Category Archives: Bible

The Hamburg Chronicles

Posted on by Silva
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Late May was eventful for a small team of us as we traveled to Hamburg to support the Hamburgprojekt - a new church plant in the north German city.  Our church has been a partner with them for four years now.  To be a ministry partner usually means financial support, prayer support and encouragement.  In our case with Hamburg, it also meant that we would send small teams to the city to mentor, coach, teach and train their pastoral staff and leadership.  What a privilege it has been to be involved at any level and see what God has done!

This year’s trip was May 19-28.  These are the chronicles of that trip.

We left Charlotte at our usual time around 5:00 pm.  This time we flew Lufthansa which we were looking forward to – we’d done Continental and US Airways and it seemed at least the Germans knew that long flights and tiny seats didn’t go well together!  I happened to sit next to a sweet little 9-year old who was traveling with her family to India (what a trip!).  Stewart was traveling next to a business woman who made regular pilgrimages to Europe.  The only disappointment was the food on the flight – it was some scary stuff…

Dominic, one of the pastors, met us at the Hamburg airport around 1030 the next day (we connected with another flight in Munich).  Our commitment on Day 1 is to stay up until midnight or so.  Our bodies make the adjustment faster (Hamburg is 6 hours ahead) that way.  So, Dominic told us that Debbie (his wife) wanted to have us over for lunch before we went to our accommodations.  Stewart had experience with Debbie’s cooking and so he (for both of us) heartily agreed!  We were not disappointed…It was so good to see their family.  They have two boys, Merlin (around 4) and Luis (18 months or so) and they were both very fun.  They live in a first floor apartment with very tall ceilings (10 ft?) that they had one of their fathers help them refinish – it looked great.  We spoke about home life with the two boys and how the Lord is slowly giving children to the others in the church.

After lunch, Dominic took us to where we were staying.  Interesting story about that…a week or so before we were to leave the US, we found that we had no accommodations.  Walking around Hamburg there’s no shortage of hotels so we didn’t think it was any big deal.  That is, until we discovered the Hamburg marathon was the first weekend that we were there.  It wasn’t until a couple of frantic days later did we realize that just about every single room in walking vicinity of the church was taken.  A friend of ours from the church, Ulf, who was running in the race told us that this is one of the biggest road races in all of Europe…no kidding.

Daniel Bartz, the lead pastor, finally said to me in an email, “Gabe, let us take care of this.”  Boy, did they!  A young couple he recently married were on their honeymoon and (somehow) Daniel contacted them and they agreed to let us stay at their place for free.  Um, free?  And, they lived close by Daniel’s home and within walking distance to the church.  It was a wonderful set up in many ways and we were richly blessed; to be able to come back to an apartment each day and relax in it in ways that hotel rooms don’t facilitate was very helpful.

It was down to the wire, though, and it revealed sin in my own heart.  I had been so excited about this trip in ways that I had not been in the past, God had given us opportunities to ministry that we had not had in the past that to be confronted with an issue (albeit minor) like this…well, let’s just say that my response was less than faithful and hopeful.  I reverted to “wait a minute, God.  I’m jazzed up here and You throw ice water down my shirt….”  Or, put another way, I’m doing this for You, You need to do this for me…  Ugly and sinful.  I was reminded that I need mission trips for my own spiritual health maybe as much as anyone would need my ministry.  Thanks be to God!

More later.

Relationships are not efficient

Posted on by Silva
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I recently returned from a missions trip to Hamburg, Germany.  What a marvelous trip; it is remarkable (though not surprising) to witness first hand and participate in what God is doing through the hamburgprojekt, a young church there.  With a brother from my church we were able to mentor, train and visit with courageous brothers and sisters.  We hope to write more on that later, but there was one element that deserves mention ahead of those details: relational inefficiency.

Recently a pastor friend of mine remarked in my presence that as much as we would like to believe otherwise, relationships are just not efficient.  If you think about a favorite American past time, the “to do list,” versus relationships, we can see just how they differ.  To do list’s:

  • Are strictly controlled
  • Don’t surprise us
  • Don’t act in ways that are destructive
  • Don’t need to grow in holiness
  • Go away when we want them to
  • Don’t say stupid things
  • Can be delayed
  • Can be shortened
  • Take only as long as we want
  • Aren’t shy or guarded
  • Don’t yell at us…

You get the idea.  I guess it is no surprise why they are so popular to us.  All of this is probably clear, huh?  Relationships aren’t like to-do lists at all.  “Of course,” you say, “that stuff’s obvious.”

I think I underestimated how much I often put people in the same category as a to do list.  I wouldn’t really know that I had done so until I…well, left the country for another culture.  Now, no one that I know would suggest that Germans are inefficient!  Yet, one thing that became clear to us what that in their culture (perhaps it is just with Americans) they take a long time to “be known.”  They are cautious and guarded (yet polite and fun).  When it comes to intimacy, they take their time, or, are “inefficient.”

I think we get that real rich relationships take time to build.  But I wonder in our culture if we have mostly lost the ability and desire to make the investments.  Facebook demands nothing, Twitter demands less.  Email reveals little, text messages less.  I was listening to Christian radio the other day and the host was encouraging folks that if they wanted prayer to text, Tweet or Facebook ‘em!  At what point did we think calling into a radio station asking for prayer was even a good idea?!  Do we do that because we knew that if we called a good friend he’d make us actually communicate in ways that would put us off our calendars?

It has taken four years for me to build meaningful trust and communication with my Christian siblings in Germany.  At times it was tiring (surprise).  But, what struck me on our most recent trip (last week) was the remarkable fruit and joy that came as a result of our investments in each other.  I never imagined that I’d be able to share such profound and impacting life and ministry with men and women from a totally different culture!  I believe it was due to the commitment to relational inefficiency that is present in the German culture.  There is a sweetness to the slowness.  There is a profound pay-out for the systematic investments in relationships over a long period of time.  Talk about delayed gratification!

In our culture, most often, we are serial-relaters.  We have efficient relationships, that is, ones that don’t cramp our style and that get us where we want to go.  I am glad that not every culture is as inane as ours.  I don’t intend this to be a German-grass-is-greener post as if one culture rises above all others.  But, clearly, ours is not a culture that places tremendous value on systematic and long-term relationships for their own sake.  How many Facebook friends do you have?

Five Ways To Make Your Kids Hate Church

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Here’s an article I found that I thought was VERY interesting:

Don’t read your Bible at home… Don’t engage your children in questions they have concerning Jesus and God. Live like you want to live during the week so that your kids can see that duplicity is ok.

1. Make sure your faith is only something you live out in public

Go to church… at least most of the time. Make sure you agree with what you hear the preacher say, and affirm on the way home what was said especially when it has to do with your kids obeying, but let it stop there. Don’t read your Bible at home. The pastor will say everything you need to hear on Sundays. Don’t engage your children in questions they have concerning Jesus and God. Live like you want to live during the week so that your kids can see that duplicity is ok.
2. Pray only in front of people

The only times you need to pray are when your family is over, holiday meals, when someone is sick, and when you want something. Besides that, don’t bother. Your kids will see you pray when other people are watching, no need to do it with them in private.
3. Focus on your morals

Make sure you insist your kids be honest with you. Let them know it is the right thing for them to do, but then feel free to lie in your own life and disregard the need to tell them and others the truth. Get very angry with your children when they say words that are “naughty” and “bad”, but post, read, watch, and say whatever you want on TV, Facebook, and Twitter. Make sure you focus on being a good person. Be ambiguous about what this means.
4. Give financially as long as it doesn’t impede your needs

Make a big deal out of giving at church. Stress the need to your children the value of tithing, while not giving sacrificially yourself. Allow them to see you spend a ton of money on what you want, while negating your command from Scripture to give sacrificially.
5. Make church community a priority… as long as there is nothing else you want to do

Hey, you are a church going family, right? I mean, that’s what you tell your friends and family anyways. Make sure you attend on Sundays. As long as you didn’t stay up too late Saturday night. Or your family isn’t having a big barbeque. Or the big game isn’t on. Or this week you just don’t feel like it. Or… I mean, you’re a church-going family, so what’s the big deal?
Thomas Weaver is the Lead Pastor of Logos Community Church, an Acts 29 Church in McAllen, Texas. This article first appeared on Resurgence.com, the missional leader website of the Acts 29 network.

What if the boy is not too cute?

Posted on by Silva
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We’ve covered some good moral, ethical and spiritual ground in figuring out the “qualifications” of a young suitor. These are by far the most pressing issues especially in light of the culture where cranking out solid young men is not too highly esteemed (just read “Guyland” by Michael Kimmel.  Yikes.).  We must give ourselves to these things.

But we also “sort” ourselves in other ways that aren’t too savory and mostly secret like looks.  Not you?  So, there’s never been a time in your life when you turned down an offer on the basis of looks?  “Posh!  That was college when I was young and stuck-up!” OK, fine.  Why did you do it then?  And, you’re positive you wouldn’t do it vicariously through your daughter or son?  Hmm.

It is not as if “ugly” is a fictitious category.  The Fall has caused physical disfigurement: hair cowlicks, acne, big noses, spots, missing limbs, compressed spines, crooked fingers or toes.  Do these amount to “ugly”?  Answer that by asking if these things will be present in heaven?  But, more importantly, the Fall has caused a natural propensity towards ungodly sorting and categorization.  We secretly expect the pretty people to marry each other and hope the ugly ones marry each other without transgressing this boundary.  It’s terrible and it’s true (even Jane Austen thought so).

In the end, we’re not the ones who choose for our daughters and sons.  The issue is will our sons and daughters sort their suitors on the basis of looks and should they?  You and I did: what will keep them from not doing it?  This discussion borders the preposterous.  We just don’t think that poorly of ourselves that WE would be the ones to advise our children against marrying for things other than looks.  Assume for a minute that you might…

First, ugly is a part of life.  Try as we might to rationalize that ugly actually isn’t, it will still hold to be true.  Perhaps, ugly will always be with us so that we will remember that there’s a time coming when it will be no more.  In one sense, without “ugly” we’d forget about heaven.

Second, God doesn’t really care about ugly so we shouldn’t either.  Here’s a short sample:

6When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed is before him.” 7But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”  (1 Samuel 16)

1My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,”while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 5Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?  6But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? 7Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?  (James 2)

1Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, 2when they see your respectful and pure conduct. 3 Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— 4but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.  (1 Peter 3)

Third, ugly saves and so we really can’t always judge that “ugly = bad.”  No one would say that the Cross upon which Christ died was anything but ugly.  I suppose it would be functionally equivalent to us calling a firing squad or an electric chair something other than ugly.  Yet, the work of Christ upon that Cross when united in us with faith saves to the uttermost (Hebrews 7:25).  That is hardly ugly.

Fourth, our children will naturally sort against ugly.  You did it.  The Bible warns against it.  They will do it.  Unless you teach them not to.  Of course, that would assume that you have modified your own views that sorting on the basis of looks isn’t appropriate.  If we work to inoculate our children against the fear of “ugly” in this way, then, in life when cancer or accident strikes, love will not find any obstacles to expression.

Would you really have “pretty” instead of “godly” if it came to it?

Why I should hate the phrase, “Woe is me.”

Posted on by Silva
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Most people are quickly discouraged in their lives.  Joy in some circumstances is hard, in most is even harder and in all circumstances seems impossible.   We have good intentions: we might start out well in the morning, our devotions done and prayers prayed. Yet the first ankle-biter issue in life turns us over into the sour pusses that we had hoped to avoid.  We capitulate faster than you can say “woe is me.”  “Wait a minute,” you say, “Woe is me?  Are you saying the difficulties of life are all my fault?”  The cause?  No; that wouldn’t be fair.  But the response is all you and all me.

It is not as if life isn’t hard.  I was recently reminded of this when we heard a church family had just a baby who might have Down’s Syndrome.  Hard indeed.  Life’s bowl of cherries has pits that break teeth.  It’s not going to do us any good to ignore the difficulty.  No one has true joy by ignoring circumstances; that’s a fool’s errand.  Eventually, we’ll go crazy in our little make believe worlds.

No, the world is to be faced.  And it is a hard world.

I like movies.  I particularly like the movie “A Knight’s Tale.”  Now there are parts of it that aren’t so good, but there’s one scene in the movie that will help here.  The main character, Ulrich Von Licthenstein, is a tournament jouster.  In one exchange his opponent cracked his armor.  He had to go to a smithy and have it fixed.  He found one, a woman named Kate.  Kate, he found out, had come up with her own way to heat steel and make stronger armor out of less steel.  The effect was a very light yet strong suit of armor for Ulrich; like Knight’s UnderArmor.

It certainly looked different than the other knights’armor.  In fact, the next time he jousted, he got laughed at by the other men for his armor.  That is, until he was able to mount his horse like he was wearing no armor – that got their attention since none of them could do that.

In fact, those knights had armor that made jousting difficult: apparently it was very heavy and didn’t move well.  As if trying to stay on a horse that’s galloping, holding a lance, trying to strike the opponent in a meaningful way and avoid getting hit and falling off the horse weren’t difficult enough!

Here’s how it touches what we’re considering: life, like jousting, is difficult.  The question is:

  • What do we “put on” that makes living in it even harder?

I’m talking about perspectives, demands, views, commitments and hopes.  What I mean is that what we believe about life can either help us tackle it or make it even harder to tackle.

Here’s an example.  I think Christians often put on a viewpoint that thinks much of the power of our own sin and circumstances to crush and discourage us and little of the power of our Savior to strengthen and save us.    We think things like, “It’s only a matter of time before I get mad / lust / depressed / worried….There’s nothing I can really do about it.  It’s going to happen.”  This view makes the difficulties of life even more difficult: if we’re already convinced that the mountain is too hard to climb before we even see it (or see what’s in our packs) then we’re sunk when we come to it.  In other words, we really think highly of our sin and our life’s circumstances and lowly of Christ’s provision and power believing perhaps that we are just passive recipients of the black waters of life.  In the end, we drink deeply and it is bitter.

But, if Christ Himself holds all things together (Col 1:15-17) and all things were conceived of in His mind and built through His very power and find their purpose and conclusion in Him, then why be so quick to think sin is too much and circumstances too overwhelming?

  • Is the tendency to sin really too strong for the Spirit to counteract?
  • Are your children really so aggravating that the Spirit can’t give you peace or patience?
  • Is the disease, the deformity or the doubt really so strong that God the Rock and Refuge (Psalm 31) cannot enter in?

My wife and I were talking about how it feels like the home page in our lives’web is “Me.”  But that’s wrong.  In Christ, our home page is Him.  He is our default.  Our sin is not the first or final word in our lives, His righteousness that He gave to us and His Word is both first and final.  If we believe that it’s only a matter of time before we sin or our circumstance are going to beat us up, then perhaps instead of being realistic we are being sinful.  Instead we must face our daily problems with:

  • Christ’s power is enough to keep me from the power of my sin and these circumstances

He is either powerful or He isn’t.  We either live one way (“He is powerful”) or we live the other (“He is not strong enough”).  God gives power to His children to overcome (1 Corinthians 10:13) because He has already overcome it all.  Receive it and use it today.