America Is Great Because...

I once owned a 2003 Ford Windstar van that I bought off of ebay for $3,000. I remember one road trip we took with this van to visit family in NH. The van stalled in the middle of town just a day after we made the 6 hour trek north. We were driving on Russell St. about mid-day when all of a sudden the van just shut off. I tried to restart it but it would not kick on. Finally I got out, checked a few things under the hood and then called my father-in-law to see if he would bring us some gas. The gas gauge said we had a quarter tank but the van was acting like we had none. After adding gas to the tank, however, the van still would not start so a friend of ours came with a trailer and towed the van to his shop.
About the same time the next day our friend called us to say the van was fixed. He ended up replacing the fuel pump since it was clear that the engine was not getting gas. We arrived shortly after he called, paid for the work (at a discounted price graciously!) and headed on our way. We drove less than a mile from the shop and the van stalled again! With the whole family in the car I pulled the van to the side of the road, put the hazards on and walked the mile back to the shop to tell my friend what happened. Shocked by my arrival, our friend loaded in his tow-truck and towed us back to the shop again. We waited about a half hour while he checked a few things under the hood. Turns out the fuse to the fuel pump had blown. He replaced the fuse but it blew again almost immediately after he started the van. Partly embarrassed and feeling bad for our waiting at this point, our friend quickly rigged the fuse box with a special type of fuse attachment which required a lot more voltage to blow the fuse. This time, thankfully, we drove all the way back to my father-in-law’s house with no problems.

The next morning I was leaving to go back to NJ. Marci and the kids were staying behind and driving back to NJ with her mother a few days later. As I was about to leave town I stopped to get a coffee at Anderson’s bakery, shut the van off, got my coffee, returned to the van and, you guessed it, the van wouldn’t start. I couldn’t believe it. Since I had a deadline in getting to NJ I ended up trading vehicles with my mother-in-law so that I could leave. This also gave our friend a couple more days to actually fix the van this time.

Dumbfounded by the vehicle at this point, our friend brought it to another friend to see if he could accurately diagnose the problem. The problem, as it turns out, was not the fuel pump or the fuse or anything to do with the fuel system. The problem was a lot simpler than he realized. Turns out Ford installed an emergency fuel shut-off switch in the rear of the vehicle which was being engaged by the loose-jack bouncing around in the rear compartment. The jack was supposed to be secured so as not to bump into the switch but I never re-secured it the last time I used it. All we had to do was secure the jack and disengage the shut-off switch and all would have been fine. That would have been nice to know $300 prior!

So how is this experience spiritually significant? I believe the problems in our lives both personally, nationally and internationally are really a lot simpler than we initially imagine. We have many societal vehicles that are stalled on the side of the road right now. Our families are broken. Our government is in debt. Our schools are violent and chaotic (not all of course). Our personal lives are stressed and many times on the brink of a nervous breakdown. To “fix” these vehicles we employ many remedies: committees, counselors, credit card companies, the police. However, once we have exhausted all of our remedial agents we drive a mile down the street only to have those same vehicles stall again. During round 2 we replace fuses and hurriedly look for quick fixes to our heightened problems only to find that they work for a time, but stall soon again.

The fact is these societal vehicles will continue to stall until we discover that the real problem originates from an unsecured jack in the rear of the vehicle. Work hard as we may, the vehicle will continue to break down on us until that jack is secured again.

For many years America ran quite smoothly. In fact for many years America was like a brand new vehicle. She was the most admired vehicle in the world. America was the van everyone wanted an opportunity drive. But in recent decades the jack in the back of America has come loose. As a result many mechanics are being employed to “fix” the problem, but with only temporal success. They don’t yet see what the main problem is.

I believe the same is true of many families today. For many of you it may be that years ago your family ran like a brand new car. She was admired in the community, stable, financially sound, peaceful and communal. All family members seemed to know what was expected of them and honored and respected all others. But in recent decades the jack in the back of your family has come loose. Now you wonder if the family will survive to see another generation. Ever since your grandparents passed away it seems like everyone is rushing around trying to fix the problem but the van keeps stalling.

In the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah the prophet said, “If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, ⁸ and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. ⁹ And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, ¹⁰ and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it” (Jer.18:7-10).

I believe one lesson from this passage is that the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who sent Jesus Christ is in control of the nations that rise and the nations that fall. The rise and fall, running and stall of all societal vehicles (families, governments, nations) are not happenstance; the Lord says He is in control of them. Since this is the case, He also gives conditions upon which those vehicles will remain running. They must “repent of [their] evil” (to repent means to turn 180°). They must “obey Me”.

In short, the loose jack in the back of the vehicle translates to sin and disobedience in our lives. When I allow sin and disobedience to enter my life I quickly detach the jack in my life. When I allow sin and disobedience in my life relationships begin to crumble. Families begin to deteriorate and divide. Communities begin to implode. Nations begin to invade.

Our American leaders today seem to believe that America is great because of her clever economics. They credit Capitalism. They credit our military might. They tell us that our national debt, high unemployment rate and ineffective school systems are the cause of our national stall and if we just fix them all will be fine again. I disagree. Those things are symptoms of the main problem, yes, but fixing those things will be equivalent to replacing the fuel pump in my van. They will help us run for a very short while, but be prepared to stall again.

When will we see that the reason America, our family and our community ran so good for so long was because for so long we were obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ? Or, in the BCC vocabulary, American ran so good for so long because America “built life around Jesus” for so long. The Lord, seeing our obedience, then blessed us with financial gain, peace and a just system of law. But ever since the American people considered alternative ways of life as preferable to the life of obedience to Jesus Christ, so have we seen our blessings float away. No matter how hard we try to fix the many problems in America, they will continue to recur until the jack of Jesus Christ is re-secured to His proper place.

So what about you? Is the jack of Jesus secure in your life? Are you being led by the Holy Spirit today? Are you stalled and dumbfounded how to get going again?

Let me encourage you to live out your faith today in every second. Slow down. Love your neighbors in their time of need because of Hurricane Irene. Intercede for your Mayor and councilmen in prayer. Be the example of Jesus in your family. Speak to your church leadership about getting out the in the community as a congregation and leading the way. Don’t be afraid to call evil evil. Refuse to believe that America, or your family for that matter, can never be what she once was. The Lord has reversed the curse of disobedience more times in the course of history than any of us can count. He can do it again!

I believe it’s time to re-secure the jack. Today I will do this by visiting the low-income neighborhood in our city to talk to residents about Jesus. I will also call some estranged church members to encourage them. What will you do today to resure the jack of Jesus in your life?

Are We Full of Talented People but Void of Spiritual Power?

I don't know much about church growth anymore; I once thought I did. I got real heady a few years back when all of our church-growth plans began to come together in a fruitful fashion. Then, not long thereafter, they started to fall apart. Rapid growth (rapid for us anyway) turned to decline. The decline came with a full plate of humble pie; filling no doubt, but tough going down. Now, a few years older and wiser, I am again trying to give credit where credit is due. Having eaten more pie than I wanted I am confident in saying now that if I once thought I knew a bit about the subject I am now writing, I am convinced that I no longer do! What I do know, however, is that as the Lord extends patience to His church for their lack of trust in Him and over-trust in themselves, we must learn to be rapid learners.

To build our lives around Jesus, I am learning, is to make Jesus our foundation. It is to stand on Him. It is to gain one's strength, energy and motivation from Him alone. It is to awake each new morning with the awareness that, once accepting Christ in belief and baptism (see Acts 2:38-40), I am now animated by the Spirit of God so long as I do not quench the Spirit's work in my life. I am now become a temple on heals. I can move where the Spirit leads to do what the Spirit demands. When I get out of bed in the morning, the right side or the wrong side, I can shout with confidence, "I have power, through the Spirit, to put to death the deeds of my body and the thoughts of the mind and to accomplish supernatural things like moving mountains" (see Mt.17:20).

The more I trust in the truths of God's Word- the more I actually believe in what He has told me and live as if they were as true as the sky is blue, the freer I shall be to be used by Him. The Spirit is quenched, however, when we begin to believe and act as if we do not need the branch we are sitting on. Over time we begin to notice our gifts/talents and how good we are at them. We notice their effectiveness in impacting people. Our increasingly polished performance as a Christian leads us to believe we are quite special and needful and good enough. Our preaching becomes an act of creative persuation to make them like us. Our friendships become our attempt to network in order to move up the social and economic ladder. We become gifted salesmen instead of lamps of light who bring warmth and visibility to all we pass. As we graduate from Spirit-reliance to self-reliance we steadily cut through the branch we are sitting on and plummet to our spiritual death. And, as you can imagine, the church begins to decline.

This "cutting off the branch" is what I believe to be a fundamental wound in the life of many congregations today. It was for ours. We all want the church of Jesus Christ to grow. We all want to see every soul from here to Zimbabwe build life around Jesus. But in an effort to spread the gospel far and wide we have forgotten the life-source of our very selves. What I learned in our time in the valley is that it is not so much important for the church to figure out how to spread the gospel to her communities; what's important is to be people who deeply depend on the Spirit of God for all movement. You see it is the Spirit of God who will lead us and empower us to reach our communities. Jesus said,

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen" (Mt.28:19-20).

As we look at this passage, how did Jesus intend to be with us to the end of the age? By His Spirit He would give. It was the Spirit Jesus sent whom Paul relied on to accomplish all he did. He said to Philippi,

"For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death" (Phil.1:19-20).

Through other Christian's prayers and the supply of the Holy Spirit Paul was empowered to plant numerous churches. We need the Holy Spirit alive in our churches! By this I do not mean that we need more Pentecostals. We need congregations who are full of people walking by the Spirit, not by themselves. Francis Chan calls the Holy Spirit the "Forgotten God" of the Christian church. Have we forgotten the One who gives us life and breath and all things?

What would happen if our preaching (my preaching) was less creative this Sunday and more Spirit-empowered?

What would happen if my conversations with my lost friends were less about the right things to say and more about the love of the Spirit of Jesus exuding out of me?

What would happen if our worship gatherings began with congregational confessions of need for God's Spirit instead of incredibly talented and polished worship bands impressing us?

For us, and for many others, we were a congregation full of talented people but, in many ways, void of spiritual power. Years down the road now I believe our congregation recognizes better than ever that if we are going to unite to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our community, we must rely on the power of the Holy Spirit inside us to do it.

Creative preaching with out spiritual power is dead.
High energy worship without spiritual power is dull.
Highly motivated and  talented Christians without spiritual power are fruitless.
Innovative and expensive marketing campaigns without spiritual power are a waste of the Lord's money. (Yes, we may have wasted some money).

May the church become, no, better than that, may I become a person dependant on the Holy Spirit (through prayer, fasting, scripture study and Christian community) who daily experiences the Lord's hand in my life. I won't expect anyone to do what I have not done first.

Let's Give A Microphone to Good Churches!

On almost a weekly basis I hear someone talk about what’s wrong with churches today. Some say, “they aren’t doing anything”, “all they care about is money”, or “they are a bunch of hypocrites”. I do not completely disagree: there are some churches who aren’t doing much, some who care too much about money and no doubt there are some hypocrites out there too. Occasionally we need to give a microphone to what’s wrong in churches in order that they will be corrected. However, sometimes the best way to silence the bad is to give the good a microphone instead.

That’s what I would like to do today. I want to give a microphone to the ways in which I see the Holy Spirit animating the Brunswick Church of Christ.

• BCC has been Praying Regularly

Prayer has not always been a core value of BCC. Neither has it been a core value of mine until recently (sadly). Just this year, however, prayer has grabbed a seat at the top of what members of BCC value. Each Monday night since the beginning of June members of BCC have gathered at the church building to simply pray. We pray for the lost. We pray for the sick. We pray for revival. We pray for the Lord to bring a flood of His Spirit into North Brunswick and awaken our community to their need for Jesus. We pray because we have learned, through the school of hard knocks, that nothing grows unless the Lord makes it grow (see 1 Corinthians 3:6). Prayer has brought a new dependency on God for all things and I am so grateful to see it.

• BCC has been Transforming Daily

Daily transformation has been a core value of BCC for some time. However recently it has really become visible among us. For a while we did not offer people the invitation to respond to the message on Sunday. Instead we encouraged people to talk with a leader of the church afterwards if they had a need. In some ways we may have lost opportunities to call people to daily transformation by doing it this way. But ever since February of this year we have been offering the invitation almost every Sunday and the response has been very encouraging. One Sunday 5 people responded to the message resulting in a number of prayer stations around the room. Another time a gentleman came into the service with a very heavy heart and, rather than talk with him afterwards about his problem, the leadership asked him if they could pray for him right then and there in the service. The people of BCC have been asked to consider what transformations the Lord might be calling them to make today and they have responded!

• BCC has been Building Genuine Christian Community

Community is hard to find nowadays. We may live directly above someone and not even know them. Even harder to find in the 21^st century is genuine Christian Community. We read that the church in Jerusalem,

“…were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved”(Acts 2:44-47).

This picture of the church is foreign to us at best. But those seeking to follow Christ will begin to break out of conventional, American ways of living and transition into new life in community. This is what I have seen BCC doing this year. The women’s FOCUS group had secret sisters they bought gifts for all semester long. This challenged each lady to intentionally think of another during the week. One of our teens has been spending a lot of quality time with her spiritual mentor this summer as well as with some other godly women in the church. The “older women” are “teaching the younger women” (see Titus 2:3-5). The church has been generous to one another by paying another’s rent, paying another’s fines and helping a member clean, paint and move for no charge at all.

• BCC has been Serving Sincerely

Serving sincerely happens to be one of our core values at BCC. This summer has given us a few specific opportunities to sincerely serve together. To serve sincerely, as I am using it here, is to serve with no hidden agenda. It is to serve because He first served us (see John 13). Having said that, we understand that as we love others through service, God draws people unto Himself. As we love others through sincere service we gain entrance into the hearts of people whereby we can then share with them the essential message of Jesus Christ. One lady at our recent National Night Out event said to us,

“What you are doing in giving away school supplies is great. My daughter is a teacher and, because of budget cuts, has to purchase her own supplies for her children out of her own pocket. Keep up the good work!”

I have seen BCC serve sincerely this summer and it is so encouraging to see. Remember and cherish the Lord's words in 1 Peter 2:12: “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

Folks I know there are many things wrong with many churches. But I can vouch for BCC when I say that she is the best congregation I have ever been a part of and the greatest light for Jesus I see in our area.

Please pray that the Lord will draw many, many more people from our community to Christ through the tilling, watering and sowing efforts of BCC!