TILL HE COMES Blog

I’m in my final semester at Dallas Theological Seminary, and wow, am I looking forward to being done! I love studying; I don’t like seminary. Maybe someday I’ll explain why.

But here is a hint: In my “Eschatology” class (study of the End Times), three different students who were interacting with the professor used the following terms: “ontological bridge,” “theological taxonomy,” and “epistemological center.” And yet we wonder why the average seminary graduate has a difficult time connecting with the average person on the street.

Thanks to seminary, I understood what they were saying, but all I could think was, “I hope those students don’t preach much.” If seminary is teaching us to talk like this, seminary is a failure. If you ever catch me talking like this, come burn my books.

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Ok, so I have a problem. It’s more than a problem; it’s an addiction. There I said it. The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem, right? Of course, I’m not sure I want to recover from this problem. That’s probably another problem.

I have a book addiction.

But it gets worse. My wife has the same addiction. So do my three daughters. We are doomed. When we moved from Montana to Texas three years ago, our moving van was half filled with books…over 100 boxes. While in seminary, I have easily added another 10-15 boxes. In my study, I have ten bookshelves crammed with books, and on top of every shelf is a pile of books almost to the ceiling. Out in the garage, there are 20-30 boxes of books that I was not able to unpack  because there wasn’t room in my study.

And I am not just a “book collector.” There is not a single book I own that I don’t want to read. The ones I don’t want to read, I give away, throw out, or sell on Amazon. I want to read every single book I own.

Here’s why I am posting this. I counted today, and in my pile of books that I absolutely MUST read as soon as possible, there were 191 books. With a lot of pain and heart-wrenching agony, I was able to narrow it down to just 40. As I looked over these 40 books, I realized that they fell into three categories: Bible backgrounds, church planting/leadership, and missional living.

That tells me a lot about what I want to do with my life and where I am headed. I want to understand the Bible so that I can take what it says and lead a church to reach out into this world with the love of Jesus Christ. Even as I think about this, it gets me excited.

So what’s on your reading list, and what does it tell you about who you are?

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Wendy and I continue to face the biggest crisis of our adult (and married) lives, which when compared to the crises many people go through, may not seem like much of a crisis, to us it is pretty big. Though we have felt the whole gamut of emotions, we are still trusting God to get us through, and are learning some valuable lessons. At least, we think they are valuable… 

One of the primary things we have learned is that as Christians, we can learn a lot from non-Christians about how to take care of people who are facing times of crisis.

When you, or I, face a crisis, what is the typical Christian response? The normal Christian response when others are facing a crisis is to quote Bible verses and announce theological platitudes. We’ve all heard them: “God will never leave you nor forsake you.” “God is good, all the time.” “Jesus will be there for you. Just continue to depend and rely on Him.”

Contrast this with the normal non-Christian response. They don’t have Bible verses and theological truths to fall back on. So they fall back on the only thing they can fall back on…themselves. If they want to help, they offer to help. They give a listening ear. They sympathize. They can’t say, “God will provide for you,” so they provide for you. They can’t say, “God will be there for you,” so they try to be there for you. They can’t say, “Take it to Jesus. He can handle it for you,” so instead they say, “I know it hurts. Life sometimes stinks. I’m here to listen or just sit with you.”

This doesn’t mean those verses and theological statements are not true, but that in a crisis, they are not very helpful. In fact, I think that many times, we Christians use Bible verses and theology quotes as an excuse for not helping. But in the (paraphrased and amplified) words of James, “If a brother or sister is without food and clothing, and one of you says, ‘Be warm and well fed. God will provide for you. I’m praying for you. Just have faith.’ but you don’t do anything to help clothe or feed the person, of what use is that?” James is saying that if you are going to pray for a person, or pronounce theological truths, back up those words with some action.

When someone is facing a crisis, act like a non-Christian and pretend you don’t have helpful Bible verses and handy theological clichés to toss around. Instead, actually do something helpful. If nothing else, just offer to listen without lending advice.

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God gets the glory, as He should in any situation, whether good or bad.

We’re still right smack in the middle of this crisis, and so far, we’re learning much from it and through it. I want to spend the next couple posts explaining some of what we’ve learned.

First, as some of you have reminded us, God truly is good. I have never doubted that.

I am reminded of a story I read about when Max Lucado almost lost his daughter to drowning. They found her floating face down in a swimming pool, and after pulling her out, and administering CPR, she choked, coughed, and was revived. In that moment, Max whispered this prayer: “Thank you, God. You are so good.”

Afterwards, he got to thinking about it and wondered, “Would God still be good if my daughter had died?” Theologically, he knew the answer was “Yes.” But personally, he was not sure how he would have responded in such a situation. I am not sure how I would respond either if one of my daughters died.

But I have seen how my faith has performed in a much smaller crisis, and I am not proud of it. Nevertheless, through this crisis (which is nowhere near as desperate a crisis as some people face every day), Wendy and I have become more convinced than ever of the goodness of God. It is He that is seeing us through. He has made Himself real to us in ways that cannot be experienced apart from crisis. It is He that is teaching us things about life, ministry, and caring for others that probably could not have been learned any other way. So, to God be the glory.

I will share some of these we are learning in the next couple posts. Of course, unless you’ve been through a crisis (whether a large one or a small one like ours), these posts probably won’t be helpful. Nevertheless, you are welcome to come along for the ride. 

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Yes, there are problems with the Guatemala adoption process, so it is a good thing that the government is fixing and updating the adoption laws.

But, there are 370,000 orphans in Guatemala. An estimated 30,000 die every year. Of those who do not, many go into crime or prostitution. Hopefully, the new adoption laws will fix the corruption, but also make it easier for legal adoptions to continue.

See a previous post about this if you want to learn more about what Wendy and I are doing.

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My wife and I are currenly undergoing the biggest crisis of our lives. I cannot go into details right now, but this crisis is definitely not the biggest crisis that can happen to a family. We are all healthy, no one has died, we still have a home, etc. However, with what we are going through right now, we find it very easy at times to be angry at God and other Christians.

And as we ask ourselves, “Why is this happening to us?” one reason Wendy and I keep coming back to is that God wants us to understand how a life crisis can lead a person to deny and reject Jesus Christ. We haven’t gone through one-tenth of what some people go through, but I think we now have a glimpse of what it is like.

When bad things happen to a person, it seems like God doesn’t care. Then, to make it worse, Christians come along and many of them stab you in the back. In such times, people are prone to think, “God must not exist after all. Or if He does, and this is how He shows His love, and this is how His people treat one another, I want nothing to do with Christianity.” One thing is for sure, as the country song says, “It’s times like these you find out who your friends are.” And in times like these, it certainly doesn’t seem that God and Christians are very good friends. (And for you Christians who think that is a heretical statement, go ahead and prove it true by making a critical comment below or on your own blog.)

So I see why people leave the church. I see why people turn to alcohol and drugs. I see why people become atheists.  As another country song says, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

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Today is the third and final installment on things I’ve learned about church leadership and church planting from Will Smith.  Yesterday we looked at the first five. Here are the last five:

6. Understand ideas, and which ideas move people.Smith says that when studying movies, and which ones are popular, he tries to back up and get the big picture. “I look at movies in their essence,” Smith says. “Will that idea sell?” If you look at the movies Smith does, he always does movies that focus on an idea or a story that resonate with the vast majority of people on the planet. He is not just trying to entertain, he is trying to connect.

7. Understand universal patterns. This is related to number 6. Smith calls himself a student of universal patterns. He watches for movements in worldwide society and culture, and then tries to focus on these patterns. He and his manager sit down every Monday morning any analyze the box office numbers for the past weekend, as well as the past 10, 20, and 30 weekends. He is looking for trends and patterns.

8. Think globally. Smith doesn’t just want people in the US to see his movies. He wants to be a worldwide movie star. So after a movie debuts in the US, he travels to England, Germany, Japan, Brazil, China, and promotes his movies. This, of course, makes him popular with the movie producers because it is  more money for them.

9. Go where the people are. Since Smith didn’t initially have worldwide recognition, he knew it would be hard to get a worldwide platform unless he went where people were already gathering. So when he travels, he travels intentionally. He promotes his movies in South Korea at the World Cup, in Brazil during Carnival, and is headed to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics. Why try to gather a crowd on your own when you can just use a ready-made crowd?

10. Never neglect what is important: family. This I though was the most amazing thing of all. Hollywood actors are not known for stable marriages, mostly because they are trying to follow their dreams and make it big. Smith has been married for 10 years and says, “Our first official date was with a relationship counselor. The math is simple. Start while it’s good. Do it three times a week while you’re laughing and still having fun. You get so much more work done. You head off problems. Do it during the ether time, and do it aggressively.” Smith knows that all of his fame and glory is nothing if he doesn’t have a his wife and kids to share it with.

Now, most of these ten principles are driven by secular goals. But if you go back through them, and substitute in spiritual, Biblically-based goals, you have a surprisingly good list of what it takes to hear God say “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

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How do you define “busy”?

Here’s mine: You know you are busy when you catch yourself making a list for all the things you need to make lists for:

Make a list of things I need to do for the adoption process.
Make a list of things I need to do for my Thesis.
Make a list of homework projects that are coming due soon.
Make a list of high priority projects at work.
Make a list of things I need to do around the house and to the car to keep everything working.
Make a list of edits and changes that need to be done to the website.
Make a list of things to do to keep from going crazy.

How about you? How do you know when you’ve taken on too much? Weigh in on the comments below…

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