Update on the Congregational Care Department

In the last 3-6 months in respect to caring for our congregation, we are now creating momentum and I am personally excited by what the Lord is going to do through our entire congregation to care for our congregation and beyond to our community.

I am nearing my second year on staff at Ada Bible Church and since that time, we have done a thorough job of restructuring how care occurs here at the church and multitudes of individuals and married couples have stood up to serve with us in making this a reality. Here are some highlights of this “momentum” God is creating with us:

The Care Department

The restructuring of the care system is complete and for the most part, there is no place where a person who could slip through and not find some kind of care while here at Ada Bible Church. Perhaps the one thing I am personally most proud of is that in some many different circumstances our staff, board and leaders are working as a team in providing help to others.  Moving forward, we want to continue to pursue this ideal: to create a team environment in which all ministries—ranging from the Board, Administrations & Operations, the Teaching Team, Family Ministries, Adult Ministries, Worship Arts, Facilities, Missions; all areas of our church are in some way caring for those who call Ada Bible Church home. We are definitely moving in the right direction.

The Care Team

The Care Team (Deacons-Benevolence, Mentors, Budget Counselor, and Care Elders) is an amazing group of individuals who simply get what it means to care for our congregation. So many different folks have jumped on board and are serving with a passion. Countless stories are occurring on a weekly basis about what God is doing in respect to restoring a person’s finances, a marriage, a broken individual, a wayward soul. As one story: I won’t mention him by name here, but one of our mentors recently came up to me earlier this summer and said that he has been serving in the church for over 40 years. In this last year and a half he has been serving as a mentor, leading many different men in a variety of difficult situations. With this, he said being a mentor has easily been the most rewarding service he has ever done in church. As he said, not only has he been able to pour himself into these other men, but in doing so, God has been pouring himself back into him in a greater way than what has happened in a long time. It is a privilege for me to serve with this team.

Pastoral Staff and Volunteers

Prior to coming to Ada Bible Church, I had a lot of experience in working with all of the larger churches in the area as well as many smaller ones. I had the privilege of working closely with staff of many of these churches and in some cases, got to know these organizations intimately. I have to say this:  we have the most professional, dedicated and spiritually mature staff I have ever worked with in all these years. I love working here with our staff and on a daily basis have interactions with most everyone on staff here. There isn’t a single department that is not looking to care for and serve their leaders and volunteers in a way. When a care situation arises in one of these circumstances, in each instance, they jump in and fill that void and if more resources are needed, look in the right direction for that extra help.

Conclusion

In conclusion, as a comparison to last year: “by the numbers,” we have cared for considerably more individuals and families at Ada Bible Church. There are countless stories I could share with you in which I have witnessed our staff or our leaders moving into a difficult situation and then God slowly restoring an individual, a teenager, a marriage or a family. As one comparison to this growth, six months into my position, we had four mentors; today that number is over forty and we will most likely double that number in this next year. It is purely mathematical—when you have more people willing to serve, you can do more. When you have those who are willing to step up and try to make even the smallest of impact in the mess of a person’s life (Matthew 10:42), God does the unthinkable.  By continuing to grow our leaders and Care ministries, I expect the Lord to do even more amazing things for us in this next year.

The Necessity to Grow

I know of someone who recently has walked away from their faith. This was a person who some years back was serving and living a life that was exemplary when it came to being a Christian. However, over the last couple of years, I began to see that this life began to wane and he did not take his relationship with God very seriously over these last years. Slowly over time, it began to show, and not only with the obvious outward signs. Sadly, with this and since that time, he has made many poor decisions which has not only impacted him negatively, but his family as well. It's been a little bit like watching a train wreck.

With that, I have been thinking about how dangerous it can be not to grow as a Christian, which essentially means to not have Jesus at the center of your life on a daily basis. And yet, this happens all the time. Sadly, in general, the church today places such emphasis on evangelism, "getting people saved and into heaven," but too often focus too little on discipleship—learning how to live a life with Jesus. The Barna Group has some staggering statistics, confirming the fact that the church is good at “making converts, but not disciples:”

• When Christian adults were asked to identify their most important goal for their life, not a single person said it was to be a committed follower of Jesus Christ, or to make disciples of Christ. 
• Less than one out of every five born again adults had any specific and measurable goals related to their personal spiritual development. 
• Less than 1% of all believers perceived a connection between their efforts to worship God and their development as a disciple of Jesus.
• The most widely-known Bible verse among adult and teen believers is "God helps those who help themselves"—which is not actually in the Bible, and actually conflicts with the basic message of Scripture.

But as each of us knows--living for Jesus every day--this is really where life begins, not when you say the sinner’s prayer. Life is always continuing and we need to move with it. Often in Christian circles, over time, being reflective and deliberate about our relationship with God is put to the side. For whatever reason, people tend to stagnate rather than thrive after making a commitment of faith. The questions don’t get asked. Masks begin to be worn. We play the part, but don’t really know the role we should be playing as it relates to being a Christian.

Living like a Christian is easy, being in relationship with God is a whole different matter. This is what Jesus was talking about when you build something on sand. I learned quickly in my own life, that if you have any amount of biblical knowledge, watch out. You eventually will become the expert, the guru. People will perceive that you have it all together, everything is in place, and you and God must be best buds. But all of this can be perilous, because it allows or forces ourselves to not be who really are. In the end, we paint ourselves into a corner to which there is no escape. Because we have played the role of the well-behaved churchgoer, we don't know how to play any other. Sadly, I know this from first-hand experience from years past.
 
But knowledge is never the standard for relationship and too often in the church, this is what we emphasize. It’s easy to know a lot about someone; it’s a whole new thing to know someone. This makes sense—it’s much more easy and comfortable to just know about someone, simply knowing the facts (e.g., "she works at a hospital, likes to eat salads at lunch, has three kids, and drives a Black Toyota Sienna."). There’s distance and safety and very little mess. Knowing just the facts about someone does not mean you know them. Lots of us know a lot about a whole bunch of people, but it goes about as far as that. It's the idea of the a mile wide, but an inch deep. For some, it can be a rarity that we have genuinely deep and strong friendships. We keep people at bay, at a safe distance and we don’t go too deep.
 
But we need to move beyond just knowledge—we need to know. John Wesley once wrote, “Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame, if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.” In that statement, Wesley was saying that it was disgraceful if he hadn’t grown beyond where he once stood in terms of knowing God. We need to keep moving on as well, being restless and asking for more. This should be the end goal. I think C.S. Lewis said it in the most direct way possible:

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature -- either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

Those are strong and difficult words, but they are so true. Yogi Berra said it in a similar way, but in a way only he could: If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else. As Christians, we need to continually change and grow and move beyond just knowing about God and genuinely encounter him. At the end of the day, we need to know where we are headed.

Learning to Be a Father

Last night, my son Josiah and I headed over to the golf range to hit some golf balls and just hang out. This has been a tradition for us for sometime as we both love golf and even at a golf range can find a way to compete with one another for fun. 

On the drive home, over an ice cream cone from McDonald's (another more recent tradition that we probably should discontinue), we just talked and it was another one of those moments that I am pretty sure I will remember for a long time and one that I will cherish. We just talked about life in general: about his friends, about the rest of our summer plans as a family, a little bit about his future and the next year. On paper it was an insignificant couple of hours; in the test of time, it was an eternal moment.

As I came into work this morning, Matt Bell, one of our pastors came in and told me a great story. A couple of weeks ago, a fourth grade boy from our congregation had a blood cot in his brain and had to have it surgically removed in an emergency procedure. The doctors didn't think he would be the same boy he was a week earlier. The doctors had a grim outlook for the family. At that point, Matt went and visited the family and tried to offer some comfort in a dire time.

How things have changed as of today. Matt told me he visited the family this morning at the hospital and voilà, he was speaking to the little boy and now this young boy is in the process of a full-recovery! This morning the father of this little guy spoke to Matt and conveyed to him that he is basically in the process of learning this truth -- our days are numbered and we must take full advantage of them, especially with those we love. Because of this major challenge for a family, this father is re-learning in a unique way the importance of being a father. On some level, with the near loss of his son, he is learning to never take his little life for granted.

This story Matt told me is again reminding me of something that God continues to ingrain into my life at this time in my life. The thing I am really learning over these last couple of years is the privilege it is to be a father. Even though there are many challenges in being a parent, there are so many things that I have learned in these past fifteen years. My sons have taught me more than maybe anyone else has -- about myself, about others and most importantly, about my own Father who continually seeks to care for me. 

As many of you know first hand, our children grow up with a speed which we sometimes fail to take into account. As I sit here and write, I still can't believe my first born, Josiah, will be off to college in three short years, and then two years later, my youngest will do the same. With this fleeting aspect of life, it again reminds me how each moment counts, whether it is just having fun on a golf range in the humid July air or when I am having a semi-serious conversation with my son over an ice cream cone.

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.
    Remind me that my days are numbered—
    how fleeting my life is.
You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.
    My entire lifetime is just a moment to you;
    at best, each of us is but a breath.”
                      
We are merely moving shadows,
    and all our busy rushing ends in nothing.
    We heap up wealth,
    not knowing who will spend it.
And so, Lord, where do I put my hope?
    My only hope is in you.

Psalm 39: 4-7

What I've Been Reading

I came across some recent research entitled Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample Followed for 32 Years (McDermott, Fowler, Christakis, 2010). It offers an interesting perspective about how divorce can be linked to one's social network and how divorce can turn into an epidemic in social circles. The basic premise and findings is that those who divorce often are befriending those who have already followed that path. If this research is true, it validates the importance of surrounding couples who are struggling in their relationship with those who already have healthy marriages. As related to marriage, this research essentially maintains that hope can reproduce hope, but also the opposite can be true -- that despair can produce greater hopelessness. It is an excellent article which exemplifies Proverbs 6:27-28:


 Can a man scoop fire into his lap
       without his clothes being burned?
Can a man walk on hot coals
       without his feet being scorched?


Here is the abstract of the research:

Divorce is the dissolution of a social tie, but it is also possible that attitudes about divorce flow across social ties. To explore how social networks influence divorce and vice versa, we utilize a longitudinal data set from the long-running Framingham Heart Study. We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network. We also find that popular people are less likely to get divorced, divorcees have denser social networks, and they are much more likely to remarry other divorcees. Interestingly, we do not find that the presence of children influences the likelihood of divorce, but we do find that each child reduces the susceptibility to being influenced by peers who get divorced. Overall, the results suggest that attending to the health of one’s friends’ marriages serves to support and enhance the durability of one’s own relationship, and that, from a policy perspective, divorce should be understood as a collective phenomenon that extends far beyond those directly affected.

If you are interested, here is a link to the actual paper and research:

http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/social_network_effects_on_divorce.pdf

What I've Been Reading

I just picked up and began re-reading Gordon MacDonald's Ordering Your Private World. In one of the chapters he discusses the idea of person caught in the "Golden Cage." That is, the person who is driven to the point where success is all that matters, be that in the your work, being "spiritual," or any other thing that we attempt to accomplish. The person is so driven that the end is all that matters--the accomplishment. Some of his key points about driven people are:

• A driven person is most often gratified only by accomplishment
• A driven person is preoccupied witht he symbols of accomplishment
• A driven person is usually caught in the uncontrolled pursuit of expansion
• Driven people are not likely to bother themselves with the honing of people skills
• Driven people are usually abnormally busy, are averse to play, and usually avoid spiritual worship

As Charles Spurgeon wrote about these ideas:


Success exposes a man to the pressure of people and thus tempts him to hold on to his gains by means of fleshly methods and practices, and to let himself be ruled wholly by the dictorial demands of incessant expansion. Success can go to my head, and will unless I remember that it is God who accomplishes the work, that He can continue to do so without my help, and that He will be able to make out with other means whenever He cuts me down to size.

 This book would be a great summer read for those who need to re-order their lives to get things back under control, and it is definitely not just for those who are driven. It's a thoughtful book, which unlike some Christian books, offers you practical ways to make changes in your life, which are concrete. If you are a person who is struggling with what it means to be "successful," be that in your work, or as a parent, or as a volunteer in a ministry, this book can help you reclaim the what it means to live as a "called" person. It may help you become the person who can have lofty and realistic goals, but also one who doesn't let these ambitions dictate their lives.

A Meditation on Significance

Read this morning a passage from Larry Crabb's book The Marriage Builder (awesome book on marriage by the way):

"Significance: A realization that I am engaged in a responsibility or job that truly is important, whose results will not evaporate with time but will last through eternity, that fundamentally involves having a meaningful impact on another person, a job for which I am completely adequate."

There is so much in this little passage.

There are some great phrases in this short paragraph, that if broken down can turn into something that I need to meditate on in regards to my life:

• "a job that truly is important"
• "whose results will not evaporate with time"
• "involves having a meaningful impact on another person"
• "a job that I am completely adequate"

In that sense, this passage almost reads like a proverb or poem.

Many questions pop up for me when I read it like this.

• What job has God given me that is "truly important?" Obviously, I have been given more than just my "work" here at Ada Bible Church -- what else are the jobs that He has given me to accomplish at this current moment in time? Some other obvious ones would be--follower of Christ, father, husband, friend--are there any others? Throughout life these "jobs" can often change; what are mine for today, in this moment in time?
  
• What are the "results" that He requires of me? What are the daily ones that seem insignificant, but actually "will not evaporate with time?" Doing homework with my sons, cleaning the bathroom, sitting with someone over coffee who has just experienced a great loss. What are the ones that are long-term projects? My sons one day following God to important places in their lives, a very good 50 years of marriage--these are the ones that are obvious to me. God, what else to you have up your sleeve for me in these next years???
• Who am I "impacting?" Maybe a good goal for me each day is to do at least one genuine, self-less good thing for someone, maybe even someone I really don't like so much? Should that be a goal? Should I not even have the goal of attempting to "impact" someone? Perhaps I accomplish this goal by merely being "good" to others throughout the day?
• Lastly, what are the jobs that the Lord has uniquely gifted me and ones that I am "completely adequate?" How can I stretch myself so as to discover the "jobs" that I don't think I am adequate at accomplishing, but in stepping out in faith, I at least try and then in the end realize, "Wow, I am pretty good at that!"

These are some thoughts of mine today.

Marking Points That We Make

It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

-Ursula LeGuin

Personal change is important, because it is innate to being a follower of Jesus. Naturally, we are continually being renewed, growing and emerging and becoming more. With this, our journey of faith has marking points. Being a Christian is a progression. We have many examples of this in Christian literature, The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan as the classic, and The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis in the last century. And yet, the walk of faith is never one in which the person “arrives”--that they have it all figured out. We will let the eastern religions keep that monopoly! The walk of faith is like an long road trip, going from one town to the next and every now and then stopping alongside the road perhaps to change the tire that has blown or getting off at the next exit to have some good coffee and a piece of pie at a diner just off the beaten path. Discovery, in the in end, is at the heart of the Christian faith.

Throughout the Bible, God is attempting to pound this idea that it's all about a relationship with him that matters the most. The Israelites of the Old Testament had such a hard time with this one, because they wanted so much to make it about religion—following a set of rules was so much easier than being in a relationship with their Creator. Very few characters we read about in the Old Testament got it right. Most, which we read about, insisted on obeying all the rules versus moving into a friendship with God. If we were to think about that list of who got it right, it is a relatively short one. A few would be: Abraham, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Josiah, annd Elijah. When we read their stories, we learn about the ramifications and possibilities of having a relationship with God.

In the New Testament, Jesus makes the same challenge. He says that the basis of everything is relationship, a relationship with him. Let’s listen to Jesus’ all-important words, “I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) The Message restates it even more directly: “Separated, you can't produce a thing.” Now that’s saying it like it is! Meditate on that one for a minute. Are we really going to believe such a statement? No one—not your Aunt Bev, not the nice guy down the street who shovels your sidewalk every winter, not even your own mom, the nicest lady in the world—can do anything good without Jesus. What he means in that statement, is simply this—everything has to be about him, otherwise it means nothing. As C.S. Lewis wrote so eloquently in Mere Christianity, in making such statements like this, Jesus was either an ego maniac, mentally ill or God Himself! Everything will come up short without Jesus. Every part of our lives must be subject to him: the inner strength of our marriage; the skills and talents we use on the job; our ability in the classroom or on the basketball court; how well we can think or feel; our financial security; our gifts of hospitality or giving; our ability to be a father or mother, son or daughter. Jesus is the center and how centered our lives are to his, will determine how well we do in everything. Everything about our lives starts with him. It’s not that we don’t have importance as well in this on-going relationship; but the whole of our lives and how we live them starts with the One who made us. Let me say that one more time: the whole of our lives and how we live them starts with the One who made us.

This is the starting point and the ending point. Our life, all of it, is in relationship to the One who created us (Colossians 1:16). The closer we are to him, the better we are. I see this continually with my own life and in the lives of others. The better a relationship with God a person has, the more “effectiveness” they have in their own lives. Depression is easier to conquer; marriages re-connect sooner; a father and a teenage son begin to have fun again; sometimes, you can even hit the golf ball straight. Things begin to happen that you never expected to happen. Life begins to fall in place. Inevitably, if we want to have the life we want, if we want to be the person we are supposed to be, it will tie back to our connection with Jesus. In essence, only the person who has God at the center of his life can have the good life. Again, the closer you are to him, the better you will be.

To end, Muhammed Ali said it well: “The man who views the world at fifty the same way he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.” The person who commits his life to God and his ways will go through many changes of not only mind, but heart and soul as well. Relationships will change. Interests will change. Thinking will change. Life, itself, will change. If we allow it, the whole of life will just be an on-going metamorphosis into something more, something different and better. In the process of the journey, we are inevitably changed. Literally, one year-five years-twenty years later, you’ll become an entirely different person, a better person, more sound and connected to something extraordinary.