First Christian Church

Are we raising “small” Christians?

I’ve just begun reading a really great book by Gary Thomas called The Beautiful Fight. It’s about “surrendering to the transforming presence of God every day of your life,” especially the transforming part! Great read, people… Great read! He begins by recounting the story of Francis of Assisi coming across a victim of leprosy, one of the most feared diseases of its time.

“During my life of sin,” Francis wrote, “nothing disgusted me like seeing victims of leprosy.” Exuberant in his newfound faith and with joy flooding his soul – and remembering he was now to love and even treasure those things he formerly loathed – Francis chose not to run from the leper, as he would have done earlier in his life. Instead, he leaped from his horse, knelt in front of the leper, and proceeded to kiss the diseased white hand.

He kissed it.

Francis then further astonished the leper by giving him money. But even that wasn’t enough. No, Francis was determined to “drink great sweetness” from what he formerly loathed, so he jumped back on his horse and rode to a neighboring leper colony. Francis “begged their pardon for having so often despised them” and, after giving them money, refused to leave until he had kissed each one of them, joyfully receiving the touch of their pale, encrusted lips. Only then did Francis jump back on his horse to go on his way.

In that indelible moment, Francis’s faith became incarnate. His belief didn’t just inspire him; it transformed him.

Thomas continues…

Witnessing the dynamic witness of a young Francis,… I feel embarrassed at how small-minded we can be when discussing the Christian faith with young people today. The apostle Paul exalted life in Christ as the most exciting and compelling life anyone could choose. In a marvelous take on 2 Timothy 4:7 (MSG), Eugene Peterson recounts Paul telling Timothy, “This is the only race worth running.”

Today’s believers often lose touch with this sense of the glory of being a Christian. We settle for so little – a tame religion, a few rituals, maybe even an occasional miraculous answer to prayer – and so pass our lives without understanding our true identity in Christ, embracing our calling as God’s children, or fulfilling our divine purpose.

Is the Christianity taught today large enough to seize our hearts? Does its promise of transformation so compel us that we would give all we have to take hold of it?

The contemporary American church’s vision of “being a Christian” is anemic and not hardly compelling enough to call people to join in the beautiful fight of transformation into Christlike holiness. If you look at what we’re producing in our churches, you’d think we’re calling people to satisfaction in worldly values instead of God. Instead of “reducing our faith to a set of intellectual doctrines and a list of forbidden practices” (Thomas’ words), we desperately need to call our young people to a compelling vision of the Christian life. For the sake of the continuing witness of the gospel and our childrens’ souls, we must raise young Christians who will forego the values of hipness and security for the sake of the gospel calling of being a witness. Sell the RV and vacation home and cash in the 401K to model participation in something of far greater consequence than earthly gain! At the least we should be systematically and intentionally orienting our lives, families, and resources around Kingdom priorities. Your kids will FOREVER thank you.

Thomas concludes this section:

The ‘Beautiful Fight’ invites you to explore the depths of a truly transforming faith, an incarnational spirituality that doesn’t dwell merely on a list of prohibitions and forbidden sins but powerfully ushers us into something so precious, so profound, and so stirring that we would gladly give up all we have just to lay hold of it. It is what in our deepest longings we truly want to become.

Easter Egg Hunt Pictures

Did You Know?… We’re buying a school?!

Okay, only sort of! Just a cool little tidbit not many in our congregation know about yet…

Steve and Kay Carpenter, and their kids Natasha and Benjamin, are longtime missionaries to Mexico City that we’ve supported through Christian Missionary Fellowship International for a number of years. Their important work has helped establish a new church where they minister, La Iglesia Cristiana Las Aguilas, or Eagles Christian Church. They have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase a fantastic facility at less than 45% of its market value for the church body there. Check out this blog post on the CMFI website and the Carpenters’ website for more info.

That’s where we’ve come in to help a little bit… A few months ago the Missions Ministry Team suggested to our Board of Elders and Deacons that we send them $10,000 from our Missions Fund which is outside of the General Operating Fund, and we’re excited to report that the purchase is going forward and we are helping to support them with $10,000! Isn’t that great?! (This is not an April Fool’s joke, BTW!) Please be praying for the Carpenters and the important work going on for the Kingdom there in Mexico City!

The Disciples’ Call: Jesus’ Parables of Learning and Doing

Here’s an overview of our current sermon series…

We’re studying Jesus’ parables of the process of discipleship: from hearing Jesus’ invitation to follow, all the way through to becoming stewards of our lives in a manner that accords with being a disciple.

• Sun, Oct 26 – The Urgent Invitation (Luke 14:12-24)
• Sun, Nov 2 – The Search (Luke 15:1-10)
• Sun, Nov 9 – The Find (Matthew 13:44-46)
• Sun, Nov 16 – The Decision (Luke 14:28-33)
• Sun, Nov 23 – The Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13)

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to (re)visit Jesus’ call to discipleship! Click on the passages listed here to prepare by reading ahead of time (not so subtle hint)… and you can compare the English Standard Version with others (see pull down menu at bottom of page once you get to the ESV passage.)

“Christian Voting”

As November 4 approaches, I think it’s important for us to think about what we’re doing when we vote. Wherever you stand on the issues or the candidates, it’s entirely appropriate that we discuss how Christians approach the role of politics in our lives. Here’s a great little article by John Piper, a pastor in Minneapolis, with some good Biblical thinking about what it means to vote as a Christian. It’s definitely worth the 3 minutes it’ll take to read.

Frankly, I have a specific political view to which I personally hold, and I will vote for my preferred candidate. I expect you will do the same based on your political views.

But no matter what happens on election day, Christians prepared for eternity will be quite fine. For we hold fast, not to earthly powers, but to Almighty God. God’s power dwarfs humanity’s political attempts to usher in policies that can only act as temporary bandaids for the world’s real problem of sin. Friends, only God can change hearts and minds, and for the Christian prepared for eternity… no politician nor government can ever separate us from Christ!

For the sake of the Kingdom,

Scott

Freedom From Busyness

Did you know that over half of each dollar spent on food in America is spent “eating out”? In the U.S., we average 47 hours of work per week, and according to Time Magazine, we receive 11 paid holidays, and 12 days of vacation per year. In Europe, it’s around 38-39 hours per week, 8-10 paid holidays, and 5-6 weeks of vacation per year. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics’ Time Use Survey, in 2006, 35% of employees now work on weekend days and the average parent of a child 6-years or younger spends 2 full hours a day providing primary care to the child while holding down a full-time job. Check out this stat: “People work approximately 8 weeks longer per year than in 1969—in the space of a single generation—but for roughly the same income (after adjusting for inflation).” (Check out this page to get really worried!)

In our fast-food, fast-pace, and fast-track world, it sure seems like we’re all living at 100 miles an hour just to keep up with everything, doesn’t it?! And the result is a life that is a mile wide but an inch deep. Our relationships with people and with God suffer. Chuck Swindoll says it well:

Busyness rapes relationships. It substitutes shallow frenzy for deep friendship. It feeds the ego but starves the inner man. It fills a calendar but fractures a family. It cultivates a program that plows under priorities. Many a church boasts about its active program: “Something for every night of the week for everybody.” What a shame! With good intentions the local assembly can create the very atmosphere it was designed to curb.

After exhorting us not to be anxious and likening us (by way of contrast) to busybodies who “toil” and “spin” (Matthew 6:28, ESV) out of a nervous need to “lay up for ourselves [sic.] treasures on earth” (Matthew 5:19, ESV), Jesus says, in Matthew 6:33 (ESV), “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Let’s learn together during this series how we can more effectively (though not quicker or easier!) “seek first the kingdom of God.” Based on the study series “Freedom From Busyness: Biblical Help for Overloaded People” by Michael Zigarelli, we’ll be looking at these 5 topics:

• Sunday, August 31 – The Bondage of Busyness
• Sunday, September 7 – Saying No
• Sunday, September 14 – Slowing Down
• Sunday, September 21 – Simple Living
• Sunday, September 28 – Freedom From Busyness, For What?

Come join us as we look at some important ways to reestablish your intimacy with God and your relationships with people! The Sunday morning sermon outlines will come with some practical helps and questions for further study on the back. We’ll also be going deeper with an interactive 6-week Wednesday night study and discussion group, from 7:00-8:00 p.m. (in the Bond Between Us classroom). No need to sign up or bring anything, it’s free and we’ll provide the materials and the coffee!

… On Worship at FCC

Ever wondered “where we stand” on worship style questions? Well, this is not an “authorized statement,” but I wanted to provide a couple quick thoughts so you know where I’m coming from when it comes to planning the Sunday morning worship service. These are not presented as a tight theological argument nor official church communique, so please read them appropriately, as my thoughts.

First, style serves and is subordinate to content. In other words, if I’m putting together a service and a classic hymn expresses the truth better, I’ll choose that. If a praise chorus provides better connection with the theme for the day, I’ll choose that. Second, I believe a “blended” style best reflects both the unity and diversity of the body of Christ. Both “contemporary” and “traditional” descriptions of worship services are too limiting. But, a service style open to using acapella singing, piano, organ, choir, ensembles, guitars, drums, brass, woodwinds, strings, handbells and audio-visual elements provides a chance for all of us to experience together (unity) the full-range of expressions and giftedness (diversity).

If you were here last Sunday morning, you saw that in aciton. We worshipped with piano, organ, band, and acappella… all in the same service! In many churches, these stylistic issues divide, but praise the Lord that we can worship together in a blended way that illustrates both the unity and diversity of the body of Christ. And, believe me, our guests and visitors, believers and not-yet-believers alike, will notice!

So… those of you worried that this young preacher is getting rid of the good old hymns, the choir, and the organ, rest assured. And those of you worried that we’ll never have any praise choruses led by a band, don’t fret. We’ll continue to meet each other halfway to become a church of balance where people come to FCC knowing that, regardless of the style that day, they can meet with God and experience a great worship service!

“Psummer Psalms” – Psalm 1

This summer we’ll be doing a series on the Psalms called “Psummer Psalms.” I’ve begun reading a 3-volume commentary and a couple great little introductory books in preparation. Here’s a nugget from James Montgomery Boice’s study of the Psalms. We’ll be starting with Psalm 1, “The Song of the Righteous” (forthcoming sermon title for July 13). It serves as an introductory “text of which the remaining Psalms are essentially exposition” (p. 14). In the Hebrew, “blessed” is plural connoting, umm, lots of blessing, as in lasting happiness. It is essentially a Psalm about lasting happiness as the fruit of the life of the man who loves God’s truths. It is not so much a reward as a practical result.

Blessed is the man​ who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
-Psalm 1:1-2 (English Standard Version)

The parallelism in this Hebrew poetry is probably a helpful clue to the Psalmist’s meaning. Notice the three sets of parallel terms in this verse: “walk, stand, sit,” “counsel, way, seat,” and “wicked, sinners, scoffers.” There seems to be a progression (or regression?) of meaning here. Boice says, “[I]t is hard to believe that the phrases are not saying that the way of the wicked is downhill and that sinners always go from bad to worse” (p. 14). Here’s what Charles Spurgeon said:

When men are living in sin they go from bad to worse. At first they merely walk in the counsel of the careless and ungodly, who forget God-the evil is rather practical than habitual-but after that, they become habituated to evil, and they stand in the way of open sinners who willfully violate God’s commandments; and if let alone, they go one step further, and become themselves pestilent teachers and tempters of others, and thus they sit in the seat of the scornful. They have taken their degree in vice, and as true Doctors of Damnation they are installed” (Spurgeon, Treasury of David, 1a:1-2).

Good stuff. We don’t get enough good writing and thoughtful exposition like that much anymore, eh?!

Are we thoughtful and intentional (enough) in welcoming guests?

I’ve just read “Fusion,” by Nelson Searcy, which is a great book about taking seriously the process of “assimilation,” the basic process of turning first-time guests and visitors into fully-engaged members. Andy Stanley says, “The Church is a family expecting guests.” Does that accurately describe us at First Christian? How’s this for some good (and inflammatory) food for thought?…

“Unfortunately, we live in a culture in which the business world understands more about true expressions of hospitality than the Church does. ["Ouch!']… While hotels, restaurants and stores all around us serve their guests with intentional care, we often let ours wander in and out of our weekly services with no specific plan for showing them how important they are to us.”

When you add in the words “intentional care” and “specific plan,” this passage is a serious indictment of most churches’ current efforts. We do well at First Christian with some things, but are we intentional and specific enough that the various elements of what we already do are part of a larger process that actually moves people from visitor to member?

On the face of it, when you begin to talk about something like this, it feels like a sales job with all the concern about proper signage, making people feel comfortable, providing a homey environment with food, and sending small gifts of appreciation with thanks-for-visiting letters and cards, but at its heart, this process isn’t just about ‘impressing’ someone, it’s about evangelism and discipleship. It is only half-done if it’s simply about integration and acculturation into “how we do things” because then we’ve made people followers of First Christian sometimes more than we have of Christ. (Can I get an amen?!)

It seems to me that if we don’t take seriously our task to make our guests feel welcome, we don’t take seriously our mission to reach people with the gospel.

Creative Video – Casting Crowns, “Who Am I?”

Check out what this group of students from Oslo, Norway did with a blacklight, a good song, some hard work and creativity. Pretty cool!