The (Unofficial) Fellowship Bible Blog

Communication is good, and we need better communication

Why did we start the Fellowship blog?  To foster communication of all kinds of things that have anything to do with the type of information people at Fellowship might be interested in.  It's very broad, but it's a start.

We need better communication at Fellowship.  We need it at all levels.  And I write this post to ask you to pray -- when you pray, and if you don't do it regularly, now's the time to start -- for Fellowship and its people as we communicate in all environments.

There are lots of communication channels at Fellowship, and we could improve on all of them, both in efficiency and authenticity.   From the platform to the elders to paid staff to unpaid staff and volunteers to people who just come and sit on Sunday morning to people who have only heard of our church -- in every venue, internal and external communication is huge for us to "do" church together effectively, and we could stand to improve it across the board.

So, pray that we'll communicate better with each other in all settings.

The Mind of the Maker

A fascinating book on what it means that you and I are made in the image of God is “The Mind of the Maker” by Dorothy L. Sayers.

Sayers graduated at the top of her class from Oxford in 1916. Women could not receive degrees in those days, and she graduated without one. She did not let the short-sightedness of the men at Oxford get in her way. She possessed a fierce intelligence and wit. A friend and co-belligerent of C.S. Lewis, they exchanged many heated letters over the years. She writes in “The Mind of the Maker” that the one thing that most reveals what it means to be made in the image of God is that we are co-creators. Unlike him, we cannot create from nothing, but must use the materials of His creation. When however, we take these materials and shape them into something else, we tap into something that is very deep within us and of God.

When someone takes the inside of a cotton plant changed to thread and woven into fabric, then uses it to make a dress for their child, they show themselves to be someone made in the image of God. When you gather vegetables, meats, grain ground into flour, add spices, and cook it atop your stove or bake it in the oven, something of God is seen, smelled, and tasted. When a man and woman come together in love and a child is born, the image of God in flesh and blood is revealed for all to look upon and wonder at.

I am a builder. When I am given the opportunity to design and build a home for someone, I will often stand back at the end of a day’s work and simply stare at it. I take the home into myself and draw pleasure from its progress. I delight in its shape and finish, and how the loving labors of so many different people have contributed to it. It amazes me that an abstract and intangible idea of a home is capable of becoming a tangible shelter and sanctuary for life to happen and flourish in.

There are times at the end of such a day when I quietly speak to myself saying, “It is good.” I intuit in these moments what God must have felt at the close of each creation day when he stood back, looked upon his work and said, “It is good.”

It is good!

It is very good!

The Main Event

The Main Event is a church wide party. There will be baptisms, music, food, small group competitions, children’s games and lots of fun. It will be THIS Sunday, May 3rd, from 3-7pm at “Summers at the River”. If you have not picked up a free ticket, you can still come simply by sending an RSPV to becca.murdaugh@fbclife.org

Directions to “Summers at the River”: From Springfield, go south on 160 to Highway AA. Turn right (West). Go 1/4 mile to Fox Hollow Dr (look for the fire truck). Turn Right into the parking lot.

Being a missional church

Here's an excerpt on the mission of church from Vintage Church by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears:

"Thankfully, the mission of the church is not that complicated. The mission of the church comes directly from the command of Jesus, who, following his resurrection and just prior to his ascension, said, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:19-20; see also Mark 16:15-16; Luke 24:46-49; John 20:20-31; Acts 1:5-8). Jesus speaks of going, evangelizing, making disciples, and planting churches that plant churches to continue the process. Therefore, the mission of the church is nothing less than bringing the entire world to Christian faith and maturity.

A missional church must strategize how to carry out the mission to today's increasingly non-Christian culture."

What are ways that Fellowship can effectively carry out the mission of bringing the entire world to Christian faith and maturity in southwest Missouri's increasingly non-Christian and increasingly unchurched culture?  Are we doing that?  If so or if not, what could we do to improve? 

This isn't something that will happen by itself and it must constantly be on top of our minds and our conversations as our purpose and our driving idea.  If we're not actively pursing this mission and allow it to fall by the wayside, we're not the Church and we become another social club.

15 Minutes of Shame

I read this post on a friend's blog about things he learns in his spiritual life, and I thought I'd pass it on.  I'm republishing in its entirety because it's challenging:

"Andy Warhol stated that at some point in our lives we are all famous for 15 minutes. Hence, our 15 minutes of fame. Today, I experienced quite the opposite. It was my 15 minutes of shame.

As part of healthy work environment challenge I agreed to spend at least 15 minutes walking today. Now that is not a lot of time to spend on exercise, but for someone who has not been the most diligent in his exercise routine, it was at least something. I decided to walk around close to the office to put in my 15 minutes.

For those of you who are not familiar with Springfield, our office is close to Commercial Street which is home to a lot of outreach programs for the needy. When I was looking at moving to Springfield I was told by a Realtor to avoid moving to a loft on Commercial because "it's where all the homeless people are."

So today I set out on my 15 minute adventure and as I walked I started to pay particular attention to those I saw. The homeless, the poor, the hungry, the desperate. I suddently became very aware of my selfishness as I walked along in my Prada sunglasses. I felt literally ashamed.

Jesus spent only 33 years on this Earth. He spent most of His three years in ministry surrounded by the broken, the poor, the needy, the desperate. They were the people that He came here for and those are the people that He reached out to. How in the past 2000 years that we have lost that direction I am not sure.

As I walked along, I smiled at people, I said "hello", and then I returned to the comfort of my office, knowing that I would soon be at home and able to have a nice dinner and sleep in my own bed. I can't stop thinking about those 15 minutes. Perhaps God chose those 15 minutes to remind me of who I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to be doing here on this Earth. All I know is that I learned quite a bit from my 15 minutes of shame."

Farewell to the Vander Ploegs

Today Fellowship Bible said its goodbyes to the Vander Ploeg family.  Eric Vander Ploeg has been the Executive Pastor at Fellowship for 3 years now, but he, his wife Parker, and their 3 girls are moving to the Madison, Wisconsin area so Eric can step into a lead pastor role at Hillcrest Bible Church in Oregon, Wisconsin.

I've been close friends with Eric these past few years, and I've also had the pleasure of having him and his family living about a block away from my house.  We started a small group together, and we've had many nights eating dinner at each others' houses.  When the ice storms of the past few years have hit, we've been good neighbors and taken care of each other, and we even learned that our houses, which are in sight of each other, are actually on different power grids because we once had power when they didn't.  My 3 boys have really enjoyed playing with their 3 girls over the years, and we haven't gone on a family walk without stopping by to see who was home at the Vander Ploeg house.  My wife Amy has become close to Parker, and it's been hard for them to say goodbye.

Eric did great things in his tenure at Fellowship.  He has strong leadership skills, and he led the capital campaign, building design and building construction process from start to finish to get us into our new building.  In addition, he has freed up Phillip from administrative matters so Phillip can focus on teaching.    He has been the chief decision maker in staff issues and building issues, plus he has had a strong part in the general leadership of our church.  In my opinion, Fellowship Bible would not be in the place it is today without Eric's involvement, and I appreciate his hard work over the years.

We had dinner with the Vander Ploegs tonight, and it's sad to see them go.  We wish them the best in this new venture in a new place, and we also look to God's direction as we move into a new chapter for Fellowship.  Thank you, God, for the friends who cross our paths and make a difference during the time they're in our daily lives.

The Breakfast Song

In the clip, Minister Cleo Clariet and his fiancé Katherine Lane are shown singing on "The Kay Bain Show" in Tupelo, Mississippi in May or June of 2004.

The video came from Tom Joyners website www.blackamericaweb.com. The lady singer, Katherine Lane, was interviewed on his March 13th show.

Thanks to Jim Dauber for the lead on this video.

The Man Dog

NOTE TO THE READER. PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTION AT THE END OF THIS TALE.

I wouldn't read "Wild at Heart" when it came out because I have a deep and abiding prejudice against popular Christian books. A few years back, the morning men’s group I was part of at Fellowship used that book and its video series for a study, so I found myself backed into reading it. I ended up liking it. I hate it when my most precious prejudices are so carelessly taken away.

Stimulated by our discussions concerning what it means to be a Christian man, I began thinking to myself, "My parents divorced when I was three. I was mostly raised after that by my mom and grandma. For the last so many years I've lived with my wife and three daughters. All of our dogs and other animals have even been female. I’ll not stand for this any longer!  A man can only put up with just so much. Enough is enough! I’m going to find me A MAN DOG!"

Each day for the next several weeks I visited the Humane Society shelter looking for THE MAN DOG. Coming in from the garage after getting home from one of those searches, I was met by Becky (my wife) asking where my dog was. One of our daughters it turns out, had told her I was at the humane society looking for a dog. I realized then I hadn't informed her of my quest. I offered no defense, saying only, “I haven’t found one that talked to me yet."

But a few days later, I found him. He was a clumsy, brown pup, just eight weeks old, with big feet, a strong nose, and flapping ears. He talked to me. He was the one I had been waiting for. I took him from his cage and brought him home without realizing he'd  grow to 160lbs. He drools, snores, and farts. He'd drink beer if he could open the fridge. He's the quintessential MAN DOG. No longer am I surrounded with nothing but estrogen. Noooo, not me. I have THE MAN DOG. It's great!

Becky wanted to name him. Each day after he'd moved in with us, she came up with names she wanted me to give him. She had named all our girls and most of the animals, but she WAS NOT going to name THE MAN DOG. I told her in no uncertain terms that her days of naming were over. "He'll tell us his name when he's good and ready." I said. "Until then, you will respectfully refer to him as THE DUDE."

THE DUDE decided we were OK after hanging with us for a month or so. It was 'round this time he said his name was Malcolm Muggeridge. "My friends just call me Muggs," he said matter of factly. "Good name!" I said. "Solid! In fact, turns out my Christian mentor was an English guy with the same name."

I don't think he was listening. He's one of those dogs that has his own thing going on, if you know what I mean. Kind of like Miles Davis, or Sean Connery, or Frank Sinatra in the early sixties.

Some people.......... some dogs........... are simply born cool. Cool is not something a person or dog can learn. You are either cool, or you're not. It's just the way things are. The MAN DOG .................. is COOOOOOL.

Muggs later told me he too was English -- English Mastiff to be exact. I nodded and said, "COOL!"

Yepp! No uncool girly names for............THE MAN DOG!

END OF TALE

QUESTION: Does the dog wag the tale, or the tale wag the dog?

What I'm reading: Clutter-Free Christianity

I'm in the first chapters of a new book called Clutter-Free Christianity, and I'm liking it so far.  No -- this isn't a book about organizing your workspace to be a better Christian.  I've found the title to be misleading.  Instead, the "clutter" the book encourages you to clean out is the rules and "to dos" that we gather up in our attempts to grow in Christ that really have nothing to do with what God wants for us.  If you've ever found yourself asking "What does God want from me?", then this book is for you.

The author, Dr. Robert Jeffress is pastor at First Baptist Dallas, but don't hold that against him.  He openly admits in the opening chapters that he's a Southern Baptist and that his kind, over the years, have been some purveyors of rules that really have nothing to do with what God is calling us to.  He does a great job of pushing the door open and letting in the refreshing truth of what God wants from you, and when it comes down to it, his answer is letting Jesus live His life through you.  Each chapter deals with a heart issue, not with your actions, and I find it's a refreshing approach.  Jeffress' writing is easy to read and is very approachable as he challenges the reader to become more like Jesus in action, attitude and affection simply by turning their heart toward Jesus and letting Him take control.

I'm only in the first few chapters, but I encourage you to check out Clutter-Free Christianity  Hopefully, you can shorten your spiritual to-do list and come out with a deepened commitment to let Jesus live through you in everyday life.

Oh Waiter! I'd Like Another Juicy Reformation Please! (Part 1)

Following are personal thoughts relating to ongoing conversations I am having with living, breathing people, but also including many writers both ancient and contemporary. They hopefully tie into things that are relevant to what we will celebrate this coming Sunday morning. Sunday, April 12th of 2009, will be the day known to some as Resurrection Day, and others as Easter Sunday. It is the day when once a year, nearly all Christians remember and celebrate Jesus the Christ's resurrection from his death suffered three days earlier from his having been hung like a common criminal on a Roman cross.

DO WE NEED ANOTHER REFORMATION?

The gospel familiar to most American and evangelical Christians is derived from the writings of the apostle Paul; the focus of his arguments in his epistle to the Romans in particular. Reformation theologians Luther, Calvin, and others, found in these epistles a corrective to and hopeful cure for grave errors that had crept into the Church. These errors were so pervasive and endemic that, in their view, they threatened to destroy the Church’s foundations. At stake was the recovery and re-establishment of the gospel as good news that comes from outside creation and into a world that is perishing. This cure would require a complete overhaul of the Church’s teaching and understanding of how man is made right with God. Its main points were essentially:

1. A complete and irreparable break between God and His creation has occurred.
2. Humankind is powerless to bridge or repair the break. Men and women usually even deny its existence.
3. The essence of the break is separation from a God who is the creator and source of all life. Consequently, men and women are now spiritually and eternally dead. A single word for this is damnation.
4. If there is to be salvation from this damnation, it cannot come from man nor anything else in creation. It will be possible only if it comes from somewhere outside of creation.
5. Only God, the author of creation, can save it. However, His just and holy nature is an obstacle to this salvation that will need to be surmounted and satisfied in order for His loving and forgiving nature to mend the break, affect salvation, and bring forth a renewal of His creation.
6. It is exactly here that the Good News comes to us. This “satisfaction” was accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God even supplies faith to those Christ died for as a conduit to connect and incorporate the individual into His death, resurrection, and life eternal.

This cure, this doctrine or teaching, became the cornerstone of reformation and protestant theology. It returned Jesus the Christ to the center of His creation. It re-established Him as the author and finisher, the Alpha and Omega of all that is, including mans salvation and sanctification. It also coincided with and even made possible the development of Western, rational, scientific reasoning, and enlightenment thought and culture. Like hand and glove, it fit into and became part of the modern ages detached, scientific, forensic way of viewing and thinking about the world. This gospel teaching was itself developed and systematized in much the same way everything else was. Biblical writings were studied, categorized, and developed into systematic theologies that were then moved front and center. The project to understand and organize everything God had revealed in scripture was done in precisely the same way one might study nature. The same types of observational study and systematic ordering that permitted the development of powerful chemical formulas curing disease and the construction of atomic weapons were now applied to the study of God.

Systems thinking requires detachment and distancing from the object that is to be studied. Consequently, our thinking about God and our experience of him became detached and distant. The cure that was meant to heal our break with God and rightly order our understanding of Him (or what was later called "getting saved") primarily came to mean getting ones thinking ordered in a particular way that would give them power to be saved. "The Cure" came to be something that could be memorized and applied like a mathematical or chemical formula.

Formulas are memorized in order to solve particular kinds of problems. I received an A in calculus because I was able to memorize the formulas I needed to solve problems given me on tests and provide the correct answers for them. I can’t solve a single calculus problem today because I had no idea what I was doing at the time. I had simply memorized formulas now lost to me because the only reality they connected me with was that of a good grade. It is possible to do math problems correctly all day long and never comprehend the problems and solutions. The Reformers gave us keys that were later developed into formulas that let us get ourselves saved in the same way I did calculus.

We now had a formula given us we could memorize and work to solve the problem of damnation. The formula  of confessing  I BELIEVE I AM A SINNER AND ALSO IN THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST) made us saved. Possession of the formula meant we no longer actually needed Christ. His part was in the past. We thought well of him for putting up with those irritating thorns, nails through the hands, and that nasty tasting vinegar. But now we simply needed to work the formula and solve the problem. Of course we did first need to be persuaded there was an actual problem in need of solution, and that a test on it was coming that we'd flunk if we didn't make class. But once convinced, we could quickly memorize the required formula, give the correct answer, get our A's, and go home just in time for the summer break.

Seen in this way, it becomes apparent we have gone somewhere the Reformers never meant for us to go. Once again, like sheep, we have all gone astray. A true teaching of scripture recovered and sharply articulated with the express purpose of returning the Church to Christ has become distorted and used to get us free not from sin, but from Christ Himself. Scripture magnifying God’s sovereignty has been turned about so we could once more claim sovereignty for ourselves.

Can this be true? If so, are we not right back where we were in 1500 AD?

Now what?