Archive for August, 2006

The Church in Baghdad

Published
by
Mike
on August 21, 2006
in General
. 27 Comments

Apparently the opening of “Snakes on a Plane” wasn’t as strong as had been hoped. It is a movie about a plane in trouble and slithering, poisonous snakes. And people aren’t interested in watching? Go figure.

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One of the NY papers screamed “SNAKE ON A PLANE” today beside the picture of John Mark Karr returning to the USA to face charges about the murder of Jonbenet Ramsay. Like many of you, I was sorry to see all the attention given to his background in the Church of Christ in Alabama.

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Great day yesterday — and among the hundreds of new students and their parents were several regulars from this blog. So nice to put faces to names.

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A powerful section in Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical is where he tells of his recent visit to Baghdad. He met with hundreds and hundreds of Christians in an assembly. He writes:

“They read a statement from the Christian church directed to the Muslim community, declaring that they love them and believe they were created in the image of God. Then we sang familiar songs like ‘Amazing Grace.’ We said the Lord’s Prayer in several languages. . . .

“Afterward, I was able to meet with one of the bishops who had organized the gathering, and I explained to him that I was shocked to find so many Christians in Iraq. He looked at me, puzzled, and then gently said, ‘Yes, my friend, this is where it all began. This is the land of your ancestors. That is the Tigris River, and the Euphrates. Have you read about them?’ I was floored — by my ignorance and by the ancient roots of my faith. It is the land of my ancestors.”

Ordinary Radicals

Published
by
Mike
on August 18, 2006
in Books, Salt and Light and faith
. 43 Comments

I had a wonderful couple days in Rochester, Michigan while my luggage enjoyed a relaxing time at O’Hare in Chicago. Fortunately, it showed up just in time for me to haul it back to the airport and come home with me. Left with clean clothes; returned with clean clothes.

As I went and returned, I read Shane Claiborne’s new book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.

Read with care. This young man could rock your world! The very idea: living as an ordinary radical. It’s like Dallas Willard with steroids and dreadlocks. Claiborne believes that a Christian is, by definition, a disciple: a follower of Jesus. One who is called to participate in God’s work in this world.

My thanks to Zondervan for publishing this book. I’m sure it wasn’t a safe decision. Many won’t like it. Some will fume and rant. But I was inspired.

Claiborne, a member of The Simple Way in Philadelphia, is an activist in the best Christian sense: one who is willing to put his life on the line for justice and compassion. Here are some samples:

“We live in a world that wants things bigger and bigger. We want to supersize our fries, sodas, and church buildings. But amid all the supersizing, many of us feel God doing something new, something small and subtle. This thing Jesus called the kingdom of God is emerging across the globe in the most unexpected places, a gentle whisper amid the chaos. Little people with big dreams are reimagining the world.”

“We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor, but that rich Christians do not know the poor.”

“I remember when one of my colleagues said, ‘Shane, I am not a Christian anymore.’ I was puzzled, for we had gone to theology classes together, studied Scripture, prayed, and worshiped together. But I could see the intensity and sincerity in his eyes as he continued, ‘I gave up Christianity in order to follow Jesus.’ Somehow, I knew what he meant.”

“While the ghettos may have their share of violence and crime, the suburbs are the home of the more subtle demonic forces — numbness, complacency, comfort — and it is these that can eat away at our souls.”

“As I’ve heard my old mentor Tony Campolo say, ‘If we were to set out to establish a religion in polar opposition to the Beatitudes Jesus taught, it would look strikingly similar to the pop Christianity that has taken over the airwaves of North America.’”

It doesn’t take much imagination to predict that this book will join Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazzas a favorite among university students.

Rochester College

Published
by
Mike
on August 17, 2006
in General and travel
. 12 Comments

I’ve been at Rochester College for the past couple days speaking to some of their student leaders. I’ve said this before here and I’ll say it again: RC is an incredible school. It has an amazing, diverse student body. It has a strong administrative team (lead by Mike Westerfield, the president) and some of the best teachers I know.

I got to stay with John, Sara, Nate, and Brynn Barton, the family we stayed with for a month while they were still missionaries in Uganda. We got to know John and Sara well when I was preaching at the College Church and they were students at Harding. It was also a blast to have our buddies Greg Taylor and Mark Moore staying there.

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As I think of these friends, the old Jinja mission team, and the gang of buddies that I climbed Kilimanjaro with, please check out www.kibogroup.org.

Here’s what the site says about “who we are”: “Kibo - (pronounced, kee-bow) is the highest point in Africa, the peak of Mt Kilimanjaro rising 20,000 feet above the plains of Tanzania. It has long been the goal of many Western climbers who come each year by the thousands and pay thousands of dollars to take the challenge of climbing to Uhuru (freedom) peak. The Kibo group was founded and incorporated as a 501c3 by a group of such climbers in 1999. 14 of us made the five-day climb, half of us lived in east Africa at the time, collectively we represented 80+ years of living and working in Africa. Learn more about how the Kibo Group was founded. Our trip to the highest point in Africa inspired us to help take African communities to their highest points. Since that climb we have been funding various small-scale projects presented to us by East Africans. At present we limit our interaction with countries located in the lake Victoria basin, focusing on the countries of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. Recently, as our partners have succeeded the Kibo group has grown to meet the increase in interest. Kibo is not a religious organization yet it is faith based in that our common faith in God inspired us to act in this way. We will consider any group or person that displays a creative spirit, a sustainable plan and a heart for social entrepreneurship. Read more about our motivations.”

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Those of you bringing students to ACU — I hope to see you Sunday morning. Our assemblies will be at 8:15 and 11:00.

8th Grade

Published
by
Mike
on August 15, 2006
in family
. 34 Comments

Off to 8th grade.

These years are going quickly. I don’t want to resent them or miss them. It’ll be spring of 2011 before we know it (graduation).

It’s so easy to miss all the weeks and months by holding your breath, waiting for some magic moment in the future when life is slower and more comfortable.

These are the days, fellow parents. Let’s not miss them. Don’t pass up the hug; don’t fail to read the story; don’t wait to pray.

Ping-Pong

Published
by
Mike
on August 14, 2006
in General and family
. 46 Comments

In the sauna of our garage yesterday, Chris and I pulled out the ping-pong table and went at it for an hour or so. (Modesty prevents me from reporting the results, especially since he’s just now getting to where it could go the other way.) The weekend before, we’d gone up to play with Matt at Baylor Med School’s student center.

This love for ping-pong began when I was just, I’m guessing, seven or eight. When we moved into our new house on Reid Road in Neosho, my dad set up a table in the basement. We played for YEARS . . . night after night after night. I became pretty good at the game, but much more important was the time I spent with my dad all those evenings.

Some of my favorite Harding memories are of playing in the evenings with Jerry Jones, chairman of the Bible department at the time, and Dwaine Powell, my roommate. Jerry was a patient, return specialist. Dwaine and I would slam away, time after time, and Jerry would keep sending them back.

When Matt was about six we bought a table. He and I played night after night for many years. When he got a bit older, we often went up to ACU to play whoever was in the table tennis room. Long after he could kill me in basketball, running, wrestling, and nearly any other sport you can name, I could hold my own in ping-pong.

Chris started when he was first able to hold a paddle. He didn’t want to be left out while his dad and older brother were playing.

Now it’s a blast to have the three of us together with the winner holding the table. (For the record, the two women in our family are pretty good themselves.)

Any other ping-pong families out there? Or, what is it that brings you together for an evening of fun (and competition!)?

Baptism: Through the Water Into New Life

Published
by
Mike
on August 12, 2006
in Books and faith
. 15 Comments

From N. T. Wright’s Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense:

That is why, from very early on, Christian baptism was seen as the mode of entry into the Christian family, and why it was associated with the idea of being “born again.” Of course, not everyone who has been through water-baptism has actually known and experienced for themselves the saving love of God in Christ sweeping through and transforming their lives. At various points Paul has to remind his readers that they have a responsibility to make real in their own lives the truth of what happened to them in baptism. But he doesn’t say that baptism doesn’t matter, or that it isn’t real. People who have been baptized can choose to reject the faith, just as the children of Israel could rebel against YHWH after having come through the Red Sea. Paul makes that point in 1 Corinthians 10 and elsewhere. But they can’t get unbaptized: God will regard them as disobedient family members rather than outsiders.
. . . The point is that the story which baptism tells is God’s own story, from creation and covenant to new covenant and new creation, with Jesus in the middle of it and the Spirit brooding over it. In baptism, you are brought into that story, to be an actor in the play which God is writing and producing. And once you’re onstage, you’re part of the action. You can get the lines wrong. You can do your best to spoil the play. But the story is moving forward, and it would be far better to understand where it’s going and how to learn your lines and join in the drama. Through the water to become part of God’s purpose for the the world.

Published
by
Mike
on August 11, 2006
in Books, Salt and Light and politics
. 78 Comments

My friend Ryan Porche introduced me to this picture of the new statue in front of a Memphis church. The Statue of Liberty holding a huge cross with the words “liberty through Jesus.”

My response? First, I’d have to say that I don’t know anything about the church, and I’m sure it’s made up of people seeking the Way of Christ in this world.

However, I’m not sure it could be said better than Randall Balmer does in his excellent new book Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical’s Lament. After tracing the history of Baptists in America from Roger Williams to Isaac Backus to George Truett (who defended the separation of church and state at the Capitol Building in D.C. in 1920), and after pointing to two key ideas of the Baptist tradition — adult baptism and liberty of individual conscience, “generally expressed in the shorthand phrase ’separation of church and state’” — and after showing how Christians in the best of that tradition have sought to have an impact on the morality of their society without seeking to intertwine their faith with one political party and without eviscerating the first amendment, Balmer wrote:

I came to Texas in search of Baptists. What irony! There at the heart of Baptist country, Baptist principles regarding the separation of church and state have all but disappeared. What was once a proud and mighty — and defining — tradition of ensuring that government did not interfere with religion and religion did not meddle with government has withered beneath the onslaughts of misguided individuals who seek to impose their own views on the rest of society. The gospel is compromised, American Protestantism is imperiled, and the republic itself suffers from the massive disappearance of Baptists from the American landscape.

Never in my life did I think I would say this, but America needs more Baptists — real Baptists, not counterfeit Baptists like Roy Moore or Rick Scarborough or Richard Land or Jerry Falwell, all of whom are Baptists in name only. Our nation loses something very crucial as Baptists vanish from the American landscape. “The Baptists were the first propounders of absolute liberty,” John Locke once observed, “just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty.”

Christianity itself needs more Baptists, women and men willing to reconnect with the scandal of the gospel and not chase after the chimera of state sanction. We need women and men prepared to stand on conviction and articulate the faith in the midst of a pluralistic culture, not by imposing their principles on the remainder of society but by following the example of Jesus and doing what Baptists have always done best: preaching the gospel and not lusting after temporal power and influence.

Straight to Little Rock . . . Through Chicago

Published
by
Mike
on August 10, 2006
in travel
. 30 Comments

My American Eagle flight was extremely delayed Tuesday morning, meaning I’d miss my connection to LR. Every other connecting flight to Little Rock was full, so I took the direct route: Abilene to DFW to Chicago to Little Rock. Only way to get there. I waved as I flew over LR about 9:30 in the morning, knowing I’d return in about four hours. Yesterday it was much better. American Eagle cancelled my flight out of Little Rock for the infamous “mechanical difficulties,” but I did make a later connection. I have a feeling, after listening to the news this morning, that flying would be a bit more challenging today with all domestic flights on orange alert.

I was in Arkansas for two reasons: a meeting in Little Rock and a stress test in Searcy. (Yes, supply your favorite joke here.)

I had just a few minutes to run into the Heritage Center and see a few friends on the Harding campus. Didn’t even have time to make it over to the Bible building to see Ross and Monte if they were around. But what a joy to connect briefly with old friends: Liz, Mike, Rowan, Cecilia. Wish I’d had a lot more time.

Today and tomorrow I’m working on my message on “unanswered prayers.” It’s one of the great mysteries of our faith.

Uncle Joe Blue

Published
by
Mike
on August 9, 2006
in General
. 27 Comments

Yesterday I flipped through a book called “Preachers of Today,” a publication from 1952 about preachers in Churches of Christ. Each person has a small photo with a bio.

I quickly looked up a couple preachers who were famous in my part of the world (Missouri/Arkansas): Rue Porter, who was actually from Neosho, and “Uncle Joe” Blue, the great uncle of my buddy Dr. Leon Blue.

In the bio of “Uncle Joe” I found that preaching wasn’t always easy for him. He had been stoned and beaten with green walnuts and with eggs. Once he had someone plant dynamite under the pulpit where he was preaching.

I guess I’ve had it easy. No stoning, no egging, no walnuting, and no sticks of dynamite. At least none that have detonated.

The Gospel Of Thomas, Johnny Cash, and the Blues

Published
by
Mike
on August 8, 2006
in Church of Christ and General
. 16 Comments

Just got my lectureship brochure for the ACU Lectureship, which this year will be in the fall. September 17-20, 2006. Wow! Mark Love and Co. have done a great job. These lectureships really are incredible. I know Abilene has a hard time competing with some other places for “where-I’d-like-to-spend-a-couple-days-away” competition, but the fellowship will be lively and the world’s best bar-b-que places will be open!

I’m especially looking forward to having my friend Don McLaughlin come. He’s giving the theme speech on Tuesday night from John 17. But he’s also coming a bit early to preach at Highland (where two of his sons attend — which makes it a wee bit easier to convince him to come!) on Sunday the 17th. He’s also teaching a class called “Training for Warriors in the Peaceable Kingdom: Multicultural Churches As Salt and light.”

There is a Michael Card concert that Sunday at 2:00, prior to the first evening lecture. What a way to begin!

How about this:

Jeff Childers talking about “Deciphering the Da Vinci Code and the Gospel of Judas.”

Richard Beck discussing “Disgust, Death, Sex and the Gospel of Judas.”

A group of panelists talking about the challenges of faith and nation in a culture that leans toward national idolatry.

Darryl Tippens, Jackie Halstead, Bill Rankin, and Scott Hamm exploring the themes of Darryl’s new book, A Pilgrim Heart.

Another panel exploring “Churches of Christ and the Missional Church Movement.”

Evening vespers.

Evening coffee houses (like “The Man in Black: Music and message of Johnny Cash” or “The Gospel and the Blues”).

Need a lectureship brochure? You can go to this site to request one.

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Here’s just a reminder not to forget to read Larry James’s blog. Larry reflects in yesterday’s post about how different the health care experience is for his parents than it is for his friends in the part of the city where he lives and works.

Early last Thursday morning, I picked up my parents from their home and took them to the new Baylor Regional Hospital in Plano.

My dad was scheduled for an angiogram to determine exactly where blockage was located in the artery supplying blood and life to his left leg. Going into the procedure, the doctor hoped to be able to open the artery by means of angioplasty and/or a permanent stint.

My mom, who suffers from a non-cancerous blood disorder, needed a blood transfusion.

As it turned out, the hospital staff–an incredibly warm, accomplished and helpful team–arranged for the two of them to be in treatment rooms right across the hall from one another. That made my job much easier!

Both procedures went like clockwork.

My mother was all done by about 1:00 p.m. and feeling better. My father, complete with new stainless steel stint implanted successfully with blood flowing freely into his previously troubled leg, got into a room for an overnight stay around mid-afternoon.

All of this had been easily arranged in the week to ten days prior to their coming to the hospital. No long waiting period. Very little time for anxiety or worry or feeling poorly unnecessarily.

My dad had seen his heart surgeon who referred him over to the doctor who performed the flawless procedure. My mom had made her plans two days before following a routine visit to her blood specialist, a smart young doctor who is becoming her friend.

There had been no delays, no roadblocks, no question whatsoever about scheduling, cost, or whether or not their needs would be met in a most timely manner.

Both of my parents, now in their mid-80s, carry Medicare health insurance cards. Medicare is the national health plan provided by our government to persons past the age of retirement. An extremely efficient operation, Medicare works flawlessly for my folks. [Blogger's confession: Every time I hear someone bashing President Lyndon Johnson and his "War on Poverty," I can't help but think of Medicare--a program he delivered to America.]

As I waited for them in the really inviting environment of the new hospital, I couldn’t help but think of my friends who don’t enjoy such health benefits.

I thought of the long delays in arranging specialty treatment for the poor right here in Dallas. I thought of our overcrowded public hospital, a hospital doing amazing work, but stretched well beyond its limits.

I thought of the ease with which my parents have been able to find just the physicians they need when they need them, while my friends at the bottom of the economic pyramid struggle to find doctors because so many don’t work with Medicaid patients.

I also thought of the recent cutbacks in funding for the Medicaid insurance program designed for low-income persons.

Just thoughts while waiting for my parents.

Thoughts set alongside thoughts and memories of my friends in the city.

Should health care continue to be treated as a commodity to be consumed? Or, should a higher, nobler view of life inform our perspectives on what we provide and demand. . .for everyone?

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Many of our seniors recently made a trip to New Orleans to work in the recovery ministry there. It made us even more thankful for the amazing work of the Tammany Oaks Church of Christ. Steve Hare told me about how this church cut a hole in their brand, spankin’ new auditorium to make it easier to serve food to people who are there to work in this relief effort. That’s church at its finest, isn’t it?

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Take a couple minutes and listen to “Preaching to the Pocketbooks” from yesterday’s “All Things Considered” program.