Archive for June, 2006

The Morning My Brother Whistled

Published
by
Mike
on June 16, 2006
in faith, family, grief and memories
. 32 Comments

On June 16, 1999, tragedy struck our family again. My fun-loving, faith-filled nephew, Jantsen, died suddenly at the age of 15. There was no warning. He went to lift weights with the football team, laid down to rest, and his heart failed him.

Today I’ve asked my brother, Randy Cope, to reflect on these seven years since the death of his son.

- - - -

Seven years ago today my life changed forever.

Actually I knew that it had changed the moment the doctor came out of the emergency room and told my wife and me that our 15-year-old son had passed from this life from what we later found out was an undetected heart problem.

I had enjoyed my life up to that point – a healthy family, a good job, and a bright future – but as I stood in the hallway of Freeman Hospital there was no doubt that things would never be the same. Before I left my son’s side that day I prepared myself for a life that resembled a scorched forest after a wild fire. The hillsides filled with lush trees and the valleys filled with wildflowers would now be smoldering ashes.

As the fog lifted so did the reality of what had been lost. Each new act brought new pain – the first trip to the store, the first Sunday at church – even the first time I decided to make oatmeal and had to figure out how to make it for one person, since he and I were the only breakfast eaters in the house.

And such was my life – for a season.

Yet one day, months later, I caught myself whistling. There wasn’t much life in the tune, but it surprised me just the same. As I look back on it now I see that moment as a sign of the renewal that was to follow.

From that first sprig of life has grown not a forest, but a park. I say park because my days are not only filled with life, but an increasing measure of purpose and meaning.

Don’t get me wrong; to call my life a park is not to say that there are no weeds. Our enemy is relentless and is not even above using my grief against me to pull me down from time to time.

Yet as I look back over these last few years I see many wonderful lessons:
• God is creative and lavish in the gifts He sends to bring comfort. He brought friends I hadn’t seen in years, books, music, nature, and even complete strangers to bring healing.
• God taught me not to fear life in the valley. The valley of suffering to me was a place to be avoided at all cost. Now I see that it is strangely a place of peace. God dwells with His suffering people in the valley – in green pastures and beside quiet waters. The Bible reads completely different now that I have this perspective of suffering.
• There is nothing more beautiful than a friend that comes running to help, even when the emotional fallout is intense. Friends like Todd, Warren, Tracy, James, and Cary, who all jumped in to save us – and a brother and sister-in-law who came to sit beside us in silence and later whispered lessons they had learned, having started this journey of grief with their own daughter five years earlier.
• With a treasure of mine now in Heaven I see life much different. It is like studying a Magic Eye drawing and suddenly seeing a beautiful scene in what you once thought was simply a meaningless mess of color.
• With Jantsen on the other bank, the water that separates this life from the next is a brook, not a ragging river – one I am anxious to step over once my work here is done.

I see the work of restoration most in the life of my wife. On that day seven years ago I prepared myself to care for her through the years. I knew she would never recover.

Yet she did.

After a season of intense suffering I watched as our Lord lifted her up – not to her old self but He transformed her into a daughter who has a passion for those that suffer. This new perspective on life has led her to start a ministry that dries the tears and brings smiles to the faces of orphaned children in countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, and Nicaragua. God also brought her – us – healing through our oldest daughter and our two young ones, whom we met when he led us to them half way around the world.

Some days the pain returns – not the intense “I can’t breath” pain that I remember from the early days, but a heaviness that I guess will be with me all the days of this life. Maybe, however, this heaviness is in some ways a blessing. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When a loved one dies, God comforts us enough to sustain us, but God leaves enough of the void and enough of the loneliness to help us to anticipate the reunion.”

And so it is, seven years later.

I can’t leave this reflection without thinking of a song by Stephen Curtis Chapman that helped inspire me to get up off the ground and “dive in” to what Got has in store for me:

The long awaited rains
Have fallen hard upon the thirsty ground
And carved their way to where
The wild and rushing river can be found
And like the rains
I have been carried here to where the river flows.
My heart is racing and my knees are weak
As I walk to the edge
I know there is no turning back
Once my feet have left the ledge
And in the rush I hear a voice
That’s telling me it’s time to take the leap of faith…

So here I go I’m diving in, I’m going deep in over my head, I want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head, I want to go
The river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive
So sink or swim, I’m diving in

There is a supernatural power
In this mighty river’s flow
It can bring the dead to life
And it can fill an empty soul
And give a heart the only thing
Worth living and worth dying for.
But we will never know the awesome power
Of the grace of God
Until we let ourselves get swept away
Into this holy flood
So if you’ll take my hand
We’ll close our eyes and count to three
And take the leap of faith
Come on let’s go
…
Lord, I thank you for bringing peace to the valley – and for what awaits us all around the next turn.

The Evil Empire and Christianity . . . and Hit 1,000,000

Published
by
Mike
on June 15, 2006
in Baseball and movies
. 46 Comments

Bobby Ross, editor of the Christian Chronicle, asked me if one can be both a Christian and a Yankees fan. My answer can be found here.

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Check out this piece by N. T. Wright on “Women’s Service in the Church: The Biblical Basis.”

He says at the end:

I think I have said enough to show you where I think the evidence points. I believe we have seriously misread the relevant passages in the New Testament, no doubt not least through a long process of assumption, tradition, and all kinds of post-biblical and sub-biblical attitudes that have crept in to Christianity. Just as I think we need radically to change our traditional pictures of the afterlife, away from the mediaeval models and back to the biblical ones, so we need radically to change our traditional pictures both of what men and women are and how they relate to one another within the church and indeed of what the Bible says on this subject. I do wonder, sometimes, if those who present radical challenges to Christianity have been all the more eager to make out that the Bible says certain things about women, as an excuse for claiming that Christianity in general is a wicked thing and we ought to abandon it. Of course, there have been plenty of Christians who have given outsiders plenty of chances to make that sort of comment. But perhaps in our generation we have an opportunity to take a large step back in the right direction.

- - - -

Diane and I had a real, live date night Tuesday before the middle school boys returned from the Houston Impact trip. We went to see “Prairie Home Companion.” I’m guessing it won’t be on many Top 10 lists, but for those who’ve been listening to and reading Garrison Keillor for as long as we have, it was great. Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Tommy Lee Jones, John C. Reilly, Lily Tomlin, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson, and, of course, GK.

Ebert and Cope give it “two thumbs up.”

- - - -

This is pretty arbitrary, because for a long time this blog didn’t have a counter. But after I dropped one on, it rolled over to 500,000 about 6 1/2 months ago (11/28/05). I sent the “lucky” 500,000th person a copy of Seeking a Lasting City signed by the authors (Doug Foster, Randy Harris, and Mark Love).

In a few days, the counter will hit 1,000,000. Any suggestions for a prize? Maybe signed photos of Foster, Harris, and Love in summerwear? (Do shorts and swim suits come in all black for Randy?)

All right — perhaps another book? I’m thinking maybe a signed copy of Pilgrim Heart (Darryl Tippens) or of the updated Cruciform Church (Leonard Allen). Maybe free registration to the fall Zoe Conference? (How about it, Eric?) Think outside the box.

Training for Professionalism

Published
by
Mike
on June 14, 2006
in missional and spiritual formation
. 45 Comments

This is from my 9/28/04 blog entry (slightly adapted):

I’m not blaming anyone for what I’m blogging about this morning. Really good people were doing the best they knew how to do. The fault is largely mine.

But I was trained to be a professional.

It was great training for a Constantinian world in which the church is the center of all life. But it doesn’t fit our current situation of living in a post-Christian, post-modern world.

One of my graduate school professors insisted that a preacher should spend one hour in study for every minute he preaches. That’s great advice — if the goal is to preach sermons. For much of my preaching life, I’ve preached two sermons a week. That would be 50 hours of study. While in Searcy, I preached three sermons a week. That would be 75 hours of study.

I was trained to do just that. With seven years of Greek and a couple years of Hebrew along with class after class of textual studies, I was prepared to do one thing: study. I had (for the most part) incredible profs. I don’t regret most of the classes.

But I was never taught other things: like how to be missional, how to help form a missional church, how to pray, how to disciple people in the way of Christ, etc.

Again, good people were teaching me what they knew. It wasn’t them–it was more a whole system that didn’t understand what we’re facing. We majored in information transfer. We hardly even minored in formation and transformation.

There was never any training and mentoring in how to connect with lost people, how to move Christians from consumer-demands to kingdom-service, how to start justice-based ministries, or how to plan worship that forms people and prepares to send them out in Jesus’ name.

It’s easier to train professionals. People who know how to caretake the organization. They know how to bring about slow change. How to do studies. How to organize. Basically, how to do all the things really good businesses do.

So churches have learned to rely on people who know very little about Christian mission and formation but know a LOT about professional matters.

I remember taking a class on evangelism. The whole class was, of course, a study of evangelism. We spent the whole semester getting ready to perform a skit from GO YE MEANS GO ME. And there was a class on “the work of a preacher” that was basically a study of the pastoral epistles–in other words, another textual class. My class on worship studied the issues of worship and worked toward the big project: of each group preparing a devotional for one class period.

I’m thinking we don’t need any more professionalism. (That isn’t to say, of course, that we want to give up serious study of scripture, including languages!) We need missionaries. Missionaries right here: people who can learn the language, teach the language, learn the culture, teach the culture, mentor, equip, train, reach out.

Here are some realities we’ll have to face:

1. Some don’t want to be missional. They want the organization to work smoothly. We need to love them as they struggle, helping them to mature beyond consumer complaints. Jesus didn’t leave the church so everyone could be comfortable and happy; he left it as an outpost of the in-breaking kingdom. It is not safe!

2. There will be conflict as this happens. But this conflict is best resolved by people staying focused on what the mission of Christ is.

3. The day of megachurches as the center of attention is probably coming to an end. Megachurches are great at offering services. But they haven’t historically been great at forming people into the image of Christ. I’m thrilled when I hear about students (of various majors) eager to go out and start a house church. This isn’t either/or. I’m committed to helping a large church. But I think the future will be smaller.

4. I hope our theological training stays rigorous: in languages, history, theology, etc. But along with all the information we must find a way to form lives. We need to keep raising up teachers who are actively involved in the mission of Christ. (And I’m discovering more and more of them!)

One final word of grace here: God has used all our stumbling efforts–including my own pitiful ones–to his glory. This doesn’t discount any of the sacrifices that others have made. But it’s just a chance to think ahead and dream.

“A person of prayer”

Published
by
Mike
on June 12, 2006
in Books and faith
. 14 Comments

From Greg Vaughn’s book Letters from Dad:

“Recently when my mother was in poor health I felt God calling me to capture the heart of this great woman on film. I flew to her with a video camera and asked if she felt well enough to speak. She gave the thumbs up.

“For the next three hours, I videotaped my mom talking about her life before I finally got to the most important question of all: ‘If you could speak to your great-great-grandchildren, what would you say to them?’

“I offered to let her think about it for a minute before I started taping, but she shook her head and said, ‘No, turn it on.’

“‘There’s a couple of things I want you to know about me,’ she said, speaking directly to the camera. ‘Whoever I am to you — your grandmother, your great-grandmother, whoever — I was not a person of power and prominence, but I was a person of prayer. And I have laid up for you in the throne room of God prayers that you will come to know the great God and Savior I have served for seventy-eight years. . . .”

That’s a legacy!

Signs of Hope

Published
by
Mike
on June 12, 2006
in Church of Christ and missional
. 59 Comments

The landscape of Churches of Christ looks very different today than it did back in 1992 when Wineskins magazine was launched. Here are five signs of hope:

1. Churches all over are struggling with their identity, trying to break from being defined by what we’re not. (Not Catholic, not Baptist, not Presbyterian, etc.) And for many, the language being used has to do with being missional: living out the Way of Christ in a world that God deeply loves and seeks to repair. There is more focus on kingdom language, echoing the dominant theme of Jesus’ preaching. I hear less discussion, e. g., of how our understanding of baptism is better than everyone else’s and more interest in what the implications are of baptism. Also, many more are talking about salvation as an on-going way of living — the continual process of God peeling away layers of selfishness that would demand our own way.

2. There is a revival happening in many of our Christian colleges and campus ministries. Just ask anyone who’s been to the Gulf Coast Get-a-Way in recent years. For a weekend in February, nearly 2000 university students crash in Panana City to be challenged and to challenge one another to live for Christ on their campuses. At Lipscomb, the wise, courageous leadership of Randy Lowry is showing quickly. Look for them to become a leading school in the next decade. At Pepperdine, Rochester College, and ACU (under the leadership of Andy Benton, Mike Westerfield [and before him Ken Johnson], and Royce Money), these schools have opened dialogue beyond our own small world and have built strong Bible faculties to help form students theologically and missionally. The books that have been coming from “The Heart of the Restoration” series from ACU have been insightful. (Check them out: The Crux of the Matter: Crisis, Tradition, and the Future of Churches of Christ, God’s Holy Fire: The Nature and Function of the Scripture, Unveiling Glory: Visions of Christ’s Transforming Presence, and Seeking a Lasting City: The Church’s Journey in the Story of God. ) I’m also encouraged by the recent news that Dr. Harold Shank, longtime minister at the Highland Street Church in Memphis, is joining the Bible faculty at OC. What a great addition for them. While I continue to be sad about the insular world the current administration of Harding has woven (Again I ask: How can Jeff Walling, as one of many examples, be banned from speaking on campus? He’s been impacting teens and university students all over the country for decades.), the school continues to send out young men and women to plant churches across the states and around the world. Harding students who come to ACU’s graduate school have been challenged (by Cox, Cochran, Fortner, etc.) to live radical lives of discipleship on behalf of the world.

3. The Christian Chronicle continues to bless Churches of Christ. Fifteen years ago the editorial tone of the journal was often harsh. “Young reformers” were encouraged to leave. But no longer. The Chronicle has a very responsible way of reporting and encouraging. Right now I find them to be a great rallying point of unity.

4. The response of Churches of Christ after the tsunami and after Katrina has reminded us again that there is a hurting world that isn’t interested in our internecine discussions. Churches large and small have cooperated to pray, to give, and to send workers to help.

5. The focus of “worship renewal” has changed for the better, INMO. The language I’m hearing at Zoe conferences, Stream in the Desert, the Tulsa Workshop, Pepperdine, ACU, etc. — would indicate that we’re thinking more holistically about worship. While some time needs to be spent praying and planning for the corporate times of gathering, even more important is that those times of gathering allow us to stir one another on toward love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24f). We come together to remember who we are as Christ-followers, and we send one another out, freshly commissioned to live worshipful lives of service throughout the week. Praise, thanksgiving, confession, and lament permit us to remember that God, despite outward appearances at times, is in control and that he is blessing us to be a blessing.

There are many other signs I could have included in this brief list, such as the shared discussions this year with Christian Churches and the growing sense that the family of God is much larger than our streams of the “Restoration Movement.”

I have no crystal ball. I have no idea if there will be a major split in Churches of Christ in the future . . . or just a growing, informal split . . . or maybe a renewal of unity around the old idea of being Christians only but not the only Christians.

Re-Imagination

Published
by
Mike
on June 11, 2006
in scripture
. 7 Comments

Wednesday night I began a series at Highland on the theme of “re-imagination” from Isaiah 56-66.

Many have noticed that there seem to be three chunks of Isaiah: chapters 1-39, which warn the Jews to repent or face judgment; chapters 40-55, which offer hope to those in exile; and chapters 56-66, which try to imagine (again) a way to live after the exile.

Last Wednesday - Re-Imagining God
June 14 - Re-Imagining Salvation
June 21 - Re-Imagining Life
June 28 - Re-Imagining Justice (led by Dr. John Willis)
July 5 - Re-Imagining Hope
July 12 - Re-Imagining the Gospel

Haven’t all of us been there at one time or another — after failure, fractured relationship, illness, or death? A time when we have to re-imagine our lives in light of what we’ve learned?

Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Lord rises upon you
and his glory appears over you.
Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.(Is. 60:1-3)

Interpreting Scripture

Published
by
Mike
on June 10, 2006
in Books and scripture
. 14 Comments

“It is from this root — the culturally conditioned ‘Bible wars’ of the Western culture, not least in North America — that the polarization of current debates has emerged. it is in that context, again, that one hears it said frequently that all reading of scripture is a matter of interpretation, with the implication that one person’s interpretation is as good as another’s. This is of course a variation on the classic postmodern position that there are no such things as texts, only interpretations, since when I read a text it ‘becomes’ something different from what it ‘becomes’ when you read it . . . .

“This is demonstrably flawed. It can be shown, and many (including myself) have attempted to do so, that a ‘critical realist’ reading can take the postmodern critique fully on board and still come back wiht a strong case for a genuinely historical understanding. . . .

“Biblical scholarship is a great gift of God to the church, aiding it in its task of going ever deeper into the meaning of scripture and so being refreshed and energized for the tasks to which we are called in and for the world. Many churches, including my own, have retained the Reformers’ emphasis on the ‘literal sense’ of scripture, not in the sense of ‘taking everything literally’ but in the sense of ‘discovering what the writers meant’ as opposed to engaging in free-floating speculation. As I pointed out earlier, the ‘literal sense’ means the sense originally intended; thus, ascertaining the ‘literal sense’ of a parable involves recognizing it as a parable, not an anecdote about something which actually happened. Getting at the original sense of scripture is an ongoing task for scholar, preacher and ordinary reader alike.”

N. T. Wright, The Last Word : Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture

“The Waltz We Were Born For”

Published
by
Mike
on June 9, 2006
in marriage
. 15 Comments

Walt McDonald, reflecting on an older couple as the husband realizes the depth and “timeless, dazzling devotion” of the one before him:

Her voice is more modest than moonlight,
like pearl drops she wears in her lobes.
My hands find the face of my bride.
I stretch her skin smooth and see bone.
Our children bring children to bless her, her face
more weathered than mine. What matters
is timeless, dazzling devotion — not rain,
not Eden gardenias, but cactus in drought,
not just moons of deep sleep, not sunlight or stars,
not the blue, but the darkness beyond.

- Walt McDonald

Wounded Marriages

Published
by
Mike
on June 8, 2006
in marriage
. 30 Comments

Some people throw in the towel too quickly on their marriage. They think they’re beaten and wounded beyond recovery, they can’t imagine it ever being better, so they give up.

But in way too many cases this is a lack of imagination. And life can do that to you: it can suck out all the imagination you have.

Small insults, small wounds, and small arguments accumulate through the years. Pressure at work, exhaustion from children, and weariness over life begin to set in. Before you know it, the insults are more insulting, the wounds are more injurious, and the arguments have taken the gloves off.

That’s when many begin to wonder if it can ever be set right again.

It can. Oh, yes. It can. Maybe not in every instance, but in most.

But it’s going to take better memory and better imagination. You have to remember why you fell in love with that person; you have to remember that there has been an “us” that has gone through childbirth and jobs and lay-offs and sacrifices and diapers; you have to bring in friends (whether these friends are professional counselors or wise people of faith who’ll be for the marriage — rather than just for one side); and you have to picture a way in which forgiveness paves a new way.

And even in the midst of all the pain, the power of “you’re still the one” comes through. It says, “We have a problem. I’m part of that problem. The system is broken. But it would be broken if I got in the same pattern with anyone else. But I don’t want anyone else. You . . . are . . . the . . . one.”

Don’t throw in the towel. There can be better days ahead. Try to remember and try to imagine it.

You’re Still the One

Published
by
Mike
on June 6, 2006
in marriage
. 55 Comments

The years pass, life gets frustrating . . . or routine. Jobs are demanding. Children are time-consuming. Months come and go.

And then, out of nowhere, you tell the one you’ve been married to that after all these years she (or he) is still the one. That you’re in it for the long haul. That life is good, and to the extent it hasn’t been good you want to work to make it better.

But you don’t want to work on it with another person. You don’t want to look for happiness by switching partners.

You’re still the one. After all the years. After signs of aging have begun to show. After disappointments and frustrations. You’re still the one.

Go for it. Today. Maybe lead up to it. Maybe just blurt it out. There is power in those words.