God Grew Tired of Cheesy Films….

….so He inspired some folks to produce one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. So, stop whatever you are doing right now, and go rent “God Grew Tired of Us.” It is the inspirational story of a bunch of Sudanese boys who escaped the Islamic genocide of Christians in southern Sudan. They made a grueling journey across the desert when they were young boys and spent the rest of their childhood in refugee camps. None of the boys have seen their families since they were little, and many of their families have been brutally murdered during the ongoing Muslim jihad. Now that the boys are grown, the world is trying to figure out to do with them because they cannot safely return to their homeland, and life in the refugee camps offers no future for them. A number of the boys have been chosen to come live in the U.S. to work and to finish their education, and “God Grew Tired of Us” follows several of them during their first few years in America.
This film aroused so many emotions in me when I watched it. It made me angry that the world has stood by and done nothing as the Muslim jihad continues. It mad me cry that these young men are faced with the reality that their families and homeland have been decimated and are forced to live as strangers in a very strange land. It made me feel a deep joy as I watched them adapt to American culture with innocent and open hearts. The first time they all try to go up an escalator in the airport is hysterical. Anyway, all I can really say is GO WATCH THIS FILM!
(There is a similar documentary to this one called “The Lost Boys of the Sudan,” but “God Grew Tired of Us” is considerably better)

A Tough Loss

Well, all my fellow Buckeyes are in mourning tonight after a disappointing loss to Illinois in The Shoe. I keep telling myself that sports would get boring if all my teams won every week. Oh well, there’s always next year.

On a more cheery note, I heard a quote tonight that I thought was great. We were watching the movie Almost Famous and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character says, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” How true that is….

Ministry Update

I don’t want to get into too many details about life and ministry in Eagle, but I did want to give y’all a general overview on how things have been going in my first six or seven weeks here. So, here are a few updates and thoughts:
1. I’m feeling more and more confident that God has called us to serve here. Ministry certainly has its challenges, and I’ve been busier this past month than at any other point in my life. But, the business has been good. I’m working hard, but I’ve really enjoyed the work. I take this to be a sign that I’m pretty well suited/gifted for this ministry. I still have many times when I feel like the challenges are pretty big and I’m not sure what I should do next, but I’m actually enjoying the challenges and feel inspired to attempt to overcome them.
2. I’ve been spending a lot of time just building relationships. I’ve realized that in ministry I must overcome my fear of taking the initiative to call people, visit them, and begin to build relationships with them. When I served in MN, I know that I became too standoffish. I’ve been trying to call and visit a lot of people here, and the more I do it, the more I see how essential this aspect of my ministry is. In fact, it can seem so important that I can easily understand how some ministers end up neglecting their families, prayer lives, preparation time, and study time in order to spend all of their time “out there” trying to participate in Christ’s incarnational ministry among people. I know that I must continue to take the initiative to call, visit, and connect with people, but I also must guard against neglecting other essential aspects of life and ministry.
3. God has been giving us hope. Everything is not perfect, but I really believe that God is working and leading us. He is helping me to see things not as they currently are, but as he desires them to be. I am seeing that people and church structures are flawed, but he is reminding me that his Spirit is at work building and expanding his kingdom through Christ’s transformational grace. Everyday I am reminded of his grace. His grace is giving me great hope.

A Tale of Two Christian Movies

Jill and I watched two Christian movies this week. I’m not sure if either movie was produced by a Christian company or not, but both films were overtly “Christian” in their content and were marketed to appeal to a Christian audience. Yet, the two movies could not be more different in the stories they tell and the morals they convey.

The first movie was “The Ultimate Gift,” and it played like a cheesy after-school special. I knew it was a "Christian" movie because all of the music in the film was from popular "Christian" artists. The only song that wasn't was Bob Dylan's "You're Going to Serve Somebody," which is the one Bob Dylan song that every Christian seems to know about. Anyway, the movie is the story of a grandfather who dies and leaves an unnamed “gift” to his rebellious grandson, and the only way the grandson will inherit the gift is if he completes certain tasks that are meant to teach him moral lessons. Yeah, the storyline is pretty hokey, but don’t worry, it gets much worse. The characters are so one-dimensional that they become caricatures. The plot takes so many absurd twists and turns that it reminded me of Forest Gump, but unlike Forest Gump, we’re actually supposed to take the plot seriously. It’s a good thing that I didn’t see this movie in the theater. I would have been one of those annoying people who was laughing in all the places where you aren’t suppose to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself. In the end this romantic-comedic-tragic-action-drama mess of a movie teaches us the fundamental Christian moral that if we all live good moral lives, we too will be blessed with great wealth and riches.

The second movie was “Beyond the Gates” which is the story of a priest and a school teacher serving in Rwanda when the genocide broke out in 1994. The Christians in this film must face the reality of great suffering and injustice, and they must decide what they will do in response as they attempt to live out their faith. I found it to be both a faithful portrayal of the Christian faith and a scathing critique of the UN’s handling of the Rwandan genocide. I won’t say much more about this film because I don’t want to ruin it, but I would highly recommend it.

If you couldn’t tell by what I wrote above, I wouldn’t recommend “The Ultimate Gift.” It may be an alright movie to show Jr. High age kids. But, if you rent it expecting an enjoyable movie for yourself, you will experience the ultimate disappointment.

3rd Place Ain’t Bad

I’m not much of a baseball fan (I grew up a Pittsburgh Pirate’s fan, so you can understand my lack of interest), but the Cleveland Indians just fell one game short of making the World Series. In doing so they ruined my prediction that they would lose in the World Series and complete a full year of Ohio teams finishing in 2nd place in nearly every major sporting event. The only exception would have been a 2nd place in the Super Bowl, but let’s be realistic, the Browns and the Bengals make that feat pretty much impossible.

Even though the Indians finished in 3rd place, they didn’t let their fans off of the hook. Their collapse in the ALCS with a 3-1 series once again raised the hopes of Ohio sports fan, only to break their hearts in the end.

Well…the Buckeye’s football team is once again #1….knock on wood….

Sanctification and Sinlessness

I have wrestled with the holiness doctrine of “Entire Sanctification” for a number of years, and I am still not resolved on the issue. The difficulties I have with this doctrine are not so much based on theological issues but on the way the doctrine is often preached and lived out. I do believe that God calls his people to be holy. I believe that the salvation Christ offers is fundamentally transformational in its nature. I believe that Christians are to be filled with the Spirit and empowered to live holy lives.

The problems I have with the doctrine of entire sanctification arise from those who emphasize the instantaneous act of “entire sanctification” to the exclusion of progressive and continual sanctification. To such people, entire sanctification seems to be a state of sinless perfection that anyone can attain simply by asking the Holy Spirit to sanctify them. Don’t misunderstand me. I do believe that God desires to and does sanctify his people. However, I believe that those who overemphasize the crisis event of sanctification have turned sanctification into a kind of “name-it, claim-it” experience and have actually watered-down the true holiness message. Here are two difficulties I have with this kind of “name-it, claim-it” sanctification:

First, I believe an overemphasis on the initial act of sanctification tends to divorce sanctification from the need of continual sanctification through discipleship and ongoing communion with God. We implore people to receive the grace of sanctification, but once they finish praying at the altar, we send them back into the world without taking the time to disciple them and walk with them in their experience. We preach at them to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, but we fail to teach them how to live and grow in the grace they have received.

Second, I believe that the emphasis on initial sanctification often leaves people believing that they are entering a state of “sinless-perfection,” and such a belief can actually be counterproductive. If sanctification is a state of sinless-perfection, then those who are sanctified either cannot or do not sin. Once such a state is reached there seems to be no more need to confess one’s sins or to search one’s heart to discover attitudes that are contrary to God’s will. I’ve heard a number of “sanctified” people give testimonies like, “I was sanctified fifteen years ago, and I haven’t knowingly sinned since then.” This doesn’t impress me! In fact I think it sounds spiritually arrogant and contrary to true holiness. I’m not saying that all Christians must sin everyday; however, people who are truly holy do not have to toot their own horns regarding their personal sinlessness. I believe that most people can conform to a superficial form of legalism and claim to not sin as long as they narrowly define sin as the things that are easy for them to avoid (like drinking, smoking, cussing, etc…), but is this true holiness? Does this mean that they love God with their whole heart? Does this mean that all of their hidden slothfulness, bitterness, pride, selfishness, hatefulness, lust, and jealousy have been cleansed and that they are now perfected? I doubt it.

I read something in Dennis Kinlaw’s book “Preaching in the Spirit” that is truly helpful. He writes: “Some people think the sanctified life is one in which a person never errs; but when we seek God’s grace to live a holy life, we know that’s not so. As much as anything else, the sanctified life is one sensitized to error” (46). (By the way, Kinlaw is a man of such love and grace, that if he claimed to be utterly sinless, I would believe him). I think Kinlaw’s words are very helpful. Those who are truly holy are those who constantly allow the Holy Spirit to probe their inner life and who confess and repent of errs and sins that are revealed. They do not settle for a false sense of sinlessness, but continue to grow in sanctification until they are completely perfected in Christian love.

Minneapolis Bridge

I don’t have a lot of time to write right now, but I figured I’d post this pic from the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Jill and I were there at the beginning of September with her siblings. It was pretty crazy.

Tech-nol-oh-geeze

I have come to the conclusion that as our society advances technologically, we decrease in intelligence. We may have vast amounts of information at our fingertips, but our minds have become mush in the process. Here’s a story that confirms my theory:

I was looking to buy a cell phone the other day. Being the new pastor, I figured I should finally enter the 21st century, break down and get a cell phone so that people could get in touch with me whenever I’m not in the office. When I told a salesman that I was a minister and new to the area, he jumped into his extensive pitch about me needing a combination pda/high-speed internet browser/turn-by-turn voice navigation/cell phone/etc…thingy, and it would only cost a small fortune. He told me that it would literally save me hours everyday, and this is important since a minister’s time is so valuable. I must admit that the phone was pretty cool, but he never really had me convinced (mainly because I’m so cheap!).

But if my frugality didn’t fully convince me not to take the technological plunge, the end of our conversation solidified my decision. I was looking for a few things for my guitar, so I asked the salesman if there were any music stores nearby. He told me that he played guitar in his spare time and that the best place to get what I needed was online at www.musiciansfriend.com. I knew I wasn’t going to remember that, so he said he’d write it down for me. He started to write, and I could tell he was struggling. He said, “please forgive my poor spelling,” and handed me the paper. It read “musistians frend.com” Apparently he doesn’t do much reading or writing in the countless hours that his cell phone saves him each week. I immediately went and got the cheapest/simplest phone I could find!

The Dialup Blues

I’m sure by now that the two or three of you who actually did read my blog at one time or another have ceased to read it due to my lack of posting over the past month. I hope to rectify this problem soon, now that we’re settled in Michigan, but I have one huge hurdle to overcome: my painfully slow dialup connection!!!! Apparently, there is no available high-speed internet in the Eagle area, so I’m forced to go from super-fast cable to tying my emails to carrier pigeons, and sending them out in the hopes that one day they might find their destination. I know my Carrolltonian readers can relate to this problem. Anyway, this post is kind of a test-run to see how long the process is going to take. If it takes more than 10 minutes, my posting may continue to be very sporadic.