Archive for April, 2006

Brenda Chrane

Published
by
Mike
on April 29, 2006
in Highland
. 23 Comments

Tomorrow is the last day for Brenda Chrane to serve as one of the ministers of the Highland Church. She has been there 25 years and is “retiring” to move more fully into her love of grandmothering.

This is one of the most amazing women I’ve met in my life: godly, positive, cheerful, helpful, wise, hospitable, compassionate. She consistently leaves people blessed and nurtured in her wake.

What a privilege it’s been to serve side-by-side with her for the past fifteen years.

Other Brenda Chrane testimonies?

Communion

Published
by
Mike
on April 28, 2006
in General and faith
. 66 Comments

This Sunday I’m speaking about communion — about how it has historically been for the church a weekly opportunity to celebrate the risen Christ and to re-enlist in his mission.

Most of us have some special times in our lives that are connected with communion — maybe a time of rededication, a time of forgiveness, a time of joy or of grief.

Anyone willing to share some of those stories?

Perception Vs. Reality

Published
by
Mike
on April 27, 2006
in General
. 28 Comments

From my buddy Rubel’s “Fax of Life”:

It was Robert Burns who wrote the wistful line about God giving us humans the power to see ourselves as others see us. I wonder if his thoughts turned in that direction because of somebody’s waistline.

A new report from the Pew Research Center gives some interesting insight about how men and woman see ourselves. The topic surveyed among more than 2,250 adults was weight. Says the report: “People tend to see the weight problem of the nation as a whole as being greater than the weight problems of their friends and acquaintances.” They might also have added “or themselves.”

Nine out of every 10 Americans hold the opinion that the majority of their fellow citizens are overweight. Yet only 70 percent think that most of the people they know are too heavy. Finally, when it comes to themselves, only around four in every ten of us thinks he or she weighs too much.

If those numbers seem not to add up, the researchers noticed the same thing. “When [people] think about weight,” they wrote, “they appear to use different scales for different people.” And weight isn’t the only thing . . .

We are also inclined to use different “scales” for weighing deeds and motives. So she admits she said something hateful but denies having really meant it. He confesses to hitting her but claims she knows that he really loves her. Or we acknowledge that we have not obeyed some red-letter teaching of Jesus but insist on our religious zeal and piety. What’s going on here?

We are facing a difference of perception versus reality.

* The reality is alcoholism, but the perception is extroverted party-animal.
* Reality is painful neglect of family, and perception is noble hard work.
* Truth is lack of integrity, yet the masquerade is that everybody does it.
* Fact is religious hypocrisy, but pretense is denominational loyalty.
* Reality is only words and promises, while perception is deep devotion.

So what do you think? Are your self-perceptions accurate? Or are they skewed by allowances made for self and friends that are not made for strangers? Vices plastered with excuses? Disobedience masked by religious lip service?

“Not everybody who sounds pious is really godly,” said Jesus. “They may call me ‘Lord,’ but they still won’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The real test is whether they obey my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).

The poet was right. It is a gift from above to see ourselves as we really are.

Today’s NIV

Published
by
Mike
on April 26, 2006
in scripture
. 52 Comments

Yesterday after class a couple students came up and said that at their church they’d been told to get rid of their TNIVs because the translation gets rid of the male language for God. That is awkward because I’ve talked about the improvements made in the TNIV.

(By the way, I seriously doubt that they heard this from their minister. I’m guessing it was from a class.)

Let me be clear: the TNIV does NOT get rid of the male language for God.

It does, however, make some changes (just one of many areas where improvements are made over the older NIV) that reflect differences in the way Greek and English deal with gender.

For example, I have one brother and two sisters. In Spanish I could say I have three hermanos. Even though “hermano” is the word for brother, in the plural it can include brothers and sisters. But even though in Spanish I could say I have three hermanos, I wouldn’t in English say I have three brothers.

Similarly, when Paul writes to the “brothers” in a church, he isn’t just addressing the males. So in Today’s NIV it comes out as “brothers and sisters” (unless, of course, the context suggests a male audience).

Here’s what D. A. Carson, who’s known as a fairly conservative Evangelical scholar, has said about the TNIV: “The TNIV is more accurate than its remarkable predecessor, the much-loved NIV, while retaining all the readability of the latter. It is a version I can use with confidence, whether I am speaking at a university mission, or in a Bible conference anywhere in the English-speaking world. I am deeply impressed by the godliness, linguistic competence, cultural awareness, and sheer fidelity to Scripture displayed by the translators. Thirty or forty years from now, I suspect, most evangelicals will have accepted the TNIV as a ’standard’ translation, and will wonder what all the fuss was about in their parents’ generation—in the same way that those of us with long memories marvel at all the fuss over the abandonment of ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ several decades ago.”

My preaching hero John Stott has said: “It has never been easy to distinguish between a ‘translation’ and a ‘paraphrase’. Translations tend to go for contemporary scholarship at the expense of contemporary language, whereas paraphrases tend to sacrifice accuracy for relevance. Today’s New International Version is highly successful in combining both scholarly accuracy and linguistic relevance.”

Despite what a few have said, the TNIV isn’t an attempt to create some gender neutral society. It’s an attempt by people who love scripture to translate scripture accurately in this generation. Spend a little time at their website, and you’ll get a feel for the devotion the translators had to this communicating God’s message. If you want to check out more about their decisions of how to handle language related to gender, there’s a great explanation here. As he explains, one day we’ll realize that this was a tempest in a teapot!

An Interview with Dr. Jeff Childers about the Wreck

Published
by
Mike
on April 24, 2006
in Highland, faith and the wreck
. 36 Comments

1. Jeff, we’ve been drawn much closer together over the past year because of the experience our children were in. I’ve shared with this blog community some of the horror — along with some of the blessings that have come. Could you reflect a bit on some of the positive things you’ve seen from this tragic experience?

Our time together has been one of the real blessings to come out of this nightmare — and for me, part of the healing too. You and I always said we wanted to spend more time together somehow, though I don’t think this is the way either of us would have chosen to begin doing that. Still, it’s funny how catastrophe can open our eyes to a new way of seeing, so that some vital things which tend to get laid aside in favor of “urgent routines” make their way to the top of the list, demanding attention. Conversation, relationship, community — why does it often take crisis and loss to remind us how much more important those things are than many of the things we misspend our energies towards every day?

Back to your question. Amara was in the accident because she traded seats with a friend during the last rest stop. For some reason, she and her two friends weren’t able to ride in the same vehicle together. Amara was assigned to ride in the car her mom was driving — not the average 8th-grader’s dream youth group road-trip, but she endured. The other two girls were together. As an act of friendship, one of them (Sage Nielson) gave up her place so that Amara could be with the other girl for a while: Beth Johnston. Then the accident happened. The seat-swap created some confusion back in Abilene about just who was involved in the accident but it also stirred deep emotions between Sage and Amara.

When Amara was finally brought to the hospital, she looked awful and was in a lot of pain. But she had only two things on her mind and she kept talking about them, for as long as she was conscious: 1) the people who had helped her and prayed with her on the roadside; and 2) she asked how everybody involved was doing — including Sage. Once Amara and Sage finally got to see one another, late the next day, the scene was incredible. “I am so sorry that you took my place,” Sage said. “It should have been me!” At the same time, Amara was blurting out, “I am so glad that we traded places, so you didn’t have to go through this!” They were both weeping. Come to think of it, some other people in the room may have been crying too. Each was ready to give herself up for the other and in the middle of the horrific pain of that time of broken bodies and death they knew very well what they were saying. The image of Christ was making an appearance, right there among the cookie bouquets and blood transfusions.

Has anything positive come from this? Yes. For instance, we got so many cookie bouquets that we had to borrow extra freezer space… :) But seriously — in this experience we have met God. You can tell whether a sure-enough, for-real encounter with God has happened based on how the event transforms people’s lives. You often can’t know at the moment. You certainly can’t tell God showed up just because there are deep emotions, or great inner experiences, or amazing coincidences, or miraculous provisions, wonderful as all those may be. Sometimes we let ourselves get fooled into thinking that those are the marks of a God-thing, but he’s deeper than those things. It’s about how the event causes people’s lives to be reordered according to the image of Christ — that’s how you can see God’s hand. It usually takes some time; time to see the effects, time to reflect on the event and the aftermath. More than a year later, I can look back and see how that this event has evoked the image of Christ. Amara and Sage — the Good Samaritans on the roadside — the people who sacrificed and mobilized to help the Bourlands and all the families involved in the wreck — the Highland Church coming together for service, prayer, and healing — cooperation and compassion between denominations in Abilene — the tangible outpouring of love from people all over the place, including so many regulars on your Blog. And in Amara I have seen ongoing transformation. She is more responsive to people in need. She has volunteered her time to help the local Children’s Miracle Network — including doing spots on TV and radio (against every 14-15-year old’s instincts..). She thinks about creative ways to use her money to help others. She’s on her way to Mexico this summer to put her aching body to work for others. I am proud of her.

Seeing all this in the aftermath has renewed my conviction that the Way of Jesus is a good Way. And I am totally convinced that our family and our church met God that day, because of the way his character and heart have revealed themselves in the midst of it all. Many people impacted by this event have been formed according to Christ. To me — that’s positive.

2. You’re a dad and a theologian. You’re bound to have heard people try to explain “why this wreck happened.” Can you help us think Christianly about this?

Tough question. After all, if we met God that day and if rich blessings have come out of the event, is that why it happened? Who am I to say? Maybe I should stop there. But, here goes…

Early on Amara started getting hit with many different explanations for her suffering — everything from “accidents happen,” to elaborate commentaries that confidently interpreted every detail of the experience as directly orchestrated by God for very clear and specific purposes. She handled the explanations fairly well. I think deep down she sensed that people were genuinely trying to be helpful and encouraging in a faithful way. But more than once, having to grapple with some of the explanations produced tears and painful conversations as she tried to fit these explanations into what she knew from the Bible and her experience. Some of them just wouldn’t fit. Some of them required a God who was totally absent; others required a God who spent a lot of his time inventing new ways for people to suffer unfairly. One evening she visited with me about how hard it was to see God as someone who would deliberately take away a mother’s young son, as in her accident — or to cause the suffering of a child who was being abused by a parent over many years, as in some cases she’d heard about. Yet some of the explanations from older Christians she admired required that kind of God, and it was difficult to swallow. You can imagine that we were having different conversations than we’d had before.

It was a reminder to me that theology matters, because some theology is toxic, no matter how well-meaning. It often becomes toxic when some truth about God is magnified to become the only truth about God, at the expense of some other truths that are just as biblical and just as important. But maybe I didn’t need to worry about it so much, since over the last year my teenaged daughter has become quite a practicing theologian. She didn’t just swallow everything she heard, but reflected deeply, talking it through with her parents and siblings. And she heard the reflections of people like you and others, that helped her find ways to think Christianly.

I have heard that when some of her peers in her High School Bible class or Huddle are quick to blithely give God credit for various tragedies that occur, on the presumption that he has some good purpose we just can’t see, she now tends to be one of those who says, “God didn’t do those things. But he wants to bring good out of them.” That has become her answer to the problem, I think. And it has become important to her that it be said — that well-intended, pious-seeming, but overly simple explanations for tragedy not be allowed to stand unchallenged. I think she knows that way more is at stake than the momentary comfort one-sided answers bring.

Her answer reminds me of Jesus with the man born blind (Jn 9), or the time he commented on the worshiping Galileans that Pilate slaughtered and the tower of Siloam that collapsed and killed people (Lk 13). There were obviously people who could tell you why those awful things happened and what God was up to in causing them. They wanted Jesus to deliver his view on that question but, as usual, Jesus won’t play their game. Instead, he redirects people’s thinking away from the business of sorting out why those things happened to focus on the significance of how people respond in the events’ aftermath, to participate in the ongoing work and glory of God. You see that all over scripture — the Bible is much more modest about determining who caused what than we tend to be, but it’s also very clear in stressing that the important thing to focus on is who we are to be in the midst of tragedy and pain.

I like Amara’s answer — though our family doesn’t have it all figured out, to be sure. The pain is still real, physically and spiritually. Amara’s youth ministers have learned that when Bible class includes some presentation of suffering or need she is likely to be one who asks the troublesome question, “Why does God let that happen to people, anyway?” We’re still asking the questions, some days more painfully than others. But over time, my answers to your first question are becoming our answer to this one too. “Did God cause this? Why did God do this?” soon receded, as a bad question. “Where is God at work in this now? Who does he want us to be in this?” came to the forefront as the question the Bible actually sanctions and that our experience showed us was being answered right in front of us. In the midst of experiences of death and pain God brings resurrection in hope and healing and his presence. That seems a Christianly way of thinking, to me. At least, it’s something I’ve been learning from my teenage daughter — along with which lip glosses are best, though I’m not finding that wisdom to be as helpful.

I don’t know that I’ve really answered your questions, but thanks for letting me share my rambling thoughts with you and your Blog community. It helps. Their prayers and messages have meant so much to us over the last 15 months. And thanks for being my faithful conversation partner during this time.

The Live Current

Published
by
Mike
on April 23, 2006
in preaching
. 20 Comments

“Every preacher has a different routine for preparing a sermon. My own begins with a long sitting spell with an open Bible on my lap, as I read and read and read the text. What I am hunting for is the God in it, God for me and for my congregation at this particular moment in time. I am waiting to be addressed by the text by my own name, to be called out by it so that I look back at my human situation and see it from a new perspective, one that is more like God’s. I am hoping for a moment of revelation I can share with those who will listen to me and I am jittery, because I never know what it may show me. I am not in control of the process. It is a process of discovery, in which I run the charged rod of God’s word over the body of my own experience and wait to see where the sparks will fly. Sometimes the live current is harder to find than others but I keep at it, knowing that if there is no electricity for me, there will be none for the congregation either.”

(Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, p. 80)

Adding By Subtracting

Published
by
Mike
on April 22, 2006
in Church and missional
. 62 Comments

Today, we had a leaders’ retreat at Highland to further explore the implications of being a missional outpost. I was there as much as possible, shuffling between three basketball games and the retreat.

Two Highland guys, Mark Love and Chris Flanders, led most of the discussion time. Both have lots of insight and experience.

One thing Mark said really resonated. He said that as a church makes this move, those who are there for “goods and services” are likely to leave. But, he said, that is “addition by subtraction.”

It’s never easy to lose people. And we should never take pride in seeing people leave.

But, honestly, churches must not be held hostage by a few people who don’t like the direction that the leadership has discerned it must follow. Even if they’ve been there a long time. Even if they’re well known and well respected. Even if they give a lot.

Too much is at stake. One of the pastoral blessings a church must learn is the blessing that’s offered — in genuine love — to those who are leaving.

Usually addition comes from addition. Sometimes it comes from subtraction.

Cheers for Date Night; Jeers for Monthly Bills

Published
by
Mike
on April 21, 2006
in General
. 30 Comments

Is it a sign of approaching 50 that these things seem to be coming around way too quickly:

- filing tax returns
- putting up Christmas lights
- taking down Christmas lights
- paying the monthly bills

while these things seem to be coming way too slowly:

- summer breaks
- family reunions
- date nights

Got to hear Philip Kenneson last night at ACU. His book, Life on the Vine, should be studied at every church!

The Lynn Anderson That Doesn’t Sing Country

Published
by
Mike
on April 20, 2006
in Church of Christ, General and Highland
. 43 Comments

As I read those wonderful comments about Terry yesterday, it reminded me of other encouraging ministers in my life.

Every time I’ve come across Lynn Anderson, I’ve walked away a stronger person. Seriously.

Years ago when I’d come speak at the ACU lectureship, Lynn and Carolyn would keep me at their house. Around midnight, Lynn would just be coming alive with a room full of young guys he was encouraging. I’d sneak off to bed as he kept challenging. Then he’d be up early the next morning to go find some other guys to be with.

Lynn was Highland’s preacher for 19 years before I came. A beloved, gifted minister. That’s not always a good situation to walk into. But Lynn told me from the day he resigned that I needed to be the next guy. And on my first day in the pulpit he came back to tell the church that. I have walked in his blessing for 15 years here. He’s the same age as my dad, so it’s been like having a fatherly blessing as well as the blessing of a predecessor.

For the last several years through Hope Network, Lynn has traveled around the country building teams of men in ministry, encouraging them to encourage each other. That may prove to be the most lasting impact of his ministry. How many guys out there have been loved, affirmed, taught, and challenged by him?

I once heard one of his sons say this at a dinner in his honor: “A large part of my dad’s brain is complete mush. But there’s about 20% that is more brilliant than anyone you’ll ever meet.” What a tribute!

Lynn’s renowned for being unable to locate his keys . . . or his notes . . . or his notes about where his keys are.

But he knows the good news. And lives it out as such a blessing to others.

My life is much richer because of it.

Relaxing at the Plate . . . and at the Office

Published
by
Mike
on April 19, 2006
in Baseball and sports
. 49 Comments

I’ve been inspired over many years by Terry Rush. I remember attending the Tulsa Workshop when I was a young man and listening to his fiery “listen to me now!” as he spoke passionately about Jesus.

A couple days ago, I got a note from him inviting me to speak at the workshop again next year. I wrote back that I appreciated the invitation but that I am trying to keep the whole spring clear so I can manage Chris’s baseball team one last time.

Good opportunity for a guilt trip. “We need you at the workshop.” “You know how important this one is going to be.”

But not from Terry. He affirmed the decision and the priorities and said, “Be sure to tell the kids to relax at the plate.”

That’s how you know someone really understands baseball. The inexperienced coach thinks that the most important rule has to do with where you hold your hands or how you twist your back foot (both important).

But the experienced coach knows that a kid has to try to relax. Someone his age or a year older is going to throw a hard object at him from 46 (until age 12) or 60 feet. If said object happens to hit you, it hurts. So you have to try to relax, convincing yourself that he’s probably NOT going to hit you and even if the pitch gets away from him you probably have time to bail out.

So how do you relax under such circumstances? Maybe we should be teaching Lamaze breathing at practices. I still remember the “hee-hee-hee” breathing pretty well. (I practiced it recently when, against my better judgment, I went on a helicopter ride.)

We all have those places where it would help to relax, don’t we? The dentist’s office. The doctor’s office. The post office. The office. Deep, cleansing breath.

And very often at home.

More Lamaze and yoga breathing. Less clinched teeth and tightened airways. More smiles and laughter. Less frowns and anger. Life would be so much sweeter. Just relax a bit.