Word of Life

I have been engaging the Soterian Gospel discussion again. It's an attempt to correct the emphasis on the gospel presentation from a place where you go when you die. IE. Heaven or Hell, thus making it a veiled threat, to an announcment about life, the world of life, Christ's revealing the heart of God, and how that life can be ours, now,and it will be life changing and hope inducing and produce people who are young at heart, who enjoy this life, and have quiet confidence they will endure this age into the next, but are so committed to life together, with the body, serving the King, that our life was different.

If our life here is not different, don't expect your profession of faith to have the power to take you to that place, if the person has not captured your soul and life here. That's why those forming this discussion call the attempt to reform our thinking, The King Jesus Gospel, who is a life giver, first and foremost now, in this age, and then in the age to come.

Fun with Electricity Bills

I shared in fun today a game Laura and I play twice a year entitled, How cold and how warm you can get. We try to leave the heat pump off until May, just when we are flirting with three digit temps. It got to 85 in the house yesterday afernoon and right now at 3:30 pm it is 84. Its a great game of endurance and silliness that every penny pincher should enjoy.

It really underlines for me how hard desert living must have been pre AC, and around much of the world that deals with it the same way with fans and closed shades.

The Adjustment Bureau

There is a large part of American Christianity that forms most of their ideas upon the importance of "free will". God gave it to you and now He is bound not to violate it, thus your final destiny is your own damned or blessed fault. You choose, God honors.

Having my faith built upon the minority report of man's basic brokeness and inability we were taught to see God's choice preceding our choice of following Him.

Both systems can be harmonized with the idea that people respond to that which they want and love, and tend to run from that which causes pain and fear. Its hardwired into our human condition. So the Gospel declares and demonstrates the love of God while we are in that fearful condition and draws us into trust and relationship, which transforms us into loving and trustworthy folks.

God must then love us enough to sort of interfere with our self destructive paths and sort of violate our free will because it does not freely move in the direction of that which it believes to be fearful, rightly or wrongly. This seems to be part of our gospel proclamation that has fallen on hard times. We seem to be warning people of the wrath of God instead of telling them that God is in harmony with His own son in pardoning and welcoming us home, not a sin counter, but a love who draws a world of lost sinners to Himself.

We will be exploring that theme with a Monday movie, because the "angels" or agents in the movie The Adjustment Bureau do not know why they are charged with changing the will of the primary characters. They thus make outside agency seem cruel, which in the gospel in it anything but cruel.

Ten Years off the Merry Go Round

Here is an example of one of our newer mega church buildings.

Just read an article about the 35 plus years of constant change in the evangelical church. When I started, you knew just what was going to happen in church, you followed a bulletin, sang, prayed, stood and sat, listened and left.

With the music revolution there have come literally every other year a new way of worship, a new idea about how to do church, a new philosophy of ministry. We read the gurus, desired their success and tried to go home from conferences and change our church forever.
What usually happened is that we angered our traditional worshippers and they left the church.

I saw some pictures of a church grand opening yesterday. The church was started when three families moved to Queen Creek from California with salaries, an advertising budget that was huge, and a strategy to tell me that every church in the community was dull and boring but fear not, because a real fun church had arrived.

The problem for me, was that we opened our new church worship center the same Sunday they were inviting people to the school cafeteria to try something new. Our church was over 20 years old, had been through ups and downs, and was still struggling with old and new ways of doing things.

We were contemporary, but I discovered harshly that the quality of your church band could change drastically and you could go from OK to bad overnight with the loss of one or two families. And know people were changing churches according to the skill of the band.

So, it took this church over 11 years of setting up and tearing down in a rented facility, and I congratulate them for perseverance. I think they did not want to build too soon because it would stop growth, but then they hit hard times and many got tired and drifted to other more successful attempts at doing the new thing.

For me, at 50, and with a diagnosis of diabetes and a heart attack, I was through. I had my shot and took it. I tried to create a new church atmosphere out of a struggling traditional church. I got to stand behind an acrylic pulpit, and then it was over.

And, I returned to piano and organ and bulletins and a few good old hymns, standing, sitting, praying, and listening.....and I am OK with it. The church being the church.

Close calls, grieving, sharing

A happy memory from Del Mar Beach CA, 2005.

The experiences of every day changes in life as a friend to a group of people is so full of constant change. One friend had a fall, an emergency helicopter trip to see a neurologist.

Another friend loses his wife of sixty plus years.

Our monthly golf group chatted of travel, places to eat, summer plans.

The sad and glad of life, we all experience it.

Rogerian Counseling and a Mentor's passing

Dr. Newton Wilson died yesterday at age 70 of liver failure. He became one of my Bible profs, with a specialty in counseling, when I was at Belhaven College. I remember fondly learning Rogerian Counseling from Newt. It was a non directive type of counseling where you help someone by asking questions, or leading a person to self discovery by repeating what they just said.

"I am depressed", says the counselee, "Your depressed? Tell me about it", says the counselor. It all seems hokey to me at the time, and I was in just a short time to be led in a completely different direction by the teaching of Biblical counselor Jay Adams who used bible texts like aspirin. All ministers are counselors but I always found helpiing troubled people to be one of the greatest challenges of my ministry. People do not fix easily and one method does not help everyone.

Newt was just a bit older, but like those paying tribute to him, he had a maturity, a gentle sense of humor, an approach-ability that endeared him to a generation of students and later to those who sat under his Presidency of our Alma mater, Belhaven College now University.

He joins my other favorite professor, Dr. Knox Chamblin who died last year of leukemia. Both poured their lives into teaching others, and I commend them for it, as I am sure the Lord is doing.

Fry's Electronics

After lunch I browsed through Fry's, a California based electronics superstore. I share this because I have watched its whole history and am amazed at its survival. The street it is located on was once the location of several computer stores that blossomed and died during the years when people were buying PCs like wildfire.

When Fry's Opened, it was a visitors attraction for its visual stimuli, with screens and sounds everywhere and every inch packed with fantasy purchases.

Today, it is more calm, has much more open area, has focused on the few things that have survived, movies, TV, Camera, and computer supplies and support.

I was there to look at a few camera accessories and to replace my currently misplaced USB flash drive, which we use to carry files between computers at the office. The newest generation is very tiny, and can be hooked on my key chain, its very cute the size of a thumbnail and holding 16gigs of files and pictures, and that why I love electronics stores, they represent the greatest and best technology that makes our lives in an information society work seamlessly.