Big Shoes

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Starting today, I am now teaching Bible class at Longmont Christian High School.

I took over for Don Monteath, a great godly man who taught history and Bible for many years at LCS; he taught our son for the years that he went to school there. Mr. Monteath didn't only teach the kids, he also loved them very much and they knew it. Mr. Monteath didn't teach at the school because he needed to, he taught there because he loved the kids and he loved teaching.

 

Don Monteath passed away in December. I attended his memorial, and it was packed. There was an open mic and the memorial went on and on with former students, family members and friends sharing their memories.

I heard it said recently that what the church needs most is more great men and women of God, who serve God and take part in His mission simply because they are Christians and that is what Jesus called all of His followers to be about until His return.

I consider it a privilege to get to teach these students the Bible, and to fill Mr. Monteath's shoes in this role.

 

Thoughts on Vision and Planning

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I overheard this conversation between two cashiers at a store the other day:

“…then he asked me what my 5-year plan was, and I’m like: ‘I don’t know! I don’t even think like that!'”  “I know, right?!”

I remember when I used to think like that myself. When I first planted the church in Eger, people often asked me what my “vision” was, or what my 5-year plan was. I told them, “I don’t know. I just want to lead people to Jesus, plant a church, and raise up Christian leaders.”
Little did I understand, that what I was expressing was a very clear vision and plan!

I have come much more to embrace the mentality of having a plan or a vision.

Dave Ramsey says, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time”.

I have been in circles before where it was seen as unspiritual to plan or strategize. The thing these people don’t often realize is that they have unspoken plans and strategies, even though they don’t articulate them. It can be a strategy, for example, to not plan, and leave yourself open to whatever the day brings you. That’s a strategy – it’s a plan, and one which, like all strategies and plans, has advantages and disadvantages.

The New Year is a time of year I have come to love and appreciate, because a year is a measurable period of time, which gives us a scale to measure by, a scale to reflect upon, and a scale to plan by.

In reflecting on this past year, I realized that God did so many great things in the life of our family and our church. We finished the legal process of our son’s adoption and immigration, our church had several successful outreaches and did more for mission work, my wife and I celebrated 10 years of marriage… I could go on and on.

When it comes to strategizing and planning, I believe the best way to do it is in accordance with your long-term goals of what you want your life, or your organization, to be about.

I have a lot of ideas about things I would like to do in this New Year, and I pray by God’s grace that I would be cognizant of these things, and be able to bring them through to fruition. After all, it’s easy to start things, and a lot of people start things – but few people finish things, and even fewer finish them well.

Happy New Year!

Mother Who Died While Driving High Had Children In Car

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A few months ago a fatal head-on collision happened on a road we drive almost every day. We wondered how this could have happened, and finally the toxology reports were released: both drivers were high and one was high and drunk.
We are so sorry for these children who lost their mother, the families who lost their loved ones. We are also concerned, that incidents like this might become more frequent as marijuana becomes more commonplace in Colorado.

“He LIVED”

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Continuing on the topic of George Whitefield, here is more on what Charles Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers” – perhaps the single most influential preacher of recent centuries – had to say about him:

“There is no end to the interest which attaches to such a man as George Whitefield. Often as I have read his life, I am conscious of distinct quickening whenever I turn to it. He LIVED. Other men seem to be only half-alive, but Whitefield was all life, fire, wing, force. My own model, if I may have such a thing in due subordination to my Lord, is George Whitfield; but with unequal footsteps must I follow in his glorious track.”

The more I read about Whitefield and his life, the more I desire that by the grace of God I might live like him.

Charles Spurgeon on George Whitefield

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“Whitefield’s sermons were not eloquent, but were rough and unconnected. But it was not in the words themselves, but in the manner in which he delivered them, the earnestness with which he felt them, the pouring out of his soul as he preached them. When you heard him preach, you felt like you were listening to a man who would die if he could not preach. Where, where is such earnestness today? One sad proof that the Church is in need of revival is the absence of earnestness which was once seen in Christian pulpits.” [1]

Happy Birthday George Whitefield!

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People have often asked where we got the name of our church: White Fields Community Church.
The answer is actually three-fold:
1) In John 4:35, Jesus said, “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” The name White Fields aligns us with this, and is a statement that we exist to carry out the mission of God and be laborers in His harvest field.
2) The area where we are, North-East Boulder County, is full of wheat fields which turn white at harvest time. The name reflects the area we live in.
3) George Whitefield, the great evangelist of 18th century America, is someone we greatly revere and we want to follow in his footsteps of evangelism and bringing the Gospel to bear on people’s hearts in powerful ways.

Today is George Whitefield’s 300th birthday. He was born in Gloucester, England (where it just so happens that I attend seminary) on December 16, 1714. He later came to America and was used by God as a driving force for the Great Awakening.

Check out this short biography of Whitefield’s life to learn more about him.

“It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.”
George Whitefield

Redemption: Jesus’ Family Tree

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In the Gospel of Matthew, the Christmas Story doesn’t begin with a baby born in Bethlehem and placed in a manger. When Matthew wants to tell us the story of Jesus, he takes us back hundreds, even thousands of years, to look at the family line from which God chose to bring the Redeemer into the world. Matthew starts by giving us a genealogy — which gets skipped over by many people, because it reads like a Hebrew phone book!
But, if you look closely, you’ll find that Jesus’ family tree contains a lot of knots: people we have read about in the Old Testament, whose stories were full of scandal and intrigue…and sin. Yet, these people each represent a story of redemption, in which God blessed a mess and brought beauty from ashes and salvation from brokenness. Ultimately, it was from this group of people that God brought The Savior, The Redeemer, Jesus Christ into the world.
In Matthew 1:21, we read this glorious proclamation: “Mary will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  
Jesus came to save you from your sins. That is what Christmas is all about.
I invite you to join us at White Fields Church in Longmont every Sunday in December and on Christmas Eve for “Redemption: An Advent Series” – in which we will be looking at the knots in Jesus’ family tree, and how God redeems.

 

Ferguson and the Need for Healing of Corporate Memory

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Many people have been asking what the role of the church is in what is going on in Ferguson, MO. Clearly this is a very broken community which has been divided along racial lines and two divergent stories of what went on and why it happened.

One of the most important roles the church has to play in this situation is what is called “Healing the Corporate Memory”.

Social memory is that which attaches to membership of certain groups, and manifests itself as collectively held ideas and experiences.
Most churches and local communities face needs for the healing of corporate memory and for increased awareness of corporate responsibility.
The intention is not to recollect the past for the sake of preservation, but to awaken a sense of responsibility for being the body of Christ in that place.
– Esther Reed: The Genesis of Ethics

Examples of what this looks like can be found in the mid-1990’s in South Africa and in the war crimes tribunals for the Balkan Wars. It consists of telling and hearing both sides’ stories and understanding (but not necessarily affirming) both sides’ narratives – and then condemning ALL of the wrong actions that took place and all of the SYSTEMIC wrong that contributed to the situation in the first place.

However, restitution is also a key issue when it comes to healing. If the white community can make efforts towards restitution for prejudice, disdain and lost lives – whether they feel it necessary or not – and if the black community can make efforts towards restitution for the destruction caused by the rioting – it will make major headway towards forgiveness, healing the corporate memory and creating a new narrative for the whole community – both black and white – to share.

I believe it is the place of the church to step across racial lines, link arms and lead the way in this.

 

Does Forgiveness Simply Mean Suppressing Your Feelings?

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In reading through some material for a class I’m taking on Christian ethics, I ran across an interesting discussion of the ethic of forgiveness, related to Jesus as Priest (part of that being that one role of priests in the Old Testament is that they were mediators of forgiveness between God and humans).

Here is the quote from Esther Reed in the book “The Genesis of Ethics”:

Christian ethics has much to share with – as well as to learn from – the survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence. A problem for both is that forgiveness is too often confused with passive acceptance of wrong, or the suppression of hurt and anger.

The supposed virtue of self-control, and the ideal of self-sacrifice or martyrdom, can lead women to believe that in accepting abuse and exploitation they are doing what Christianity, especially in its support for family values, requires. For neither, however, does forgiveness properly equate with sweeping wrong aside. Rather, it has regard for the specifics of a person’s situation and never trivializes any suffering endured. Anything less is what Bonhoeffer calls ‘cheap grace’, because there is no recognition of guilt and no call for genuine repentance.

I recently spoke about this very thing at White Fields Church – on the oft-missunderstood topic of ‘turning the other cheek’ and what that means, because it has often been taken to mean allowing people to walk all over you or permitting people to abuse you. I don’t believe that’s what it means – and I explained that in detail in a study titled “Loving Your Enemies” – the audio of which can be found here.