Stopping a sermon before it crashes...

Monday mornings for some preachers is a time in which they feel bad about the previous Sunday.  For me, though, Monday morning is when I start outlining my sermon for the coming Sunday.  If all has gone well in previous weeks, when I've been doing proper Bible study and prayer and reflection about what needs to be said (or, better said, what God is trying to say through me), outlining the sermon that will be formally written on Wednesday is easy.  The sermon writes itself.

Today, though, I knew that there was going to be a problem.  Even as I had done my preliminary on this sermon, it never really felt right.  In doing this for almost 20 years, when I have to go hunting for scriptures to back up my premise, the sermon becomes something that is probably not worth preaching.  This was one of those sermons.  While I think that the premise was probably good and needs to be said, I had a hard time justifying the sermon.  I came to realize while looking over my previous notes that it was more like a rant than a sermon.  

Rant sermons are all too common by preachers.  We get fired up about something that is happened to us, or something makes us mad, and we want the congregation to know what's on our mind.  Or we get really invested in some particular doctrinal point and we think that the congregation isn't right until they agree with us.  So we rant and rave, and in the end we haven't preached the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Yes, it's frustrating to have wasted all that time on a sermon that won't (and should not) be preached...but it's better to have destroyed a sermon before it can do any harm.

If there is one blessing about having preached for almost 20 years, it's that there are plenty of sermons stuck away in the file cabinets.  Not all of them are good, of course, or are worthy of repeating.  But at least I have one that can be preached so that the church will be blessed rather than cursed.  

Sunday Best

I have a long-running and (mostly) friendly debate going on with one of our members about the necessity of wearing one's 'Sunday Best'.  Likely it comes from the fact that many of our members wear jeans, shorts, and other apparel to church that a generation ago would have been verboten.  As my family is one of the culprits, I think he's trying to send a message to me, but I think he's even annoyed because I don't wear a suit to church, I am down to wearing a tie on Sundays 80% of the time, and on Wednesdays I wear blue jeans.

I can understand his argument, as it's one that I was brought up with.  If you were going to visit the President, wouldn't you want to look your best?  Indeed, the idea of dressing nicely for God, for giving him your best, that on the surface seems to make a lot of sense.  And I agree that there are a lot of people who simply use changing fashions as an excuse to look sloppy.

But over the years I'm started thinking that his reasoning is all wrong.  First, there is no Biblical command about wearing one's Sunday best.  The only words about clothing in the NT are about what a woman should NOT wear: 1 Timothy 2:9 talks about wearing 'respectable' apparel, modest, and not 'braided hair, gold, pearls, or costly attire'.   'Modest' today has taken on the meaning of 'not indecent' and that's probably good considering many fashions today...but Paul's intent is explicitly that we NOT wear fancy or eye-catching clothing.  Indeed, the city of Babylon in Revelation 18:16 that is clothed in fancy attire is a city that is doomed!  1 Peter 3:3-4 is even more explicit:  "Do not let your adorning be external--the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear--but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious."  Church is never to be a fashion center; I can remember when I was much younger how women were especially excited about spring in order to wear their 'Easter fashions'.  That's simply not right...and if we apply this to men, shouldn't we think the same thing?  Shouldn't we wear our common, everyday clothing?  If a man normally wears jeans to work at the plant, shouldn't he wear jeans to church?

Second, why do we think we are honoring somebody by wearing fancy clothes?  When did that come into play?  For much of humanity's existence a person who had two sets of clothing was considered rich.  The fact that the church has bought so much into the idea that there is even something called fashion means we have failed somewhat in our discipleship.  If we believe that 'clothes makes the man', then haven't we bought into worldliness?  The only kind of clothing we should be really looking for are clothes that are washed white in the blood of the lamb (cf. Rev. 7:14).  We are to be defined not by what it is that wear, but by how we have been 'clothed with Christ'.

It's fascinating how such an unimportant and unBiblical topic makes its presence felt so strongly in the mind of so many Christians.  May we be a people who focus on things that are important, rather on things that matter not one bit.

States I've Visited, Hung Out In, Merely Passed Through, Totally Avoided, and Even Lived In

On Facebook I've been seeing maps of the United States showing states that people have visited.  For me the map would be almost entirely filled in...only Nevada and Alaska have not had me yet grace their presence.

But not all visits are the same. I got to thinking about all the states I've been to and what I remember about each.  Some I spent just a few hours in...some I have spent almost half my life.  Shouldn't that factor into the equation, quality over simply quantity?  So, here's a ranking of my 50 states visits ranked by the total hours spent in that state.  It's not exact, but it's probably close.  

1. Oklahoma.  I grew up there from the time of nine months through the time I left for college.  Also my parents still live there.  Probably 37% of my life has been spent in Oklahoma.
2. Kansas.  I was born here and have spent most of my adult life here.  32%.
3. Arkansas.  I went to 3 1/2 years of college here.
4. Oregon.  I spent three years here.  I miss being 20 minutes from the ocean and 45 minutes from up in the mountains.
5. Tennessee.  I went to grad school here for two years.  Memphis, not one of my favorite places.
6. Montana.  In college I spent two months on a mission effort in Great Falls.  What a beautiful state.
7. Texas.  My sister lives in Texas and has so for a long time, plus we have taken several family vacations here.
8. Colorado.  So many great memories as a kid of skiing and church mission trips.  This should be higher.
9. Missouri.  I lived within a stones' throw of Missouri for 3 1/2 years.  All the Royals games I have attended should push Missouri up the rankings.
10. South Carolina.  My wife and I got married here and spent a week in this state.
11. Virginia.  My brother lives here.  I've been there a few times.
12. Mississippi.  When I was grad school I preached in tiny backwater churches here sometimes.  And one night my friend Derek and I went to Tunica to see the casinos.  Probably the #1 reason why I don't gamble...casinos are depressing places.
13. California.  I've taken several family trips here, and when I lived in Oregon would sometimes cross the border to look at the Redwoods.
14. Washington.  Also related to Oregon.  Mt. St. Helens is awesome.
15. Hawaii.  Spent six beautiful days in Hawaii a few months ago with my wife.  Laid on the beach.  Listened to humpback whales sing underwater.  This too needs to get higher.
16. Michigan.  Saw a Tigers game once.  Flew there for a wedding once.  It's starting to get thin.
17. Iowa.  Field of Dreams, yeah.
18. Minnesota.  Took two family vacations here.  Neither is all that memorable.
19. Nebraska.  Nebraska probably is near the top of the ranking of percentage spent in that state that I was driving to go somewhere else.
20. South Dakota.  In high school we took a mission trip to the Black Hills.  Mt. Rushmore!
21. Idaho.  My casino friend Derek and I drove to Idaho once so he could do a wedding.  Also, my u-Haul broke down here while moving to Oregon.
22. Florida.  I went a work conference in Tallahassee once.  It rained the whole time.
23. New Mexico.  My wife's G-Pa was buried here, so I spoke at his funeral.
24. Utah.  My sister once lived here.  Mormons and skiing.
25. West Virginia.  I had a job interview here one weekend for a church.  They never bothered calling back.
26. Kentucky.  Ditto.
27. Georgia.  I vaguely recall taking a family vacation when I was a small child here.  I don't remember much about this.
28. New York.  The week after my brother got married I remember going to a Mets game with my friend Rob, and thinking wow, those planes from LaGuardia get really close to buildings.  This was two weeks before 9/11.  Also upstate is beautiful.  Baseball hall of fame.
29. Maryland.  Orioles games while near DC.
30. Delaware. Rehoboth beach.  I think that's how you spell it?
31. Pennsylvania.  A beautiful state I remember from the year after college when I drove around and camped out and tried figuring out what I wanted to do with my life.  
32. Massachusetts.  Cape Cod.
33. Maine.  It's a bigger state than you think.  And did you know that it used to belong to Massachusetts?
34. Wyoming.  Yellowstone national park.
35. Rhode Island.  On said college trip I remember eating at a restaurant here and thinking that it was likely a mob front.
36. Vermont.  On said college trip I remember camping a few nights here and being cold in the middle of July.
37. New Jersey.  On the way from my brother's wedding to New York a few weeks before 9/11, I remember getting stuck on the New Jersey turnpike in a massive Sunday afternoon traffic jam.  If it wasn't for this New Jersey would be even lower on the list.  Atlantic City is a hole.
38. Ohio.  I remember this to be a wholly unattractive state.
39. Arizona.  I remember it was 114 degrees in Phoenix.
40. Indiana.  I have friends from college who live here.  I don't think I've ever visited them.
41. Illinois.  I know I've been to Chicago, but can't recall being anywhere else in the state.
42. Louisiana. My college friend Glen lives there.  Cajun country.
43. Alabama.  No memories but I've taken it as fact that I once went there.
44. Connecticut.  I vaguely remember a waterfall at a place I vaguely remember as Devil's Elbow.  I'm too lazy to confirm that this exists.
45. New Hampshire.  To get from Maine to Vermont you have to drive through New Hampshire.
46. North Carolina.  One day on our honeymoon we thought, hey, we oughta drive into North Carolina.  So we can say we've been there.
47.  North Dakota.  On our second Minnesota trip we drove through North Dakota for an hour.  We ate at a McDonald's in Fargo.
48. Wisconsin.  On our first Minnesota trip we drove through Wisconsin for an hour.  We didn't stop to eat.  No cheese sightings.

For all the Obamacare haters, my personal story (so far)

I know that Obamacare has a bad name amongst many of you.  The recent election was in essence a referendum on it and President Obama, and it was hated.  Conservative talk shows and Fox News regularly campaigns against it, and the coming Republican majority of congress has pledged to end it.   Court cases may soon mean that all that I'm going to write about goes away.   But listen to my story before you decide to keep hating.

My wife and I both work jobs in which our employers are unable and unwilling to provide health insurance.  That's fine...having health care through an employer makes you more attached to those employers than you should be; you face great uncertainties about changing jobs because you don't want to have to change your insurance.  But for us, this freedom to move has meant we needed to buy health insurance ourselves.  When we got married a decade ago, we paid what I already thought was a high amount for insurance and we have kept it for a decade.  It has been pretty good insurance, paying most of the bills when she had her appendix out while out of state and when we had our two children.  But yearly the rates went up, usually 12-15% per year on average.  Over the course of a decade the premium to cover us (and eventually our two children) tripled.  It's not like we were sick much, either...just yearly shots for the kids and a yearly visit to the allergist for our son.  Maybe a few other appointments, but our rates showed us paying much more in than we were getting out of the insurance.  A few times we looked into other plans, but most anything comparable cost even more than we were already paying...so we stayed where we were.

Then Obamacare went into effect.  And for the first time the rates stopped skyrocketing...I think that last year our premium only went up 3%.  We were hoping that maybe with competition the 'affordable' part of the Affordable Care Act really meant something.  But a few weeks ago we got our renewable notice for 2015, and once again the rates went way up: 13%.  We were now going to be paying more per month for health insurance for a healthy family than the combined cost for our mortgage, homeowners insurance, a car payment, and car insurance for both cars.  Something was definitely wrong.

So we decided to use the health care marketplace on healthcare.gov when open enrollment began today.  Could we find something better?  Hopefully.  I started shopping and now had almost too many choices, 32 different plans from 4 different providers.  Some of them were rather cheap, but had lots of out-of-pocket expenses.  Others were expensive (in other words, basically what we were going to pay now), but paid for almost everything (which was not the case with what we had).

I will confess that the signup was not the easiest in the world...it took me almost half an hour to get to the actual health plans after telling them most of my life story.  I think I had to indicate that I was a white male non-Latino a half-dozen times.  But eventually I got there, and all the information about the details of the plan were stated rather clearly.  Again, there were almost too many choices, but we settled on something in the middle of the pack...a decent deductible, a decent maximum out-of-pocket, and decent co-pays.  We also added on a separate dental plan.  All in all, the plan is very comparable to what we had previously as far as costs we will incur through the year.

So, what't the damage?  Compared to what we paid this year, 27% less for both plans.  Compared to what we were going to pay for next year, almost 35% less.  And this doesn't factor in the $1600 in tax credits it says that we will receive for 2015.  (To be honest, I'm not sure whether that's $1600 for each of us or just $1600 for all of us.  I think it's all of us, but hey, that still ain't bad.)  The total amount we will save even with the smaller number comes to over $6800 for our family.

Now, Obamacare may be distasteful for you because of your ideology...should the government be involved with this at all?  I know...keep your government hands off my medicare, you are saying.  But health care companies, like most large companies, have generally shown that they can't be trusted to do the right thing on their own.  When forced into something, they're not going to be able to bleed us as much as they were doing before.  Yes, maybe I could have found all these things on my own rather than through a government website.  But a one-stop shopping area for health insurance that meets certain standards and can't free-market itself into cheating me?  Fine by me.

Or maybe you hate Obamacare because you don't like that it's changing your own insurance.  You are working for a company that is being forced to change their own policies (or even end their policies) because of skyrocketing health care costs.  But let me ask you this...is it Obamacare doing this?  Or is it the last vestiges of a dying employer-based health care system grabbing whatever it can before collapses in on itself?  What's really the really the problem?  Maybe it's just that your company sucks, and is run by somebody upset because he won't be able to afford a third vacation home.  You figure that out.

Maybe there are other, genuine reasons to hate Obamacare.  There are other affects of this that will not be known for awhile.  The bureaucracy of healthcare is only increasing, and that's distasteful to me.  I don't really want to go through the government to get health care, and given other government involvement (hello, VA!) with the health care system, I'm still a bit wary.  Likely direct control of the health care system is not good.  I've been wondering if maybe a single-payer option is good, and let the government run the whole thing.  Probably not.  Quality will suffer and innovation will dry up if that's the case.

Of course I don't know what the future holds with this.  There's a real possibility that it turns into a disaster.  If it tries screwing over me or my family, I'll come back and say that it did so, and find something else and join you in your hatred.  Who knows, maybe this plan will also go up 13% each year and in a few years I'll be back where I started.

For now, though, I'm looking forward to taking that $6800 that I will be saving in 2015 and doing something productive with it.  Maybe I'll demand-side boost other parts of the economy.  Maybe I'll add some extra funds to my kids' college fund or to my IRA.  Maybe I'll give more generously to some charities.  Hopefully I won't have to pay more taxes to support the evil government.   But one thing I do know is that a lot more of my family's money will not be going into the pockets of health insurance companies in 2015.  And that surely is a good thing, right?

Fear in all the wrong places

Several years ago I stopped watching TV news because I hate the fear.  Don't go out at night or you will be raped and murdered!  ISIS!  Ebola!

Fear is everywhere in our culture today, which is remarkable because probably there has never been a more secure time to live.  We're not really in danger of war coming upon us; we have security everywhere we live; and even all the health scares out there usually only come up because people are not as hygenic as they should be.

For all the fears that we could have, are we afraid of the wrong things?  Likely.  So my parents just got back from a trip back east to see my brother and on the way they stopped and saw some old friends.  They woke up the next morning not feeling well, but eventually left.  They arrive back home this week and find out that the people they stayed with died because of carbon monoxide poisoning this week.  Actually one of them is still alive but not expected to live...but you get the point:  this is something serious!  Had my parents stayed with these people for a few more days, this is something that could have actually killed them, something that likely happens in many places.  It's a reminder to me to a)get the furnace checked and b)make sure the carbon monoxide detector is working.

So many people today are going crazy over the fears 'out there'.  Congressmen seek to gain political points by talking them up, newscasters look for ratings by scaring the crap out of people.  'We've got to stop these horrors!', but in the end they forget about the things that are really dangerous.  What of Congress devoted as much as time to making sure every furnace in America was safe rather than criticizing policy about Ebola?  Wouldn't that actually be a more productive use of their powers?

A friend of mine was driving to work yesterday when somebody ran a stop sign and almost killed him.  It could have been much worse: only one fractured vertebrae and a lot of aches and pains.  But a serious wreck nonetheless.  But stuff like this happens all the time...people minding their own business driving to work, when somebody not paying attention causes a major, dangerous wreck.  Where's the outrage?  Why aren't our streets safer?

Carbon monoxide poisonings and car wrecks kill far more people than the Ebola virus in our country.  But one we freak out about, the others we ignore.  Maybe we'd just rather be scared by fake stuff (hello, haunted houses!) than things that are real.  But that's just stupid.

The Double Standard of 'Terrorism'

Last week in the news there was a story from Oklahoma of a man who was angry about being fired.  He walked into the personnel office of his business and decapitated one woman and was in the process of killing another woman when one of the managers came in and shot him.  A horrible story...but what captured the attention of everybody (beyond the beheading...CSI episode alert!) was the fact that he was Muslim, and that he had been trying to talk to people about his Muslim faith in recent months.  Naturally, the question became not whether this was a horrible crime, but whether or not this was TERRORISM.  Whether this was JIHAD.  Whether this was part of the evil holy war that Muslims were waging against us good Christian folks.

Everyday in the news here in our good Christian nation there are stories of bad people doing bad things to bad people.  A man goes in and kills his girlfriend and then turns the gun on himself.  Two school teachers in Louisiana are arrested for having group sex with a 16-year-old student.  A politician is found to have traded political favors for his wife getting a cushy job.  Bad things happen all the time...but how many do we call these people Christian terrorists?  Many bad things are done by good church-going folks, but it's never terrorism when we do it, we think...just bad things done by bad people.  Muslims, we say, are told by their religion to do a terrible thing.  Christians, we say, could never be told by their religion to do a terrible thing.  We overlook the fact that Christians literally 'took the cross' in 1095 when encouraged to go and invade Jerusalem (and many places along the way, Muslim and non-Muslim alike).  We forget that various Christian groups declared war on each other in the centuries after this.

Why is it that we continually call every evil thing Muslims do terrorism (and such a product of the culture of an evil religion), but every evil thing a Christian does to be simply an individual choice?  We set a double standard for these things, and quite honestly it's not fair.  As Christian people we should know better than to engage in hatred and suspicion, of thinking that 'They' are bad unless other wise proven to be good and that 'We' are good unless otherwise bad.  Grace should stop this stupid thinking that find ourselves engaging in.

But here's an exercise to help cleanse you of these things:  Next time you watch a news report of somebody done somebody wrong, ask yourself, are they Christian terrorists?  If nothing is said of their religion, assume that they are.  If 85% of Americans still identify themselves as Christians, surely their Christianity played a part in their evil, right?  Do this enough times and maybe you'll hate Christians too, just like you hate Muslims.  And the culture of fear will have won yet again.

Wednesday morning phone call

I’m lousy at remembering the details of conversations with people, but this is what I remember as closely as possible about a conversation I had this morning. 

I received a phone call this morning from what sounded like an elderly woman.  ‘Are you the traditional Church of Christ’?  Uh oh.  I wanted to flesh this out, so I asked her what she meant.  ‘I mean, the one that doesn’t have music.’   ‘Well, we have music.  We sing.’  ‘That’s what I meant.  I was just wanting to make sure that you didn’t use instruments.’

After she mentioned that she had thought we had two Churches of Christ in our town, we then proceeded to talk about why this was so.  Historically we can see this division being about personality and ‘issues’, but to me, it’s a shameful mark about the disunity of the body of Christ.  Eventually she asked,   ‘Was this the church that was identified with J__ ______’?  ‘Yes ma’am, I knew J__, but he passed away a few years ago.’  ‘Oh, OK, J__ was the man who baptized my husband and me, and I think it was at the church in your town.’

Side note that will become increasingly important:  I didn't know J__ when he lived here, but I have heard stories of his baptizing people, and I'm grateful for that.   But from what I gather he was something of a legalist.  I do know that J__ was a contentious old guy when I knew him, who preached in a small town near here after leaving this church.  The few conversations I had with him gave me the impression that he believed his own church was the only right one, and that there weren’t any faithful, ‘sound’ churches anymore, except his own, including the one at which I preach.  When he died, his little church was only a handful of people who were likely as legalistic as he was.  I’m not sure if it even exists anymore.

After a bit more talk about the two churches, she got to her point.  ‘I was wondering if you were available to baptize somebody today.  My husband wants to be re-baptized because he doesn’t feel that his first one was for the right reasons.’  Oh boy.  ‘We can, but I’d like to meet with him first.  Can I talk to your husband?’

Eventually she put him on.  I could tell he was very hesitant.  ‘So, why do you want to be baptized again?’  ‘When I first started attending church with my wife, she would take the Lord’s Supper and I did not feel as if I was able to do so.  So, eventually I decided to be baptized.  After all these years I don’t feel I got baptized for all the right reasons.’ 

Right reasons.  What is this, an episode of the Bachelor? 

‘Can I ask you something?  Are you a believer?’  ‘Yes, I am.’  ‘Do you believe in God’?  ‘Yes, I do, and in things like that.’  Things like that?  ‘Do you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins?’  ‘Yes, I do.’  ‘Do you believe you are saved now?’  ‘Yes.’  There were a few other questions I asked along this line, but again, I stink when it comes to remembering this word-for word. 

‘Can I ask you one more question?  Do you and your wife attend church anywhere?’  I was starting to get the impression that he had not attended church in awhile, because I’ve met more than a few folks who justify not going because in their minds no church is truly faithful anymore.  ‘Yes, we attend in W_______, but we live in B_______.’  ‘Maybe you need to talk to the elders or the minister of the church there about this.’  ‘I’m a private man.  I don’t want the show that they have when they baptize somebody, with cameras and all that.’ 

The beginning of the end of the conversation likely came from my response.  ‘One of the truths I have learned about baptism is that it is a very public act.  If you aren’t doing this publicly, then would this really be an acceptable baptism?’  Really, would he keep from his church family that he did this? 

He started pulling away for good at this point and was working to get off the phone.  But as he did I tried pulling this train wreck of a conversation back onto some tracks. ‘Sir, let me be honest with you.  It sounds like you don’t need to be baptized again.  It seems pretty obvious to me that you need to talk to somebody at your church in W_______ about this, the elders or a minister or somebody. Baptism is not your problem.  Trusting in God’s salvation through Jesus is.  In the end baptism is not showing off your own goodness.  It is trusting in Christ, allowing him to save you.’ 

Somewhere in the conversation I mentioned my own ‘imperfect’ baptism at the age of 11, and how I have in the last 30 years grown in my understanding of baptism and the grace of God.  We’re not saved, I told him, because we have perfect understanding.  We’re saved by God’s grace; if I got re-baptized every time I learned something new (and wonderful!) about baptism, I’d have been baptized a dozen times. 

At this point he said goodbye and hung up.  My suspicion is that he (or actually his wife, who likely is the one reminding him of his unworthy baptism and calling into doubt his faith) will be calling other Churches of Christ in the area, a traditional one (we’re all traditional around here, mind you, but that’s a post for another time) that will re-baptize him with no questions asked.  By the time I finish writing this, they’ll probably already be in their car on the way to a traditional, faithful church for him to get dunked for all the ‘right reasons’.   

Over the course of this 10-minute phone call I confess that I never got their names.  I already feel bad about how I handled this, and I am thinking about all the things I should have said, how I should have quoted Scripture about the grace and mercy of God and how only Jesus is our hope, not our goodness.  Hindsight makes us replay these conversations in our mind and makes us feel guilty for not getting it all right.    

But more than anything I feel especially bad, because this man, likely because of his wife’s ‘concerns’, lives his life in a constant fear.  Some go to one extreme in their thinking of ‘Once saved, always saved’…but far too many Christians I have come across over the years think ‘Once saved, barely saved.’  In a way, I can understand why they think like this…they’ve probably heard too many guys like J__ ________ talk about how everybody else is wrong, and you had better be certain you get it all right.  How can you ever be sure of your salvation?  More than anything, though, many never take time to understand even the very basics of God, and ‘things like that’.  Many have taught that faith is not about a relationship with God…it’s simply a list of propositions to believe and actions to prove their worthiness.  They’re so focused on what they think they have to do that they forget what it is that God does. 

I’m not sure what I’m more upset about, though…is it the legalism that brought him to this crisis (which is not entirely his fault), or the fact that he has to keep what he is doing a secret from his home congregation?  Legalism can be cured over time…but to think that faith is only a private matter, how sad is that?  How has he become so suspicious of the family of God that he wants nothing to do with the church when he is being baptized? 

Maybe I'm completely wrong about this.  Maybe I should have just dunked him and made him feel better and gone on.  He doesn't live here, so I'd never see him again likely.  But regardless, I need to pray for this man:  not because he is not saved, but because he doesn’t feel he is saved.  There’s probably been little joy in his Christian life to this point, and even less genuine Christian community with whom he can share his concerns.  And even after he gets re-baptized, probably later today, he still won’t know any of those things. 

Bumper sticker belief, part 1

You can judge a lot about people by the bumper stickers they put on their cars...

My neighbor who lives across the street seems to be a good guy...but he's been through more women since we have lived here than I have gotten rid of dust rags.  Quite a few have lived there for a few months before suddenly leaving, and now he has another one who seems to have mostly moved in, at least on weekends.

On the back of her car are three bumper stickers:  one for a sports team, one that says 'Sh*t Happens' (without the asterisk), and one that says 'Got Jesus?'  For the longest time it sorta offended me that on the one hand she had a bumper sticker that seemed to express a belief in Jesus, while at the other time expressing a crude profanity that doesn't need to be seen any more than it needs to be heard.

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I realize that there's actually some consistent truths on the back of this car.  Bad things happen, and do you have Jesus?  I'm pretty certain that there's probably not a lot of real thought put in to this by the owner of the car...she probably thought that the first was funny while the second was slapped on a moment of piety.  But the fact remains...a lot of crap happens in life, and where is your hope?  When sh*t gets dumped onto your life, is Jesus there?

Things That Annoy Me #3: "I care by supporting a cause without having to really do anything substantive..." (aka the ALS ice bucket challenge)

Half-Brother to TTAM #19: Letting your life and your likes be dictated by fads.  

It started about a week ago.  In my facebook and twitter feeds and on internet news sites I noticed that people were having buckets of ice water poured over their heads.  At first, it was just athletes and celebrities.  But in just a week it's spread to everyone.  Random people are being nominated to have buckets of ice water poured over them.  Everybody's doing it.

What is it?  Something called the 'ALS ice bucket challenge'.  I know...it's a fundraiser for ALS, and to raise 'awareness' of ALS.  In the past day I've seen probably 25 people do variations on this theme, all because they support the cause.  They care.

But here's the thing...what is ALS?  Would half the people who have taken this challenge really try to figure out what ALS is?  Has their knowledge of ALS increased because of this?  What are some ways their ability to cope with ALS has increased in the last week?  How many have chosen to take this cause up until at least Labor Day?  I'm assuming (since nobody has really explained what ALS is as part of their challenge) that ALS refers to what is sometimes called  Lou Gehrig's disease...a nasty disease in which one's body wastes away, named after the famous Yankee first baseman.  It's awful, and I wouldn't want to get it.  I support wanting it eradicated.

But, beyond raising money (something I haven't really seen anybody really doing, though one friend of mine says they have raised $31 million...but this week?  Month?  For who?), how do you really care?  How do you show your support for this?  Again, I have learned nothing even as supposedly my awareness is supposed to be raised.  How do I detect that I (or somebody I know) is coming down with this?  How should I help somebody who has this?  Where do I even give money to help researchers?  What kind of treatment options are being explored?  In all these posts, nobody has explicitly said anything about this.  Instead, they've had buckets of ice water poured on them.  And that does, what?

The reality is that this kind of 'caring' happens all the time.  Click a button on facebook, and you show your support.  That's it.  Want to get rid of an African child slaver?  Watch a Kony 2012 video!  Want to show how much you hate breast cancer?  Watch the NFL as they wear pink socks for a month!  Want to hate some other kind of cancer?  Buy a cheap plastic wristband!

Awhile back a friend got really interested in how Christians were being persecuted, particularly in North Korea.  He printed out a form letter written to the North Korean dictator and wanted me to sign it.  It contained allegations that I had not investigated.  It pledged to 'do everything I can to let the world know' of his actions.  I read the letter, not knowing much about what was going on, but had I signed it, it told Kim Jong Un that I meant business!  I am certain that all these identical form letters has left Kim shaking in his boots.

I know...I'm a harsh, unfeeling bastard.  I really am.  I must not care because I am questioning the intentions of a lot of people who think themselves well-intentioned.  I am asking whether people will actually do something substantive about things that they suddenly now have gotten interested in, or whether they are just being sheep that are trying to make themselves look good and supportive.

But maybe it's time that we start trying to do something real and genuine, rather than just do something that is full of empty symbolism.  You really want to show that you care?
-Go and find somebody with ALS or Alzheimer's or dementia and meet their caregivers.  They're probably exhausted, because those diseases (and many others) are brutal not just on the one who has it, but those who take of them.  Why not give them a break?  Agree to sit with the person for a few hours so they can go shopping or out to dinner with a friend.  If you're really brave, agree to sit up with the person for an entire night so that their spouse can get a good night's sleep.
-Ticked off about African dictators who kidnap kids?  Go an volunteer to be a soccer coach or a Big Brother or a Sunday school teacher at your church.  Actually get to know and support kids where you are, especially those who don't have good parental figures in their life.
-Angry about how certain religious minorities are being treated in other parts of the world?  Get to know a religious minority where you live.  Show them that Christians here in mid-America don't hate them just because of the color of their skin or the way that they speak or the god that they worship.  Show them genuine love, rather than sharing on facebook some article about how all Muslims are obviously terrorists.

It's time we did more than just be supportive.

It's time we did more than just tell people how much we care.

It's time we stopped with all this symbolic crap, and did something real.

Yo, Adrian!

The other day I was lounging around and one of the cable networks had a 'Rocky' marathon going on. Rocky is one of those iconic movie franchises that's always on TV, so I remember it in bits and pieces rather than as a whole.  It's unlikely that I've ever seen most of the movies in their entirety, uncut, but I've seen some of the scenes a half-hundred times.  How many times have I seen Rocky running to the top of the mountain somewhere in Siberia and think, yeah, I need to get outside more?

But the other day I caught the beginning of the first Rocky, when he's in the middle of the fight at Resurrection A.C. and after getting head butted he knocks the crap out of Spider Rico before going back to the locker room to get his $65 (minus the cost for the towel, locker, cutman, and taxes).  Since I had little else to do (actually I did, but didn't want to) I tuned on in.  A few thoughts on Rocky, 38 years later.

1)Adrian isn't nearly as much a wet blanket in this movie as she is in later years ("YOU CAN"T WIN!"); she's just a homely girl from the neighborhood who lives with her abusive and drunk brother.  To me she's one of the more fascinating characters at this point.  I fear that at some point she was molested by her brother or another relative.  But what gets me about Adrian and Rocky's relationship in this movie is how at first he's really a bit of a stalker, and second, when she finally goes out on a date with him that he basically date-rapes her in the end.  She walks him home (!?), then he practically forces her to come inside of his apartment.  Then, when she keeps trying over and over again to leave, he won't let her go...and then they do the deed. Society had a much different perspective on power roles of men and women in those days.  Today if that scene was re-made, there would be huge protests about how Rocky forced himself onto her, and rightly so.  Hey Rock, NO MEANS NO.  Creep.

2)During his training Rocky goes into a frozen meat locker and finds that he likes hitting a side of beef.  Paulie says that his boss says it's OK...but is it really?  And if it is, aren't there huge health code violations there?  Where is the USDA?  Yes, there's prime, choice, and select cuts of beef, and finally beef that has been used for a punching bag.  And who, after the news report of what he's been doing, does any reputable restaurant or grocery in the area want to buy meat from Shamrock meats?

3)Apollo Creed didn't know it was a damn fight, he thought it was a damn show!  That's why he allows himself to be knocked around for 15 rounds before winning in a split decision.  Apollo, after a long period of being champion (had he beaten Smokin' Joe Frazier into retirement?  And where was Foreman and Ali?  Jerry Quarry, anybody?) really was focusing too much on the PR stuff and wasn't ready to fight.  But then, what about Rocky 2?  Was Apollo simply past it at that point?  Had the first fight ("AIN'T GONNA BE NO REMATCH!") taken too much out of him?  Not really...he really whipped up on Rocky most of that fight, and only lost because of a lucky punch at the end.  The reality is this: Rocky was lucky to land in that period between the great heavyweights of the early 70s and the reality that was Larry Holmes.  That's why in the first montage of Rocky 3 he was able to beat all those tomato cans that Mickey set up him up to beat.  To sum up: Rocky wasn't a great fighter, just a really tough guy who a)got lucky to catch fat Apollo b)then got lucky to get Apollo at the end, be way behind on the cards and get a lucky punch in and c)finally got lucky to face tomato cans before Clubber Lang came along who, truth be told, was a much better fighter.

4)If Rocky was made today, he'd never get the chance.  Two days after the announcement, Outside the Lines would report that that Rocky beat up deadbeats and broke their thumbs and hung around with the mob.  Fight off.  Either that, or the story would have to be that he had spent time in jail and was now trying to be reformed and put his life back together.  The backstory would have to be totally different to fit in our times, and it would fundamentally change the story.  Rocky was too much a bum as he was to survive today.

Thoughts on painting my house...

So this summer I decided to paint our house.  It has been a combination of brick, yellow, and and faded brown trim...you can't do much about the brick, so the other two have needed work for awhile.  Instead of getting a power sprayer, I am using only brushes.  We are doing some other projects that we are having to pay people for, so I decided to do this myself.  Here, about a third of a way through the project, are some thoughts about painting my house.

1)Brushes matter.  Don't buy the cheap brushes, because they suck.  Spend a few extra dollars for some good ones.
2)The concept of a trim color adds about another 50% time needed for a project.  Do one color, and it doesn't matter when a misplaced brushstroke touches an edge.  Do two colors, and that misplaced stoke makes me want to curse.
3)I've got about 4 hours of good painting in me a day, broken down into two segments of two hours.  If I keep pushing on, my strokes get sloppy.  Enough is enough.
4)The whole project is taking a lot longer than I thought it would.
5)Painting is not hard work, but it requires a lot of concentration.  Having to watch the kids at the same time doesn't work.
6)Rough wood requires the most paint but needs less touch-up.  Smooth surfaces paint easier, but usually need a second coat.
7)Finding the proper placement for ladders over shrubs and bushes is vital to not messing up your back and not having to strain to get that one little spot.
8)Why on earth would anybody have painted this house yellow?  C'mon now.
9)I need a taller ladder, but thankfully I have friends who can loan me one.
10)It's the trim and the little areas around windows that take the most time.  Big patches of wall are easy.  It's the little things that take the most time.

Background Jesus

I've noticed a strange thing in local businesses in recent weeks:  contemporary Christian music being played as the slightly audible music playing in the background.  My local grocery store has done it for awhile, and last week the same thing was at Wendy's.  It's not just that one song has snuck onto a playlist, but I stopped and listened...the whole time I was in these businesses, I could hear the quiet sounds of this music filtering into the heads of those who shopped and ate at these places.

I'm not here to say this is a bad thing.  I'd much rather have my children hear this kind of music than most of the stuff on country or pop radio these days.  To hear about how God is awesome is much more preferable than hearing about tractors, dirty girls, and the grunts that make up most of the stuff one hears today.  I'm grateful that management of these businesses are happy to play this kind of music.

But it got me to thinking how very American this kind of influence is.  We really like having Jesus in our lives, we like talking about God's goodness...but we like it as background music.  None of the times I have heard this music was it blasted...too loud, and probably there would be complaints.  But keep it in the background?  Great.

American culture wants there to be Christian influences today...but we want it in the background.  Don't make it too loud, don't make it too noticable, and certainly don't make it something too real.  Even those who decry the fading of Christianity from our national landscape probably don't want Loud Jesus in their lives.  They want a Jesus who waves the flag, tells us our consumerism and militarism are great, and generally marches to the beat of our drummer.

No, background Jesus suits us just fine.

IMDB Ratings

I love IMDB, the 'Internet Movie Database'.  I have loved this site ever since I first discovered it...it allows me to always answer that nagging question of 'Where did I see that person before?'  I love that it lets me see parental guides about movies before seeing them with my kids (so I can stop them from watching them or at least know what's going on).

And I love the fact that, by its rating system, it allows me to know what I've seen before, or at least since I started rating movies and TV shows.  Anytime I watch a movie now (or at least a few episodes of a TV show) I go on and give a rating, adding my stats to millions of others.  I know my numbers don't affect the big picture, but it's becoming a more interesting part of community to me than seeing the silliness that is Facebook.

But how do I rate?  That's what this post is about.

My median rate is, I suppose, a 7.  A 7 is a score that says something is good.  It means I enjoyed watching the show, but it wasn't the greatest thing I've ever seen, in fact, far from it.  It was a movie or show that had some issues, but all in all it was still enjoyable.  Here are some 7s:  Mamma Mia!  Anchorman 2.  Oblivion.  Flight.  Heaven is For Real.  Most of these will be movies that I forget about rather quickly...but now I can at least know I watched them.

An 8 is something that is very good, though not great.  Many times I rate something an 8 when I really wanted to love something, but instead I just liked it.  The other night I watched the Book Thief, and I wanted to think it was wonderful and life changing, but I just couldn't pull the trigger on anything higher than an 8.  So it got an 8.  8s are also something that can be very surprising to me.  Frankenweenie was an 8, as was 42.  TV shows that I watch on a regular basis often get 8s: I Dream of Jeannie, Parks and Recreation, and Game of Thrones.  Hard to put those three in the same sentence, but all get 8 for general excellence, but not brilliance.

A 9 is something inspired, something Oscar-worthy.  Here we start getting into rarified air.  Gravity was a solid 9.  So was the old show Mr. Bean.  Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog also gets a nine.  It's hard to punch any holes in a nine or to sit around and think, "If they had done _____, it could have been better."  As it is, a 9 makes my Hall of Fame.

(I do feel compelled at this point to speak about Mad Men.  Mad Men is a 9 unlike any other, because there are episodes of Mad Men I've been sorely confused about and wished it would go away.  But then it sometimes reaches heights where individual episodes make me go back through and watch them 3-4 times just to soak in the brilliance.  Maybe Mad Men should be an 8 with an asterisk, but I love it too much to let it be any less than a 9.)

I have given one 10:  Schindler's List.  It's not like I want to watch this movie all the time.  But every few years I feel compelled to go back and watch it.  It's a movie I want to share with my children when they get old enough to understand.  I don't see a lot of other 10s out there and am afraid to dilute a 10 based on a few great memories.  I have seen pieces of the TV version of The Shawshank Redemption a hundred times, but I can't remember the last time I saw the entire movie as it was meant to be seen.  So I will wait and judge it if I ever watch it on DVD.

Going the other direction, the ratings start to slide rather quickly.  A 6 is a show that is mediocre.  It's not a bad thing that I spent some time watching it, but I can't imagine watching it again.  The remake of Red Dawn, which surprisingly was not lower than this, qualifies as a 6.  Looking at my list I see a lot of remakes and sequels: the remake of Footloose; Star Trek into Darkness; the 2012 remake of Total Recall; Muppets Most Wanted; Iron Man 2.  Maybe a six can best be described as something that simply had no inspiration behind it.  Maybe a six is a money grab.

A 5 is something where we start getting into 'not very good' territory.  The 'Bean' movie sits here.  The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.  This is where we watch a show and through most of it think, "you know, I really wish I was doing something else, but there's too much talent here to give up.  How many more minutes does this last?"  And then I keep hitting the 'Display' button on the remote and look back and forth at the clock.  But you stick it out because you have nothing better to do.

By the time we get to a 4 we get to not a lot of movies, because a)I won't rate a movie or show I don't sit through completely and b)Some movies get turned off, especially if I only spent a buck at Redbox or got them free through the library.  I did make it through Battleship and Tower Heist, though.  Not sure how.

I only have two movies rated a 3:  Cowboys & Aliens (wow, that sucked) and Mulholland Dr. (wow, that was a hot mess).  By this point concepts like 'suckitude' and 'craptacular' come into the discussion.

And as you might have figured out by this point, I have never rated anything a 1 or 2.  But why?  Aren't there a lot of terrible movies out there that can be mocked in ratings perpetuity?  Maybe it's just that I give three points for the very fact that a movie or TV show somehow came to my attention, so it at least deserves that, like an SAT student getting a few hundred points for spelling his name right.

More likely, though, I've seen a lot of movies in this category, and they are the movies used in Mystery Science Theater 3000.  I went through IMDB's master list of the 'Bottom 100', which identify the worst movies ever made, to see what I have seen.  I can be proud not to have seen Disaster Movie and The Hottie & the Nottie (that just sounds terrible)...but I have seen (via MST3K) Manos: The Hands of Fate, Final Justice, Track of the Moon Beast, Space Mutiny, and The Creeping Terror, among many others on that list.  I'm not sure why I don't pour on the hate, but the MST3K versions make them all bearable.  Maybe that's why I gave it a 9.

L S V, Viewer Discretion Advised

It goes without saying that most of the 'entertainment' these days geared towards adults has a copious amount of language, sex, and violence.  I'm not even sure why they bother posting the little warning signs anymore...it seems that without those things, adults won't consume them.  But how necessary are each of those things?

L: Language.  While one usually doesn't find the F word too much in prime-time entertainment, an R rated movie is guaranteed to have this word used over and over again.  Most 'lesser' words are perfectly acceptable now in most adult entertainment; to use the S word never gets it past the PG-13 rating in most films, and seems to be acceptable in most prime time cable dramas.  But most uses of profane language is not just offensive, but really pointless.  When Rhett says "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" it comes after years of abuse by Scarlett O'Hara.  Maybe after all that time, a shocking word might be appropriate.  When there is genuine anger or genuine fear maybe some words are the only things that can express the sentiment of the moment...but more and more the abuse of such language just shows lazy writing.  Last year my wife and I went to a play about two couples stuck in a romantic getaway cabin for a weekend together.  It was a story of conflict: one couple was old and white, the other young and black.  There were good elements to it, but I found the use of profanity lazy and cliched.  Tension build up, Conflict, Profanity Punch Line (usually the old white man exclaiming DAMMIT), and the audience laughs.  Really, that was the best way to handle this?  It was as if the writer of the play couldn't find a way to properly resolve the tension, so he picked out the laziest path he could.  And most of the time when I hear people use profanity today, it's because their brains aren't big enough to express what it is they really need to express.

S: Sexual Situations.  This is what usually gets Christians worked up today, the use of sex and/or nudity.  Somebody once told me that in many novels you can turn to a page each 1/4 of the way through and find a sex scene, and that's probably not a bad rule of thumb.  When you see S listed as something a show will have this can mean any number of things, from people actually engaged in sex to a post-coital conversation afterwards to a steamy make-out session.  It's hard to know what really is implied, as it can mean so many things.  It's interesting the way sex is used...a skilled writer or film maker will use it where it gets both the male and female interested.  A man wants more of the graphic, titillating image; the woman usually wants more of the romance and vulnerability of the people so engaged.  As I get older sex doesn't seem to bug me as much when it is used properly.  It is a very natural, God-given thing, and something that is familiar to almost every adult.  Maybe it is often pictured more 'beautifully' than most sex actually is, but it's a very real thing.  Unfortunately, in most entertainment it usually is enacted between two people who are not married, and often used in the very same way profanity was used in that play: tension, conflict, LET'S GET BUSY!  Again, the resolution of conflict involves two people who don't know each other well tearing each others' clothes off.  That doesn't happen for most people, does it?  Maybe I'm far too sheltered.

V: Violence.  If our society was as truly violent as most of our entertainment, most of us would be in the hospital most of the time or dead.  Conflict may well be the seed of all drama, but rarely does conflict arise to the place that it does in most things we read or watch.  For most people when we have conflict we either avoid it (that doesn't make good entertainment, admittedly), or we get through it quickly by argument and eventually ignore what happened.  Rarely do we take it to the places it ends up in entertainment:  getting in fist fights or engaging in Jackie Chan violence or shooting to kill the guy who has insulted us.  But again, where would the drama be if the violence wasn't ramped far beyond the normal standards of human conflict?

I suppose the reason people watch or read as they do is to engage in some kind of escapism; we don't want to watch things that look like our normal life.  Unfortunately, we have become a people who speak little different than the L warnings of our entertainment.  S and V, though, take us to a place we never would imagine going to on our own.  Perhaps it does give us an outlet for our basest desires, but should Christians desire to engage this?  Suppression is not the answer; it only blows up in our face.  Rather, in Christ we are called to be transformed to something different than what the world had made us to be.  It means that we seek better ways to use language, it means that we better resolve our conflicts, and it means that we recognize sexuality is God-given but must be used as he would have us to do.

Truly, we can't escape such things even in the Bible...even in Holy Scripture there is a LOT of S and V.  Much of contemporary 'Christian' entertainment seems to forget it; but Scripture also takes such things and redeems them to God's good purpose.  The best of entertainment today can do the same thing, but sadly most of the time it only takes them down to our basest desires.

"Hi, God!"

The other night our family was eating out on the back porch, and we could tell that off to the west a storm was brewing up and headed our way.  Our 6-year old son finished his meal about the time we heard the first thunder.  "What's that?"  We knew that he knew it was thunder, but I said, "It's God clapping for you."  He thought about it for a second, and then looked up into the sky.  "Hi, God!"  And for the next five minutes he carried on a conversation with God.  He showed off his beaded necklace (don't ask) that he had gotten for a scavenger hunt, danced around the yard, and occasionally would talk to the sky.

It was a beautiful thing to watch.

And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me." (Mark 9:36-37 ESV)

Preacher Shortage

A fellow preacher I know casually called me up the other day for some information which is not really relevant for this space, except that he's thinking of leaving preaching after being in a town different than the one he had been at when I knew him.  I had not known he had left the previous town, and he proceeded to tell me the story that I've heard so many times before from other preachers.  He'd been there a few years, been with them through some trials, and the moment he even thinks about looking for another job (due to some family concerns) he comes in the next week to his elders' meeting and is given a thirty-day notice of termination, though it's not really thirty days because they pay him for the month he's about to preach and that month was just about over.  From there he went to another church, not the one he had thought about going to previously because they dragged their feet for three months before finally saying no to him.  Ultimately the church at which he landed really had no desire to do anything more than what they are now (and probably don't even want to do what they are doing), so he's thinking of moving, and probably already quit by the time you read this.

Another preacher friend of mine have kicked around the idea for a few years of writing a book for churches, "How NOT to Hire Your Next Preacher", basically a collection of horror stories about things that churches do when it comes to hire churches.  While there are many good and responsible churches out there (and I am eternally blessed to be at one who treats me and my family wonderfully), there are many more that look at their preacher as a hireling, ready to jettison him the moment the shine wears off.  It shows in the interview processes: churches that do not consider that he is picking up and moving a family to a new place, shuffle their feet (aka looking for a whiter knight) and leave somebody hanging for months, or totally lose communication courtesy with somebody they had brought in to interview.  That book will one day be written, even if I'm not the one to write it.

I speak of all this because regularly I hear this statement that "there aren't enough preachers to go around".  Men (always men in my fellowship, but that's another column) aren't being trained to preach, and many churches can't get anybody to hire, so the lament goes.  So our church schools establish scholarships for preaching, 'preaching schools' (with little to no accreditation and no responsibility except to a particular ideology) pop up everywhere, and we wonder why things are the way they are.  Indeed, I can name in just the area a number of churches that do not have a regular preacher and are quickly withering away; it's not that they wither because of no preacher, but because they are just dying...having a preacher only seems to delay this happening.

But it's not that there are not enough preachers; it's that there aren't enough preachers for the many tiny congregations we have.  A friend of mine is a youth minister in a large (for that area) church of about 275 people, and they are looking for a preacher.  Last time I talked to him they had somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 applications.  I am not looking for a new job, but I scan the ads once in awhile see how many tiny churches can't afford to pay anybody; a run-down parsonage and $300/month won't support a family, sorry to say.  Certainly, there are a few semi-retired ministers out there willing to do that, and God bless them, but many more churches go wanting.  I can't say that I really blame these churches; they really can't afford to hire somebody on what is given, and just asking people to give more is not always the answer.  Sometimes the money just isn't there.

Still, many preachers are getting out and doing something else.  Two main issues I see:  1)We burn out preachers out to where they don't want to preach; many are the stories of preachers who keep getting burned by churches and need somewhere to recuperate.  In another area congregation I know of at least 4 men who used to preach regularly who no longer do; they need nurturing instead after years of giving so much that they have nothing else to given, all the while being dragged through the mud by churches who have never learned to understand that preachers need love too.  Why did it get that bad?  Some churches are guilty of malpractice.  2)We have too many men wanting a nice job in the Bible belt.  It's easier there; on the edge of it there are many more opportunities than for somebody away from it.  It frustrates me when I see missionaries return back from foreign fields and they use that experience of church planting and evangelism to settle into a plateaued congregation that simply wants a preacher.  3)Many of our preachers, when they retire, move to a church where nothing is asked of them.  In my parents' congregation in the heart of the Bible belt, they have dozens of retired preachers among them; a few still get out and preach occasionally, but most of them let their knowledge and wisdom go to waste.  I can't imagine NOT wanting to preach at all; maybe not every week, but I'd like to think I'm starting to figure this out after a certain time.

So where are we going with this?  Some suggestions.  1)Stop focusing on preachers being what churches need.  Most churches don't need somebody to give two sermons and preach two classes a week.  They need evangelists, those whose primary job is to make new disciples and strengthen old ones, and that happens more in the other hours of the week besides the assembly.  But wait, you say...what happens when there is nobody to preach?  2)Thanks to technology, most churches don't need a regular preacher anymore.  Many churches (my own included) provide audio podcasts, and some of the more high-tech churches provide live-streaming; it's now possible to watch preachers all around the world, good preachers who don't need a parsonage and $300/month from a congregation that can't afford it.  3)As most churches won't do the first two, here's a third and more realistic one: stop thinking that your preacher will be a star.  Far too many of our people today compare their preacher (for example) to the fluffy nothingness that is Joel Osteen.  We can't compete (except with more truth and better messages, but who wants that?).  Few of us are made for TV; we plod along week after week, looking for the truth of Scripture and applying it as best we can.  Far too many churches have far too high of expectations for their preachers, especially considering the fact that they can't afford to pay them a living wage.  Time for that to change.  4)Recognize that going forward most of us will start having to serve part-time.  Again, this is not all the home church's fault.  Sometimes the money simply is not there.  But we have to be realistic and find ways to help families stay afloat when the church itself cannot be the sole financial source.  It's one thing to say 'we need more tentmakers', it's another thing to help these men find places to practice their tentmaking.  I don't know of any church in which a business-owning member thinks about hiring dedicated Christian men whose first job isn't to work for him, but for the Lord.

I don't have all the answers, but things have to change.  It's a strange new world, and many of our churches and our preachers have no idea how to face it.

Commercials For Codgers?

It's no secret that most TV commercials are targeted to the particular audience watching them.  Beer and car commercials dominate sporting events, and I'm assuming tampon and weight watchers commercials during most Lifetime shows (yeah, I know...broad sexist generalization!).

But what about the commercials for shows on networks who target people who watched TV long before I was born?  I like some of those shows, on a network called 'Antenna TV', that features shows like Green Acres, The Burns and Allen show, and Jack Benny.  What seems to be things that companies think old people need?

So, as an experiment, here's the list of commercials during tonight's 6:30pm episode of I Dream of Jeannie on cable channel 674.  

Commercial block one:
1. The "I've fallen and can't get up" help button for seniors, almost a minute and a half.  Philips Lifeline, featuring a lot of senior citizens near tears.

Commercial block two:
2. NordicTrac X9, another long mini-infomercial.  Burn them calories, fat people.  Just get up and walk.
3. OMG Tax, a tax resolution company.  Stop taking my money!
4. Wall & Associates, to get the IRS off your back!

Commercial block three:
5. XOut pimple treatment.
6. ITT Tech.  Scholarships and financial assistance for qualified candidates.
7. FreeHealthHotline.com.  What are you entitled to?  Get the prescription plan.

I'm actually a bit disappointed, I expected a few more prostate pills and portable scooters like I've seen over lunch.  But I guess that's more during the daytime when the older crowd is still awake.  This crowd is more interested in keeping their money, keeping their job, and staying alive after a fall.

Free As Credit Cards

The big news story in this week's news cycle is that NBA franchise owner Donald Sterling said some really stupid, racist things.  Once again, in this world of no privacy, people in position get caught out saying stupid things, and now likely he will have to sell his franchise to somebody more 'enlightened'.  I suppose that this is a modern form of social darwinism at work...keep doing something stupid and eventually you will get caught, shamed, shunned, and vilified.  A bit of me smiles that it's another rich and clueless guy who is getting brought down in the court of public opinion.  Some people don't need their own Jerry Springer to have their stupidity exposed.

When things like this happen (and, I suppose, they happen to the point now of something we might expect on a regular basis, and how can you really be outraged when you know it is coming from somewhere, somehow, even if you don't know from, um, somewho), inevitably the lament of 'free speech is dead' comes from at least some corner, though I haven't really seen it yet in this case since what he said is morally indefensible.  But what do they think 'free speech' is.  To quote the first amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for aredress of grievances. In fact, there really is no free speech...it's just that the congress can't outlaw unpopular speech.

But the rest of us?  Yeah, we get to slam on people who say terrible things.  Here's the analogy I thought of today.  Speech is like using a credit card: you can buy what you want now and it doesn't cost you a thing today, but tomorrow, if you aren't careful in how you can use it, you'll really end up in the hole.

Freedom in speech does not mean that there are no consequences, especially when it comes in a society in which we are increasingly interconnected.  Somebody can say what they want when nobody is around, and rarely will it ever catch up with them.  But in a civil society of 300 million people, in which you never really have it where nobody is around, that no longer happens.  Too many phones and recorders are out there, taping everything that we do.  Even a blog like this, something mostly anonymous (by design) where I get to ramble on about what interests me (and likely nobody else) at the moment, could eventually be traced back to me.  I've said too many stupid things in my own life to ever be considered for public office, not to mention the stupid things I would say on a campaign trail (I have to think that I'd regularly be lampooned on the Daily Show).  That's life, though.  I'm willing to live with consequences for what I do and say...but I'd be better off just staying as anonymous as I can if I can't stay silent.

New roof, $15,300.

In our national church newspaper this week there is a request from a congregation in a far-off place for a new roof for their building.  It's a congregation of "5-10 members" (what, at that point you aren't sure by a margin of 100%???) asking for $15,300 to replace the roof.

Stuff like this drives me nuts.  Here we are, in a time in which money is scarce (or, at least, nobody wants to let go of what they have), and a near-death church thinks that the best use for other peoples' money is for them to build a roof for a church that probably will not exist in 5 years.

Now, maybe I'm wrong, and this is simply a church that is being launched and needs helping getting off the ground.  There's about a 3% possibility that this is the case.  But more than likely, this is a church of a few folks who have done no evangelism, no outreach, and are hunkering down in their little building, a survival mentality taken to the end.  To their mind, their survival for a few more months or years will only come if they have a building (that which they think gives them respectability) when in fact with 5 or 10 people they could easily fit into the living roof of most houses and survive for just as long.

But here's the thing...is what this church is asking for any different than what we do with most end-of-life decisions?  I have seen in several places (though, this being a blog that nobody reads, I'm not spending a half-hour tracking down the source) that approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of all health care costs are incurred in the last six months of life.  What happens (and I've seen this firsthand many times) is that we hope to keep a patient alive for an extra month or two by pumping them full of drugs, by costly and time-consuming dialysis, by a half-dozen trips to the emergency rooms after yet another fall.  In the end, of course, the patient dies.  Death, in this life, wins in the end.

Something is wrong with how we look at death.  For Christians, death should never be a fear.  At this age of my life I'd like to think that when death is imminent, I'm ready for it and won't keep trying to hold on.  Take me Lord, I'm ready to go.  Some, of course, aren't likely as ready for death and want to hang on.  But Christians should never have this mindset.

But with churches, are we willing to let go and let them die a natural death?  Or do we have the same mindset we have with our bodies?  Why don't we feel as if we can let go?  Or at least 'transition' to a new place (e.g. meeting in a home, or collectively joining up with another congregation) much like a person can transition to hospice?  Back when I was in seminary I preached at little congregations and one Sunday I was invited to a church in a small town.  The building would have seated probably about 150, but there were four people that morning, two older couples there who were 'determined to keep the doors open' for as long as possible.  So they kept up the church act with preachers coming each week to preach at them, so they could feel they were doing their worship.  I found out that there was another healthy Church of Christ, but a black church, on the other side of town but they refused to join.  To them keeping their little church alive was more important than accepting death or being in a healthy fellowship.

Nobody wants a church to die...it might seem as an act of failure.  But as we come close to Easter next weekend, can we see that a seed must die so that something greater than live?  I'm really tempted to write that little church and humbly suggest they fold.  Maybe that's not my place...but maybe nobody has told them how foolish their plans are.

Who gets the last word?

I did a funeral yesterday for a man who had been in the Navy during the late 60s, but had eventually been honorably discharged and lived the rest of his life in general anonymity.  Generally speaking all said he was a good Christian man, well loved by his family and friends.

Out at the gravesite I did the standard committal service...a few scriptures and a prayer.  To the Lord we commit this man.  In doing so we proclaim that for a Christian the cross has the last word, in that though we know his body is now dead, he will arise one day with Christ.  At least, that's the way we Christians would have it to be.

As I finished my brief remarks, though, the navy honor guard did their standard routine that they do at the end of all funerals for honorably discharged veterans.  There was no gun salute, but there was the playing of taps (from a thing that looks like a bugle but is actually just a loud boombox held up to a man's lips, kinda silly but oh well) and the folding of the flag, its presentation to the family, and the thanksgiving on the behalf of the nation to the widow.

The nation got the last word in, as they do in so many of these funerals.  We ask them to attend funerals and have the last word, even trumping what the preacher may say.

It again makes me think of the symbolism by which we do things in our country.  Whether it was the church down the street from where I lived in the days after 9/11 that put a big American flag on top of the cross that sat atop their building , or a right-wing pastor that speaks of God's Plan For America regularly in his sermons, or whether it is having the last word at a funeral by speaking of service to a nation (rather than his life as a Christian), we subtly (or not so subtly) proclaim that we believe in America First.  Sure, you can talk about Jesus and his salvation at the funeral in the church and the hope you have at the gravesite, but it's America and its flag that has the final say.

Why, then, are we so surprised that many 'Christians' are more about their idea of America than they are the kingdom of God?

Podcast

After several years of thought I finally have started podcasting my Sunday morning sermons.  As one who listens to a number of podcasts each week, I know that there are also some really bad podcasts out there.  It takes a bit of ego in order to put yourself out on the web, to think that you have something to say, when in fact there are a hundred thousand other podcasts out there, all put out by people who think that they have something to say.  I'm not expecting my podcast to rocket up the iTunes chart list, but neither do I think that I have nothing to say.

The very act of preaching is based on the belief that God has called me to speak something to people that they need to hear.  As most of us who preach are not really 'prophetic' in the sense that suddenly a feeling comes over us that makes us think we can't control ourselves, we choose to preach.  Some of us even do it for a living.  Each week we need to have enough nerve to stand up and say, 'listen to me, because God wants you to hear something'.  I continue to preach, even though I wonder if people listen, because I still feel called to do so.

So why not podcast?  In this day and age technology offers us the opportunity to let our sermons go out to a wider audience than only those sitting in the pews on a Sunday morning.  For many years preachers have had their sermons carried through the printed word (once upon a time, even in city newspapers!), over radio and TV waves, and now through computers.  Some churches even livestream their entire service over the internet to be watched (and participated with) by people on the other side of the planet.  Amazing that people will listen far away, even when people in your own town (or even your own church) are not listening.

When I was considering starting this I polled some Facebook friends to see what they thought.  More than a few were not sure what a podcast was; it's not as widespread as I thought it would be.  One friend, an old college roommate, told me thought that this might be an ego trip, and perhaps he's right.  He also mentioned that maybe it is like another faulty form of 'evangelism', something where we think it's what people want to hear when in fact people couldn't care less.  Maybe it is...but then again, there are enough people who actually want to hear me speak that they will share the sermons (or knowledge) they hear with those who are not believers.  It's not that I have a great ability in my own, but God does use me to his service for whatever reason.

So...the podcast is alive.  And we'll see if anybody actually listens.

What Is Extremism?

I'm currently reading an interesting book from the library called American Extremists, by John George & Laird Wilcox (Prometheus, 1996).  Basically it's a brief history of many of the far-right and far-left extremist groups in the United States, from communists to John Birchers.

What really caught my attention, though, was a section on trying to identify if one can be considered 'extremist'.  In it the authors give 22 general characteristics, and as I was reading I started thinking about not only others whom I think a bit loopy, but also myself.  Am I an extremist in how I criticize others?  "If it's a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed."  (Kahlil Gibron, 1923).
On most of these I will just list the headings, but I will make other notes in italics that are mine, and quote interesting things the author says about some of the points.
1. Character assassination.
2. Name calling and labeling.
3. Irresponsible sweeping generalizations.  "The sloppy use of analogy is a treacherous form of logic and has a high potential for false conclusions."
4. Inadequate proof for assertions.  How many emails are written each day that people forward on assuming they are true?  "They tend to project wished-for conclusions and to exaggerate the significance of information that confirms their beliefs while derogating or ignoring information that contradicts them."
5. Advocacy of double standards.
6. Tendency to view opponents and critics as essentially evil.
7. Manichaean worldview.  There is no middle-ground, everything is absolute.  Thus, your candidate is wholly evil, mine is wholly good.  
8. Advocacy of some degree of censorship or repression of their opponents and/or critics.  "Extremists would prefer that you listen only to them."
9. Tendency to identify themselves in terms of who their enemies are.
10. Tendency to use argument by intimidation.  How much do we do this in the church?  Quickly when somebody says something we don't like, we threaten their position or seek to kick them out of the church.  
11. Use of slogans, buzzwords, and thought-stop cliches.  Like, 'Freedom is not Free!'?
12. Assumption of moral superiority over others.
13. Doomsday thinking.  (Whatever problem they predict), "it's just around the corner unless we follow their program and listen to their special insight and wisdom, to which only the truly enlightened have access.  For extremists, any setback or defeat is 'the beginning of the end'."
14. Belief that it's okay to do bad things in the service of a 'good' cause.  "Defeating an 'enemy' becomes an all-encompassing goal to which other values are subordinate.  With extremists, the end justifies the means."
15. Emphasis on emotional responses and, correspondingly, a de-emphasis on reasoning and logical analysis.
16. Hypersensitivity and vigilance.  See my previous post on John Waddey, who saw himself as the sole guardian against the heretical barbarians at the gate.
17. Use of supernatural rationales for beliefs and actions.
18. Problems tolerating ambiguity and uncertainty.  "The more laws or rules there are that regulate the behavior of others--particularly their 'enemies'-the more secure extremists feel."  Particularly, when it comes to many Christians, there is a need to be able to interpret every Scripture within a particular framework.  To deny the ability to do this makes many, many people nervous.
19. Inclination toward 'groupthink'.  "Groupthink involves a tendency to conform to group norms and to preserve solidarity and concurrence at the expense of distorting members' observations of facts, conflicting evidence, and disquieting observations that would call into question the shared assumptions and beliefs of the group.  Right-wingers (or left-wingers), for example, talk mostly to one another, read only the material that reflects their own views, and can be almost phobic about the 'propaganda' of the 'other side'."  It is remarkable to me that the same people who continually think of the news media as having a liberal bias will only listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Fox News.  Anything else is to be ignored.
20.  Tendency to personalize hostility.
21. Extremists often feel that the system is no good unless they win.  "For example, if they lose an election, then it was 'rigged'.  If public opinion turns against them, it is because of 'brainwashing'....The test of the rightness or wrongness of the system is how it has an impact on them."
22.  Extremists tend to believe in far-reaching conspiracy theories.

The Death of John Waddey

John Waddey died recently, according to an obituary in the Christian Chronicle.  After reading about his death, I got to wondering how we are to respond when somebody dies who was a terrible and corrupting influence on the church? 

For the past decade or so both churches for which I preached received every month this little rag called ‘Christianity Then and Now’, which was a nasty little polemic against any kind of post-1957 change in the church.  It was put together by one man, John Waddey, and mailed to who knows how many other churches in this country and around the world.  It was complete and utter garbage and seemed to serve the singular point of making Christians suspicious of one another.  In almost every issue Waddey would speak about the nefarious methods of ‘change agents’ in the church.  In Churches of Christ, these are those who dare to challenge the dogma about instrumental music, women’s role in the church, fellowshipping with ‘other’ kinds of churches, and basically any kind of move to make the church not seem like a monument to the church methods and structures popular during the Eisenhower administration. 

Not long after I moved here, for about a year I would respond back in a letter each month to Waddey, pointing out his continual misuses of Scripture, his oversimplification of the issues, and how he was instigating divisiveness within the church.  For two or three months he wrote back angry and bitter letters about how I must certainly be one of those change agents and why didn’t I want to just leave the church rather than pull good people down with me.  Eventually, though, he stopped writing, and I decided after a year that this garbage wasn’t worth my time.  It was just getting me mad that somebody could find those willing to pay to have crap like this sent out even while so many other needs were being unmet in the church.  I sought to apply the principle of Romans 16:17-18, in which Paul told them to ‘watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.  For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve.’  I’m not sure Waddey was ever smooth or flattering, as he seemed to hate just about everybody, but from my conversations with other preachers it did appear that he had gained something of a following of those who were naïve. 

So, how can we speak of Waddey, if we do not want to speak ill of the dead?  When I was in grad school at Harding back in the 1990s I often had conversations with some of my fellow students about rags like this (and sadly, there have always been too many to keep track of) which seem to do little more than boast self-righteously about how right their own little group is and how wrong and condemned everybody else is.  Going all the way back to magazines like Arthur Crihfield’s Heretic Detector and continuing on through the 1990s to Ira Rice’s Contending for the Faith, we’ve had far too many magazines dedicated to dogma and destruction rather than building one another up.  But in those days, I used to be on the side of thinking that those magazines were helpful, as 1)they gave an outlet for disaffected malcontents and 2)helped keep those of us who were more progressive in line. 

As I have gotten older, though, I have become much more cynical about the place of these kinds of magazines.  Through their writings malcontents enable themselves to be paper popes and drag others into following them (and thus make them suspicious of others); they become much like the church in Corinth in which everybody has somebody whom they follow instead of all following Christ first. 

What may be worse, though, is that after reading these rags for several years I find how untruthful they are about what the motivations and teachings of the progressives usually are.  It’s hard to have an open and frank conversation with somebody steeped in hyper-conservative dogma when they are convinced that those on the other side are Satan-inspired heretics who are out to destroy the church and nothing will convince them otherwise.  Thus they feel compelled to proof-text Scriptures that have nothing to do with the issue at hand, misrepresent the motivations of those calling for change, and even distort the Bible to make it say something that the Biblical writers never intended to say.  I remember one time with John Waddey when he had used Galatians 1:6-9 to condemn change agent liberals on some issue, and I pointed out in a letter that he was using that Scripture to mean the opposite of what Paul intended (for in Galatians Paul is opposed to the legalists, not the liberals).  He wrote back and basically tried justify what he had done because liberals were the great danger and he had to find something in scripture that would point out the error of their ways.  In the end, his argumentation became even more ridiculous and desperate and unbiblical. 

I’d like to think that there were some whose faith was strengthened by Waddey’s magazine.  Once a year there might be something worth reading, and I’m hoping that the little good it contained was more read than the many other worthless articles.  I doubt that happened, but I can hope.  Regardless of how horrible his writing became in the last decade of his life, though (and in recent years it went straight into the trash), I think that the Chronicle and others who memorialize him will hopefully remember whatever good he did.  He did train preachers and preach (though I can only imagine what that was like and shudder), after all.  Surely some came to Christ by his efforts.   

Most importantly, though, in his death he will have learned that his salvation was not dependent upon his own works-righteousness or his ability to root out error (imagined or not).  Rather, he will have learned in eternity that he is saved by the grace of God, that it is by the blood of Jesus Christ that he had any hope at all.  If Jesus can save me in my wickedness and Paul who was the ‘chief of sinners’, then surely God will also save a divisive and angry man who at one time accepted Jesus and died with him in baptism to be raised forever.  Maybe this is what the death of John Waddey can teach me today.

Max and Ruby, a background study

Ruby (age 10) and her younger brother Max (age 4) live alone in a well-kept house in a small village.  They appear to have no family except for their maternal grandmother, a sweet elderly woman widowed four years previously.  Ruby and Max seem to have an acceptable level of social life with their peers; Ruby engages in girl scouts-like organization and regularly has friends over to play; Max likewise occasionally has friends with which to play.  Ruby appears to be the one who is the caregiver for Max, regularly bathing him, dressing him, and feeding him.

Their living arrangement brings about several questions:
-Why is Ruby seeming to be the sole caregiver for Max?
-If there are no parents around, why do the children not live with their grandmother?
-Why are they not allowed to attend school?
-What will happen to these children?

The situation of Max and Ruby appears to stem from a tragic event in the months before we first watch their story.  Max and Ruby came from a generally stable household with loving parents...until one day when the parents disappeared.  What happened to them?

I suggest that Ruby somehow was responsible for the deaths of her parents.  Perhaps they perished in a car crash when she distracted them with a tantrum.  Perhaps they died when she accidentally mixed some bathroom chemicals into a cake she made for them.  Or perhaps they tripped over and broke their necks when they encountered the legion of Ruby's stuffed animals in the living room.

Ruby might have been responsible, but she was not guilty.  Her actions greatly divided the family.  The paternal grandparents were upset with what happened and refused to forgive Ruby, and by extension Max, for their son's death.  They refuse to have any contact with the children.  The maternal grandmother, however, loves the children deeply and has chosen to forgive.  While in her elderly state (and perhaps displaying the first signs of dementia) she does not have the ability anymore to raise the children herself, she continues on with the traditional grandmother role of looking in on them and spoiling them when she can before sending them to their own home.

But why does society refuse to provide proper adult supervision for these children?  In their particular rabbit community, children who are orphaned, particularly those who caused the death of their children, are not provided foster parents.  Rather, the children are left to fend for themselves without the benefit of a proper education.  The children may be blessed to have a few neighbors courageous enough to allow their children to play with Ruby, who has generally been ostracized for the death of her parents, but these are the exceptions.  Ultimately, their lives within this rabbit culture are not honored as humans are, for rabbits reproduce far too quickly to sustain a stable population count.  Rabbit children, particularly orphaned children who had a role in the deaths of their parents, are considered disposable by society as a whole, and if a few die due to neglect, others will soon replace them.  They breed like rabbits, after all.  

Ruby, however, is still reeling from the loss of her parents and feels especially guilty for their deaths.  She has vowed to her rabbit-god that she will care for her brother until he reaches adulthood.  Thus she cooks and cleans and tends to his every need, even as she lives off the trust fund that her deceased parents left in their care.  She may have the body of a 10-year old, but the scars of her youth have already made her into a middle-aged woman emotionally.  Certainly her friends come around occasionally to give her some youthful company, but Ruby will never marry, never find love, and die at a relatively young age due to the stresses of her youth.

Max, having lost his parents at a very young age, will grow up into a young man with many emotional issues.  His sister will have done well to have raised him to this age, but having not the parental support he needed he will continually see women as objects for displaced affection.  He will go through a series of short-term relationships, often producing bastard rabbit offspring, but rarely will have any contact with his children.  His sister Ruby will seek to be a good aunt to these children, but again, being rabbits, there are too many of them to count.

Max and Ruby is a tragic story whose difficulties have only begun when we first begin to view their story.