choice

For a reminder of how impactful our choices can be, read the following story that recently came out in a Florida newspaper about one of our former Southern Baptist IMB missionaries to the Philippines:

Just before her pregnancy, Pam fell into a coma after contracting amoebic dysentery, a bacteria transmitted through contaminated drinking water. During her recovery, she received a series of strong medications. And even though she discontinued the regimen when she discovered the pregnancy, doctors told Pam the fetus had been damaged. Doctors later told Pam that her placenta had detached from the uterine wall, a condition known as placental abruption, which can deprive the fetus of oxygen and nutrients. Doctors expected a stillbirth, Pam said, and they encouraged her to terminate the pregnancy "They thought I should have an abortion to save my life from the beginning all the way through the seventh month," she recalled. Pam said her decision to sustain the pregnancy was a simple one - because of her faith. "We were grieved," she said. "And so my husband just prayed that if the Lord would give us a son, that he would let us raise him." In her seventh month of pregnancy, Pam traveled to the country´s capital, Manila, where she received around-the-clock care from an American-trained physician. For the next two months, Pam - steadfastly praying for a healthy child - remained on bed rest. And on her due date - Aug. 14, 1987 - Pam gave birth to a son , who she described as "skinny, but rather long." "We were concerned at first because he was so malnourished, but he definitely made up for it," she said, between laughs. Today her son, now 20, stands at a solid 6´3" and 235 pounds....

His name is Timothy Richard Tebow, the new Heisman trophy winner who Lee Corso from ESPN has described as the best spread offense quarterback who has ever played the game.

But even more important that his football prowess, though substantial, is his walk with Christ. Read below from Tim's own words:

…learning humility: “When I was very young and in T-ball, my parents would never let me tell anyone how many home runs I’d hit. At that age, I wanted to be like, ‘I just hit three home runs!’ But I wasn’t allowed to say that until the other person asked me. Then, when I was older, I learned that God blessed me with athletic ability and that He can take it away in an instant. I’m thankful for it. Just because I play football doesn’t make me more special than anyone else.”

…football as a ministry: “I think anything can be a ministry, especially football when you have a platform. You have 100 guys in the locker room with you every day. But more importantly than that, you have 1,000 kids looking up to you and even more people all across the country. You have the opportunity and the platform, and to not take advantage of that would be a big mistake.”

…what he wants others to take away from watching you on the field: “First, that I am not out there playing for myself. I love the game but I am playing for the Lord Jesus Christ. I am going out there, loving the game and giving everything I’ve got, and hopefully they can see through me the love of Christ.”

…how Christ’s example plays a role in how he leads his team: “Christ was the best leader; so you can learn everything about leadership from Him, seeing how He died on the cross and applying it to your life in every aspect. Also, not just in leadership, but how you interact with people. Teammates don’t just see you as someone who is getting on them, but as someone who loves and cares about them on and off the field.”

loving the church, warts and all

I really enjoyed our Sunday night worship.

I thought it was great on a number of levels- I especially enjoyed the testimonies and baptisms- the clusters of people gathered in prayer before the Lord's Supper- I thought the videos and preparation were all great. I enjoyed our children's singing. I particularly enjoyed not hearing me preach. How great to see one of our key leaders, Benny Becht0l, baptize a couple he has known for years. It doesn't get much better than that.

I enjoyed the visual demonstrations of Christ at work in our fellowship.

One of my favorite moments was when Ray Sanders asked everyone who had been on a mission trip to come on to the stage and stand in front of the particular station that represented their mission partnership.

It was very meaningful to see so many standing on the stage.

The whole night was a great visual picture of how effectively our missional strategy is taking hold in people's hearts. But as great as the picture was for us, the reality of what the pictures demonstrated is so much greater than what we could possibly visualize.

One cannot walk away from an experience like last night without a sense that God's work in the local church is dynamic and effective. Despite the diagnosis of some that the church is on life support, barely breathing and close to it's last breath, what we experienced together yesterday says to us that the local church still works, and that younger generations are embracing it.

I'm not saying that we are not flawed. At times the church (not ours of course, wink wink, but the church in general- all those other churches) is ugly- short-sighted, self-infatuated and sinfully inflicted. Scripture is replete with examples of how God uses flawed people. Over and over again, we learn about soiled saints and pitiful prophets and patriarchs whose irredeemable qualities make us blush. They don't ask for His grace, look for it, deserve it of seem appreciative when they receive it. For the person who is looking for the Bible to be a book of virtues with heroes to emulate-it will fall way short and only be disappointing.

The Bride of Christ is not always Rachel, sometimes she is homely Leah.

Some will correctly point to the mistakes of the church. Some will see that the church has been an embarrassment- judgmental and narrow, listless and petty.

To all of those complaints we say "guilty as charged."

But we must also remember the important point that God uses the ugly and unattractive. He uses the poor and foolish to confound the wealthy and wise. He chose the unimpressive Able instead of Cain., Isaac and not first born Ishmael. He used the lying stealing, cheating mamma's boy Jacob and not the man's man Esau. The outcast cripple Mephibosheth was brought in and blessed, the other more impressive sons of Saul were torn to pieces.

Don't forget that it was through Leah and not radiant Rachel that the Lord brought the tribe of Judah. He used the spoiled Joseph and not Rueban- the younger and weaker are often used effectively and not the strong and well-connected. Isaiah tells us that there was nothing attractive about the crucified Christ. All of this simply to drive home the important point that it is because of His grace that we stand. It is not about how great or beautiful or attractive the church is, but how incredible His grace. The church is not the hero. Jesus is the hero.

It's not about how great and wonderful and attractive we are. It is about how deep His grace is.

"Nothing in my hands I bring...
"Simply to the cross I cling."

If scripture teaches us anything, it teaches us that God uses the broken vessels, the dispossessed and second born. I love the story by Brennan Manning about the valley girl who reads the New Testament for the first time:

"Wow, Jesus is like really into ragamuffins!"

Some say they don't like church. Others have just walked away, given up. "The church is ugly and irrelevant," they say.

Yes- but that's the whole point.

This way we can't get the glory.

pray for our missionaries, and pray for our board that oversees them

If it's close to December it must be time for us to talk about our global missions offering. Over the past few years our church has ramped up our missions emphasis considerably- resulting in new partnerships in places like Showback Jordan and Montipur India and Vancouver Canada. Council Road is truly a global church- ending each calendar year with a crescendoing of missions giving that vaults us into the next years missions opportunities and providing our missions boards with much needed resources to push back darkness in some of the most remote, unevangelized places on the planet.

This is not just a time for us to support missions causes but to also pray for our missionaries and I would add to that, pray for our IMB mission board. Having served on this board for the past four years, I have had a front row seat not just to the incredible work in harvest fields around the globe, but also to the spiritual battle that often takes place in the board itself. When one considers that this is the largest missions sending organization BY FAR in the world, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the kind of spiritual fireworks that inevitably results. (Be warned- mixed metaphors ahead).

Without getting too far into the sordid details of the inner workings of the board, I would simply say that I believe the enemy would like nothing more to tie us up into knots over senseless issues that are not worthy of even one planck of our time. Like the ancient mythology of the Iliad, the enemy would like to throw the apple of discord into our missional activity.

In my opinion it is extremely important that our board maintain the proper perspective in our relationship to the local church. For those who need a quick Baptist primer, the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) is not a "denomination" per se, we are instead a convention made up of cooperating churches around our missions emphasis and primary doctrinal statement, the 2000 Baptist Faith and Mission, believing that together we can do much more effectively what we might try to do separately. The International Mission Board (IMB) is effective precisely because of this kind of cooperation. In this model, the board is a servant to the church, it is not the missions arm of some hierarchical diocese reigning from above, telling the local church how to believe.

As long as that balance is maintained, the channeled force of that cooperation is extremely effective- resulting in the unleashing of church movements and strategic Kingdom growth around the world.

When that balance tilts one way or another, it puts a lot of stress on the organization at just about every level- and threatens the ground that has been gained and hard work that is being done.

As of late the board has been dealing with a clash of philosophies that has caused if not a tilt, at least a strong sway. On the one hand you have the philosophy that says, "We have to keep all these missionaries and administrators and missiologists doctrinally pure". Of course, the issue then becomes, "Exactly which version of 'doctrinal purity' do you mean?"

Believe me, we Baptists have a lot of versions- we are not called "dissenters" for nothin!

The other philosophy says, "The very meaning of cooperation is that you have a wide tent of doctrinal standards staked around our strong belief in the integrity and infallibility of scripture as expressed in the Baptist Faith and Message, therefore we may not always agree on the non-essentials, but we have cooperation around the essentials." Of course, the problem here becomes all of those non-essential doctrinal beliefs that are not mentioned in BFM 2000 but which some large numbers of Baptists don't have a stomach for. "What about private prayer language for instance?" "What about people who are baptized by the "wrong" church as another example?" they will say.

So what you have here is the classic battle between the SBC equivalent of Spartans on one hand who want to further solidify the parameters of cooperation versus the equivalent of Trojans on the other who want to aggressively advance the gospel under the banner of the Great Commission and who resent any attempt to chip away at the cooperating fringe. The extremities on each side of this conundrum are so far from the cooperating center that they cannot exist in the same circle. They are not just two competing philosophies, they are two irreconcilable world-views. The two groups have no way of speaking the same language because they are working off of two completely different operating systems.

What is needed is leadership with the gift of tongues. And I don't mean the kind the IMB has banned. I mean the kind of leadership that allows for an understanding and appreciation of both languages and philosophies. I mean the statesmanship that can speak from the perspective of both Troy and Sparta. I mean the kind of wisdom that allows people to disagree without constantly tangling up in public floggings and pronouncements and censures. I mean the kind of wisdom that understands the difference between a local church and the organization that serves the church.

That is what I am praying for this Christmas season and I ask you to pray for as well. Pray that in this tenuous season of philosophical dissent, that real statesmen of the SBC would step into the middle of the fray and articulate the strong solid center and remind all of us that the Great Commission of our Lord is much more important than the silly political maneuvering of the idealistic fringe. The missionaries we all know and have grown to love and the young men and women from our church family who are being called out of our church and into the white harvest field are too important and their calling too important for us as a convention to fall prey to the enemies ploy.

Truly the enemy is on the defense- as progress for the gospel is being made in unprecedented ways around the world. I truly see what we are going through as a spiritual battle, and therefore call on all of us to cinch up our spiritual armor and pray.

ed stetzer quotes from this weekend:

“70% of Southern Baptist churches are plateaued or declining, but that statistic is deceiving, because another 19% are gaining members from transfers from other churches. 89% of our churches are not impacting the world's lostness in any way.”

“Most of our churches are facing a crisis of facing reality.”

“The peak of growth for Southern Baptists was 1954. When population growth is factored in, we have been in decline ever since. If the 1950’s ever come back, Southern Baptists are ready to go.”

“Churches that were most successful in the past era of church growth, will be the least effective and most difficult to change in the next.”

"Comeback churches are not parasitic, but are an invaluable blessing to their community. The measure of a missional church is how the community would miss it if it were gone."

“The 'norma'l in missional churches is every member obedient to the life and mission of Christ.”

“Given the choice, most churches will choose their traditions over their children every time. The result is that over time children leave the church, creating a crisis later of how to get the younger generation back.”

"I don’t think God is honored by multiple generations all worshipping in separate churches. Imagine how impactful it would be if a church would dare to believe God for what He wants to do in the community so that they set aside their agendas and selfish preferences and instead asked, 'it doesn’t matter what I want, what methods will most effectively engage this community with the gospel?'”

“Something major has shifted in the past 20 years, and yet the church tends to be change averse. Successful churches will naturally change over time but what must never change is the need to proclaim the gospel.”

“Change only takes place when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change.”

“Demographics are not the answer. We need to decipher the individual communities to which God has sent us. The Church should be defined by the mission field, not by programs or tradition.”

"John Knox said, 'Give me Scotland or I will die!' Are we willing to say, “Give me Oklahoma City or I will die?'”

“The church of the future must move from attractional to incarnational”

"In the past, the church focused on only one conversion. In the future, unbelievers you are leading to Christianity will need to go through three different conversions in sequence:

Conversion to you,
Conversion to community,
Conversion to Christ."

“The church of the future that is incarnational is interested more in the harvest than in the barn.”

“We are a harvest denomination in an unseeded field.”

“Today, people are realizing that God is using many different kinds of methods and models to reach different kinds of people.”

“The answer is not for all of our churches to look alike, but the answer is everyone seeking the same thing: to glorify God by being incarnational in the community they are in.”

“The modern church is moving from professional to passionate. In the past, ministry was the realm of the seminary- trained. Not so any more- ministry is not the realm of the professional, it is in the realm of the passionate.”

“There must be a transition from seating to sending. The impact of kingdom growth is more important as a measure. Missional churches give themselves away rather than serve their own needs.”

stetzer

The first time I met Ed Stetzer was at a conference in Seattle Washington where he was speaking at Mars Hill Community Church. I had heard the name before, and had seen some of his books- but had never read anything by him. Fifteen minutes into his talk I knew that I wanted him to come to our church. Ed is one of those rare personalities who is able to process huge chunks of data and distill it down so that the rest of us can make sense of it. He reads the books and does the research the rest of us don't have time for or don't have the tenacity to absorb.

He is also a guy who understands the church as we know it- he is a Southern Baptist working with Lifeway Research- and yet he spends enough time outside the SBC culture dish that he brings a fresh perspective to help us pry open our minds to new and changing realities we might now be able to see otherwise.

Besides all of that- he is a dynamic speaker. He is a guy you can sit and listen to for more than 20 minutes and never look at your watch. If you've not read his latest book- I highly recommend you do. If you have and have been challenged by what you have read in "Missional Code", I can promise you that hearing him and seeing him and interacting with him this weekend will be especially invigorating.

Ed will be with us in both worship services this Sunday at 9:15 and 10:45 and Sunday night at 6:30 p.m. in the CUBE and then again Monday for lunch at noon and again Monday evening at 6:30 p.m. at the CUBE.

the gift of ignoring

The last place I want to be tonight is Springfield Illinois. It seems like these IMB meetings never come at convenient times. I am not really in the mood for long meetings and plenary sessions. The contrast of the bureaucratic minutia to our experience in India seems very stark at this late hour- especially after two very good worship services this morning.

I really wanted to sleep in my own bed tonight. I really wanted to go to work at my own office tomorrow.

Those of you who know me well know that I am not big on meetings- I incline away from the details and toward the action. I want to get to know our new missionaries. I want to hear how God has called them and what their hopes and dreams for the future will be. I want to know how to pray for them, to get involved with them. I'm a "get your hands dirty" kind of guy- I prefer a backpack to a briefcase.

I could skip the meetings details- just get me to where the action is.

So, my attitude is not really all that great coming into this meeting at the Abraham Lincoln Hotel. We learn on the drive to the hotel from the airport that Springfield has a population of 110,000. Not much action here at 11:00 p.m. on a Sunday night, the shuttle driver tells us.

I will be in meetings here until Wednesday, so I do appreciate your prayers.

One of our problems on the board, it seems to me, is that we meet too much. The other problem is that we have too many board members. Someone is always creating a crisis- with so many board members the possibility of clashing agendas goes up exponentially. I have been around long enough now to observe how this works in any body of fallen men and women. Increase their numbers, you increase opportunity for dealing with the crisis the members create instead of dealing with the important matters of the mission.

It is the "straining at gnats to swallow the camel" phenomenon.

I read the latest example of this phenomenon sent out via email by one of our trustees while sitting in a hotel room in Orissa India, where millions of Hindu were chanting prayers to their idol gods outside my window. I had just flown from Lucknow where millions of people live on the street and untold numbers die from hunger every day. I had just observed some incredible Christian schools and ministries in which active rescue effort is taking place on a daily basis- but their ministries are like fingers in the dike. The sheer millions of people who are suffering in places like India and Africa can be terribly overwhelming. I guess you could say I was not exactly in the proper frame of mind to read what we in our particular brand of American Christianity think of as a crisis.

It would be good for all of us to spend a couple of weeks in the slums of Delhi or Manilla or Kibera. We should all get a great big dose of the hungry, the naked and the imprisoned that Jesus talked about when he said, "when you did this to the least of my children, you did it unto me..."

Our perspective of a crisis would certainly change. Our sense of urgency about the Lord's command would gain a blaring certainty in our consciousness and those things we thought were so important and urgent and necessary would begin to pale against the blazing sun of the world's harsh reality.

Pray for good leadership this week. We need logical good sense steady handed leadership- the kind that says, "millions of people are going to bed hungry tonight; children are homeless in the streets of Calcutta and Darfur and San Paulo; millions will go into a Christless eternity in the three days that our board will meet- I think we should pour our energy into the weightier matters of our global mission and not get hung up on every little crisis someone wants to create.

Effective leadership and wisdom is knowing what to ignore, and discerning what needs attention and focus. Good leaders know the difference between camels and gnats. After all, we only have so much energy- and our time is finite.

"Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is." (Ephesians 5:15-17)

Wisdom is making the most of every opportunity. It is choosing the VERY BEST in each situation. This means that there are many less important things in life that must be ignored in favor of what is most important.

The ability to ignore is at times a wonderful gift.

There is an interesting story in Mark 5 where Jairus's daughter has just died and some men come to him and tell him the terrible news. They were obviously not the gentle comforting tpyes- they said to this man who is in the throws of horrible tragedy, "Don't bother the teacher anymore, you daughter is dead."

Hows that for subtle?

The Bible says that Jesus, "ignoring what they said", turned to Jairus and said to him, "Do not be afraid, only believe!"

I love that passage. I love this passage not just for what it says of the words of Jesus but for what it says of Jesus. I think that one of the important things we learn from our Lord in this chapter is that sometimes the very best thing we can do is IGNORE.

I am trying to convince my wife that this is a spiritual gift- the gift of ignoring.

There are times in our lives that we must ignore what is being said and hear the words of Jesus, "do not be afraid, only believe."

That is what all of us need, it seems to me, a little LESS fear and a lot MORE belief.

On a brighter note- I am very much looking forward to meeting our new missionaries who we will commission for the field this week. I know of at least one couple that has a connection to our church (the Minnicks). Another couple we are commissioning this week, Mike and Jennifer Beck, used to serve in the church I pastored in Wichita Falls. Mike and Jennifer are heading to Lisbon, Portugal. I am also hooking up with some good friends from Tulsa who are being commissioned to a very remote, volatile part of the world.

It will be great to see them again and celebrate this new chapter in their life.

I ran into John Brady, the regional leader from North Africa Middle East at the Chicago airport. It was good to see him. John is one of those guys on the board who gives you great hope and optimism for the future of missions. He is a very effective, creative leader. He doesn't get to come to many of these meetings because he is constantly moving around the middle east, tending to his "flock". I will enjoy spending time with him.

I asked the Abe Lincoln hotel shuttle driver at the airport if it is true that Lincoln used this hotel when he was traveling through Springfield?

He tells me the hotel is only 20 years old.

It is obviously too late for weak humor. My body wants to go to sleep but my brain still thinks it's India.

The gift of ignoring will come in handy this week.

seeing christianity for the first time

I have been trying to put my finger on what it is that impacted me so profoundly in my visit to India. I would not describe my experience as particularly overwhelming or devastating, but I would say that there came a time in this experience that I knew that somehow from that moment on life would seem different to me. I would see things differently.

I think it is because I feel as if I have seen true Christianity for the first time.

It seems odd for the me to say this- in fact I know that I have made this observation several times since coming back, and have followed up that statement with a kind of tepid explanation for what I meant to say. Surely someone like me who has been a Christian my entire life and a pastor for most of my adult life is exaggerating with a statement like that. It sounds crazy even to me. I have surely been around true Christianity before- I have known many great Christians. I have seen the love of Christ demonstrated in very profound and self sacrificing ways not only in our culture but in places around the world. I know men and women who are giving the best of their years and the best of their talent in places where angels dare not trod (so to speak).

But I have never seen this before.

I have never seen people who are willing to live in a garbage dump in order to show the love of Christ to the desperately poor. I have never seen people who are willing to sacrifice so much for people who have absolutely nothing to give back. I have never before in my experience seen people who have taken so literally and so seriously the command of Christ to give up your life in order to find it.

At the conference in Orissa on Monday of last week, our team of Indians, Americans and Kroatians handed out over 10,000 Bibles to young men and women so that they could give them away to their friends. Before distributing them, our team made it clear that if they chose to pass them out, they could expect persecution.

In the state of Orissa, it is against the law to talk to someone about Christianity.

Before our plane even touched ground in America, we got word that six young people were arrested in Orissa for distributing Bibles. Radical Hindus ganged up on them, beat them, dragged them to a temple and doused them with cow urine (to "purify" them) and then handed them over to the police, who arrested them for disturbing the peace.

I suppose the reason that I am saying that I have seen Christianity for the first time, is because I have had nothing within my limited context to identify with this kind of witness. I have not until now had opportunities to see first hand how the movement of Christ actually works in most of the rest of the world.

In fact, this is the way the movement of genuine Christianity has always worked.

I recently watched a debate between Indian Christian apologist Dinesh D'souza and renowned atheist Richard Hitchins (I recommend that everyone youtube this in it's entirety). In one of the most compelling moments in the debate, D'souza told the story of Mother Teresa on the streets of Calcutta one day, putting her arms around a man whose body was racked with horrible leprosy. A man walking by said to her, "I would not do that for all the money in the world!". Teresa responded, "Neither would I. But I will do it for the love of Christ".

Hitchins scoffed from the other microphone, "Oh please... gag me with a spoon...such saccharine".

D'souza went on to explain that Christianity moves a person beyond reason and logic and up to a place beyond themselves. It is not something that can be explained- it is transcendent and spiritual in nature.

What I have seen and experienced defies all logic and explanation- aside from the movement and work of the Holy Spirit and the recalibration that takes place in the human heart as a result of the work of God's grace. Truthfully, most of what I have seen up to this point in my Christian experience has been at times powerfully exceptional, but very seldom have I experienced something that so absolutely defies human imagination and reason.

How I want us to know this kind of Christianity. When one tastes it and sees it, nothing else can satisfy.

Perhaps this is why Christianity is growing so rapidly in places like India and China and Indonesia- and has always grown through the centuries whenever it is persecuted. History has taught us that when world powers attempt to stamp the flame of true Christianity, they only help spread it.

Perhaps this is why Christians by the thousands drive 20 hours to gather with other Christians and cram into uncomfortable spaces and eagerly accept Bibles to hand to their friends, all in the face of persecution.

But we who have so much, who have been so blessed and spoiled, we who have two or three Bibles at home we seldom read and who only come to Christian gatherings when it is most convenient and self serving-have become somehow immune from the affects of true Christianity, it seems to me. This is why trips like this are worth whatever you have to sacrifice to make them.

I asked my friend Sergay how he liked his visit to America. He told me, "it is a great country, the people are wonderful and the land is beautiful, but the whole time I was there I was thinking to myself, 'I could be in India'".

I really like Sergay. Such honesty. Such pure faith and Christian joy.

I watched Sergay pass out those Bibles to the young people of Orissa. He immediatly jumped to the front of the line with a huge bundle of Bibles in his arms. He didn't just hand out Bibles, he handed out hugs and prayers. He wanted to touch every single one of them. He wasn't just involved in it, he was indulged in it. He was going to be the first in line to pass out these Bibles. He was so eager to hand them out, to look each person in the eye- to embrace them and encourage them. Sergay was very enthusiastic at this- he was doing it with greater purpose than the rest of us.

And then it occurred to me what I was seeing.

My Ukranian friend had also endured years of persecution for his faith. He too knew what it meant to be arrested for living your faith- for passing out Bibles. As that knowledge sunk in, I positioned myself so that I could begin passing Bibles to Sergay so that Sergay could pass Bibles to the front of the line. My purpose from that point was to keep feeding Sergay those Bibles so that he could keep handing them out.

It took us a full hour to distribute all of those Bibles. The line extended and curled hundreds of meters out into the hot India sun outside the tent. But Sergay stood there in the front of the line the entire time. Every single person who walked on that stage received not just a Bible, but the encouragement of a Ukranian believer who understood perhaps better than most people on earth EXACTLY what he was handing them.

When the service is over, Sergay is beaming, ecstatic. This is why he is in India.

Perhaps this is why I was in India. So that I could see Christianity for the first time.