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David, Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell, and YOU!

July 2, 2014 by Mark Woodward

Boy with menacing shadowHave you read Malcolm Gladwell’s book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants?  Gladwell has been one of my favorite authors since Tipping Point was published in 2000.  Having said that, I would say, however,  that you can’t read his books uncritically. He typically takes either statistics or limited studies, draws unusual conclusions from them, then illustrates those conclusions with selected anecdotes.

The scope of his conclusions are broader than the evidence that he gives to support them, BUT what makes his writing so captivating is that while small samples don’t always prove large truths, sometimes they do.  Much of what Gladwell writes rings true and has proven itself true for some people—hence, its appeal.

While the “David and Goliath” story has taken on archetypal qualities, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Gladwell does more than just borrow the metaphor.  The first section of the book actually explores the biblical story and offers some unique insights without being purely imaginative.

For instance, Gladwell goes into the story and speculates (as have many) that Goliath may have suffered from acromegaly, a disease related to giantism, which is quite common in people of excessive height.  One of the symptoms is poor vision, sometimes double vision.  For Gladwell, a vision disorder explains why Goliath seems to need to be led by someone else and why he at first seems a bit slow to recognize that David is not a fully-armed warrior.  You can hear Gladwell tell the story himself at this Ted talk from 2013 http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_the_unheard_story_of_david_and_goliath .

In addition, Gladwell argues that “slingers” were a part of ancient armies in the same category with archers. He maintains that a rock in a slinger’s sling traveled at such velocity that it would have about the same effect as a 45mm handgun and that they were accurate up to 200 yards.

Gladwell is not trying to debunk the biblical story at all. His point is that David, an experienced slinger (remember the bear and the lion), was not a total underdog when he went up against the visually-impaired giant.  With what he believes is a better understanding of the story, Gladwell is trying to make the point that there are reasons to expect victories even in the face of what appear to be overwhelming circumstances.

Gladwell would like for his audience to rethink the David and Goliath story and come away with two important points:

  • For people who think they are strong:  “the same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.”
  • For people who think of themselves as weak or underdogs:  “the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.”  

Don’t Christians often feel like underdogs in the post-Christian world we live in?  Don’t individual Christians often feel defeated by the gigantic evil in their lives?  Don’t we all wonder where the promised victory is when we look at the trends in the world around us?

If you were to place yourself in the story of David and Goliath, who would you be?  Would you be the person who relies on size and armor, and those you surround yourself with?  Are you the one who relies on experience and previous success and who scorns those smaller than you, those who are beneath you, those you can so easily defeat?

Or perhaps you are just a soldier, standing on the hillside far removed from where the big battle will take place, unwilling to be tested, hoping that someone else will win the battle for you, perfectly willing to wait passively and just hope you are on the right side at the outcome?

Or are you a little young or a little inexperienced for the big battle, but you have some skills and gifts that you know can be decisive.  You don’t really have all the right gear—but sometimes the right gear is a hindrance, so you think you can do without it.  You don’t really have a following; people like you, but they think you are a bit foolhardy.  But your confidence causes you to step out and take on challenges that nobody else seems to want to do?  And that confidence comes from great trust won from great experiences with a God who is never defeated!

Who are you in the story of David and Goliath?

Malcolm Gladwell is certainly not categorically a “Christian” author , but in writing this book, he was changed.   In an interview with Religious News Service, he described a rediscovery of faith:

I had drifted away a little bit. This book has brought me back into the fold. I was so incredibly struck in writing these stories by the incredible power faith had in people’s lives; it has made a profound impact on me in my belief. That’s been the completely unexpected effect of writing this book. I am in the process of rediscovering my own faith again.

We are surprised by the power of God and His Word like we are by David’s victory over Goliath.

Gladwell’s book is about why improbable victories might be more probable than we think.  God’s book is about why victory is certain! 

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Sunday Hymns: The Sands of Time Are Sinking

June 29, 2014 by Mark Woodward

Women have contributed some of the greatest hymns of the Church.  In our circles, many would be able to name Fanny J. Crosby as a writer of many familiar hymns—and rightly so. Look at this short list of some of her songs that are still sung in churches that sing hymns:

All the Way My Savior Leads Me

Blessed Assurance

A Wonderful Savior

I Am Thine, O Lord

Jesus Is Tenderly Calling You Home

Safe In the Arms of Jesus

Tell Me the Story of Jesus

To God Be the Glory

But there are many lesser-known women who have given God’s people great hymns.  One of my favorite hymns since my college years is The Sands of Time, a hymn written by Anne Ross Cousin.  

Mrs. Cousin was born in 1824 in Scotland as the only child of Dr. David Cordell, who had served at the Battle of Waterloo.  She married a Presbyterian minister named William Cousin, had six children with him, and wrote many hymns to be used in the services conducted by her husband.

The Sands of Time was written in 1854 and, according to Mrs. Cousin, was inspired by the dying words of Samuel Rutherford, one of the highest regarded and prolific religious figures in Scotland during the early 19th century. The epitaph on his tomb includes the words “Acquainted with Immanuel’s song.”  Cousin composed a poem of nineteen stanzas around the idea of Immanuel’s land, using this prophetic name for Jesus as the central motif.  The lyrics were set to the music of a French tune by Chretien D’Urhan and arranged by Edward Rimbault in 1867 into the hymn, usually with only four or five verses, with which we are familiar.

Here is a beautiful rendition of the song on Youtube you will enjoy hearing:

 

The sands of time are sinking, the dawn of Heaven breaks;
The summer morn I’ve sighed for—the fair, sweet morn awakes:
Dark, dark hath been the midnight, but dayspring is at hand,
And glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.

O Christ, He is the fountain, the deep, sweet well of love!
The streams of earth I’ve tasted more deep I’ll drink above:
There to an ocean fullness His mercy doth expand,
And glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.

The King there in His beauty, without a veil is seen:
It were a well spent journey, though seven deaths lay between:
The Lamb with His fair army, doth on Mount Zion stand,
And glory—glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.

With mercy and with judgment my web of time He wove,
And aye, the dews of sorrow were lustered with His love;
I’ll bless the hand that guided, I’ll bless the heart that planned
When throned where glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.

O I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved’s mine!
He brings a poor vile sinner into His “house of wine.”
I stand upon His merit—I know no other stand,
Not even where glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.

If you would like to read all nineteen verses of the original poem, you can find it at this site.

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Edge of Tomorrow and Days of Future Past: Where Is Our Hope?

June 27, 2014 by Mark Woodward

edgeoftomorrow Perhaps it’s the threat of random terror and/or the post-modern lack of confidence that anyone has the answers to anything anymore, but something is stealing our vision and hope of a future—and our films are the popular expression of our general anxiety.

Two of the big summer movies currently in the theaters deal with time travel issues.  The first Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, is a military thriller, but really it is about what it would mean if we could really start all over again every time we mess up badly—and that’s appealing at a certain level, isn’t it!

X-Men: Days of Future Past, delivering the usual ensemble of stars, but focusing on Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), tests the idea of whether going back in time and manipulating historical events can change the future.

Both films play with the threat of total annihilation of the race.  Seems like we are getting more and more films like this, that is, films like the 1950s movies about the invasion of aliens and/or the mutants from atomic wars overrunning the earth, all of which expressed the newly feasible, but very real existential fear of atomic destruction.

Edge of Tomorrowsets up a scenario where a reluctant soldier (Tom Cruise) repeats the same day over and over again, resetting to that day every time he is killed.  When he realizes what has happened to him, he tries to learn from each lethal experience in order to save the world.

Through hundreds of iterations of the same day, he finally figures out what to do and what not to do in order to win the war against the aliens—at which point he has to start the NEW day over again and try again from the beginning to win the girl.

Fortunately, the director and editors of this film spare the audience the boredom of watching the same events happening over and over again, all which would have to be repeated so carefully because even one forgotten detail could result in needing to reset all over again.

That boredom and the tyranny of details when trying to change history were better demonstrated in Stephen King’s recent book 11/22/63: A Novel about a time traveler’s attempt to change history by preventing the assassination of President Kennedy.  Although the time travel and resetting is quite similar, because the novelist has more than two hours to tell his story, the difficulty and tedium of using repetition to get everything right are much more pronounced.  In fact, it proves to be almost impossible.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is the better film, primarily because the complexity of the characters plays a larger role in the outcome of the film.  In spite of political, racial, and philosophical oppositions, the key for saving the world becomes hope!  That hope is essential to the survival of humanity rings true, doesn’t it!Xmen

A cousin of mine is a hospital chaplain. He has told me that his main job is to offer people in his care hope, that when a patient loses hope, death becomes more probable.  He says that if he can just help them hope for tomorrow or next week,that they often rally.

Ultimately, time-travel films are terribly inconsistent, sometimes inconsequent, because no cause-and-effect event can be ignored, not even the smallest, without downstream consequences.  That is the great comfort Christians take in being in the hands of the Great I AM.

Our hope rests on the sole First Cause, in the hands of the Beginning and the End, in the Author and the Finisher.  Our hope is not in ourselves or dependent on our tomorrow; our hope is not in learning all we need to learn to achieve perfection or in getting it all right. So Christians can live without that existential fear that lies behind films like these because we have been given true hope.

“May the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in your faith, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, your whole life and outlook may be radiant with hope” (Romans 15:13, Phillips).

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I Stumble Over the Word “Loyalty”

June 13, 2014 by Mark Woodward

loyaltyIn our daily staff devotional at the Let’s Start Talking office a few days ago, the Psalm was read from a more modern version and, as is often the case, the new words for the ancient expressions caught me off guard.

Specifically, this particular Psalm praised the loyalty of God.  I don’t think this was the chapter but Psalm 100:5 would be representative of the word usage that tripped me up:  “The Lord is good. His love is forever, and his loyalty goes on and on” (NCV).

More familiar versions of this verse use faithfulness or steadfast love.  Is loyalty the same as faithfulness?  That’s what has been puzzling me!

From what I have read, the root idea, at least the initial idea behind loyalty would have to do with the Latin word lex, meaning law.   If you were loyal, you kept the law.  That basic idea grew into a slightly bigger idea relating to the power behind the law.  If you kept the law of the king or your feudal lord or whoever your master was, then you were loyal.

This understanding of loyalty expanded to include the master of your house—probably the husband, also the Father—and so the concept of loyalty to the family and/or clan emerged.

One of the primary uses of the word loyalty in modern times, I would argue, is in association with nationalism and patriotism.  Another synonym might be allegiance.

The dissonance for me was to use the word loyalty in place of faithfulness when talking about God’s relationship to His people.  Yes, the words point in the same direction; in fact, the word faithful is often used in dictionaries to help define the idea of loyalty. Nevertheless, . . . .something feels wrong!

Perhaps my discomfort grows from using the word about God! 

Loyalty is something that is earned, while God is faithful because He is God, not because we have earned His faithfulness.

Loyalties are generally either deserved or demanded.  Who could demand God’s faithfulness?  Who could deserve God’s faithfulness?

Loyalties may shift with circumstances; you may be loyal to the country of your birth, but change your citizenship and swear loyalty to another country for reasons of your own choosing. God is not whimsical or capricious; God is faithful.

Loyalty can have degrees. I am loyal to my country, but only to the point that it does not conflict with greater loyalties, such as God and family.  God, on the other hand, is absolutely faithful. His faithfulness will never be superseded by a greater Good or a greater Love.

Semantical arguments always seem a bit petty; however, words not only express our thoughts, but our choice of words can also change our thinking!  I would not feud over the word loyalty, but I do think it is a smaller word and that it makes God smaller—and that I don’t like.

I like the words the Spirit wrote in Lamentations 3:22-24 (NIV)

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”    

 

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Did You Miss Pentecost Last Sunday?? Do You Know Why?

June 10, 2014 by Mark Woodward

Pentecost[1]We acknowledge—sometimes celebrate—Christmas and Easter, of course!  We recognize Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, and Super Bowl Sunday! But Pentecost comes and goes and many of our churches leave us in our perhaps benign, but unfortunate ignorance!

Pentecost is the Greek name for the Jewish Festival of Weeks (Shavuot).  The word pentecost means “fifty days,” referring to its time seven weeks (from Saturday to Sunday that is fifty days) after Passover.  According to Exodus 34:22, it was given to the Jews to celebrate while Moses was on Mt. Sinai and was one of the three feasts that all male Jews were required to celebrate (Deuteronomy 16:16).

Besides the events of Acts 2, Pentecost is only mentioned in the New Testament by Paul who tries his best to be in Jerusalem for the feast after his third missionary journey (Acts 20:16); he also uses the feast day to mark time in his first letter to the Corinthian Christians (16:8).  Paul may be keeping his Jewish traditions, but it could have taken on a new significance as well.

Within a century after the apostles, the early church fathers mention Pentecost as if it were a well-established feast day for early Christians.  Tertullian says in On Baptism:

            After that, Pentecost is a most joyous space for conferring baptisms; wherein, too, the resurrection of the Lord was repeatedly proved among the disciples, and the hope of the advent of the Lord indirectly pointed to, in that, at that time, when He had been received back into the heavens, the angels told the apostles that He would so come, as He had withal ascended into the heavens; at Pentecost, of course. But, moreover, when Jeremiah says, “And I will gather them together from the extremities of the land in the feast-day”, he signifies the day of the Passover and of Pentecost, which is properly a feast-day.  (Chapter 19)

One of my professors at Harding Dr. James D. Bales used to call Acts 2 “the hub of the Bible.”  He was not the first nor the last to recognize the immense importance of the events which Luke records in that chapter:

  • Coming of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles 2:1-4 – On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place.2 Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. 3 Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. 4 And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.
  • Apostles First Preach the Gospel to the Jews 2:14 – Then Peter stepped forward with the eleven other apostles and shouted to the crowd, “Listen carefully, all of you, fellow Jews and residents of Jerusalem! 
  • The Fulfillment of the Great Prophecy 2:16 – No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares,that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
  • The First Proclamation of the Risen Messiah as Lord 2:36 – Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
  • The Promise of Salvation from Sin and the Gift of the Holy Spirit 2:37-39 – Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” 38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” 
  • The First Baptisms of New Believers 2:41 – Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all.

 

The Eastern Church considers Pentecost the second holiest day after Easter. Liturgical Christians in most western countries celebrate Pentecost, some as a continuance of the Easter celebration, for many as a time for baptisms, and for all a day of joy and new birth.

 

So where is Pentecost in our churches?  I have scratched my head trying to figure out why there is virtually no acknowledgement of Pentecost—even from our churches that have cornerstones marking their beginning in 33 A.D?

 

Here are a few brief thoughts:

 

  • We have never been very comfortable with the Holy Spirit, not in song, not in prayer, not in practice.  So we probably can’t figure out a way to celebrate this Holy Spirit event.
  • Our roots are anti-liturgical, so we react to their celebration by ignoring Pentecost and missing a great opportunity to celebrate!
  • We have long opposed any “holy days”—but we seem to be OK with Easter and Christmas—finally. Maybe we can work on Pentecost.
  • This one I hate, but I think it is true:  Our culture has not secularized Pentecost as it has Easter and Christmas.If we had an Easter Bunny or a Santa Claus type for Pentecost along with appropriate children’s traditions, then we’d figure out a way to do it at church as well.

OK, I’m making a note to myself right now to do a “Preparing Children for Pentecost” series of blogs next year as I have done for other celebrations in the past.

What would you like to do?

 

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Presidential Libraries Are Like Heaven on Judgment Day!

June 4, 2014 by Mark Woodward

eisenhower librarySherrylee and I just returned Saturday from a two-week road trip vacation—which is why this blog station has been silent for a while!  For the first week we were in Kansas, Iowa, and Minnesota looking up dead relatives . . . if you know what I mean.

I must admit that I find it great fun to dig around in court records and libraries, even the walk through cemeteries, looking for clues to how my great- and great-great- grandparents lived, why they moved from one place to another, how they met their spouses and lived their lives. It’s certainly more fun and entertaining that watching fake people’s lives on the soaps!  I guess this is my own version of reality TV!!

The second week of our trip we drove across Minnesota and South Dakota to Mt. Rushmore—a beautiful drive this time of year and an impressive monument.  While Sherrylee searched the antique stores of Rapid City for treasures, I drove over to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, a place I’ve been attracted to since seeing Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

OK, I will also confess that driving back to Rapid City from Devil’s Tower, I stopped in both Sundance, Wyoming, where the Sundance Kid took his nickname because he had been jailed there, as well as Deadwood, SD, where Wild Bill Hickok held aces and eights for the last time. I don’t find it very inspiring that people leave half-empty whiskey bottles and old playing cards on his grave.

From South Dakota, we started home, but first had a very important stop in Abilene, Kansas. Here’s the story:

Shortly after President Reagan died in June 2004, Sherrylee and I visited his library and museum in Simi Valley, California.  Our visit was especially meaningful because our memories of his funeral there were still quite vivid, but we were amazed at how well done and interesting the museum itself was—and that was even before they had the retired Air Force One on display there.

Some friends of our try to visit all the classic roller coasters in the U.S..Others travel to and tour baseball stadiums. Some of our dearest friends set a goal of seeing all 34 Vermeer paintings—I don’t know if they include the disputed paintings or not—but I think they have or will soon complete this fancy.

Sherrylee and I decided we wanted to see all of the presidential libraries/museums.  There were only twelve at the time, but now there are thirteen official presidential libraries.

Franklin D. Roosevelt established the first presidential library in 1939 as a repository for his papers. In addition, he donated part of his Hyde Park, NY, estate to house them. Harry Truman decided he wanted to do the same thing and so a pattern developed that was codified by Congress, first in 1955 in the Presidential Libraries Act, then even more firmly established in 1978 and 1986.  The result is a wonderful set of museums, strung like pearls across the United States, literally from coast to coast, operated and maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration.  Here is the list and location:

Herbert Hoover Library West Branch, Iowa
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Hyde Park, New York
Harry S. Truman Library Independence, Missouri
Dwight D. Eisenhower Library Abilene, Kansas
John F. Kennedy Library Boston, Massachusetts
Lyndon B. Johnson Library Austin, Texas
Richard M. Nixon Library Yorba Linda, California
Gerald R. Ford Library Ann Arbor/Grand Rapids, Michigan
Jimmy Carter Library Atlanta, Georgia
Ronald Reagan Library Simi Valley, California
George H. W. Bush Library College Station, Texas
William J. Clinton Library Little Rock, Arkansas
George W. Bush Library Dallas, Texas

 

Now you know the reason for our important stop in Abilene, Kansas.  Our visit to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library means I have visited all of the libraries.  Sherrylee still lacks two, and I’m sure we will eventually see those two together.

The presidential libraries are like heaven will be!  The full story of every president’s life is revealed.

  • I bet you do not know what an extraordinary generous man Herbert Hoover was, a man who spent much of his life and personal fortune helping the hungry and homeless.
  • I bet you didn’t know that George H. W. Bush was raised as a man of deep faith, and that he served as an elder in his church.
  • I bet you don’t know that Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, was raised by a pacifist mother, and that he hated war!  He said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

I say the libraries are like heaven because the stories of these men’s lives are told to show what led them to greatness and to show the good that they have done with the lives they were given.  When essential to their story, their failures are admitted—Watergate, Bay of Pigs, Great Depression, etc.—but when you get to the end of the museum, you always feel like you have been in the presence of someone who cared deeply about his country and his fellow citizens and who was wholly committed to upholding his oath as president.

After commanding millions of soldiers in war and sitting in the most powerful seat in the world for eight years, Dwight D. Eisenhower was buried in a regulation army casket in a chapel in Abilene, Kansas.  That simple casket is the fate of all of us—great or small.

Presidential libraries might be like Heaven on Judgment Day.  Because of the justice of God, our lives will be openly displayed, but because of He is full of mercy and grace, most prominently displayed will be how God has worked the days of our lives together for good along with those good works He prepared for us to do.  Our sinfulness is acknowledged, but overshadowed by the love and light of Jesus, so that He will be glorified when He says, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

 

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Godzilla and Mother Nature: Two of A Kind!

May 17, 2014 by Mark Woodward

MCDGODZ EC052Sherrylee and I almost always choose our movies by consensus. Occasionally, however, one of us gets a wild hair and just wants to go see something that neither of us would normally choose.  If I want to remind her of some crazy films that we have seen together which were her choice, then all I have to do is refer to Snakes On A Plane (2006), which is so bad that it might become a cult movie someday.

Thursday night she decided we needed to see the premiere of Godzilla (2014), so we invited friends to join us and hurried to buy early tickets and beat the crowd. Before the film began, we were talking about the older Godzilla films, and Sherrylee says, “I liked the one with Faye Raye better than the Jessica Lange version.”  Oops!

After a little research, it turns out that Sherrylee was more right than she thought; apparently, the word godzilla was intended originally to invoke the idea of a gorilla. Gojira is the Japanese name, which is a combination of their words for gorilla and whale. In spite of the fact, that Sherrylee was disappointed not to see King Kong, I think she enjoyed the film!

The first Godzilla film, a Japanese film, was released in 1954, and most people agree that the monster was originally a metaphor for nuclear war. This sauric creature is awakened from his pre-historic sleep by nuclear blasts, he feeds on nuclear energy, and one of his trademark weapons is his atomic breath, with which he can destroy his enemies. In later films, he even has the power to shoot out atomic laser-like beams through his eyes!

Nuclear fears were behind many of the 50s monster movies, but even though Cold War fears subsided and nuclear energy became more common, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, survived by becoming a more sympathetic creature, often saving humanity rather than destroying it. Buildings, mountains, weapons, cities were destroyed, but not human existence.

Interestingly, however, Godzilla is not really the friend of humanity; rather, the monster usually acts out of a sense of self-preservation.  His now famous signature roar (at which the audience on Thursday night clapped in delight!) seems like rage, but the roar is more animal than human, a physical response to threat more than an emotional reaction to evil.

The producer Shogo Tomiyama reportedly was asked if Godzilla was good or bad.  His reply was that the creature was neither; Godzilla, he says, is more like the Shinto “God of Destruction,” not human and not moral at all.

This is where I slip over into Christian movie-watcher mode because the message of the 2014 Godzilla, is “if you leave it alone, nature will take care of itself and preserve its own balance.” 

As have been many of the earlier Godzilla films, this movie also pits modern technology and modern science against nature. Modern science and modern technology—especially weaponry—really only feed the monsters and do nothing to save humanity.  Only when left to its own devices can Nature (Godzilla) overcome the threats to the world.

I really have no trouble with the current recurrent cultural bent toward nature.  But I do find it atheistic!  Our world has adopted both figures, the more benign and comforting Mother Nature as well as the frighteningly powerful and destructive monster Nature (Godzilla), to explain the world we live in.

As a Christian, I do not believe in Mother Nature or Godzilla because I do not believe in a self-created, self-sustaining, self-preserving force called Nature.  I believe rather in God the Creator who “through the Son created the universe. The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command (Hebrews 1:2-3).

There is nothing amoral about God. He creates the world and sustains it and holds it together because of His nature. There is purpose and plan in life and death; there is a beginning and an end, terminal warfare between Good and Evil, and, best of all—God so loved the world!

Godzilla is a good Saturday matinee film! The well-known actors have almost cameo parts, which should tell you that the monsters, the battles, the action are what the film is about. It is not really one of those sneakily propagandistic eco-films that you have been mildly disappointed with in recent years, so go see it!

But don’t forget that Nature is just as fantastical as Godzilla. Only God can save the World.

 

 

 

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Facing the Challenges of Foreign Missions, Part 3

May 13, 2014 by Mark Woodward

_foreignmissions2 (1)The fact that foreign missions are hard and getting harder is no excuse for God’s church to be slack in going into all the world. But it does mean that we can’t just pattern future work on the way we have done it in easier times. If your church is still choosing missionaries, supporting missionaries, and sending missionaries in the same way it did in 1960—or 1990 for that matter—then it is time to reexamine your strategy.

While every mission site will have very specific needs, let me offer to you some larger strategies that you need to think about implementing for today’s and tomorrow’s mission efforts.

We can work globally without traveling abroad! American churches have hundreds of thousands of foreign/international people living within ten miles of their church buildings!  Chinese, Bhutanese, Armenians, Vietnamese, Russians, Iraqis, Burmese, Somalis, and Cubans are currently among the most populated refugee communities in the U.S.. Then there are over 800,000 international students in American colleges and universities. Even the local community colleges have significant foreign student populations.

Our churches have begun discovering these opportunities in the last decade. FriendSpeak,a Let’s Start Talking ministry, has been training churches in organizing effective outreach programs to our international population for 25 years now, but has really seen an uptick in the demand from churches in the last ten years.

We are getting better at meeting and welcoming these people into our congregations, helping them with their basic needs (including their English skills) and sharing our faith with them.

But we are missing a great opportunity for global outreach!  If we think globally for a minute, we realize that instead of trying to get these internationals who become Christians in our ministries to become great members of our congregations, we could offer them the opportunity to return to their countries (especially international students) and to be vocational church planters and/or Bible teachers/church leaders in cities and countries that American Christians will never get to—and probably wouldn’t be that effective if we did.

I can imagine congregations large and small reaching out to their international people, some of those people becoming Christians, at which point the church starts planting missional seeds in their hearts for their own people, offers them intensive Bible training as well as church planting/leadership training, and then helps them transition back to their own country or another one until they establish themselves.  If only one-tenth of our congregations would do this, we would double the number of “missionaries” we are sending into all the world in the first wave. They would be going into corners of the world that we Americans may never get to in our lifetime.  Tt would cost only a small percentage of what it costs to send Americans to live abroad for a short number of years, and the chances of a sustained work increase greatly.

All we have to do is think globally instead of locally!

Use the resources of American churches to fund foreign national Christians as missionaries to go places that Americans can’t go!  There are Christian missionaries all over the Middle East—Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan—but most of them are not Americans!  I just had two Christian men in my office yesterday that are doing mission work in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and in Muslim parts of China—but they are not Americans!  In our recent LST project in Amman, Jordan, we heard of 150 Korean missionaries—and we met several of them—most of whom are in Jordan until they can return with their families to the Middle Eastern countries which they fled during recent turmoil.

If we want to go into all the world, we would do well to support the efforts of Christians from other countries who can go places Americans may not be welcomed to for generations!

We must become more collaborative!  Can you imagine that ten churches working together, pooling resources—prayer, influence, people, and money—to do missions in some Muslim or Buddhist country would have a greater impact than if just one church—even a megachurch—tries to do it all alone?  What if all the churches in your city took on a region or a continent—and collaborated—that means worked together—in order to bring the Good News to that part of the world?

I’m convinced that the reason we don’t know about some great mission movements in very foreign places is that we simply don’t get out of the house enough to know what other people are doing!

Our churches can remain autonomous and still be collaborative. Big mission agencies are not the answer; a loving and trusting spirit is what we must learn in order to collaborate.

We need to send Christians to do what only Christians can do! This is just a choice churches make.  We can send 20 people to build a church building in Central America, have a great “mission” experience ourselves, but spend twice as much money getting there as it would have cost to pay a local company to build it. So we have really served ourselves more than we have served the local community.

Muslims do a tremendous amount of charity work all over the Muslim world.  How is our Christian hospital going to be different from the Muslim hospital in the next town?  How is our Christian orphanage going to be different from the Muslim orphanage in the next village?

It is not that we don’t need to bring relief and physical healing to those in need—quite the contrary!  But we MUST remember that “faith comes by hearing the word of God.” We must intentionally plan the communication of the story of Jesus into our humanitarian efforts, or we have done nothing more than what non-Christians could have also done for these people.

And, finally, we need to engender a spirit of fearlessness in our young people and then let them go to places that we are afraid of!  I’m a little embarrassed that the worker in China had to tell us to quit sending our teams with so many “safety” instructions because they were sharing them with the Chinese Christians and making the Chinese afraid to share their faith openly. I had a similar sense in Jordan when American Christians talked about our “bravery” but it was a very safe country to be in; it is those Korean Christians who worked in Syria and Egypt and Iraq who were brave! We’ve got to be strong and courageous and not afraid! And if we can’t do that, then we need to teach our children and grandchildren not to be afraid.  We better resurrect the old hymn Anywhere With Jesus I Can Safely Go if we want to go into all the world!

God has not given us a task that we cannot accomplish!  Let’s prayerfully grow into being a church of great wisdom and courage. That’s how we become missional!

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New Challenges in Foreign Missions, Part 1

May 6, 2014 by Mark Woodward

_foreignmissions2 (1)Although some American churches sent missionaries to foreign countries before World War II, most foreign church planting efforts have occurred since the end of that war. Just like the persecution in Jerusalem forced the first Jesus-followers to scatter throughout Samaria and Judea, the world-wide deployment of American military pushed Christians en masse, both military and civilian, into all the world—and they took the Good News with them.

During the 1950s, U.S. churches of Christ focused on Western Europe and Japan. The focus shifted in the 1960s to Latin America, especially Brazil. We were turning inward again in the 70s and 80s, but the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, followed by the opening of Eastern Europe, once again generated a strong wave of missions from U.S. churches. China is the current hotspot; Africa is always a missions magnet.

I started personally at the end of the 60s, worked with the European guys from the fifties, and have been involved in all of these mission moments since, which is where the following generalizations about our mission work come from:

  • We only have the stamina for harvesting, not for planting and nurturing. If we can’t plow, plant, water and harvest in five years, we look for more receptive fields. When receptive fields get tougher—and they all do–, our money and missionaries go home.
  • We believe we should be able to work everywhere else in the world cheaper than in the U.S.  Very few churches will pay their missionary more than what their local preacher makes—regardless of the cost of living in both countries.
  • Our mission work is dependent on how many self-motivated missionaries surface in our fellowship as opposed to a strategic global vision. Our churches support those who knock on their doors, rather than searching for the right people to send to fulfill their strategic vision for some place or part of the world!
  • We are not by nature collaborative. I have been to relatively small Eastern European cities where two missionaries arrived to work, neither of them knowing that the other had plans to work there.  I have seen mission teams go to cities to plant a new church where there were existing national churches who did not even know they were coming. I have been at missions conferences when American churches in the same city discover that their neighboring church was trying to start a new work in the same mission point where the first church had been planning to send a new missionary.
  • Our missionaries tend to be “lone rangers!”  We believe in mission teams and almost always send multiple people to new works, but before these teams reach the five-year mark, most of the groups have dwindled to one couple!  Most of our long-term mission work that extends longer than five years is done by a lone person or family—who have a true spiritual gift for working alone.
  • Although the importance of missionary care is rising, thanks primarily to Missions Resource Network, we have been and are still too often negligent in carry for missionaries on the field, but especially when they return.

Admitting to these characteristics of our mission efforts together is important as we go into the future and think about the extraordinarily challenging task of going into all the world with the Good News of Jesus.

I want to continue this post by talking about the world that our future mission efforts must address and why the above characteristics will not serve us well going into that future; however, I do believe that with a new perspective, we can expect to be more successful and bring more glory to God.

Posted in Christian Missions | 5 Comments »

Has Hollywood Discovered Forgiveness?

May 1, 2014 by Mark Woodward


Philomena2Revenge has always been an intriguing subject because of the inherit struggle between good and evil. Revenge can contribute a degree of complexity to a story because it races ambiguously towards either justice or hatred, with the vigilante often not knowing which is his/her motivation—nor even if there is a real difference in these polar opposite moral positions.

With two recent very well-done films, Hollywood has discovered that the journey toward forgiveness can be just as dramatic.  Early last year, Philomena (2013)was released in time to secure three Golden Globe Awards and four Academy Award nominations as well as a number of other accolades.

Judi Dench delivers an extraordinary performance as Philomena Lee, the mother of a boy who was forcibly taken from her and given up for adoption by a sanctimonious Mother Superior in the convent community for unwed mothers like Philomena.

After living with the secret for fifty years, Philomena reveals her secret to her daughter who persuades a journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) to help her mother try to find her son.  They begin, of course, at the convent where Philomena had been, but are again rebuffed and are turned away as had happened in previous attempts by the mother to find out about her child.

I want you to see the film, so I’m not going to tell you more except that the story is bittersweet!  After the drama of the search is resolved, Philomena confronts the sisters of the convent one last time with her pain and agony, suffering which had been cloaked in shame for fifty years, laid on her by the unmerciful sister.  The journalist is livid and vitriolic in his attack on the heartless woman, but Philomena instead forgives her.  That’s the surprise ending that won’t ruin the story for you.  It’s not cheap grace, it’s not sappy and maudlin—it’s a choice to not be destroyed by hatred.

Last week, Sherrylee and I saw The Railway Man (2013)with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. As was Philomena, this film isThe_Railway_Man_--_movie_poster also based on a true story, that of Eric Lomax. Lomax was a British officer taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese early in WWII. He and his mates were not only made to work under horrendous conditions on Thai-Burma railroad (think Bridge Over the River Kwai), but tortured as well for building a radio.

Viewers only learn these secrets of Lomax’s through flashbacks because the actual story takes place in Great Britain in the 1980s. Lomax, a fanatic railroad enthusiast, falls in love with a younger woman (Nicole Kidman) he meets on a train. After their marriage, she learns the truth about the considerable psychological suffering that he still experiences from the trauma of torture.  Reluctantly from his war buddies she forces out the whole story with the hope that she can help him.

But she also learns from his mates that her husband’s main torturer is still alive. Lomax doesn’t want to hear about this, but is forced to confront not only the existence of this man, but his own years of hatred toward him as well as the perpetual imaginations of revenge that he has fed on for forty years.

Lomax tracks down his torturer and confronts him with a knife in his hand.  But as he learns of his opponents own mental anguish and sees how he has tried to make some amends for his crimes, Lomax finds that it is more healing to forgive him than to kill him.

Two real movies about two real people who suffered horrible atrocities and injustices, who nevertheless chose to forgive their enemies—there’s a lesson here!

In thinking about these two movies, I couldn’t help but think about the young man in Jordan, a Palestinian whose family had fled Israel during the ’67 War after their home and their life there was lost.  He hated the Jews for what they had done to his father and mother. He hated Israel—as do so many in the Middle East for the injustices they believe have been done to their families and their peoples.

And the Israelis appear to have an arrogance born of fear—fear of future holocausts, fear of being pushed into the sea by their enemies.

When you talk with people in Jordan and Israel about politics, they very often fall back to a safe position with “It’s complicated.”  And it is.

But I do know that until someone is ready to forgive someone else who has wronged them horribly, there will never be peace.

Jesus taught us this first! 

 

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