Month: June 2017

RENDEZVOUS WITH JESUS: Alpha 2017

A new friend sat across the table at the local deli, eager to tell me what had happened to him.

“On the third week, when Nicky Gumble led in prayer, I prayed with him and gave everything to God. I told God I couldn’t do anything without him and didn’t want to try. Up until then I had some good days and some bad days, well, really a lot of bad days and some OK days, full of anxiety, sleeplessness, and depression. All of that is gone. I felt this incredible lightness after I prayed. I’m sleeping the night through now, and I’m so happy.”

That was in 2011, about five weeks into our first Alpha Course, and conversations like it have continued to happen ever since. That’s the reason our church will offer Alpha in September for the eighth time since 2011. I’m writing today to ask you to pray for the course and for friends you might invite this summer.

Haven’t heard of Alpha? Wonder what it’s like?

The Alpha Course is completely apolitical. More importantly, it isn’t built around a sales pitch of the gospel. It is a course, Christianity 101 if you will, founded instead on two fundamentals: Process and Community.

Learning is a process that happens best when we are in the presence of friends. This is what makes Alpha so enjoyable and encouraging. No one is pressured to “buy” anything and all questions are welcomed in a community of friends who’ve gotten to know one another through shared meals and laughter.

Alpha is for everyone. People who have attended church all their lives will enjoy it. Those who’ve never entered a church or considered Christianity will also enjoy it and come away enriched, with new understanding and new friends.

The Alpha Course Team, the people who make the event happen each fall, consists of two parts: task force, and hosts / facilitators. The task force prepares the meals and handles logistics. The hosts / facilitators make  guests feel welcome and facilitate small-group discussions. The only prerequisites to serving on the team are to have attended the course at least once and meet a few times prior to launch for prayer and training.

One of the most important things our Alpha team has learned over the years is that the primary reason people attend the course is because a friend has invited them. So even if you choose not to serve on an Alpha Course team, your prayers for and invitations to friends really count. Of course you’ll also want to attend with whomever you invite.

The coolest thing in the world is to sit with new friends, see the peace and joy on their faces, hear how awesome it is to know that they are loved and cared for by the Creator of heaven and earth, and know that we got to play a small part in their rendezvous with Jesus.

Interested? Visit  http://alphausa.org.

DISCERNMENT IN THE D.C. GLADIATORIAL GAMES

Politics is blood-sport where power is the prize and those who play it will stop at nothing to win.

I learned that ugly truth in a beautiful room in the house of one of the power players in Washington D. C. The owner, whose issue is tax reform, was not present, but had made his home available to another special interest group for a meet-and-greet. I was attending their conference as a guest who could offer an evangelical perspective on their issue.

As I sipped my drink and circled the room I came upon an older, white-haired gentleman, erect, clear-eyed and almost elegantly dressed compared to the rest of us. This old gent looks nice enough, I thought; I bet he can give me a real feel for their movement. So I introduced myself and asked something innocuous like, “I’m new to this. Can you tell me what drew you to this movement and what how I might help?”

With little more than his name and state as preamble he said, “Young man, this is about power plain and simple and I am willing to break your legs in order to get that power and defend my rights and achieve my purpose. If you are not willing to do the same you don’t belong here.”

I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. If that’s what this is about, I thought, count me out. But that happened about ten years ago, and the more I watch the D. C. gladiatorial games, the more I believe he was right. While there are a few “Mr. Smiths who have gone to Washington,” honest people seeking to serve, we are witnessing a ruthless battle for power into which all have been swept. Those who have it want to pursue the agenda for which they were elected. Those who do not have it want to stop those who do and will fight dirty to win.

The question for us is: who is telling the truth? Answering that requires the biblical quality of discernment. It is what Solomon asked of God when he became king of Israel, “Give me a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.”[1]

Discernment is the ability to see the character beneath the costume. It perceives the chill in the kidnapper’s eye as clearly as the fear in the real mother’s when threatening to split the disputed baby in half, as Solomon did in his most famous case.[2]

Like Gamaliel, who reminded the Sanhedrin of the fate of earlier messianic movements when he stood to speak on behalf of Peter and the apostles, discernment sees the whole context, remembers the rest of the story, not just the parts on momentary display.[3] It reads between the lines of testimony and sees that what is not being said is as important as what is.

Sound judgment also distinguishes a partisan player from an honest broker, a manipulative speech from a straightforward question, and a witch hunt from an authentic investigation. As Megan Basham, who attended the Comey hearings, reported on World Radio this morning, “Everything sounded so scripted that all the drama was taken out of it. The only thing that raised journalists’ eyebrows was Mr. Comey’s admission that he had leaked information to the press via a Columbia Law professor.”

No one person has access to all of the facts, so discernment in the D.C. gladiatorial games depends on reliable reporting based on biblical objectivity, or the “God’s-eye” view. It is impartial, fact-filled, and thorough and recognizes that “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account,” including the biases of the reporter. [4] 

For that I can only recommend WORLD Magazine and World Radio’s The World and Everything In It podcast. You can get a risk-free three-month trial membership by going to www.getWORLDnow.com.

[1] 1 Kings 3:9 NIV

[2] 1 Kings 3:24 NIV

[3] Acts 5:34-39

[4] Heb 4:13

THE SELAH CENTER: New Help for an Old Problem

“We need to talk.” The message alarmed Tom because his girlfriend, whom he had dated since middle school, usually felt free to text anything. But this time she would only agree to meet in person. With his subconscious screaming, you know what this is! but his frontal lobe in full denial mode, he made his way to their favorite spot in the stairwell at the high school. The look on her face said it all, “I’m pregnant.”

If you can identify with the desperate situation in which these teens find themselves, and statistics tell us that about thirty percent of us can, you know what it is like to be unmarried, pregnant, or with a pregnant girlfriend, and totally unprepared. For over forty years the standard procedure for people in this situation has been to find the local abortion provider and “deal with the problem.” One in seven pregnancies still ends in abortion.

But a combination of improved ultra-sound technology, multiple stories of abortion-injured women, and Planned Parenthood scandals is causing more and more women to seek an alternative solution.

That’s the role that Southside Virginia’s newest crisis pregnancy service provider, The Selah Center, hopes to fill in ever greater ways as it observes its first anniversary in operation.

The Selah (pronounced Say-la) Center, located at 403 Virginia Avenue, between Pizza Pub and United Country in Clarksville, opened on May 26, 2016, has helped many clients in its first year with services including pregnancy testing, post abortion peer counseling, pre-natal and parenting care techniques for mothers-to-be. But Selah also provides male mentoring, peer counseling, and classes on finding a job, making and keeping a budget, and how to buy a good used car for future fathers.

The Center is also committed to the development of expectant moms as whole persons. Clients receive “Boutique Bucks” for each class attended that are then redeemed for diapers, wipes, bath items, children’s clothing up to 2T, and other baby care necessities.

Selah Center Executive Director, Christie Russell says, “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that God would ask me to join Him in this work.” But Russell, who holds a B.S. in Global Marketing Management from Averett College, and a Masters in Biblical Counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that over the years she had so many conversations with so many hurting young women, that when a speaker from the Tidewater Area issued a challenge to her congregation to open their own pregnancy center she found she could not say “No”.

With Transitions Pregnancy Services in Danville, and The Selah Center in Clarksville, Halifax County women and men now have two options for help during a crisis pregnancy. If you need help with a pregnancy, or you would like to donate, you can contact them at 434-362-2207, or find them on the web at theselahcenter.org.