Bryan Graduates from the Police Academy

Last Thursday, April 24th, Bryan graduated from the Police Academy at St. Johns River Community College (actually it is called the Criminal Justice Training Program). Laura and I are very proud of him for how hard he has worked at this. He has been commuting to the campus in St. Augustine, about an hour each way, every day for about nine months. Class usually let out about 10:00 p.m. at which time he had to rush back to the westside of Jacksonville to get to his job at UPS.

Bryan earned both "High Academic Honors" and "High Liability Honors", the only one in his class of 35 to do so. Bryan has been single-minded about going into law enforcement for many years now. This shows what he can accomplish in an area he is passionate about.

Next week he will be taking his State Exam down in Deland, Florida. The following week he has an interview with the Chief of Police with one of the local police departments - the last step in their hiring process. We are praying that all will go well with both the exam and the interview. I'm confident that Bryan will make an excellent police officer.

Washing Feet

Last night at our Maundy Thursday service we included Foot Washing as part of the service. I must admit that I was very curious when this was in the planning phase about how this would go over with the congregation. Its been years since we've done foot washing at West Jax.

Obviously, many people feel uncomfortable with the idea of someone handling or washing their feet. Because of this, we didn't push to have everyone participate. Twelve volunteers were identified prior to the start of the service to have the elders and pastors wash their feet - all others present were also invited to participate - which several did. One of the children even asked if they could come back for a second time. A number of people came forward and asked to wash the feet of the pastors and elders - this was a very humbling experience for me.

It's even more humbling to think how Christ, God incarnate, was willing to wash the feet of His disciples. The Son of God performing the task that in His day was only done by a servant. But I guess that is the point. This is quite a contrast to "leaders" today.

While foot washing might not be culturally relevant today, I wonder what menial tasks are. What seemingly lowly acts of service might come my way that would give me the opportunity to serve someone else - to love another as Christ loved - sacrificially. I pray that I would never think so highly of myself that I would miss the opportunity to show Christ's love in this way.

Please Forward This To Everyone in Your Email Address List…

Chain emails are something I can’t stand. They show up from co-workers, family members, and especially fellow Christians warning against some great evil that is about to happen. You are implored to pass it on to everyone you know. Of course the people who send them usually don’t forward this type of thing, but “this one is different”.

Its not that I can’t just delete them – I can. However, at best, it makes me wonder about the gullibility of people; at worst, I think it is very damaging to the Kingdom of God.

There seems to be a very predictable formula for concocting a good email rumor. You start with a good serving of some group we know and distrust/dislike (e.g. liberals, ACLU, politicians). Add to that a subject that either pulls at our heart strings or gets our blood boiling (e.g. religious freedom, our troops, the flag, little children). Include an impending deadline and some people with some official sounding titles. End with a plea to send the story forward to everyone you know. Enjoy, your chain email rumor is ready. I’m not sure what people get out of creating email hoaxes, however, if they use the standard recipe they can be pretty much assured that people will pick it up and run with it.

So how can this be damaging to the Kingdom of God? Its not just about passing on slander and gossip, which I believe the Bible clearly defines as sin, but I think at the heart of it is the issue of credibility. The rumors make their way into discussions or sermons or even calls to action at church. As Christians, we are called to tell people some pretty incredible news – The Son of God came and died and rose again. If I was not a Christian and I knew that Christians commonly passed on untrue information and stories, I would never believe them. I would not believe what they said about Jesus nor would I believe anything they had to say about answers to prayer from God. Trustworthiness is something that should describe the character of all Christians. It is import because it is the nature of God – it is import to God being able to use us for His purpose.

Lastly, people have asked, “How am I to know?” as an excuse when passing on one of these hoaxes. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is true or not – but I believe if we are passing something on as true, we should be fairly sure that it is. Did it come as an email chain letter? That is a good indication right there that it may be false. You can also check out such web sites as snopes.com or truthorfiction.com. These sites might not be faultless but at least they do provide some background documentation.

By the way, please don’t forward this to anyone! ; )

Biblish

During church services, my mind often wanders to the question of whether visitors understand the message due to the words being used.

Organizations, industries, and cultures adopt terms and words that the group understands – often shortcuts to more complex ideas – but that others outside of the group don’t readily use or understand. In addition to facilitating communication, using this jargon helps people feel like they belong, that they are part of the group. The Church is no different. We’ve adopted words and developed phrases to express Biblical truths and meanings that are often gibberish to the community around us. I call this Church Speak or Biblish. I’m as guilty as anyone in using Biblish.

Years ago, this wasn’t such an issue as it was fairly safe to assume that in America, most people had a church background and were “schooled” in the use of Church Speak. Today, this is a fairly poor assumption as a large percentage of the population is un-churched. In his book “Evangelism That Works”, George Barna reports that in one study, only one-third of those questioned knew what the phrase “The Gospel” meant – and that’s one I would think most people would know. What about other words and phrases such as “washed in the blood”, “lamb of God”, “hedge of protection”, “testimony”, “Great Commission”, “born again”, “in the flesh”, “witness”, or even “sin”.

Should we care?

I believe we should be a missional church (that’s probably another example of Church Speak). By missional, I like Tim Keller’s definition of, “adapting and reformulating absolutely everything it did in worship, discipleship, community, and service--so as to be engaged with the non-Christian society around it.” Keller says a couple of things regarding communication and being missional:

“The missional church avoids 'tribal' language, stylized prayer language, unnecessary
evangelical pious 'jargon', and archaic language that seeks to set a 'spritual tone.'”; and

“The missional church avoids ever talking as if non-believing people are not present. If you
speak and discourse as if your whole neighborhood is present (not just scattered Christians),
eventually more and more of your neighborhood will find their way in or be invited.”

We are seeing more and more new people from our surrounding community attending services Sundays and Wednesday evenings. Many of these people don’t have a church background. We need to be intentional about the language we use so that they can understand and feel part of the church.

The Business of Business is...Greed

Exxon Mobil Corporation announced the largest annual profit ever by a U.S. company - $40.6 billion! (they also held the previous record of $39.5 billion, which Exxon Mobil reported for 2006). This all at a time when record fuel prices are pushing up the cost of everything else - including food, heating, and transportation.

The quote, "The business of business is business", supposedly stated by Economist Milton Friedman, is drilled into Business majors in college. I certainly heard it when I was working toward my Masters Degree in Management. It goes along with the belief in a free market and capitalism. But how far should that mantra extend? Does business have any obligations or duties to the society in which it flourishes?

For many years, I've considered myself a conservative Christian and tended to vote Republican. Lately, I've become very uncomfortable about the strong ties between Republican policy and big business. Republican politicians seem to think that what is good for business is good for everybody. It bothered me that the first place that Mitt Romney visited upon arrival in Jacksonville during the Florida Primary campaign was Gate Petroleum. Republicans talk about conservative values and expect Christians to fall in line behind them. Is greed a conservative value? If it is, I guess I need to rethink the idea about being conservative. My Lord certainly spoke out against greed and taking advantage of the poor.

I'd probably give up on Republicans except that Democratic politicians leave me cold too.

"Christian" Candidates

In his book "God's Politics" author Jim Wallis states:

It is important to remember that the particular religiosity of a candidate, or even how devout they might be, is less important than how their religious and/or moral commitments and values shape their political vision and their policy commitments. If one's religious and ethical convictions don't shape a condidate's (or a citizen's) public life - what kind of commitments are they?"

What do you think? I tend to agree. I think a lot of politicians snooker Christians into voting for them by playing the religious card. But it is one thing to talk about it during the campaign and another to do it when in office. A Christian politician's efforts in office should reflect the image and values of Christ - ALL of them - not just a couple select Christian hot-buttons intended to get them re-elected.

Otherwise, I'd rather vote for a non-believer who is committed to fighting poverty, bringing justice, strengthening the family, the sacredness of life, being honest, and protecting the environment, to name a few. Things I think my Lord would be interested in.

A Tragedy?

So who the heck is Heath Ledger???

Of course by now I know. I guess I had heard the name before when all the flap about the movie "Brokeback Mountain" came out and I remember him now from "The Patriot". But this is getting ridiculous. In the last couple of days I've seen articles about how his massage therapist found him and called Mary Kate Olsen before she ever called 911; what Jack Nicholson had to say when he heard; how playing the character "the Joker" emotionally drained him; how Mel Gibson had distanced himself from him; and how Daniel Day-Lewis had paid tribute to him on Oprah. And that was just on FoxNews.com.

Maybe Joseph Stalin was correct when he said, "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."

How many thousands died today from preventable diseases such as malaria or AIDS; malnutrition; unclean water; exposure to the elements; or war. I didn't see one article on those people today or even this week on any of the news sites. Yet Hollywood and the press are going crazy over the death of this one man from a suspected drug overdose.

Uncounted numbers of people have their lives torn apart or die every day in this country due to drug dependency problems. Yet, unless their name is Lohan, Spears, or now Ledger no attention will come to it.

Heath Ledger's death is a tragedy - a waste. It's just too bad that the thousands of people who die each day from preventable causes have become a faceless statistic. Maybe death on such a large scale is beyond human comprehension. I probably couldn't handle the enormity of the tragedy. But I do know the one who knows and cares for each life lost, for each life caught up in the entanglements of this world. May He break my heart daily for those who go through life's struggles unnoticed and uncared for by our society. That is a tragedy.