Leonard’s Blog

I keep promising myself that I’m going to post to my blog at least once a week. I setup a blog for my daughter not long ago, and she has already far exceeded me both in content and readership. Truth is, I’m not even sure if I have that many readers. Nonetheless, I find blogging helps clarify my thoughts and gives me a way to get some things off my chest and out of my head without having to do so in a highly formal way, so I think it is a good discipline.

This past weekend I went on a canoe trip down the Buffalo River in Tennessee with my son and his Boy Scout Troop . My wife and I love to canoe but we haven’t had very many opportunities over the years. It was my first 25 miler (I’m sad to say), and I hope it’s not my last. Aside from some crowding after about mile 8 where the commercial outfitters dropped off their patrons, the entire trip was an opportunity for good conversation, quiet reflection (there was absolutely no cell coverage), and just sheer peaceful observation of God’s creation. We paddled for about 18 miles the first day, camped in a cow pasture, and completed the remaining 7 miles the next morning. The last leg was in the rain but it didn’t really matter–it’s just part of the package.

The greatest adventure, though, comes at a juncture more primal and significant than just being on the water in a canoe with a paddle. Adventures are never as great as when they are shared, and my greatest joy was just being out in the wild with my son. We didn’t paddle together on the first day (which gave me an opportunity to get to know another of the dads and get a lot of encouragment), but I did get to watch him and enjoy him. On the next day my son and I paddled the last few rainy miles and ended our trip together. He worked to learn the strokes and to keep a good rhythm and it was a pleasure to watch him try so hard. Riding with him made the trip go swiftly and I would have gladly paddled much farther with him on board. I don’t know if he’ll treasure the time as much or more than I, but I pray that I never forget it.

I’ve always heard that life passes quickly and children grow up too fast. I understand what is meant by those words, but I believe that most of the problem is with adults not time. We have the same amount of time in a day, a week, and a year as when we were kids. The difference is simply that we work so hard to give our kids the stuff we didn’t have when we were young and to give them every opportunity at success that we often miss the most basic and primal lessons our children need to learn from us: the value of friendship and loyalty; the value of good, honest, hard work; the value of time carefully spent; the value of an abiding walk with and knowledge of God. You cannot teach children such lessons in a classroom and you cannot pound it into their heads. You must show them. They have to see it in you, or they may never catch it.

I know I’m not the best dad, but I hope, by God’s grace, that my children grow up knowing how much I love them and, more importantly, that they learn how to walk with God by watching me.

In a society increasingly devoted to communication and connection it seems strange that anyone could be lonely or isolated. Online communities, electronic interaction, reality TV, and digital empires supplant the old-fashioned face-to-face involvement of by-gone days when a preson actually had to get off the couch and go outside to see other people. Now we can communicate across the globe in matter of seconds with family and friends separated by thousands of miles.

Ironically, this tightening of distance and shortening of communication tends to separate people from real human interaction. There is just something different about sitting at a table drinking a cup of coffee with a friend versus chatting online, video conferencing, and email. It is simply a fact that an online personality often is very different from the real thing. I can create my online personality and give you only what I want you to see. In other words, I can hide the real me. When you sit in my house, ride in my car, hang out with my family it’s harder for me to hide. Perhaps in the midst of a digital world, you like many others fear at one and the same time being lost/forgotten and being found/known.

It seems to me that the church must become a place for real people where the masks come off and the pretensions are lost so that real community can thrive. Doing church this way will make some of us uncomfortable, though. We may not like ourselves much less our neighbors when the curtains open and the reveal is complete. People are not perfect. We all have flaws, bad habits, and attitudes that interfere with relationships. So how do we do it? How do we live in community with other imperfect people without masks? Here are some thoughts:

1. Remember who you are (and who you are not).
2. Give one another the benefit-of-the-doubt.
3. Pray for unlikeable and unlovable people.
4. Don’t make assumptions.
5. Be patient. In other words, relax.
6. Don’t forget the grace of God given to you.

I’ve been working back through a book I read in seminary by Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy. On page 91, he remarks, “I personally have become convinced that many people who believe in Jesus do not actually believe in God. By saying this I do not mean to condemn anyone but to cast light on why the lives of professed believers go as they do, and often quite contrary even to what they sincerely intend.” Wow! That is a strong statement! Can a person believe in Jesus without believing in God?

To grasp Willard’s point, you need a little more context. He is focusing on the reality of the Kingdom of God as it interacts with “real” life. We often think of the kingdom as out there beyond the stars or something that will come to be sometime in the future, but we seldom think of it as a very present reality in the lives and communities of Christians. Our present world is in a “flight from God.” We find little need for “interaction with God” in most of our life. Our books, classes, motivational speeches, jobs, love-lives, families, and whatever-else-you-can-think-of have little apparent need for God, and therefore God seems to have little impact on any of them. “All of us live in such a world, for we live by our competencies. Our souls are, accordingly, soaked in secularity,” writes Willard. He continues,

The “real” world has little room for a God of sparrows and children. To it, Jesus can only seem “otherworldly”–a good-hearted person out of touch with reality…He is a cheerleader who continues to shout, “We are going to win,” though the score is 98 to 3 against us in the last minute of the game.

I don’t know about you, but I find many Christians who view Jesus this way, and it is sadly no different than the way many non-Christians view Jesus. When pressed Christians would never admit to such a description, but practice reveals the substance of their beliefs. Again, Willard writes,

When this cheerleading approach to the “real-world” triumphs among those who profess Christ, they may then have faith in faith but will have little faith in God. For God and his world are just not “real” to them. They may believe in believing but not be able to rely on God–like many in our current culture who love love but in practice are unable to love real people. They may believe in prayer, think it quite a good thing, but be unable to pray believing and so will rarely, if ever, pray at all.

Is this not a warning to us and a call for self-examination? Do I really believe in God? If so, then how does my believing in God change my life? How does faith in Jesus change the way I make love to my wife, discipline my children, pay my bills, do my job, mow my grass, and care for my neighbors? Am I living in the present reality of God’s reign, or am I living in the delusion of the “real world” as though God were not there at all?

I’ve been thinking for the past few days about my greatest fear. It is healthy for a man to face himself and consider what causes him the greatest fright and distress. Despite the efforts of many to build a false-front and pretend they have “No Fear,” we all fear something. What about you? What do you fear most?

Financial Ruin. Perhaps like so many in our culture you fear financial ruin. You worry about keeping the bills paid or being in debt. You work hard to amass a certain about of wealth in order to secure your retirement and protect yourself from the harsh realities of life with little money. You watch or read the reports of the nursing homes and the geriatric wards and determine that you will never be there. With pity you observe the barefoot children on television who have none of the modern conveniences and thank God that you don’t have to live like that. Life without money or the stuff that it buys seems to you to be the end of the world.

Embarassment. Maybe you fear humiliation whether it be a result of financial ruin, a social faux pas, intellectual suicide, or simply being different. No matter what happens you want people to think you are the most handsome, the strongest, the bravest, the smartest, the wittiest, the most clever… You’re great fear is that someone will find you out, and you will not measure up to their expectations.

Lonliness/Isolation. In a society increasingly devoted to communication and connection it seems strange that anyone could be lonely or isolated, but it happens. Maybe you find yourself overwhelmed by the increaing pressures of daily life and fear that you will live, love, and die without ever really being known.

My greatest fear is that my life won’t matter. I fear that when all is said and done, I will pass from this life as little more than wind in the trees, a gentle breeze that leaves nothing behind. I want to count; I want my life to matter for the Kingdom of God. I want my family to matter, and I want my church to matter. I fear that in five years, our church will have a building, a budget, a crowd of people and we will think ourselves a success, but we will be irrelevant to a dying world! We will have stumbled into the very place we have tried so hard to avoid–complacency.

Professionalism is the killer of so much ministry. We strive to be good stewards and make wise decisions with God’s money, but are we spending it the way God want’s it spent? Does God really care about our stained glass windows, our padded pews, and our new paint as much as he does the poor, the hungry, and the lonely? I admit, it is hard to change a long-standing way of doing things. It is difficult to re-think who we are, how we go about things, and why we do things that way. If we are going to to be missionaries in our present generation we must think and re-think how our current practices and ask God to change us from mission supporters, mission promoters, and mission goers into missionaries.

I write thinking of all of the plans I have made over the past week or two realizing how silly and difficult it is to get frustrated when my plans do not come to fruition. God has done a good job of reminding me over the last 5 days just how human I am.

Many of you that know me know that my schedule is pretty erratic and unpredictable. While in Seminary I lived by the need of the moment trying to keep everything rolling. Over the past month or so, God has convicted me of the need to change some bad habits and get on a better schedule. For about two weeks, I’ve been rising early, having my devotion, exercising, and starting work. Conventional wisdom says that it takes 3 weeks for something to become a habit, and as you might guess, the real struggle to maintain this course has fallen on week 3. Just about anything you can think of has come up to knock me out of my new course.

By God’s grace, I am still rising but I do not feel very productive in my devotions. Work has been challenging and I cannot seem to clear my thoughts enough to focus on God. I can’t really say why, but I feel that it is extremely important for me to get this right. For the sake of my family and the sake of the church I serve, I need my life to stabilize and become more focused. I want to enter God’s presence today and know that He is near me.

The nineteenth century isn’t going to happen again in the twentieth century–and we now stand on the threshold of the twenty-first century! Few of today’s believers will be content to make their faith journey in a church whose leaders set the thing on autopilot in the 1970s and who have not been back to the cockpit since.

–Lynn Anderson, They Smell Like Sheep. (New York: Howard Books, 1997), 173–.

As I read those words this morning, I couldn’t help wondering, “Where has this book been for the past 10 years?” Lynn captures something of the role of elders/pastors that has long been missing in many North American congregations. For years, I have resisted, and even rebelled against, much of the hype and fervor over church leadership because it seemed too mundane and trivial. Too much attention has been focused on making our churches pragmatic machines churning out churchgoers by the droves, and not enough attention has been given to the simple task of making disciples.

To be fair (because I know that many of my friends will disagree with me), almost every book written and conference put forward in the past 15-20 years has had as its aim the making of disciples. The question has been “How do we do it?” Modernity had its answer: Make the church run like the factory. Pastors are CEO’s with a highly developed professional staff capable of managing the ongoing needs of a large congregation.

Now post-modernity asks the same question, and the answers are everywhere on the map. I don’t pretend to be a cultural expert; I don’t think I’m much of a visionary; but I do stand with my own questions about the direction of the church for the next 20-30 years. The biggest problem I have had with leadership training for pastors and church leaders is the paucity of Biblical support. Sure, we all have our proof-texts and can pull out parables that exemplify the leadership trend of the day, but where is the carefully thought out, thorough treatment of authentic Biblical leadership?

I ask the question, not because there are not good books on the subject, but because I’m not convinced we’re paying enough attention to them. As an overly faddish culture we are more apt to jump on the latest catch phrase or personality band-wagon than we are to think seriously about God’s intentions for His Church’s leadership. When the dust settles and we’ve only moved the ball six more inches down the field we look at one another in amazement and wonder why God didn’t bless our efforts. Maybe its because we were too busy putting forth our effort to stop and ask God if this was really the direction we’re supposed to be going in the first place.

On the other side of things, I have had my head stuck in the dust for too long. Like many of my close friends, I cherish our rich heritage as Protestants and as Baptists. I read Spurgeon, Dagg, Calvin, Whitefield, and others and dream nostalgically of days very different than our own. The Puritans have encouraged and challenged me at times. These men and their works have shepherded my soul over the years. Nevertheless, it is a sin to hold on tightly to their times as if somehow the past had been more godly than the present. Spurgeon witnessed the downgrade of Baptist churches in England; Calvin oversaw the souls of persecuted believers during a time of great social, political, and religious upheaval; Whitfield moved about the country-side on horseback and barefoot, preaching in open air settings with little of modern conveniences. Sure Edwards was president of the College of New Jersey which would become Princeton, but it was a fledgling then, and there were still only Thirteen American Colonies and they were still flying under the British flag.

It’s easy looking back to think of these giants as having had it better. We forget that God, who is Sovereign over all, appointed their time and place as assuredly as He has appointed our own (Acts 17:26). We were not meant to live then; we are meant to live now. Somehow, we must learn from their struggles and our fathers’ struggles. We must unearth the principles behind their practices and apply them to our times. We simply cannot rewind the clock, un-invent the Internet, or stop the Wright brothers. We are where we are because this is where we belong. That longing you have for a place where you truly belong will not be satisfied here. It is the prompting of the Holy Spirit, keeping you just off balance so that you will not cling to this world more than you ought. God does not want us to get too comfortable; nor does He intend for us to turn our flocks around and head back to Egypt. The promised land is not behind us; it is ahead of us in the same direction our spiritual forefathers were walking.

Wisdom must prevail as seek to follow Jesus in this culture. We cannot blindly apply The Purpose Driven Church (and Rick Warren wouldn’t want you to), or any other paradigm, anymore than we can apply 18th and 19th Century congregational practices to our own. The last church I pastored paid their preacher in whiskey and chickens in the 1880s and 90s. I don’t think my family would appreciate the whiskey very much and a couple of chickens wouldn’t last long around my house.

We need God’s guidance as we unleash the chains that have held us back from engaging culture head on and courage to resist the temptation to cater to those who want to remain in Egypt. Here’s thing guys: God is already moving; there are already leaders whom he has raised up to be on the front lines, through whom God is impacting our generation. He’s calling us to get involved. Don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be left on the bench when the game’s over.

I spent some time talking to a good friend and fellow pastor, Spencer Haygood, the other day. Spencer is one of those guys that just sticks in your life and really seems to get it when you talk to him. He’s got some battle scars as a pastor and understands the struggles and daily pressures we face.

Anyway, we chatted for a good while about church and what it’s all about. He used a phrase that sparked some energy in my own soul: “At church,” he said, “we have life together.” Having life together–what an incredible thought.

As a man who has spent many years trying to understand the gospel and the church I continue to marvel at the simplicity and wonder of it all. Often I have sought out the deficiencies of the church through its organization–policies, procedures, structure–when in reality the problem lies in her heart. We work so hard at times to have all the right stuff that we forget what it’s all about: just following Jesus.

It’s so easy for the church to become an organization rather than an organism. What’s the difference? Ask someone who’s an expert for the real answer, but, as I see it, one is functional while the other is alive. An organization is very similar to a machine that processes inputs into outputs. As long as you get the correct output from the stipulated inputs you have a well functioning machine. The organism, on the other hand, does that and more. It responds and interacts with its environment because it lives within its environment. It relates to the world around it.

How does this apply to the church? Well…I’m still trying to figure that out, but I can say that it means that church is about more than programs, buildings, and budgets. We have to have those things in order to carry much of our work (but, then again, do we depend on those things simply because of our cultural influences). If we boil it all down what are we left with? What makes a church a church. The Reformers worked hard to answer this question, and they answered it correctly. We need to ask and answer the question again–not because the answer has changed but because we have forgotten it.

The church is about relationships. I heard it all when I was a teenager in church, but it’s still true. Christianity is not about membership in an organization or following certain rules, it is about walking with God and God’s people. Therefore, God’s church should be about living life in the midst of God’s people. We “have life together” because we experience it together as we follow Jesus together.

That’s what I want for our church–to be a group of people devoted to following Jesus together, sharing our lives for the glory of God.

Well, we have completed week two at our new home and we finally have electricity. Most of our friends think we are nuts (which is probably true), but none of is worse for the wear. The kids are having a blast, and we have all survived the adventure.

Over the past couple of weeks, God has blessed our family in some incredible ways. Not only do we have our first home as a family, but we have witnessed the love and favor of God through the generosity and help of many friends. We have been overwhelmed by the kindness shown to us to the point of tears and simple speechlessness. God has proven to us again how amazing He is.

I wanted to take some time to share with you some pictures my daughter, Tiffany, has taken over the past couple of weeks. You will see some of our friends who came to help, but I don’t have the space to include everyone. Some helped us move; some came and worked on our road and brush pile; some helped with our well house, water line, and electric pole; some gave us warm food, firewood, and hot showers/baths; some gave us financial help to complete the work; some helped us clean; and many prayed. We give thanks to God for each of these saints who has blessed us with such kindness over the past few weeks. May God richly bless each of you.

There are many more pictures that I wish I had and names that need to be mentioned. A.J. Smith helped me set the electric pole for the house service among other things; Rob and Angela Jackson and David Hooks helped us move; Reuben and Becky Hayes helped us clean the rental house and load that last bit of stuff; John Theabolt came out and helped the guys from North Shelby Baptist on Saturday (he also loaned us a box truck to move with–easiest truck I’ve ever loaded during a move because it has a lift gate). I know I’m missing some names, but we are grateful to each and every one.

As some of you already know, we are being blessed with a home just outside of Calera and Columbiana on some property we purchased when we returned to Alabama. We have been waiting and praying for two years and thought that we were going to just sell the property and try something else. Around the middle of November we got a call to go and take a look at a used Double-wide. It was not exactly what we had planned, but it looked nice and seemed like it would work. After being turned down for various reasons time and again, we had pretty much given up. This time, however, things progressed with very little effort on our part. We signed the papers just before Christmas and now have a road and a lot awaiting the new home. There is still a bit of work to do at this point–septic, well, electric, etc., but we are beginning to feel very excited.

I thought I would share some photos my daughter, Tiffany, took of things as they stand now. I will share some more later, but these are what we have on the digital camera.

You can see the pad for the house just behind the loader. To the right there is a pile of pine trees about 15+ feet tall and probably about 40-50 feet long. I’m not a good judge of size without a measuring tape, but it is a big pile of pines.

The only thing to see here are a handful of excited kids. The fifth one is behind the lens taking the picture.

This isn’t the best picture but it gives you a view of the driveway (road). I haven’t measured it since they cut it through, but I believe it is about 700-800 feet.

This is what the yard looked like before the loader got to it. It’s hard to explain just how dense these little trees were, but they were very tight.

Here are some more them.

The rest of these are just some cool pictures my daughter took.
   

Over the years I have studied John 4 numerous times. I had at least two courses that focused exclusively on John. I have read, diagrammed, and outlined John in Greek. Still, there are passages that confound me and things I discover through each fresh reading.

Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman demonstrates the profound grace of God. When we compare the woman’s encounter with Nicodemus’ we notice some stark contrasts. Nicodemus came looking for Jesus at night. The Samaritan woman came looking for water in the middle of the day. Nicodemus was a learned ruler of the Jews. The Samaritan woman was an outcast of outcasts: she was a Samaritan, she was a woman, and she had gone through five husbands only to be living with a man out of wedlock. She didn’t even go to the well to draw water with the other women during the cooler parts of the day. We know Nicodemus’ name, but we are never told the name of the Samaritan woman.

Following Jesus’ confrontation, the woman begins to ask a theological question about where worship takes place: “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship” (vv. 19-20).

Everytime I have read the story before, I thought that the woman was trying to deflect attention from her sin by engaging Jesus in a theological debate. After all, I have encountered many people who do the same. As I meditated on this passage this time, however, I came to a different conclusion. I do not think the woman was trying to deflect attention from herself because she was apparently well aware of her condition. She was an outcast of outcast people. Instead, once she realized the prophetic nature of the man sitting before her she proceeded to ask him the most pressing religious question on her mind: “How do I get to God? The Jews claim that worship must take place in Jerusalem, but my people worship on this mountain. I have no place with my people and I cannot go to Jerusalem, so how do I get to God?”

What she did not realize was that God had come to her. God had made an appointment with her there at the well, and now He was here to show her the way:

“Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24)

I believe the woman got it because she left and told the men of her city about her encounter with Jesus. This simple encounter resulted in her salvation and the salvation of a city. What amazing grace!

What about the millions of wayward people who would not be accepted in our typical churches but still need to know the way to God? How often have we masked the way to God behind tradition, legalism, and sheer pride? What about a God who seems somewhat cold toward a religious leader who seeks Him out, but shows deliberate interest and concern for an unnamed Samaritan woman who was not even looking for Him?

The fundamental need of every human being is God–not education, civilization, security, or even bread. Our greatest need is to know and experience the true and living God. What Adam and Eve lost in the garden was a not a bountiful supply of food and shelter or security and peace; they lost the cool evening walks with their Creator. They lost a unique relationship with God.

Somehow much of the American church has lost this basic realization. We have become sophisticated, tame, and unapproachable. We worry too much about people’s suitability to be in our church without assessing our own suitability to be before God. Sadly, we have become Pharisees while thinking we have become spiritual. What is more important? A woman’s clothes or her soul? A man’s hair or his eternal destiny? I do not doubt that we have often good intentions: we intend to reach the lost, and we intend to touch the hurting, the poor, and the forgotten. Somewhere along the way, however, we get distracted or blinded. We start to become more concerned with appearances than with people’s lives.

For me, I must ask myself the question, “If I am willing to reach out to lost people, am I willing to get into their lives and allow them into mine?” If we allow people to get into our lives and into our churches, they may make a mess of things. They may ask of us more than we expected to give. Somehow, I do not think we will find much sympathy for selfishness from the Father who gave His own Son.