Just follow the directions

I just finished another online auction this week. It was another great auction with many local buyers, and we are shipping items all over America. This is the second auction in a row that saw someone drive a long ways to pick up their winnings that were not shippable. We had a man drive from Missouri to our auction center in Indiana to pick up the items he won. In our last auction we had a buyer drive from Texas to our auction center!

These online auctions are fun, but there is one thing that troubles me at every auction: people who don't read the information that clearly states the terms of the sale. Every auction clearly, in several places, gives the day, time and location for people to pick up their winning items, and yet there are 7-8 people in every auction who call or send an email asking when they can pick up their items and where are we located. We explain clearly that we do not have their credit card information on file and people can pay by check, cash or credit when they pick up their items. Still, in every sale there will be several who tell us they assume we automatically charged their card when they won the bid. Numerous times in the listing it explains that pick up is on Wednesday, the day after the sale closes, but on Tuesday night after the sale people will start sending emails explaining they can't pick up their items on Tuesday because they will be out of state or have an appointment to have their dog groomed or some other excuse. That means we have to work around their items in our small auction center while setting up for the next sale. It gets quite frustrating.

Of course, it's not just auction buyers who fail to read the terms of the sale. A lot of Christians never bother to read the Bible, or if they do read it they somehow believe it doesn't apply to them. There is no better guidebook for helping people understand how to live their lives, but many of us feel like we can ignore it and never suffer any consequences. If a preacher dares to proclaim, "Thus sayeth the Lord...." there's a good chance he or she won't be around next week. Prophets were not very popular in biblical times; they are less popular today.

How long has it been since you've engaged in serious Bible study? The Bible is not a book of theory. It doesn't contain suggestions that might help you live a better life. This is a guidebook given to us by God and designed to help us live the life He intends. We don't get to pick and choose what parts of the Bible we'll follow and which parts we'll ignore and not experience any consequences. I'll be the first to admit some of the things the Bible tells us we are to do can be difficult, but if we'll just follow the directions we will find life will become much better.

Church hoppers

 Every pastor dreads to hear a member of the congregation say, "We're not getting fed here and we've decided to leave for another church." This is seldom true. There are those occasions when a pastor is not preaching biblical truth, and people do need to leave a church, but this is not usually the case when people say these words. The reality is that many of them are "church hoppers," people who move from church to church attempting to find a place that will cater to their preferences and desires.

In my 35+ years of ministry most of the people I've seen leave a church did so because they were angry because they didn't get their way. Some were controllers who had perhaps ran the church for years before someone finally said no to them. When they couldn't threaten and bully to get their way they left to take their dysfunction to another church. Some had a different vision for the church and its ministry, a vision most of the church didn't share, so they left. They weren't angry; they just needed to find a church whose vision for ministry more closely matched their own. This is different than the ones who leave because they didn't get their way.

Some have a "What have you done for me lately?" attitude. I learned the hard way that no matter how much you help some people, they always demand more. When the help begins to slow down, they move on to greener pastures.

Church hoppers can have a fear of commitment. They are afraid if they stay too long in a church they will be expected to become involved. The only involvement they want is to attend a worship service when it's convenient. They don't want any responsibility, and they certainly don't want to be held accountable. The pastor of one church told me that their church was large enough that people could hide out there. That can't happen in a smaller church. Eventually, in a smaller church people are going to be invited to serve in some capacity, and that invitation is enough to cause some church hoppers to leave.

They may also have a fear of the shallowness of their faith being exposed if they stay too long. While the excuse may be that they are not being fed, the reality may be that they don't want to be fed. Often, they are not feeding themselves. Their faith might be described as a mile wide and an inch deep. There is no depth to their faith, no roots, and this shallowness will eventually be seen if they stay in a church long enough for people to get to know them well.

 When people complain about not being fed, pastors should take a look at their sermons to see if there is any truth in the complaint. It might be that some adjustments may be needed in the messages, but often pastors will find that there is no basis for the complaint. In that case, wish the people well as they continue their spiritual journey and bless them as they continue their church hopping.

Where does a church find a bivocational pastor?

 For years churches worked with their denomination to help them find a pastor. Many still do, and this was an important of my ministry as a Regional Minister for our denomination. Smaller churches in our area often sought help from the placement office in a nearby seminary. They could usually provide the names of seminary students seeking a ministry position while they finished their studies. However, as more and more churches have begun seeking bivocational leadership seminaries and denominations can struggle to provide good candidates. Where do these churches look to find a bivocational pastor?

Denominational leaders should still be the first contact. Like I often told smaller churches, I didn't have bivocational ministers growing on trees, but sometimes I would know of a retired minister or someone feeling led to enter the ministry who might be willing to serve their church. Sometimes I would know of lay leaders who felt called to do more and who had the gifts to serve a church as a bivocational minister who might consider a call to a church. Because denominational and regional leaders network with so many churches and people, they are the first contact a church should make when seeking bivocational leadership.

Your bivocational pastor is going to come from the same general geographical location as the church. It's not likely a pastor will move from New Jersey to Iowa to serve a bivocational church. When I worked with churches seeking such pastors I would try to keep within a 50 mile radius from the church and much closer when I could.

Sometimes the best person to serve as a bivocational pastor will come from within the congregation itself. Several times I saw someone from within the church accept the call to serve as the church's pastor and enjoy a very successful ministry. These are people who are known by the congregation and community, they are trusted, and they have shown good leadership in the past. Often, they will lack training, but there are numerous ways that can be addressed today.

Retired pastors can make great bivocational ministers. While they may have been glad to leave the stresses of fully-funded ministry, I have found many who were willing to serve a bivocational church. They bring a wealth of experience and wisdom to the role that a church will not get from someone just out of seminary. If they are willing to consider returning to the ministry it probably reflects a passion to serve people, and that is important in a bivocational church.

Although it often takes time to find a good bivocational pastor, they are out there. Churches should not give up or decide to settle on someone who really isn't a good fit for the church. Work with your denominational leaders and trust God in the process. You'll be glad you did.

The importance of youth ministry today

 I grew up when youth ministry in our church was known as BYF, Baptist Youth Fellowship. We went on hay rides, played games, had Bible sword drills and once a month joined the other churches in our association for a large youth gathering in one of our larger churches. It was fun and a good chance to learn about God and what the Bible teaches. Youth ministry today is much more serious. Not that there's not opportunities for fun and building relationships with other young people, but the challenges young people face today require much more from the youth leaders than what the youth leaders of my generation faced.

Recently, I had the opportunity to listen in to a ZOOM meeting where a global study of teens was shared. This study focused on 13-19 year-olds in twenty countries to better understand their religious beliefs and their challenges. Of the young people in the study, 43% were Christian, 23% were from other faiths, and 34% professed no religion with 20% of them committed to atheism or agnosticism. However. when a list of criteria was presented that would determine how many of the Christians were committed to the faith, that 43% dropped to only 7%.

Some of the interesting findings in the report noted that 52% of all the teens believe that all religions teach equally valid truths. Conservative Christians believe that only faith in Jesus Christ leads to salvation, but 53% of the Christian teens in the study believed that all faiths lead one to God.

When the study focused on issues the teens struggled with they found there were many. One in five teens feel sexually attracted to someone from the same gender in the previous few months. One in four admitted to having suicidal thoughts in the previous three months, and this included one in three teens from the US. The top factors that led to the suicidal thoughts were gender confusion, online bullying, same-sex attraction and depression. The study found that girls struggled more with these issues than the boys.

Only 53% of US teens believe that gender is determined at birth reflecting the trend we are seeing in our culture. Same-sex marriage is also growing in acceptance among teens with girls much more likely to say that marriage does not need to be exclusively between a man and woman. It was also found that a small percentage of teens view marriage as a lifetime commitment between two people.

While there were other interesting findings in the study, I will only mention two more, one negative and one positive. The negative one is that only one in 12 teens will talk to their pastor or study a religious text to find answers about the meaning of life. This indicates a real distrust that many teens have towards their religious leaders, which I sense reflects more on those of us in leadership than it does on the teens. We have not earned their trust.

The positive finding I'll mention is that 41% of the teens who do not attend church say they would if asked and another third reported they might attend a church if asked.

I doubt that the youth leaders I had growing up ever faced any of these challenges. Today, I would expect that all youth leaders do if they are listening to their teens. Many of our churches need to take a serious look at their youth ministries and ask if they are equipped to respond to their young people who are facing some of these challenges and questions. The decisions our young people make in their teens will impact the rest of their lives, and we need to do everything we can to help them make the best decisions.

The problem of suffering

An argument often used by those who doubt the existence of God is related to suffering. They will point to the example of a child dying of cancer or some horrible event that brings harm and death to innocent people. They then challenge the existence of God by saying that Christians teach that God is all-loving and all-powerful, and yet innocent people are allowed to suffer. Therefore, their conclusion is that either God does not exist or He is not all-loving or all-powerful, and therefore, even if He does exist, He is not worthy of worship. Frankly, it appears to be a good argument as virtually everyone wishes that people did not have to suffer the things that can come into one's life. However, this argument fails on several counts.

One, those who make this argument are often the same ones who claim there is no objective morality. They believe that people should be free to do what they please without any moral judgment being placed on them. But, their claim that suffering is bad or wrong is a moral judgment. If there is no objective morality, what is the basis for their moral judgment? Perhaps they believe that a particular action is wrong, but if another does not hold to that belief, and there is no foundational basis for moral values, then who can say that anything is good or bad?

Second, just because we might not recognize a good reason for suffering does not mean that there is not one. Many will tell you that the greatest insights they ever gained came through a time of suffering in their lives. Countless people have testified that they have accomplished the things in life they've accomplished as a result of going through times of testing.

A third reason the argument fails is that there is nothing inconsistent in the nature of God that would prevent suffering. God often allows us to experience the consequences of the choices we make, and sometimes those consequences are painful. If God prevented us from experiencing those consequences we would probably make even worse choices than we do now.

Finally, suffering is a result of living in a broken world. When sin entered the world it brought with it suffering and death. There will come a time when all suffering will cease, but this is not that time.

Everyone will go through times of suffering at some point in their lives. Some will experience it much worse than others. Because it is such an important part of our lives, and because it can cause even the most dedicated Christian to question his or her faith, I am going to begin a three-part sermon series in the church I serve starting next Sunday on the subject of suffering. If you live in the Westport, Indiana area I invite you to join us at 10:30 for worship. If you live away, the service will be broadcast live on our church's Facebook page at  https://www.facebook.com/WestportBaptistChurch. It will also be available on our church's webpage at https://westportbaptistchurch.org.

Remembering that God is in charge

 This past year has been a struggle for nearly everyone. We knew there was a world-wide pandemic that was costing millions of lives, but we also kept hearing conflicting messages on how to address it. Do we wear masks, or are they not effective? Should we stay three feet apart, six feet apart or stay home completely? In what ways can it be transmitted? We've seen tens of thousands of people put out of work as businesses shut down, and many of those businesses will never reopen. Today, as things have opened up a little we find that we have shortages on many of the things we've come to expect. Supermarkets cannot keep their shelves stocked. Car manufacturers cannot get the components they need to build cars fast enough. Stimulus packages are passed by Congress to supposedly to assist people struggling financially, but much of the money in these packages are not going to individuals but to pet projects of members of Congress.

Of course, Covid is not the only problem facing us. In some parts of the country protesters continue to wreck havoc in major cities. Police are resigning in mass due to budget cuts and their sense of not being appreciated for the work they do. Mass shootings continue to occur in some of the major cities. We have a crisis at the border as people continue to enter the country illegally. Fuel prices are rising at a rate faster than anyone expected which is driving up the cost of many products we use every day.

I could continue, but I've painted a dark enough picture of what's happening in our nation. Those elected to positions of leadership are powerless to do anything about these problems, and in fact, caused some of them. But, we are not a nation without hope.

The thing we must remind ourselves is that God continues to be in charge. One might ask if He is in charge why are so many bad things occurring in our world and nation. That would be a fair question, and the answer is that He is working out His purposes in all these things. Perhaps His purpose is to show us what a world looks like that has turned its back on Him, and America has certainly done that over the past decades. Maybe He has allowed all these things to cause us to repent and turn back to Him.

As painful as these past months have been, as believers we can trust that God remains firmly in control of our world. 2 Chronicles 7: 14 tells the church that our responsibility is to pray, seek God's face and repent of our sins, and then He will heal our land. Believe me, our government is powerless to fix our problems. Technology cannot solve it nor can science. Only God can bring healing to our land, and the church can begin to set that healing into motion by following the passage above.

At church yesterday our special music reminded us that we need Jesus every hour. That reminder is always timely, but it seemed especially so in light of the challenges we now face. We need Him to turn this nation around, and we need to be reminded every day that God remains in charge of all that is happening.

Church and culture

 I am reading a very interesting book that explores how people perceive God. I won't mention the name of the book because, although I find it interesting, it is not one I would necessarily recommend. I am finding some good information in it, but there are also some significant problems with how the author understands God.

The author is a neuroscientist who studies how people think about God, their meditative practices, and how people pursue spirituality and an understanding of God. I am still in the first third of the book as it is not a quick read.

Not surprisingly, his studies find that people are moving away from a traditional understanding of who God is. The research he has done finds that many people think of God as a feeling or an idea but not as a personal God who can be known. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has seen our culture shifting away from traditional Christian teaching. While this is troubling enough, the author suggests that churches will respond to this in the same way it has always done - by reinventing themselves to meet the expectations and desires of the culture. Of course, we have already seen this as mainline churches have become more liberal in their theology and evangelical churches have moved away from much of their traditional views to be more accepting to "seekers." Go into many churches today and you will be hard pressed to know if you are in a worship service or a self-help seminar.

The church is to impact the culture in which it lives, not allow the culture to shape it into something it prefers. The New Testament church had such an impact on its culture it became known as the people who turned the world upside-down. That could not be said of today's church. Instead, the world has turned the church upside-down. Too many churches seek to be politically correct rather than doctrinally sound. We prefer to tickle the ears of our supporters than to speak biblical truth that lives might be changed. If our culture is dysfunctional as many claim, the church is an enabler for that dysfunction. Smoke machines and strobe lights on the stage won't cure our culture's dysfunctions. Only the power of God can do that, and until the truth of God's Word is boldly proclaimed in the church and marketplace His power will not be experienced.

For years we have been warned that the church must not violate the separation of church and state. For those who do not know their history, the First Amendment was written to keep the government out of the church, not to keep the church out of government or the public arena. It is a lie that says that the church cannot be involved in public affairs or speak to the moral issues facing our culture. For too long we have bowed down to those liberal organizations who seek to silence the church and Christian people in order to promote their own evil ideas and beliefs.

Our nation is facing serious problems, and until the Christian church is prepared to address them they will only get worse. Someone asked me earlier this week what God had to say to those nations that turned from following Him. He nodded as I said that those nations would not survive. I then went on to remind him that those nations were always destroyed from within before they destroyed from invaders from without. We are seeing that internal destruction occurring today. If our nation is to be saved the church must begin to pray, repent of its sins, seek the face of God, and boldly proclaim His word to the nation.