I Wish I'd Said That • 3

I realized I haven't shared an I Wish I'd Said That post since January, so here you go!

• If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough. - Mario Andretti as quoted by David Foster

• God is just as concerned about how we treat the people we lead as what we get accomplished. Remember, they may be your leaders, but they are His kids. - Jim Wideman

• If Jesus said the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, why don't we think the thief ever actually comes to steal and kill and destroy? - John Eldredge in Waking the Dead

• If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems, and that's a big mistake. - Frank Wilczek (Nobel Prize Winner in Physics) as quoted by Tony Morgan

• The path of least resistance makes for crooked rivers and crooked men. - Unknown

• But in our defense, we're very lazy people who tire easily. - Mark Addy as Bill Miller on CBS's Still Standing

• Without wood a fire will go out, and without gossip, quarreling will stop. - Proverbs 26:20 - NCV

• When you know God would never do anything to harm or destroy you, and whatever He does or does not do in your lifeis in your best interest, then you will give yourself freely to Him. - John Bevere in The Bait of Satan

Friday Blog Shout

This week's blog shout out is an easy one. My wife, Janelle, doesn't blog that often, but when she does it's fantastic (picture Ignacio saying fantastic! without the sarcasm)! Check out her blog at janelle irwin - preacher's wife.

365: Psalms 89, 90, 91 and 92 (Day 177)

Psalm 90:1 reads: Lord, you have been our home…

Please understand what I’m saying: It is an extreme privilege to be called as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. No amount of frustration or sacrifice could ever balance out the awesome privilege we have of serving Christ.

But sometimes… I’ve got to admit, when Janelle and I think about the challenges in ministry, the main thing that grabs our hearts is that we don’t have any place to call home.

My parents retired to Florida over 20 years ago. My dad passed away 10 years ago, and my mom’s condo is nice, but it’s not home. My brother and sister moved away from Erie, PA – our home town and now my brother lives across the river from Cincinnati in Kentucky. Dave and his wife Mary have a beautiful home, and we enjoy visiting (rarely, I’ll grant you) but it’s not our home. Judy, my sister, lives in Lakeland, FL with her husband Al. We also enjoy visiting in their home, but again, it’s not our home.

Ben (16) and Will (closing in on 13) were born in Nashville, TN, but we moved away from there when Will was only 8 months old. Since then, my kids have lived in Maryland (suburban Washington, D.C.), Georgia and Pennsylvania. They don’t have anywhere that feels like home either.

And I understand it’s not just pastors. Everyone knows we live in an increasingly mobile society. Lots of people are feeling the lack of roots that comes from living here today and somewhere else tomorrow.

My wife’s family still lives in the Kansas City area. She has her mom, a brother and two sisters, their spouses, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles and cousins all within the metro area. If I were pushed, I guess I’d say that Kansas City feels more like home to us than anywhere else. But we left Kansas City in December of 1983. I wasn’t even a pastor then, but the move was necessary to procure a promotion in my paramedic career at Medevac Emergency Medical Services. That wasn’t bad, only 70 miles west of KC. Little did we know we’d never live that close again.

Right now, we love our place in rural Pennsylvania. We could get real used to this. But we know God is preparing a place for us, and he’s preparing us for that place, too.

That’s why we take comfort in this passage: Lord, you have been our home since the beginning. Before the mountains were born and before you created the earth and the world, you are God. You have always been, and you wil always be (Psalm 90:1,2 - NCV).

In an increasingly rootless society, no matter where we live, we can put our roots down deep into Christ. Come what may, he is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). How much stability can we have if our stability is dependent on location, career, or people? Everything changes; everything that is, except for God. That’s why God is our home.

Tell me your tales of living in a rootless society.

Mid-Week Snicker

The General in charge of the army was pleased to get a visit from his friend, the Admiral in charge of the Navy. How are your men, Admiral?

My men are tough as nails - lean mean fighting machines. How about yours?

The General replied, My men are the bravest fighting men on the planet. I'd put them up against your men any day of the week!

Show me, said the Admiral, unimpressed.

The General called out to a soldier on the training field, Private Cooper, report!

Private Cooper ran across the grounds and snapped to attention: Private Cooper reporting as ordered, Sir!

Cooper, do you see that tank approaching? I want you to get out there and stop that tank with your bare hands.

What?! Are you crazy? I'd be killed! And with an, I'm out of here! Private Cooper ran off the field screaming.

The General turned to the Admiral. See what I mean? You have to be pretty brave to talk to a general like that.

Tuesday Book Review

My intention is to organize my blog by a blogging schedule. Here's what it's supposed to look like:

Mon: Open - my choice
Tue: Book Review
Wed: Humor
Thu: The Bible in 365
Fri: Blog Spotlight
Sat: Family
Sun: Sunday Report

I'm going to follow this to the best of my ability as long as it seems to be working for me. If it needs tweaked, I'll gladly tweak it. In the immortal words of Dr. Peter Venkman (Ghost Busters' Bill Murray), It's more of a guideline than a rule.

Of course, right now I'm limited on weekends because of my limited Internet accessibility. That's why I focused on family (no pun intended) in yesterday's post when I wrote about Ben.

I'm also not guaranteeing I'll be writing every day. I do have a life. But like I've said many times before, blogging has become a spiritual discipline for me. It gives me the opportunity to have an outlet for what God is teaching me, and it makes a way for me to stay connected to friends.

My last book review was of Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change. I was going chapter by chapter, which is my modus operandi. Unfortunately I felt the need to take a blogging break, and did not finish that review. It's a great book, and I highly recommend it. (I hope Amazon can handle all the traffic caused by my recommendation - they may have to hire some temps!) I have several unposted chapter blogs in my computer, but rather than go back and finish that off, I'm going to start something new next Tuesday. Actually, it's something old. I'm going to review a classic work by Watchman Nee, entitled The Release of the Spirit. It had been sitting on my shelf for years before I read it this spring. It was powerful for my life, and I think I will retain its teachings better if I put it into my own words (read: blog about it), and I think it will be meaningful for you, too. Pick up a copy, and read along with me.

Tell me about your best laid plans that had to be tweaked in the name of sanity.

Ben Turned 16 Last Monday

I can’t believe it. He started his first job the week before, at Whitehall Camp & Conference Center as Junior Summer Staff. His primary duty is serving as a lifeguard, but that’s only about four hours a day, and since he’s working 10-12 hours a day, or even longer, there’s plenty of other stuff to keep him busy.

He took his lifeguard training a week ago on Friday through Sunday, and the first campers arrived on Monday. When he’s not lifeguarding, he does everything from weed eating to cleaning to washing dishes to helping with summer camp kids.

I’ve been impressed with how Ben has grown up over the past couple years. During the school year he’s been a real self-starter, getting himself to school on time, knowing when his assignments were due and getting them done. We’ve been lucky to see him for about an hour a day since he started his job, and already we can tell it’s doing him good. He’s told us it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, but the most rewarding, too. We were also blessed to hear him talk about how he’s growing spiritually from the experience. Since he’s eating all his meals and bunking at the camp, too, I can’t tell you how much we miss him being around.

Will is about ready to turn 13 (less than two months from now). Ben and Will are both good boys, and I’m proud of the young men they’re becoming. When I think about what great kids they are, I have to laugh at all the questions we had as they were growing up – questions about parenting and discipline: Were we being too strict? Were we being too lenient? Should we or should we not let them play with razor blades? Okay, that last one didn’t really happen. All in all both boys have made it pretty easy to be parents so far. I know we’ve got a lot of parenting ahead, and everyone tells us the teenage years are the most challenging, but so far so good. We’ll just take things a day at a time, and trust God for the results.

Ben turned 16 last Monday.

Blogging Geniuses

I don’t know how they do it! That's my rant for today. How do they do it? I find it difficult to post regularly, mostly because I’ve gotten out of the habit. Part of my blogging is as a spiritual discipline, sharing some of the things God is speaking to me, especially those things that I think would be helpful to you.

So, #1, I’m aware I have to re-develop the blogging habit. I get that. But let’s look at some accomplished bloggers, writers whose blogs attract hundreds of times the readership of The Masked Evangel.

Ben Witherington posted four blogs yesterday (Wednesday, June 18 – I’m writing this on Thursday to post on Friday – even though my blogging platform doesn’t provide a way to do that, my laptop has a little used blogging tool called Microsoft Word, so I can write ahead when I have the opportunity, and then post on a later day). Ben’s four posts averaged out to around 675 words each. I personally believe Ben is a robot who doesn’t need sleep. He’s one of those guys who accomplishes so much with the life God has given him, that I am ashamed to ever utter the words, I don’t have the time.

Craig Groeschel and Anne Jackson both write posts ahead (they’ve written about it as advice to other bloggers). Craig’s posts average 145 words each and Anne’s about 294 words each. How do I know this? Okay, I admit I took their last ten posts and did a word count.

Perry Noble posts every day (I'm having trouble linking to Perry today -- hope you can navigate there! I swear the link is right. Try www.perrynoble.com/), and his articles are usually a little longer – about 373 words each. Then there’s Greg Boyd (who has more brains and theological knowledge in his little finger than I have in my entire body), whose latest post (at the time I wrote this) was about 1900 words! Every writer has his own style, and the question isn’t so much, How long are the blog posts?... but, Is the blog worth the investment of time it will take to read it? Believe me, I’m a better person for reading the blogs I do. I subscribe to about 25 blogs. I scan them almost every day, and if they catch my interest I read them more carefully. I’m a better Bible scholar, theologian, pastor, family man, and person because of that small investment of time. Hey; If I find myself continually disinterested in a blog’s content, that blog gets dropped from my subscription list – life is too short.

Anyway, Friday is supposed to be the day I give a shout to someone else’s blog. This week I want to direct your attention to Craig Groeschel. Read this and this. It won't take long, and it will be worth it; I promise.

But first, thanks for reading The Masked Evangel. I’m dedicated to making it more worth your while than it’s ever been. (By the way, my last ten posts averaged about 225 words a piece – that is until this one threw off the curve!) And if you want to read some really great blogs, check out my blog roll in the lower right column.

365: Psalm 33-36 (Day 163)

Psalm 34:14b admonishes us: Look for peace and work for it. Jesus said: Blessed are the peace-makers (Matthew 5:9). Both of these passages teach us that, as God's children (those who would carry on the family business, so to speak), we have a responsibility to actively pursue peace. Peace never comes by the path of least resistance.

What if I refused to stoke a conflict applying water, rather than gasoline, to smoldering fires. What if I actively advocated for peace, a smoothing hand to ruffled feathers and a soothing voice to frenzied spirits? And what if I had the kind and volume of peace in my hearts that overflowed to those around me.

The antithesis of this peacemaker ethic is hiding behind my right to not get involved. That's what the priest and the Levite did when they happened upon a crime victim in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan, on the other hand, simply got involved and did what he could to heal the ravages of violence. He didn't end a war or free a nation, he just reached out to another human being.

Where would God have you get involved in the pursuit of peace?

Musings on the Sovereignty of God

One group of Christians identifies God by his sovereignty, his control over everything. By their understanding, everything that happens is God's will, part of his plan. God knows what will take place because he has predetermined it. When bad things happen to good people, it's all part of God's design, and if we knew what God is up to, we would understand. The point is that God is sovereign, and it doesn't really matter if we understand or not; it doesn't really matter if we like it or not, because we're God's creation (read: We are God's property).

Another group identifies God by his love. Rather than focusing on his transcendence (how different and far away from us he is) and power, they focus on his immanence (how like us and near to us he is) and love. But real love makes us vulnerable, and vulnerability doesn't seem to fit with a transcendent God. This group, for the most part, also believes God knows every aspect of the future, not because he predetermined it, but because of his simple foreknowledge. Because he loves us, he has endowed us with free will (not fully realized in the unbeliever, because how free can anyone be who is a slave to sin?). Of course, predetermination and free will sort of cancel each other out, don't they? As God's crowning creation, this group doesn't focus so much on God's property rights, as much as on God's love for us (read: We are God's children).

Still another group, more closely related to the second than the first, focuses on God's openness. They say God only knows those aspects of the future that he chooses to know. They don't doubt that God could have created a universe where he predetermined everything down to the smallest detail, but they believe God chose not to create that kind of universe. They don't doubt that God could have created a universe where he simply foreknew everything, but they believe God chose not to create that kind of universe. They believe that God chose to create a universe where people would honestly have the ability to choose, and that how the future unfolds is in part dependent on those choices, making us not puppets, but partners with God in life.

What do you think? And how does what you believe shape how you minister to those who have experienced the tragedy of loss? How does what you believe impact your understanding of prayer?

See You Later, Zach

I had the bittersweet privilege of visiting with some people from my last pastorate on Monday. It was wonderful to see them, but the reason for our reunion was a sad one. A young man named Zach got his driver's license last Wednesday, and was killed later the same day when his car hit a tree. Zach was a good kid. He was born just up the road in Mt. Pleasant, but his family had moved to Ohio some years ago. I was touched to see several members of his church youth group travel from Ohio to SW Pennsylvania to say their goodbyes. I had baptized Zach's little sister and his grandpap (SW PA for grandfather) a little more than a year ago, and I dearly love the whole family, all four generations.

The Prophet Joel wrote to his generation after it was assaulted by a devastating natural disaster. Rather than a cry of gloom and despair, Joel wrote a note of encouragement, assuring Judah that God had not forgotten them, and that there was still every reason to look with hope to the future. He admonished them to be reminded by their hardest days to inventory their own lives, taking stock of their relationship with God.

Zach knew Jesus. We hate it that his life ended so tragically, and we grieve for our loss, but we are comforted to know that we will see him again, when we experience a much more joyful reunion.

To my friends in mourning, my prayers are with you. You know how to get in touch with me; and please know that I always love to hear from you. As much as I hate the circumstances of our gathering, it means so much to me that you asked me to be with you in this most difficult of times. Please know that I love you.

All that Glitters Is Not Gold

I thank God for the opportunities I have had to teach and/or lead worship over the past few months. I taught a segment of The Church of God in Michigan's ISL (Institute for Servant Leadership) on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. I was blessed to speak at City Church in Connellsville for a Saturday night and Sunday morning service. I taught and led worship at Beaver Valley Church of God, led worship at Whitehall Camp & Conference Center, and will be speaking this weekend at Robertsdale Church of God. A couple weeks from now I'm supposed to preach at Grove City, but that depends on the outcome of this weekend.

Yes, we had some weeks off and enjoyed worshiping with our sister Church of God congregations around the area, but my favorite weekends were sharing in one way or another, teaching or leading worship.

Hey, Robertsdale friends; you can get a jump on Sunday by reading 2 Chronicles 12:1-11. And for our Sunday afternoon Bible Study, read Matthew 5:17-48. That way we've covered both an Old Testament and a New Testament passage.

Looking forward to this weekend. I'm praying for you!