Who Are We?

Unless you have some familiarity with the Church of God (Anderson), this won't mean much. But if you do have more than a passing interest, this may mean a whole lot. I am attempting to try and answer a question about the Church of God. The question is, "Who are we?" Ever since I started into ministry, I have both been confronted by that question and have struggled with the same. Yesterday, Joanie and I went to a local sandwich shop that just opened. Eager to meet new customers, one of the guys in the shop noticed my notebook and the religious overtones suggested by it. He remarked on it, asked to sit down and struck up a conversation about our relationship to God. Quickly he got to the question about our church affiliation. When I told him Church of God, he asked me the question. THE question: "Church of God? Who are they?" How do you answer that?

I tried to give an analogy - we are close to the Nazarene Church or the Wesleyan Church. Of course, unless you know those churches, that doesn't mean much. I could have told him we were out of the Pietistic Movement and had both Arminian and Wesleyan theological roots, but I don't know if that would help most (it didn't help him). I could pull out the old name dropper idea - the church of Bill Gaither and Sandi Patti. But you would have to know them to know what I was talking about and even knowing who they are, how does that define who the Church of God is? Do I give a list of doctrines? Do I explain how a normal service is structured (how is a normal Church of God service structured, anyway?) or talk about what we preach? Does anyone outside of a deep Christian experience understand what it means when we say we are a holiness movement? So, I ask again, who are we?

I know we live in a soundbite era and that the gospel resists being reduced to a soundbite, but what do you say when someone with limited Christian awareness asks who we are? How do you describe the Church to someone who doesn't have an intimate experience with a local church? How do you describe belief to those who don't have a vocabulary of religious terms? Well, I need some help. As a matter of fact, I will be dedicating the next several years of my life to try and figure out how to help this Movement called the Church of God to find some effective way of describing itself or understanding itself.

Will you help me? If you have any insights to give, give them to me. Post them here. If you don't have a strong biblical or local church background, help me understand what you want to know when you ask someone what their church is all about or what you want to know when you ask someone where they go to church. If you are part of the Church of God, how do you answer that question when it gets posed to you? Help me learn. I await your answers, questions, insights, and ramblings.

Sincerely,

A Fellow Struggler

The Bottom of the Barrel

I probably shouldn't write this, but...what else is a blog for other than writing what you think about. So, here goes.

It's in the news, again. I am willing to admit that it might have been there all along and people just didn't hear about it because we didn't have CNN, Fox News, and other 24-hour news outlets, but I never heard so much about it before! Hear about what, you ask? Women doing brutal crimes.

Today, Fox is reporting about the murder of a "father, 28, [who] was found hanging by a yellow nylon rope from a second-floor banister... The children — girls ages 9, 4 and 1, and a 3-year-old boy — were found in beds completely covered with sheets and blankets pulled over their heads." From the article it appears that they are looking for the missing mother/wife as the chief suspect. Yesterday, the news reported on a woman who killed her husband by having him drink antifreeze (she was already in prison for killing another husband). The reports of children in our schools being molested recently has been, seemingly, all female teachers who have been having sex with young boys. So, how is that equality thing working out, ladies?

Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for women's equality. I believe passionately in it. I am in an institution that believes firmly in the equality of women and in the ordination of women in ministry. My wife is an ordained minister and the bread winner of the family. This is not a rant about the importance or meaning of equality. It is about the sad state of human affairs that we live in today. It used to be men that were violent and women that were nurturing. Granted, that was probably a stereotype, but it seemed to be true. Then came abortion on demand, lax attitudes toward "recreational" drug use, day care out of economic necessity for women to compete in the workforce, and feminist ideologies that say that women are equal to or superior to men in all things. Well, women have arrived. You are now just as depraved as men. Congratulations, you have found the bottom of the moral, ethical barrel. We men have been living down here a long time. We have grown accustomed to war, battles, depravity, sexual lusts, carnal ideas, and moral debasement. Don't worry, the longer you are all down here with us, the more comfortable you will become.

As a pastor I noticed that the very backbone of the church was women. They held the institution together. They flooded the choir, taught in the Sunday Schools, served on the committees, sang the solos, filled up the pews, and did most of the ministry and serving in and around the church. Men were relegated to being Ushers (why men have to do that I don't know) and serving on the Board of Trustees. Those were manly things to do! Now, I fear that the decreases in the life of the church are being felt not from men leaving the church, as they have done for the past half century, but now it is women leaving the church. Why? I fear they have found the basement and are living down were Eve has trod. As a society we are less tolerant of others, less nurturing, less patient with the shortcomings of others. As men, we have lost touch with our feminine side. And I fear that the women are getting more and more in touch with their masculine, debased side.

What does this all mean? It means that the Bible was right all along. It doesn't matter whether you are male or female - sin is an equal opportunity employer. Being spiritually "lost" is not a gender issue, it is a human issue. Equality of the sexes is not the point. Finding our true selves in Christ is. Ladies, I stand up for your rights! Now, please, help us all to stand up for what is right.

And all the men said, "Amen"!

The Real Meanning of "What Would Jesus Do?"

When Jesus hung on the Cross he cried out, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do", he showed us what it means to be a lover of souls and a forgiver of sins. Imagine the grace and character it takes to forgive the very people who are responsible for your torture and murder. It is one of the statements Jesus makes that reveals to us his divine character. It is a powerful witness to the world about his message and the reality and depth of his belief in it. But how do we, his body, live out this call to forgiveness to others? I fear that this lesson is all too often lost in the church/congregational world of today. We are quick to adopt sound business principles as to how to run a church organization but we are slow to pick up on sound spiritual principles that show us how to live our lives together. Fortunately, there are examples to remind us of how we should live and who God really is.
A few months ago the news was filled with tragedy that took place in Amish Country. As one who has visited the Amish areas in Pennsylvania on numerous occasions, I know first hand that the Amish are quiet, reserved, hard working, savvy, devout believers for whom their Christian faith is not ancillary to their lives but is central to who they are and how they live. Faith is not show but something to be lived out no matter what the circumstance. The text came to Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania last October when Charles Carl Roberts IV, a depressed and angry area resident whom the Amish community knew but who, himself, was not Amish, marched into a one-room schoolhouse and took 10 children, ages 6-13, all girls, and shot them all before committing suicide. Five of the girls died immediately, one died some days later, and the other four girls are still recovering. The effect was devastating for the families and the community. Five funerals were held within two days for the fallen girls, each funeral procession of Amish buggies passing by the house of the killer on the way to the cemetery. How do you forgive someone who has done something like this to your loved ones and to your community? While it is a trite and worn expression that fits easily on wrists or t-shirts these days, the question must still be asked, "What would Jesus do?"
The answer to that question came in the form of 35 people, all Amish members of the community. In the midst of their grief and the devastation of the murder of their children, 35 men, women, and children - some of them related to the murdered girls - attended three days of funerals, not two. Not only did they attend the funeral services for their own girls: Marian Fisher, 13, Naomi Rose Ebersol, 7, Anna Mae Stoltzfusand, 12, and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7 but they attended one more. They attended the grave side service at a local Methodist Cemetery of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the shooter of the girls. They went to comfort Robert's wife, Marie, and their three small children. One mourner, Bruce Porter, who had come all the way from Colorado said, "It's the love, the forgiveness, the heartfelt forgiveness they have toward the family. I broke down and cried seeing it displayed." We may sit around and debate long and hard what real forgiveness is, but I know of two instances where it was lived out. One was on the Cross of Calvary as Jesus hung dying unjustly. The other was in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in an Amish community that believes that forgiveness is showing love in the most difficult moments of life.

What does the Church Look Like?

Joanie and I went to church on Sunday - twice as a matter of fact. We attended two churches. Sunday morning I preached in Santa Ana. It was a nice service and, for that group, well attended. A couple of new people showed up. In a congregation that has been devastated by ethical problems and a church split, it is quite obvious and very encouraging to have any new people show up (hard to miss when there less than 20 people at the service!). We sang hymns, prayed, gave an offering, shared the Word, and gave testimony and witness to Jesus Christ. It was a good service.

One of the visitors was a new friend of ours whom I met at the Southern Cal Association Ministers Meeting. She is ministering as a Chaplain at a Hospice Center. We had an instant connection and she wanted to travel with us and worship together. Joanie had a similar kind of connection after meeting her and spending the afternoon together. It was very easy to talk and relate.

So, when she talked about being involved in a home bible study on Sunday nights and described it, we took up her invitation to go. However, it was not a bible study. It was a church. Packed into an apartment living room, we had nearly the same amount of people as we had on Sunday morning. We sang hymns, shared the Word, prayed together, ate together, and gave our witness of Jesus Christ. It was most interesting. It made me wonder. What does the Church really look like?

The Church of the first century didn't look anything like what we think the church of the 21st century looks like. They had no buildings and few of the elements and rituals that we have come to expect at church. The only thing that bridges that gap was the fact that when we gathered and when they gathered back in biblical days, we both gave witness to our faith in Jesus Christ. Reality says that the church changes it's look more than Madonna has. We don't look the same today as we did when I was born. The church always changes. It's the message that doesn't change. It's the witness that remains consistent. House Church, Sanctuary, Wooded Glens, Campgrounds, Caves, even an Apollo capsule on the way back from the Moon have been sanctuaries - places of worship. It's not the look of the church that defines us. It's the vision and witness of the people that reflects who Jesus is and what the church really should be.

Things Are Not What They Appear to Be

If I've learned anything over the past few months (years, too, I'm sure) it is that what we know is a lot like the warnings they used to put on side view mirrors - "Things appear larger than what they seem"; at least I can say that, "Things are not always what they appear to be". Now, that may not be earth shattering news, but it has been revolutionary in my thinking. Tied up in this idea is the whole debate that is going on in academic circles about the change in society from a modernistic view of the world to what is being called postmodernism. Let me try and explain.
Modernism is what you and I have grown up with. In our world, things are ordered; they can be explained by scientific theories and experiments; knowledge is key in the modern view - we can understand anything (from how peas are grown to how to go to the Moon and back) as long as we can break it down and explain how it functions. Our world is based on modernism. It is comfortable, hopeful, and logical. It is also based on a false premise (maybe several false premises!).
The first premise is that we can be objective when it comes to knowledge. The whole scientific method is based on this principle. If you ever watch Gil Grissom on "CSI" you will hear him say things like, "The evidence is neither good nor bad, it's the evidence". What does he mean? He means that, as a scientist, he can objectively find out what has happened by looking objectively at what the inanimate evidence reports. He has no opinion nor does he affect the materials, he only discovers what they are "saying" through experimentation. Sounds good, doesn't it? The problem is it just doesn't meet its own scientific fact. Below is a link to a Google video piece that may explain this even better. Before you watch it, let me explain a bit. Albert Einstein discovered the theory of quantum physics. What is quantum physics? Well, I'm sure I don't know. But it does tell us one thing. No one is objective. Everyone who observes something and reports on what they observe changes and affects what they observe. Take a look:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4237751840526284618&q=%22double+slit

Did you get it? I hope so. The first time I saw it, I was dumbfounded. It seems to say (and prove) that nothing is what is seems. Everything is affected by how I live, what my prejudices are, what I think or believe, and that nothing is really objective at all. Is this relativism (that there is nothing true and that everything is relative to the situation - a kind of situation ethics)? Hardly, it just recognizes the reality that, as human beings, we affect everything we come into contact with and with which we interact. In reality, this is exactly what the Bible says. The Bible teaches that as Christians we have an influence on everyone and everything. The Bible calls that witness or testimony. How we live effects the world around us. The decisions we make effect the people we know. Nothing takes place in a vacuum. We are inexorably tied to one another. What I do with my life matters. Therefore, things may not be what they seem but they may be greater than what we assume. Today, as you live your life, you will effect the way life is lived for yourself, your family, your co-workers, fellow students, and the idiot that cuts you off in traffic. The question is not will you effect, the question is how you will effect life. Think about it!

A Box of Chocolates

Forrest Gump was right. "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're goin' to get." Life seems full of surprises. Some are exciting, others not so. But you never know what you are going to find:

1. Surgery - Joanie has been diagnosed with advanced arthritis in her left hip. The cartelidge is all gone and bone is rubbing on bone. After seeing a surgeon (the third doctor that has confirmed the arthritis diagnosis) he is recommending hip replacement surgery. He is booked 4-6 months ahead, so we are unsure when the surgery will be scheduled. The condition has grown more and more problematic and painful for Joanie. She finally has medical insurance (six months getting that straightened out) and will be having the surgery through Kaiser. We have had good experiences with them and were very impressed by the surgeon and his reputation. Rehabilitation will take 6-12 weeks following the surgery. Our biggest concern is being able to get to Joel and Shafali's for the birth of our first grandchild in September. We are praying things all work out.


2. Although there are other factors, this certainly sealed the deal that Joanie will teach again in Gardena next year. She has already informed her Principle and the Senior Pastor about both the surgery and her intent to return. Both are sad about the surgical aspect but excited to have her come back. She is doing a great job and they are all very happy to have someone of her gifts and quality, commitment and attitude coming back to the school.


3. I walked into class last Thursday to listen to three students preach in our small group preaching session (I listen to them preach and then critique their sermons). As I approached the room, I found that a movie crew was there. They had received permission to follow one of my students for the next 18 months as they prepare for ministry. So, they filmed for this documentary not only the student they were following, but the two other students scheduled to preach that day (both of whom had preached exactly once before in their lives, and that was in this same small group a couple of weeks ago). Then the crew filmed the feedback session. Later that day, I saw the director on campus and she asked me if they could interview me for the documentary (the title is, "Called" and deals with people called to ministry and their preparation for it).

So, somewhere in 2009-10 I will be in a documentary from PBS. Or, I will end up on the cutting room floor (more likely). But, life is like a box of chocolates . . .