A Former Muslim’s Story

This is the season of Immanuel, God coming into the world to dwell with us, the incarnation. It is more than myth or legend, this God-Man Jesus changes lives, and people do not recant in the face of hostility and death. Take a look at this Voice of the Martyrs video at one family in Iran.

Matthew 5:10-12, Mark 10:29-31, Luke 21:12, John 15:20, Acts 7:51-53, 1 Corinthians 4:11-13, 2 Corinthians 4:8-10, 2 Thessalonians 1:4-5, 2 Timothy 3:12, 1 Peter 4:12

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CBF Global Missions 2010

At King’s Grant we support missions through a variety of channels. We have recently produced a Missions Giving Catalogue that will help our people choose from several organizations into which they can make an eternal investment. The first Sunday in December we will highlight the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Offering for Global Missions with this video:

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Why Christian Service?

King’s Grant Baptist Church is getting ready for Operation Inasmuch, the sixth year for the community impact project. This year we are partnering with the Union Mission in Norfolk. John Gray from the Union Mission will be our guest this Sunday (August 30), informing the congregation about the needs and wonderful opportunities for service at the Union Mission.

Why is it that we would serve others in this sort of way? Americans do a lot of volunteer work and churches top the list as the place where volunteering happens. The mission of King’s Grant is to Know Christ and Make Him Known; meaning we are to love and serve God as well as love and serve others. That’s not surprising because Jesus spoke often of the importance of loving and serving others; throughout the Bible God shows a bias toward the poor and a concern for their needs. As followers of Christ, we, too, should have a heart for the poor. We can give money to charities that help the poor, but, in addition, we benefit when we get personally involved. Your opportunity to get involved with “the least of these” is October 17.

Psychiatrist Carl Menninger was asked one time what someone should do when they feel on the verge of a breakdown. Menninger answered, “Lock your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need and do something for him.” I found some other quotes on service worth sharing…

  • In a conference, I’ve heard John Maxwell say, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” 
  • I don’t know who said it, but how about, “life is a lot like the game of tennis, those who don’t serve well, end up losing.”
  • Peter Marshall once said, “”The measure of life is not in its duration, but in its donation.  Everyone can be great because everyone can serve.” 
  • Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me and I forget.  Teach me and I remember.  Involve me and I learn.”

Let’s learn by doing what the Bible says. Acts 20:35 says, “We must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” We all need to ask ourselves regularly, “When was the last time I spoke up for, or did something to help someone in need?” Mark your calendar for October 17, and get involved. 

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Being Missional Vs. Missions Involvement

Gary Chapman of the Southwest Virginia Christian Leadership Network reminded me of the recent movement termed “missional.” To me, this makes sense:

You’ve likely heard the term, “the missional church”, in conferences and conversation.  Simply put, it is a call to churches to be biblically faithful to be Christ’s presence in their local community.  In Breaking the Missional Code by Ed Stetzer and David Putman, the authors make the following statement:

It may sound uncharitable, but we don’t mean it to be so. But . . . many will say that these shifts, and a book like this, do not matter.  They are convinced if you just “preach the gospel” and perhaps “love people” that your church will reach people. They are wrong, and their ideas hurt the mission of the church. Communities across North America are filled with churches led by loving gospel preachers—most of whom, if statistics are true, are not reaching people.

You cannot grow a biblically faithful church without loving people and preaching the gospel. But loving people means understanding and communicating with them. Preaching the gospel means to proclaim a gospel about the Word becoming flesh—and proclaiming that the body of Christ needs to become incarnate in every cultural expression.

So, practically speaking, what would it mean for the church to become “missional?”  This list is from Dan Kimball’s book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church and explains what Stetzer and Putman are suggesting:

  • Being missional means that the church sees itself as being missionaries, rather than having a missions department, and that we see ourselves as missionaries right where we live.
  • Being missional means that we see ourselves as representatives of Jesus “sent” into our communities, and that the church aligns everything it does with the missio dei (mission of God).
  • Being missional means we see the church not as a place we go only on Sunday, but as something we are throughout the week.
  • Being missional means we understand we don’t “bring Jesus” to people but that we realize Jesus is active in our culture and we join him in what he is doing.
  • Being missional means we are very much in the world and engaged in culture but are not conforming to the world.
  • Being missional means we serve our communities, and that we build relationships with the people in them, rather than seeing them as evangelistic targets.
  • Being missional means being all the more dependent on Jesus and the Spirit through prayer, the Scriptures, and each other in community. 

Authentic followers of Christ would seem to be missional in their mindset as described here. It’s more than being involved in missions activities; it’s a way of life! Check out this image…

On a wider level. people just might consider the claims of Christ or at least view Christianity with some mention of respect if they could just see more people actually living out what they profess to believe. A lot of people may be into spirituality but they are certainly not into the church. How can we grow into authentic followers of Christ? How can we embrace what it means to be missional?

“An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer.” –Sarah Ban Breathnach

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Who Decides Proper Christian Theology?

This YouTube video (the Church of Oprah Exposed) is tremendously disturbing. Is this video representative of what happens when the group or community gets together and decides proper theology? Rex Miller indicates we should trust our people to be on a hero’s journey searching for truth and significance in life (my interpretation of what I heard at a recent conference), but what happens when influential people like Oprah with her “experts” and credibility redefines who Jesus is? Is there no standard anymore within the Christian community?

I see this like Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code confirming in the minds of skeptics that Jesus really is the charlatan they always thought he was; because “now we have proof – Dan Brown’s research claims its truthfulness right on page one.” When is the print media of the Bible a true standard in this generation? Or is proper theology lost and we just have to keep diversifying the church (liberal vs. conservative, infant baptism vs. believers’ baptism, health and wealth gospel vs. theology of the cross, cheap grace vs. costly discipleship, gay bishops vs. homosexuality is a sin, etc.). While denominationalism divides the church (often times for good reason regarding non-essentials or preferences) we still can agree on who Jesus is in our foundational beliefs.

In Beauty and the Beast, the village is storming the castle in order to kill the beast. The cartoon musical has a great line, “a hundred Frenchmen can’t be wrong, so kill the beast!” Just because a larger group gets together and says Jesus is NOT only one way to get to God, doesn’t make it proper or acceptable Christian theology.

I read this article this morning in Our Daily Bread:

In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman warns us of the danger of a world of information overload. He reminds us of a chilling futuristic vision—Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which describes a world thoroughly flooded with information. But that data is manipulated so that none of it has any significance.

A glance at the Internet or a magazine rack hints that we are living in just such a culture. We’re drowning in a sea of information often marketed by the unscrupulous. We need discernment to choose wisely whom we will listen to.

In John 6, Jesus delivered His “I am the bread of life” message (v.35). It was a sermon so controversial that, at its conclusion, many of His followers went away and stopped following Him (v.66). They chose to stop listening to the voice of Christ. When Jesus challenged His disciples as to whether they would also walk away, Peter wisely responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (v.68).

In a world swamped with confusing and contradictory information, we can, like Peter, turn to Christ for wisdom. He cuts through the words of confusion with words of life.  — Bill Crowder

So, here we are in the information age, so much information we often find ourselves in information overload (24 hour news, thousands of magazine choices, more web pages than Google can count, non-stop commercials telling us what we need in order to live a satisfying life). I wonder if the church needs to be more in the business of helping people make sense of the world around them; we need interpretation more than additional information.

Read what my friend Chuck Warnock has written on the topic.

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The Historic St. Patrick

Today, we are all supposed to be Irish, wearing green, displaying the shamrock, looking for leprechauns or pots of gold at the end of rainbows, drinking green beer and eating Lucky Charms… it all appears to be just another excuse to party, and we don’t have to wait for the weekend. So, what’s it all really about? Who was this Patrick fellow anyway?  

Robert Morgan writes (in Amazing Stories About Saints, Martyrs and Heroes) that Saint Patrick died March 17, 461, a day that has since borne his name. Patrick was born about 389 in Britain. His father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest. Roman protection of England had deteriorated, and bands of Irish invaders tormented coastal areas, pillaging farms, slaughtering villagers, kidnapping teens. Patrick was taken at age 16. The Irish farmer who bought him put him to tending sheep, and somehow through all this Patrick found Christ. “The Lord opened to me a sense of my unbelief, that I might be converted with all my heart unto the Lord.” 

Following a daring escape at age 22, Patrick returned home to joyous parents who prayed that he would never again leave. But Patrick’s heart burned for his captors, and one night he dreamt an Irishman was begging him to return and preach. After several years of Bible study, Patrick returned to Ireland as a missionary. The Irish were almost wholly unevangelized at the time, worshiping the elements, seeing evil spirits in trees and stones, and engaging in magic, even in human sacrifice, performed by the druids. “It very much becomes us,” he said, “to stretch our nets, that we may take for God a copious and crowded multitude.” And so he did, planting 200 churches and baptizing approximately 100,000 converts, despite a dozen attempts against his life and violent opposition from civil authorities. In his Confessions, he wrote, I am greatly a debtor to God, who has bestowed his grace so largely upon me, that multitudes were born again to God through me. The Irish, who had never had the knowledge of God and worshiped only idols and unclean things, have lately become the people of the Lord, and are called sons of God. 

Think of the love this man had for God and also for his captors. Patrick would sense the call of God to a foreign land to share the good news of Christ with those living in darkness. He thought of others more highly than himself. He was willing to get out of his comfort zone and step out into a risky future. So, on this day of Irish celebration, how is God leading you to get out of your comfort zone? How will you take a risk for God and allow Him to work through you? Peter was called to step out of the boat and walked on water for a while (Matthew 14). How is God leading you? Remember, Peter would never had experienced the thrill of walking on the water had he not stepped out of the boat!

What we experience here in America on March 17 is a far cry from what I read about the real St. Patrick.

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Heisman Winner Has Priorities in Order

I found a great article about this year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Tebow, having his priorities in order. He’s an MK (missionary kid), a committed follower of Jesus and a faithful member of First Baptist Church Jacksonville, Florida.

In a profile aired on ESPN during the Heisman award ceremony, Tebow said his priorities are: “number one, my faith in God; number two, my family and my relationships with my family; number three, academics; and number four is football.”

His mother, Pam Tebow, in the profile, said she declined the advice of a doctor to get an abortion after she became seriously ill and dehydrated when pregnant with Tim, her fifth child while living overseas. Bob Tebow said his son is a “miracle baby and so we have reminded him that hundreds of times.” He was homeschooled but allowed to play high school football thanks to a Florida law.

There are several quotes from his pastor, Mac Brunson, about the entire family’s commitment to Christ. 

“I think who he is is a great tribute to his mom and his dad, in fact the whole family,” Brunson said. “It’s a family that’s incredibly dedicated to the Lord, dedicated to missions. They walk the walk. They just don’t talk about it; they really walk the walk. It’s a close family, and you have to admire the family, not just Tim, but the entire family as well for their commitment to the Lord and the Lord’s work.

“They are really an example of what a family can be under Christ because all of them are so gifted in so many different ways,” Brunson continued. “He’s got a brother who is an incredible athlete. He has a sister who is an incredible teacher. His mother speaks, his dad preaches and has this mission effort in the Philippines. They’re all just talented, gifted. They’re close. They’re a great example of what a family can be when Christ is Lord of everyone’s life.”

Mac Brunson was a Tidewater area pastor several years ago, serving at South Norfolk Baptist Church.

I liked this article because Tebow sets an example for students today, standing up for what he believes in, as well as excelling in academics and athletics; a real role model. Not just a guy who crosses himself after a great play, but a young man who can be at the top of his game and still be faithful in his relationship with Christ. The world has plenty of people who talk a good game. Living it out can communicate to others that what we believe really is something significant.

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