A few days ago, Pinakidion posted a laments about what he calls the move toward a ‘Kinder Gentler ICOC’. In other words, essentially the same as we’ve always been, but with all the rough edges sanded off. We’ll take away the compulsory discipling, the stat sheets, the forced giving levels, the levels of staffing above the individual church level, but we’ll leave the same basic ideas – evangelism and growth focused, performance mindset, everyone ‘sold out’ – in place. He points to a few articles and studies that are getting at real reform as better models.
Sunday our minister articuated much the same idea with different words. He pointed out that when we are confronted with rotten fruit of sin in our lives, the temptation is to react by frantically yanking the rotten fruit off of the tree. Simply pulling the rotten fruit off may make us look better, but it does nothing to produce good fruit. The tree is cleaned up, but remains the same at the root. Instead, we should go to the root of the tree, to feed it, strengthen it and heal it so it would produce good fruit.

Dan does it again. This time he tackles Christian “Adware” saying “Scrape the fish off your car. Please! I’m begging.” I cannot agree more. I’ve always found about 99% of those Christian slogan T-shirts, bumper stickers, fish symbols, etc at least tacky, if not offensive. Why? Dan sums it up best:

To be perfectly blunt (and when am I not perfectly blunt?), I can’t see what having any kind of Jesus fish or bumper stickers gets us except another reason for unbelievers to be hacked off at our lousy driving habits or the sheer hypocrisy of the plethora of other stickers we might have on our cars that cancels out that Ichthus. If a nut goes screaming past me doing twenty miles over the speed limit, he’s just a menace. But if he’s sportin’ the old Ichthus and doing it, well then he’s now a Christian menace.

Long term readers of this blog (both of you) might remember this post from back in May of 2004:

Monday night was a monumental night, or at least it could have been. Time will tell. The deacons of the Columbus Church of Christ (myself included) met with the evangelist to discuss the state of the church and its future direction. Decisions were made that will effect the lives of many here.
Last week the deacons had met for only the second time since our appointment back in November of last year. …
At the end of the night, we had decided that we could no longer sit on our hands and watch. We, along with the evangelist and campus minister, were the appointed leaders of the church. If we did not act, who would? We decided that we needed to take our place as leaders beside the ministers and work side by side with them. We would not meekly ask to be included, nor would we arrogantly demand to have our say. Rather we would, as leaders approved by the congregation last fall, assume the place we should have from the start. It was time that the church had a cohesive leadership team. …
As we left there was a feeling expressed that this could be the beginning of a new era in our fellowship, a turning point if you will. Perhaps it will amount to nothing, most, if not all, of that depends on our follow through.

Our meeting was a fruitful one and the then two ministers (our campus minister has since resigned) and the four Deacons commented to work together. We met together and talked every two weeks. We began to get with he members to hear their concerns and we began to forge unity. The longer we consistently got together, the more cohesive the group became. Our differences melted away.
Late last year, I was feeling that we were heading into new territory as a cohesive group. As the weeks and months went by, it felt to me that we were on our way to making the great changes in our church that were needed. There was a general feeling that it was time for us to accomplish more than talk. It was time to produce real change. It was about this time that our minister made an announcement:

On Thursday our main minister or evangelist, spoke up against the idea of team leadership as we’ve been practicing it. …
[H]e thought that perhaps we had gone beyond what we should have. … He referred back to the appointment of the deacons, about a year ago, saying we were appointed to specific areas of ministry (children, poor, campus and administration) not to a broad leadership role. He thought we had gotten away from our focus on specific areas of serving and had taken on a larger role than we were given. He said that he did not see a team approach to leadership in the scriptures, that it was the evangelist who led the church until such time as there were elders in place. We have no elders, so it was his role to lead, not the group’s. His thought was that this was a better plan because, as our group has demonstrated, group leadership can lead to paralysis, lack of focus and stagnation.
Well, to say I was surprised would be an understatement. I did not see this coming. A plethora of emotions were running through my mind. He went to great lengths to reassure us that he was not trying to take over or grab power. He has grown to appreciate our meetings greatly and plans to rely on us for support and advice. He would be a fool, he said, to ignore our council, and other mature men in the church, in leading the church. He emphatically expressed his desire to involve us in the decision making process. …
In the events of last Thursday I see hope and I am afraid. I do not know what will come of it, but I did not know what would come of our meetings when they began 6 short months ago. They have brought us together and built a foundation of trust that can be built upon. In that I see hope. What was once a fractured, dis-unified leadership now has a foundation of unity. I hope that my fears are unfounded, the unhealthy result of an aversion cultivated by the past pattern. I’ve seen many years of hierarchy leadership with one man at the top and only 6 months of a team based system. It scares me to put one man in charge again. But now I know this man and I know his heart. I also think I know God’s heart a little better and I have a little more conviction and courage to speak up, and because of our new relationship I have the confidence that I will be listened to as well. As I said six months ago, time will tell what this means.

To make a long story short (imagine me doing that), in the past few weeks, we’re back to where we begun. The Deacons and the minister have met twice in two weeks and we’ve set a course to meet on a regular basis (twice a month). It’s a turn of events that hold much promise for the congregation. We’ve been languishing in a malaise for too long.
I don’t think there’s any reason to go into the details of why this is taking place now. Suffice to say that the Holy Spirit has clearly been working on all of our hearts, and each person has been listening. The environment was now ripe for change and cooperation, I think we all recognized it and acted on it. Where there was once distance, there is now cooperation. It isn’t taking us long to get right back where we were, which is pleasantly surprising to me. I thought it would take longer.
We’ve only had two meetings, but we’re already making some exciting plans that I hope to share with you in coming weeks. God is working in our hearts, and hopefully we can pay attention to His Spirit and 2006 will be the year of renewal we’ve been waiting for. It is an exciting time, one that is once again full of hope and promise.

Dan from Cerulean Sanctum posted a while back on curses. He was talking about the literal kind and his post has an incredible personal encounter with someone who was living with one. I’m not sure where I stand on the existence of such things, but his story was moving and thought provoking.
Even more thought provoking were some of his comments on the very real curses others place on us or we even place on ourselves. Our experiences and interactions with people can leave an imprint on us that can be hard to shake. He wries about how someone once shared that Dan’s life had had a profound negative impact on this person. Not only was that man impacted, but his sharing it with Dan stayed with Dan for years to come. He writes:

I think it was just today that I came to grips with his pronouncement. In some of my darkest times, what he said to me that night haunted me, and only now do I recognize it for the curse that it was. Only now do I feel like the black power of that comment has been rendered inert in the light of Christ.
How many of us are laboring under a curse someone glibly tossed out a decade or more ago? What words carelessly spoken–or even spoken with intent–have pinned us to the ground or left us flailing?

That last paragraph reached out and grabbed me. I think that to a large degree lots of folks are laboring under such a curse. I think that plagues far too many former and current ICOC members as well. I know that I’ve found many things I believed fervently are false, yet I cannot seem to unplug myself from that mindset entirely. It sticks with me, shaping my thinking and my worldview. It is a kind of curse, an undercurrent running through my subconscious subtly and not so subtly influencing my thoughts.

• Though I understand now that my worth as a disciple does not hinge on my evangelism, I still feel some guilt if I’m not constantly focused on sharing my faith.
• Though I know that having daily, morning quiet times or Bible study is not necessary for salvation, I’m still afraid to admit that I don’t practice that discipline (though I do get into the Bible in other ways).
• Though I know that I don’t need to give a certain percentage of my income to be accepted as generous, I wonder if I’m giving enough.
• Though I now understand that my church is not the church, I still feel myself looking at others as outsiders.

Though I am growing through these things and others, I don’t think I’ve put enough emphasis on the spiritual forces at work here. I’ve not prayed earnestly enough, acknowledging that I need a power bigger than me to release me from this line of thinking. Not only that, but I need Him to help me find balance in these areas. In my mental gymnastics to wrestle through to the truth, I can spring from a hyper focus on evangelism to an aversion to it, from a firm belief in a morning Bible reading ritual to being flippant about not getting in the Bible at all, from legislated giving to casual, inconsistent and thoughtless giving.
Church relationship aren’t the only ones that can do this. How we are raised, our work environments, friends and family can all influence us in ways we are not entirely aware of – for the good and the bad. I can look back at my childhood and see so many blessings – how my parents taught me to love God, respect the Bible and love Jesus, how they taught me to love my country and respect authority. I can also look back and see curses that have hung with me, like a temper that gets the best of me now and then. Thankfully for me, the blessings far outnumber the curses. Some are not so lucky and they spend a lifetime battling against the curses of their past.
No matter where the curses come from, Dan brings to light for me a powerful concept that it’s not just up to us to read our Bibles and sort this stuff out intellectually, we need God’s intervention on our very souls. Only he can reach in and separate us from those things that have their grip on us, like a curse, and free us from them.

The other shoe has dropped in regard to Mr. McKean. Another letter to Kip has been posted at Disciples Today in the ‘paid only’ section of the site. It will reportedly be made public at a later time. The letter points out that Kip has never responded to the prior letter (the Portland response to the previous letter was not from Kip, but from the Portland leadership.) In fact, since that time he’s been uncharacteristically silent, no postings at all from Kip on the Portland web site. In light of that silence and of the continuing theme coming from there, these, now 84, leaders have announced that they will have no fellowship with him until he repents.
I’m both encouraged by this and ambivalent. Pinakidion has some great thoughts about the 13 ‘Convictions’ listed in the letter. That’s up from 10 in the first one, he points out, and the additions are a little troubling. Why do ICOC leaders have the thing about telling people who to date and marry, I wonder? Pinakidion, though, goes farther than that and questions the need for and the wisdom in lists of common beliefs or convictions like this. There is great value in individuals or even individual congregations searching these things out, but beyond that they only serve to divide.
Anywho, that’s the latest. I’m getting a little tired of this whole thing, so I hope it’s over. Probably not quite yet, but maybe we’re close.

The Wall Street Journal today has an article today by Sharon Begley in the Science Journal column (only online for subscribers, sorry) about our mind’s amazing ability to find good in every situation, no matter how bad it may be.
It describes several experiments where subjects were either tricked or forced into making bad choices. In the first, a Swedish experiment, people were asked to choose the more attractive of two women in photos. After their choice, the experimenter put the chosen photo face down and slid it to the subject, secretly switching the photo for the less attractive one in the process. Interestingly,

Few subjects batted an eye. Looking at unchosen [photo], they smoothly explained why they had chosen her (“She was smiling,” “She looks hot”), even though they hadn’t.

Professor Daniel Gilbert at Harvard is doing similar experiments. Subjects are told they’ll need to partner with someone who’d likable and trustworthy. The then pick one of four folders at random, not knowing that each contains the same bio of an unlikable, untrustworthy person. The subjects still managed to read good into the bad description of this person. Even when compared to bios of others, they continued to see their choice as superior.
Later, the experimenter would tell the subject that they were subliminally sending them signals to chose the best candidate. Since they had already convinced themselves that they had chosen the best candidate, they needed to explain why, so they bought this explanation. He calls that ‘the illusion of external agency’.
The main gist of the article is that this is where religious belief come from. We desire positive explanations of bad situations like the Asian tsunami, the Pakistan earthquake and the Gulf hurricanes. So we say it was God, even if we cannot say what he was doing, we say He knows best.
I find a certain level of truth and irony in this research. I think there’s a powerful truth in it, people do try to explain away their own bad choices or bad situations by saying God did it for some reason. Get too many red lights on the way to work? Maybe God is protecting me from an errant driver up ahead. Have to file for bankruptcy? God wants me to rely on Him, not money. Katrina devastates New Orleans? It’s his judgement on their sinful lifestyle. The common theme is that it’s not my fault nor should I worry about acting as a result of this, God is in control. As a result, the chronically late or the bankrupt person don’t look at their behaviors and make changes, but instead simply get a warm fuzzy feeling about God’s providence and go on. Others look at disasters like Katrina and see people getting what their sins deserve and miss the opportunity to be like Jesus and meet the needs of the hopeless. Our minds and hearts have a powerful tendency to convince us that what we already believe and see is right, and to interpret the things that happen around us in light of our current point of view. God’s way for us, however, is to constantly re-submit our will and viewpoint to his, which is perfect. A couple of scriptures come to mind:

“But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
   whose confidence is in him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water
   that sends out its roots by the stream.
   It does not fear when heat comes;
   its leaves are always green.
   It has no worries in a year of drought
   and never fails to bear fruit.”
The heart is deceitful above all things
   and beyond cure.
   Who can understand it?
“I the LORD search the heart
   and examine the mind,
   to reward a man according to his conduct,
   according to what his deeds deserve.”

Jeremiah 17:7-10

Our heart is deceitful, but we will be blessed if we put our confidence in God’s ways. I suppose that one could say that blindly attributing events to God is putting our trust in Him, but I look at this differently. I see it as saying ‘Conform your view and your will to mine, and it will go well with you’ rather than ‘No matter what happens, trust that it is good because I am in control.’

Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.

1 Thessalonians 5:19-22

I ask myself ‘Why?’ a lot. Why do I want this? Why do I think this way? Why do I believe what I do? I do this because I know my heart is deceitful and I must constantly test it to see if it is conformed to God. God is truth and my faith in Him need not be afraid of questioning, testing and digging. I am confident that nothing I find will contradict Him, His word or His will.
The irony I find in this article is that the researchers are using this evidence to show how religion and the idea of God may be false. Of course it feeds their own preconceived notion about God that this would be true. Are they testing themselves? Are they using this to validate their own notions about God and to avoid asking themselves the hard questions of why they don’t believe in Him? Perhaps their saying to themselves (without knowing it), “See, religion is false and God doesn’t exist. It’s all a convenient illusion. I was right all along.”

O my people, hear my teaching;
   listen to the words of my mouth.

I will open my mouth in parables,
   I will utter hidden things, things from of old-

what we have heard and known,
   what our fathers have told us.

We will not hide them from their children;
   we will tell the next generation
   the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
   his power, and the wonders he has done.

He decreed statutes for Jacob
   and established the law in Israel,
   which he commanded our forefathers
   to teach their children,

so the next generation would know them,
   even the children yet to be born,
   and they in turn would tell their children.

Then they would put their trust in God
   and would not forget his deeds
   but would keep his commands.

Psalm 78:1-7

As leader of the children’s ministry, I’ve shared this scripture a lot. It is my favorite scripture regarding teaching children about God. ” … so the next generation would know … ” They need to know, and they will never know unless we know and in turn teach them.
I shared that scripture as children’s ministry leader on Sunday for the last time. Maria and I have decided that, after 9 years, it was time to move on to something new. We have both felt less than effective in recent months, and for myself I’ve felt a recent pull toward a new ministry. It’s been something I’ve been praying about and talking with Godly men about for months. Through that time it became clear that it was time to move on to something new.
For the longest time I didn’t know what that new ministry would be, and to some degree I still don’t. After our recent Dynamic Marriage class training in Chicago, I know that is part of it. I long to help bring hope back into hopeless marriages, or maybe just rekindle the flames that had been reduced to smoldering. I also feel a strong desire to help the hurting. I’m not sure how that will manifest itself yet.
God has blessed our time in children’s ministry, even though we did not choose it. Shortly after we arrived in Columbus on the mission team we were asked to lead the Children’s Ministry (we suspect that it was why, afer initially being turned down for th team, we were later asked to join it.) We then had 12 kids and the oldest was in kindergarten or first grade. Now we have 50 some kids from newborns through sixth grade, as well as a good middle school and teen ministry.
Many have praised us for what we’ve done here with the kids, but we really don’t feel that we can take much of the credit. All we did is care. Others had the good ideas, the practical suggestions and put in the hard work. It was Greg and Kyra Miller, church leaders here until about 2 years ago, who came up with the idea of rotating coordinators to take the day to day load of of one couple (us) to ‘run the show’ each Sunday. We were ready to give up then and this spreading of the load gave us the strength to continue to serve. We also owe so much to those couples who joined us in running our Sunday classes, Kingdom Kids. Dave and Jawan, Dave and Janet and Bob and Trish have given their hearts to the kids and us. We are also grateful to the support that Randy and Sharon have always shown us. Lastly, we are so, so grateful for the support the church has given us in always being eager to teach and to serve. With out you, all of our best efforts would be in vain.
Bob and Trish will be taking our place as leaders of the children’s ministry. They’ve always had a heart for kids, as evidenced by their life & family, and God has put the children’s ministry on their hearts. There was no searching or wondering who would step in, as they stepped up on their own, before we were 100% sure that we would be moving on. We are grateful to be able to be putting this important ministry in capable hands and hearts.

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

John 10:11-13

Based on this scripture in John 10, we gave Bob and Trish the following charges:

1. Be the Good Shepherds, care for the sheep.
2. Be an advocate for the kids. These kids have needs, but they don’t know what they are. Even if they did, they couldn’t articulate them. Even if they could, not many would hear. Be their advocate, stand up for what is good or not good for our children.
3. Be an advocate for the teachers. The kids need teachers and if the teachers aren’t cared for and supported, there won’t be teachers. Speak up on their behalf. Make sure they understnad and feel how special and important they are to this church.

And with that, we move on to new things. Not necessarily bigger or better, just new.

Before diving into Ed’s book on Repentance, the church went through the minor prophets. At our men’s devo two Wednesdays ago we talked about that infamous passage in Malachi 3:6-12, used to get people to give to their church:

“I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.
“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’
“Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’
“In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.

The question was asked, what could that mean to rob God? After all, everything we have is a gift from God, how could we rob Him? In thinking about it, this story came to mind.
When my wife and I were first married, we lived for year one in a tiny 800 square foot house in Dearborn MI. As we approached our first Halloween, we (mostly Maria) were looking forward to passing out candy for the first time We had both lived in apartment complexes prior to that which didn’t really have trick or treating, so this was going to be fun.
As the kids came, we opened the door, presented the bowl of candy and told the kids to take what they wanted. Most kids were polite and took a couple, or maybe four or five. Then Those Kids came to the door. When I said take what you want, the opened their bag and plunged it into the bowl, trying to scoop out all the candy. The force knocked the bowl out of my hands and onto the porch and they ran away with most of our candy. I was ticked off and paced round the house spouting off about it for a bit, making threats I had absolutely no intention of carrying out.
What does this have to do with Malachi? Well, I got to thinking, it’s kind of like that with God. He’s laid out before all of us a certain sum. For some it’s modest, maybe $20,000 per year (or even less), for others it’s substantial, well into six figures. “I’ve made this available for you.” God says, “Take what you need or want.” Am I so greedy to snatch the bowl out of God’s hands? Will I spend all that God has provided? How much will I leave behind, to give to do the work of God? Will I rob God of an opportunity to work?