03.13.08

Self-Examination for the Church

Posted in Reading, Church Life, Mission at 1:04 pm by Anthony

I made my first trip to Africa in 1988.  Shortly after arriving in Kenya, I met Stan Granberg, and spent four weeks as an intern with the mission team in Meru where Stan lived.  I was impressed with him at that time, and continue to be.  Stan is now leading Kairos, which encourages planting new Churches of Christ in North America.  Stan is deeply commited to our heritage in Churches of Christ and wants to help us reclaim the best parts of our heritage. 

Today, I received the following email from Stan.  I thought it was worth sharing with you:

March 13, 2008

Dear Friends,

My wife and I have the opportunity to travel widely across the country, observing, listening to and engaging in conversation with the fellowship of the churches of Christ. As we do this I keep a travel log of what we are learning. Recently I was blessed to share with our local preachers what God has been doing through Kairos. Since many of these men are my “traveling companions in the kingdom” I wanted to share with them some of what I have been learning about our fellowship. The following is a condensed version of those thoughts. I pray these considerations will encourage and challenge you as you serve God in his great kingdom.

1. Our heritage is blessed by a powerful “believers church” theology that, in its strength, is not complacent with the world as it is. For church planting, it is this theological heritage that critiques pragmatism or personal preference as the foundations for decision making about what a church planter will do. Our believers’ church heritage should help us live out God’s desires in the midst of the fiercely opposing values of a world where the “prince of this world” rules hard. Leonard Allen in Things Unseen describes the essence of a believers’ church theology as an apocalyptic vision of the kingdom of God of which we are both recipients and outposts; this apocalyptic vision provides the dynamic that energizes us into service to the world.

2. Our fellowship is blessed by a deep desire to obey, rooted in a trust in God’s Word. When this desire to obey is based on relationship, knowing God—we do well; when this desire to obey is interpreted as being knowledgeable of the Word, disconnected from relationship with a personal God, we lapse into law-keeping which turns us brittle and harsh.

3. The Road Not Traveled – This is the title of the final chapter in John Mark Hick’s Kingdom Come, the story of James Harding, David Lipscomb and the Nashville Bible School. Our fellowship, and probably God’s people in general, tend to do better when we are traveling folk and not settlers. Our call is still the call of Abraham to leave Ur and of Moses to leave Egypt so that we can experience God as we travel with him. Working with John Mark’s theme, here are three areas that for me constitute the road our fellowship in our generation has yet to travel:

a. Reducing our pride and arrogance. Our spirit of debate and insistence on our correctness are signs. Our well-honed ability to critique, evaluate and look for fault is another. The most damaging evidence of this sin is our struggle with spiritual submission to those whom God brings with spiritual authority into our lives. I confess, I am truly a child of my heritage—I feel I can do better then “they can.” So I have the right to tweak, adjust, dissent. But honestly, I can’t do better. I’m doing the best I can. Lord enrich my willingness to be blessed by others.

b. Serving the world as part of the fellowship of the broken. Our strong “set apart” exclusivity has not only separated us from other believers’ traditions, it has often separated us from the world God intends for us to serve. If we are to be salt and light among God’s lost people we will gain the opportunity to be heard as we recognize that we too are members of the fellowship of the broken. It is this personal recognition that will raise our level of compassion out of the pew and into a life of transforming service in God’s world.

c. Developing a culture of generosity at the level of the congregation. My experience is that as individuals our fellowship can be generous—at times. This has seldom been my experience at the congregational level. A friend of mine recently made this observation of us, “When missionaries go to churches of my fellowship if they do not ask for big money, the churches are insulted. When missionaries go to churches of Christ your churches are insulted if they are asked for money.” Giving without expecting the benefit of the gift must truly be the definition of generous giving. My experiences suggest that generous giving is a road our churches have yet to travel.

I just wanted to share these thoughts with you as we learn together how to minister from our fellowship, calling one another to God’s mission among God’s lost people.

God bless you all for your contributions to the kingdom.

Stan Granberg
Kairos executive director

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02.27.08

William’s Psalm

Posted in Mission, Prayer, News, Theology at 10:42 am by Anthony

This past Monday night, as wild fires were raging across West Texas, another West Texas family also lost their home in a fire.  Only this family wasn’t living in West Texas at the time.  Yancy and Sherry Fariss are translating the Bible in Guinea, West Africa. 

As their house burned, Sherry heard their seven  year old son, William, saying some powerful words that resembled a psalm.  In the chaos of the moment, she was not able to write down the words at the time.  But a couple of days later, he was still saying them, so Sherry wrote the words down as William dictated them to her.  Here is William’s psalm:

Through wind and rain
Through fire and lava
The Lord will never leave you.
Through earthquakes and floods
Through changing sea levels and burning ash
The Lord will never leave you.
If you love Him, He will bless you
and He will give you many things.
Who can change the Lord’s words?
Who can stop the Leviathan?
The Lord, of course.
Who made everything?
Who made the animals?
Who made the dinosaurs?
The Lord, our God.
Who can stop the Lord?
Who can chase a cheetah across the plains of Africa?
The Lord, He can.
Who can stand on Mount Everest?
Who can face a rhinoceros?
The Lord.
The Lord can give you sheep and goats and cows and ducks and chickens and dogs and cats.
The Lord can give you anything He wants to.
Just like David fought Goliath or Daniel lived throughout the lions’ den.
Just like Moses on the mountain, just like the Israelites fought the Jebusites.
The Lord will never stop His power.
Who can face a tyranosaurus rex?
Who knows what kind of animals lived thousands of years ago?
The Lord! He knows.
Stop all the evil, and be kind to one another.
Who can stop the Lord?
Who can face an elephant?
Who is brave enough to face a lion?
The Lord.
Who’s as fast as a horse?
Who can catch a blue whale?
Who is brave enough to face a giant squid?
The Lord.
Just as Jesus died on the cross, so the Lord had done so.
The Lord will never leave His people. The Bible is His word.
The Lord is a good leader.
Just as Moses and Aaron led the Israelites into the desert, so the Lord had done so.
Who can see the dinosaurs? Who can face the behemoth?
The Lord who loves you.
And He will not forsake His people. The end.

To learn how you can help the Farisses, go to the Pioneer Bible Translators web site.

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02.06.08

A Father’s Heart

Posted in Preaching, Mission at 10:55 am by Anthony

This Sunday I’m going to be talking about Spiritual Warfare.  When I read Ephesians 6:10, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power,” my thoughts went immediately to something I watched on the Internet last week.  Rick Burgess is one of the hosts of the Rick and Bubba Show, a morning show heard on many radio stations, especially in the Southeast.  A couple of weeks ago, he lost his 3 year old son, Bronner, in an accidental drowning.  His words of faith and challenge at Bronner’s funeral service, should challenge all of us.  You can read a transcript of Rick’s words, or watch the address, contained in three You Tube videos, below.

Rick Burgess, “A Father’s Heart,” Part 1

Rick Burgess, “A Father’s Heart,” Part 2

Rick Burgess, “A Father’s Heart,” Part 3

You can also download the audio file here.

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04.29.07

Too Busy for Grace?

Posted in Mission, News at 6:58 am by Anthony

My friend Marshall Coffey, minister at the Anson Church of Christ, sent me this link to Pearls Before Breakfast, a Washington Post article about a world-famous classical violinist who performed in a Washington, D.C. subway station.  How do people respond to beauty and grace when it is unscheduled and free?  The article is lengthy, but well-worth time to read.  If you do, you’ll be reflecting on it for days to come. (If your internet connection permits, view the videos and listen to the audio.)

How does the church preach and embody a message of grace in a culture that may be too self-absorbed to receive it? 

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04.20.07

Gospel — Facts or Person?

Posted in Reading, Mission at 7:25 am by Anthony

After being a Christian all of my life, I find it amazing that I’m still working on answering the very fundamental question “What is the gospel?” As a child I was taught that the gospel consisted of “facts to be believed and commands to be obeyed.” When I was in college students and teachers debated whether the gospel consisted of all biblical teachings or “the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.” For a long time I accepted the shorter version, but as I’ve gotten to know Jesus better, I’ve found a lot of gospel — the good news of the kingdom — operating long before Jesus made it to the cross. Yesterday, in a commentary on Matthew by Stanley Hauerwas, I came across this statement.

That he [Jesus] must go to those in neeed indicates that the gospel is not and cannot be a set of beliefs. The gospel is the man, and this man must encounter actual men and women in order to call them into the community of the new age. Evangelism is people meeting and coming to know people. … A church that is not a missionary church is not a church. The book of Acts witnesses to the necessity for disciples of Christ to, like Jesus himself, be on the move. (p. 103)

Is the gospel a set of beliefs or a person? Or a set of beliefs about a person? Or a relationship with a person? Hauerwas’s point, and I think it’s a good one, seems to be that people whose lives are shaped by the gospel will be in relationship with people who need good news, who need Jesus, and that the gospel/Jesus cannot be shared apart from relationships. If the gospel is information, answering the question “What must I do to be saved?,” then that information can be conveyed without relationship. But when the jailor asked that question, Paul and Silas went to his home and shared with his family — in the context of real-life relationships, how “believing on the Lord Jesus Christ” was to be lived out. If lives are to be transformed, then it must happen through life-on-life sharing.

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04.03.07

A Tool You May Be Able to Use

Posted in Mission at 9:42 am by Anthony

If you work in a secular environment where your computer screen can be seen by others, you may be interested in this screensaver that I came across.  It is designed to stir interest and perhaps conversation without being “in your face.”  Along with nature scenes, here are some of the quotes on it.

• “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” — Augustine
• “There is a vacuum in the heart of every person that cannot be filled by any created thing.” — Blaise Pascal
• “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” — Jim Elliott
• “To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?” — C.S. Lewis

I hope this is of some help as you are out there in the “real world” with the people that God loves so passionately and wants to reach through you.

Click here for instructions on how to download and install.

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03.31.07

What is the Gospel — Really?

Posted in Blogging, Ministry, Mission at 2:19 pm by Anthony

If you’re new to the Clay Pot Journal, you may be wondering what all those links are over in the side bar.  Those are blogs of friends of mine, some of whom I’ve only met in cyberspace.  One of those that I deeply cherish is Dee Andrews.  Dee is a remarkable woman and you can read some great stories on her Finding Directions blog.  Recently she celebrated the birth of a new granddaughter, one born into a loving and secure family.  But not all children are so blessed.  Dee tells the story of one of those and challenges us to greater discipleship.  What she says about her little town in southern Mississippi could easily have been written about “the coolest little town in Texas.”

For instance - just a couple of weeks ago in our Sunday school class one of our young ladies who works for the county social services system said that she’d had a sad and needy case come in that week.  A black lady who is a grandmother had come in with her brand new infant granddaughter who had no name.  The baby was born beside the road up a ways from here to the lady’s daughter, who is a crack addict.  So is the baby.

The woman hadn’t had any contact with her daughter in some time and didn’t have any idea where she was or that she was pregnant.  The mother of the baby was hauled off to jail, the county sought out the grandmother and brought this tiny baby to her and left.

When the grandmother showed up seeking help where she could she just had the baby lying in the back floorboard of her car because she had no infant seat and no one she’d contacted as yet had been willing to help her out at all!  The young woman in our class quickly remedied that situation by making a couple of calls to fellow church members and found a used car seat in excellent condition that they brought to the grandmother.

This young woman helped the grandmother all she could with county and state and federal aid (WIC program, etc), but asked us to help out, too, as individuals in the class and as a church.  The grandmother had no clothes or diapers or anything.  I wrote out a check for a sizable amount of money and gave it to them to go shopping for the baby.  What less could I do?

That was last week.  This week she said that the grandmother now calls the baby Lily.  Baby Lily, she is.  Here’s the clincher - the state has now brought the grandmother the three other children by the daughter - all boys - ages 11, 8 and 4.  The four year old the grandmother had never seen.

She - the grandmother - is without means of support herself and how can she care for these four hungry kids, including a small infant?  She still has a 16 year old son of her own who lives with her.

These are the people the church needs to be reaching out to around here in this small Mississippi town.  This grandmother should be at the top of our list when it comes to “missional” thinking.  I mean, this is a very religious town, over all.  There are dozens and dozens and dozens of churches of all varieties and all full of good people. 

They don’t necessarily need “converting.”  What would we be converting them too?  Showing up at a different building every Sunday morning because we sing accepella and they don’t?  Are we going to proselytize from other churches who may not agree with us in 100% of our theology but who worship with great faith as well as we do?

It is the poor and hurting people of this community - the unchurched, the neediest of needy people we should reach out to in Christian love.

Let us not grow weary in well doing, nor lose sight of who it is we should be doing well for.  

I’m happy for my new granddaughter and the life she is being born into.  Exceedingly happy.  But how can I not want as much for any other baby born into either my family or a family near by?  

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03.23.07

Free Parking?

Posted in Reading, Mission at 3:09 pm by Anthony

I was looking this week for something catchy to put up on our church sign and I came across a saying that several churches have used in their parking lots — a sign that says:

Church Parking Only — Violators Will Be Baptized

I guess that would keep a lot of people away.  I was reminded of this when I read the piece below in Leadership magazine.  It’s written by Mark Buchanan from British Columbia.  He talks about how, in Mark 2, people who really needed Jesus couldn’t get to him because of the crowd who was gathered around him had shut them out.  Could that crowd be the church who, in listening to Jesus, often ignores the needs of those who need to get to him the most?

I’m new to Albany and I look forward to witnessing my first Fandangle.  This story may also help us reflect on how we can minister to our community and the many visitors who will be coming down our street.

Here’s the story — think about it.

Years ago I was invited to speak at a small church in a semi-rural lakeside community.  I arrived a half-hour before the service, and the building was still locked.  So I drove down the town’s main drag, which the church was on.  There, between the main street and the lake, were thousands of people gathered for a community-sponsored half-marathon.  A local band was already playing on a flatbed.  Coffee kiosks were doing a booming business.  Runners were stetching, limbering up.  The local radio station was giving live color commentary.

It was a festival.

I drove back to the church and found the building open.  A church deacon met me at the door, took me to a small office and, before we prayed, told me how upset he was: on Friday, the church’s parking lot had been freshly paved.  On Saturday, someone (”probably one of those people here for the marathon”) had driven an RV into the lot.  Turning it around, they’d creased the soft asphalt.

The deacons had called an emergency meeting for Sunday night, and the outcome would likely be that they’d use the church’s savings (they had over $50,000 in the bank) to hang a chain across the entrance of the church parking lot and prevent any further damage.

I decided, there and then, to preach Mark 2.  I stood up, read the text, and asked, “What roof tiles do you need to break?  What are you willing to suffer the loss of for the sake of reaching the thousands of people right outside your door?”

The parishioners sat unmoving, unmoved.

It was a dirge.

I’ve never seen a congregation clear out more quickly.  I don’t think it was to join the festival outside.

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