Family Christmas photos

Happy Birthday, Gwyneth!

How can it be that you entered our world three years ago today? And look at you now!
Have a magical day and enjoy being a princess.

Days that change our lives

Our entire lives can be changed by a single event or by a series of events, and in only a moment, a day or days. I know that the first days of January were life-changing for me (and a lot of other people). And now, each year at this time my mind goes back to those days in 2008 when I saw miracles happen.

At least I call them miracles. Anyway, they were life-changing. And I'm so glad I blogged about them.

So I'm going back in the archives and reading what I wrote just to remind me of God's power and love. You're welcome to join me.

Click here to begin. Scroll down to the first week's posts.

Communicating Vision

"I don't have a vision for my church and don't know how to get one."

Sad words spoken to me by a pastor friend a few months ago. The church he leads has been in decline for over a decade. He's the third in a string of pastors during that time. The latest news I have heard is pretty bleak.

As my church's "Lead Pastor" part of my responsibility is to not only get God's vision for our church, but to communicate it to our leaders and to the congregation. It's that pastoral role Paul wrote to Timothy about, saying, "Exhort...". Exhortation is really a form of encouragement, and that's what clear, God-given vision does for a church: it inspires and encourages. It's the idea God communicated to the prophet Habakkuk.

A recent request for questions from my church about how and why we do some of the things we do revealed to me something that I needed to hear: Vision leaks. Many of the questions indicated the askers didn't understand the "Why"s of our church. And if the "Why"s aren't in a firm grasp by the flock neither will be the "How"s.

That gave me clear direction as to the initial series of this new year. I usually spend the month of January doing some vision-casting and encouragement, challenging the church to take on the new year with a renewed commitment to Christ, His Word and His family. But it has been a while since I went through our Vision Statement* point by point with clarity.

Our church has many young believers. Leaders of a growing church can sometimes forget that unless doctrine and values are frequently addressed those who are new to the faith can't understand. And those who are older and have been around awhile tend to forget.

So the first 6 weeks of the New Year will cover our church's vision. We began Sunday, January 2. The question cards were a wake-up call to me, and I'm excited not only to hear the "reveille", but also to urge the "troops" to "charge" and because Jesus' vision for the church is clear, to never hear "retreat".

*To read our church's Vision Statement go to our web site, click on the "About" tab and then "Core Values".

An Unforgettable New Years Day (from 2008)

(I originally posted this on New Years Day 2008 after a long day. Little did we know then how miraculously God would answer our prayers. But we did believe. This is my third year to repost it.)

Usually I'm doing as little as possible on January 1; trying to avoid taking down Christmas decorations while channel surfing between bowl games. Not today.

Today, along with 3 of our church's pastors, my wife, another pastor's wife, our youngest daughter and her husband, my daughter-in-law's parents, my sister and a friend, we visited our very ill daughter-in-law at Duke University Hospital.

It's a 4 hour ride for us to get there. Yesterday she requested our elders (synonymous with pastors in our church) come to anoint her with oil, lay hands on her and pray (see James 5 in the New Testament). Word got out via the net and word of mouth and who knows how many joined us in prayer between noon and 1PM.

Tricia has posted some prayer needs on Nathan's blog site. If you want to meet some incredibly courageous young people, give it a read.

And here's my granddaughter's latest photo. She's 24 weeks in the oven and weighing about 1 lb 4oz. And she's got her mom's nose.

My Year in Review

Where does time go? The older I get, the faster it flies by, it seems. As I get ready for the New Year it's probably a good idea to do a quick review of the old. Then I can hopefully learn from it and do my part in making 2011 even better. I can't control a lot, but what I can I want to do so in a way that is wise, godly and productive.

Not that anyone else much cares, but this was a good exercise for me in my advanced stage of life!
In 2010 I...

• Wrote 50 or so columns for the Outer Banks Sentinel.
• Preached less than a typical year (due to my Sabbatical). Didn't preach on Easter for the first time in a long time. Covered 6 different series including expositions of Isaiah 55, Romans 5-8, and topical series on family, the church, love and Advent. Preached a series of meetings for another church and delivered a message to the annual Chowan Baptist Association.
• Posted less on this blog.
  
• Conducted 3 weddings and 2 vow renewals and a funeral.
• Responded to 4 drownings in a two week span in August.
  
• Spent 42 days in February and March driving coast (Atlantic) to coast (Gulf) to coast (Pacific) to coast (Atlantic) with Gail. We saw wonderful parts of our country and spent time with many friends, some we had not seen in over 30 years. The car traveled over 8,000 miles, got a new set of tires in California and two oil changes in Florida and Las Vegas. I took about 1000 pictures.
• Visited Bayou La Batre, AL. Home of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
• Was in NOLA for Mardi Gras. I don't get it.
• Watched a young Marine get his LT bars in front of the Alamo.
• Blew my diet on Mexican food.
• Found Arizona to be beautiful in February.
• Went to Disneyland after a 32 year absence.
  
• Was white-knuckled scared and at the same time in awe of God's creation as Gail drove us up the Pacific Coast Highway.
• Drove through a giant redwood.
• Stood on the Mt. Shasta Lake and Hoover dams.
• Found the Strip at Vegas to be decadence at its worst.
• Wondered at the natural beauty of the Grand Canyon and Red Rocks of Arizona.
• Stood on the corner in Winslow, Arizona as a girl in a flat bed Ford slowed down.
• Visited Hugo, Schooler Lake and lived a few hours on Tulsa time visiting family and friends from ministry in the '70's.
• At barbecue in Arkansas with a bald headed biker preacher.
• Watched as friends and family had victories and defeats in their lives. And realized you can't fix everything. Confronted some issues for the first time when I thought I'd seen it all.
• Saw some folks discover life in Christ and a bunch of them take the plunge in baptism.
• Saw some folks walk away from their church family.
  
• Played with and took my granddaughters out for breakfast a bunch of times.
• Played golf (I use "played" loosely) twice. Was given a new used set of clubs by a friend. Found out my days of 300 yard drives are over.
• Got a great and surprisingly good report from my annual physical. Even amazed my doc.
• Stopped playing racquetball at the Y. Too expensive. As a result I'm in need of exercise.
• Went to France for a week to serve a couple of churches and work with them in reaching the city of Grenoble. Thanks to my friends who helped me go.
• Discovered what "French pastry" really means.
  
• Did not get in the ocean at all, except to stand in it in FL a couple times to say I did.
  
• Got some of my best work done at the Morning View coffee shop in Nags Head.
• Worked on writing two books. I'm a long way from completing either.
• Didn't read enough.
  
• Spent too much time on Facebook.
  
• Shaved my goatee but kept the mustache.
• Bought a cowboy hat in CA.
• Pastored a most excellent church with an incredible team of fellow pastors and staff.
• Completed my 20th Christmas season with Nags Head Church.
• Enjoyed watching "American Pickers" and "Pawn Stars" on the History Channel.
• Was disappointed once more by the Washington Redskins and their inept owner.
• Started a Facebook group for my old youth group's reunion in CA this spring.
• Had a cough I couldn't shake for two months.
• Figured out that there's no such thing as a "fair and balanced" news network.
  
• Did some substitute teaching in Dare Co. schools. My favorite is the Alternative school for some reason.
• Learned that the information highway is the cult of the 21st century, drawing in the gullible with myths and conspiracy theories.
  
• Reconnected with some "long lost cousins" and some I've never met.
• Started on researching our family genealogy. Found out my great-great-great-great grandfather had the same name as me and participated in laying the cornerstone of the Washington Monument.
• Watched our church learn what love is and then put it in to practice in the community.

In many ways it was a great year. In many ways it was a trying year. That's the way it is every year isn't it? But it's great to know that no matter what comes my way (or yours) God knows and He is always available and ready to walk with us through the valleys and over the peaks.

Have a new year filled with joy. Happiness is temporary and fleeting. Seek something greater!

The Original Christmas Gift

Before the Magi came with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh another Gift was given - not to the Babe in the manger, but to all mankind.

"Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? " - Romans 8:32 (NLT)

A Christmas to Remember

The week before Christmas, 2007, Gail and I made an quick overnight stay in Durham, NC. Our two daughters, Rachel and Sarah and their husbands, Ramon and Terry made the trip with us. There we visited with Nathan, our son, and his wife Tricia. All of us wondered if this group would ever be together again for another Christmas.

You probably know Tricia's story, so I won't go into it here. But that Christmas she was perilously close to death due to the advanced stages of her cystic fibrosis and that fact that she was 5 months pregnant. Her ability to breathe was rapidly coming to an end. She would be admitted to Duke later that week and wouldn't emerge until May.

So we drove the almost 4 hours to Durham. We exchanged gifts, laughed a lot and went out to eat together. The picture is one I took of all the kids. Though they were smiling, behind the smiles was a sadness we all felt. If you've seen recent pictures of Tricia you see the immense change now that she's healthy. (She's on the right.)

God was gracious to us in miraculous ways in the months to come. Now those six have increased to 8 and a half (Rachel's got one in the oven). Best of all, we'll all be together this Christmas. And with the addition of a foster granddaughter it's even better.

I don't care if I get anything in my stocking. My heart is full and overflowing.

Jesus Loved Them...Shouldn't We? (Part 2)

So what do we do?

Most of us who have been given new life by faith in Christ know too well how easy it is to retreat into a "holy huddle" and lose total contact with those outside the faith. Picture in your mind a huddle of football players getting the next play from their quarterback. They're all faced inward.

But they don't stay that way for long. In fact, if they stay in the huddle too long the ref blows a whistle and they're penalized by losing ground. The huddle is an important time, but its purpose is to get everyone on the same page as they turn to face the other team. It's a comfortable place. Everyone in the huddle wears the same uniform. We know each other. We're a team and are comfortable together. And in the huddle we get a bit of a breather. Not a perfect illustration, but I think it makes some valid points for the church.

We need that time together when we're getting the Coach's instructions for our next steps. He's got a game plan for us individually and collectively. In a nutshell it is found at the end of Matthew's gospel. We often call it the "Great Commission", and it tells us that as we're going into the world we're to make disciples. Guess what? That requires leaving the huddle and getting into the game by engaging those who don't yet know Christ.

When I played football we all knew when it was time to leave the huddle. The quarterback, who had been given the next play from the coach, called out the play to us and the snap count that would start it. Then he repeated it just to make sure we all heard it and heard it clearly. With that accomplished he said, "Ready" and simultaneously all eleven of us clapped our hands once and said, "Break!" The huddle was broken and we assumed our positions on the line of scrimmage.

If we're going to have balance in our lives, engaging in both edification - building one another up in the church - and evangelism - taking the Good News to the world, somebody has to call "break". I guess that's one of the duties of pastors and leaders: Saying to the team, "Let's go. We know the strategy; we've had the coaching; our assignments are handed out. Let's take the Gospel to those who don't know."

Jesus didn't just hang with His disciples. Sure, He invested a lot of time and energy with them, getting them ready to carry on. But He also broke from them to spend time with a woman who was rejected by others at a well outside of town. There He told her how to drink the water that gave life everlasting. He was willing to be criticized by those in His day who never left the huddle to eat and drink with the spiritually starving. And it wasn't long before He sent them out two by two as "lambs before wolves". He knew their purpose as lambs was to leave the safety of the fold and tell others how to be in the fold.

If you're not taking His instructions and then going into the world, making disciples, you'll never gain ground. In fact, you and your huddle, your group, your church, if they're doing the same and looking inward, you're losing ground. You're being penalized. We have to be actively involved in both the inward and the outward. That means I may have to put my insecurities in God's hands. I may need to find ways to spend time with those outside of my church. If you realize all your friends are just like you, something's wrong.

And here's what will happen if you stay in the huddle too long. Paul warned that in the last days women (and this can happen to men as well) will be "always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth." (2 Tim. 3:7) We can be guilty of being learners but never practicing what we've learned. In my experience, those church members who tell me they just can't get enough "Bible study" also never (that's right, never) bring another person to Christ. Somehow their hunger for God became all about knowledge and never about making disciples.

In his letter to the Corinthian church Paul told them they had plenty of knowledge. Yet, they were at the same time filled with division and selfishness. "Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds them up." (1 Cor. 8:1) If we fill our heads with spiritual truth but never allow that truth to transform our lives into loving witnesses it only serves to fill us with spiritual pride. (Now there's an oxymoron.)

Ask yourself these questions. Then decide what you need to do.

When was the last time I shared my faith with a non-believing friend?
When was the last time I brought an unchurched friend to church with me?
Have I allowed my Christianity to distance me from those who need Christ?
Are all of my friends at church?
Who will be in heaven because I took the knowledge I learned and gave it away?
Do I jump at the chance to attend a church related conference or Bible study but don't invite my neighbors to an outreach event?

Ready? Break.

Jesus Loved Them...Shouldn't We?

• The Samaritan woman at the well.
• Nicodemus, the Jewish civil and religious leader
• Andrew, a fisherman.
• Magi who traveled from the East with gifts for a new King.
• A Roman centurion with a deathly ill servant
• A tax collector who went to extremes just to see Him and climbed into a tree.
• A rabbi with a dying daughter.
• A handicapped man whose friends had a "whatever it takes" attitude.
• An anonymous woman with an incurable hemorrhage.
• A rich, young ruler.
• Many more we know about from the biographies of Jesus called "Gospels". Many, many more we don't.

What they had in common was a need, be it spiritual or physical, and they sought out Jesus. Some were actually looking for Him, with curiosity or even an inkling that He might be the promised Messiah. Most, not all, embraced Him as Savior.

Back in the 90's (or so) a term was coined to represent men and women who are like the list above: needy and wanting an answer or healing or solution. If he didn't use the term first, he at least became most famous for its use at his Willow Creek church outside of Chicago, but whether or not you or I agree with him on every point, Bill Hybels' ministry became symbolic of the term "seeker".

"Seeker" became a buzz word in some evangelical circles, and typical of evangelicals and fundamentals, whenever someone introduces something new, be it terminology or ministry strategy (which I find are never new, but usually something forgotten retrieved) we (I'm an evangelical) take sides. At our heart, it seems, we truly enjoy divisiveness ala the Corinthian church by drawing lines in the sand - and sand constantly shifts - by declaring, "I'm fer it" or "I'm agin it". Often in our quest to guard our perceived "orthodoxy" we over-analyze and miss the forest for the trees. Semantics should never divide. You say "tomaughto", I say "tomayto". It's still a tomato. "Seeker" simply means someone outside of faith in Christ who needs Him and is searching.

So here are two paradoxical axioms that I ponder. Actually the second can't truly be called an "axiom" because while it is typical, it is an aberration of what is true. But because it is so overwhelmingly the "norm" I'll treat it as such.

1. None of us who know Christ as Savior have always been believers. No one comes into this world trusting Jesus and on the road to eternal life. The Bible is clear that we are all born with a sinful nature that separates us from God and the life He possesses. Whenever I hear someone say, "I've always believed" I have to ask them, "Really?". Because that contradicts Scripture.

Since I was very little I understood there was God and His Son Jesus. I didn't doubt that as a child because people I trusted (parents, Sunday school teachers) told me so. As I heard of His love and my own inability to achieve everlasting life and His provision of grace I became a "seeker". I distinctly remember asking my mother, who at the time was very religious, but was herself an unbeliever, "How do you get to heaven?". Her answer, by the way, was typical of mainline religion - "Do your best" - and was wrong. But it wasn't until I was nearly eleven years old that I understood my personal need for faith in Him that I experienced new birth.

Every child of God was first a "seeker" in some fashion. But there is also a most confounding pattern I've noticed in my 40 plus years as a believer.

2. We tend to forget who we were and lose our passion for those who are seeking. Here's how it works. We don't plan it this way and never really see it coming. But in the vast majority of Christians this is how life plays out unless we allow God to help us see the world through His eyes. Here's the scenario.

Our seeking results in finding. Whether you see it as you found Him or He found you isn't the issue here. From your perspective, you found Him and received His gift of eternal life. From His perspective He "found" you. Jesus is the ultimate "seeker". And the changes begin in your life. You connect with a local church and God brings a whole new family and group of friends into your life. You hunger to know Him and love it whenever you discover new treasure in His word. You find a place of ministry in the church, serving His family. Life is better than ever...and it's supposed to be.

Your excitement over your new life is uncontainable and you want all of your family and friends to discover what you've found. So you invite them to church. You talk to them about your faith. Some go with you. Some even believe. And those who do become part of your inner circle of friends now that they, too, share this faith.

But as time goes by - maybe a year or two - you gradually begin to lose contact with those old non-believing friends. You don't hang out with them as much, if at all because your Christian friends and family not only get your priority, they get your everything. It's been a long time since you talked with a non-believer about Jesus. You can't remember the last time you invited someone who is unchurched to church with you. Even when the church has bridging events for the community, you don't invite anyone to come. Rather than talk to someone who needs Him, you retreat into a "holy huddle" of other believers and talk to them about Him, whether that be a Sunday school class, a Bible study or a small group. And within the safety of that family you convince yourself you are content.

Suddenly you look around your life and you've lost contact with the world Jesus came to save. As you've grown older in the faith you've also grown distant from the "seekers" and from being a "seeker" like Jesus.

What's happened? In my next post I'll talk about the need in our lives for balance. Real Christian maturity, like Jesus, must be balanced with a passion for growing in the faith and going out to reach the yet faithless.