The Christian Thing To Do

I've been thinking today (yes, dangerous, I know), especiall following a brief conversation I had to day with my barber. I gave her a $20 for a $15 cut and told her to keep the change. That started a conversation about money and what we think of when we think of money. I told her that I began thinking of money more as a tool to be used ever since I heard a missionary tell about how he used money to effect good evangelism.

I said that I thought that to acquire money just for the thrill of acquiring it was not where I was, and whether or not she gave me the $5 extra back in change or not was immaterial to me. That amount of money will not change my life one way or the other, whether I have it or not.

We then got into a conversation about tips at restaurants, for some reason. I told her that I've begun to tip wait staff at least 20% and will go as high as 30% or more for really good service. We agreed that most wait staff could use the money. Many probably are single parents, adults trying to support other people, students, or between jobs otherwise. Most probably have bills, not very good vehicles, and a host of personal issues they need to be working on and through.

As I thought more about the conversation I had with my barber today, I thought to myself the old truth, “I may not be able to do everything, but I can do something.” And that would apply to my dealings with wait staff in a restaurant. I can't fix their marriages or relationships. I can't pay their bills or catch them up on the rent. I can't buy them a newer vehicle or rid them of an abusive spouse. For the older ones who can't afford to retire, I can't magically provide them with a stash of mutual funds that they can retire on.

But I can do something. I can let them know they are appreciated. I can let them know that I care. And I can help them in a small way to maintain their dignity and sense of self-worth. These people, by and large, work hard for sometimes little pay. The least we can do is honor and recognize that in a tangible way.

After all, it's the Christian thing to do.

It's Not Your Table

Tom Shipp, a Methodist minister in the early 20^th century, tells a story about his receiving communion that rings especially true today.  As a boy, Shipp had to live with what would now be called a foster family because of the untimely deaths of both his mother and grandmother.  In those days, these kinds of arrangements were considered to be more of a “hired hand” arrangement than someone joining the family.

The first family he lived with did not consider him part of the family.  They did not allow him to eat at the table with them; he had to eat by himself after they finished.  He also had to room in the barn rather than in the house.

Shipp tolerated this for a year, then asked to be moved to another family.  This new family considered him to be part of their family.  He ate with them, slept with them, and participated in family events as any family member would do.

The family attended a Methodist church.  Shipp tells the story from here.

“The first Sunday I attended church it was communion.  The ushers directed people to the communion table.  The family I was with insisted that I go with them.  As I knelt down to receive the elements, the man I had previously worked for knelt down beside me on my right, and the man for whom I was now working was at my left.

The communion elements were served.  And the man at my right for whom I had worked took my hand and held it just as I reached for the bread.  I can still feel the tension.  The man to my left was a German, and his face turned bright red.  I can still hear the words that he said as he leaned forward, the preacher still holding the elements, not moving.  He said to the man, ‘It’s not your table!’  There was a hush over the whole sanctuary.  ‘It’s not your table!  It’s not your table!’

Finally, before matters came to blows, the man released his grip and I was allowed to take communion for the first time.”

This is Jay again.  “It’s not your table.”  As we approach the communion table in whatever manner we do, we need to remember that the table is not ours…it’s the Lord’s.  It is he that desires to share with us.  It is he who calls us to his table.  Those he calls, we have no right to turn away.

Our church family may not consist of those we especially like.  Our family may have people in it who grate on us the wrong way, or hold a different political or social opinion, or are much wealthier or poorer than we are.  They may look different than we do.  They may be immigrants or the working poor or the homeless.  But we all come to the table of the Lord because he has called us there…to his table…and has invited us to take and eat; take and drink.

May we always be welcoming, hospitable, and gracious when dealing with our church family.  May we always seek the common good, do our part to keep the family healthy, and constantly recognize with respect and humility just who the head of the family is.

Keep the Faith

I’m reading a book called “Confronting Christianity” by Rebecca McLaughlin.  In it, she addresses twelve “tough questions” for Christianity such as, “Doesn’t Christianity cause violence?” and “How can you take the Bible literally?”

In the chapter answering the question of Christianity causing violence, at the end of the chapter, McLaughlin quotes Nicholas Kristof in a July 11, 2011 opinion piece in the New York Times newspaper.  I looked up the entire article, copied it, read it, and would like to share a couple of paragraphs from it.

In the article entitled “Evangelicals Without Blowhards,” Kristof talks of the bad taste that the term “evangelical Christian” has in the mouths and minds of many, and especially in liberal circles.  He pins much of the blame for that on such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and some of the more outlandish things they’ve said on national media.  Of them, and others like them, Kristof says, “Those self-appointed evangelical leaders come across as hypocrites, monetizing Jesus rather than emulating him. Some seem homophobic, and many who claim to be “pro-life” seem little concerned with human life post-uterus. Those are the preachers who won headlines and disdain.

Kristof goes on, “Partly because of such self-righteousness, the entire evangelical movement often has been pilloried among progressives as reactionary, myopic, anti-intellectual, and if anything, immoral.  Yet that causal dismissal is profoundly unfair of the movement as a whole.  It (the reaction of progressives to Evangelicals) reflects a kind of reverse intolerance, sometimes a reverse bigotry, directed at tens of millions of people who have actually become increasingly engaged in issues of global poverty and justice.”

Kristof then says this in defense of evangelicals:  “Evangelicals are disproportionately likely to donate 10 percent of their incomes to charities, mostly church-related.  More important, go to the front lines, at home or abroad, in the battles against hunger, malaria, prison rape, obstetric fistula, human trafficking or genocide, and some of the bravest people you meet are evangelical Christians (or conservative Catholics, similar in many ways) who truly live their faith.  I’m not particularly religious myself, but I stand in awe of those I’ve seen risking their lives in this way — and it sickens me to see that faith mocked at New York cocktail parties.”

Fellow believers, people ARE watching us.  They ARE seeing whether we do as we say.  They ARE “in awe” of what God is able to do through us.  We ARE making a difference, even though it may seem like the drudgery of everyday life, living, and yes even service…will never end.

Keep the faith.

An Unbelievable Truth

I’m reading a book called “Confronting Christianity,” a well-written and very well documented book exploring twelve hard questions for the world’s largest religion.  Questions such as, “Doesn’t religion cause violence?”  Or, “How can you take the Bible literally?”  Or, “How could a loving God allow so much suffering?”  Rebecca McLaughlin, the author, digs deeply into scholarly material to help provide answers to these and other questions.

In answering the question of, “Doesn’t Christianity crush diversity?” she comes out with some telling statistical information from a reliable source that I want you to know.

In 2016, The Gospel Coalition (Google it if you want to know more about this organization) published an article by Mark Howard, who works with Elam Ministries, an organization founded in 1990 by Iranian church leaders with a mission to strengthen and expand the church in the Iran region and beyond.  In the article, Howard asserts that “The church in Iran has become the fastest growing in the world, and it is influencing the region for Christ.”

Now, that isn’t something that most Western Christians would readily believe, and in fact would dismiss outright as the ramblings of someone deranged.  Iran?  The church in Iran??  The fastest growing in the world???  That has to be in error.  Alas, but it’s not.  And the church in Afghanistan is right up there with the Iranian church in growth, fueled in part by the Iranian church evangelizing Afghans.

I will quote here from the article.  Despite continued hostility from the late 1970s until now, Iranians have become the Muslim people most open to the gospel in the Middle East.

How did this happen? Two factors have contributed to this openness. First, violence in the name of Islam has caused widespread disillusionment with the regime and led many Iranians to question their beliefs. Second, many Iranian Christians have continued to boldly and faithfully tell others about Christ, in the face of persecution.

As a result, more Iranians have become Christians in the last 20 years than in the previous 13 centuries put together since Islam came to Iran. In 1979, there were an estimated five hundred Christians from a Muslim background in Iran. Today, there are hundreds of thousands—some say more than one million. Whatever the exact number, many Iranians are turning to Jesus as Lord and Savior.

The article summarizes the explosion of Christianity in those areas like this:  “Persecution threatened to wipe out Iran’s tiny church.  Instead, the church in Iran has become the fastest growing in the world, and it is influencing the region for Christ.”

Would you ever in a thousand years have thought that Christianity in that area would even have any growth at all, let alone be the fastest-growing religion in the world?  I’m telling you, God is at work.  He is at work in areas that many in the Western world have written off as unreachable…either because of what appears to be an incredibly difficult evangelistic field, or because of our bias against people and nations of other religions and other cultures.

It is reliably told that China will be largely Christian in thirty years.  South Korea already exports more missionaries to foreign fields than the United States.  Nigeria is seeing thousands proclaim Jesus as Lord, especially in the face of persecution and chaotic government.  It is time to recognize the fact that God works in places and in ways that the Western church can sometimes barely fathom, let alone participate in.

May the God of heaven and earth be praised for His marvelous and incredible love!

These Days Will Pass

Toby Levering, preaching minister at our sister church Northside Church of Christ, posted the following today on Facebook.  I’ll comment following your reading his post.

Most days I take the kids to school.  And before I drop them off, we take a few minutes in the parking lot to talk & pray together.  It’s not always about super deep things, but sometimes it is. It’s my imperfect attempt to be a Deuteronomy 6 dad.

Right now, life is a grind.  Every day.  But as we stopped to pray, for whatever reason, it occurred to me that these days will pass. Their hands will continue to grow. This season will change. I will not always have these moments.

It’s just a phase so I must make the most of it. I’ve got to pause, get off my phone, slow down, appreciate these days and moments.  Because, in a day closer than I want to think, these days will pass.

To my fellow parents out there.  Whatever phase you’re in, appreciate it, make the most of it, and do your best to make God a part of it.  Whatever the phase, my job as a parent, is to glorify God and help my children get to heaven. May we make the most of these fleeting moments.

This is Jay again.  Toby is doing a good thing.  This time with his kids is precious and necessary, because life really is a grind, sometimes.

But I want you to key in on what he says toward the end.  “In a day closer than I want to think, these days will pass.”

It may seem like life goes on forever just as it is.  But you and I both know that isn’t true.  I speak from experience, just as Toby understands; “In a day closer than I want to think, THESE DAYS WILL PASS.”  Toby intentionally created those before-school moments with his kids.  You can create moments such as this as well.  So, create the moments…and do as he says…get off your phone, slow down, and appreciate these days and moments.  Because they will never come again.

A Response

Last week, I received a response to my last post on the bulletin back page.  In the event you don’t recall, I mentioned that another congregation was advertising their church experience as being “fun.”  I said that church could be about many things…thanksgiving, fellowship, instruction, worship, humility, service, joy…but in my opinion, “fun” as generally defined wasn’t necessarily one of those.

In the response, the writer rightly says that as we enter the sanctuary, “Should we not be meditating on why we are there, or praying for our Lord to be with us?”  She differentiated here the difference between an auditorium and a sanctuary, giving the idea of some kind of hallowed area in the building that was to be used only for certain purposes.  I prefer to not designate any area of the building as necessarily holy or sanctified; rather, to understand the purpose behind any gathering in any part of the building.

However, I do not dispute her premise.  The answer is, “Yes, of course.”  As we enter our time with our church family, wherever that is, we also enter into the presence of God in a way that we normally do not do individually.  As the writer/responder says, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I with them.”  It seems that God is present in a crowd of believers, even if only a crowd of two or three, in some way that is special and unique.

The writer then goes on.  “People all over the world are being persecuted and many killed because of their belief in our God and our Savior Jesus Christ.  They are forbidden to gather for worship or even own a Bible.  We are so blessed in our country to openly meet to worship together.  We are blessed to own Bibles and openly speak of our faith.  Can we show our God how thankful and humbled we truly are by showing reverence when we enter to worship?”

And then I thought about Psalm 100.

Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth.  Serve the LORD with gladness; Come before Him with joyful singing.

Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name.

For the LORD is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting And His faithfulness to all generations.

Somehow, it seems, God desires us to sing and shout with joy, giving praise and thanksgiving to him, and gladly serve him while also humbly recognizing our brokenness and dependence on him.  While at first, these seem to be opposites, the reality is they are part of the whole of the worship experience.

Encountering God is so much more than any one descriptive term.  It transcends any ideas we have of proper decorum, thoughtful reflection, ritual exercises (communion, singing, etc), fellowship, commonality, joyful expression and the like.  Encountering God is one of the Great Indescribables and Undefinables of life.  To limit it in any way, whether as to place, time, season, or event, is to miss out on one of the great blessings of the Faith.

"Fun" Church

I recently ran across a social media post about a local church that was starting a new year push for attendance with a promotion using various fictional characters such as Buzz Lightyear, Bo Peep, and others. One of the comments in the post had this to say. "We make church fun because we want to introduce everyone to Jesus because of what He has done in our lives."

While churches certainly can do whatever they think best without any interference from me, I have to wonder if the goal of having church is to make it fun. Maybe I'm old school, but it seems to me that church that is fun may well be church that is shallow in substance and reality.

I'm thinking, and this is only my humble opinion (IMHO on social media), that church should be a place where, among other things, humble, sinful, and contrite human beings, trembling, approach the footstool and throne of a holy and unfathomable God, thanking Him for the righteousness imputed to them through the holy sacrifice of the very Begotten Son of this same God.

I'm not cognizant of any way that church can be fun and also be what I've just described. There's no fun in admitting my brokenness to God and to other humans. There's no fun in knowing that Jesus Christ took my unrighteousness to the Cross and gave me His righteousness in the place of my unrighteousness. There's no fun in approaching the footstool of a righteous God in naked reverence and righteous fear with nothing to offer except the blood of Jesus.

Church also is a place of acceptance, safety, celebration, fellowship, renewal, thanksgiving, praise, and spiritual growth. It is, or should be all of this and even more. But to describe all of this as being fun is, in my mind, reducing all of the greatness of God's revealed mystery into something that entertains and takes our minds off of the reality of our brokenness and depravity for a short time.

Can there be times and periods of fun in church life? Of course. Fellowship, activities together, and even classes can have times of fun and enjoyment. But we must always have as the underpinning of our faith the reality of the God of the universe so desiring relationship and fellowship with his creation that he offered himself in righteous sacrifice in order to make that happen.

To do any less is, in my mind, to cheapen church and “trample underfoot the Son of God.” May God help us all.

Saying Good Bye

Today, I had a lunch date with a woman friend who I will probably never see again. (Yes, my wife knew all about it and was invited to the lunch, but couldn't come because of work.) Aimee was our across-the-street neighbor when we moved to where we are now. She, along with her hubby and young daughter, became friends of ours over the years.

A few years ago, they moved to another location. We maintained a connection via social media, however. Some months ago, she contacted me, saying that she had been thrown out of their house by her husband, who had developed a relationship with another woman, and had been living in her car for several days. We immediately invited her to join us at our place. She had no clue the ouster was coming, and needed time to gather herself.

She stayed with us for only a few days, finding a place to stay and other friends that would help her. She has been in survival mode for quite some time. But we've maintained contact through all of this, and have served as an “ear” for her from time to time.

Recently, she found out about work that she could do (she has a disability) in Ohio at a women's fraternity. (Yeah, I didn't know women had fraternities either.) She interviewed, and was given the job. The work fits her perfectly and will be a good thing for her. She also will be able to get out of this area, which has so many reminders of a life no longer viable. She will be leaving for Ohio this coming Wednesday, so I asked if she could have lunch one last time before she left.

I admire how she has crawled out of the hole dug for her and has determined to make her own way in the world. Her daughter, now in Iowa, originally siding with her father, has recently begun to repair the relationship with her mom. The divorce is final, so that's over. She has no reason to stay here or come back here.

I don't know about you, but these kinds of meetings and good-byes are difficult for me. Knowing I will probably never see her again, even though we are obviously “just friends,” makes it doubly difficult. Social media will relieve some of that, but it is not an adequate substitute.

Life sometimes hands us situations, circumstances, and conditions that we are not prepared for, not expecting, and haven't a clue how to handle. Such was the case here when we learned she was homeless. We knew we would be riding this one out with her, along with other friends of hers. And we did. Hopefully, we were helpful to her along the way.

Aimee, we wish you many blessings as you start life anew yet again. And if you happen to be traveling in Kansas close by, let us know. We'd love to see you and catch up with you.