I Wonder

Had a friend I worked with years ago named Ray Cagle. I was a bivocational pastor at the time, and Ray was a member of a nondenominational church and seemed to me to try and live out his faith. We stopped by his house on the way back from lunch one day and I when I went to flip a light switch I noticed a bible verse was taped to it. Looking around, I saw other verses taped on things like the TV set.

I had to know - so I asked Ray about it. He said that as a family they were trying to get as much Scripture in as many ways as possible into their hearts. So they chose Scriptures and printed out slips that would cause them to think about their devotion to God.

After all these years, I'm still impressed by the sincere desire Ray expressed that day to follow Jesus and lead his family to do the same.

Haven't thought about it for years.

But it's Christmas season.

So I wonder... if we printed out slips of paper with "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:21 and taped them to our checkbook, to our credit and debit cards - would it cause us to consider whether what we were about to spend was the best God honoring use of the money God has blessed us with.

I wonder.

Might make a difference this Christmas...

An Advent Conspiracy Begins

Something is wrong with Christmas in America.

We work ourselves into a frenzy during the season of hope, peace, joy,and love - rushing around buying presents with money we don't have for people who don't need what we are giving them. By doing that, we are robbing ourselves of an unforgettable Christmas experience.

Well at New Hope, we've decided to step off the Consumerist merry-go-round and give more presence and less presents. During the next four weeks we will focus on worshiping fully, loving deeply, spending less, and giving more of ourselves to God and to our friends and family.

Our worship gatherings will point us in that direction and our efforts on behalf of Shelter House, local needy families. Haitian orphans, women in Malawi, and to drill a well in the Sudan will cause us to focusing on giving, not getting and play our part in God's plan to love the world with the love of Jesus.

We're joining thousands of other Christ followers in forming an Advent Conspiracy Come join us - Christmas can still change the world.

Christmas Can Change the World - Again

It starts with Jesus. It ends with Jesus.

This is the season we should stop and realize just what God did - and is doing.

This is the season we should move closer to God and to each other in love.

For the next four Sundays at New Hope we'll be looking at how hope is reborn, love wins, peace breaks through and lives are changed - forever!

So love well this Christmas. Give a well this Christmas.

No one wants a Christmas worth forgetting.

It's Christmas - Again!

Franklin the postman just left me a Christmas present that Bunny had ordered for me but which couldn't be delivered until after Christmas. It's a T shirt that is just COOL looking and the proceeds from it go to help the Dixon family adopt a child from Africa. Their website is here. Go Seek Love

The Dubois family produced the shirts originally to help fund their own adoption, but now are helping others.

Awesome that the Body of Christ is finding new ways to reach out and to draw closer.

Thanks to my beloved, it's Merry Christmas!  for me today and for the Dixon family and their hoped for child later.

Sunday Recap 20 December

Today was the last of the four weeks of the Advent Conspiracy emphasis. We've tried to turn the cultural tide away from the consumerist extravaganza that Christmas has become back to what Christmas was supposed to be. We've learned about how to worship fully, to spend less, and to give more. Today we wrapped it up with the hardest - "Love All."

Everyone I have ever known has challenges in this area. Most have exclusionary lists of people who they do not love the way God would have us love. The barriers to that may be racial, cultural, ethnic, any number of reasons or no real reason at all. And yet to fully understand what God did in Jesus - to fully become what God would have us be - we have to learn to love as Jesus loved. We have to Love ALL.

This year those of us who make up the family known as New Hope have had many opportunities to learn just that. We've turned our attention to areas of the world and people who live there that we never really focused on before. The least of these. They are mostly black and poor. Many are infected with HIV and will die without divine intervention. Well, guess what - we're God's chosen instrument. It was okay to read about what was going on in Africa until we saw the faces of those in peril - until we read and heard the stories.

Now we know. Now we have to decide whether we are truly followers of Jesus or whether we are his fair weather disciples. There's no way to sugar coat it or explain it away. Are there people right here who are in need? Absolutely. In fact I'm so proud of how New Hope has given to our neighbors here this year. We've served at area events. We've collected school supplies for local schools. We've given out food from our pantry on numerous occasions. And just recently we've supplied Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and provided toys for 21 children in Valparaiso. There's probably more that I don't remember or know about.

And then we sent some of our youth and adults to Kentucky again this year to spend a week serving the people in that impoverished area.

But this year, it has been the orphan and those with HIV in the third world that has gotten much of our attention. I knew going in that there would be some "push-back" from some and a tepid buy in from others. "Why don't we focus on helping our own?" was something I heard second hand earlier in the year.

First, there is no "our own" in Jesus Christ. When we decide to follow Christ we give up forever our right to choose who we will love. We have to love ALL. That "who is my neighbor?" stuff went out when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. Luke 10 - look it up.

And second - Think about it this way. You drive up to a row of three houses inhabited by three families. The first home needs a new roof. The second home is being broken into. The third home is on fire. Now all three are in peril. If the roof is not fixed when the rains come damage can occur. In the second case the robbers could decide to cause bodily harm and not just rob the people inside. But the third home is on fire with people in it. There's no question that unless help comes quickly, THEY WILL DIE.

The statistics on deaths among children from starvation, from contaminated water, from malaria, from HIV left untreated are horrible. Those areas are on fire. We have to get help to them as fast as we can. We'll get help to the others as well, but this is a no brainer. 147 MILLION orphans need families.

Are you okay with 25,000 people dying each day from malnutrition and starvation?
Are you okay with a child dying every 21 seconds from the effects of contaminated water?
Are you okay with those 147 million orphans growing up without homes?
Are you okay that many will die without knowing the love of Jesus?

New Hope has said - No We Are NOT OKAY WITH IT

So today that was our focus. To look into the Scripture and redefine love the way that God would have us view it. To come away committed to Love All. I didn't do the best job of presenting it but I hope God used it for His glory.

The songs were: Here I Am To Worship
The First Noel
Joy To the World
O Come All Ye Faithful
Offering (Christmas version)



My fervent hope is that 2010 is the year New Hope sends people to help and to build lasting relationships with those on need.

Had a great Christmas fellowship after and the New Hope family were very generous in their Christmas gifts and words of appreciation. Bunny and I are blessed to serve them.

Sunday Recap 13 Dec 2009 - "Give More" (Advent Conspiracy)

December is flying past us and the miracle that is Christmas approaches. As we've been on the Advent Conspiracy Journey for the past two weeks (Worship Fully, Spend Less) the ground that we have covered is new. Most Christmas seasons we recall the events that took place then and try to bridge to the present. With the outline we are following now, the opposite is true. So we have looked at what it means to Worship Fully, and tried to grasp "Spend Less." It is time to approach "Give More."

When I was working on this message, and reading once again the passages dealing with the Incarnation, I could not help but wish that I had been there to see it all happen. But no one on earth saw it all - that would have been relegated to the angels like Gabriel who are in the presence of Almighty God. They would have also have had the context to understand why such a drastic measure was necessary.

It started out so well. God created men and women to fellowship with Him. But they rebelled against His authority and broke trust with God. The consequences were awful. A loss of fellowship with God, a loss of the special relationship and even their home that was created just for them.

When a relationship is broken, the tendency is to turn away, to put some distance between the hurt party and the one who hurt. While the deep intimacy was gone between the Creator and His creation, in His mercy He did not leave. And down through the ages He continued to offer His children the opportunity to do right, to live righteously. But time and time again they failed. So finally, in the ultimate act of love, God sent His one and only Son to come and live among men, bringing the Kingdom of God near once more.



Our song set this week was:

How Many Kings by Downhere
Here Is Our King - Crowder
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
Angels We Have Heard On High
In Christ Alone

At the end of the message, I read most of a blog post by Shaun Groves, a Christian musical artist who also serves as an ambassador for Compassion International. It was deeply moving. I know that the Advent Conspiracy focus was to "give more" relationally - more presence instead of more presents - but I could not get away from my conviction that we need to do more for the poor and the orphans. Go over and read Shaun's post and prayerfully consider whether God might be calling you to sponsor a child.

Sunday Recap Dec 6, 2009

The second Sunday of Advent and the "Spend Less" week.

Before worship, Sarah Hickman helped us learn about what the numbers for how much Americans spend on Christmas and what could be done if we spend less. Clean water, food for the hungry, and HIV meds - all are possible if we focus our attention on people and not presents. Then Missy Hickman made us aware of an opportunity through fromhivtohome.org to give the gift of an orphan's support to people this Christmas.

It is amazing that we can literally save lives by purchasing items that are produced by people in the third world. The Scriptures say that Jesus went about doing good. We can too.

Our music today was:

God With Us
O Come All Ye Faithful
Give Me Jesus
Come Home Running

As I wrote yesterday, this week's theme was personally convicting so I do hope that God used what we did today to touch the hearts of others and change how we spend so we can do more good.



Don't forget that the New Hope website has a page of links you can use to do good when you do decide to spend.

Objects In the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

So it's Saturday night and I'm putting the work of the last few weeks into the Powerpoint I'll use tomorrow. The trouble with that is that on a usual week's work I'll have 30-50 pages of notes, a dozen pdfs, several pages bookmarked and far more material than I will ever use. The trick is to distill and illuminate what you've learned in a way that the people who walk through it with you can grasp, apply, and incorporate into their lives.

There are times when the particular topic or text doesn't really train its crosshairs on me. But this one is. Tomorrow I'll continue our Advent focus and talk about the commercialization of Christmas and urge people to spend less. Like the mirror above - that topic is closer to me than I'd like.

I LOVE CHRISTMAS

Yes, I love the Biblical story of Incarnation and the promise of redemption. The babe in the manger. The shepherds keeping watch of the flocks by night. The wise men. The flight to Egypt. I love it all.

But for most of my life, and too often still, I find myself dreaming of what I might get for Christmas.

As a child I was totally sold out to the presents that Christmas brought. As an adult I've loved buying them for Bunny and for the boys. It was like being a kid again. And I'd move heaven and earth to make sure that they "had Christmas" in the typical American traditional way it is expressed - that is - we loaded them up with stuff. I've gone in debt again and again to make sure it happened.

So when I stand before the congregation tomorrow, I will be speaking to them and to myself.

Sunday Recap 11/29/09

We began Advent worship this week with this reading from Isaiah 40.

11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in his arms, holding them close to his heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.

Isaiah 40:11 (NLT)

We need Advent. We need to slow down and reflect on just what God did through the Incarnation. We need to remember what Christmas is.

Our Advent Conspiracy theme for this week is [Worship Fully]. It was a great beginning for the Advent experience. Christmas began with worship. Sometimes we let the things of this world block our view of the manger. So I led with this clip from a beloved TV show.

We took a look at two people's experiences related to Christmas - Zechariah and Mary. Each began with questions and ended with praise.

Our music today was:

O Worship The King - Tomlin
Whole World In His Hands - Redman
and our first Christmas carol - O Come O Come Emmanuel
We used "Grace Flows Down" for the invitation to commitment.

So much to be thankful for.

Risk

Tomorrow night we'll meet and enjoy a time of fellowship and then move to the sanctuary where we'll sing some Christmas carols and then open our Advent Conspiracy store.

It's a Risk.

We're in an economy that doesn't inspire many, and heading into a season where people will come face to face with their financial limitations. The fact is that many of them will ignore those limits and spend money they don't have on stuff that people they give it to don't need.

The Advent Conspiracy aims to change that, and we want to be a part of that change. Our hope is that people at New Hope will worship more fully, spend less, give more, and love all this Christmas season. We could have just taken up an offering, but we want to DO SOMETHING. :)

So our Child 2 Child girls have spent every Wednesday night for the last few weeks preparing items for sale in the store. There's going to be some really cool gifts in there throughout the season. 100% of the proceeds will go to help children in the third world. We're also going to be selling products made by others who have the same goals as we do - to change the world.

We've never ever done it this way before.

I love it.

Advent Conspiracy

This is one of those great ideas that is gaining attention and a voice. Churches who covenant with each other to seek to do everything they can to make a difference around the world in Jesus' name at Christmas.

New Hope has adopted five families locally and will be supplying food and some gifts during the holiday season. Our hope is that we can show the love of Jesus to people who may not know Him, and that by doing so, that love will grow in us.

I am convinced that one of the best things anyone can do to grow spiritually is to serve others in Jesus' name. So we are serving and will continue to look for ways to do more, and partner with other organizations to extend our arms toward others.

Small church with a big heart for God and for their neighbors = New Hope