The More Things Change

This is a difficult BLOG to write because it is the precursor of radical behavioral modification on my part, and, not that I am so egotistical as to believe the readership of this missive has the kind of audience that we writers secretly hope it does but deep in the corner of our hearts where reality hides except to occasionally douse us with that sickeningly annoying dose of truth, know it doesn’t.  And to make matters worse, the aforementioned demon of reality, who doubles as a nosy, impertinent grammar Nazi informs me that the opening sortie is in actuality yet another of my trademark run on sentences, which indeed, it was. After first reminding the rude little parasitical urchin of his unwelcome intrusion, I did reward the brat with a half-hearted “well done, you. Now return to the level of hell from whence you originated”.

As Batman once told his nemesis, Two-Face, deliciously portrayed by the talented Tommy Lee Jones (SIDEBAR: I liked Batman so much better before he was even more of a psychopath than the villains he chased) “You’re of two minds about everything”, I find myself facing the same dilemma. I find myself at a crossroad where I must decide which 'me' will ‘win’, and more importantly, do so without decimating that which is good in the 'me' who loses. Bear with me, I’m going to talk to myself for a while because no one else understands my struggle with the minutiae quite as well as I do, and that makes me the expert in the field. That, plus the fact that I’ve known me longer than you have and, well, you see where I’m headed? So as I wade through a few feet of a river in Egypt, I’ll try and explain the what and maybe, if possible the where and why of it all.

My disillusion began with a win that was in many ways a loss. The year was 2000. George Herbert Walker Bush defeated Albert Gore for the office of President of Florida. The Booby Prize was the other 49 states. It was a win in that the socialist minded democrat who couldn’t keep his fly zipped and his wife who wielded far too much power for an unelected occupant taking up space in the Oval Office were gone.

Did you know Bill Clinton had an IQ of over 180?  Einstein strata!

The win that was ultimately a loss was George Herbert Walker Bush.  A decent man. A man loyal in fidelity to his wife. Not the brightest candle in the box, but a far more reasonable alternative to either the guy who both invented the internet and discovered climate change or the Viet Nam protestor from Massachusetts.

My downhill plunge began during these years because I found that I had to discover a way to remain faithful to the two greatest driving forces in my life:

1.      My Faith: I am a Christ Follower. This is NOT a religion, although during all of the years of my life as a Christ-follower leading up to and including those of the Bush presidency, I attended some flavor of Baptist church, which by definition, is a religion. However, I repeat for the record: I am a Christ-follower. This is NOT a religion.

2.       My Patriotism and loyalty to my country

Finding a happy medium for these two things that satisfies both without compromising either has become more and more difficult over the years, and in particular in the years since I started school. That really marks the time when America began her down-slide into the abyss of godless humanism and religious tolerance which is, in reality such a mishmash of religions that the Judeo-Christian foundation of our nation was but a fading memory. The last six-twelve years have been the worst.

I began writing BLOGS in 2002 when I returned from a brief time in Europe. I had begun to see my nation through the eyes of a European. I began over time to wonder if my newly elected President wasn’t really just trying to prove something to his Daddy.  I began to ask why it seemed that everyone on planet earth with the exception of my president and one or two of his cabinet understood that what was happening in the Middle East was a religious civil war that was 6,000 years old and we had no business interfering in it other than to support our ally, Israel.

Then 2008 came, and came with a vengeance, but I fell back on the comforting shoulder of my faith, and the words of the author of my faith. You see, as a Christ follower, I believe every word of the Bible as it was given to the authors of the individual books as they penned the original manuscripts, is inspired by God.  The Apostle Paul, in his second letter to Timothy, the aged Apostle affirms to his young protégé that he be assured that “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…”. The Greek phrase translated ‘given by inspiration of God’ is ‘theopneustos’, and literally means God breathed.  This ‘God breathed’ sense of inspiration only applies to those original manuscripts, or autographs, as textual scholars refer to them, and not to subsequent translations.  There is no such thing as a God breathed translation. That said, God has kept his Word intact and pure through thousands of years.

So, facing the enigma of loyalty to faith and loyalty to ‘king and country’ without compromising either, I took refuge after the election of a marxist-socialist, practicing Muslim who went on record proclaiming that “America is no longer a Judeo-Christian Nation”. He took the lie further and proclaimed that America – MY America is “one of the largest Muslim nations in the world”.

I sought peace in the Word of God, and found it in the Book of Daniel, chapter 2, verse 20:

“And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and He raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.”

And I said to myself and anyone who would listen, “See!  This didn’t catch God by surprise! Barack Hussein Obama is President for the same reason Nebuchadnezzar was King – because it pleased God to put him there for His divine purpose!”

That was my fallback verse for five years, and it was enough. But the ten months of the sixth year of his disassembling of America, have tested my faith unlike any time in my life! I’ve watch the atrocities performed by this man while a nation of religionists stood back wringing their hands as his minions cheered him on. Until,just a few weeks ago,  in a Bible Study one night, our pastor teacher shared this passage of scripture with us:

“Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever rests resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but the evil do you want to be on afraid of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their do: taxes to whom taxes are due, costumes to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”    Romans 13:1-7

So what did I get for my meddling questions? The firm reaffirmation, this time from the very Apostle who told me that ALL Scripture is God breathed, not just from an old testament dude who made friends with the hungry lions into whose den he was haphazardly tossed to be surprise catch of the day.

So you’re asking – at least I hope you are – where are you going with this, Dave?

If you’re one of my Facebook followers – or the other one – I’m not going to be spending as much FB time discussing Politics as I have been.  My views haven’t changed, but my sense of what’s important has. I’ve already filled in my vote by mail ballot for November’s election.  I vote in every election, and so should you, especially if you are a Christ follower.  And stop paying so much attention to those sensationalistic FAKE conservative news URL’s.  They’re just advertising mines and data mines looking to get your info so they can flood your inbox with junk, most of which is not verifiable anywhere on mother earth.

It really doesn’t make a lot of difference who the next POTUS is. Why? Because whoever it is, if God didn’t either put them in office or let them be put in office, they wouldn’t be there.  I remember a song written specifically for the chorale at my college.  It’s as true today as it was 40 years ago when they recorded it. JESUS IS STILL THE ANSWER, and my friend, that applies to politics now more than ever.

Do you really want to see change in America? The answer is as simple as this.  God once told Solomon, on the night before the dedication of Solomon’s Temple, “If my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

The promise of God to Solomon was conditional.  It boils down to this: keep the temple pure, I will bless the land.  There are a lot of individual conditions in that promise, but that’s the gist of it.

Now fast forward to 25 October, 2014, America’s spiraling downward, we live under grace not law, and besides – there isn’t a Temple…or is there. Hear the words of Paul again one more time:

“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” 1 Corinthians 6:19

Same principle. The blessing on the land is in direct proportion to the purity of the temple. Thr only difference, child of God, is that WE who are Christ  Followers ARE the Temple! You want to see Revival come to America? You want to see REAL change in Washington DC? It’s up to us, brothers and sisters in Christ. God has given us a promise with a purpose:

1.       Call on His Name

2.       Humble ourselves before Him

3.       Pray

4.       Seek His Face

5.       Turn from our wicked ways (REPENT)

AND GOD WILL

1.       Hear from Heaven

2.       Forgive us

3.       Heal our Land

The first step is ours.  It’s time to clean the temples, America.  Will you join me?

Class Acts and Lame Ducks - BLOG for 5 October, 2014

Missing Kenyan Village Idiot
Please return if found

Jack Kennedy stood up to Khrushchev, told him to move his missiles off of Castro's Cuba, and the big shoe hammering ruskie flinched. Being POTUS (President of the United States of America) meant something then.  It was kind of like the old commercial, “My accountant is E. F. Hutton, and when E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”

Jimmy Carter was the next Democrat to put on his big boy pants and attempt a move like like that when the American Embassy was taken hostage by militants in Tehran. Good ole boy Carter, thumbs no doubt locked securely in his  blue denim Bob Evans overhauls, red kerchief and official Song of the South Issue straw farm hat, as he told the Ayatollayouso Khomeini to release the American Hostages from Tehran, or else! Khomeini stamped his angry little feet, folded his arms stuck out his bottom lip and mumbled some gibberish the spooks at the House of Babel in Langley which roughly translated meant,  "Nya, Nya, Nya, Nya, Nya! I’m not gonna do it, and you can't make me, so there. Now someone go wash up my favorite sweet little camel honey doll. All this international bullying has me in the mood"

POTUS Reagan, on the other hand just flashed that Colgate Hollywood grin of his, had Chuck Heston teach him how to say "Let my people go or your next democratic election won't be until sometime in the 123rd century, if the glow settles down some,” and suddenly Khomeini felt sufficiently enough satisfied with his superior negotiating skills, and being in no great hurry to meet his 72 virgins, saw the wisdom of Reagan’s way of thinking. Or maybe he was just out of Viagra.

Classy guy that he is, POTUS Reagan didn't mention Carter's buffoonery, double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, or worst economy since the great depression.

Ditto POTUS Billary (Bill and Hillary “We are the President) Clinton when they succeeded George Herbert Walker Bush who was a single term President, nor did George Sr.’s  son, George W. Bush, otherwise known as Dub’ya, himself, a genuinely underwhelming, but at least housebroke POTUS. Even he didn't devote spectacular amounts of time blaming his predecessor for our nation's problems or bother mentioning the notorious, if infamous dribble stain.  Dub’ya might not have been much, but at least he didn’t brag about it.

That brings us to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  I’m hesitant to apply the term POTUS in this instance because the constitution requires POTUS to be American born or nationalized.  This guy is a lost Kenyan village idiot who somehow managed to master his Phoenix online public speaking course so well that he tricked enough otherwise intelligent American voters to elect him.  Well, them, the ones he bought with the free cell phones, the dead ones, and Nancy Pelosi, who escaped from area 51 sometime in 1957.

 In contradistinction to every man to hold the office of POTUS prior to him, the first thing this illegal alien did was embark on his six and a half year long “IT’S NOT MY FAULT 2008-2014 WORLD TOUR”, bowing submissively before for Muslim Kings and offending royal houses of nations who are allies, but regrettably not Islamic. AND Barack Hussein Obama is still blaming George W. Bush 6 1/2 years into his presidency. Kind of gives a new, fresh perspective to the term LAME duck, although now I'll have to come up with another phrase for lame duck that isn’t offensive to actual physically impaired water fowl.

Now Mid-term elections are a month away, and our nation is faced with a plethora of potentially terminal problems, and the person we untrusted with the responsibility of having our backs is holding a gun to our heads!

He has opened our borders to illegal immigrants, like himself, and routed funds formerly used to provide income prepaid for decades into the social security system, to fee, house, cloth, educate and provide high level healthcare and citizenship to these individuals who entered the country by criminal means, not merely ignoring the criminality of their action, but encouraging it to the point of financial reward.  The joke that once equated illegal immigrants to unregistered democrats is now more fact than punchline. Money intended, indeed invested by taxpaying American workers is being used to support criminal immigrants while they are being told their retirement investment is in danger of default, yet somehow the charity fund established by the Kenyan Pretender is in no danger of default. And now this growing population of criminal faux citizenry comes bearing a new gift: incurable respiratory and other unknown new diseases, and finally, hitchhikers: ISIS terrorists walking freely across our southern borders with the president’s blessings and weapons POTUS provided to them before they left the middle east.

And the punch line for all this? The Mad Dog of Kenya has promised, indeed bragged, that he will sign a presidential order granting amnesty to the thousands of criminals he has welcomed through back channels into our sovereign nation.

There is a small glimmer of hope. Outsmart the missing Kenyan village idiot at the ballot box. It may be our only hope as a nation.

Musical Pews - or The Field of Dreams Church

This is something long overdue.  I’d temporarily set aside doing blogs because of the continuing problem of paralysis in my hand due to the stroke I suffered on April 20, 2008. In fact the last blog I wrote was January 22nd of this year and coincidentally it was similarly themed to this. I’m continuing on with the subject of churches, church growth, and evangelism and I’m trying to kind of combine those topics into one blog and look at them as though they were one subject, which I believe they are. At the very least the topics are interrelated.

Another thing that’s different about this blog is that I’m approaching it from a different way of writing it. I’m using voice transcription software called Dragon Naturally Speaking© and this is a real challenge for me. I’m one of those people who writes better typing as they think.  In other words, my thoughts seem to flow more easily directly from my head to my keyboard. The idea of going from my head to my tongue is a new concept for me as a writer. I’m able to do it easily enough as a teacher, as a lecturer, as a preacher and in general conversation but as a writer this is a new concept for me. This is something I’m having great difficulty teaching myself to do even with a Facebook IQ app telling me that I’m smarter than 98% of the population with an IQ of 148, this difficulty is probably going to be reflected in the end result of this document.

Let me first try to define the problem as I see it. In my immediate community there are a half a dozen or so churches whose worship services follow a very similar format. I call this format the “Field of Dreams” format. Let me explain what I mean by that. You remember the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams? The tagline for that movie was “if you build it they will come.”

Now let me translate that into form and function. What the “Field of Dreams” church is doing is creating fantastic new programs, defined by exciting emotional worship music in a concert type venue, four color advertising with which they anonymously flood their community. Then they sit back in their “Field of Dreams” (buildings) and wait for the unsaved world to come to them. As I’ve said I called this “Field of Dreams” church. They call this the “Seeker church.”

What you end up with is a half dozen churches within a 5 mile radius who are basically doing the same thing just packaged slightly differently. Every 6 to 12 months a group of people that make up any given set of members of any given Seeker church congregation will tire of their particular group of Seekers, get up and migrate to another Seeker church just like the one that they left. When they get to this new Seeker church, many of them; not all but many of them will once again be converted, baptized, and be assigned a position in their new church as new converts. They will be replaced at the church that they just left by a similarly sized group of people that left another Seeker church in the community performing the same pew swapping ritual they just did.

In 6 to 12 months it’ll happen again, and this migration will continue throughout the community every 6 to 12 months. There will be a change of congregations of basically the same people moving to a new Seeker church going through the whole program of conversion and baptism, become recounted as new converts, and each of the Seeker churches will call this process church growth.

I’m calling this musical pews because no real growth has taken place. All that’s happened is a sizable portion of the community has revolved like the spinning barrel of an old time handgun and moved from one place to another and gone through all of the steps again. Don’t get me wrong. Along the way there have been some new genuine conversions, but mostly it’s just a migration.

Now how does this happen? I believe it’s a misunderstanding of the great commission and I’d like to try and explain why I come to that conclusion.

I believe when God says things, He says what He means and He means what He says. For example if He gives you a list; let’s say, as an example, in the list of gifts of the Holy Spirit that Paul details in Corinthians an with minor differences in Ephesians, there is a reason that that list is given in the order in which it’s given. Paul even explains that the last gift in the list is there because it’s the least important of the gifts. Another example of this is when God sets out steps to do something, and he gives an order to those steps. Let’s take the Great Commission for example, as it is given in the book of Acts. We’re told in the book of Acts “daily were added to the church those who were being saved.” (2:47)

Now there are two things happening in the sentence, apart from the fact that both were ongoing processes, and the order is of great importance. Be in very careful not to miss them.

Number one: new believers are being added to the church daily.

Number two: those new believers are being added to the church after they have been converted, again, a daily occurrence for the first century church in Jerusalem.

Do you see the importance of what’s happening in Acts when compared to what’s happening in today’s Seeker church? The order in Jerusalem is that new believers are welcomed into the church after their conversion. New believers are welcomed in to participate as fully vetted members of the family of God, welcome to worship, participate in the Lord’s table, be part of the family because they already are!  This question of before and after is critical, and that’s what the Seeker church is getting wrong.

The Seeker Church/”Field of Dreams” church operates on the premise that if you build the building, design a great program, and have a band that can sing the K-Love Top-100 by memory, lost people will come seeking the truth where you are. Here is your first problem. The Bible says that there none who are righteous, (Romans 3:10) and none who seek after God (Romans 3:11). How can you have a church based on the premise that there are seekers when the Bible says that no one is seeking?

The second problem is a little more complicated. It presumes that the Bible was written for everyone, and it’s not. The Bible is written for the Church. The Church is made up not of the building where people worship but of the worshipers themselves! The Bride of Christ.  Those who have committed their lives to Jesus Christ as Savior. They have repented of their sins, they have asked him into their life as Lord and Savior and accepted him as such. That’s the church, and it is to this group of people that the Bible was written, not the rest of the world.

The book of Acts rendering of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:119-20) works this way. The members of the church, from the preacher to the janitor, go out into the world, and communicate the Good News. That’s what the word Gospel means – Good News! They evangelize the world. When they are successful in spreading the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ: the death burial and resurrection of our Savior and people become born again, where they live, then they are to expand out into the rest of the world. That’s the message of Acts 1:8!  Don’t stand around waiting, GO GET THE LOST, and when you’ve found, converted and baptized them, then welcome them into the church. That’s what the verse and emphasis that daily were added to the church those who were being saved means.  That is the order.  It doesn’t say daily those who were seeking the church, found it and got saved after they were added to the church. The “Field of Dreams” model is simply not in harmony with the biblical model.

The problem then is that the Seeker church, no matter what their programs, no matter what music, no matter how loud or soft they play, it no matter how many screens they show it in however many campus satellite facilities they use, no matter what graphic tee of the week they’re wearing, or what hip new English translation of the week they’re preaching from, an evangelistic model that continues to expect the world to find you instead of you going out into the world preaching the gospel is going to continue to result in exactly what it has resulted in. As wise old preacher friend of mine used to say: “if you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you’ve always got”, and for the field of dreams church, church growth is going to continue to be nothing more than a rotation of the same group of people moving from church to church to church to church.  And as they get to church to church to church to church, and as they continue to be reconverted and re-baptized and re-101’d and re-102’d only to move on to a new place and do it all, all over again in another 6 to 12 months, the church continues to be a nursery when it should be a seminary!

Church, we’re getting it wrong. We need to take another look at the direction that God gives us through the Holy Spirit in the words of Dr. Luke in the book of Acts and go out in to the world 2 by 2 as Jesus commanded us (“And He called the twelve to Himself, and began to send them out two by two,” Mark 6”7a) and preach the gospel to Jerusalem Judea Samaria and on to the uttermost parts of the earth and when we see conversions, then bring them into the church and train them.  Disciple them. What Acts is talking about is how one on one personal out in the real world face to face evangelism was how the first century church could proclaim, ”daily were added to the church those who were being saved.” That’s still how a church grows. Not by having blocks of born-again people moving from congregation to congregation to congregation and get reborn and get re-baptized every six months to a year.

I trust you will take another look at Matthew 28 and the Great Commission and that you will re-read the first three chapters of Acts and you’ll read through them prayerfully, and just as prayerfully consider how you’re doing church. Rethink the “Field of Dreams” Seeker church and really think about why you’re not reaching your community for Christ. The end is coming. It’s closer than we think. Jesus could return tomorrow: are you ready? Is your Church ready? Is your community ready? My community needs Jesus, and I want to see it turn to Jesus Christ. Who is willing to help me? Let’s commit ourselves to work pray and see our communities turn to Christ and see revival sweep our land before Jesus returns.