Category: Community

CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM COVID-19?

CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM COVID-19?

A visionary leader gets betrayed and kicked out of his spiritual community. He is deeply hurt and confused. He cannot see a way forward. Can anything good come out of that?

A decorated war veteran gets court-martialed, ruined by the Army and the country he seeks to serve, simply for telling the truth. Can anything good come out of that?

The world succumbs to a global pandemic, the likes of which hasn’t happened in a hundred years. Can anything good come out of that?

Several conversations, books, and documentaries posed the same question: A disaster happens. Maybe it is personal. Perhaps it is public. It could be global, but it happens, and all that people in the middle of it can see is the downside.

I’m learning that if we watch and wait, if we trust God and keep a positive attitude, there can be an upside. I’m looking for that with Covid-19, and here’s what I’ve found.

Remarkable advances have happened in medical technology and vaccine development. Scientists and pharmaceutical companies produced vaccines in record time with new methodologies. Global trade almost guarantees that more viruses, perhaps much worse, are coming. We now have the medical science to combat them.

Many people heard the phrase “supply chain” for the first time in 2020. Everyone in the logistics business is figuring out how to do it better. We also have a deeper appreciation for truck drivers, grocery store clerks, and toilet paper!

Forced isolation created powerful opportunities for personal reflection on what matters. Too many of us go thoughtlessly through life. Covid-19 forced us to slow down and consider how we spend our time.

Fear of death caused all to pause momentarily to think about our eternity. That is never a bad thing.

We appreciate and support the performing arts. Great music performed by gifted artists is a uniquely uplifting human experience. I plan to attend more concerts.  

Public worship. Nothing can duplicate the experience of the gathered church in worship. I can’t wait till we can all be together again, singing our hearts out to God and experiencing his presence in our praises.

The visionary leader was Joseph, whose brothers sold him into slavery. God used him to save his family and Israel, from whom came the Savior of the world. Joseph is a model for several people I know today, whose stories are still being written.

The military leader was General William “Billy” Mitchel. He foresaw the role of airpower in the 1920s. He publicly accused the War and Navy departments of “incompetency, criminal negligence, and almost treasonable administration of the national defense” for refusing to recognize it. He predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and his followers successfully led the Army Air Force through WWII. In 1946 the U.S. Congress authorized a special medal in his honor; it was presented to his son in 1948 by one of his disciples, Gen. Carl Spaatz, chief of staff of the newly created U.S. Air Force.[1]

The greatest disaster happened to the man from Nazareth on what we now call Good Friday. Or was it a disaster after all?

What good can you find from Covid-19?

[1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Mitchell

WHAT LOVE LOOKS LIKE

WHAT LOVE LOOKS LIKE

What does it mean to love your neighbor? Maybe this will help.

We took lots of trips to West Point, Georgia, when I was a child. Like our current hometown, West Point was small, straddled a big river, and in those days the home of a large textile plant and many farming families. When Dad went to drill with the reserves, we went with Mom to West Point.

On arrival, we had two “must visit” places: Grandmother’s house, my Dad’s Mom, and Grandmama and Granny, my Mom’s mother and grandmother who lived together. All three women were staunch members of 1st Baptist Church, upright, faithful, hard-working women. Grandmother and Grandmama had also suffered much as a result of their marriages. All three loved their three rambunctious grandsons. But the way they loved us was, well, it’s easier to show than tell.

Grandmother always wanted to see us, but you could feel the tension in the grass when you stepped out of the car at her house. She was prickly, agitated, and persnickety. The candy in the crystal bowl on the coffee table was only for display, not for little boys! We ate only at mealtimes, no snacking from the fridge. And she always burned the biscuits. It was hard to please Grandmother and easy to elicit rebukes.

Form-fitting clear plastic with little bumps in it, like sitting on your soccer cleats turned upside down, covered the furniture in Grandmother’s living room. And you didn’t sit on the couch anyway, much less jump on those lovely, firm cushions! You perched on it oh so delicately. Any other approach brought swift scolding.

The whole experience was like that: uncertain, uncomfortable, tight like plastic cushion covers. I tried to stay out of Grandmother’s way and begged Mom to leave as soon as possible.

Grandmama’s house was completely different. Oh, there were rules, but not so many that a boy couldn’t enjoy himself a bit. And the rules were more about who you were than what you did. For instance, we knew we weren’t supposed to use the pea gravel from the driveway as slingshot ammo to shoot at cars from the safety of the shrubbery. Of course, that was wrong. But it wasn’t wrong because of the minimal damage it did to those massive 1950’s & 60’s Detroit machines. It was wrong because the late Nolan Stanley’s great-grandsons should never do something so disrespectful to their neighbors. But I digress.

The minute you stepped out of the car at Grandmama’s, you could feel the love. You walked up the steps, down the long screen porch to the ornate door with the bell in the middle. But we never turned the bell. Just turn the knob, walk right in and race for Granny’s kitchen and the biscuit tin.

Grandmama and Granny’s manner was always calm, dignified, peaceful, quiet, and affectionate.  They radiated welcome. They were glad to see us and sorry to see us go. And I never saw them flustered.

Their house was our house. We could wander through the secret closet and push our faces into the real mink stole that still had the heads with glass eyes. Climb the old magnolia out back, hide in the huge camellias out front, use pea gravel from the driveway in our slingshots (at authorized targets like each other), build forts under the tall beds. The kitchen was always open, and the biscuits never burned. If you’d never known it before, you knew what love was when you went to Grandmama’s house.

That’s what the two homes felt like to us. Grandmother told us she loved us. But we couldn’t feel it. All we felt were the restraints.

Grandmama and Granny welcomed us into their world and blessed us with actions, with demeanor, with the whole environment. We knew they loved us because we could feel it.

My friend Stephen Crotts of The Carolina Study Center said recently, “In the 1960s, students wanted to know the topic and the speaker before they would attend a talk or event. In the early 2000’s they wanted to know if the cool people would be there. Today, so many of them are victims of so many traumas that they just want to know if they will be treated kindly.”

Want to spread the gospel and change the world? Love your neighbor.  

HELPING LELAND’S GRANDMA

The house was small and dark inside, unkempt outside, slumped behind an overgrown hedge like a sleepy hitchhiker by a busy road. I delivered Christmas gifts to Leland (pseudonym), the 5th-grade boy I mentored, and his younger siblings. But his widowed grandma drew my attention. The elderly lady was cold, wrapped in a shawl, huddling near a little oil-fired heater, and wheezing badly.

I hate being cold. My heart went out to her.

It was an all too typical situation. The boy’s father was in prison, his sister and baby brother were children of two other men, his mother a classic example of chronic self-indulgence and irresponsibility. And everyone crowded into grandma’s little clapboard house, living off of food stamps and her meager social security.

The boy was my primary concern, my mentee from the Mentor Role Model program. We met consistently through about the first year of high school when he drifted away. I did everything I could to try and give him a leg up on a better kind of life. I guess the jury is still out on that. But his cold, sick grandma always comes to mind when I pass the now empty house. And the question always comes back: how could I have helped her without further enabling her debauched daughter?

The answer is, I could not.

You may have heard of toxic charity. Toxic charity does for others what they can and should do for themselves. It attempts to meet chronic needs with crisis-response methods and ends up incentivizing behaviors that created the condition in the first place. It also perpetuates the status quo between the rich and the resourceless. It makes the giver feel good while perpetuating dependency and fosters dishonesty to boot. It robs God’s image-bearers of the dignity that comes from the work God created us to do. That’s a bad situation. But recognizing it won’t keep grandma warm.

Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you.” I think what he meant was that, given our sin-nature, we will always have irresponsible people freeloading on their elderly parents. (I did confront the daughter, but that’s another story).

He also said, “You can do good to them anytime you want.” I think that means we cannot always solve the social pathologies that come from our systemic sin-nature, but we can, just for a little while, keep one or two widows warm and trust God to hold their sinning children to account.  

WELCOMING SINGLES HOME The Importance of Intentionality

WELCOMING SINGLES HOME The Importance of Intentionality

Note: I’m happy to welcome my daughter, Mikeala Skelton, as guest blogger today. Her thoughts on being single in the church give us food for thought as the holidays approach. D.S.

A couple of weeks ago, I was having a rough Friday. I was worrying about my granny, who was experiencing health problems three hours away in my home state of Virginia. Earlier that morning, I had called my dad to see how things were going. He informed me that he was taking her up to a hospital in Lynchburg where they could run additional tests. They were checking for pulmonary embolisms.

The rest of the day was tense with the stress that I might be getting some bad news soon. The tests took all day and Dad had very little news to report. By the end of the workday, I realized that I was about to go home to an empty house. Suddenly, anxiety overwhelmed me, and I was sharply aware that, just like every other human being on this planet, I didn’t want to be alone.

This is the reality that many singles face. Some cope with it in healthy ways, some don’t, and many of us fall somewhere in the middle. We all need community, but sometimes, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. That afternoon, I employed a trick my oldest sister taught me: create a list, then reach out to every person from the top to the very bottom of that list until you get a response. It might not be exactly what you are looking for, but it’s a start. 

That isn’t easy for me to do. It feels like a cry for help and I cannot bear for people to see me as helpless, but what I needed that day overpowered my pride, so I went to work sending texts. Not surprisingly, no one was available. It was a Friday, after all. My mentor and her family were busy packing for the weekend’s youth retreat, my good friend and her husband were about to enjoy their first dinner date together in weeks, and my other friend was already at the movies.

Many assume the answer to a single’s struggle with loneliness is easy: a relationship. Get yourself a boyfriend or a girlfriend and all your problems and feelings of loneliness will go away, but that’s not the answer. Even happily married people experience loneliness and if we keep placing romantic relationships on the pedestal of perfection, we will continue to be unfulfilled. The assumption that we must act on our sexuality to be happy is wrong, and the Church has joined the rest of the world in saying that our identity is in our relationship statuses. How? By its lack of intentionality and dismissal of singles as well-rounded individuals.

My goal as I reached out to friends that evening was not to wind up in a sexual relationship. It could have been. I could have just as easily hopped on Tinder than reached out to my married friends. I know how easy it is to replace loneliness with sex, but I also know that real relationships take time and I wanted something real- to be part of a family, to be safe, to be loved. Romantic relationships are great, but they’re not a requirement for any of these things.

As we approach the holiday season, I encourage families of the Church to do more for the singles in their lives. It might seem intimidating, but as theologian Phylicia Masonheimer said, “You don’t have to be in the same relationship stage in order to learn from each other and to unite around a table.” 

A few years ago, I stood alone in a pew listening to the organist play the recessional at the end of a beautiful Easter Sunday service. My family was five hours away and deep loneliness pierced my heart as I watched the other families around me leave for Easter Sunday brunch. Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Behind me stood an elderly gentleman and his wife. He was holding a folded twenty-dollar bill and had a shy smile on his face.

“You might not remember me,” he said, “but the Lord is telling me to treat you to lunch today.” 

I gratefully accepted with tears in my eyes. He had no idea what a blessing that twenty dollars was to me, but as I thanked him and tucked the gift in my pocket, I remember waiting for him to say that he and his wife would love for me to join them for brunch. That invitation never came. I don’t blame them for not offering, but I would have willingly paid well-over twenty dollars out of my own pocket just for them to invite me to a meal.

Couples and families of the Church must be willing to be intentional with singles. We’re not all the same. Some of us are divorced, some of us are widowed, and some of us choose singleness. We don’t need to be coddled. We don’t need special dinners or retreats. But think about this: we do everything ourselves. We take care of ourselves. Sometimes, it’s nice to be invited, to have someone be intentional with us, to be welcomed as part of a family. (And not just on Sundays.) The Church must begin intentionally welcoming singles as whole individuals, or we will go looking elsewhere for community. I will go looking elsewhere for community.

*Phylicia Masonheimer recently released an episode of her Verity podcast on singleness. If you’re looking to understand singleness and how the Church and Christians can help singles, I highly recommend it. It will help you better love the singles in your life.

Mikeala Skelton is the Digital Media Producer for Lenoir-Rhyne University.

HUNGRY FOR COMMUNITY?

HUNGRY FOR COMMUNITY?

I have a confession to make. I hunt for reasons to leave my office and run errands. I spend too much time on Facebook. I linger and chat with the grocery clerk and the guy at the gas station and just about anybody else I can find out in public. I like people. I don’t like being alone. AND I’M REALLY SICK OF SOCIAL DISTANCING! 

If you can identify, and I know most of you can, I want to encourage you to find a friend and bring them to our Alpha Course that begins September 15. Why? Alpha does four things that most of us need right now.

First, Alpha ignores politics. It seems that every four years, we find ourselves in “the most contentious political climate ever.” Politics is a necessary evil, but it need not consume all of our attention every day. Alpha is a beautiful break from the political storm.

Second, Alpha is not trying to sell you anything. Marketing expert Dr. Jeffery Lant developed something called The Rule of Seven. The Rule of Seven states that “to penetrate the buyer’s consciousness and make significant penetration in a given market, you have to contact the prospect a minimum of seven times within an 18-month period.”[1] My dad, who sold life insurance, among other things, summarized it thus: “It takes six NO’s to get a YES.”

Alpha is not a sales pitch of the gospel. It is a course, Christianity 101, if you will, founded instead on two fundamentals: Process and Community. Those two make up the third and fourth things Alpha does for us: create community and allow us to process some of life’s most profound questions.

Covid-19 is forcing many of us to sit still and ask serious questions, some for the first time in our lives. Questions like: Is this all there is? What is life about? Why do bad things like this happen? What’s my purpose? Where is it all headed? Am I ready to die? Alpha provides ancient wisdom on those topics as well as a safe space to process them.

And finally, friends! Alpha helps us meet that gnawing need for community. That is what makes Alpha so enjoyable and encouraging. No one will pressure you, and all questions are welcome in a fellowship of friends who’ve gotten to know one another through shared time and laughter.

Alpha is for everyone. If you’ve been a church member all your life, you will enjoy it. If you have never entered a church or considered Christianity, you will enjoy it and come away enriched with new understanding and new friends. Want to register yourself or a friend? Click here: FIND AN ALPHA.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-many-contacts-does-it-take-before-someone-buys-your-product-2011-7#ixzz3kaienRL6

MAKE EVERY EFFORT

MAKE EVERY EFFORT

 

This is a solemn but a glorious hour. I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly over all Europe.

For this victory, we join in offering our thanks to the Providence, which has guided and sustained us through the dark days of adversity.

We can repay the debt which we owe to our God, to our dead and to our children only by work—by ceaseless devotion to the responsibilities which lie ahead of us. If I could give you a single watchword for the coming months, that word is—work, work, and more work.

Those words, spoken by President Harry S. Truman, 75 years ago this week, opened his speech marking VE Day. If that last line sounds gloomy, remember, the whole world needed rebuilding, and the Japanese had not yet surrendered. The task was huge, but America met the challenge.

Just as Americans met the challenge back then, we need to meet the challenge of resuming normal life now. We have work to do. The virus is not yet wholly defeated, and much requires rebuilding. It also means that no matter what we think about the coronavirus and our various responses, we must preserve our unity.

I’ve been thinking hard about this, as we consider exactly how and when to re-open our church building and resume regular worship. Ephesians 4:1-3 primarily occupied my mind.

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.[1]

“Make every effort,” sounds like Harry Truman’s exhortation, does it not?  Here’s a breakdown of what it will take to meet the challenge of maintaining our unity as we resume communal worship.

First, practice humility, the art of seeing ourselves as we are, not as higher or more important than others, but not as everyone’s doormat either. It just means, “Wake up and smell the coffee: the world doesn’t revolve around you.”

Second, practice gentleness. Meekness is the old word. An often-misunderstood concept, meekness is not “weakness,” not “milk-toast-ness.” It is not a lack of confidence or living in constant fear of hurting someone’s feelings. It is strength under control. It is the picture of a powerful horse responding to the merest nudge of his master’s knee.

I was born into a home with a big yellow tomcat named Amenhotep, “Teppy” for short. My parents bought the cat for my older brother, who was born six feet tall and 200 pounds so that he could learn how to be gentle with me.

Some of us are stronger than others. Be gentle with each other.

Third, practice patience.

A young father in a supermarket was pushing a shopping cart with his little son, who was strapped in the front. The little boy was fussing, irritable, and crying. The other shoppers gave the pair a wide berth because the child would pull cans off the shelf and throw them out of the cart. The father seemed to be very calm; as he continued down each aisle, he murmured gently: “Easy now, Donald. Keep calm, Donald. Steady, boy. It’s all right, Donald.”

A mother who was passing by was much impressed by this young father’s solicitous attitude. She said, “You certainly know how to talk to an upset child—quietly and gently.”

And then bending down to the little boy, she said, “What seems to be the trouble, Donald?”

“Oh no,” said the father. “He’s Henry. I’m Donald.”[2]

Patience is the ability to endure, putting up with things that make life a little complicated and just carrying on. Be patient with each other.

Fourth, forbearance. Patience emphasizes bearing up under a load; forbearance is about self-restraint, holding back from comments or actions which may be justifiable but ultimately undermine unity.

Everyone knows Winston Churchill, but not everyone remembers Lady Astor, the first female member of Parliament, who was also anti-Semitic and part of the appeasement crowd who opposed Churchill. The two were known for verbal jousting.

Astor is reported to have said, “If you were my husband, I would poison your tea,” to which Winston replied: “Madam if you were my wife, I’d drink it.”

That might be fun, but it isn’t the way to maintain unity.

Forbearance practices courtesy, “the oil that lubricates the fine machinery of civilization.” It recognizes that each of us is a fragile, imperfect creature. Forbearance fuels unity.

“There is one body and one Spirit— just as you were called to one hope when you were called— one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all,”[3] wrote the apostle. Therefore, make every effort to keep that unity in the Spirit through the bond of peace.

[1] The Holy Bible: New International Version. (1984). (Eph 4:1–3). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[2] John Huffman, “The Fruit of the Spirit Is Patience,” PreachingToday.com

[3] The Holy Bible: New International Version. (1984). (Eph 4:4–6). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

THE SECOND LAW OF SPIRITUAL THERMODYNAMICS

THE SECOND LAW OF SPIRITUAL THERMODYNAMICS

Physics recognizes the second law of thermodynamics. Everything is winding down.  Everything atrophies. Everything decays unless it’s maintained.

Do you have a car? The clutches and seals in the transmission will wear out. Own a home? The siding will rot. The mortar in the bricks will need touching up. The porch will sag. The plumbing will stop up. Have a computer? Its CPU will crash if you don’t maintain it.

What most of us don’t realize is that there is a spiritual version of that law.  It’s called “the law (or doctrine) of total depravity”.  It means that the whole person is affected by something that destroys us, something that causes problems in our relationships and our communities. The mind, the will, the emotions and the body of every human being is infected with a condition known as sin. It doesn’t mean that everyone is as bad as he can possibly be. It means that left to ourselves, without something to keep us in line, we will tend toward selfish, greedy and destructive behavior.

The second law of thermodynamics means we must work at maintaining physical things. The law of total depravity means that we must work at maintaining spiritual things. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost its saltiness it is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do men light a lamp and put it on under a basket, but on the lamp stand, and so it gives light to all who are in the house.” (Matthew 5:13-16).

How to pull that off? Well, it can be costly. The late Howard Hendricks told this story:

Recently, I was walking the streets in San Mateo, California. I met an attorney I knew from a local evangelical church. I said to him, “What are you doing?”

He said, “I’m looking for a job.”

I said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

He said, “No, last week I walked out the front door of that corporation and told them, ‘You can hang it on your beak. I’m no longer going to write contracts that you and I both know are illegal and illegitimate.'”

That man is regarded as one of the top five corporate lawyers in America, and he’s unwilling to sell his value system for a mess of pottage. We need a larger core of lawyers like that.[1]

I can hear you thinking, “Yeah, we need more lawyers like that!” But to be honest we need more mechanics, more doctors, more contractors and more everybody to be like that. That’s what it means to be salt.

Without something to preserve it, the world will suffer ethical decay. Without something to light the way, the world will recede into darkness. God put his church into the world to be that something.  God put you and me here to do something for the world that the world cannot do for itself. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.

[1] Citation: Howard Hendricks, “Beyond the Bottom Line,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 101

 

WHY CAN’T WE COMMUNICATE?

WHY CAN’T WE COMMUNICATE?

“Are you listening to me at all?” My wife asked gently as we waited for our meal at Applebee’s.

Oops, I thought. You’re so busted! “Uhhh…No, I was trying to see who won the game last night,” I replied, still snatching glances at the wall-mounted screen over her right shoulder. Good thing she likes sports, or she would’ve really been mad.

Have you ever said something to someone and, having listened to their response, realized that they didn’t grasp the tenth part of what you were saying? Or felt like they weren’t listening at all?

Perhaps this is only common to preachers (and football widows). After all, preaching, as they say, “is just talking in someone else’s sleep.” But I have a feeling that you know what I’m talking about, that you’ve experienced communication frustration. Where does it come from? Why is communication, especially communication about spiritual things, so difficult? Well before you take a megaphone to the next person that doesn’t listen consider a few things.

A friend who is an engineer for a large utility company tells me that when he had to hire some new engineers, he required applicants to hand write sample repair instructions to a mechanic. Something like two out of ten could do it with any competence. Our education system is not what it used to be. More and more people are graduating from high school and even from college without the ability to make themselves understood.

We are also in a much denser communication environment than ever before. Commercials are shorter and faster, cell phones, Twitter, and text messages interrupt normal conversation, emails, pop-ups, dual screens – all of these technologies force feed us with hundreds more messages than earlier generations had to process, causing us to erect thicker message filters than we did forty or fifty years ago. We humans can only absorb so much information at a time. As a result, attention spans have shrunk. We are also becoming more reliant on pictures and music and less on words. We are a nation of receivers tuned to the elemental frequencies of image and melody. Language is becoming harder to digest.

But there is a third reason that people often cannot hear what we’re trying to say, especially if our message concerns the kingdom of God. Spiritual forces are at work. Consider Jesus and Paul’s comments on the matter:

Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. (Jesus in Mark 4:15 NIV)

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (Paul in 2 Cor 4:3-4 NIV)

The ability to communicate clearly and powerfully is a skill that can be learned. But in the end only God can penetrate the darkness, the spiritual veil that covers the heart of men and women. So, no matter whom you’re talking to or when, before you begin to speak, pray for the Lord of light to open the eyes and ears of the soul in your listeners. He alone has the power to make his light “shine in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:6).

THE POUND CAKE HAS LANDED and other thoughts on community

THE POUND CAKE HAS LANDED and other thoughts on community

The “Smith” boys got arrested last week and I couldn’t help them. My brother is moving this week and I can’t help him either. And the pound cake landed in my office today, but I didn’t bake it.

Those three things percolated in my head this morning as I sat down to write. Though they are unrelated events in a typical week, they share a single thread: Healthy community isn’t optional, and it doesn’t happen by accident. It must be intentionally built.

I’ve been acquainted with the “Smith’s” since they were born. We greeted them as toddlers on our daily walks past their house, one block over from ours. We watched them graduate from training wheels to big boy bikes. I helped them refill their tires once with my air compressor. We waved and said hello every time they passed our house on the way to the basketball court at the park. But we never built a real relationship with them or their parents. Their vandalism—the neighborhood always knew it was them—escalated with age. Now they are under arrest, charged with  murder.

Maybe, just maybe, if I’d hosted that annual 9-11 block party I dreamed of shortly after the terrorist attacks, a relationship could have taken root. Mentoring might have happened. Now I’ll never know.

My brother is moving from the gulf coast to north Georgia this week. He is desperately tired with all the preparations and needs a lot of help to get moved in. I’m too far away, there is no room in my work schedule to go anyway. He doesn’t have a network of friends there yet. I’m hoping and praying the church he visited on one of his house hunting trips will hear of his need and give him a hand.

Healthy community doesn’t happen by accident, it must be intentionally built.

And just in case you were beginning to get depressed, the pound cake has landed, and I didn’t bake it.

We’re not talking just any pound cake here either. We’re talking Ann Chaney’s finest lemon-glazed, melt-in-your-mouth, make you wanna slap your Momma ‘cause she never gave you anything this good! southern Virginia masterpiece of a pound cake. Ann, who has been my administrative assistant for fourteen years, baked it for our upcoming Alpha Course. I’ll never be able to bake anything that good. But I can’t wait to bless our guests with it.

Life is tough and people have free will. We can’t save every wayward boy or help every worn-out brother. But we can, if we are intentional about it, create an environment where relationships can grow, people can hear the gospel, receive the gift of life, and experience the community of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

But it won’t happen by accident. Healthy community must be intentionally built. Sometimes all it takes is a really good piece of pound cake.

Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. [1]

[1] The Holy Bible: New International Version. (1984). (Php 2:4). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

AN ALIEN IN YOUR DRIVEWAY

AN ALIEN IN YOUR DRIVEWAY

If an alien from outer space landed in your driveway and asked, “What are all those buildings in your town with pointy spires and crosses on top? What is that about?” Could you answer accurately?

That’s the question C.S. Lewis—author of the Chronicles of Narnia—and Oxford College Chaplain, Walter Hooper, knocked around one day. “We wondered how many people, (who did not flee) apart from voicing their prejudices about the Church, could supply them with much in the way of accurate information. On the whole, we doubted whether the aliens would take back to their world much that is worth having.”

Hooper and Lewis were speculating because at that time, in the mid-twentieth century, several autobiographies of former bishops and preachers had flooded the market explaining why they could no longer accept the faith. Lewis believed that much of the ignorance of true Christianity was due to the flood of “liberal writers who are continually accommodating and whittling down the truth of the Gospel.”

Nothing much has changed. Today, many people reject Christianity because of prejudice. They’ve been disillusioned by a bad Christian or injured by a fraudulent one and rejected the faith out of anger. And a spate of recent statements and books by former evangelicals such as the late Rachel Held Evans, and former pastors Rob Bell, and Joshua Harris contributes to confusion. “If professionals can’t follow it, how can I?”

But as Hooper writes in his preface to God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics by C.S. Lewis, “…it is impossible to decide whether Christianity is true or false if you do not know what it is about.” Spiritually hungry skeptics must ask themselves, “Am I rejecting something I fully understand? Or am I using negative examples as an excuse not to investigate it?”

If you are ready to learn what Christianity is about, Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity, is a good place to start, as is Lee Strobel’s, The Case for Faith. But if you prefer talking it out among friends you would enjoy the Alpha Course. It’s a ten-week introduction to basic Christianity that’s designed to encourage questions and build friendships with others on the same journey. Our church is hosting its ninth Alpha Course this year. If you come, we promise to feed you well, treat your questions with respect, and above all, not treat you like an alien from outer space.