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It seems like it is easier to post videos than write sometimes. This is especially true with this one. This video is a project that I have worked on more hours than I care to admit. I would use descriptives like “meticulous” or “perfectionist” to describe my motivations, but neither fits well. I was tasked with creating a short film to profile MTW’s work in the region. I collected footage from a number of sources, which wasn’t really ideal, mainly because it was shot by a number of different people with different equipment. But I was thankful to have the footage at all, and was especially appreciative toward those who graciously shared what they had with me. I found myself constantly tweaking and changing the film because it is to be profiled in connection with the upcoming General Assembly. I wanted the outcome to reflect well on MTW by communicating not merely information, but a story that speaks to the hearts of its viewers. My times has run out and this is the final product, for better or worse!
I’d never heard this song. I enjoyed the verses but the “refrain” hit my like a bat on the forehead. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
I’m not sure that this is a real return to the blogging world. It’s more or less an attempt at an attempt. I’m pretty confident of my failure. But I’ve thought of writing at least fifty different times and have just never taken the time from work (that usually pays bills) to stop and do so. So here’s to not paying bills!
There are several things I’ve been thinking about lately: relationships, sin, transgenerational stuff (it’s not a bad thing, sicko!), and of course, technology…in no particular order.
Relationships – everything seems to hinge on them. When life is good, it’s because relationships are good. When relationships are good, life is. Even when bad things in life creep in the front door…or even mow down the stinkin’ door and barrage the whole house, we can still enjoy the morsels of sweetness that our found in good relationships. It’s often during such times that the best of relationship are revealed. And God seems to leave a lot of evidence in His working through relationships. I’m reading through Exodus, and continually wonder why God sent Moses to Pharaoh instead of just the plagues. Wouldn’t Pharaoh have gotten the message just as clearly? Even more so, I think of how God honed Moses through his having to confront Pharaoh over and over. Instead of telling Mo, “I’m going to send a bunch of plagues, and keep hardening the guys heart. You just wait right here and when he finally relents, I’ll let you know so can lead my folks northward.” Then there’s the whole wilderness thing. Lots of relationship issues there, and I’m not even thinking of the ones that recorded. I can only imagine my kids, “I got the manna yesterday. Today it’s your turn.” Anyway, my thoughts lately are how when relationships go south (and I’m not talking about the Israelites now). When relationships fail because of our sin, it’s the depth of those relationships that bring the severity of hurt. When I sin, it’s those who I am closest too who I hurt the most. May we be mindful, moment by moment, of how our sin affects our relationships.
And that’s a nice segue to sin, isn’t it? This past week during our staff meeting at work, our boss reminded us from Psalm 137 of how we shouldn’t be surprised by sin. It’s true of others when they sin against others, and it’s true of our own sin. After all, we sin because we’re sinners. I regularly think of a book I read some years back, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin. In this book, the author shows how shalom is the way things ought to be, and sin is really everything that is contrary to shalom. Sin robs us of peace, contentment, and fulfillment. If nothing else, this increases my longing for the day that our salvation is complete and sin will be no more.
Another thing on my mind lately is the issues surrounding our generations. I’m coming to the place in my life where I’m realizing more and more how much living it takes to get real clarity. That is, our perspective when we are young is shrouded by our naivety. Yet, naivety is something that protects us from things like callousness and often bitterness. The compelling thing that stands out to me in light of these things is how we need input from old and young. In our early years we need to listen to the wisdom of those beyond us, and as we grow we need to listen to the optimism and ideas of those younger than us. Wisdom is found somewhere in the middle, often times. The practical advice of those older than us, applied to the reality of the changing world around us which is often best revealed by those younger, can bring us to the place of true understanding. This is especially true in the development of leadership. I wrote some of my ideas in an article about this recently.
I’ll wrap saying that I’ve had some real fun this past week bridging the generational gap with Leslie’s grandfather, Poppie. He was one of the first people I know who got an iPhone, and he and I have always enjoyed discussing, and being amazed by, this little piece of technology. I have to fight the lust factor with this device. This past week, his new iMac arrived, which he had me order for him. The past two evenings we have spent time together getting it up and running and doing some training and discovering together. I just made the PC to Mac switch in January, so I am still learning. It’s been a lot of fun, and I have to resist becoming a Mac-snob. These machines really are breathtaking, both to look at and to use. And I’ve also enjoyed the Wii with McGrooter this past week. We rented a baseball game to play while he was quarantined with the chicken pox (and strep throat). Actually, all three kids had both at the same time. What’s astounding to me about these machines is the interactivity between user and platform, as well as between the users. While he was quarantined, he mastered the basic skills of this game so that when we played, he pretty much stomped me in the ground. That brought a whole new challenge to our relationship! How do I celebrate his knack and persistence, while maintaining my dignity? I have no idea. But it’s been fun, and I will add that I have apologized at least once. Speaking of McGrooter, I’m really proud of his progress on the real baseball field. At the beginning of the season he experienced more than a few strikeouts. His last 5-6 games, he hit the ball at every at-bat! And on another non-techno note, he is really getting into our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia…almost as much as me!
No, this is not about cancer, suffering, or needing to coordinate meals. It’s just for fun, theological fun. Now that I’ve weeded out all the readers but two of you (probably Van and Andy…maybe Curtis is still with me), check out these great motivational posters about the “emerging church.” They’re kinda funny. Here are a couple of my favorites.
And the VERY BEST one:
I had the best of intentions to blog from General Assembly this year, but there was little time. It was a great week in Memphis, and several things will stick with me.
The highlight of the week was our MTW luncheon. We had about 400 people in attendance and the focus was on partnerships. The idea behind partnerships is that the traditional model of missions is losing its effectiveness. This model is where the local church, the missions agency and the field work in a lateral operation. The separation between the church and the field has created a divide between the two. Churches lack a sense of making an impact. The field feels alone. The missions agency can become bureaucratic. So in the past few years churches have sought to become their own sending agency. This has a number of weaknesses. Churches lack sustainability by themselves. Small churches are inadequate compared to big churches in what they can do. And churches of all sizes which do this end up requiring a staff so large that the actual cost of “doing” missions is exorbitant. The partnership model brings the three together, rather than in a lateral line, working in concentric circles. At the lunch we demonstrated this by having a U.S. pastor, a missionary, and a national church leader in front. In this particular scenario the pastor spoke about how the relationship with the field developed from supporting missionaries, to the church sending short term teams. Soon the church brought the national leader from Mexico to the U.S. and hosted he and his family while they attended seminary at RTS. Now the church’s associate pastor and his family, Michael and Tricia Lee, are going to Mexico as long term missionaries. It was a special joy to me as I have had the joy of working closely with the Lees as they have come through the assessment process and are now raising support. Partnerships work because each entity does what it can do best. The church is able to provide people and resources, the national leaders are the best leaders in their own country (they know the language, the culture, and they will raise up their own replacements rather than the mission agency sending new missionaries), and the mission agency can handle the administrative and care responsibilities most effectively and efficiently.
Another memory from the week was seeing a number of old friends and hearing how God is working throughout the PCA. It was also great to develop new relationships with pastors and ruling elders, and forging new paths to assisting churches in developing their missions ministries. Face-to-face time with people always proves more fruitful than relying solely on phone calls and emails. I experienced this especially with one church with which there has been some difficulty in their relationships with some of our fields. Walking away from this week I was struck with the effectiveness of simply talking through issues.
I left for Memphis struggling with loving the PCA. I love the theology of the PCA and I love the people in our denomination but sometimes I wrestle with loving the PCA. We’re not perfect. But General Assembly is refreshing because it demonstrates so many of the benefits of working together. God’s glory is our corporate goal, and his method of demonstrating His glory is through His Church. Watching the leaders wrestle with difficult issues, such as the Federal Vision debate, and then resolve and state that this movement does not represent the Confession, and therefore Scripture, renewed my commitment to the PCA. I still long for us to do better in a number of areas, such as genuine kindness (while balancing the purity of the church with the unity of the church), appreciating and using the gifts of all in the church (while appreciating the office of teaching elder, dismantling the fraternal order that divides it from the laity), and pursuing diversity (without pursuing it for diversity’s sake, but learning to appreciate all people groups). We’ve got a ways to go, but for now this is where I’m led to belong and serve. I long to finish my seminary work and get back in the trenches of pastoral ministry, but am resting in God’s sovereign timing, knowing that He is at work.
FIDE-O usually writes things I agree with, in content, but sometimes not in manner. They can tend to be caustic. So I was surprised today when reading the current post that it seemed so well-balanced, both in content and in candor. Then, as I finished the article I noticed a link to read the rest of it at modernreformation.org. It was an article by Michael Horton. (I’m not sure my link will work, but you can go to the archives, and then go to the Sept/Oct 2006 issue). I don’t mean this a knock to the FIDE-O guys. I’m glad they posted it. I just wish they wrote with as much grace more often.
And speaking of grace, I sure need an extra dose of it today. On Monday we found out my mother-in-law would no longer be able to keep our girls after preschool (and on the days they don’t go). The termination of services was immediate (due to a pinched nerve). So I am taking vacation the rest of the week to keep the girls. It’s been fun, some. But it’s also been unnerving. My “anger problem” has resurfaced. But let me focus on the positive. For example, how much fun is it to stick a doll up your shirt and announce, “I have a baby in my tummy!”? Evidently it is tons of fun. At least for 3 and 4 year old girls. It is also “fun” for the 3 year old (well almost, she’ll be 3 next month) to announce “I tee tee’d in my pull-up,” just mere minutes after putting a clean one on her. Then, not doing a very good job of containing my frustration, I find her sitting in a puddle in my chair. Yes, my chair. Evidently, the way she was sitting, the pull-up didn’t do it’s job. And so now, my chair is drying and I have to sit in a hard wooden chair as I type this. Do you feel my pain?
Now, I’ve just been told, we are at the hospital and we’re going to take my daughter’s baby out of her tummy (that’s the way they do it, you know). But the baby has to stay until she’s ready to go home. So Aggie is now getting and giving shots to everyone. Oh, the drama! But I can now announce that I’ve held her precious baby and that we must all be quiet now because she is resting.
Jerry Falwell died unexpectantly. It’s been interesting to read some of the responses, from Ralph Reed’s initial response just moments after the announcement, to Jason’s at FIDE-O, to Jolly Blogger’s, and maybe most especially Steve Camp’s. For the most part, many Christians seem in some way appreciative of Falwell and his ministry. It seems to me, from my reading, the closer that people were to him in relationship, the more committed they were to him as a person. May you’re saying, “no duh!” But my thought is that most want to admire from a distance those in Christendom who are controversial. It’s safe. I think that is what many have done and will do with Falwell. But the reality that has struck me is that those who knew him in some way, who have spent time around him, are unapologetically appreciative of him as a person and his ministry. That ought to teach us something of the importance of relationships. In our denomination, Frank Barker is in many ways a father of the PCA. Now in my short history, I’ve actually had people say to me things that were less than complimentary about Dr. Barker. But I’ve always defended him. Say what you want about Frank Barker, the man lives what he believes. I know this from working in the church he planted 40+ years ago, and from passing him in the halls, sitting under him in seminary classes, seeing him at church on Sunday, etc… He is the same man every where he goes. He’s authentic. He’s the real deal. I may not agree with everything he says (e.g. we differ on the creation account), but you can’t argue with his life. He doesn’t have “preacher mode” that I’ve ever witnessed. He speaks in the same voice wherever he is. And he acts the same way. He’s humble, and lives simply so that he can give generously. And the only way I know those things are from those around him. He doesn’t brag. So my guess is that those who knew Jerry Falwell best, and who spent any time around him, have the most right to speak about the man following his death. I may not agree with him that teletubbies are evil, but it sounds like he genuinely loved Christ and wanted to make Him known.
Okay, so to end on a lighter note, let me whole-heartedly endorse a new choice in breakfast cereals: Arrr-mini-ohs, with the tag line, “It’s all up to you maties!” And last but not least, my friend Van forwarded this to me: a disturbing, frustrating, yet humourous account of why people don’t like Christians (not for the easily offended…Mom!).
It was a good day for yardwork today, cool and wet. I spent the better part of the day digging holes and planting bushes, pulling weeds and laying mulch. It was a good reminder of the joy of manual labor. I wish I could do it more. I’m sure I’ll sleep well tonight. Now, it’s time to unwind and read a bit…
I was surprised today to learn that Francis Beckwith, President of the Evangelical Theological Society (or former president), has returned to the Roman Catholic church (see the link for his blog). James White has blogged about this. James also wrote recently on Dave Hunt’s low view of God’s sovereignty.
The Jollyblogger has a good quote from Martin Luther that I find refreshing today.
Steve Camp is always writing thought-provoking things on his blog. I enjoyed this article on preaching. It is a good reminder for both preachers and hearers to rely on the Spirit of God rather than on the power or eloquence of the preacher. In this day we have access to the best of preachers through the Internet and CDs that are readily available. And so after a steady diet of the best it may be hard as a hearer to walk away from your weekly church service less than disappointed. But our disappointment ought to convict us. It’s not that our preachers fail (unless they fail to preach the Word) so much as it is our failure to hear God’s Word by the power of His Spirit. We ought to enter our churches with the mindset of hearing from God, not from man.
If Calvinism scares you, you’ll like this new software.
For those who have heard about John MacArthur’s recent address at the 2007 Shepherd’s Conference, but have not been able to listen to it, Sam Waldron has posted a transcript of it here.
I’ve enjoyed getting together the past few weeks with some co-workers, informally around lunch, to discuss issues around philosophy of ministry. That probably sounds boring to most people, but it has really been both a provoking and encouraging experience. I’ve always had the desire to make the most of my efforts in ministry. Who wouldn’t want that? But knowing how to do this has often eluded me. By nature, as a human, I tend to program anything and everything I attempt (whether as an individual or as part of a team). Do we need to do better at evangelism? Well, let’s start evangelism training, and plan weekly outreach events, and have a conference with a special guest speaker? Or do we need to assimilate people better? Well, let’s have a 16-week…um, no, no one will commit that long. Let’s have a 6-week program for visitors, another for new members, and then we’ll put them in a community group. I could go on. The point is that I typically think of “doing” rather than being. Could being a better evangelist be more meaningful (even if to fewer people) than doing all these programmatic things to a larger group. Or if I was more proactive at enveloping others into the body, would that be an example and encouragement to others to do the same (more than attending a conference on assimilation)?
I’m not trying to demonize programs, or plans. But I think relationships, personal relationships, may bring more to the table in terms of effectiveness in regard to many things that we face as challenges. Discipleship? We could do it in a group, go through a book or two, and then everyone would be discipled, right? Relationships are a little trickier. How do we know when we’ve done “it?” How much more time would that take? My point is clear, I think. It can be more work and more ambiguous.
So today we were talking about presuppositions. Our facilitator (who has strong ties to Reformed University Fellowship) shared six presuppositions that ought to be in our minds, because they do affect what we’re doing in ministry. They are:
There are many of these presuppositions that I have failed to factor into my ministry in the past. There were times in my ministry when I swung the pendelum toward relevance, and times when I swung it to far away from relevance. Often I focused more on the task than the person(s) I ministered to. Tasks are easier to quantify than relationships, and we (I) like to measure things. There have been moments in the “pressure cooker” of ministry that I failed to remember that God was at work. So this has been a helpful discussion for me, and my hope is that my ministry in years to come will better reflect not just what God expects of me, but who God expects me to be.
It’s been a while since I could post due to a number of things, mostly a certain book. Actually, it’s a certain stack of books (albeit a small stack). I’m trying to finish a course in my seminary studies, an apologetics course, to graduate with a Masters of Biblical Studies. I’m not giving up on my Master of Divinity (which I’m about 70% through). But since it’s taken me so much longer than I had hoped, I decided I wanted to get something to show for what I have done. I’m doing this partly for my own motivation, but also to possibly open up some doors of opportunity. So, all that to say, I’ve had my nose buried in the first of four books, a rather enjoyable comparison of apologetical methods, edited by one of my seminary profs, (Dr. Steve Cowan). The book is Five Views on Apologetics. I won’t get much into the book here (I’ll save that for later), but I will say that as much as I have been in the classical camp for as long as I’ve studied apologetics, I am really enjoying the writing of John Frame. I haven’t finished and am not nailing down any stakes, but so far I really like what Frame is saying and the way he is saying it.
The special committee of the PCA’s General Assembly to study “Federal Vision” has released their report. And as far as I have scanned over it, I’m pleased. It’s available here. The heart of their work can be found in the nine declarations they made:
In light of the controversy surrounding the NPP and FV, and after many months of careful study, the committee unanimously makes the following declarations:
Derek Webb has a new album coming out this week entitled The Ringing Bell. I always enjoy Derek’s music and his lyrics.
