and leaders heard the challenge to consider their own story. In our culture that makes reality television stars famous overnight and for no real reason, we were asked to consider what kind of story our lives would tell if the cameras turned around and focused on us. Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 3:2-3, You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts, helped frame the week as we pondered the truth that our lives are like a story, open for anyone to read. 

Our students reported that the week helped them to consider exactly what it means to live a God-honoring story in a world scarred by the Fall. For many, this week marked the first time they had ever honestly considered how their life story is touched and shaped by brokenness. They thought about how vast the love of God is that redeems us from our hurt and liberates us to live a story about his faithfulness.

Most of all, our students were reminded that, in our world of brokenness, our quest for a significant story always leads us to the cross and resurrection of Christ. Only there—in the greatest pinnacle of any story ever conceived—do our stories find resonance. Only because of Calvary, can we hope to live a life that moves beyond a narcissistic devotion to our brokenness and into the fullness of worship of the God who saved us when we were yet enemies.

As we all seek to live a story worth reading, may we continually reflect upon the work of the true Author. And may his work in our lives read like a bestseller about his faithfulness, grace and mercy.

On the first Thursday of May, there was a prayer meeting of sorts outside the Pentagon in Washington D.C.  Franklin Graham and about a dozen friends gathered on the sidewalk and prayed for five minutes.  After the amen, Graham told reporters that he was praying for our president, for our soldiers, and especially for his son who is in Afghanistan:  [The soldiers] risk their lives every day to protect our freedom, so my prayer was that God would watch over them.  You have probably heard that Graham was praying outside the Pentagon because the military had rescinded its invitation to him to lead a prayer meeting inside the walls of the military complex. It turns out that Graham’s previous comments about Islam being a religion of hate were too incendiary for the military industrial complex.

In the meantime, the very existence of a National Day of Prayer was threatened.  On April 15, U.S. district judge Barbara Crabb ruled that the National Day of Prayer violates the First Amendment which forbids the establishment of religion by the federal government.  In other words, 58 years after president Harry Truman signed a bill saying that we are supposed to turn to God in prayer and meditation on the first Thursday in May, Judge Crabb ruled that the NDOP is unconstitutional.  Her reasoning was puzzling.  Crabb claimed her ruling wasn’t because prayer is a meaningless relic from our Puritan past.  Instead, the federal judge said prayer is too powerful for the government to touch.  Crabb wrote this:

In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual’s decision whether and when to pray.

What do you think?  Should our government endorse a National Day of Prayer?  Or should prayer be left to those who actually place their faith in God?  And if we do away with the NDOP, what about Christmas as a national holiday?  For that matter, what about Thanksgiving?  To whom do we give thanks if not the God whose will and wisdom has blessed us?  The list goes on: Should the Senate and the House continue their practice of opening their sessions with prayer?  Should our president be sworn into office with his hand on a Bible saying, so help me God?

If you struggle with any of the above questions, know that our nation has been wrestling with this issue ever since a group of men gathered in Philadelphia to declare independence.  In fact, the Founders struggled among themselves.  There was, for example, a huge difference between the way George Washington and Thomas Jefferson saw the role of religion in public life.  According to a recent book, Washington consistently sought to use governmental authority to encourage religion and foster the religious character of the American people (God and the Founders: Madison, Washington and Jefferson by Vincent Munoz).  Commentator Ryan Anderson adds:

Washington’s theory was simple: Since republican self-government was impossible without moral virtue, and moral virtue impossible without religion, the state had a legitimate interest in promoting religion.  So long as the state’s action was broadly ecumenical (not favoring any particular sect), and didn’t force anyone to worship against their will, the good of religion could be promoted without violating religious liberty.  (The Weekly Standard, 5/17/10, p. 36)

Jefferson, on the other hand, was more influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment that tried to have a civil society without reference to God or religion.  He argued that history furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.  Yes, the third president of the United States believed strongly in religious liberty, but he believed in this liberty as a natural right, not as a God-given prerogative.

In a very real sense, the history of religion in the public square of American life has been a tug-of-war between Washington and Jefferson for the past two hundred years—and since 1963, when the Supreme Court prohibited our public schools from sponsoring prayer, Jefferson has been winning.  Judge Crabb’s recent ruling is only one in a long line of decisions that push God out of public life.  Rest assured, Crabb’s ruling will be tested and ruled upon by the Supreme Court.  Next year we may or may not have a NDOP.  But what should those of us who love and follow Jesus think and do in the meantime?  I have three words of advice.

First, don’t panic.  We don’t trust in horses or chariots or even in the American experiment.  We trust in Christ, and we are citizens of heaven.  And Crabb does have a point: prayer is, perhaps, far too powerful to domesticate and trivialize.  A nationalized prayer meeting strips prayer of its potency and power because in a pluralistic society we must give everyone—whether Mormon, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, or Presbyterian—the chance to say the invocation.  To put it another way, it would be hard to imagine Elijah or John the Baptist being invited to pray at the next presidential inauguration.  Our gatekeepers see to it that those who pray in public do so politely.

Second, don’t give up.  We could throw in the proverbial towel, endorse a purely secular state, and flee to our religious hiding places to wait for Jesus to return.  If we do this, in effect, we lose our place at the table of public discourse.  Such a posture toward government says, “We give up.”  Christ and the church would then operate outside the realm of politics.  The church is the church and the state is the state and the two don’t intersect.  But despair shouldn’t be our refuge, and withdrawal shouldn’t be our posture.   We still find ourselves caring about our public schools, fighting against abortion, standing against pornography, and voting for our favorite candidate.  We care deeply who is our president and who serves on our city council.  This is how it should be.  When God saves us, he saves us in our own particular context.  The fact that we are created in God’s image makes it impossible not to care about the cleanliness of the air we breathe, and the clear-cutting of forests we will never see.

Third, keep praying.  If we believe that prayer is powerful and effective, and if we believe that God’s will and work are effected through prayer, then Judge Crabb’s ruling and Franklin Graham’s being disinvited to lead a prayer meeting in the Pentagon should only encourage us to keep doing what the secularists among us are so afraid of.  Prayer is the powerful and subversive weapon of the church.  Prayer changes people and shapes nations.  So, brothers and sisters, let us pray.  Let us pray boldly and consistently, Your kingdom come, your will be done.  Washington won’t stand a chance.

In March, you heard from the Elders regarding our next steps on how to proceed with the proposed multi-purpose building or “BOP”. The BOP is a building that was planned and permitted by Trinity prior to the merge.  It was approved for construction as part of the church campus upgrades permitted at that time and was to be built on the pad below the main sanctuary. What we told the Body in March was that we would build the multipurpose building but only if we received substantial financial support of $750,000 and received this money from a broad base of our church.   This would ensure that if the building was built or not, it would best represent God’s leading in our church.  The deadline for receiving this money was set for May 2nd. 

During the pledge period starting in March until the deadline in May, we received approximately $410,000 in commitments from about 220 of you in the church.  Although these numbers represent a broad base of our church, they do not meet the criteria of raising $750,000 in commitments.  Therefore, the Elders have decided not to move forward with building the BOP building.

We, the Elders, strongly believe that God has been in this decision process from the beginning and we are tremendously encouraged that so many of you participated through communication, commitments and prayer.  It is clear to us that as a church, we moved through the process with a strong sense of unity, recognizing that no matter whether the building was built or not, God would be glorified.  The Elders also witnessed the sacrificial giving that so many of you gave to this project which was over and above the giving that you have already committed to with our current budget.  If we can raise a few hundred thousand dollars in a such a short period of time, imagine some of the ways God could use our church to glorify Him in our community and world in the future through other sacrificial offerings.  As always, the Elders want to encourage us as a church to prayerfully consider our giving as worship, and recognize that God has entrusted us with much.

So what are our next steps? With the help of the Board of Trustees, we will work with the County to preserve our rights as best as possible in maintaining compliance with our property’s conditional use permit while investigating what other options, if any, may be available for that portion of our property.   As always, we the Elders feel blessed and encouraged in serving.  May God be glorified.

For the past seven years, May 1st has held an elevated status on my calendar for all the wrong reasons. It’s the day that my brother David died.

But here’s the thing. May 1st, 2003 is also the day that dear friends welcomed home their second son. This little guy’s conception and birth were nothing short of miraculous. Our friends had endured a long road of infertility. Ashton’s safe arrival marked an end to a trying season - one that we’d traveled with them. The news of David’s death and Ashton’s birth came within minutes of each other. And at the time, the combination felt impossible to process.

Exactly two months later, our daughter Hannah was born. She too had been a baby we’d waited a long time to have for different reasons. Once David died, I found myself wading through two months of pre-term labor. Ultimately, Hannah came early. Her delivery was frightening and amazing all at once. The doctors and nurses called her the miracle baby and she was. As I held our firstborn in my arms I felt incredibly blessed. My heart also ached for the brother I no longer had.

Four years later, yet another little man made his way to the outside world. He’s the son of my college roommate and treasured friend, Janna. After days of labor (I’m confident this girl could excel at marathons based on her birthing experiences), Paxton Kai was born on May 1st. We celebrated his arrival with joy and relief. And if the truth be known, I also cried that day after getting off the phone with Janna’s mom. 

As I sat across the table from a dear friend last night eating burritos, we talked about May 1st. We talked about the incredible odds involved in these births and David’s death lining up the way that they have. We talked about the incongruity of life and death and how they ultimately make very awkward bedfellows. 

Following my daughter Hannah’s birth, I can’t tell you how many times people told me how lucky or blessed or fortunate I was to have her on the heels of David’s passing. For many this little six-pound colicky bundle became the proverbial ribbon that they hoped could wrap up my pain in a tidy package and send it away.

I understand the awkwardness that accompanies death. This seems especially true when the loss is unexpected, untimely, seemingly unavoidable or any combination thereof. What I’ve also come to understand is this: the thing I unknowingly longed for in those dark days was a simple acknowledgement of the incongruity of it all. That was it. 

It turns out that life and death rub up next to each other in the most awkward of terms. I needed souls brave enough to sit within the heartache and the joy without trying to find cohesion between the two. My heart never ached so deeply. Still, my mind always knew that life and its goodness does (and ought to) carry on.

My grief demanded that I sit within these discrepancies and I suppose I wanted company. I had this at times in the most intimate of ways. Within hours of my horrible news, one friend was boarding a flight to come and be with me. Another friend was there within minutes. They held me close, cried their own tears, timed my inconceivably early labor pains, washed my dishes and somehow filled each daunting hour with their presence alone.  I’m forever grateful for those courageous individuals who didn’t try to fix it. Instead, they dared to live within those moments with the simple resolve of steadying my fragile soul.

In many ways, the past seven years have been a journey.  I needed to somehow locate a resting place within the paradox of life and death. I think I have. Come to find out, there are thousands of ways to navigate this terrain. At times I’ve tripped and fallen flat on my face. I’ve grown tired from the heat - finding myself parched with no water bottle on hand. More than once, I’ve meandered off course, having no idea which direction to go next. At still other turns I’ve found myself gaining momentum; there I’ve experienced deep satisfaction and an expansive view that moved my soul to an entirely new place. 

In the end, God’s grace has proven to bridge this chasm of life and death in ways that nothing else has. It has provided me with a deeper understanding of how beauty and depravity come alongside one another with the ability to emerge from chaos into harmony. This grace is stout. It is unwavering and entirely capable of supporting deep aches right alongside the abundant joys that this world contains. It has gifted me the time to consider and the space to doubt. It has granted me the expanse to wander, and ultimately enveloped me with the assurance to return with a greater understanding and still more questions. 

Grace. It is the essence of how I seek to live life alongside loss each day this side of May 1st, 2003. I think David would be proud of the path his little sister has traveled.

How many times have we read stories of some person who leads a quiet, frugal life—maybe a librarian or a store clerk—and upon their death, they give a fortune away to the less fortunate?  Even better, is the story of one who leads that simple life and has an ongoing pattern and practice of generosity.

Webster’s defines the word “generous” as liberal in giving; openhanded. 

Openhanded…  That is a true challenge right there.  And it is a challenge mirrored throughout Scripture, perhaps most pointedly in 1 Timothy 6:10:  For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. 

Three quick observations:

1)        Money itself isn’t the evil, but an inordinate desire for it leads to many evils;

2)        Pursuing wealth doesn’t send us rocketing straight to hell.  Rather, the eagerness for more causes us to wander, and it could be a slow and circuitous path away from loving God;

3)        The piercing mentioned here isn’t delivered by God, but by our own choices.

The antidote to all this?  Openhanded generosity.  Sacrificial, regular giving—the kind that keeps the love of money from growing on us like a barnacle.  Does this kind of generosity describe your habits?  If so, then you can skip the rest of this and check out another article in the Community News.  If you feel that you have room to grow in this area—as I do—then I’d like to share some things I’ve been mulling over on this topic.  My “mulling” has come as a result of my husband’s challenge to our family to increase our giving.  Not such a big deal really, under normal circumstances.  But he is proposing this as our first of three kids starts college in the Fall.  I can already feel my open hand closing into a tight ball! 

With this clenched fist has come some reflection on what it means to open my hand and become generous in the way that God calls us to.  Some thoughts:

•          It’s about more than the check:  Regular giving is worship.  Worship is entrusting to God’s care all that is dear to us—again and again. The check is a symbol (albeit sacrificial) of our ascribing worth and honor to the One who gives us true security.

•          It’s proactive AND reactive: The discipline of regular, generous giving is proactive.  The above and beyond response to the needs we see around us is reactive.  Both are necessary ingredients for a heart growing in generosity.

•          It’s humble:  With enough practice, our hearts are increasingly tuned to God’s.  Then our lives can agree with Jesus’ words when he says, …when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.  Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.  Matthew 6:3-4

•          Control button “OFF”:  We’re taught to be in control of as many things as possible, maybe especially our finances.  To give generously is to relinquish control, especially when we give to our church and are not making the personal decision about where each dollar is allocated. 

•          Creativity required:  Most of us have experienced (or will experience) financial hardship at some time in life.  Does it mean we cease to give, or hold off giving until things look up?  ---A wise person once said that if we don’t give when we’re poor, we’ll never give when we’re rich.  It’s true, but sometimes it calls for creativity.  I recently read about a church in the Midwest that has been particularly hard-hit by the economic downturn.  When they didn’t meet their missions budget, they launched a church-wide idea they called “Fast for Food.”  Each member gave up some little thing that was extra in their own budgets (movies, dinners out, desserts, etc) for a month.  Then they pooled what they would have spent on these things and gave it to their missions group, who in turn channeled it to a feeding program their church supported.  We may not always have a lot of money, but we always have creativity, and there is always a way to give.

•          Make it relational:  Invite others into the challenge with you.  It adds encouragement and accountability.

•          Celebrate!  We grow in new areas when we practice.  We also grow in new areas when we stop to enjoy the view from the vista points.  Has God shown you more of Himself as you have surrendered more of your finances to his care?  Celebrate!  Is a child wearing shoes because you gave up dessert?  Celebrate!

Although we don’t pass an offering plate at our church, (instead we have a couple of innocuous-looking giving boxes in the entryway), I’ve often wondered, if we did pass one, what it would be like to have everyone write down on a piece of paper everything that they owned —bank accounts, homes, cars, electronics, etc., and put that into the plate? The message would be, “God, it’s all yours.  You provided it, and thank you. Now, teach me what it is to be generous.”

Bob Dylan has a famous line in one of his early songs, You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing.  Penned in 1965, this lyric seems quaint in light of the increasing mobility and internationalization of our times. The airplane has made moving people inexpensive and efficient, and the internet has made sharing ideas quick and easy. So, we move a lot and we have access to a lot of information. But both the migration of people and the sharing of ideas bring the inevitable clash of civilizations.  To use Dylan’s metaphor, the wind is blowing from every direction.  Consider several news stories from the past few weeks:

•          In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has been taking heat for his intention to ban women from wearing the full Muslim veil.  Sarkozy tied his decision to the nobility of women, saying that a full veil runs counter to women’s dignity.  The backdrop of the ban, however, is larger still.  Fully 10 percent of the population of France is Muslim.  Most of these are very poor immigrants living in suburban communities that are violence prone and incubated from France’s secular society.  In a word, these neighborhoods are seedbeds for radical Islam.  As one writer put it, The veil [is used] to deprive girls of basic educational opportunities and to prevent women from fulfilling their obligations as citizens.

•          Just last month, FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, banned from the game women in a hijab (the head scarf worn by women soccer players from Islamic countries).  The laws of international soccer decree that a player may not wear any equipment that has any political, religious or personal statements. 

•          From Dubai comes the story of a British couple, Charlotte Adams and Ayman Najafi, who had the audacity to smooch while having dinner at Bob’s Diner.  They were both fined a few hundred dollars, and Najafi is facing deportation issues over the incident.

•          In Yemen, Sheik Abdul Majeed Zindani, the country’s most influential cleric, is gathering a million signatures to protest a draft law banning child marriages.  The impetus behind this came about after a thirteen-year-old girl bled to death after being married off to a twenty-three-year-old husband who forced himself upon her. Zindani said the proposed ban on child brides threatens our culture and society and spreads immorality.

•          Two weeks ago, a federal judge declared the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional.  U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb wrote that the government can no more enact laws supporting a day of prayer than it can encourage citizens to fast during Ramadan, attend a synagogue, or practice magic.

•          Then, last week Franklin Graham was uninvited to the Pentagon because he has called Islam an evil religion.  The event, held every Spring, is sponsored by the National Day of Prayer Task Force, which works with the Pentagon’s chaplain.

So you can’t kiss in Dubai and you can’t pray in Wisconsin. You can bathe topless in Biarritz, but don’t try going to the mall in your burka. So much for knowing which way the wind is blowing.

Two books I’ve read recently speak to both the problem and the solution for the crosswinds that are blowing through the time in which we live.  First, A God Who Hates is written by Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born émigré to the United States.  She calls herself an atheist Muslim—atheist because she doesn’t believe in God and Muslim because that is her background, her culture.  Time included her on its list of the world’s 100 Most Influential People.  Sultan’s book is, basically, an autobiographical tell-all about the way women are treated in Syria and about the darker side of the Koran and Islamic teachings.  She claims that speaking Arabic as a first language helps one see what the Koran really says about the treatment of women, children, and people from other religions.  The title says it all: Islam, Sultan contends, is a religion of hate, and its adherents worship a God who hates.  For the past twenty years, Sultan’s god has been the United States of America.  But even that god is disappointing her as she has watched our leaders become increasingly accommodating to radical Islam under the guise of pluralism.

The second book, even more fascinating, is entitled Son of Hamas and was written by Mosab Hassan Yousef.  The author is the son of one of the founders of Hamas, the radical Palestinian organization that sponsored many of the suicide bombings in Israel during the past two decades.  When Yousef was arrested for being a terrorist, an unexpected change took place in him while he was in prison.  He saw the way Hamas treated its own, using torture to extract information from fellow members.  God began working on Yousef’s heart, and he left both Hamas and Islam, eventually placing his faith in the God who loves.  From an early age, Yousef had been disillusioned with Israel.  He had seen Palestinians killed in the streets and incarcerated for no reason.  When he was arrested, he himself was brutally tortured.  But this prison experience caused him to become equally disillusioned with his neighboring Palestinians (whether from Hamas or the Palestinian Authority).  A long internal search led Yousef to give his life to Jesus and be baptized. 

Son of Hamas makes for terribly exciting reading: for ten years Yousef acted as a spy for Israel, infiltrating the deepest pockets of Hamas and sharing his information with Israeli intelligence.  The book is one of those Just ten more pages and I’ll turn out the light kind of reads.  And Yousef saves the best for last.  In the epilogue, he explains that his purpose in writing the book was to show his own people—Palestinian followers of Islam who have been used by corrupt regimes for hundreds of years—that the truth can set them free. 

The truth, of course, is not an ideology or a political system.  The truth is neither Sharia Law nor the Declaration of Independence.  The truth is a Person who suffered a horrible death so that, indeed, we all might be set free.  As believers caught in the crosswinds of our time, let us cling to and proclaim the God who loves, the God who stooped to meet our need (Psalm 113:6).

Can anyone relate to an attraction towards raucousness?  Are you strangely drawn to seemingly disordered piles of creative projects “in process”? How about family gatherings that contain that edgy feel to them that anything could happen ---and it might be a scene?

Eugene Peterson (pastor/writer) was once asked what he loved most about the church.  His answer?  “The mess.”  --He loved the messiness and the unpredictability that comes with the community of the church.

The Christian church was the first institution in history to bring together Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free, and to hold them in equal standing.  This blending of previously separated groups was socially shocking. However, Paul said that by forming this community of diverse members, and by learning to love one another, we (the church) would capture the attention of the world (Ephesians 3:9-10). 

Any community where its members may have only one thing in common (faith in Jesus, or at least the desire to find that faith) is bound to have “issues.”  People will say stupid, insensitive things to us; worship styles may appeal or not appeal to us; sermons may or may not “touch” us – but it is in this diverse, and sometimes unpredictable soup of different personalities that we learn about grace.  And grace is never learned in a crash-course.  It takes a long, long time and, just when we think we’ve grown in grace, we get a new lesson to test us. 

As Philip Yancey says, Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form a community.  Grace grows best in messy places.

That said, here’s a modern enigma that is increasingly evident:  The busier we become, the more we desire control. And the more we desire control, the less open we are to the notion that God may want to use something messy to shape and change us. 

Another principal at work is that the busier we are, the shorter our attention span for these lessons that take a long time.  We want our “needs” met.  But (and please don’t take offense here), do we really know what we need?  Could it be that God may want to forge our character in the very place we find most frustrating – that messy, chaotic place that currently may not be meeting our “felt” needs?  I sometimes wonder if the very reasons people leave a church community  (I just need a place where the preaching applies to my life right now;  --I need to go where the worship feels authentic) may be the very reasons God wants them to stay put. 

God’s humor and wisdom are both rolled up into His design for the church.  It is no accident that it’s a messy place, and I personally think that the mess itself is an expression of God’s wise love for us.

So… raucousness? -- Bring it!  Piles of unfinished creative projects (that would be us) –Bring it!  We’re gathered to become Jesus-worshippers who can only learn God’s grace by exercising it within the context of community – a long and messy road to be sure—but definitely part of God’s love story for us.

As a new father, I have the privilege this May of celebrating my beloved’s new role in life: mother. This month will mark the first time that we have ever celebrated Mother’s Day as a family of 3. It will also mark the first time in a long while that we have actually enjoyed the day at all.

Infertility is perhaps more prevalent than we realize: one in six couples of childbearing age experiences some type of involuntary infertility. For three and a half long years, we met each Mother’s Day with dread. Once we decided that the time had arrived to start a family, we figured—as most young couples do—that the arrival of our first child was simply a matter of time: nine months, to be precise. Yet, God had other plans for us. Plans we would not have chosen for ourselves. Plans that involved more tears than we can recall. Plans that made it hard to even come to church on Mother’s Day.

The irony of that last reality is sharp. In our lowest moments, when the grip of infertility felt especially tight, church was often the last place we wanted to be. Our church family, normally such a source of acceptance and joy for us, regularly served as a reminder of our own lack. And Mother’s Day was the worst, as it will undoubtedly be this month for couples in our church struggling through the pain of infertility.

We do well to celebrate our mothers and to remember the hard work and sacrifice that so often marks their lives. Yet, in so doing, we run the risk— without even knowing we do so—of further alienating and wounding those who want nothing more than to be among their number. So, what can our church family do to better minister to those within our body who so desire to have their own child, but who still find themselves waiting through the night of mourning for any glimpse of the promised joy of the morning? Some practical suggestions:

Embrace the silence: When the topic of infertility comes up, otherwise rational brothers or sisters in Christ often lose the ability to measure their words. “Well, you’re probably having lots of fun trying, right?” “I bet if you just relax, and stop obsessing, things will get moving for you.” “Isn’t God enough for you?” “You can practice with my kids anytime.”

Perhaps the first impulse of Job’s friends should guide us. “Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was” (2:13). If you aren’t sure what to say to your grieving friend, don’t. Your steady presence communicates more than hastily chosen words could ever hope to. But, if you simply must speak…

Watch your language: Our church is not a baby factory. It’s a place full of broken and hurting people, some of whom feel broken and hurt because they have no children of their own. These kinds of comments, although not intended to do any harm, can feed the already daunting sense of isolation and loneliness experienced by infertile couples seemingly surrounded by growing young families.

While we’re at it, let’s stop asking married couples, “So, when do you think you’re going to have kids?” The less tactful, “Why don’t you have any kids yet?” is even worse. The assumption that after two people marry, pregnancy just happens on our own schedule is false, hurtful, and a symptom of our own need for control. Let’s allow God to work in the lives of each couple as He sees fit and not pile on the already fragile couple with our own preferences and assumptions about the way their life ought to work. And, speaking of assumptions…

Put away your crystal ball: Greta once had to firmly confront a lady who, in her zeal for the Lord, pronounced quite emphatically that God was going to give us a child very soon. “Or, He may not. We may never have children,” Greta replied. He did give us the gift of Gwyneth and we are thankful, but the announcement of an overeager prophet did not change God’s mind or alert Him to our desires. We had made them evident over and over in hours of prayer.

Making your own pronouncements about dates and times only leads to increased feelings of frustration, shame and disappointment. Instead, express your firm hope—something that couples in the middle of infertility’s dark night often lack. Pray with and for those who are suffering, asking God to respond to the cry for children and asking God to sustain them as they wait. But, ignore the impulse to play prophet. Instead…

Be willing to weep:  At one of the darkest moments in our journey, Greta and I found ourselves wondering aloud, “Where are those who will mourn with us?” Paul says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15). Over the years, we have found plenty of people who have been willing to fulfill the first half of Paul’s dictate, but far fewer who have stepped in to complete the second half of the verse. And those who have stood with us, wept with us and prayed with us hold a special place in our hearts.

Mourning with those who mourn doesn’t need to involve sackcloth and ashes, but a phone call or a card never hurts. Check in with that struggling couple after a child dedication or the announcement of yet another pregnancy or birth. These moments, although met by most with joy and excitement, can be emotional triggers during infertility.

Through our journey, we have remarked consistently how thankful we are for a loving and supportive church family. We truly do not know how those outside of the body of Christ cope with such gut-wrenching pain without the type of love and support we have known. Yet, we can all grow in our care for one another and our awareness of the hurting brothers and sisters among us. May it be said of SBCC that we are a church who knows how to weep as well as rejoice. And as we celebrate our mothers this month, let us not forget those who are not yet mothers, but long for the day when the Lord settles them in their home as the happy mother of children.

(Rob is supported by SBCC and was Director of Urbana 2009) 

Those of you who have been on this InterVarsity journey with us for awhile know that, since 2000, the country and people of Bosnia have developed a special place in my heart.  That year, my former area, the Central-South Coast, began a ministry partnership with the newly established IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) movement in Bosnia.  I am very happy to say that the relationship remains healthy and active today.  It has led to nine summer teams visiting various cities in Bosnia to do ministry alongside Bosnian students.  Currently, there is even an InterVarsity Link-Staff couple, who were formerly on staff at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, serving with the Bosnian staff team.  Good stuff has happened on both sides of the Atlantic because of this relationship!  One of the joys of this partnership for me is that it has led to a wonderful personal friendship with Enisa Dedic, the General Secretary of IFES, Bosnia, and an SBCC supported missionary.  

But who would have ever thought there would be some tie between Bosnia and St. Louis, MO!  At InterVarsity’s national staff conference in 2008, I took advantage of the opportunity to join a bus tour of the city of St. Louis.  During this tour, we heard a bit about the multiple refugee communities there.  My interest was piqued when I heard that one of the more sizeable refugee communities in the city was the Bosnian community.  Established as Bosnians fled their homeland during the 1990’s Balkan war, some estimates put the size of this community as high as 50,000.  Riding along the St. Louis streets, I began to dream a little, “Could there ever be a way that some of the folks we are connected with in Bosnia could serve the refugee community here in St. Louis?” The thought raised some intriguing possibilities but, over time, faded into the background with our move to Madison and engagement in planning for Urbana 09.  

But God wasn’t quite done with the dream.  About six months prior to Urbana, Cassie Meyer joined our operations team.  I soon found out that Cassie was getting involved in a new church that had felt called by God to plant itself in the Bosnian community in St. Louis with a desire to serve that community and live out the gospel among them.  The challenge – although convinced that they were called by God to be there, the church knew virtually nothing about Bosnian culture and those they had been sent to serve.  Hmmm, perhaps I knew someone who could help! What if Enisa were invited to come to Urbana as our guest, take in the conference (which by itself would be a good reason to come) and then meet with the leaders of this church (BEVO) to help them understand more about those they were called to reach?  The dream could be coming to life. So, I invited Enisa and she was able to come.  Urbana was a great experience for her and she had a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with scores of people (students and staff) who had been on one of our nine Global Projects (summers) to Bosnia.  Then on January 2nd, after Urbana, Enisa and I met for about three hours with some of the leaders of the BEVO church to help them begin to understand more about the Bosnians and their community.  Enisa had discovered that many of the refugees in St. Louis had come from the Bosnian city of Srebrenica.  It was a significant discovery, as Srebrenica was the site of one of the most horrific genocides during the war.  Enisa spoke the following day at the church sharing some of her own story of coming to Christ from a Muslim family and up-bringing, and providing the church with some insights about connecting with the Bosnians in their community.  It was a wonderful gift for the church.

…and the dream continues.  In early June 2010, people from the BEVO church will be traveling to Bosnia where they will be hosted by Enisa to learn more about the country, culture, people and church of Bosnia!  Their visit will include a trip to Srebrenica.  Please pray for them – that this relatively brief exposure to Bosnia would enlighten and shape them in ways that will make them more effective in being the body of Christ among the Bosnians in St. Louis.  And please pray that all God intends would be accomplished through these established and newly formed relationships.  I often wonder what all God may intend to do to make the dream a reality!

If you would like to contact Rob, you can do so at RKnight@intervarsity.org/608-284-7261.

The eye never has enough of seeing,

nor the ear its fill of hearing.                                               Ecclesiastes 1:8

I have a friend who is a filmmaker.  Tim makes films for various clients, and he makes some of his own movies as well.  We have a cup of coffee from time to time, and, being a movie lover, I enjoy it when our conversation drifts to all things celluloid. 

While my friend’s occupation is making movies, his passion is the protection of unborn life.  Recently we met and talked about his desire to raise some money to make a film about the silent holocaust of abortion.  He needs a good deal of money, and he wanted my opinion as to whether or not the project was viable and the funds needed were attainable.  I tried to be as encouraging as possible on both fronts.  After all, sometimes a movie or even a single photograph will grab our attention and melt our hearts more than a thousand books and articles on the same topic.  Do you remember the 1989 picture of that man standing in front of a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square?  That snapshot galvanized world opinion. Do you remember the college video called The Invisible Children?  Or, for that matter, do you remember Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ?  The eye is the window to our emotions.  Video, therefore, is a powerful tool of persuasion. 

As we talked, I asked Tim what, in addition to his Christian faith, fueled his passion for the abortion issue. It was seeing pictures of aborted children that had grabbed him.  My eyes have seen the pictures, and my heart has never been the same, he said. 

It turns out that what is true for my moving-making friend is also true for some abortion providers.  Some abortionists have seen enough.  Their vision of things too horrible to describe in respectable conversation has compelled them to quit doing abortions and find some other medical specialty. 

David Daleiden and Jon Shields wrote an essay published in the Weekly Standard entitled “Mugged by Ultrasound” (1/25/10).  In their essay they chronicle the shift in abortion methods since Roe v. Wade.  Back in 1973 most second-trimester abortions were performed by saline injection.  The baby was killed in utero, and a nurse dealt with the expelled fetus.  In a sense, the doctor never saw his work.  But in the late 1970s, it was agreed that dilation and extraction was a safer method of abortion.  A D&E abortion is performed when the doctor dilates a woman’s cervix and then, using forceps, dismembers the baby and removes one body part at a time. The abortionist has to reassemble the baby, part by part, to make sure he got all of it lest the woman be subject to severe complications and infection.

You’ll see no pictures in this CN article, but will you allow words to paint a vivid picture of their own? Daleiden and Shields quote Dr. Lisa Harris, an abortionist whose eyes saw too much while she performed a D&E on an eighteen-week-old fetus.  It turns out Dr. Harris herself was eighteen weeks pregnant when she did the procedure.  She claims she felt her own baby kick at the very moment she ripped a leg off of the fetus with her forceps.

Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.

Then there is Dr. Paul Jarrett who quit performing abortions after his twenty-third procedure, which was on a fourteen-week-old baby.  He recalled:

As I brought out the rib cage, I looked and saw a tiny, beating heart. . . And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being—a human being that I just killed.

Kathy Sparks is another who was transformed by too much seeing.  Sparks was responsible for disposing fetal remains at an Illinois abortion clinic.  Her account of her own experience is harrowing.

The baby’s bones were far too developed to rip them up with [the doctor’s] curette, so he had to pull the baby out with forceps. He brought out three or four major pieces. . . I took the baby to the clean up room, I set him down and I began weeping uncontrollably. . . I cried and cried. This little face was perfectly formed.

Because of what she saw, Sparks quit her job and now directs a crisis pregnancy center.

In the quotation at the beginning of this essay, the writer of Ecclesiastes says our eyes never get tired of seeing and our ears never grow weary of hearing . . .  but I think the preacher is wrong.  At least he is wrong in regard to seeing pictures of mutilated unborn babies.  I’ve seen those pictures.  They are gruesome.  They make me feel sick.  They convict me as a silent accomplice in the extermination of a helpless underclass in our society.  Indeed, my eye has had enough of seeing. . .

At the end of my time with Tim, I try to be as encouraging as I can that his movie needs to be made.  I have a few suggestions as to where he might raise the money, and I tell him, sincerely, that I will pray for his efforts.  It is time to leave, and I hear Tim ask me, Reed, you are a pastor.  Why is it that the church seems to care so little about this silent holocaust?  Why do we treat this as one issue among many?  I manage a smile, and we both get up to leave.

You may have noticed that we often read historical creeds and confessions when we worship together.  Have you ever wondered why?  To some they may seem dry and formulaic.  Others may think of them as archaic.  Still others find the creeds and confessions to be wonderful aids to worship.  Regardless of how these documents “grab” you, there are very good reasons for reciting these statements of faith together.  What follows are just two reasons that I hope will help you appreciate them as instructive, inspiring and life-giving articulations of our faith:

1.  Historical creeds and confessions remind us that we are part of something bigger.

Just recently we studied 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 where Paul instructs the church about the nature of Christian grieving and the second coming of Jesus.  But in order to address these things, Paul needs to teach those believers (and us) a very important lesson about the nature of the Church itself.  The lesson is this:  death does not ultimately divide the church of Jesus Christ.  We are one body – not just with other Christians in our local congregation; not just with all other Christians in our city/region; not even just with all believers in the world.  We are one with all those who have trusted in Christ throughout history.  This is what Paul is getting at in v. 17 when he mentions “the trumpet call of God.”  It is an allusion to Numbers 10.  There we find these instructions given by God through Moses to the people of Israel:

Make two trumpets of hammered silver, and use them for calling the community together and for having the camps set out.  When both are sounded, the whole community is to assemble before you at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.  (Numbers 10:2-3)

So the trumpets were used to gather all of Israel together.  So too Paul wants the Thessalonians to be assured that those Christians who are living are not the whole Church.  When Christ comes to gather his own, they will have to wait for those who have gone before them to be assembled as well.  They are an integral part of the Church of Jesus Christ. 

When we recite statements of faith written by those who have preceded us, we are given an opportunity to think about our unity with saints of old.

2.  Historical creeds and confessions help keep us on track.

In Hebrews 12:1 we find a tremendous word picture for the Christian life: 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

What is this “great cloud of witnesses”?  I used to envision it as a crowd at the finish line of life cheering me on. But that is not what the metaphor is about.  The cloud is not a vague reference to something that surrounds us, but a specific reference to something that goes before and guides us.  Again, the history of Israel provides the context. 

By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.  (Exodus 13:21)

In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted.  (Exodus 40:36-37)

In the same way that the cloud guided the wanderers in the desert, so too those who have gone before us serve as a guide for us during our wandering through life.  They show us “the race marked out for us.”  They show us what it means to live lives of faith.  (Notice Hebrews 11 is all about faith.)  Reading the statements of faith of those who have preceded us in death is a way to allow them to play this important, God-ordained role in our lives.

C.S. Lewis advises that we read old books to counteract our cultural and historical blind spots. 

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

For the same reason, we read old creeds and confessions.  Their perspective helps keep us centered and on track.

Those who have gone before us have bequeathed us great gifts!  Praise God for reliable summaries of the Christian faith such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed!  These were formulated by wise and godly people who cared enough to fight (sometimes at a high price!) for biblical truth.  Thank the Lord for aids to learning and understanding such as the Westminster and Heidelberg Catechisms which were crafted by those with a zeal for spreading the knowledge of the gospel of the glory of God!  May these wonderful tools help us grow in loving God with our minds and hearts.

We have some exciting news to share: in less than a year, our family (including Buddy the dog) will be moving to Córdoba, Argentina!  Our hope is to spend four years there, partnering with a local church we’ve become acquainted with (La Gracia de Cristo).  Specifically, we plan to help this group further develop the microfinance program that they’ve begun and to implement other tools of economic development to help the poor.  Come August, we will move to San Jose, Costa Rica to further our studies in Spanish and will then transition to life in Cordoba in January of 2011.

As we’re sure you can imagine, the idea of moving abroad and inland took some getting used to for our family. In some ways, this step could appear more like a leap, but as we look back and reflect, these next four years simply represent the next steps on the path we’ve been on for quite some time.

Back in college, we can both recall unique opportunities we had to connect with the Latino population:  in Honduras, Mexico, Costa Rica, and in Santa Barbara at La Casa de la Raza.  These experiences certainly left an impression.  And, over the past four years our eyes and hearts have been opened in new ways to this group of people in our hometown and around the world. 

As a family, in 2006, we traveled to Guatemala for two weeks with the high school youth group.  Looking back, we realize what a significant seed this short-term mission trip planted in our minds and hearts, in addition to the life-changing effect it had on the high school seniors and recent graduates.  It is exciting to receive letters from the current youth on the Guatemala 2010 team who are in the process of preparing for this service trip.  What a blessing it is to partner with them and their leaders in prayer; we know what an impact this service opportunity will be for them.  (They will be in Guatemala from July 23th-31st, 2010.)

More recently, we traveled to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico for two months (to attend language school with the boys).  At home, through the many years we have spent as a part of Santa Barbara Community Church, our understanding and commitment to missions has increased as a result of the lives of service we’ve seen here, in this body of believers that has truly become a community for us.  In addition, we had the chance to become involved with a local Latino church and were welcomed with open arms in spite of our broken Spanish and blond hair.  Through all of this and more, our hearts have only grown for the people of Latin America, leading us to ultimately decide to live and work alongside them for an extended period of time.

Thankfully, we’ve found a wonderful organization with whom we will partner. It’s called Latin American Mission (www.lam.org). This past summer, our family spent two weeks in Florida at an intensive orientation and found our confidence and excitement growing exponentially over the prospect of partnering with this group. LAM is nearly ninety years old and has a rich history full of stories of service and partnership with the people of Latin America.  As a result of LAM’s knowledge of us, of Latin America, and their connections with its people, they encouraged us to consider partnering with La Gracia de Cristo in Argentina.

So, in October – after much prayer and encouragement from close friends and family – we left the boys with Grandma and headed to Argentina for seven days. We spent a considerable amount of time with Rubén, the pastor of La Gracia de Cristo, as well as the Vice President of LAM.  We also ate more meat than we’d like to admit.  It was there that we began to really see how our family of five would fit within this community and how our business skills, experience and education could all be used to bring hope in the name of Christ.

Santa Barbara Community Church has decided to carry a significant percentage of our operating budget for the work we will be doing in Cordoba.  How thankful and humbled we are to be a part of such a generous and missions-minded church.  Your regular giving to our church is also regular giving to us and our work in Argentina.  Thank you.

As we’ve traveled this journey, so much of our confidence has come from knowing that friends like you are with us.  We’re humbled by your partnership and pray that God will continue to grow all of us in our ability to care for those less fortunate than ourselves. It seems that a microfinance venture in Argentina is what He has slated for us in the coming years.

While an article feels so limited in its ability to relay all that we have in our heads and hearts regarding our impending departure, we hope you will be in touch in order that we can fill in the gaps and expand on things that are most interesting to you.  –Chris, Krista, David (10), Andrew (7), and Johnny (5) Frohling…frohlingfam@gmail.com, www.familiafrohling.blogspot.com.

No Longer In The Game

Reed Jolley, reed@sbcommunity.org/967-5858

God must love football because he created so many football players, right?  Or is it soccer or basketball that God loves?

The world has gone bonkers over sports and its stars. As one English soccer t-shirt has it, Football isn’t a matter of life and death. It’s much more important than that. In the United States alone, we spend something like $17 billion annually on tickets to watch our favorite players putt, bat, dunk, kick, or tackle.  We spend more than five times that ($90 billion) on our own sporting equipment.  And Sports Illustrated prints over 13 million copies of its magazine each month!  Our devotion to our favorite games is, to put it bluntly, idolatrous.  A courtside seat to see the Lakers will set you back $2,200 bucks—and those seats are filled throughout the season.  We demo massive stadiums and build new ones in their place which are bigger, more attractive, and more comfortable.

Curiously, the church does not seem to feel much rub between our allegiance to Christ and our devotion to the games.  Retired sports stars go on the circuit giving their testimony to congregations here and there.  Denominations host Faith Nights at MLB games. There are even Christian wrestling organizations, of the cartoonish variety, that glamorize violence in a vaudeville fashion (Billionaire Todd is the bad guy who always loses; Jesus Freak is one of the good guys who tends to win his matches).  After the wrestling, the “athletes” share the gospel with those who came to see a good show.

Interestingly, sports and religion have become bedfellows.  Disciples adorn themselves with the sports apparel of their favorite player, and Christian symbols permeate sporting events.  When Brazilian soccer star Kaka (you only get one name if you are a Brazilian soccer star) scores a goal before the watching world, he then lifts his jersey to reveal a t-shirt with the message I Belong to Jesus!  Tim Tebow puts “John 3:16” under his eyes before the game. 

In his new book Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports, professor and author Shirl James Hoffman writes this about the mixture of sports and religion:

As sports have invaded Christian culture, the symbols of Christianity have invaded sports. Professional football is a heady mixture of toughness, violence, and piety—vicious collisions coupled with post-touchdown genuflections, trash talk mixed with heaven-directed index fingers, anger and aggression interrupted by prayers.

One wonders at the church’s seemingly blind acceptance of our sports culture.  Again, as Hoffman puts it, the sports culture, at its worst, is variously described by both insiders and outsiders as…

narcissistic, materialistic, violent, sensationalist, coarse, racist, sexist, brazen, raunchy, hedonistic, body-destroying, and militaristic…. [B]ig-time sports culture lifts up values in sharp contrast with what Christians for centuries have understood as the embodiment of the gospel. There are simply no easy, straight-faced, intellectually respectable answers for how evangelicals can model the Christian narrative—with its emphases on servanthood, generosity, and self-subordination—while immersed in a culture that thrives on cut-throat competition, partisanship, and Darwinian struggle.

Well. . . there, I’ve said it.  And I’ve written enough CN essays over the years to know that this one will elicit several emails, most of them critical, some even hostile.  Reed, how can you say that?  It’s just a game—and I like [fill in the blank with your favorite team or sport].  As if being just a game makes right the worship of the athletes and liking the sport justifies all of the above. Perhaps we, as believers need to wrestle as some Christian thinkers did in the later 1800s and early 1900s as sporting pursuits rose to new heights of popularity in the U.S. They realized the possibility that Sports… provided a public sphere in which ethical behavior could not only be tested but molded (Hoffman, p.113).  Fair enough.  But they also saw the potential of the idolatrous nature of sport. Around this time period, the Dean of the Divinity School at University of Chicago said,

Football today is a social obsession-a boy killing, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport. It teaches virility and courage, but so does war. I do not know what should take its place, but the new game should not require the services of a physician, the maintenance of a hospital, and the celebrations of a funeral. (Hoffman p. 124)

Has our devotion to sport and sporting gotten out of hand?  Have we made idols out of our competition and of our competitors?  A short CN essay is clearly not the place to work out a theology of sports and a Christian’s participation in them.  But isn’t it time for the church, at least, to ask these questions? 

I wonder if we might have something to learn from one superstar of yesteryear.  I’m thinking of missionary Charles Thomas Studd.

C. T. Studd was the most famous cricket player of his generation in the era when cricket was the sport of the world.  He was arguably the most sought-after athlete in all of England. He was the Kobe Bryant or Lindsey Vonn of his time.  He was Tiger Woods before the scandal, Lance Armstrong at his peak.  And he gave up his sport for Jesus. 

Studd had become a Christian in 1876 when he was sixteen years old, but he soon fell away from his faith and lived the life of a prodigal.   At the pinnacle of his athletic career, however, Studd met Christ, really and truly, and cricket lost its allure.  To understand the significance of the following quotation, imagine your favorite sports star meeting Jesus and then saying these words:

I have tasted almost all the pleasures that this world can give.  I do not suppose there is one that I have not experienced, but I can tell you that those pleasures were as nothing compared to the joy [of Christ]. . . . Formerly I had as much love for cricket as any man could have, but when the Lord Jesus came into my heart, I found that I had something infinitely better than cricket.  My heart was no longer in the game; I wanted to win souls for the Lord. 

Can a disciple enjoy the game?  Clearly.  Can he or she be a fan?  To a degree.  Can a Christian be a great athlete?  Certainly.  But whether athlete or fan, we should play or watch our sports with a difference.  We will, in a word, no longer be in the game.  Neither our sport nor our star will be our god.  Elsewhere Studd wrote this:

I do not say, “Don’t play games or cricket and so forth.”  By all means play and enjoy them, giving thanks to Jesus for them.  Only take care that games do not become an idol to you as they did to me.  What good will it do anybody in the next world to have been even the best player that ever has been?  And then think of the difference between that and winning souls for Jesus.  Oh, if you have never tasted the joy of leading one soul to Jesus, go and ask our Father to enable you to do so, and then you will know what real true joy is!

Our sports culture is, as Hoffman puts it, tilting toward Sodom and Gomorrah.  He is absolutely right, so let us proceed with care. Let us be very unlike Lot who pitched his tent too close to Sodom and became like those he was near.  Let us defuse the power of the gods by laughing at them, turning off the television when they are performing, and cultivating interests that are broad and wide. How?, you ask.  Just do it!

Living in Santa Barbara puts a few things in bold relief – like, for instance, the homeless man or woman standing with a sign at the freeway offramp, next to an idling Mercedes or BMW.  Or, how about the dog bakery that used to be on State Street? Think of this sad irony: seeing a man with a sign, reading “Hungry. Please help” sitting next to a dog bakery.  It’s craziness!  But, if one lives here long enough, the juxtaposition of rich and poor, beauty and tragedy, can seem a little ho-hum.  And what about the poverty we don’t see?  It is hidden in corners all around us in this breathtakingly beautiful, affluent city.  Poverty --as an “issue”-- can feel overwhelming when we consider how to respond.  And so, we often do…nothing. 

Fortunately, God has stirred the hearts of several members of our church family who have taken on different areas of ministry that serve the poor. Their passion has been contagious, and I want to share with you one way that it has spread.  This year, the Gathering (women’s Bible studies) decided to commit to two local ministries that serve the poor in our own city.   Through our “adoption” of these two ministries over time, we hope to (a) gain God’s heart for the poor; (b) encourage the leaders of these two ministries; and (c) to not only provide service, but –hopefully—build relationships over time with the ones whom we serve.

One ministry is the Kid’s Club (which encompasses the ministries of Querencia on the East Side, and the Goleta Homework Club).  This ministry offers after-school homework tutoring through a mentorship program, and summer camps where the kids can play, build relationships, and learn about Jesus.  Importantly, the relationships built with the kids throughout the year, extends to their families, most of whom are the working poor among us.  Earlier in the year, Holly Gil organized a service day for us at the Gathering.  The “service” entailed delivering 420+ Thanksgiving bags to families primarily on the Eastside.  What a sight to see about 100 women of all ages and physical abilities, streaming back and forth across the parking lot, hefting heavy bags that would supply not just one meal, but many.  (These families often stretch this one bag of 1-meal ingredients to last an entire week.) The gift to us entailed Holly telling us stories of the different kids and their families – what their lives are like day to day.  We then broke into groups and prayed for them by name.  I think I can speak for most of us when I say that I left that day knowing I had sat in God’s presence.  His heart for the poor was shared with us.

The other ministry we have committed to serving (and being served by) is Community ONE:27.  I will not go into as much depth here because Tracy Wilcox has written a great update on this ministry in this edition of the Community News – please read it!  I will say that Community ONE:27’s vision for reaching out to orphans includes the many children currently in the foster care system here in Santa Barbara.  Children in this system are among the poorest among us – on so many levels.  We heard from Tracy, and from Margaret Polizo, who has directed the Royal Family Kid’s Camp (for foster kids), and we spent time writing cards for the RFKC kids, and assembling “journey-packs” for foster children.

Will it all make an impact on the larger problem of poverty in our community?  Well, it certainly won’t erase it.  However, our goal at the Gathering is to be God’s people.  Part of this discipleship process is learning, first, to not turn away.  Secondly, it means engagement.  Thirdly, it will mean transformation of our own hearts to more closely resemble His.  This usually doesn’t happen with a scatter-shot approach to service, but rather through the building of long-term relationships.  These  long-term relationships erase the divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.  The ones we serve, serve us – by educating us about God’s grace and mercy, and often, about joy in the midst of trials.

Responding to poverty is simple obedience to God.  How we do it need not feel overwhelming.  Simply begin – and bring friends and family along on the journey!  As a family, or a group of friends, consider “adopting” a ministry that touches the lives of those who live with next to nothing.  Think creatively – get excited. I am looking forward to the years ahead, as the Gathering grows relationships out of these two ministries.  It is God’s work to grow the fruit.  Our job is simply to stay connected to the vine – and what a sacred adventure that is!

On February 18, 2010, the Gathering women’s ministry and Community ONE:27 joined together to assemble twenty-six Journey Packs for the foster youth in Santa Barbara County.  Journey Packs are backpacks filled with important and necessary supplies such as: sweatshirts, toiletries, school supplies, water bottles and stuffed animals.  These Journey Packs are being delivered to shelters in Santa Barbara and will be handed out to the children who are placed there.  The children, when taken from their homes, are placed in shelter care homes until other foster care homes are found.  The idea of Journey Packs comes from a former foster youth who is now 25 years old.  After discussing with her what Community ONE:27 can do to help the foster youth who are in the system now, she recommended making Journey Packs.  Community ONE:27 is very thankful to have the opportunity to join together with the Gathering to provide a tangible way to help foster youth on their journey. 

Community ONE:27 is a group of people who have come together to mobilize our church to care for orphans and the foster care system in our community and the world.  145 millions orphans is a big number to comprehend and is overwhelming.  We are taking steps for our community to find practical ways to help these children.  We chose Community ONE:27 as our name since we are establishing a community that is based on James 1:27.  It reads Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Community ONE:27 believes this verse is not a mandate, but a definition of “pure and faultless” religion.

In the United States, there are 500,000 children in foster care.  In 2008, 68,127 of the children lived in California and 580 children in Santa Barbara.^[1] The numbers grow each year and there are not enough foster care homes.  Without a home for these children to go to, who is taking care of them?  The problem right now rests on the state, but the problem should not solely rest on the state and needs to be taken care of through the community and by the church.  

Why should we care?  Eventually these children in the foster care system grow up to be adults. 20,000 foster youth “age out” of the system when they turn 18 years of age.    Without a long life connection to a caring adult, the stats of foster youth are shocking:

Only 54% earn a high school diploma, 2% earn a Bachelor’s degree or higher, 84% become parents within 2 years, 51% are unemployed, 30% have no health care, 25% become homeless, and 30% receive public assistance.^[2] These children grow up without the support they need to be productive and caring citizens.  Furthermore, they grow up not knowing Christ.  This population in our community is ready to be harvested for the Kingdom. 

Consider this analogy: In my role as a parent, I try to raise my children in a greenhouse environment by providing them with enough water, food, sunlight, and spiritual nourishment and protecting them from the harshness of storms, wind, or too much sun.  That way when they enter into the outside world they will be strong and rooted deep in the soil to grow and bear good fruit, providing nourishment for others.  Foster care youth are not in greenhouses.  They are in the desert surviving as a cactus would.  They have too much sun, not enough water, and survive on very little.  They grow thorns to protect themselves from others who try to hurt them.  The foster youth grow thorns for self-preservation and continue through their lives harming themselves and others. 

Our community and our church needs to care for these children and provide them with life-long mentors and “forever families.”  Please consider how you can help.  The number one need is for more people to become foster parents and “forever families” for these children. Can you commit to praying about your fears and see how God calls you to help these children?  

We also want to update the community about Community ONE:27 and what we are planning.  We as a group continue to meet every week to plan and implement programs, workshops, and ideas.  We are currently working on creating a photo gallery, also known as a heart gallery, of SBCC families who have adopted, been adopted or are in the process of adopting.  If you interested in being a part of this please contact Tracy Wilcox at tlwilcox2003@yahoo.com.

 In November, we had our first campaign for Soles 4 Souls.  We collected over 700 shoes that were delivered to the Las Vegas distribution center.  We had a great response and blessed many by donating shoes.

On May 22nd, we are hosting our first “Thinking of Adoption or Foster Care?” workshop.  If you are interested in this event, please save this date on your calendar now. 

We will continue to provide updates and announcements as we begin to implement projects and workshops.  Thank you partnering with us.

5th/6th Winter Camp

During the weekend of February 26-28, over 120 students and leaders from our 5/6 and High School ministries enjoyed a weekend away at Forest Home. Heavy snow on Saturday afternoon followed by clear night skies and a bright full moon draped the mountain scene in a Narnia-like stillness and beauty that, in itself, was a gift from God. And God used more than just the scenery to capture our students’ attention.

For our 5th and 6th grade students, the weekend was spent contemplating the implications of Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.” With a theme entitled, “The Snowball Effect,” our students heard the challenge to consider their actions and decisions and the results that they bring about.

Junior High Winter Camp

In January, after getting snowed-out of camp the weekend before, our Jr. Highers’ disappointment was abated as we loaded the buses for the second time and headed up to Forest Home. We had a fun snow-filled weekend together, enjoying the time away, the chance to play in the snow, and also time spent in fellowship with one another and with God. From a ministry perspective, it was a fantastic opportunity for our leaders to have intentional time away from distractions to connect with students and engage in conversations about life and faith. Below are a couple of stories from our leaders that give a glimpse of the wonderful weekend we had together at Forest Home.

One thing that sticks out was a fun cabin conversation with our girls in which they were asking questions about judgment and hell.  I realize it is strange to refer to such a conversation as “fun”, but it was a great moment of honest questioning and getting to really talk about God’s word and what it means.  We looked up Romans 10:9-10 together and discussed the difference between saying something with your mouth and believing it in your heart.  As these girls grow up and gain independence from their parents, I see them facing the issue of “is my faith real?”  Forest Home facilitates such great opportunities for these real-faith questions to be asked and discussed.

During cabin time, [a leader] asked the guys what our purpose is here on earth. [One student] said that it’s to worship God and enjoy doing it.  I loved that his theology was spot on.

[One leader] and I had a conversation with our cabin about prayer. We walked them through the Lord’s Prayer and explained the different types of things we could use it for (i.e., “your kingdom come” could be a request for boldness to share his message and enlarge his kingdom currently on earth). Then, we spent a good amount of time praying through it with them line by line. I think this was a first for them all, and it gave them a practical understanding of what it means to pray and what to pray for.

High School Winter Camp

High school camp gave our students the chance to view their relationship with Christ as “3D.” By drawing an analogy with the increasingly popular method of movie-making, our students wrestled with the question of how they view God: in a 2-dimensional way or in a 3-dimensional way. The times of worship and learning from God’s Word helped invite them into a more intimate relationship with God, one marked by knowing the power of his forgiveness and living out his heart for the world.

For many of our high school students, the weekend proved profoundly impactful. One sophomore girl realized during Winter Camp that “God is always at work in my life, even when I don’t see it. And it’s great that I don’t always see it, because then I have to have faith.” One junior boy felt burdened to approach the Lord’s Supper in a different way, expressing more joy and rejoicing for what Christ accomplished on the cross.

Our students are consistently blessed by the ministry of Forest Home, and Winter 2010 proved to be no different. The opportunity to leave the everyday distractions of life at home long enough for God to get our students’ attention is a rare treat. Thank you for your prayers, love, and support as our students pursue a life lived for the glory of God.

It is exhilarating to be in a church community that is being drawn together by the Lord. Our individual lives are knit together evermore intimately by the Spirit as we, the corporate body, come before God’s throne united. It was in this spirit, and with personal joy in God’s recent works here at SBCC, that we were inspired to write a song of devotion to this great God. Using Psalm 86, almost verbatim at times, we echo the cry of King David for freedom from duplicity.

Psalm 86

1 Hear, O LORD, and answer me,

       for I am poor and needy.

2 Guard my life, for I am devoted to you.

      You are my God; save your servant

      who trusts in you.

8 Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord;

      no deeds can compare with yours.

11 Teach me your way, O LORD,

      and I will walk in your truth;

      give me an undivided heart,

      that I may fear your name.

It’s powerful to hear the congregation sing “I am poor and in need… teach me your ways, O Lord.” As we together admit our emptiness and dependence on God, we ultimately come to the quintessential conclusion, “Lord, you alone are God!” When we as a church body sing together in one room as one voice to our Lord, we unite in a unique way. The cry of our individual hearts and voices intertwine to create a harmony that has less to do with music, and everything to do with the created communing with their Creator.

Our desire to be undivided works powerfully on two levels. First, individually we feel the desire, just as King David did, to be wholeheartedly committed to our Lord. Christ says, “You cannot serve two masters” and yet we are constantly distracted, and enticed away from our focus on God. All too easily we are drawn away from what is most valuable only to chase after prizes of finite worth. It is therefore a great blessing that God has not left us in isolation to muster our devotion alone. We are called into a great multitude of sons and daughters of God. And it is within this context that the second sense of being undivided resonates. We long to be undivided as the body of Christ. As we are faithful and obedient, we become united together by the Spirit. With God’s recent work in joining our SBCC and Trinity congregations, we have all seen the glory revealed by the Spirit’s unifying power.

It was a great pleasure to channel the excitement and joy of this community into the creative process of songwriting. After the idea for this song sparked on a bit of melody and a rhythm, the lyrics came out quickly. Fueled by our love for Folk, old Gospel, and unpolished Country music, the prayer that is this song took form over a dry acoustic guitar riff and a shuffled snare drum.

As we approached the recording process we knew we wanted the sound to be uncluttered. We never had to struggle with its musical direction. Early on it strongly showed us the direction it wanted to go and we were just along for the ride. The strings were added to augment the organ for power and suspense creating a vibration that feels like it’s coming from inside your own head. It’s alive and right there. It was a joy to work with all the other musicians who played a part in the recording of this song. The process itself exemplified the undivided theme of the material. We are blessed and humbled that many in the church have received and accepted the song.

It is thrilling to see what has been happening recently with Mission Nannys.  For 10 years in Maryland, God brought 22 volunteers to apply.  Since coming to California in 2002, God has sent out 96 volunteers to serve missionary families all over the world.  What a blessing they have been to so many parents and children.   The greatest part, though, is the ongoing ministry that has occurred since three of these volunteers have gone into full-time missionary work. 

Ashley, in her late twenties, served for three years in Italy helping a church-planter with many duties, but particularly by putting his weekly sermons on an Italian website for all to download.  She lives part-time with one of the church families and has been able to teach them English, help with the cooking, offer babysitting and be very helpful to the church members.  Recently, several families have listened to the online sermons, obtained a Bible and after reading it and listening to sermons, they came to the church to receive Christ as their Savior.  Praise God.  The Italian visa laws were amended recently, and because Ashley was in Italy during the time period stated in the law, she was able to get a permanent visa to continue on in the country.  She plans to stay and is supported under Vera Vita Ministries on a full-time basis.  Praise the Lord!

Holly applied to be a Mission Nanny in her twenties and selected a family in Zambia to serve. As soon as she met the family, she felt confirmation that she had come to the right place.  They had one daughter in need of homeschooling and Holly loved participating in the village ministry along Lake Tanganyika.  For the first two months, she homeschooled Mariska in Mpulungu, but then went on to travel with the family to South Africa, Israel and Europe.  When they came back to Zambia, she became involved in many aspects of the ministries of the family.  She visited remote villages, taught music to orphans in the school, and was involved in youth ministry and teaching English, as well.  Later in the year, she attended a discipleship training in South Africa and soon joined Operation Mobilisation for full-time missionary work in Zambia.  Great news, Holly!

Rona sent in an application to be a Mission Nanny and wanted to go to Spain to help a family with five children in Artajona as well as minister in the villages around the city.  The family lived in a 500 year old stone home with plenty of “cold” space for everyone.  Rona helped in the care of the family and then started to teach English to villagers.  She loved it.  After six months, she decided to go with another mission board to Turkey and taught for a while there.  Then, she decided to go with another mission board and continues to serve the Lord on a full-time basis.  She is now with WEC International serving in Brazil, and is doing administrative work in the Fort Washington, PA office awaiting an overseas assignment for full-time ministry.  Thank you Jesus!

All of these young ladies are remarkable women.  They love the Lord, and want to serve in various ministries to spread the wonderful news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 14:13-21, Jesus was poised to teach an expectant crowd about the Kingdom of God. Looking closely, he was moved to compassion by the evidence of their hunger and sickness. First he healed them. Then, to the wonder of his disciples, Jesus gave thanks for the meager provisions at hand and began to pass out food. He modeled to the disciples, and to us, faith-filled trust at God’s power to make the offering sufficient for those in need.

In Santa Barbara, there are many individuals and families going hungry. Our church is partnering with the Santa Barbara Community Development Center (SBCDC) to develop five-acres of our church property and transform it into the Five Loaves Community Garden. Produce from the garden will go to the poor through the existing distribution channels at SBCDC. (This Christian ministry provides a range of services to the poor.) By combining creation care with a ministry of compassion, we hope to put the glory of Christ on display for all.

Santa Barbara A Rocha will oversee the Five Loaves Community Garden on our church property. The groundbreaking will be this April; our goal is to make it a source of fresh produce for 150 individuals by October 2010. The heart of this program will be its volunteers, people just like you. School-age children, families, college-students, retirees – all will be welcome and utilized in a meaningful way.

The Five Loaves Community Garden will also offer rather unique discipleship and outreach opportunities. These include: volunteering to help grow, study, and harvest organic produce; participating in on-site weekly Bible studies and devotionals; summer Creation Care Kids Camp; a college-age Creation Care training institute; organic gardening workshops; and other educational outreach tools.

Contact Rich Dixon at rich.dixon@arocha.org to learn more about how you can volunteer and become involved in this exciting ministry.  If you give to Santa Barbara Community Church, you are already a financial partner in this ministry. Thank you! Come join in the good work as we get our hands really dirty!

This particular thirty-second timeslot cost a reported $2.3 million, and it may be the least expensive advertisement in history.  At center stage is a football player not even in the NFL, yet furor surrounds superstar college quarterback Tim Tebow and the fact that his mother did not abort him.

I write seven days out from the most watched sporting event on American television, the annual Super Bowl.  The game, mostly an excuse for afternoon parties saturated with Miller Lite and chips, is often ancillary to the event itself.  For the non-fan, the Super Bowl is not mainly about football. Instead, it is mostly remembered for the rock band that plays at halftime (will there be another wardrobe malfunction?) and, of course, those expensive and often racy commercials.  Time and again advertisers trip over one another to push the envelope of acceptability.  I’m told the loud, raucous parties grow quiet when the commercials come on.  But this year the focus and the furor are not over the amount of skin to be revealed, but rather over Pam Tebow’s choice to give birth to her son. 

Focus on the Family has used specifically-designated donations for a thirty-second ad that tells of Tebow’s mother who, pregnant with her fifth child, was serving as a missionary in the Philippines.  Pam caught a severe case of amoebic dysentery and fell into a coma.  Her treatment required medications strong enough to affect the baby.  Told that the damage to her child would be irreversible, Pam was advised to abort her baby.  Because of her Christian convictions about the value of all life, Pam refused the abortion and spent two months in bed. In August 1987, the future Heisman Trophy winner was born.  Does an advertisement that tells this story sound controversial?

The mere possibility that this thirty-second commercial would be aired elicited protests from predictable places. The National Organization for Women and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) petitioned CBS to yank the ad.  The Women’s Media Center, which speaks for a collection of abortion-rights groups, sent a letter to CBS arguing that the Focus on the Family spot uses one family’s story to dictate morality to the American public and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk.  Pro-choice attorney Gloria Allred went so far to say that Pam Tebow made up her story, and Allred has threatened to file a formal complaint of misleading advertising with the Federal Communication Commission.

In a sense, all of the above is predictable and business as usual.  What is unusual is the backlash from those generally inclined to either defend abortion rights with vigor (The New York Times) or quietly censor pro-life messages by refusing to air pro-life advertisements (the major television networks). Wonders never cease!  On January 31, the Times, a consistent and vigorous defender of abortion rights, ran an op-ed piece defending the CBS decision to air the ad saying of NOW, NARAL, and others, Their protest is puzzling and dismaying.  The Times went further and called the protest by the Women’s Media Center a lame attempt to portray the ad as life-threatening.

Then there is the editorial decision of CBS.  Last year Fidelis, a pro-life Roman Catholic organization, produced a spot for the Super Bowl showing a beautiful in utero baby and asked the question, What if Barack Obama had been a victim of abortion?  NBC refused to show the advertisement.  This year, the Focus ad, admittedly less controversial, has the endorsement of CBS.  Clearly, as Bob Dylan crooned in the 1960s, the times, they are a-changin’. . .

The elephant in the room, of course, is Tim Tebow himself.  The Women’s Media Center says the ad is life threatening, but what about Tim?  Was his life not threatened by a doctor’s advice?  And, while we’re at it, doesn’t the abortion industry in our country alone threaten and end the lives of over a million children every year?

Until mid-April when the NFL draft takes place, Tim is just another college football player hoping to make it in the pros.  But the homeschooled son of missionary parents has his convictions.  He told the Orlando Sentinel last week, I definitely didn’t think [the ad] would have this much hype.  It’s something I believe in and I’ll stand up for.  When asked if he thought the hoopla surrounding the advertisement would hurt his NFL chances, he said, I think if anything, they like that I took a stand for what I believe.  If they don’t, if that’s something that would make them hesitate to bring me on, then it probably wouldn’t be a good fit for me in the first place.  I’m never going to deny what I believe just for a game.

By the time you read this, the Super Bowl will have been played and its outcome determined.  Focus on the Family will be $2.3 million poorer, and television viewers will have seen the ultimate pro-life argument: a living human being.  Tim Tebow stands tall with football statistics that make other quarterbacks green with envy.

One more thing. The tagline of the controversial ad is Celebrating Family, Celebrating Life.  Amen!

I’d like to share the back-story of “Glory to You,” a song found on the “Undivided” album recently released by our church. We have sung this song several times at SBCC.  My hope is that this story will inspire your worship to become more meaningful.

Glory to You

©2009, Music & Lyrics by Andy White

If I can open my eyes to see,

the measure of eternity

The highest star, the deepest sea,

they speak of you

You made the mountains with your hand

Ocean tides, every grain of sand,

The saints will sing, by your command

They speak of you, they speak of you

For your kingdom is all around,

in my rising up, in my lying down

For your kingdom is all around,

in every sight and every sound

Glory to you, glory to you…

Every woman and every man,

Woven into your perfect plan

In every tongue, from every land

They speak of you, they speak of you

I can go days, and I can go days,

and hardly think of you

Open this heart, use every part

to bring glory to you, glory to you

For a couple years, I met monthly with some of my fellow songwriting buddies. I really got into these little summits because the guys didn’t hold back when they thought a song could be better. During that time, we’d often come up with a topical “challenge” that we’d all try to write to that month. One month, the challenge was to write a “worship anthem.”  You know, some sort of instantly catchy, toe tapping ditty that would catapult every soul into the euphoric ether of the Spirit’s presence within the first minute! Yeah, that type of song.  Easy, right?

Well, I have no idea if that is the genre “Glory to You” landed in, but I am thankful that the song came to life that month.  It was an interesting chain of events that brought this song out of its cocoon. Often, when writing, I’ll start with some sort of tangible scripture, concept or emotion that I’m trying to capture.  But with this one, I had nothing besides a commitment to keep the BPM (beats per minute) up at a decent pace.  At that point, I realized it was time for a reality check. The last thing I wanted to do was write a song that was musically memorable but void of content…basically fluff. It was time to burrow beyond the periphery of my consciousness.

I turned to prayer and asked God to enlighten me. I begged for Him to reveal a direction to take with this song challenge. Much to my surprise, instead of finding a song, I found conviction. These are the things God said to me over the next few days of searching:

You are so busy.

You don’t seem to have time for me.

Multiple days go by without you even thinking about me.

Can’t you see that my hand is in everything?

These were not the things I was expecting to hear Him say for my little song-writing project. But, as many of us know, God has a much grander scheme, which far out-reaches our puny plans. He is always working behind the scenes, regardless of whether or not we choose to acknowledge his activity. God cared about my heart much more than my song. So, instead of focusing on my song, I began to search for what He might have to say to me about my life.

The Lord is so good. He reminded me that being with Him doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated. Everyday life could be infused with Him, if I could simply acknowledge His presence.  A walk on the beach could become a time for spiritual connection. A gaze at the mountains outside my car window could be a powerful catalyst to connect with my Savior.

And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: “O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. (Isaiah 37:15-16)

To my amazement, God had more than just a rejuvenated friendship in mind during this time of searching.  He had a particular message to impart, and it was all about His Kingdom. He reminded me that as amazing as the natural wonders of earth are, they are but a fraction of the glory I will see in His kingdom. The message He gave me was to not let there be a disconnection between what is happening here on earth and what I will one day see in heaven. It was time for me to tune in to God’s daily work.

Then Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let Him hear. “When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around Him asked Him about the parables. He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, “’they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’” (Mark 4:9-12)

This was a new way for me to approach my everyday life. It was as if I had been at the cinema with dark sunglasses and earplugs. God’s kingdom is being built before my very eyes. One life at a time. One conversation at a time. One sunset at a time. God is constructing paradise each day. All I had to do was wake up with open eyes and ears.

It was an exciting revelation—not at all what I thought would be the subject of a new song. However, once I went through this time of searching, I found that the lyrics for the song unfolded rather quickly. I was excited to have an upbeat song that spoke of the glory of heaven. God knew the song he wanted to give me all along.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)

You can find an mp3 of this song on iTunes or here: http://sbcommunity.org/resources/worship

Caring.  Why is caring necessary to our faith as a Christian?  How do we care for others?  These questions have been lingering in my heart and mind for the past year or so, and I feel that the Holy Spirit has revealed some portion of an answer as our family has had the opportunity to be involved in a couple of ministries.  One is a weekly feeding of the homeless and the other is being involved in the Safe Parking Program.  In these are answers that I would like to share.

In Matthew 22:34-40, we read about the Pharisees trying to trick Jesus by asking Him which is the most important commandment.  It reads:

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” 

What’s striking to me is the importance of loving our neighbor and how Christ commands us to do this with all our heart.  The more I learn about Christ through reading the Bible, listening to sermons and doing homegroup studies, the more I see how much of Jesus’ ministry was on a relational level.  Christ not only preached and taught; he also expressed His love through practical caring help.  Christ was interacting with people from the top down.  He didn’t shy away from the lepers and the outcasts. He was in the trenches.  Christ not only did this, but He commands us to do the same.  So what do we do with this?

Our congregation is over a thousand strong.  We have a large capacity for caring.  It is exciting to see how much is going on.  We are caring for foster kids, we are adopting kids, we are loving kids through Kids Club and YoungLife and the list goes on and on.  But I believe we can do more.  I know for a fact that we are all busy.  I know that we are over-extended.  Yet, we have just this one life to live.  I think many of us believe that we don’t need to be involved because, they say, that someone else will help out with ministry “X.”  Or, “I can’t do that because that isn’t my gift.”  Caring, though, shouldn’t be thought of as something we either have the capacity for or not.  It should be thought of as a muscle.  The more you exercise that muscle, the stronger it will get.

Maybe you are asking yourself, “What exactly is caring?”  I believe caring is this: “Compassionate Actions that are Relational and Enduring.”  It’s a cheesy acronym but it gets the point across.  Caring is, first and foremost, an action.  It is not telling someone something or giving them advice.  It is an action of grace and humility.  It’s also relational,  which means that it involves building a friendship.  Lastly, it is enduring.  Caring is not a one-time action.  It is being involved in someone’s life for a season and maybe a lifetime.  My experience has been that caring for people creates a unique bond of love that takes birth in seconds or minutes.  Some people strive to foster a relationship like this and it takes months.  Caring goes straight for the heart.  It cuts out the chit-chat and replaces it with a humility and vulnerability that, while awkward for the giver, puts the recipient at ease.  It shows that you are meeting people where they are.  You are making the effort. 

Someone recently told me that they couldn’t relate to caring and it was not something they could grasp.  To this I replied, “Think about the people who are close to your heart.  It may be your spouse, your mother or father, brother or sister, son or daughter, or maybe your best friend.  Now think of that person becoming very sick.  Wouldn’t you do anything for that person?  Wouldn’t you give them your time, your money or whatever they needed?”  They said, “Of course,” to which I responded, “Everyone is someone’s son or daughter, brother or sister and most of all a child of God.  They deserve and they have the right to be cared for.”  As Christians, we are held to a much higher standard than the world.  I kind of think God will be disappointed if, when we meet Him He says, “Look at all the opportunities I put in front of you.  And you passed them by.”

A bi-product of caring is evangelism. Caring creates trust and forms a relationship that allows us to speak the truth and share the gospel.  I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to sharing Christ, I would rather my actions speak for me.  However, I will also be the first to report that, if you speak up and share the gospel, the Holy Spirit will guide you and give you confidence.  All you have to do is listen to God speaking to your heart.  About a month ago, I was talking with a new friend I had met through the Safe Parking Program.  I invited him and his family to church.  He asked, “Is your church open?  Because I believe that there are several ways.”  I pondered this for a few seconds and then replied, “Yeah, we are pretty open.”  All of a sudden, I felt this huge wave of, “What are you talking about?” come over me.  I froze like a deer in headlights.  I got the cold sweats.  I knew I said the wrong thing.  Then suddenly a surge of confidence and peace came over me, something I have never felt before.  I piped up, “No.  We aren’t open.  We believe that there is only one God.  And that God sent His son to die for our sins.  And it is only by that grace that we are saved.”  I then pointed to the church and said,  “Everyone in that building is messed up.  We are all human and we are all sinful.  In fact, some of us are worse off than you.  We pretend and we hide it well.  So, don’t think we have it together, because we don’t.”  To which he responded, “Wow.  That’s cool.  I think that we will come.”  Now, he never called me back nor did he and his family come on Sunday.  The Holy Spirit, though, spoke to them.  I think that is what is most important.  A seed was planted.  Someone else will have the opportunity to water and help it grow.

There are many ways that we can be involved in caring for others.  I would like to highlight two that God has used to teach my family and me.  One is a feeding that occurs on Wednesday night.  Chase and Cassie Koop, James and Carrie Daly and our family have been able to minister to the homeless through caring for one of their basic needs.  Food and water.  It has been a blessing to not only provide for them but to form friendships.  These are people that are looked down on, judged and often despised.  At the most basic level, though, they are just like you and me.  God provides for us regardless of how we spend His money.  We should do the same.  At the end of the day everything comes from God.  It is not ours to decide who we should withhold it from.  For me, the most rewarding experience is to see our friends on State Street on a busy night, stop and talk with them and see a smile on their faces.  This is mostly what they yearn for.  A relationship.   

The other ministry is really close to home.  It occurs in the parking lot of our own church.  The program is called Safe Parking.  It allows people who are living out of their cars to have a safe haven to park without being hassled by the police, or worse, vandals.  (Sleeping in your car in Santa Barbara is against the law.)  Without us providing a safe place these people would be constantly on the move throughout the night.  It has been awesome to see these people come to “Space” services and to church on Sunday morning.  Let’s continue to show Christ’s love to them.

So, my hope is that this will stir us and make us uncomfortable.  I hope we wrestle with what this looks like for our own lives.  Most of all, I hope we just start.  Start by caring for those around us.  Our families and friends.  Then next, our homegroup and our church.  From there, our non-christian friends.  And then...  Total strangers.  I know that as we start, God will meet us.  He will send the Holy Spirit to give us courage, peace and grace.  He will honor our efforts as we care for others as He has cared for us.

God, give me grace and humilty
to care for those that are close to me.

         When I feel that my work is done
         reveal your children, one by one

If my heart swells with pride and arrogance
remind me of your compassion and elegance

            When the relationship is full of love and trust
            remind me to let the Spirit speak, yes it must

The young man in the radio ad declared—rather calmly and unashamedly—that he was a “high-risk driver.” As he clearly anticipated my not knowing the definition of a high-risk driver, he helpfully explained that he had a few traffic tickets, even an accident or two. He kept his tone rather matter-of-fact until the topic of his car insurance came up. Then, he betrayed not just a little irritation as he mentioned, “My old insurance company dropped me!” But, fret not, he found another company, one that specializes in covering high-risk drivers and even kept his rates low! This new lease on life got him back on the road, and, presumably, granted him the freedom to resume his speeding and accident-creation.

At that moment, I knew: we can never turn back from our newfound bailout culture. In this world in which we now find ourselves, everyone “deserves” a little (or, more often, plenty) more than they have now. In a bailout culture, skyrocketing credit card debt, pesky car accidents, or even corporate bankruptcies are not wake-up calls for radical life change, but rather minor hiccups standing in the way of “the life you deserve.” Inconvenient, perhaps, but such events need not alter our lives in any dramatic fashion.

Yet, living too long surrounded by this mentality can have tremendously negative spiritual results. A world that constantly tells us that we deserve the nicest, most trouble-free life imaginable will quickly dull us to the message of the Gospel. Scripture indicates that none of us deserves anything other than the wrath of the God against whom we’ve rebelled. For in the Gospel, we learn that God acted in our favor when we didn’t deserve it. There is no other way to interpret when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son (Romans 5:10). We weren’t simply people with low credit scores or spotty driving records. No, we were enemies of the Almighty, enemies deserving punishment. And, instead, the one we offended offered us grace and called us his children. The moment we begin to believe we had anything to offer to the Lord that would cause him to choose us, is the moment we most misunderstand our adoption.

But a second danger of such a mentality is that we begin to see no need to repent of our sin. If we aren’t careful, our world will convince us that the Gospel is heartwarming rather than life changing. In this bailout system, our poor choices—on the freeways or with our money—get passed over, and call for us to change very little in response to the issues we see. High-risk drivers shouldn’t worry about obeying the posted speed limits, nor should compulsive shoppers pay any attention to credit limits. Someone will always stand ready with a bailout. But, Scripture tells us that the person who repeats their folly is like a dog returning to its vomit, (Proverbs 26:11) that believers have died to sin and, therefore, cannot live in it any longer, that we were bought with a price and that price demands a response. While the world says, “live as you want and worry about the consequences later,” God says, go and sin no more. (John 8:11)

In a sense, each of us is “high-risk.” We all face trouble in this life, often of our own creation. Yet, in the face of difficulty, we should not protest and insist on what we deserve while continuing to walk the same path that caused us such trouble in the first place. No, when trouble comes in life, we need to run to the Savior who offered us not what we deserve, but so much more. It is that offer that frees us from ourselves and our pitiful desires and promises the new heart of flesh we desperately need in order to be holy as God is holy.

This year, almost 50 people from our church went to the  triennial Urbana Missions Conference in St. Louis from December 27-31.  This year’s version of Urbana, like the previous editions put on by Intervarsity, was both informative and inspiring.  The focus is on setting forth the heart of God and His call for us to go into all the world and make disciples for Jesus Christ.  Here are a few of the reactions from those who went:

“Urbana was, for me, a time of silencing the other voices in my life in order to hear God speak. While many of the particulars are yet to be revealed, God used Urbana to reignite my passion for mission.”    Hannah Baker

“Urbana was a great eye opening experience to see how God is working in the world and how we can use our gifts for God’s glory - I never knew God can work in so many unique and creative ways.” Jack Nespor

“Urbana just makes me want to follow and chase after God even more because He dwelt among us and made the ultimate sacrifice for us, so my life is a small thing I can give in appreciation to Him. I love what one of the missionaries said about “living to be forgotten.” It challenges me to live completely for God’s glory and for the rest of my time in college. That is my new goal.”  Sydney Morgan

“By the end of the week, barriers of selfish desire, lust, unwillingness, jealousy, and anger that I had put up around my heart were torn down.  Some of these walls I had been living with for many years and some had only begun in the recent months to trip me up.  This opened up a wide channel of communication with God and I was wonderfully fed through the seeking of Him in his word every morning, worshiping in different languages alongside 17,000 other believers, hearing how many other believers around the world were living out their faith and so much more; through this the Holy Spirit’s presence was made very powerful.  Seeing Jesus Christ anew was the greatest result of my time at Urbana.”  Michael Tennant 

“I believe that my wife and I received a powerful confirmation of our call to work in the Middle East, after attending several seminars on issues that are central for Palestinian Christians and all Christians in the Middle East.  We aim to keep moving towards cross-cultural dwelling, hoping most of all to learn from Christians around the globe and becoming, alongside them, the new humanity that Jesus has in mind.”   Brett (and Janelle) Stuvland

“I was broken to see how much need there is in the world, and how many un-reached places there are in need of the gospel and in need of healing.  It felt impossible, and then hope flooded over me as I looked around and saw how many of God’s children were going, and working toward solutions.”   Lisi Anderson

“Worshipping and learning with 17,000 people from across the country and even the world was amazing, and I’m sure the closest to heaven I’ll get before God brings me home!”  Lauren Serpa

There were many fantastic speakers at the plenary sessions.  There are a few in particular that I’d recommend you watch.  (Almost all of the main sessions are now online.)  In my mind, the most powerful ones were: 

•  Michael Oh used his own history of anger toward the Japanese to explain that reconciliation begins with a personal conviction of sin. As a Korean-American pastor and missionary to Japan, he has learned that we who are loved undeservedly must love unreservedly.

   http://www.vimeo.com/8508657

•  Sunder Krishnan, pastor of Rexdale Alliance Church in Toronto, Ontario, called us to intercede in big and bold ways as the church in Acts 4.

   http://www.vimeo.com/8467883

•  Antoine Rutayisire, Rwandan Team Leader of the African Enterprise, spoke about his experience during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Using Jesus’s example of forgiving his enemies while on the cross, he challenged attendees to let go of their anger and bitterness and seek Christ-like reconciliation.

   http://www.vimeo.com/8478094

•  Patrick Fung, president of Overseas Mission Fellowship (OMF), was interviewed by Urbana 09’s emcee Greg Jao. He called the church to humble service to God.

   http://www.vimeo.com/8433862

Thank you, church family, for supporting us and sending so many of us to attend Urbana 09!  May God continue to impress upon us the importance of taking the gospel into our neighborhoods-– both here in Santa Barbara and throughout the world!

Does anyone remember Apollo 11?  Do you remember July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong did what seemed impossible?  If you were alive then, do you remember how you felt when he took that one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind?  Just a few years earlier people had laughed when President Kennedy announced what we were going to do.  But now it was there—a footprint on the moon! The U.S. beat the Soviets! We conquered outer space and turned science fiction into science.  We walked on the moon!  Surely life was bound to get better! Surely the opportunities before us were endless. . . .

But, as Peggy Noonan observed in a recent essay, it was as if Columbus came to America and nobody followed.  The United States made five more manned moon landings, gathered some rocks, and then stayed home.  We shifted our emphasis from the adventure of going to the moon with Apollo to the monotony of circling the globe on the space shuttle.  Noonan continues:

The space program of the past 32 years unconsciously mirrored a change in American psychology. Once, we saw ourselves as a breakthrough people, a nation with a mission to push beyond ourselves. Now, in the age of soft narcissism, we just circle ourselves. Which is what the shuttle does: It is on an endless loop, going ‘round and ‘round and looking down at: us.

As we begin 2010, it seems we as a nation have looked in the mirror and grown tired of what we see.  Our visage is tarnished; our blemishes, obvious.  Optimism is in short supply; pessimism is the rage.  A cheery outlook about the future seems to be a relic from the 1990s.  Consider the polls:

In December a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll reported that 55 percent of Americans believe our country is on the wrong track.  Only 33 percent think we are going in the right direction.  In the same poll, 66 percent said they are not sure their children’s lives will be better than their own.  It seems everywhere we look we find reasons for wringing our hands: health care, job loss, Iran, Adam Lambert, deficit spending, $12 trillion of national debt, Tiger Woods, Iraq, Pakistan—Afghanistan—Iraq, North Korea, the stimulus package, the DJIA.

Definitely reasons for hand wringing! But for believers it should be different.  Some years ago, Ray Stedman wrote a book titled Authentic Christianity.   In it he said that the first mark of an authentic Christian faith is an unquenchable optimism about the future.  Believers are to be characterized by a hope and confidence that will carry them through the darkest of times.  Biblical examples abound.  Job clung to his hope even when his wife told him to curse God and die.  Jeremiah expressed his hope even when Jerusalem lay in ruins (Lamentations 3:21ff.).  Daniel’s friends expressed confidence in God even as they looked toward the furnace door they were about to be thrown through (Daniel 3).  A woman in Galilee believed that if she could only touch the cloak of Jesus, she would be healed of a disease she had suffered from for twelve years (Mark 5).  Paul and Silas sang songs after being beaten and shackled (Acts 16).  John proclaims the victory of God in the book of Revelation and sends that message to a church suffering the persecution of Emperor Domitian.  

Now three thoughts as we begin a new year…  First, biblical optimism is compatible with suffering and grief.  Please don’t read this brief essay, cluck your tongue, and say, Why is it that there is no room for groaning and grieving in the evangelical church?  There is plenty of room. We are never called to paste a smile on our face when our spirit is in distress.  This side of the Second Coming, we will be a people of continual unfulfilled expectations and unrealized dreams. Our hearts have and will be broken.  As the apostle Paul says, we grieve, but not as others who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13).  We grieve differently.  We suffer as people who know Resurrection hope and thus, with the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31, we can laugh at the time to come.  Why?  Because we know the God who will have the last word over every grief we have experienced.

Second, our gospel hope will compel us to live for the future. Postmodern pessimism proffers bumper stickers saying, Spending my kid’s inheritance and He who dies with the most toys wins.  What if each of us put a bumper sticker on our heart that quoted Edwin Chapin, a nineteenth-century New England pastor, who said, Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.  Chapin was correct: right now counts forever.  The biblical writers invite us to see every day from the perspective of eternity.  The vibrations will go on and on.  Abraham was not only going to be blessed by God, but his faith would also be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3).  Moses regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward (Hebrews 11:26).  Jesus says that we are to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19ff).  Paul says even our eating and drinking are to be done to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31)!  Peter calls us strangers and aliens and urges us to live such exemplary lives that even the pagans will glorify God on the day he visits us (1 Peter 2:11).  As Mark Twain put it, Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.  Our actions and attitudes have eternal consequences.

Third, our gospel optimism will affect the way we think about death. I’ve made it a habit to read Puritan writers who lived in a world very unlike my own.  These men and women pursued Christ in a world without convenience, a world of religious persecution, a world where death could come at any moment.  Indeed, during the Puritan era (1550-1700), more than half of those born didn’t survive infancy, and more than half the adult population died young. But when we read the Puritans, we don’t find a morbid dread of death, but a Christian hope for heaven.

Jonathan Edwards, technically not a Puritan but often called one, made it the business of his life to prepare for heaven.  In 1753 he wrote to his daughter, Esther, when he heard news that she was seriously ill.  She was living in Newark, New Jersey, with her husband.  She was 150 miles from her parents in Massachusetts, an enormous distance in that era.  Fearing she might die from her sickness and that he might never see her again, Edwards wrote words that should inform the manner in which we live in our time and place:

God has now given you early and seasonable warning not at all to depend on worldly prosperity.  Therefore I would advise . . . if it pleases God to restore you, to count on no happiness here.  Labour while you live, to serve God and do what good you can, and endeavour to improve every dispensation to God’s glory and your own spiritual good, and be content to do and bear all that God calls you to in this wilderness, and never expect to find this world any thing but a wilderness.  Lay your account to travel through it in weariness, painfulness, and trouble, and wait for your rest and your prosperity ‘till hereafter where they that die in the Lord rest from their labours, and enter into the joy of their Lord.  [It is infinitely important] to have the presence of an heavenly Father, and to make progress towards an heavenly home.  Let us all take care that we meet there at last.

As we approach a new year and enter a new decade, we can find many reasons for despair, but our gospel optimism should be the last word.  At the end of the day, let us take care to improve every dispensation to God’s glory.  And as 2010 comes and goes, let us take care that we make progress towards our heavenly home.  Let us all take care that we meet there at last.

Rock of Ages is one of the most beloved hymns in the English language.  The text of this hymn was written by Augustus Montague Toplady (what a name!).  By age 12 he was preaching sermons to whoever would listen.  At 14 he began writing hymns.^[1]  By the time he was 22 he had become an Anglican priest and as a staunch Calvinist bitterly opposed the Arminian theology of John and Charles Wesley, who began the Methodist movement.  In 1776, two years before his short life would end, he wrote a magazine article about the nature of God’s forgiveness.^[2]  The purpose of the article was to oppose what he considered to be Wesley’s deficient view of human depravity and divine forgiveness.

In this article, Toplady compared our sinful condition before God to the national debt of England.  To help the reader see how formidable was the national debt, he began the article with a series of questions and answers- the last of which were these:

Q:       When will the government be able to pay the principal?

A:       When there is more money in England’s treasury alone than there is at present in all Europe.

Q:              And when will that be?

A:              Never.

Now I’m sure the debt of England at that time was a large amount, but I’m also sure Toplady’s head would spin if he were to see the figures on America’s national debt today- over $12 trillion and rising quickly!  (It’s grown by an average of $3.85 billion per day since September 28, 2007.)^[3]   But the point he was trying to make was not an economic one.  It was a spiritual one.  In essence, he was saying, “You think our national debt is big?  It’s nothing compared to the debt we owe God!”  The rest of the article unpacks our moral debt to God and the solution to our problem, still in the question and answer format:

Q:        When shall we be able to pay off this immense debt?

A:       Never. Eternity itself, so far from clearing us of the dreadful arrear, would only add to the score by plunging us deeper and deeper into even to infinity. Hence, the damned will never be able to satisfy the justice of the Almighty Creditor.

Q:        If so, are we not lost, without remedy and without end?

A:       In ourselves we are. But (sing, O heavens!) God’s own arm brought salvation.

Q:       What return can believers render, to the glorious and gracious Trinity, for mercy and plenteous redemption like this?

A:       We can only admire and bless the Father, for electing us in Christ, and for laying on him the iniquity of us all: -- the Son, for taking our nature and our debts upon himself, and for that complete righteousness and sacrifice whereby he redeemed his mystic Israel from all their sins; -- and the co-equal Spirit, for causing us (in conversion) to feel our need of Christ, for inspiring us with faith to embrace him, for visiting us with his sweet consolations by shedding abroad his love in our hearts, for sealing us to the day of Christ, and for making us to walk in the path of his commandments.

Toplady ended the article with the text to his now famous hymn.  He titled it “A living and dying PRAYER for the HOLIEST BELIEVER in the World.”  The point of this title (and of the song) is that if we desire to

be set free from the burden of our sin and be seen as holy by God, we will not try to attain it through our own efforts.  That would be futile.  Rather, we simply trust in the riches of Christ.  Unable to get ourselves out of the mess of our sin, we rely on Christ to do what we cannot.  We look to him and him alone to be made clean, to have our debt canceled.  Not only that, the work of Christ has the effect of a “double cure”- not only saving us from God’s wrath, but also freeing us from sin’s power.  As we begin this new year, working away at our new resolutions, let our chief resolution be this:   Let me hide myself in Thee!

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee;

Let the water and the blood, From Thy riven side which flowed,

Be of sin the double cure; Save from wrath and make me pure.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee.

Not the labor of my hands Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee.

Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to the cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress; Helpless look to Thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Savior, or I die.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee.⁴

An audio clip and lead sheet of this song may be found at: http://www.sbcommunity.org/resources/worship/

In the sixteenth century, Rome began the monumental building project of Saint Peter’s Basilica. Those who have visited Rome and the Vatican can attest that Saint Peter’s boggles the mind, especially when considering that this gigantic, ornate church was built so long ago.  The artistic beauty is staggering.  Whether one is a Christian or not, the building itself elicits hushed adoration.  The problem, however, was that this building cost a fortune to build.  To help pay for this project, the unscrupulous Pope Leo X made a special indulgence to those who gave money to support this work.

The church of sixteenth century believed that the pope had the power of the keys to heaven.  This included the power to grant indulgences for people who did not have enough merit to enter heaven and were stuck in purgatory. Indulgences were granted by the church and were understood to be the forgiveness of the debt owed to God for sin.  In the thinking of the Roman Catholic Church of the day, the pope had the ability to draw on a treasury of excess merit which other saints had amassed, but did not need, to gain access to heaven.  This excess, or surplus, of spiritual good could be used on behalf of other sinners who needed more righteousness to get into heaven. 

Many in the sixteenth century tried to literally purchase the salvation of friends and family who had died but may not be in heaven.  Johan Tetzel was a Dominican friar who peddled these indulgences in the part of Germany where the soon-to-be-reformer Martin Luther lived.  Luther listened to Tetzel’s crass soliciting of salvation for sale; Every time a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.  Luther, and others, pondered the question, Could salvation be bought for a price?  Was righteousness something you could acquire on your own merit, or could you even buy the righteousness of someone else?

The central question of the sixteenth century Reformation was, how is a person saved?  Last month, in our continuing series, Re-Forming the Reformation, we considered the Reformation teaching of sola gratia, or grace alone.  Alongside of the affirmation that Christians are saved by grace alone, stands the teaching of the Bible that we are saved by sola fide, faith alone.  Martin Luther said that this is the article by which the church stands, without which it falls.  It is not too much to say that this biblical teaching, that a person is justified by faith alone, is the most important affirmation of historic evangelicalism.

In our culture, faith is often an elastic term that can mean many things.  Faith is used as a synonym for peace of mind or even a vague spiritual health.  Faith, for many, becomes a kind of spiritual-psychological key to unlock the inner doors of our life in the pursuit of peace and assurance of the soul.  Generically, we refer to people of faith.  The Bible, however, uses the word faith in a very different way.  It is a concrete word that means to trust.  In the Scriptures when someone has faith, they have trust in someone or something.

So back to the question with which the Reformers were struggling.  How is a person justified before God?  How are we saved?  What role does faith play in coming to God?  The missing piece of the complex Roman Catholic scheme for salvation was the crucial word alone.  The sixteenth century church believed that faith was necessary for salvation.  The problem was, they just didn’t believe it was enough for justification. They believed that good works completed the act of faith.  The Reformers, on the other hand, started with the Bible and found that faith alone was sufficient for salvation.  It was because of passages like Romans 3:27-28, that the Reformers came to trust in faith alone.

Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

R.C. Sproul says, It is not an exaggeration to say that the eye of the Reformation tornado was this one little word [alone].  The Reformers insisted the Bible taught that a person was saved by grace alone, by faith alone, and through Christ alone.  Christians today can make the same mistake the church of Luther’s day made and forget this one little word, alone.  There is a persistent and pernicious tendency to want to help God save us.  As SBCC stands in the Reformed tradition we want to relish the marvelous truth that we are saved by faith — alone.

When it comes right down to it, most of the commands in the Bible should either make us laugh or drive us to despair.  The commandment to gouge out my right eyeball when it leads me into sin makes me thankful for, shall we say, selective reading of the Bible.  When I read in Deuteronomy which eggs I can take from a fallen bird’s nest, that my vineyard may only contain one kind of seed, or that I can’t wear wool and linen mixed together. . . well, to be honest, I quickly contextualize these commands and then find they strike me as a bit funny.  And, I ask, just why can’t I have tassels on the four corners of my garment? (Deuteronomy 22:12).

Do you agree?  The commandments we find in God’s Word are either too easy or too difficult. Think about it.  Do not murder is within my grasp.  Sure, I might like to murder the person who cuts in front of me at Trader Joe’s with a full shopping cart while I only have tortillas and cheese, but the temptation is fleeting, and soon I find myself striking up a friendly conversation with the nearly-deceased.  In reality, never once have I caught my sinful self really saying, Lord, why are you so strict?  Why can’t I kill that guy who rubs me the wrong way? 

And when the book of Deuteronomy tells me that I’ll be cursed if I sleep with my mother-in-law, I can feel quite righteous.  When I learn in Leviticus I shouldn’t have relations with my sister, my pride can swell up.  I don’t even have a sister!  I’m not even tempted, much less prone, to break these commands.

On the other hand, very many, if not most, of God’s commands in Scripture are impossibly difficult to keep.  As a matter of fact, they are so hard, so exacting, that we get used to them and miss their potency.  Think about some of the commands we read over in our daily devotions without even a pause:

•      If I ponder the apostle Paul’s injunction to love my wife as Christ loved his church (Ephesians 5), I realize immediately I don’t have a chance.  I have never loved my wife in this way for five minutes, let alone throughout a lifetime of marriage. 

•      When the same apostle tells me to be anxious about nothing (Philippians 4), I find I have one more cause for anxiety.  In the recesses of my soul, I tend to believe that with my anxious thoughts I can cure the swine flu, fix global warming, and settle disputes in the Middle East.  And now, after reading Paul’s command, I can worry myself sick about my worry! 

•      Or how about the command in 1 Thessalonians 4 that calls me to be holy?  Sure, I can stay away from some of the juicy sins that are readily available to me.  I can abstain from drunkenness and adultery.  But holiness?  To borrow from a famous preacher who was irritated with a woman who was praising his preaching, If you could see in my heart, you would spit in my face.  When I look in my heart, I find sins that would make you want to spit in my face!

So what is an eager disciple to do in the face of the exacting and sometimes humorous laws found in Scripture?  It seems I’ve got two, well, maybe three, options. 

First, I can curse God and die.  Meaning, I can call God’s instructions poppycock and live as I darn well please.  Anyone who calls me to be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect must not be serious.  And if God is not serious about that one, then neither can he be too concerned about lying and stealing—at least if the lie is white and that which I steal isn’t too big or valuable.

On the other hand, I can adopt a lifestyle of rigidity and legalism, watching my every move and guarding my every step.  I can tithe mint, dill, and cumin (Matthew 23:23) and feel pretty good about myself for a season or two.  But sooner or later—and probably sooner—I’ll discover I’ve neglected the weightier matters of the law such as justice, mercy, and faithfulness. 

But there is a third way.  When I consider God’s impossible commands, when I admit to myself that I can’t fully hold to his standards for a nanosecond, I realize my need for a savior.  It is not that God bids me to be good and then accepts me when I succeed.  Nor is it that God sets me free to do anything I want and then judges me because I have taken him up on his offer.  It is that God judges me severely because of my sin, saves me from myself through Christ, and then sets me free to make every effort to live for him.  The Christian life involves effort, grit, and determination.  To deny this is to deny the obvious. Peter, for example, uses these very words when he urges his readers to make every effort to supplement [their] faith with virtue, and knowledge, and self-control, and a whole bunch of other things that bear witness to the change God has made in their lives (2 Peter 1:5). 

So what am I to do with the impossible commands of Scripture?  I am to love them.  Not because I can keep them perfectly (I can’t), but because they reveal God’s perfect will for my life.  I am to love them, not because they lead me to salvation (they don’t), but because they lead me, a person who is already saved, into a fuller, bigger, more exciting life.  At the end of the day, sin is boring and righteousness thrills the mended heart.  To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, holiness is not dull; it is the most exciting thing in the world.  And if the church practiced holiness, the whole world would be converted and happy within a calendar year!

I love God’s impossible commands even though I never keep them perfectly.  I don’t construe them as burdensome but rather delightful, commandments that simultaneously show me how to live and remind me of my need for grace.  G. K. Chesterton got it right when he said, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. Let us find ourselves among those who try that which is difficult and love that which is impossible.  Our lives will be better for the trying, and we will be blessed in our failures when our sins drive us to the cross where we receive grace upon grace.

In our continuing series, Reforming the Reformation, we are considering what it means when we say Santa Barbara Community Church stands in the Reformed tradition.  Last month, Benji Bruneel introduced us to the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli and compared his understanding of the Lord’s Supper with that of SBCC.  This month we will ponder one of the central teachings of the Reformation: salvation by grace alone. This contentious issue caused leaders such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox to confront the religious establishment of their day and literally face death because they saw the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3) being corrupted.  They protested (where we get the name “Protestant”) against the teaching of the church and reaffirmed the Biblical teaching that God saves us by sola gratia, grace alone.

In the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church affirmed that justification is by grace, through faith, because of Jesus Christ.  What the church in those days did not believe was that justification was by grace alone, through faith alone, and because of Jesus Christ alone.  The issue was not the necessity of grace, but rather the means and sufficiency of grace.  Everyone in the sixteenth century agreed that grace was needed for salvation. The problem arose, however, because monetary indulgences (a giving of money to purchase salvation), prayers to Mary and the saints, hours of confession, and the individual merits of the sinner were added to find salvation.  The Reformers reacted, asserting that grace was ceasing to be sufficient grace because of these added works. 

It is in this context where we encounter Martin Luther (1483-1546), an Augustinian monk who understood from the scriptures that God was a holy and righteous judge.  When Luther was a young man, he spent hours in confession hoping that God would notice him for his many tears.  His fear was that if he failed to confess even one sin, it would be enough for God to condemn him.  He later wrote, Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly . . . I was angry with God (Luther’s Works, 34, 336-37).  In 1511, hoping to encourage the young priest, Johann Staupitz (Luther’s confessor) sent young Martin to Rome to walk around the great capital city of the church.  Rather than being encouraged, Luther was extremely disappointed at the immorality and blasphemy of the city.  Returning to Germany disillusioned and confused, Luther was given the responsibility at The University of Wittenberg to teach Biblical Studies to aspiring priests and ministers. It was during this time when something remarkable happened.  While teaching on the Psalms and the book of Romans, the gospel began to leap off the pages as he encountered the phrase, the righteousness of God.  For the first time Luther understood that the righteousness of God is not only what God is, but what God gives (Romans 1:17).  Finally, Luther realized God’s grace is not only necessary, but fully sufficient to save the sinner.  The church of Luther’s day believed that justification was accomplished by the infusion of grace, a boost that helps the sinner to cooperate with God in salvation, rather than imputation of grace that actually declares the sinner righteous.  The Reformers affirmed that grace actually saves.  Grace alone means, grace at the start, grace in the middle, grace to the end, grace without merit, and grace without addition.              

The Apostle Paul, speaking of God, put it like this, [God] who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began (2 Timothy 1:9).  In his letter to the church at Ephesus Paul says, For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). It is God’s sovereign act in Christ to consider the guilty innocent solely because the innocent one was considered guilty.  If we ever stop being amazed by this life-transforming grace, we will have missed the essence of the good news of the gospel.  Grace is, indeed, amazing!

It really is almost Christmas, and I am genuinely excited. Over the years, our family has been incredibly blessed by the changes that have become a part of our life as we celebrate Christ’s birth. It has become worship. “It starts with Jesus. It ends with Jesus.” This quote comes from the Advent Conspiracy website concerning worship (www.adventconspiracy.org/hope). The mantra within Advent Conspiracy is Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. I think Jesus is happier with our celebration of his birthday now than he was in the past; he smiles more at what we do. We worship him more fully.

What is worship after all? I used to think that worship only consisted of singing great hymns and songs or lifting prayers of exultation to God. Think of the number of times after a church service you have either said or heard someone say that they wished that there had been more time to worship, that the music was just too short. Or, that it was a great time of worship because we had a particularly long block of song and prayer. What about the rest of the service? What are we doing then? Or the rest of our lives for that matter? In the Westminster Shorter Catechism we are told that, A man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Our chief end, the sum total of our life, is to glorify God. Wow! That pretty much says that everything I do is to be an act of ascribing worth and praise to God. So again I ask myself: Is what I’m doing this Christmas season making Jesus smile? Is he worshipped as a result of what I buy, how I spend my time, how I care for those around me?

Over the past three months I have shared about how our family and others have worked hard to Spend Less during the holiday season. Christmas does not equal consumption, and yet we are encouraged to go ever deeper into debt in the name of Jesus’ birthday each year. Buy one less gift. Give something lovingly used. Make gifts. We are working hard to resist the temptation that more and bigger is better, of trying to satisfy our longing for joy in Christ via stuff. I think that this makes Jesus smile. A nice side benefit is that I can smile in January when my credit card bill arrives. This link will give you many ideas as to how you can spend less during the holiday season (www.rethinkingchristmas.com).

I also wrote about how we might Give More. Christmas is not presents, but presence. Jesus gave of himself. We work hard to be there, to be more present, for family, friends and strangers in the activities of the season. Set time aside to participate in advent traditions. Think of those within our church family who are lonely, orphaned and widowed, and invite them into your celebrations. Take some time to be present in our community by sharing a meal and a conversation with the homeless. When I see my kids greet the homeless and offer them a cup of coffee and a sack of food, not only do I smile, but I think that Jesus is grinning from ear to ear.

I have reflected upon how we might be able to Love All by rethinking Christmas and contributing what we save to help those around the world who don’t have drinkable water. Advent Conspiracy has partnered with Living Water (www.water.cc/initiatives/adventconspiracy), an organization focused on providing water to the thirsty around the world via education and fresh wells. Up to now Living Water has been able to place more than 340 wells as a result of Advent Conspiracy projects. That’s 200,000 people that now have clean water as a result of first-world Christians rethinking their Christmas spending! I think that this makes Jesus smile.

This year, our act of worship is growing. We will be having a sleep over with a couple of other close families to focus on the birth of Christ.  Each of us has drawn the name of another member to give a gift: something made, something used, or an act of service. Each person will bring an amount of money they want to offer up, and together we will make a purchase through World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, or Mission Impact. Yes, all nine kids will be participating as well. We will make something to give to an elderly couple in our neighborhood as well as a homeless woman we have recently met. We will pray. We will sing. We will play. And I think Jesus will smile. My guess is that there might even be times when he will laugh.

Maybe that is the key as to how I need to think about all the activities I am a part of during the holiday season. Does this make Jesus smile? The crazy thing is that when I Glorify God I really do Enjoy Him Forever. As a result, I really am looking forward to Christmas. None of this feels like sacrifice. I’m getting the picture that this way of thinking and acting is much bigger than December 25^th. Let’s make the Advent Conspiracy a way of worship throughout the year. Let’s Worship Fully.

Excerpt from Care for Creation by John Stott, who has served on A Rocha’s Council of Reference since its inception.* 

“How, then, should we relate to the earth? If we remember its creation by God and its delegation to us, we will avoid two opposite extremes and instead develop a third and better relationship to nature. First, we will avoid the deification of nature. This is the mistake of pantheists, who identify the Creator with his creation; of animists, who populate the natural world with spirits; and of the New Age’s Gaia movement, which attributes to nature its own self-contained, self-regulating and self-perpetuating mechanisms. But all such confusions are derogatory to the Creator. The Christian desacralizing of nature (the recognition that it is creation, not Creator) was an indispensable prelude to the whole scientific enterprise and is essential to the development of the earth’s resources today.

We respect nature because God made it; we do not reverence nature as if it were God and inviolable. Secondly, we must avoid the opposite extreme, which is the exploitation of nature. We must not treat nature obsequiously as if it were God, nor must we behave towards it arrogantly as if it were God. Genesis 1 has been unjustly blamed for environmental irresponsibility, It is true that God commissioned the human race to ‘have dominion over’ the earth and to ‘subdue’ it (Genesis 1:26-28, NRSV), and these two Hebrew verbs are forceful. We would be absurd, however, to imagine that he who created the earth then handed it over to us to destroy it. No, the dominion God has given us is a responsible stewardship, not a destructive domination.

The third and correct relationship between human beings and nature is that of co-operation with God. To be sure, we are ourselves a part of creation, just as dependent on the Creator as are all his creatures. Yet at the same time, he has deliberately humbled himself to make a divine-human partnership necessary. He created the earth, but then told us to subdue it, He planted the garden, but then put Adam in it ‘to work it and take care of it’ (Genesis 2:15). This is often called the cultural mandate. For what God has given us is nature, whereas what we do with it is culture. We are not only to conserve the environment, but also to develop its resources for the common good.

A final thought: it is possible to over-state this emphasis on human work in the conservation and transformation of the environment. In his excellent exposition of the first three chapters of Genesis, In the Beginning (1984), Henri Blocher argues that the climax of Genesis 1 is not the creation of man the worker but the institution of the Sabbath for man the worshipper; it is not our toil (subduing the earth) but the laying aside of our toil on the Sabbath day. For the Sabbath relativizes the importance of work. It protects us from a total absorption in our work as if it were to be the be-all and end-all of our existence. It is not. We human beings find our humanness not only in relation to the earth which we are to transform, but in relationship to God, whom we are to worship; not only in relation to the creation, but especially in relation to the Creator. God intends our work to be an expression of our worship, and our care of the creation to reflect our love for the Creator. Only then, whatever we do, in word or deed, shall we be able to do it to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

*Used with permission from the Foreword to The Care of Creation, edited by R.J. Berry (Inter-Varsity Press, 2000) ISBN 0-85111-657-4.

Challenge:

1.       Memorize 1 Chronicles 29:11, Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.

2.       Make a list of ideas for observing Sabbath, or any day, with faith-affirming steps toward creation care. For example: Abstain from purchasing for the day. Allow this material fast to lead you into prayer.

3.      Worshipfully celebrate God’s artistry as Creator.

As you are reading this, your thoughts no doubt have moved from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  There is much to be done in the coming season.  We may have reserved a day or two to be thankful, but the pressures of Christmas are looming and there is little time to ponder gratitude.  What a shame if we think that Thanksgiving was for thanks and that Christmas is about more pressing issues. 

In reality, all of the Christian life is about thanksgiving.  Yes, Advent, Christmas, Easter, Reformation Sunday, winter solstice, your birthday, and even an average tomorrow cry out for thanks.  Whatever day it may be, for the Christian all days are for thanksgiving.  As a church, we will soon be studying Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians.  Near the end of this short letter the apostle gives these succinct instructions.  Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.  There is not a lot of mystery in these commands.

Thankfulness is to be the breath of the Christian life.  Disciples of Jesus are people who have had their lives so transformed and received so many undeserved spiritual blessings that as Ellen Vaughn puts it, we are to be engaged in a perpetual dialogue of gratitude.  The Psalmist would agree as he counsels, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name (Psalm 100:4).  Our spiritual vitality, our bonding with God is predicated on cultivating a thankful heart that is filled with gratitude because of his goodness.

What about those of us who are feeling the pressures, disappointments, and the grief of life so strongly that thankfulness seems all but impossible?  Is it hypocritical to thank God when you don’t feel thankful in your heart?  Can gratitude be forced in spite of one’s life circumstances and emotional state?  John Piper has written a helpful little book that addresses these questions (When The Darkness Will Not Lift).  In it he says, There is such a thing as hypocritical thanksgiving.  Its aim is to conceal ingratitude and get the praise of men.  That is not your aim.  Your aim in loosing your tongue with words of gratitude is that God would be merciful and fill your words with the emotion of true gratitude  (p. 51).  What Piper is saying is that when we practice the perpetual dialogue of thankfulness, our heart and emotions may eventually catch up regardless of the difficult life circumstances we face.

The Puritans were more often than not practical and realistic in their writing and preaching about the Christian life.  Puritan pastor Richard Baxter preached on the problem of thankfulness and melancholy (melancholy was the word used in previous centuries to describe what today we call depression). In a sermon titled The Cure of Melancholy, he gives this spiritual advice.

Resolve to spend most of your time in thanksgiving and praising God.  If you cannot do it with the joy you should, yet do it as you can.  You have not the power of your comforts: but have you no power of your tongues?  Say not, that you are unfit for thanks and praise unless you have a praising heart and were the children of God: for every man, good or bad, is bound to praise God, and to be thankful for all he hath received, and to do it as well as he can, rather than leave it undone . . . Doing it as you can is the way to be able to do it better.  Thanksgiving stirreth up thankfulness in the heart. 

What is the dialogue of your life like?  In this post- Thanksgiving season, we have finished off the wonderful leftovers of turkey, stuffing, gravy, potatoes and pumpkin pie.  But what about our thanks?  This is a great time to remind yourself that Thanksgiving is not just a holiday that comes at the end of November every year, but a perpetual dialogue that is to be on the lips of believers every day.

Twenty-five years ago, Lisa was pregnant, and we both sensed that life as we knew it had come to an end.  Saturday mornings devoted to quiet reading or evenings spent over a candlelit dinner with friends would soon be pockmarked with a rambunctious baby crying for attention.  To celebrate the coming change, we packed up our bicycles and took off for a tour of New England. Lisa’s pregnancy was indiscernible when we began in upstate New York, but unmistakable when we returned five weeks and almost 2,000 miles later.  Our pace was slow, and the term quickening was applied to tiny Karis rather than the speed of our riding. 

In October 1984, Karis came into the world.  Soon enough Peter and Davis came, too.  And then, a whole lot of laundry loads later, they were all gone.  Karis got married, Peter moved to San Diego, and Davis started college.  To employ the oft-used metaphor, our nest was suddenly empty.  And so…we did what any sane couple would do…. We packed up our bikes and flew to New England.  Our five-week ride before the children became a nine-day excursion after they were gone, and the campgrounds of 1984 had been replaced by drive-in motels in 2009.  But the bikes were pretty much the same, and Lisa and I hadn’t changed a bit.  We rode, should you be interested, about 400 miles.  It didn’t rain, it was often really cold, and the autumn leaves were in their glory!   

Riding a bike for nine days gives one pause to think.  Time to ponder and contemplate.  It strikes me as I ride that I have more reasons to give thanks than there are leaves on the trees of New Hampshire.  I love my wife.  My health is good, as is Lisa’s.  My children are alive, blessed, and have more than a modicum of happiness. Furthermore, they seem to like us, their mom and dad. Best of all, to borrow a phrase from the Puritans, they give evidence of being born again.  They love Jesus.  In addition to all this, my parents live two miles from my home, they are healthy, and they, too, seem to like us.  After all these years, we love our church and the people in it.  Furthermore, we have grown in our love for and enjoyment of God.  But none of the above is my point. 

As we rode through the fall foliage, it struck me that bicycling, specifically bicycle-touring, contains many metaphors for life itself.  Consider three: 

Life, like bike riding, brings varied terrain.  It would be nice if bike touring were all downhill with a tailwind.  It would be terrific if there were no traffic.  But that’s not the way it works.  A bike tour has hills and valleys, headwinds and tailwinds, great vistas and dirty factories.  To experience the exhilaration of a long downhill, we have to pump up the other side of the mountain.  To see the top of the mountain, you have to see the lumber mill at the foot of the hill.  So also in life.  A good marriage, a good job, a good ministry – in short, a life well lived before God will involve its share of huffing and puffing up one side of the mountain. But the muscle rebellion, the sheer fatigue, is worth it.  As Paul put it, For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:7).  

Life, like bike touring, brings the unexpected.  Biking, for us, is really fun.  But every tour has the moment when one or both of us say, And why did we want to do this?  You think you are almost there and you can barely turn the cranks only to be told by a local, Yes, the town you are looking for is just down the road, about fifteen miles, I think…  You expected sunshine and instead it is raining and cold.  You thought it was going to be a quiet backcountry road, and instead it seems like a trucker’s convention is about to begin down the street.  At such moments you wish your bicycle were a Harley, but you press on, and the pressing on often brings the best part of the day.  I remember taking shelter from the rain while climbing a mountain in Switzerland only to be fed lunch by a Swiss family on vacation.  I remember laughing silly with some very kind Germans who wanted to converse with these Yankees who were sitting in an Austrian café waiting for the rain to stop.  Often the interruptions become what is memorable; the encumbrance becomes the remembrance. 

It is in the unexpected that we often experience tiny moments of grace.  We help a stranger and discover he was an angel.  We are asked for directions and end up finding a friend.  We experience tragedy and maybe we find God. 

In life, like bike touring, follow the map.  Self-evident, you say?  Well, not to me.  One day on our ride we had a long day planned: we thought we’d be riding over 70 miles.  It was our intention to get up and get going. The day before, I thought I heard a man say, Just follow Route 4. Stay on it, all the way to Meredith.  With instructions so clear, who needs to consult the AAA map?  We put our heads down and rode.  And rode and rode.  At one junction Lisa asked, Should we turn here?  Being a man who sees map-reading as a sign of spiritual and physical weakness, I was compelled to answer, No, let’s keep going. We’re making good time. 

Making good time does one no good when he is going the wrong way.  My failure to read the map took us ten miles in the wrong direction.  We never made Meredith and missed one of the prettiest stops on our tour.  Life is like a bike ride.  We need the map, and we need to read and follow the map.  As the psalmist writes, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (119:105).  Life is like a bike tour.  When we read and follow the map of God’s Word, we will get to our destination in His good time. 

If bike touring teaches us anything about the Christian life, it teaches, finally, that perseverance wins the prize.  Keep turning the cranks, keep spinning the gears, and you’ll get to your destination.  Brothers and sisters, bike touring is optional; perseverance in the Christian life is not.  Let’s see to it that we finish the race and find the One whose glory will sustain us for eternity.  As the apostle Paul put it, Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14).

White Walls and The True Worship of God

Lately, the Community News has featured a number of articles dedicated to the work and thought of the Reformers. As a church that stands squarely in the Reformed tradition, the theological contributions of men such as John Calvin and Martin Luther weigh greatly upon our church’s thinking. Yet, although Luther and Calvin get all the press, as SBCC gathers to worship each week, in significant ways we closely resemble a Zwinglian congregation.

Ulrich Zwingli was a contemporary of Luther and a fellow Reformer. Living and ministering in Zurich, Switzerland, Zwingli focused his reform efforts less on the content of what his parishioners believed—although he considered that of great importance—but on the ways in which his parishioners acted out what they believed when they came to worship as a congregation.

While Martin Luther hammered out great treatises on justification by faith, and John Calvin produced incomparable systematic explanations of the Reformed faith, Zwingli concentrated his efforts primarily on what happened within the walls of the church. Zwingli’s changes concerned three spheres of church practice: music, art, and the Lord’s Supper. Based upon his interpretation of Scripture and his unwavering commitment to act, no matter how dramatically, upon the conclusions reached therein, Zwingli made sweeping changes to worship practice in Zurich.

Although icons and images of saints were staples of medieval worship, intended to generate in the viewer a love for and devotion to Christ that emulated that of the one pictured, Zwingli could not tolerate them on account of Scripture. In his view, God prohibited such images and icons when He commanded the Israelites, You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below (Exodus 20:4). Furthermore, Zwingli argued, it was impossible for fallen, idolatrous people to encounter an icon without giving it worship –worship due only unto Christ. In his work, A Commentary on True and False Religion, Zwingli outlined his conclusions; “Since sure danger of a decrease of faith threatens wherever images stand in the churches, and imminent risk of their adoration and worship, they ought to be abolished in the churches and wherever risk of their worship threatens.” As a result, under Zwingli’s watchful eye, the churches of Zurich removed the art and icons which were prolific in the worship of the immediate past. His war with the idols now complete, Zwingli could exclaim in triumph, “In Zurich we have churches which are positively luminous; the walls are beautifully white!”

As radical as those reforms may have seemed in the context of the time, Zwingli’s conclusions on music were no less earthshaking and would seem so even today. Considering texts such as Amos 5:23 (Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps!), Ephesians 5:19b (Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord) and Colossians 3:16b (As you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God) alongside Jesus’ teachings on prayer in Matthew 6:5-7 and on worship in John 4:24, Zwingli again reached startling conclusions. This reformer abolished music and singing in his churches!  “One is a matter exclusively of external forms involving ‘clamor before men’; the other is a matter exclusively of internal content involving ‘spirit and truth.’” One scholar comments, “In 1523 the singing stopped, not to be heard again until 1598. Its absence must not have been greatly missed, because in 1527 the [Zurich City] Council gave orders for the destruction of the pipe organs as well. These took longer to reappear, a new organ not being installed in [Zwingli’s church] until 1874.” 

How, then, does SBCC reflect the Zwinglian tradition in worship? Although Zwingli would have objected to even the cross mounted above the newly renovated stage and our church family clearly has not adopted his viewpoint on music, every time we come to Communion, we side with the great Reformer.

Indeed, Zwingli’s greatest contribution to the theological developments taking place during the Reformation involved the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In a time of great debate and theological formulation, the proper understanding of the Eucharist was a hot issue and Zwingli, not surprisingly, found himself in the middle of the fray. Zwingli supported an interpretation of Scripture that insisted that the Lord’s Supper serves as a reminder of the atoning death of Christ upon the cross, but no more than a reminder. Others such as Luther, Calvin, and the Roman Catholic Church held opposing viewpoints. Zwingli, as always, turned to the Scriptures to support his contention.

Zwingli argued that Christ’s words, “this is my body” meant “this represents my body.” When coupled with the command to “do this in remembrance of me,” Zwingli concluded that to eat the Communion meal in remembrance of Christ is to eat real bread and drink real wine that represent a greater reality. “How does bread represent a body? Certainly in that when thus eaten it recalls to remembrance that Christ presented his body to his murderers for us.” And although the elements upon the table undergo no change of their own, Zwingli recognized nonetheless their potential to cause great change in the one who comes to the table in faith. 

Faith, for Zwingli, was dangerously at stake when it came to false religion. Indeed, the conviction that faith itself was on the line, led Zwingli to captain his great program of reform in Zurich. With a pastor’s heart, he sought to change, abandon, or abolish any practice that did not lead his flock to greater faith in Christ, the Great Shepherd. Although a skilled musician and a great admirer of art in its proper setting, Zwingli stood firm against their place in worship based on his certainty of their damaging effect upon faith. Again, as he expressed his memorialist view of the Lord’s Supper, his aim was to build up the faith of the people. He desired, above all, that people would forsake the external and visible as the assurance of their salvation, but, in faith, would cling instead to Christ.

Each Sunday, we come to the table at SBCC to remember what Christ has done for us. As a church, our understanding of this central act of worship is decidedly Zwinglian. And our goal in coming to the Lord’s Table is just as Zwinglian. As we come, in the words of this Reformer, “we commemorate [Christ’s] body given for us and the shedding of his blood for our atonement.”   The result is that our faith in Christ is increased. So, as we approach the Lord’s Table each week, let us be people who come in humility, in remembrance, and in faith.

I have written the last two months about taking back Christmas, primarily focusing on spending less and giving more. The dollars spent on Christmas ($450 billion annually) are astronomical. It sometimes makes me wonder if they aren’t eclipsing the star that first led the magi to Jesus’ manger? But we don’t have to participate in the madness of this spending. We can break the cycle, but it will take conscious effort. Here we are in November and the rush is upon us. What else might we do to help reclaim Christmas for Jesus?

A catch phrase in the Advent Conspiracy (www.adventconspiracy.org) movement is to “Give less presents and give more presence.” What exactly did Jesus give us on that first Christmas? It was himself. And while a good argument could be made that this is a great present, it was and is his presence that changed everything for the world. He spent 33 years with us on this earth giving of himself relationally. And he continues to do so today. It is Christ’s presence in our lives that brings us forgiveness, hope and it changes us. What might it look like if we were to give presence?

The holiday season is often filled with parties and gatherings that really do add to the presence of the season. I love our Christmas Eve service: the candles, the music, good friends, whoever the character is that Reed decides to dress up like… But it’s what happens around the service that remains with me throughout the year. A simple soup and bread dinner with friends afterward. A walk on the beach with family and friends earlier in the day. Being intentional about inviting others that may not feel very included in the larger picture of our community into our home during the season. These are easy activities that build up our church community, as well as reveal the presence of Jesus among us.

Another way to bring the presence of Christ back into Christmas is to introduce traditions that cause us to reflect more on the reality of Jesus’ birth and less on the gift giving and receiving. Get a group of friends together and fill a few shoeboxes for children around the world through the Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child project (www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/index). Many families have created meaningful Advent Jesse Trees where they read scripture together during the 25 days leading up to Christmas (www.crivoice.org/jesse.html). Making an Advent wreath and reading through scriptures in preparation for Christmas is another great tradition. We do this as a church and it only gets better when you deepen it at home (www.sbcommunity.org/life/homegroups). Years ago, I made a cross from some scrap wood that holds the candles for our Advent wreath. A not-so-subtle reminder of where the joy of Christmas eventually takes us. We have celebrated Las Posadas with the Pereas and friends for close to fifteen years. It is a wonderful reminder of Christ’s infant entry into this world. The focus is so much more on celebrating Jesus’ humble birth as a community with not even a hint at gifts.

Christ’s presence, however, that first Christmas was much more than celebration with family and friends. It was incarnational. In the flesh for all of creation. How might we become the “in the flesh” representatives of Christ? Perhaps it is as I read in a book by Walter Wangerin: “Jesus with skin on him.” This pushes us further out of our comfort zones. Would you consider buying a cup of coffee or a meal for a homeless person and engaging him or her in a bit of conversation? How about bringing bags of homemade treats to the elderly at one of our local convalescent homes and taking the time to sit and talk? The idea is to be flesh and blood ambassadors for Jesus. It is certainly easier to just send our money to the Rescue Mission, but much more life changing for everyone involved if we put on Jesus’ skin and become present to the marginalized in our community. These type of activities have become our family favorites and have changed me the most.

Realistically speaking we will still be buying some gifts. Fair Trade purchases are a great alternative to traditional mall purchases. Fair Trade is a trading partnership that seeks sustainable development and greater equity for marginalized producers and workers throughout the world. There are dozens of Fair Trade options out there. One connected directly to Advent Conspiracy can be found at Trade As One (http://tradeasone.com/advent-conspiracy). This might be the place where Jesus would buy his chocolate Advent calendar!

The beautiful thing about all of this is that our presence becomes worship. Jesus is blessed in our focus on him and the people he came to save. The clutter and rush of shopping and spending are drowned out in the joy of doing the work of Jesus. Our time and availability become the gift of presence to those around us.

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it (Psalm 24:1).  Our daily habits provide endless opportunities to acknowledge this central truth of the Christian life and to obey God’s commandment to steward His creation (Gen 1:28). With hundreds of seemingly insignificant choices we, for better or worse, leave our mark on the world around us.

Living out this call can seem overwhelming at times, and our individual contributions might seem to have limited impact. But refining our habits allows us to promote justice in a variety of ways.