I am not a huge fan of Gospel tracts. I don’t feel that they really work most of the time, but I don’t think that is exactly the fault of the concept.

I am talking through witnessing with my Young Adult’s class. I am giving them a series of challenges each week and then we are talking about how those challenges went. What was effective, what wasn’t, and why? I am more interested is teaching a lifestyle of living the Gospel. A life of prayer for the lost and action on that prayer.

This week the challenge revolves around Gospel tracts. Everyone was given 3 sets of two different tracts. They were challenged to leave one set in two different locations or complete a hand off to a total stranger with the tract in some way with no follow through. I feel that most people handle tracts like that. Every tract I’ve ever been given has been someone I’ve never met handing my some folded bit of paper as they walk away. This is exactly why I don’t like tracts.

They were also challenged to go through the remaining tracts with people. One set with two people they have a pretty good relationship with. Possibly family, friend, coworker … the kind of person you might talk to on a regular basis. The other set with two people that they don’t really know well. Could be a stranger or could be someone they have a very superficial relationship with.

I think in the right circumstance a tract can be used as a tool for witnessing. I don’t think it is the all to end all of witnessing but I am very interested the conversations on how this went for everyone.

Have you been given a tract? How did that go? Have you handed out tracts? What was your method. Have you ever been involved in a situation where a tract helped lead someone to Christ?

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So it is time for March madness. The thing is, I use to love basketball, but I am just not that into it anymore. I think a big part of it is that I just don’t keep up with it. This is why I’m not writing about basketball. Instead I want to deal with something that was brought up in the comments of yesterday’s post. Sherry Meneley mentioned that she watched a young lady get baptized that she felt was not ready. As I understand it the young lady behaved in a rather un-repentant manner. I might be understating this because Sherry said she felt that the girl would come up from the water changed into a glowing angel or that she would be a head spinning, projectile vomiting demon.

Sherry is not a judgmental type of person, in fact she is really open to the grace of God so I tend to think this girl had issues. She asked what my position is on baptism and if I would refuse to baptize someone.

I think I would, but not necessarily for this reason. Please let me elaborate by explaining what I believe baptism to be.

Baptism is a symbol but it is also more than that. It is a symbol of our initiation into our Christian walk. It is a symbol of dying to our old self and being raised into a new life with Christ. It is a symbol of our confession of faith.

It is also an act of obedience, we are commanded to baptize and also expected to be baptized. Baptism goes deeper still I don’t know exactly how, but in being obedient I believe we some how participate in a small way with Christ. I think that is something that we, as Protestants, have missed is the fact that we are participating with Christ through the rites of the Church, like baptism and communion.

I wouldn’t baptize someone that didn’t understand this and agree to the ideas contained in it. If baptism is a public profession of personal faith then how could I baptize one of my students that don’t really believe in Christ as their Lord and Savior? More over how could I baptize a child that can’t really grasp this?

A while back I had a parent bring two children for baptism, one was a bit older and able to understand and confess, but the other couldn’t. I didn’t refuse but I asked the parents to be there while we talked about what baptism was all about in a class setting. After the parents asked to have the older girl baptized but wanted to wait till the younger girl could grasp these concepts.

To the question of this young lady. From what I know of Sherry I tend to think I would have insisted on talking to this girl and making sure she did have a relationship with God through Christ. It may well be that she recently gave her heart to God and I would welcome her to participate in baptism as a first step in her journey. If she claimed to be a Christian but refused to submit to Christ instead holding steadfastly to slavery in sin, then I feel I would want to talk on the subject further making sure she understood what baptism is about and what she is saying regarding her old life. If she wanted to stand up and say that she was renouncing a life of sin and was willing to be encouraged in that then I would be willing to baptize her. If she refused any of that but wanted to get baptized just because everyone else was and didn’t really want a part in Christ or his righteousness then I wouldn’t feel any obligation, compunction, or desire to let her participate in something that is holy.

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I wonder how hard I make God laugh when I start planning things? I figure my plans must be worth days of entertainment. Of course that’s not really much when we are talking about eternity, but still, it sure seems like He would clue me in a bit earlier.

Of course I know I can’t blame Him. This only happens when I start making my own plans. If I seek God and His plans then I tend to get shockingly accurate details. For example, I’ve done my sermons a year out the past couple of years. I take time to pray before, not just a quick breath of prayer before my pen hits the paper but days of prayer. Then I print out a calendar and start filling in themes, ideas, scriptures … whatever comes to mind. I occasionally feel like leaving a space blank. I assumed the first time that those were days that I would be getting details about later or something. The thing is, all of those days were days we either didn’t have service because of the weather or days I wasn’t there.

I have been planning to do a series on a book called “God-o-logy” for a year now. I keep getting other things that push this book off of my schedule. I had planned once again to start this book in a couple of weeks, but tonight I ended up on a tangent and that led to a change to my plans. I believe that God led all of this.

I began talking about how I’m tired of the same old thing and of hoping for things to be like they use to be. I want something new and I want to see a revolution. Then we got started talking about how everyone wants to see that too but they don’t know how. They don’t know how to tell others about Christ.

We are starting a new series on how to witness. I am building it around a book I’ve read The Seven Principles of an Evangelistic Life. As I build this I think I would like to post about the lessons to encourage and get feedback to better teach the series.

Part of this series will be practical challenges every week. It isn’t enough to talk. I want to encourage people to actually DO something.

What are your experience with evangelism? Have you told people about the good news? What challenges do you face? What practical challenges should I put in front of the young adults?

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I understand the dark side has cookies, as well as all the cool force powers like force choke and lightening. Plus they have James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader. I mean how cool is that? The force isn’t the only thing with a dark side … well darker side. To say dark side would assume that there is some evil to it. It isn’t evil per se, just less than enjoyable for anyone in their right mind.

What is this “darker side” you ask? Church politics.

This week I will be involved in way too much on the political front. We have our sectional meeting tomorrow. My denomination is based on a structure where each congregation is mostly autonomous. They vote for their pastors and the church organizational structure. The only requirement is that they agree with the beliefs held by the denomination and a few structural guidelines that seek to guard those beliefs. Within this system the national structure is broken down into districts and the districts are further broken down into sections.

Our section is one of the largest by area, though many of the churches are smaller and spread out quite a bit. This comes from being in a rural section. For this reason they proposed that we setup a new section that basically split our section into east and west halves. We did this on a trial basis for the past several months and for the first time since I became licensed within this denomination I felt like a part of something bigger than our little community.

Tomorrow will be the first time I have attended a sectional meeting with the larger section in 2 years. The church we are going to is further than the farthest church in the smaller temporary section and it is about halfway to the farthest church in the larger section. This is why we haven’t done much within the larger section, it is just too far to make it feasible, but in the past 6 months the smaller section has had 6 meetings, and I attended 5 of them. I would have been at 6 but I was very ill for one.

I feel worried about the political games that go on in the Church. I know it isn’t just my denomination or church. I know why a lot of churches refuse to be a part of a denomination, but even in those churches there is a lot of political posturing.

I pray tomorrow will not be full of these things. I pray that we can keep in smaller sections. I don’t have a problem with the people and churches in the bigger section, I just have an issue with the distance.

I also pray for this coming Sunday when we have our annual business meeting. I pray that it is an exercise in community and grace, not a bunch of self serving posturing.

Have you had to deal with Church politics? How does it make you feel? What is the solution?

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I wanted to write a funny top ten post today but that will have to wait because yesterday an American flew into a building in Texas that housed the local IRS office. I began reading about the details of the event and found it to be a confusing mess. Admittedly the investigation seems to be pretty tidy, but there will be conspiracies surrounding this for ages to come. The man involves appears to have done this on his own and as a protest against a corrupt government. He supposedly posted his manifesto/suicide note to a website for his business. The site was taken down by the host per a request by the FBI but it had already been copied to many other sites to avoid the censure that some believed might be coming. Of course there are already people that are saying that the site was never altered before it was taken down and that this whole thing is a hoax or government cover-up. Like I said, this is a mess.

Assuming that the facts as stated are all right I want to talk about what this man did and what he wrote. There are many places you can read the full version that was posted to the website. If you visit now it will tell you that the site was taken down at the request of the FBI but that the letter may be viewed here. Of course it is possible that things might change multiple times in the next few days alone, considering how many times they changed on Thursday, but as of now this information should be accurate.

There are several pages worth of text in which Joe Stack laments several financial woes among other life altering problems that he blames on the government and more specifically the IRS. It appears that he believes that he shouldn’t have had to pay taxes just like the Catholic church so he would be just as prosperous. This backfired on him along with some changes to the tax code that he felt targeted him specifically. Later he didn’t file his taxes one year claiming that his business didn’t show a profit and so he didn’t think it was necessary. These two incidents cost him two businesses, tens of thousands of dollars, and a marriage according to his letter.

He left California for Texas believing that he would be better off but felt that unfair business practices and government breaks to 3 major corporations undercut him. When he remarried he encountered other tax problem based on over $10k of unreported income which he blamed a CPA for. This seemed to be the final straw. He began writing this list of offenses in an effort at self therapy according to his opening statements, but found no solace.

Yesterday morning he apparently set his house on fire and fled to a nearby airfield where he left in his private single engine plane and flew into the building ending his life and possibly another in the building.

There are raging debates going on about if this man was a hero or a villain. I certainly agree that there is significant corruption in the government, but it seems the primary complaint is that he wasn’t allowed to take advantage of it himself.

I’m not interested in this debate though. When I started reading through his rants I was initially angered at the complaints. This man was much wealthier than I am. I could live well off what he had and proudly pay my taxes. This offended me and then to see him go to such lengths pushed me over, but then I realized something. This man had friends and family that didn’t see this coming. They said he never talked about these issues.

I noticed a theme where a hurting and broken man, a desperate man was pushed aside. He “closest” friends didn’t know who he was, they didn’t know his heart. This is true for so many other people. I have plenty of friends that don’t know me and I don’t know them. This is a common state of relationships in America. There were likely thousands in this man’s life that failed him.

I realized that the largest frustration I had when reading his diatribe was an anger at myself for the people I have failed. People like him whom I have not taken the time to know and help.

I encourage you to read his words with this thought in your mind, “how could I have helped?”

For him it is too late. He has made his choice, but there is a whole world of hurting and broken people out there that need out help. Please find a way to help them.

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It keeps happening to me. I think about God and how amazing He is. I think about everything He has done and I am literally in awe. He made the entire universe form scratch. I can’t even bake a freakin cake without a box recipe. He build each of us and made us unique and special and then made it all better when we screwed up his perfect work of art that is us over and over.

Despite all of that I keep forgetting just how big and powerful God is. Maybe it is because He is close and personal. He is a friend and Father. I end up putting human limitations on Him and then wonder why I am overwhelmed. I fight through all manner of situations without going to God because I forget just how big He is. So often I think, “This is to small to bother God with, He has enough to deal with.” Did you catch that? I made the mistake of thinking that God can get overwhelmed just like I do.

That is the problem. I get overwhelmed. I have huge dreams and I want to see so many things happening but then I feel like I can’t get anything done because I’m working on so many things at once. I have to step back and decide what is important and what big picture things I need to take care of so the details can be handled by someone else, assuming I can beg someone to do it.

I take my limitations and I throw them on God. I believe that God is big enough for the big things. I will stop and pray in an instant when something huge is happening. That is what God is there for right? He has to deal with all those huge things so I’ll fret my life away trying to take car of those little details. My shoulder hurts but I can ice it and heat it and rub it and take meds. I don’t need to bother God with this. It’s nothing compared to the things that some people are enduring, stuff they won’t recover from without God. We are struggling in our finances but we can cut back and plan better and make ends meet. There are many people much worse off that God needs to help so I’ll keep pressing on.

See, I forget that God didn’t just make big brush strokes when he made the Universe, He worked on things of such fine detail that our most powerful instruments can’t see them. We can detect that there are things smaller than we can see because of the behavior of what we can see, but God made that detail. He put planets out there that we could never know about. He set it all in motion and knows the position of every aspect of His creation from before the moment it was made till after He unmakes it. He isn’t even the slightest bit taxed when doing all of this, He can attend to my smallest need if I just remember that He is big enough to handle my everything.

What do you have going on in your life that you think is too small for God?

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I often learn new and fascinating fact in church. Unfortunately they are often random things that aren’t really part of what I should have learned. Pastor did a great sermon yesterday from Matthew. It had something to do with being full of the Spirit of God and acting like it. I try really hard to pay attention, but I get easily distracted and there are so many distracting things in the sound booth.

Of course I do learn things. Yesterday I learned about the blue laws. I had heard of these kinds of things in the past, and I even know that some of these laws still exist in certain communities. They limit what can be sold or done on Sunday. Most of these laws are beyond absurd.

According to my pastor the ice cream soda was invented by accident around the turn of the century in a drug store. Back in the day people would often get creme sodas. I can attest to getting these at a particular restaurant in Norman, OK. They called them “Italian Cream Sodas.” They were made by hand with syrups, soda water, and cream. From what I understand this is pretty much the formula they used back in the days when the local drug stores were making up their sodas. Anyways, one guy ran out of cream but had some ice cream which he substituted for the cream in his cream soda.

The new ice cream soda became a regularly requested item and then spread through the nation as a new national craze. Then the church stepped in. Concerned pastors started preaching against the sin of indulgence and got people to rally against the evils of ice cream sodas. They eventually got laws passed that made it illegal to make or sell ice cream sodas on Sunday.

Eventually an ingenious merchant came up with a new marketing gimmick. On Sunday he would prepare a special ice cream soda without the soda. He put ice cream and syrup into a soda glass and called it a “Sunday” special. This new confection quickly grew in popularity to the point that most Americans have had a Sundae even if they have never had a classic Ice Cream Soda.

It bothers me that the Church has wasted so much energy complaining. We still do it. We make it our business to let the World know how sinful they are, and what is worse we tend to make up sins just to beat them down. This is why I have so much trouble with legislating morality and why I think we need to be more focused on being a light or good salt rather than shining lasers into people’s eyes or pouring nasty filthy salt into their wounds.

This Sunday we should all go order a classic ice cream soda to celebrate our freedom from the Law and then find some way to spread the Love of God.

How will you be a beacon of God’s grace, mercy, and love?

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I try to be a very logical person. I see creation as a structured construct. Things have a cause and effect. God planned everything out carefully and knew what each action would cause. He is not random or capricious. This is the basis for my theology and my world view.

On the other hand I believe God is close and involved with us if we listen. I know a lot of people disagree with me. The believe that God is either this distance creator that started things and then stepped back to see what happens or that he does get involved from time to time but only with specific and special people. Many believe that the special revelations from God stopped with the Apostles.

That is well and good but I’ve experienced God. I know this is subjective and that my own experiences can’t really be useful for theological constructs, but I do believe that God is personal which means we can experience him.

I don’t have lots of visions or hear voices or anything like that. Actually I can’t think of a clear “vision” that I’ve ever had but I have had dreams or seen the supernatural on occasion. I’m not one to go to special services to try and drum up some special experience or otherwise “chase” the Spirit. I have seen a lot of that and I have a problem with the way that is done. Singing the same line of a song over and over until the “Spirit falls” feel too much like pagan chanting to me. Trying to set some kind of spiritual mood by abusing your body or doing some set process or anything else like that seems rooted in eastern mysticism.

I just don’t think we need to jump start God by anything we do. I read the Bible and it seems that when God wants to talk He tends to get people’s attention. He sends the message or speaks, or goes ahead and calls people up into heaven for a little chat. He can be big and obvious like a burning bush or He can be invisibly subtle like in the book of Esther. I don’t see why we think we should be trying to force Him at all. He is God after all.

All that said, I have had two different dreams the past two nights. Both have involved one of my students. Well it might be appropriate to say former students. I won’t go into details but for now he isn’t coming to youth events by my choice. He is too old to be in youth but not mature enough to be a leader. There have been some serious issues that have resulted from this and so I have tried encouraging him to attend the young adults’ group, which is more age appropriate and regular service, but he pretty much dropped off the grid except occasional messages sent through various mediums asking if I would let him come back. The answer has been the same every time. I want to meet with him to talk. He will not follow through with even that much.

The dreams have been even more vivid than my normal dreams, which are very clear an vibrant. Within the dream I know it is a dream and I feel compelled to pray for this student. I wake up with that same desire to pray for him and it sits with me all day.

Believe what you want. Believe that I made this dream up in my own head. Believe that God is sharing something with me. It doesn’t really matter to me, but I am asking that you pray for this young man. He needs prayer regardless of this dream. I pray for him every day anyways, but this seems more urgent.

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My kids are growing up. They have been breaking things since they were very young. The baby broke our DVD player a couple months ago. My second born took a toy apart earlier this week. Today I saw the youngest girl trying to put a pair of play shoes back together.

So far I have been able to fix most of the things they break, but they have started to try and fix it on their own. Most of the time they are trying to hide it from me, but occasionally they are trying to emulate me. One of the other kids will break something so the older two try to fix it for them. As far as I know they haven’t been all that successful yet, but I only get to see the failed attempts so who knows.

Tuesday Kathy (@katdish) wrote a post on patience that was … disturbing? Well, frustrating at least. Her post wasn’t frustrating so much as the truth within it and how impotent it makes so many of us feel.

Wednesday Kathy and I tweeted back and forth for a bit about what we can do for people stuck in abusive situations. For me I am bound by law when it comes to minors. If I suspect abuse of someone under the age of 18 I have to report it to the state. I don’t get the luxury of trying to decide if it is abuse or a teen spouting off. I have to call it in and let the state sort it out. I’ve had to do this twice but in both situations nothing happened. In one of the situations I really didn’t feel that the call was warranted, but in the other I feel that abuse was happening.

I don’t know what kind of follow-up happened when I called. Maybe they looked into the situation and found proof that nothing had happened. Maybe the information went in a file where it sits waiting for another report. I do know it is frustrating, no it is disheartening.

I am a fixer. My kids know it. When I was their age I started trying to fix my own toys and to be honest I failed a lot, but I learned and got better. As I got older I would see people that needed fixing and I’d try to help. Now I am a pastor and fixing is kind of my job. I see my students that are broken and want to repair them. I want to move the world to change their lives.

Yesterday as I was talking with Kathy I realized something. I can’t fix broken people. I am like my older kids trying to fix things for the younger kids. I see my students and want to make them better, but I can’t because the brokenness goes far beyond the situation they are in. My kids trying to fix things see that the outside isn’t right and will try to put it back together, but inside there are gears that have been knocked loose and so even if the outside is repaired the inside is still broken. Eventually my kids bring it to me and I fix it.

See, it turns out I have a Daddy that sees me trying to fix things and wants to help. He sees that I’m working on situations but He wants to reach down an take care of the inside. He brings new life where once there was death. He makes us into new people instead of just trying to glue the shattered pieces back into place.

It seems like such a small thing, but when we see people who are broken and hurting we have to start by praying for them. Asking for God to come on the scene and breathe life is like when my kids come to me asking for help. He does expect us to be His ambassadors though. We represent Him to the people we interact with. We actually get to help.

Yes, it is disheartening to see people in situations that are too big for us, but it is encouraging to know the God that is bigger than any situation and to be used by Him to speak life.

Who is God calling you to? What is He asking you to do? How can you work for Him right now? What is He fixing in you?

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They say “sex sells” and it seems that was the theme of the Super Bowl ads last night. There were two different Go Daddy commercials where women were showing off their bodies to sell web services. There was a cell phone commercial featuring Megan Fox taking a bath. There were several other commercials involving people in various stages of undress.

Of course none of this is really new. Sex has been part of of the sales for as long as I can remember. It has probably been since the very beginning of sales history. Some half nekkid cave woman drawn on the community wall advertising custom stone tools or something.

It is well known that we are inundated with sex. We are exposed to it from a very young age, but that isn’t the real problem. It certainly isn’t new. Historically sex has always been a huge part of culture because it is a requirement for culture. Without sex a culture will disappear. Don’t believe me? Well you could ask some Essenes, the people who hid the Dead Sea Scrolls, but there are none since they didn’t believe in sex. Their culture disappeared pretty quickly.

One might say the issue is sex that has been tainted by sin. Of course this has also been part of culture from the very beginning. Shortly after Adam and Eve sinned sex became an issue. They went from naked but unashamed to hiding their nakedness in shame. This is because sex was suddenly a problem. It was probably that very night that Eve made Adam sleep on the proverbial couch for the first time. “I can’t believe you through me under the bus like that. Why can’t you stand up and be a man?”

This scene does highlight the real problem though. So many Christians feel sex is a shameful thing. This can’t be further from the truth. Sex is a sacred thing, something to be honored and cherished. That is why God has placed such a high priority on sex. It is the mode by which we can participate in His act of creation. It was made to bring union in a way nothing else can.

We have to stop acting like sex is shameful. If we read out Bible then we will see that sex isn’t just swept under the rug. There is a book devoted to the beauty of sex within the relationship God intended for it. God uses sex as an illustration for the heart of Israel when they turn from God.

We are told to bring light into darkness, and yet with this subject, we are taking light and cloaking it in darkness.

How can we begin addressing sex in a way that honors the sacred nature but also shows the light of God on a subject that has been drowned in darkness and sin?

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