More Mindless Travel Blogging

I never read USA Today except for when a hotel employee puts it outside my door for "free." An article in today's edition about an on-plane dating service gave me a chuckle, particularly this closing paragraph:

With airline load factors running high, Shankman acknowledges that switching seats at the gate could mean that one of the "matched" parties ends up in the loathsome middle seat.

"You're not going to go from coach to first (class) or from 34A by the bathroom to an exit row. But if you're with someone you want to talk to, it doesn't matter," says Shankman, who is unmarried. "If a beautiful woman e-mailed me and said, 'I want to sit next to you,' I would chew off my right arm to sit in 34B."

Eat your heart out, Eharmony.

P.S. I promise I will post something substantial—eventually.

This Is Insignificant; Don't Waste Time Reading It

Just for fun, another prediction: President Bush will nominate Justice Janice Rogers Brown to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court by the end of the day Monday. I have a rationale for this prediction, but I won't make you read it and wish you could get those 45 seconds of your life back.

Travel Blogging

I don't do much of the "diary-blogging" stuff, but a couple things struck me on my trip west today that I just wanted to blather about for my own amusement if no one else's. First, the airline I flew on today was apparently bought out by another yesterday. So we were told when the gate attendant announced the new name to our surprise. But after sitting through various delays caused by fuel pumps that wouldn't pump, electrical glitches, and autopilot warning lights (don't they know how to fly them manually anymore?), I concluded that whatever the purchasing airline paid was, well, too much. Even if it did get to keep its own name.

A few minute ago I checked into my name-brand hotel. Most of you who travel have seen the "Reuse your towels . . . blah, blah, blah . . . water is precious, save the planet" stuff. Now my hotel feels compelled to assure me that "Your bed linens are fresh when you arrive." Did I miss something, or isn't that supposed to be understood? I had my doubts before, but the fact that this hotel thinks they have to convince me they change the sheets reminds me altogether my reaction when I hear a preacher say, "Now this is a true story . . ."

But How Did They Know It Was God's Will?

This article about why pastors change churches reveals something. I'm just not sure what. Here's the portion that perked my attention:

Ellison Research president Ron Sellers says only a small minority of pastors said they moved to another church primarily because of God's will. "Pastors are not saying that they are ignoring what God wants for them and doing whatever they want," he explains. "What we are seeing is that only 12 percent of them simply said the primary reason they moved was that God wanted them in a different place. But, at the same time, it really is a difficult balance between ministry and career." . . . On the other hand, the researcher notes, "Southern Baptists were twice as likely as average to change jobs simply because they had heard God's call and felt God's leading to move to a different church." The survey also found that Southern Baptist ministers are more likely than average to have held multiple positions over their years in the ministry.

I have to wonder exactly how some pastors "heard God's call and felt God's leading to move." I suppose they must have had peace about it. Just for fun sometime, categorize the use of the words "call," "called," and "calling" in the NT and see how many of them refer to each of: salvation, sanctification, the calling of Paul to be an apostle, the calling of a believer to a particular vocation, and the calling of a believer to vocational ministry.

Suffering and Missions

Several factors have coincided in recent weeks to cause me to reflect on the contented obesity and apathy of so many American professing Christians. One of those factors is reading Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions by John Piper. Chapter 3, "The Supremacy of God in Missions Through Suffering," has been particularly rebuking to me. Here are a few statements that were most poignant to me:

[Concerning Matthew 13:44] The extent of his sacrifice and the depth of his joy display the worth he puts on the treasure of God. Loss and suffering, joyfully accepted for the kingdom of God, show the supremacy of God’s worth more clearly in the world than all worship and prayer. (p. 71)*

The domestication of cross-bearing into coughs and cranky spouses takes the radical thrust out of Christ’s call. (p. 74)

We must not water down the call to suffer. We must not domesticate the New Testament teaching on affliction and persecution just because our lives are so smooth. (p. 76)

Christ died for us so that we would not have to die for sin, not so that we would not have to die for others . . . The call to suffer with Christ is not a call to bear our sins the way he bore them but to love the way he loved. (p. 77)

If he must, God will use the suffering of his devoted emissaries to make a sleeping church wake up and take risks for God.(p. 90)

Comfort and ease and prosperity and safety and freedom often cause a tremendous inertia in the church. (p. 95) [This quote reminded me of a comment I heard some time ago from a godly parent who had sent a child off to a Christian college who was grateful because the child was "safe and happy." The comment was well-intentioned, but I wonder if it betrays the temptation towards a subtle acceptance of a love for this world.]

God ordains suffering because through all the other reasons it displays to all the world the supremacy of His worth above all treasures . . . Suffering with joy proves to the world that our treasure is in heaven, not on earth, and that this treasure is greater than anything the world has to offer. The supremacy of God’s worth shines through the pain that his people will gladly bear for his name. (p. 99)

What proves that the giver is precious is the glad-hearted readiness to leave all his gifts to be with him. (p. 101)

God is calling us to be conduits of his grace, not cul-de-sacs. Our great danger today is thinking that the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn’t. Copper will do. No matter how grateful we are, gold will not make the world think that our God is good; it will make people think that our God is gold. That is no honor to the supremacy of his worth. (p. 102)

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. And the supremacy of that glory shines most brightly when the satisfaction that we have in him endures in spite of suffering and pain in the mission of love. (p. 107)

*Page numbers taken from the second edition.

Ordinary Preaching

Yesterday afternoon I reflected on the text of the morning sermon at my church, 1 Corinthians 2:1–5. In this passage Paul seems to make two points about his approach to preaching the Gospel.

First, Paul says that he avoided oratorical and philosophical flourishes in order to maximize the knowledge of the crucified Christ. Second, he ministered to the Corinthians in weakness and without persuasive argumentation so that their faith would rest not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God alone.

I heard a second or third-hand report about a pastor who manuscripts his sermons to minimize their oratorical impact. I know him to be an unusually gifted communicator, and I have no doubt that he could leave the congregation in awe of his homiletical skills. Yet, he has made the uncommon choice to limit his persuasive powers so that the impact of the message preached will be grounded in the power of the Spirit, not in his tactical ability to "draw the net."

A MacArthur Study Bible note succinctly describes this attitude: "There were no theatrics or techniques to manipulate people's response. [Paul's] fear and shaking was because of the seriousness of his mission."

How refreshing to think of Paul's strategy to make himself so small and obscure! He seems intentionally to have minimized his own personality and apostolic authority so that they would fade in contrast to the blazing light of the glory of Christ in the gospel he preached. How at odds would Paul be with our modern concept of "power in the pulpit," which often refers more to the personality or technique of the preacher than to any sense that lasting spiritual fruit is a supernatural work of God that no human can invoke.

The Sox, the Nats, and the Chaplains [or] Locker Room Access at What Price?

I read two constrasting stories over the past two days about evangelical Christianity in Major League Baseball. The Sox article is interesting and maybe even encouraging; the Nats article is disappointing but hardly surprising.

I found this section from the Sox article most interesting:

"I'm learning through Christ that I can become the kind of person I want to become," [Bill] Mueller, who also won the 2003 AL batting title, said on the DVD. "That's more fulfilling to me than any batting title or World Series."

[Trot] Nixon said in an intervew that he felt a brief sense of emptiness the day after winning the World Series because he had placed such a high priority on the achievement.

"I knew I had to put God on that pedestal [instead]," Nixon said.

Day, who also serves as chaplain for the Patriots, has seen a common theme among professional athletes who turn to God.

"Some of these guys get everything they think they always wanted in life at a young age and then find that it still leaves them a bit empty," he said. "They become more open to spiritual things and it can lead to a personal relationship with God."

Concerning the Nats article, the growing trend of punishing chaplains who affirm the exclusivity of Christ is just further evidence that the only thing American culture forbids Christians to believe is that what they believe is actually true. I wonder how many chaplains in athletics or any other venue exchange the gospel for ongoing access.

Yoga and Youth Ministry

Some folks will see this as a big problem. To them, when "a leading Christian publisher of youth ministry material" is teaching youth leaders to incorporate New Age activities into their churches in order to invite "direct experiences with God," it's a big problem.

Forgive me, but I'm not that concerned about it.

Why? Simply because I doubt that very many churches that are now committed to the sufficiency of Scripture are likely to abandon it impulsively in favor of yoga, transcendental meditation, and centering "prayers." I suspect that this sudden love for ancient exercises of "spirituality" is simply a reaction to the already-present-but-only-now-recognized emptiness in youth ministry grounded in feelings, felt needs, friends, and fun. Is yoga bad for the Church? Sure, but it's just a symptom, not the cancer itself.

I wonder if this trend is arising because young people are bright enough to figure out what their purpose-driven youth pastor is only beginning to sense—that their shepherd has no clue how to find clean, thirst-quenching water. That their shepherd only seems to find stale, putrid pools of storm run-off. That their shepherd has never learned for himself that his soul must thirst to know and worship the God of the Word, not the god conjured by the imaginations of the fallen mind. The bad news is that these New Age shepherds are only taking the sheep to another dirty puddle.

This might be a good thing. Maybe—just maybe—a few pastors will sprout some discernment when they see that some of the leaders in youth minstry are leading, but in the wrong direction. Or maybe I'm just an optimist.

Finally: The Best Bible News I've Heard This Year!

MacArthur Study Bible coming in NASB.

I hate to ask, but would the fire of gratitude be dying on the altar of my heart if I put in a request for the ESV too?

Online Directory to Discussions of Baptism and Membership

Ardel Caneday has compiled a directory to online conversations about Bethlehem Baptist's Church's move toward changing its requirements for baptism prior to church membership.

HT: Justin Taylor at Reformation 21 Blog

By the way, Caneday is the co-author with Tom Schreiner of the best book I've ever read that no one knows about—The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance and Assurance. Schreiner and Caneday have given us a great gift in their thorough exegesis of biblical passages about the certainty and necessity of progressive sanctification. If you want to understand the warning passages in Hebrews and other texts, your study will be incomplete without reading this book. It's not an easy read, but it will be a worthwhile investment.