I Saw A Giant

Now, those of you who know me have probably noticed that I am a pretty big guy.  I am not NBA tall, but I tend to be kind of obvious in a crowd.  Well the other day I saw a real giant.  Not a physical giant, but a spiritual giant is.

I am a kind of interim pastor filling in for our lead pastor, Rev. Earl Wheatley, as he battles pancreatic cancer.  A couple of weeks ago I preached a message in preparation for National Back to Church Sunday.  I talked about some of the ways that the church turns people off.  Particularly, I talked about how we tend to put people in categories and we are often seen as judgmental.  I closed by challenging the people to strive to be known for loving their neighbors, co-workers, and others who don’t know Christ. 

At the close of the service I invited people to come forward to pray at the altar rail for people they know that need a relationship with Christ; for ways they might show Christ’s love for them; and for openings to invite them to join us in worship.  The Spirit was moving among us and many people came to pray for their own attitudes, and/or people they might be able to reach out to.

The first person at the altar rail was the pastor I am subbing for.  He felt well enough to be in worship that day and sat on the front row with his wife.  The following Tuesday he was scheduled to undergo some tests that would tell what progress the cancer was making and if the very uncomfortable chemotherapy treatments were helping.  Right away, I figured Pastor Earl wanted us to pray for him and about the test results he would get that week.  I moved over to join him, but before I got there I could hear him praying.  To my surprise, he wasn’t praying about the tests, or his pain, or his cancer.  He was praying for people in his neighborhood that need to know Jesus, and asking God for guidance in how he could best approach them.  Of course, I agreed with him in prayer.

After his wife helped him back to his seat.  I just sat down on the steps to the platform.  I have to admit I was stunned.  Here was a man in a fight for his life and his prayer was for his unsaved neighbors.  I was in awe.

When everyone had finished praying and returned to their seats, I said to the congregation while still sitting on the steps, “I want to be Earl Wheatley when I grow up.”  Then I told them of Earl’s prayer.  We have a giant among us.  His body is emaciated, but his spirit is huge.  I am proud to know him, call him friend, and know him as a brother in Christ.  He challenges me to put the first thing first.  Call it what you want: making disciples, filling up heaven, or seeing people saved.  It is all about sharing the love of Christ.  It is this love that gives a man like Earl the sweet assurance of his own salvation and the deep desire for others to experience it too.  I want to be like that.  How about you?

Stopping Time

As we turn the calendar page to a new year, some of us think we would like to stop time. Perhaps, if 2010 was a great year for you, it would be great if 2011 was just the same. For the rest of us, the possibility that 2011 will be different, and maybe even an improvement, makes us anxious for it to begin. I think there are times when everyone would like for time to stop. Each of us have years, months, weeks, day, even moments, that are so sweet we want them to go on forever. Like when she said, “I do”, or you hit the game-winning home run.

I can think of times like that for me: college days when there was so much to learn and more pretty girls than there were Saturday nights; when my wife and I set out on the great adventure of life with nothing but dreams; those wonderful summers I got to teach my son to love baseball and to play it with all his heart; the day the new church building opened, signifying not only the culmination of many dreams and lots of work, but also the potential for many, many lives to be changed. I could go on, but that would be fun only for me.

The fact of the matter is that time doesn’t stop. No matter how much we wish it would. Sweet, inspiring, important times can never be caught and held on to. We get to keep the memories, but time moves on. It is easy to forget that as it moves, it can bring more amazing moments which we would miss if time was held back.

As I get older, I find the temptation is greater to try to hold back time. (I prefer listening to the classic hits radio stations, and I sometimes find myself watching old TV shows and movies on Hulu.com.) But as great as the old times seem, they are passed, and it is dangerous to let them get in the way of new and wonderful things God wants to do in and through me. He isn’t done with the world, or with me, or with the part I am to play in it. So, I will do my best to approach 2011 with great anticipation, high expectation, and courage. That is the choice I have made. Not always easy. If I choose to live as if time were stopped, I am taking the reins of my life out of God’s hands. That is something I never want to do.

That brings me to a most troubling observation. I am seeing many evangelical churches doing their best to stop time. They have determined that there was a golden age for their congregation and they want to stay there, or go back to it. This is disturbing because the world that Jesus assigned us to reach is moving headlong into the future. Surveys of young people (Unchurched by Kinnamen and Lyons ) are finding the church to be irrelevant to their lives and to their futures. They see the church as something for old people. I think this is largely due to the fact that churches do their best to stop time.

I have seen this happen over the years of my ministry. At first, I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought the church was trying to guard the purity of Christianity. As I became older, and, I hope, wiser, I began to realize that what was being guarded was most often tradition, and/or the good old days, at the expense of doing the mission of the church.

I knew one church that had an open road to become a very influential beacon of God’s love and hope in the community, but it decided that it was big enough at about 120 attenders. They chose to spend their money to pay off their rather small mortgage rather than invest in timely opportunities for the future. As a consequence, 28 years later, the church sits in its paid-off building with a congregation of 25, looks back to the days when the sanctuary was full and wonders what happened.

Another church was considered a very large church in the 1960s when a great man was the pastor. He retired and moved on, but the church wouldn’t move on and tried to preserve the 60s. The 120 people that meet there now are taught about the greatness of the old days.

A friend of mine who oversees about 150 churches in a state ministry told me that most of the churches in his adjudicatory are all ready for next year, if next year happens to be 1955. How sad. How heartbreaking it must be for the God who is always contemporary, whose name is “I am.”

Many congregations in His beloved church have chosen to fall behind. Perhaps those churches would feel more comfortable worshiping a God named, “I was.” I could go on, but it would only serve to bring depression. The point I want to make is that the future is open. Wonderful times are ahead, if we are alert, if we are willing, if we are living in time as it comes. This is true for individuals, and it is true for congregations.

Join me in 2011. May it be a year so great we wish it would last forever!

Dead Man Walking - The Apostle Paul

The Apostle Paul faced the cruelest persecutions imaginable and about every kind of difficulty you can think of. Yet, time after time in his writings he shares his joy and encourages his fellow Christ-followers to rejoice. This week I am posting a message that I preached last year at First Church of God in Kokomo, Indiana about this amazing hero, Paul - Dead Man Walking. Please give a listen. I hope it will both inspire and challenge you to live your life with Paul's kind of tenacity and joy.

Click:  http://tinahouser.net/RaysMessages/index.html to hear "Dead Man Walking - The Apostle Paul"