Moving my Blog

I migrated to Wordpress.com today. I found some of its features very appealing so from now on when trying to access my blog and sermon archive please dial in my new blog .

Check Out a Great Blog Post

Jeff Gauss is a Pastor in Cushing, MN. Read his excellent post, Risk and Reward. A link to his blog is found at the bottom of this post.

My father was a financial advisor for 20 years. He taught me a lot about money management – credit, debt, saving, and investing. Everything I’ve learned about financial responsibility, I learned from him. I remember sitting down with him about 10 years ago when Heidi and I were ready to make our first investment. As we were trying to decide where to put our money, he told us this fundamental truth of investing: “Never invest anything you aren’t willing to lose.” This caution is the application of the principle of “risk and reward” which is simply this: the greater the risk, the greater potential for reward; the lesser the risk, the lesser opportunity for reward. In other words, you can put your money in a bank savings account and it is virtually guaranteed to be safe, but you will only earn 3% on your investment. Conversely, you could invest your money in the stock market where you could earn 10, 20, 50, 100% or more on your money… or you could lose it all and have nothing. If you play it safe, you are guaranteed a little return. If you play it risky, you aren’t guaranteed anything. You might lose everything, or you might strike it rich. With great risk comes great (potential) reward.

I have come to realize over the years that there are basically two kinds of Christians: those who like to play it safe and those who like to live on the edge. Those who play it safe tend to be comfortable, secure and satisfied. They risk little, and so, consequently, their reward is little. In terms of spiritual maturity, their growth amounts to a mere 3%. On the other hand, the risk-taking Christians lay it all down on the line. They throw everything into following Jesus. They go when God says, “Go!” They give when God says, “Give.” They risk comfort, security, and personal satisfaction for the reward of a life lived in obedience to the Master. Their risk is great, but the promise of reward is greater. Often times they lose everything (money, jobs, family, friends, even their own life), but they consider it all gain for the privilege of serving Christ and the promise of future reward (Philippians 1:21 & 29).

Truly, my dad’s precaution about investing was first spoken by Jesus: “You cannot be my disciple unless you pick up your cross and follow me. But don’t begin until you count the cost” (Luke 14:27-28a). In other words, Jesus says, “Don’t invest your life unless you’re willing to lose it.”

Many times I am still tempted to play it safe – to take the comfortable and secure path of religion. But as I seek to follow Jesus, I’ve come to realize that a relationship with him is anything but safe. With great risk comes great reward. I’ve gotten a taste of God’s reward and I’ve determined that I can no longer settle for a mere 3% return on my investment. I’m throwing it all in for Jesus and expecting a great return.

What kind of investor are you?

Rurality Bytes

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Transformational Leadership

A very timely reminder for those of us contemplating the meaning of "transformation".



Sub-biblical Transformation | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

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Sermon Updates

I uploaded my last few sermons today. We finished the series on the list of qualities we are admonished by St. Peter to cultivate (2 Peter 1:5-11) with talks on Brotherly Love and Love, the capstone of Christian virtues.

My most recent talk at Temple is on embracing the redemptive mission of God. In preparing this talk I benefited from a sermon on this subject I recently read by John Ortberg, Pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church and former Teaching Pastor at Willow Creek. John is an accomplished speaker and writer.

Maintenance or Mission?

Check out the following blog I stumbled on during sermon prep today. We're praying and hoping and working to move from a maintenance to a missional mode here at Temple Baptist Church. I found this inspiring and helpful.

1. In measuring the effectiveness, the maintenance congregation asks, "How many pastoral visits are being made? The mission congregation asks, "How many disciples are being made?"

2. When contemplating some form of change, the maintenance congregation says, "If this proves upsetting to any of our members, we won't do it." The mission congregation says, "If this will help us reach someone on the outside, we will take the risk and do it."

3. When thinking about change, the majority of members in a maintenance congregation ask, "How will this affect me?" The majority of members in the mission congregation ask, "Will this increase our ability to reach those outside?"

4. When thinking of its vision for ministry, the maintenance congregation says, "We have to be faithful to our past." The mission congregation says, "We have to be faithful to our future."

5. The pastor in the maintenance congregation says to the newcomer, "I'd like to introduce you to some of our members." In the mission congregation the members say, "We'd like to introduce you to our pastor." [this is because the members are bringing folks, not the pastor...Bob]

6. When confronted with a legitimate pastoral concern, the pastor in the maintenance congregation asks, "How can I meet this need?" The pastor in the mission congregation asks, "How can this need be met?"

7. The maintenance congregation seeks to avoid conflict at any cost (but rarely succeeds). The mission congregation understands that conflict is the price of progress, and is willing to pay the price. It understands that it cannot take everyone with it. This causes some grief, but it does not keep it from doing what needs to be done.

8. The leadership style in the maintenance congregation is primarily managerial, where leaders try to keep everything in order and running smoothly. The leadership style in a mission congregation is primarily transformational, casting a vision of what can be, and marching off the map in order to bring the vision into reality.

9. The maintenance congregation is concerned with their congregation, its organizations and structure, its constitutions and committees. The mission congregation is concerned with the culture, with understanding how secular people think and what makes them tick. It tries to determine their needs and their points of accessibility to the Gospel.

10. When thinking about growth, the maintenance congregations asks, "How many Baptists live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?" The mission congregation asks, "How many unchurched people live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?"

11. The maintenance congregation looks at the community and asks, "How can we get these people to support our congregation?" The mission congregation asks, "How can the Church support these people?"

12. The maintenance congregation thinks about how to save their congregation. The mission congregation thinks about how to reach the world.

originally posted by William H. Willimon @ 10/23/2006

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Godliness

I forgot my little digital recorder and cannot upload last Sunday's sermon. We're continuing the series of sermons based on the virtues commended in 2 Peter 1:5ff. as leading to productive and effective lives. Last Sunday the theme was godliness. Literally translated "good worship", it indicates (ala Elwell, EDT) "reverence for God and a life of holiness in the world."

The only worship that matters is the kind that produces a life that in growing measure reflects the character of God.

Patience

Our series from 2 Peter continued on May 13 with a study on patience. You can listen to these sermons if you like by scrolling down to the sermon player on the left side of this page.

I was reminded that the Christian virtue of patience implies suffering and is more than a stoical acceptance of some painful reality. It is a kind of suffering in hope, i.e., while trusting in God and relying on His promise to be with us and to bring us to a desired end.

The following poem by Martha Snell Nicholson (read by Elizabeth Eliot as a part of her address at the funeral of Missionary Veronica Bowers and her infant son Cory, mistakenly killed by the Peruvian Military in 2001) captures this idea:

I stood a mendicant of God before His royal throne

And begged him for one priceless gift, which I could call my own.

I took the gift from out His hand, but as I would depart

I cried, "But Lord this is a thorn and it has pierced my heart.

This is a strange, a hurtful gift, which Thou hast given me."

He said, "My child, I give good gifts and gave My best to thee."

I took it home and though at first the cruel thorn hurt sore,

As long years passed I learned at last to love it more and more.

I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,

He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.

Self Control

I've been preaching on the character qualities we are admonished to cultivate in 2 Peter 1:5ff. One of them is self control. This is a phrase that brings me back to my childhood school days. Remember the dreaded Parent/Teacher Conference nights? "Your son has a great deal of potential as a student. He only lacks self control." I'm afraid the battle still rages on.

I have learned a few things. That there are no magic formulas. No quick solutions. No mere adjustments in terminology, no repetition of affirmations describing the self from God's point of view. No once and forever consecration or eradication of the "old man". Peter's admonition to control the self refutes perfectionism. If the self were perfected it wouldn't need to be controlled.

The very idea of self control assumes that the self is divided, complicated. It continues to present us with a serious challenge by producing tendencies to do wrong. The challenge is to "deny ourselves" and "take up our cross daily," as Jesus says, and follow him (Luke 9:23).

Sermon Player 2

I just noticed that the sermon player does allow downloads. When you select a sermon the details tab opens. There is a little mp3 icon just below the volume adjuster. This little button facilitates the sermon download.

Sermon Player

Please notice the sermon player on the right of the page. This device will allow you to listen to sermons online. I only have 2 sermons in a digital format at this time but I intend (God willing) to digitally record future sermons. That will allow me to continue to regularly post sermons on this blog. I'm also going to try to post the mp3 links that should allow you to download the messages if you're interested.

Leaving Home: Last Installment

So here is the last installment of "Leaving Home" as promised.

Its 1981 and I'm sitting in the tiny bedroom of our basement apartment (1 bedroom - 3 young kids) in Brooklyn Park, MN with my Dad. We were taking a break while my family's belongings were being loaded into a grain truck by a few good men who had come to collect their new Pastor with his wife and kids and to see us safely to the parsonage belonging to our first church (Otho-Kalo Community Church) on the top of a picturesque hill above the Des Moines River in central Iowa.

Of course I needed the break more than my Dad. He was in way better shape. But he clearly wanted to talk. He had something important to say. So we found a quiet spot and he earnestly told me a story about the first time he left home and how he tried to find his way back.

He was 3 years old and living in a shack somewhere in rural Oklahoma (he was born in 1906 in Tuttle OK) with his Mom and Dad and 2 older brothers. It seems his Dad was a drunk and a gambler who neglected (at the least) his young family until one day his grandmother (an Irish woman named Garrett sp.?) could abide it no longer.

[I'm picturing the next part of the story in John Ford western mode]

So this old lady with a bonnet and long skirts comes riding up in a horse-drawn buckboard wagon in a cloud of dust one evening, pulls hard on the reins and comes to stop outside the shack, sets the brake, climbs down from the wagon and shouts to her daughter "Goldie! You grab what you can in a hurry, climb up in this wagon and we'll see the back of this place afore that no good scalawag of a husband of yours gets back. I'll help with the boys." And so with her cape flared out in the wind she swoops down like an angry hawk to where 3 year old Harvey sits at play and suddenly gathers him up and plops him down into the wagon with his mother and brothers and their few belongings and drives off into the sunset to God knows where and this little boy will not see his father again for over 30 years.

Now I can see the pain in my old man's face as his mind searches out the rest of this story and he conveys it to me with tears in his eyes as I'm about to load my family in our buckboard wagon (58 Chevy or 73 Buick or whatever) after 8 years of college, seminary and post grad study (I was 35).

I come from a family of story tellers and listeners (we all like to gab into the wee hours if we can find anyone to listen) but this was a story that I'd never heard until that day.

So now my Dad is in his thirtysomethings with three young daughters. He's a good 1200 miles away from that old shack and three full decades have gone by. His mom had remarried, he had been raised by a step-dad, the family had eventually made their way to Minneapolis where he met and fell in love with my mother at Washington Elementary School and they had married as teen-agers (at least Mom was) and had begun to raise their own family. And yet the longing to know his father had not gone away.

A lifetime of work and struggle had come and gone and my Dad was now in a position to take a long-awaited trip to Texas to meet his father. I believe they had had little if any contact for all those years. So he leaves Minneapolis with his wife (my Mom) and heads for Texas.

Somewhere out in rural Texas they come to a mailbox on a dirt road at the end of a long driveway up to a farm house and there's the name (Evans). "This must be it" he says to Mom and his heart is pounding as they slowly turn down that lane, pull up in the yard and make their way to the screen door where they're met by my grandpa's second wife and family and warmly invited in for coffee and some delicate conversation. "Your Pa's out plowing the back 40. Go on out there, I'm sure he'd be please to see you." So, while Mom stays and visits in the kitchen with these kind women my Dad goes out to find the back forty.

When he comes up on the field he sees the old man with the plow behind a team of mules some distance across the field. He climbs over the fence and walks through the soft, newly turned loam to his father who stands by the plow and waits for his approach. When my Dad introduces himself his father interrupts him and says

[at this point in the narrative I want my readers to know that everything you've read so far has come from my recollection of that day and certainly I may have embellished a few things or gotten a few things wrong. My sisters will correct, I have no doubt, some of the details, even the grammar of this blog as well they should. But this next bit is verbatim. These are the very words that have stayed with me all these years and my memory is sealed by the recollection of the deep emotion that my Dad displayed at this point in the story. He struggled...stopped and started...shook the tears from his eyes and cleared his throat as he recalled to me his father's words...]

"As soon as I saw you come over the fence I knew you were one of the boys."

This is where my father's story came to an end. It was time to go back to work loading the truck, but when he came to the end of his story he looked pleadingly at me through tears as if to ask without words "Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Of course I thought I did. It seemed to me then and now that what he was saying to me was simply that there is an indestructible bond between us and that wherever I traveled he would never forget me and whenever I came home again he would recognize me as one of his boys.

Of course the spiritual analogies here are rich for me. God is like my grandpa in a way. When we who are His children have wandered far and long from His fields and care and if we should return to Him He'll say to us (no matter what has intervened) that as soon as we stepped over the fence He recognized us a one of His own.

But God is very much unlike my grandpa also. He doesn't stand and wait for us to cross the fence. He's really more like my Dad. The longing runs deeper in Him than in us. He takes the initiative and pursues us. He leaves His home (Phil. 2; Luke 15:4 ff.) to find us and when He does He carries us (all the way!) to our real home and we'll never leave home again!

Authority and Submission

I got pulled over by the local constabulary the other day. As providence would have it (I almost said luckily) I was actually late for a funeral. "You're conducting the funeral?" asked the officer. "Yes I am." He shook his head and said something like "at this kind of speed (over 60 in a 30 zone I'm ashamed to admit) you're lucky its not your funeral". He actually let me off with a warning and let me know that this was an unheard of mercy. "I don't give breaks on speeding like this". When you pray at the funeral, say a prayer of thanks". (I didn't wait to get there)

I was, of course, very submissive to this officer. I saw the lights flashing, noticed his badge and uniform and dutifully pulled over, produced my license when asked, etc. It made me think a bit about issues of authority and submission.

Last night at a weekly Bible study in which we have been studying the Gospel of Matthew we came (providentially) upon an interesting exchange in Mt. 21:23ff. in which the question of the authority of Jesus is raised by the chief priests and elders. These guys were having a hard time with submission. This account follows the triumphal entry, the cleansing of the temple and the healing of a number of “lame and blind” after which Jesus accepts the praise of children (vv. 14-16). (The lights were flashing big time!)

Because these civic and spiritual leaders are unwilling to submit to Jesus’ authority, i.e., to acknowledge both its divine source and character, they are self-excluded from open and truthful dialogue with the Rabbi who is the truth.

Contrast the conspiratorial huddle and political considerations of these sad men with the joy of the children in the temple and of the people confessing Jesus as the Christ as He entered the city.

Those who joyfully submitted to the authority of Christ had no power of their own to protect and rejoiced to see the signs of the kingdom breaking out. The priests and elders wanted to retain their power and the advance of the kingdom was seen as a threat. They were not impressed with the healing performed by Jesus or by the cleansing of the temple, both of which are self evidently awesome.

They chose to retain their own power and as a result lost their opportunity to experience the redemptive power of the gospel which only comes to those who submit to the one whose children call Him Lord. No wonder Jesus was soon to cry out

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"
(Matthew 23:37-39)

I'm Back

A few of you have encouraged me to continue to blog so I'm back at it. I was sick for over 2 months with a respiratory infection of some kind. It really knocked me down for a while but I'm completely recovered so I'll be blogging away again. Lets keep in touch!