The Gates Are Open

My Brother Speaking on his Son's Death

2008-06-11T17:00:00.001-07:00

As some of you know, my brother Dave lost his son in a dreadful car accident last November. In this interview on Canadian news broadcast tells how he is dealing with his loss

We Have Officially Moved

2008-05-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

My friend Vince has convinced me. I am moving this Blog over to Wordpress. There is so much more I can do there. Please click here to be redirected, or if you want to make maximum use of those typing skills, go to natomaschurch.wordpress.com.

Mike

Memorial Day for a Called Man

2008-05-24T19:11:00.000-07:00

I am sorry for the fuzzy quality of this picture, but all I had time to do was grab my camera phone and make this. On thursday afternoon, I had the awesome privilege of taking part in the ordination interview for Ted R. who will soon be serving the Lord as a military chaplain. Ted was interviewed for 3 grueling hours as we went through every aspect of biblical knowledge, theology and practical ministry. Ted came through it all with flying colors (after all, these colors don't run) and exemplified himself as a man that can lead other men in their spiritual walk.

This Memorial Day, remember Ted and his wife as they embark on this courageous career. Pray for them and their three kids that they can make the transition from Church life (Youth Pastor for 14 years) to military life. This picture is Ted receiving the oath of office from a senior chaplain. God bless you Ted!

WDDJD

2008-05-21T08:33:00.001-07:00

In actual words…What Devotions Did Jesus Do? By "devotions", I mean that spiritual moment or time when we spend time with God, whether by reading Scripture, praying, worshipping or even appreciating aspects of his creation. It can include disciplines (like Contemplation or Solitude), attitudes (Confession or Thanksgiving) and even actions (Journaling, kneeling, imagining). These are all human creations to attempt to solidify our tenuous-feeling working relationship with our Creator.

Jesus, the one who was both God and Man, spent time solidifying that Daddy-Son intimacy. Since he is completely human as we are, he felt those moments of isolation and responded to them with discipline and a process of thinking through the day. So what "devotional life" did Jesus have?

My favorite glimpse into his life with Abba comes in Matthew 4. I won't take time to deal with the entire section, but the first part of Jesus' encounter with the Father of Lies (satan) in the wilderness shows us something of his life with God. Jesus has just spent 40 days alone with the Spirit of God. This time followed his incredible filling with the Spirit at his baptism and the earth-shaking voice of the Father who said "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased". But that was 40 days ago, and as all of us face, Jesus cannot recapture the words spoken over a month ago. Every day has a new impact and even yesterday's exciting victories ring hollow in the face of attack and hunger.

In verses 2 and 3 of Matthew 4 it says

2After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

The word "tempter" means "tester". As I noted a few weeks ago, this is satan's role: he is the Proctor, he delivers our tests. We prove who we are through these tests. He designs the tests individually for each of us. This test was for Jesus. It was not as simple as it sounds. Jesus heard the Father, saw the Spirit come down on him. Felt the baptism. But our humanity is frail. He cannot hold onto that memory. Now satan wants to see if he will doubt the Truth of Abba's words.

Here is what Jesus answered:

4Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

His answer can seem glib on paper, but it reveals so much at the first level down below the bare words. First, this quote is from Deuteronomy 8. In fact, every answer that Jesus gives to the Proctor is from Deuteronomy, chapters 6-8. They didn't have chapters in those days, so let's just say it came from the same general region in the same historical book. Coincidence? Hardly. You don't have these answers unless they are recently familiar to you. I get a kick out of teachers who look at this section and tell people this is a takeaway suggesting we memorize Scripture. Don't bother. The Proctor knows the Bible better than you do. Simply quoting the Bible back to him when your heart hasn't processed Truth and embraced it won't pass this test.

Second, Jesus' understanding of the Truth in Deuteronomy 8 was deeper than just quoting something to do with Bread. The passage in Deut. 8 speaks of Manna and humbling. To go out every day and collect bread in the desert and have to rely completely on God to feed them was humbling in the sense that they had to completely rely on him. Jesus got that! He is telling the Proctor that if God tells him to turn the stones into bread, he will do it. But not a second before. What an incredible answer. He also uses the word "word" correctly in Greek. The Greek word is rhema, which means a message intended for a specific reason, situation or person. If God told Jesus directly to turn the stones into bread that day, for a particular purpose and for God's glory, then, and only then, would Jesus do it.

Do you prepare yourself in the Scriptures that way? It means bringing the Spirit into that time and preparing your heart with Truth that can be lived (as opposed to Truth that is just memorized to win a discussion). Then when the test comes, you will pass the essay questions as well as the fill in the blank ones.

This Was the Church to Be at On Mother's Day

2008-05-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

I love the group that hangs at our church. It is an awesome group doing the Journey together. But I have to give props when they are deserved. I was swinging through a few blogs I love and their links lead me to a few more links and then I found this church. It's the New Spring Church in Anderson, SC. Here is a sampling from this blog page recounting the Mother's Day events:

Today we saw the church be the church!
We gave a handicapped accessible van away to a mom & her family.
We gave away a house to a single mom…AND informed her that we were paying her utility bills for the next year to help her get on her feet.

It gives me a lot of ideas, and maybe you too. What would you give away next year on Mother's Day to a deserving mother?

The Largest Church in the World

2008-05-12T11:49:00.001-07:00

At least, this video, produced to give some idea of Oprah's religious beliefs, claims she leads the largest church in the world. Though I wouldn't go so far as to call her group a "church", she certainly wields a lot of influence. Her particular brand of religion is actually called "New Thought" and one should research it carefully before accepting Oprah's belief system carte blanche.

Gift Transference is A Disease

2008-05-07T14:09:00.001-07:00

Years ago, I was having lunch with one of my mentors and he began talking of the concept of Gift Transference. Paul mentioned how much he hated when people did it to him, but despised it even more when he did it to others. He explained what it was, but I confess I didn't truly understand it for awhile. I don't think I grasped its nature until someone did it to me, and then I realized how much I laid it on others.

So what is gift transference? Simply, it is the act of assuming that others should desire all the gifts and callings of God that we possess. In addition, it is the tendency to believe that our own ministry and burdens should be of primary importance to everyone. By this definition, Gift Transference is temporary self-absorption. With some people, it becomes permanent. Like most manifestations of self-absorbed Pride, Gift Transference is so hard to see in ourselves and incredibly annoying when we encounter it in others.

For me, the learning process started with a revival. I don't mean "revival meetings" where we announce to the world on a bumper sticker or a mailer that God is going to show up on particular dates and at a place of our choosing. I mean real revival, where God shows up wherever He feels like it, whenever He desires, and turns the Church upside down. Usually in revival there is a lot of repentance, miracles, signs and wonders and a lot of God's Presence. This revival turned my world inside out and I had to rethink everything I knew about God's Power and Presence. It may sound strange to say, but after 18 months of revival going on in our town (a time when over 400 people became Christians in our congregation alone) I actually began to get used to God's Presence and manifestations of power. I don't mean that I took God for granted as much as I stopped shaking every time I felt God.

During the end of that season, I moved my focus away from evangelism and power back to Counseling and Pastoring. After all, these are the callings God has laid on my shoulders. I stopped focusing on revival every day of the week and got back to the more mundane, but necessary, aspects of leading the Church. During that season, those who wanted to see God's revival power touch even more people began to reach out to other communities and congregations with the message of holiness and renewal. I had no problem whatsoever with that. But then they began to chastise me because I didn't want to go with them everywhere to minister God's power. They accused me of quenching the Spirit of God. They were annoyed that I would "play church" while God was doing something tremendously important. In short, they could not see anything beyond revival. Revival and its fruit were all that mattered to them, and anyone who could not see this was "out of touch with God".

I admit, it hurt deeply and I consciously stopped associating with the people who did this. I even acted as if revival didn't matter any longer. Of course, that isn't true; revival means as much to me now as it ever did. But I was reacting to Gift Transference and the implication that I was out of touch with God because I didn't go along with their viewpoint. I stopped trusting anyone who talked about revival, I deliberately ignored things that were going on around the country which hinted at more revival and avoided preaching on topics that might lead to a human-inspired repetition of the things we had experienced during days of God's Power. It was a wrong reaction and I have since re-embraced what God did during those days. But I didn't forget that ugly feeling I had when certain people laid their schtick on me.

I only wish I had never done that to anyone else. But lately God has fastened my gaze on the many formats in which I have used my Pride to practice Gift Transference. I have employed it with beliefs about: Cell Church, Full Gospel teachings, Hearing God's voice, Prayer and Intercession and most lately, the Unity of the church. It is not just that I have a burden for each of these foci. There is nothing wrong with that. But I find that I can look at anyone who does not feel as burdened as I am as out of touch with God in that area. I see a disease that creeps in my heart when I do that: an attitude of superiority that relegates other people to the place where I heap scorn. I do. I scorn people in my heart who will not or cannot see the burden I see.

What happens when I do that? God drifts away from being involved in my thoughts and stops giving me input in my burdens. Therefore, I have to carry the burden alone and it no longer feels like a light burden. Believe me, it is not worth it.

Search your own heart. Where do you practice Gift Transference? It is in parenting, marriage, your job, your ministry, your burdens, your theology, with money, with computer ability, with politics? Notice the creep of attitude sickness?

Some Children are Smarter

2008-05-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

We are entering a new era in Education in this country; unfortunately, the reason for this emergence into unknown territory is quite by accident.

The "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2002 required that by 2014, all children in the public school system reach a mean average in ability. That means that all children are legally required to become average by 2014. You can immediately see that this is one of two things: a) Mathematically impossible, since "average" means you are in the statistical middle and you can't have the middle as the bottom standard; or b) Philosophically impossible, since you cannot achieve a goal when it ignores societal relationships and the fallen nature of man. "No Child Left Behind" assumes that all children are relatively on the same playing field with regards to ability.

As we study how far we have come since 2002 in achieving the goals set in the act, the realities are depressing. We are at a statistical dead-heat: we have not progressed at all, especially in math. Perhaps the reason is that we are ignoring a simple fact. Some kids are smarter than others and some will never do well in school by any measuring rod (other than the mother's measuring rod where she sees all of her children with rose-colored glasses). But we don't like to come to that conclusion. Why? Because we want to hold onto the concept that all students can achieve academic success.

Three studies have helped to foster this idea. First came the landmark book "Pygmalion in the Classroom" which claimed to study children and teachers and found that when teachers were told their students were smart, the children's grades improved. When they were told they were stupid, their test grades dropped. Hence, it is not the ability of the student that determines what the grades will be, it is the expectation of the teacher. The problem that has emerged from this study in years since is that it has never been shown to be repeatable by other researchers. There is no doubt that teacher expectations can have an effect for a year or two, but not over the life of a person.

The second study taught that poor self-esteem lead to poorer grades. But since that 1982 study came out, it has been clearly shown that good self-esteem does not raise grades with anyone! That was depressing, but it is reality.

The final study is not wrong, just not helpful. It showed that most kids have abilities in some area, but not always in language and math. This has been shown to be consistently true, but most schools are not equipped (and may never be) to train in the arts, cooking, relational skills and building trades that would release kids to their full potential. Also, we have been told that the only real route to success in America is through a college degree and a vocational plan. To alter that stereotype is going to take decades if it happens at all.

Charles Murray, writing in the "New Criterion" has a simpler answer:

Educational romanticism characterizes reformers of both Left and Right, though in different ways. Educational romantics of the Left focus on race, class, and gender. It is children of color, children of poor parents, and girls whose performance is artificially depressed, and their academic achievement will blossom as soon as they are liberated from the racism, classism, and sexism embedded in American education. Those of the Right see public education as an ineffectual monopoly, and think that educational achievement will blossom when school choice liberates children from politically correct curricula and obdurate teachers’ unions.

In public discourse, the leading symptom of educational romanticism is silence on the role of intellectual limits even when the topic screams for their discussion. Try to think of the last time you encountered a news story that mentioned low intellectual ability as the reason why some students do not perform at grade level. I doubt if you can. Whether analyzed by the news media, school superintendents, or politicians, the problems facing low-performing students are always that they have come from disadvantaged backgrounds, or have gone to bad schools, or grown up in peer cultures that do not value educational achievement. The problem is never that they just aren’t smart enough....
There is much more to be said about these harms (and I have said it, in a book that will appear in a few months). For now, it is enough to recognize that educational romanticism asks too much from students at the bottom of the intellectual pile, asks the wrong things from those in the middle, and asks too little from those at the top. It short-changes all of them.

Read the full article (much of which I have summarized already for you) here.

Review of William Young's "The Shack"

2008-05-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

This is a reprint of a review that I did on Goodreads about this book. What started out as a minor sensation has evolved into a Christian Bestseller. I also welcome the comments of others who have read it and want to make their views known here.

So many of my friends have recommended this book that I knew I would read it and feel strongly about it. That's an understatement. (btw....there are no Spoilers in this review).

Before I began reading, I wanted so much to like this book. Partly because I respected the friends who recommended it and partly because this is the author's first book. As some of you know, I personally believe that most authors have one great book in them and it is often their first (see Tracy Chevalier and J. K. Rowling). That is why I was somewhat disappointed with my reading of the first few chapters. . He overwrites like an inexperienced author. Specifically, he uses too many deliberate similes and altogether too many adjectives. In fact, on the same page he uses three different similes to describe the wind. Can it really be a food group and a sigh at the same time? I digress.

He also gets "cutsie" with his description of the main character Mack. The author needs to choose a voice to speak from. The third person omnipotent is not working for him. If you're not familiar with that POV, it is the tendency to describe what every character is thinking. Usually writers choose third person specific, meaning they know the thoughts of only one person. But later the author figures this out and sticks with the main character and lets him discover the story as it happens. So, I guess my main criticism is that the author is not a tremendously skilled writer.

Therefore, a quarter of the way through the book I was ready to be done with it. Then I was delightfully surprised by what happened next. It seems he did an about-face as soon as he came to the heart of the story. After the tragedy that forms the spine of the tale, he tightens up the writing and I never noticed the shortcomings after that. It is like the author himself really just wanted to get to this point in the story and realized the book wouldn't make sense and would be too short without the introductory part. So be it. From this point on, I was enthralled. His meeting with God and the subsequent discoveries of God's character and the meaning of the events he has recently lived are gripping in their poignancy. At one point near the end I actually was in tears. It may be 20 years back to the last time a book brought me to tears. I ended the book totally satisfied.

The reader should note that this book is not a theological work. It falls into the same category as Frank Peretti's "This Present Darkness" in its theological importance. The point of "The Shack" is the reconciliation of the main character with God. It is not a book about Goddess worship, hierarchy within the Trinity, or the personification of Wisdom as a fourth member of the Godhead. Many have criticized Young for these, but in so doing they miss the point of the story. This is a personal encounter between God and one man. It is not supposed to represent every man.

Allow me to take one or two more liberties in criticizing a book I really enjoyed. As much as I appreciated the folksy presentation of God in this story, there are parts that don't work. Holy Spirit still feels ethereal and standoffish. Wisdom's speeches are canned and the meals they eat together get repetitive and slow the story down. Major editing could have made this one of the great new books of Christianity. He could easily have left the Afterward on the shelf and not missed it at all. Because of these things, I doubt anyone outside Christianity will read past the first few chapters. That's a pity, but it is true. It is not written well enough and there are still too many obviously contrived parts to the plot to make it seem real to someone who is bent on criticizing Christian writers.

Some of my friends who love this book will really be annoyed that I am being over-analytical. But that is what a proper book review is about. These things need to be said in order to balance the attitude which says we must exalt anything with a good message. This is a phenomenal message hiding in a slightly below average package.

May Day Celebrating

2008-05-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

Every Sunday, we went through a religious ritual in our house. All hushed and all unnecessary activity ended. It was the hour for The Wonderful World of Disney. At 7 p.m. all of us, including my mom and dad, waited for that explosion of fireworks and the Disney castle which signaled the show's opening. The others hoped it would be a movie or a cartoon. I wanted one of the nature documentaries.

You remember those don't you? The narrator had the greatest folksy faux-texas/colorado accent you could imagine. You instantly trusted anything he said. And it was like he knew those bear cubs or the raccoon family personally.

One of my favorite lines in some of those documentaries was this one that he would croon out: "Springtime came late to the Rockies".

I've lived in those Rockies. And it is true that Spring arrives later there than most habitable places in North America. Spring starts in March in Vancouver, February in Northern California and January 1st in San Diego. But the rule of thumb we had in the mountains of B.C. or Montana was that you didn't plant your flowering annuals or vegetables until Memorial Day (so you could avoid the last killing frost). When I moved to Sacramento, I asked my neighbor when she planted her bedding plants. "Usually on a Saturday" she answered as she walked away. She kept looking back at me occasionally as she walked to her house, slowly shaking her head.

Obviously she didn't understand Springtime where I grew up.

May Day, May 1st if you will, was always the harbinger of Spring and then summer for us. But even if it isn't that for where you grew up, it is still a day of new possibilities. Life is flashing out all around us. Taxes are paid, it isn't too hot to golf, fish or go for a long hike, the kids can see the end of the school year but they aren't so antsy as to prevent them from learning the occasional morsel of truth. The only real casualties of May Day are the college students either writing exams or anticipating them.

But you can't ruin May Day for me; even those years I had exams I loved the promise of this month. Traditionally May is known as the month of music around the world. And I love music. May Day celebrations are often called Music Month celebrations. Even the old Celtic holiday Beltane was dedicated more to music than to anything else. It was the day the old Irish would send out their flocks to the summer pastures to get big and fat. They would send them on their way with music and laughter. What a picture for those of us who follow God. This is a day that could celebrate the sending out of the Flock to pastures outside the safety of our comfort zones.

What can you venture out into today that you enjoy and that will bring the joy of the Lord into your life? That would be a May Day question.

Unfortunately, I looked for songs that celebrate May, and outside of a few celtic ballads, I couldn't find any. So I opted for the next best thing. I looked at what was on the Hit Parade the May I graduated from High School. Here was the music that tipped the scales on the May Day of my youth. By the way, no one celebrates the coming of May like a graduating High School Senior. In honor of that day, here are the top ten songs of May 1975.

1. Black Water - The Doobie Brothers
2. I'm Not in Love - 10cc
3. Saturday Night - Bay City Rollers
4. Jive Talkin' - The Bee Gees
5. Get Down Tonight - KC and the Sunshine Band (technically, this is an April song but it was so popular it kept going in May)
6. Have You Never Been Mellow - Olivia Newton-John
7. Laughter in the Rain - Neil Sedaka
8. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - Elton John
9. Thank God I'm a Country Boy - John Denver (yeucchhh)
10. The Boys are Back in Town - Thin Lizzy

In honor of May Day, I went on Rhapsody and loaded these ten songs into today's long-walk hit parade. I can hardly wait to take the dog out on the run and listen to these old May melodies. I may even listen to John Denver.

What songs were popular in May the year you graduated?

UPDATE: Beltane is also International Labor Day and therefore it would be more than appropriate to just stop working and enjoy the day. Thus saith the Lord.

Name This Rose

2008-04-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

There are those occasions when I get peopled out and I have to get alone to meditate and enjoy the non-human forms of life. I have chosen to cultivate and work with roses in our garden, among other things.

First prize to the one who can identify this climbing rose that is currently showing off by my fence. I know the answer, but do you?

And yes, this is just one rose variety. That should be enough hint for the real rose-ophiles.

The Truth About Angels

2008-04-15T20:02:00.001-07:00

I think there are some basic misunderstandings about the nature of angels and especially those angels that are mentioned as our enemies. I see this misunderstanding in many places – when people are praying, when they instruct children, when they ask questions about spiritual warfare etc. Not knowing the facts can hurt our lives deeply and also cause us to fight battles that should not be fought. Hold onto your seats for a very quick guided tour to those spiritual beings known as Angels.

They seem to already be in existence when we were created and there are many who believe they are the first of the created beings in this Universe. Who knows? It never says so in the Bible, but when Adam and Eve were the entire population of the first Garden on this planet, there was already an angel there. So what do we know about angels for sure? Hebrews chapter one gives us many clues about angels…but one of the clues is a startling revelation to say the least. In v. 14 we read "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?". The question, of course, is rhetorical. In the original Greek language, the answer "yes" is anticipated to the question. That means we can confidently assert that ALL angels are ministering spirits. That word "all" is not just hyperbole. It really means all. And if it means "all", then it also includes Lucifer, an angel we sometimes refer to as satan.

Think about that: satan is a ministering spirit. Not only that, but his job is to serve those who will inherit salvation. He is sent to serve mankind. But how is that possible since he is also called our Adversary, Enemy and Father of Lies? This is where the misunderstandings begin. Because he is called our Adversary, we naturally assume it is not possible for him also to be our servant. Servants don't usually oppose their masters, do they? Well, it never says that we are his masters. God is his master and he must serve God whether he likes to or not.

In Job 1 we read:

6 One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"
Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."

The words "present themselves before the Lord" literally mean "made an accounting before the Lord". God makes all angels account for their actions and their whereabouts. That includes satan apparently. Satan can also come into the presence of the Lord and speak with God. And he has to obey God. In this account in Job, satan asks to attack Job, but God puts restrictions on that attack. God shows Himself clearly to be the master and satan the servant. But some would say that this is simply a passive service. Is it? Well, let's look at a few other examples of other fallen angels to see if this trend continues.

In 1 Kings 22 we read "

"Therefore hear the word of the LORD : I saw the LORD sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. 20 And the LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?'
"One suggested this, and another that. 21 Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
22 " 'By what means?' the LORD asked.
" 'I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,' he said.
" 'You will succeed in enticing him,' said the LORD. 'Go and do it.'
23 "So now the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The LORD has decreed disaster for you."

The Lord allowed a spirit to be a lying spirit. Another time, he allowed another unclean spirit to be a "deceiving spirit" in the kingdom. King Saul had to deal with an "oppressive spirit" from the Lord. It seems that there are numerous examples of unclean, fallen spirits still being used by God to accomplish God's purposes. But why would God use such evil and fallen creatures to do His work?

In the wilderness experience of Jesus, we see a hint as to satan's continuing existence. He comes to Jesus in Matthew 4 to "tempt him". The word in Greek for tempt is "peiradzo" which means "to test". The testing that our enemy, our adversary brings is a test to see if we will be obedient to God. Jesus passed the test with flying colors. Many times we do not. In essence then, satan is the Proctor of the test that God wants to bring to us in order to see if we will be obedient in all things. We are told in Scripture that "to obey is better than sacrifice". There is no way to obey unless there is an opportunity to disobey. Since all humans are free agents, we must therefore be tested to see if our free choice will line up with God's will for our lives. And the best thing is that we can learn from these tests and clearly grow through them. Testing can be one of the best learning environments there is.

This is why Paul can say on two separate occasions in the New Testament that he was handing certain people over to satan. He did not do this because he hated them and wished for satan to torture them. Satan cannot do anything that God will not allow. Paul hands people over to satan to be tested and taught…in one case, to be taught not to blaspheme. Our adversary is a very good teacher for sure. We have nothing to fear from him for God has put him on a short leash.

A Cool Stewardess

2008-04-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

The stewardess had us wave to dad out on the tarmac as he was working to direct the flight out of the gate. His 9 year old son was on-board the plane and was crying as he left. We all waved excitedly and dad hid some of his tears.

During the flight, the stewardess allowed the young man to help her with several of her in-flight chores. I was delighted to see that he did so with gusto and joy. As I gave my plastic cup to him and allowed him to put it in the garbage bag, he beamed with delight. I have no idea what the situation was with his dad and him, but her actions certainly lit up the life of this young man, helping him to put off his pain for awhile.

Kudos to you flying waitress in the sky. You made a difference in his life and showed the rest of us that a little act of kindness goes a long way.

Advice from an Old Husband

2008-04-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

The best part about boring airplane trips is that you can sit around and listen in on other people's conversations (especially when they think a tune is actually playing on your ipod). In a ten minute stretch of snooping around the floating conversations, I caught two younger husbands making some fundamental mistakes in their marital communication.

This got me thinking about the things I would have loved to know when I first got married that I should pass on to other men. If any of these is new to you, you're welcome, and please pass them on. None of these is meant to slam or in any way denigrate my wife. That last sentence is actually the first thing you should learn as a husband: Never slam or denigrate your wife. The old adage still stands - never piss off the person who helps prepare your food.

1. Never start a conflict after 9 p.m. This should be obvious, but you would be amazed how many men do it. For the most part, men are usually winding down mental acuity earlier in the evening than this and we don't stand a chance being good listeners at night. Plus, depending on your bed-time, you will weary of the battle and not accomplish anything before both of you are exhausted.

2. Looking after your children is not called "babysitting the kids". You put the seed into the equation, therefore you are a caregiver as much as your wife. Mutually shared exhaustion, especially in this day of mutually shared income, is a given. I never knew that and paid a medium-sized price for it.

3. You both can be good at different things and still be a couple. You don't have to do everything together, dress with the same colors and spout the same philosophy in life to have a good marriage. If both of you agree on everything, one of you is unnecessary. Also, you will annoy the crap out of the rest of us.

4. You don't have to tell your wife everything. Oh, I don't mean have dark secrets from her. What I mean is, you don't have to tell her about every person you're angry at and every person who is angry at you. Some things really are your yoke to bear in life...our wives tend to defend us if they sense we are being attacked. We might get over an imagined offense in a couple of days and wonder why, two years later, she doesn't want to hang out with that person.

5. It is okay to ask your wife if she is agreeable to having more sex. Just as it is okay for her to ask you the following:
a. Can you please shower first?
b. Can I wake up first?
c. Can I be warm, and assured that no one, including our children, will walk in on us?
d. Will your ego handle it if I don't react with delight after 14 hours of looking after little people with dirty hands?
e. Can we avoid any positions that require me to know the five basic ballet moves?

6. If she says she likes flowers, buy her lots of flowers. Don't ask why she likes them, just do it.

7. Don't let your wife put a scale in the bathroom, unless you want to deal with a regular bout of "I just need to lose five more pounds". If she owns one when you get married, then break it or set it back monthly. Remember, no one is sexier than the person who likes the body they currently have.

8. You ask her if you can pray together each evening. Don't make her ask. She will be in love with you forever if you do this.

9. Asking your wife ten straight questions when you are doing finances together is intimidating to her and usually ends up badly.

10. The phrase "all I said was" is a rationalization...always. If you want to communicate as well as she does, learn to recognize tones of voice, body language and timing...your own!

Beauty - Part 2

2008-03-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

Violet Blue, writing in the San Francisco Examiner, interviewed a Burlesque dancer who admitted the following:

“I have shared dressing rooms with thousands of ravishingly beautiful women over the last 12 years, and the one thing they all have in common is … none of them think they are beautiful enough. Our society teaches women to pick themselves to pieces, analyzing each and every feature individually and keeping a list in our minds of each and every perceived fault. No one comes out of this scenario feeling good, and when women are in this mind-set, nothing you can say will change the way they feel about themselves. Believe me, I’ve tried. (Have you noticed that most women will argue with you when you give them a compliment rather than just saying ‘thank you’?)

What is this "our society" that she criticizes as the real culprit? Some would say it is men who ogle women and comment on their physical attributes out loud as if they were examining horses at a sale. Others would say it is the millions of women who analyze models to death and love reality shows that parade "almost perfect" women to discover their flaws. Some blame their mothers, others their fathers. There are some who see advertising and television as the villains and still others who find the source of physical self-hatred in the school system.

Who is to blame?

Might it just be "beauty" itself? I think there is an existence or thing we can call "perfect beauty" which none of us attain. Just as there is a holiness that sin has put out of our reach (apart from the gift of God in Jesus), so too there is a beauty that we cannot get a hold of because sin has mostly ripped it away from us.

As I said last time, when man sinned, the consequence was that we were lead down a garden path. At the end of that path is an idea that the physical realm is the only reality. Or if not the only reality, the only reality that we can evaluate. The naturalist would say: "Prove the existence of any other reality and then I will believe". What they mean by that is "reduce any other reality to physical laws and I will accept it." That, of course, is ludicrous.

Keats said "Beauty is Truth and Truth, Beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." He did not mean Truth in the absolute sense, but naturally verified truth...as in "how many legs does a spider have" and "what colors are represented in this sunset". Being a naturalist, he believed that all matter is beauty.

Tell that to the burlesque dancer with legs that go on forever and she will ask "do these sequins make my butt look too big?" She doesn't believe all matter is beauty and I suspect that when Keats looked at other women as he was walking down the road with his wife, he didn't believe it either.

I do remember that moment I held my first child while his body was greasy with afterbirth and his lungs were filling up with air and emptying with wails for the first times. My wife was being cared for and the nursing staff rushed around oblivious to me and my son. I held John and looked into his eyes for the first time. There was nothing for me to see that was appealing. He looked like an overdone lobster. He was messy, noisy, squirmy, and he made me nervous. But for a moment, I saw another realm leaking through. There was a glimpse of beauty, a Shining that came through him. I was tied to him as tightly as my Father in Heaven is tied to me. All three of us were joined and I felt "beauty" as a reality. It was like that moment when looking into a "Magic Picture" where your focus catches the real picture. That is what happened when I caught Beauty in my soulsight.

Beauty lasts...it cannot fade, since it is permanent...but my focus went elsewhere after awhile. I have caught other glimpses of Beauty at the strangest moments. So have you.

Beauty Examined – Part 1

2008-03-26T20:42:00.001-07:00

A number of fascinating, coordinating searches have lead me back to the concept of beauty. I am beginning to learn that beauty is much more powerful a reality than I first imagined. The further I looked into it, the more complicated and ominous the subject became.

Take this verse in Psalm 27 for example:

Psalm 27:4

⁴One thing I ask of the Lord,

this is what I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to seek him in his temple.

David speaks of the "beauty of the Lord" as something he is seeking after in the house of the Lord. But what are we always told about beauty: That 'it' (beauty) is in the eye of the beholder. The implication is that all things can be beautiful if someone sees them that way. As prosaic as this subjective view of beauty really is, there is little to recommend that viewpoint. God Himself has beauty whether you or I agree upon it. God by definition is absolute and complete beyond any of our opinions. Therefore, there is beauty which exists apart from anyone's opinion of it. Evolutionary biologists suggest that beauty is found in being most average. Really? That is what they believe. For instance, there are 22 measurements of symmetry in the human body (ears, eyes, breasts, shoulders, legs, etc., etc.). The more these features are symmetrical, the more beautiful someone is perceived…even by babies. The more a person looks like the average person of that race or culture, the more they are perceived as beautiful…even by babies. (We can tell that babies find someone pleasing by their facial and vocal reactions). Symmetry and culturally normal features make beauty. But do they? God is spirit, yet God has a beauty that cannot be denied. Can something be beautiful even if no one acknowledges that beauty?

There is a theory that Eve had a dynamic beauty that took Adam's breath away. And I contend that Adam and Eve were more focused on the spirit realm bfore the fall of man than the physical (after all, once their eyes were opened, they saw the physical for the first time as important…they hid, the covered up etc.). Eve had a beauty that must have been more than physical, emanating from the deepest parts of who she was.

I was reading a book last week on Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), an all-too common emotional problem. With BDD, a person obsesses over one physical feature that they believe is damaged or marred, whether this is true or not. A classic example of this would be a pop singer who thinks their nose is ugly, so they go through surgery after surgery to correct it; and end up creating an ugly proboscis. BDD patients not only obsess over body parts, but they can think of little else. They are convinced everyone is staring at their nose, their hair, their breasts, their tummy, their skin all the time. Even when they actually have a deformity, if it isn't the same one that they have been obsessing on, they will ignore it and just focus on their supposed defect. It can destroy their school life, home life, love life. They are firmly encamped in the idea that they can never be beautiful or even normal. Beauty is always elusive to them. This obsession seems to have an ideal behind it: Is it possible that sufferers of BDD actually have an intuitive sense of beauty and are devastated because their fear and shame get in the way of finding it?

Is that what the daughters of Eve are always pining away for? Is that what the sons of Adam wish they could recapture? Is beauty a quality of life? And if it is, can we have it and not know it? Can we have it for awhile and lose it? Will we know it if we see it in others and in nature? Can it be found in nature? Is it found in all of nature? These are some of the questions that come up when I look at Beauty.

Internet Porn Panic Button

2008-03-25T16:08:00.001-07:00

If you aren't already familiar with it, the best resource for accountability in the use of the Internet is called "Covenant Eyes". This program is not designed to stop you from visiting a site (try looking up anything on "Breast Cancer" with NetNanny or SafeSurf") but rather it sends out a report each week on where you've been. There is virtually no way you can trick the program and get around it. For a very small fee each month, you can have your report sent to anyone…your spouse, your boss, your pastor, your counselor…or maybe even an accountability partner. I have my reports sent to two different people. Knowing that my wife and my accountability partner would be able to see everywhere I go on the Internet virtually eliminates the temptation for me.

But now, Covenant Eyes has another feature. It is called "The Panic Button". It is reserved for those people who still struggle with porn and are totally committed to removing it from their lives. As you use the Internet, if the temptation to view porn is too great, and you don't want to give in, you can hit the panic button and it will completely prevent you from using any part of the Internet. Then, when you feel your self-control returning, you can call them up and they will reset it in your computers.

Of course, I advocate getting Theophostic therapy for any addiction, but this is a good additional tool to help with the occasional mental slipups.

Back from the Dead

2008-03-19T09:44:00.001-07:00

In view of the message I am giving this Sunday on what we are told by one who comes back from the dead, we will go from the ridiculous to the sublime. Today, the ridiculous

Telling Part of My Story

2008-03-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not entirely sure if this blog entry will turn out to be instructive or cathartic. Perhaps a little of both. I'll tell you what I did first, what happened as a result, and then we can discuss together what it means.

Reading this book by Viola and Barna last week brought back memories of 1997. I spent a lot of that year working on a book I wanted to market on a similar theme as Pagan Christianity. I had been thinking for a long time about Christianity's American expression and not happy at all with what I saw. In particular, I took exception with how much American pastors were still playing the dominant role in church ministry and how individual members felt like second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God. This problem is nothing new: It has existed since the first century. On this point, Viola is accurate and astute. The concept of the Priesthood of all Believers has not worked out well in practice.

The book I decided to write was going to be called "Releasing God's People". At the time, I was still marketing my first book and doing radio interviews with stations across the country.

A Denver radio station asked to do a 15 minute interview with me which was to be followed up with listener questions. In the minutes before we started, the interviewer told me that they usually had one or two callers at that time in the morning and I shouldn't expect to be on the phone for more than 20 minutes total. During the first ten minutes of on-air time, we talked about my book on parenting techniques and he pretty much followed the "questions list" my publicist had sent him. At one point, he stopped and asked if I was working on any new projects at that moment. I blurted out that I was writing a book on "Releasing God's People" which would center on taking much of ministry out of the hands of the pastor and giving it back to the average disciple of Jesus. It was like I had woken the interviewer up with a slap on the face. He went from disinterested radio jock to curious enquirer. I should point out that this was not a religious radio station.

After ten minutes of questions, he opened it up to the listeners. From what he later told me, they had never had that kind of response. The phone lines were jammed with people wanting to ask questions of this "pastor guy". After almost an hour of the question/answer banter, the radio guy cut it off and finished his slot for the day. When we got off the air, he asked me if I would send him a copy of the book when it was done. I assured him I would send it upon its publication.

He never got a copy of the book. It was never published. The manuscript still sits in the bottom of a file drawer awaiting its day. I am going to explain the two reasons for that in a moment.

I was approximately 80% finished with the book when I did that interview. The portion I was working on not only was the most difficult, but also the section I felt the least amount of peace over. It was the part where I explained what I thought should be done. In preparation for one of the chapters, an idea occured to me. It seemed so brilliant at the time that I really didn't ask anyone if they thought it was a GOOD idea. That might have saved me a lot of anxiety.

Here was my idea. If anything was going to change, it probably needed to come from the people at the center of the problem: pastors. And if I was going to write a book about what I thought should change, I should be willing to lead the way. I still believe that. I just realize now that my idea was faulty. It didn't seem that way at the time, but it was.

Here is what happened. I was teaching a series on Ephesians 4 in preparation for presenting some of my new ideas on the role of the pastor. During the week before the message, I had taken a sign off my door. The sign had given my name and my title and was situated at the front right hand corner of the sanctuary. I took off the words "Senior Pastor" and just left my name there. Then, at the beginning of my message, I announced I was resigning as "The Pastor" of the church. After allowing the gasps and emotions to subside a bit, I then explained myself. I looked at the Scriptures concerning the role of leadership in the church and found that it is rare for one person to be called by God to lead alone. It did happen a few times in the Bible, but the more common pattern was for God to raise up many leaders and give them various degrees of spiritual authority. What I was "resigning" from was the idea that I was the only leader in the church, the only minister, the only real servant of the Lord, the only one who could be called "God's Anointed".

After that service concluded, several people came up to me with concerned and worried looking faces and told me "I love you Mike, but I don't think this is going to turn out well for all of us". Several of the people I saw as the most mature members of the Body shared this same opinion with me. I hate to say that my wife was one of them. In fact, the people who loved what I had to say the most were the scariest ones: The rebellious, goofy and immature. Immediately I had to ask "what have I done?"

The next year was a horror story for me and the church as a whole. As I sought to bring changes to the leadership structure of the church and to have those changes filter to every level of the church's experience, more and more incidents of sin, rebellion, and people trying to exert improper control over each other happened. In one year, 8 members of the church had to be disciplined for sinful behavior. We had only disciplined a half dozen in the 9 previous years. There was a huge split in the leadership team. A year later, half the board split off and formed their own church. The church voted to leave the fellowship of churches they had been a part of since their founding 16 years earlier. We had been the fastest growing church in town at that point and now we were shrinking like an iceberg in the Sahara.

And all I did was remove my title from the door. What harm could that have done? I mean, it was only a title, right?

Some of the wisest leaders in God's church that I know have pondered this situation with me. I have written several people whose books sell millions and who are acquaintances...and they have shared their wisdom. I have sought the Lord and He showed me some things. Ministry leaders, prayer warriors, worship leaders, deacons, elders, small group leaders, Bible College presidents and evangelists have weighed in on this situation. Their wisdom amounts to three principles that I didn't see the full value of at the time.

1. Human beings want God's authority vested in other human beings. This goes right back to Israel's first King. God didn't fight it...he realized we have trouble with being lead by the unseen God. The Bible is clear that God raises up leaders (even secular leaders) to bring his hand of order and discipline.

2. The spirit realm is all about authority. When someone relinquishes authority, there is a vacuum into which the enemy can work more freely. King David is the classic example of this when he committed adultery with Bathsheba after refusing to be the leader of the Army going into battle. Never were there more ominous words in the Bible than these: "It was the time that Kings went out to war, but David stayed home."

3. Rebellion is always waiting to show itself as soon as there is anarchy. You cannot have a group of people without a leader. For if you do not designate a leader by some means, the strongest and most power-centered person will take charge.

By not recognizing these three principles, I had caused God's church irreparable harm. I have publicly confessed that sin to that congregation almost before it was too late. God did repair some of the damage, but most of it remains to this day. I refused to finish that book and publish it as a result. I think I know what the answer can be. I am waiting for someone else to write it, since I believe I have lost my right to be the one to say it. May God raise that person up.

I Love How this Sounds

2008-03-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

Here is the 8th Psalm as translated in "The Message". I don't normally do this, but the word images are so crisp and poignant.

8 God, brilliant Lord,

yours is a household name.

² Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;

toddlers shout the songs

That drown out enemy talk,

and silence atheist babble.

^3–4 I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,

your hand-made sky-jewelry,

Moon and stars mounted in their settings.

Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,

Why do you bother with us?

Why take a second look our way?

^5–8 Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods,

bright with Eden’s dawn light.

You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,

repeated to us your Genesis-charge,

Made us lords of sheep and cattle,

even animals out in the wild,

Birds flying and fish swimming,

whales singing in the ocean deeps.

⁹ God, brilliant Lord,

your name echoes around the world.

Eugene H. Peterson, The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language, Ps 8:1-9 (Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress, 2002).

Apology is Needed

2008-03-17T16:51:00.000-07:00

I do want to apologize to readers of this blog for my vain attempts at humor regarding pastors. I admit that I don't do sarcasm well...and for that I am grateful. It does reveal to me that I have some issues with a few of my colleagues which would be better served by praying for them or talking to them...or both.

I have removed the entries that don't belong in this blog. That's the reason you no longer see them.

Now I've Read the Entire Book - Pagan Christianity

2008-03-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

After reading every word of PC, I feel a little better that my pre-review was pretty accurate. That also bothers me because it means that Viola and Barna are getting type-cast and predictable.

By way of background, there are a few things you need to know about the book. It doesn't just attack the role of the pastor, but almost everything about today's church. It attacks instruments in the service, worship services themselves, youth pastors, most contemporary ministry, charismatic churches, all clergy, all tithing, all contemporary study of the Bible, all Bible college, seminary and monastic education and practices. It even says that dressing nicely on Sunday is unbiblical. Wow! That's quite a list. Add to that their attacks on Sunday School, Communion, Baptism, teaching, public prayers, layout of the Bible, any logic whatsoever in a lecture, breathing, happiness and apple pie (I made those last three up...I was on a roll), and you can see that Viola and Barna really don't like anything to do with today's church. It is 300 pages of why today's church is wrong and needs to disappear and allow the Organic Church (unorganized, no leaders, no money, no influence etc.) to take its place.

Primarily, this is a book of inconsistencies. Because of these ones in particular, he has little credibility:

1. Viola and Barna Can't Live What they Preach: They teach that no one should make a living off of the body of Christ. But Viola makes a living off of his books and lectures...to the Body of Christ! And no one is given more money from Christians these days than the Barna Group. They would counter that they don't pressure people to give them money...they offer something for their services. So does today's pastor and youth director and counselor. Viola castigates anyone who calls themselves a spiritual "expert". But his biography in the back of the book says that he is the "nationally recognized expert in new trends in the church". They say that the church is unbiblical because all it cares about is marketing and image. But I find this curious. I've been saying that for years; but one of the books given to me to counter that notion was a volume titled "Marketing the Church"...by George Barna!!! In Pagan Christianity, he fails to mention that title in his resume. Viola also sees higher education as an impediment to true Christianity, but he himself has a college degree and makes mention of it on his website.

2. Overdependence on One Chapter: Viola is actually the writer of the book...Barna only adds his name to it and a short introduction. The book actually came out in 2002, but sold sporadically. Barna has now "seen the light" and wanted it to be more prominent, so he added his name to it. Notice that it took an individual leader with credibility and stature to give the book prominence. I thought they were against leaders. Oh sorry...they are just against leaders they don't like. Back to my point...they emphasize in many places that today's pastor takes Bible truths out of context and preaches their favorite soapboxes. Yet, most of the structure for the church they emphasize comes out of 12 verses in 1 Corinthians 14! They say that the existence of the pastor is negated because it is only found in Ephesians 4, yet they make much of a House church worship structure that is really only mentioned in 1 Corinthians 14. Inconsistent.

3. Reliance on Verses, not context: Viola criticizes today's church for reliance on chapter and verse designations (that are admittedly a Middle Ages creation). But everywhere in the book, he uses chapter and verse designations. Not only that, but his treatment of most bible passages in his book lacks any explanation of the historical context whatsoever. And even though Viola seeks to give historical perspective on almost every practice in the church, he completely glosses over several key passages of Scripture and gives no background of the church to which it was written (the most egregious example is Ephesians 4...which he attacks for poor exegesis, but he gives no historical background to the Ephesian church).

4. Use of the Old Testament: Viola has a dual way of dealing with the Old Testament. If an Old testament practice is still being used in the church, he admits it is biblical, but then says it is not Christian. He defines Christian as something written about in the New Testament. But the early Christians, who only had the Old Testament, would hardly agree with him. But, when the post-new testament era church added something to the practice of the Body which diverges from the Old Testament, he says it is not biblical but pagan. By doing this, he eliminates everything he doesn't like or agree with.

5. Preaching from the Choir: Not that Viola accepts the legitimacy of choirs, but he sure does a lot of preaching from them. In his hundreds of footnotes, the vast majority are from those who already agree with his stance on the house church movement. He tries to overpower the reader with quotations, but many of them are from the same sources. These sources are not necessarily recognized historical scholars, but rather modern apologists for an unorganized church. When he does quote historians such as Will Durant, he uses some of their pithiest slogans and little of their research.

6. Out of Context: He hates when preachers take the Scriptures out of context, but he does it with several of the most famous people he quotes as support. His favorites are F. F. Bruce, Karl Barth and A. W. Tozer. These three men (all Seminary-trained theologians btw....something Viola can't stand), are quoted as supporting Viola's argument against a modern pastorate. Yet, when I looked up several of the passages he mentions, none of the men are saying that we should eliminate the pastorate. If Viola could find one credible, non-house church writer that agrees with his stance, it might hold more water.

7. Overemphasis on Catholics: Viola...there was a Protestant Reformation; Remember? Many, if not most of his criticisms in the book are leveled against Roman Catholic practices. Though I think he is overly harsh with some things, I recognize his point. But so does the entire Protestant world! When he says that Luther, Zwingli, Bucer and Calvin did not go far enough with their reforms, few Evangelicals will disagree with him. But in this book, you would think that no churches have improved upon the early days of the Reformation. For instance, I haven't heard a 3-point Hegelian sermon in a decade. I haven't seen a pastor in a boxed-in pulpit in 30 years. Yet, he makes a great case to eliminate both. Wake up Viola...have you been to a church lately? Many of them meet in schools, warehouses and on beaches. Most church members wear jeans to church instead of sunday clothes. The fact that he lives in the South probably clouds his vision.

8. Behind the Times: To be fair to Viola, some of the things he says are very good and ought to be changed. But the time to say them was 40 years ago. Today we have spontaneous singing in church. Today we have people in congregations writing new songs. Today, we have meetings where everyone brings a teaching or a prayer or a prophetic word. Has he not heard of the Emerging church or the Charismatic church or the Cell church or the Third Wave movements? Many of his proposals were being brought forward by Gene Getz, David Mains and Ray Stedman a quarter of a century ago. Ralph Neighbor talked about these views of the Scripture eons ago. There is nothing new about his viewpoints on the Bible, preaching, worship and ministry.

In short, I could give a dozen book recommendations that would be more helpful and more accurate than this one.

A Pastor By Any other Name

2008-03-07T06:03:00.000-08:00

I am almost finished with Viola's book "Pagan Christianity". I have to say this about him. He definitely makes it sound academically rich (i.e. His theory on the pagan roots of modern Christianity). But when I did a cursory background check on some of his "facts", several of them were not accurate. Naughty, naughty. That was just a tease. I will do a thorough analysis of the book next week.

But for now, let's keep talking about the role of the pastor in today's church.

(Note: If I occasionally slip and say "him" or use male pronouns in my description of the role of the pastor, it is not because I am in that camp that thinks only men can be pastors. It is because the vast majority of pastors are men and it is hard for me to break away from that stereotype completely. But I will try).

In the last entry, it was noted that today's church pastor is not functioning like the pastor of the New Testament days. The modern pastor is not as much a coach, discipler and curate as we would hope to see if things had gone unchanged over the 20 centuries of Christianity's existence. But should we have hoped for things not to change?

All organizations, no matter how loosely structured or how spiritually inclined, adapt and become more complex. Add one person to two and the amount of relational connections doubles. Add a third person and the relational connections triple (from two to six). This number gets larger on an exponential scale as you add more people. Not only that, but all organizations get more specialized in time. Today's doctor does not look like the MD of yesteryear. Gone are the barbers who did surgery, the surgeons who only cut off body parts and the leech mongers. But also, gone are house calls; gone is bedside compassion; gone is the doctor who doesn't take much money for their services. Now we have doctors who never see a patient (see the movie "Awakenings" for evidence of that), but only do research. Others specialize so completely that they know more than any other physician about the secretions of the pineal gland, but know very little about other parts of the body. Surgeons today cannot diagnose, but they know where and how to cut and which laser tools to use. My wife's nephew has a job where he make a quarter mill. a year showing surgeons how to use the specialized tools his company makes. That is a far cry from old Doc Brown who delivered twins in the morning, cut out ingrown toenails in the afternoon and visited his six patients with TB in the Sanitorium before going home for dinner at 10 p.m.

Should things have changed for doctors? Probably. But were the changes all good? Probably not.

The same is true of the pastorate. Viola is wrong when he claims that the emergence of the Pastor owes its existence to the Roman governmental system. The concept of a person or persons in charge of Christian enterprises existed from the first days of the church. Only one person got up to preach at Pentecost. Only Philip went out to preach in Gaza. He didn't bring a team with him. Only Peter got the vision of the gentiles coming into Christianity.

But in the early church, they also had other labels for their leaders. Some were called evangelists (Philip), others prophets (Agabus), and still others Apostles (Paul, Junia, a woman). Some of them weren't given a title (Mark, Timothy), but because they were sent out by an Apostle, we assume that's the role they played. But in another sense, Timothy really does sound similar to today's pastor in some of the things that Paul exhorts him to do. Teachers show up in Antioch, but are not mentioned other places. Paul teaches as well - in one case all night long - but no one calls him a teacher.

People were known by their giftings in Corinth but nowhere else. Others were known by their calling (Saul of Tarsus) and others by their position (James the supposed head of the church). So they had calling, gifting and hierarchy in the early church. They also had many names for leaders in the church.

What would happen if we started renaming the pastor of today? Some groups have actually begun to do just that. Certain charismatic circles have begun to refer to their leaders by the Ephesians 4 definitions of Apostle (see Bill Hamon) and Prophet (e.g. Bob Jones, Steve Thompson). There are others who feel that all the ministry positions have evaporated except pastor and teacher.

We recognize evangelists today (Billy Graham, Luis Palau) and teachers (Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, Jack Hayford)...everyone else is mostly assumed to be a pastor (with perhaps one of the other labels added on). I have been called a Prophet from time to time when I have prophesied and when I have taught on how to hear God's voice. I have been called an evangelist when I have lead numerous people to Christ, a teacher when I have taught for longer than a half hour at a time and an Apostle when I planted churches. But since I do more counseling than almost every other ministry, I guess I fulfill some of the functions of pastor.

Our problem today is that we probably need some new labels. Or, we need to acknowledge that the pastor of yesteryear is gone and will never return. We have become more specialized and perhaps we need to be. Some need to devote their lives to reaching certain age groups. Others are devoted to specific handicaps (the blind, lame, emotionally bereaved) to the military, to other language groups.

Perhaps a good way to handle this is to start using terms like "director", "coordinator", "president" and then add their area of specialization: as in "Director of Worship", "Chaplains coordinator", "outreach President", etc. Even today's pastors can be called "Preaching Specialist" or "Teaching Elder" as they are sometimes referred to. Others who are gifted at administration or marketing can be called "Executive Director".

Is it helpful to change the names? It might aid this new postmodern generation that fears old institutions.

Note About this Blog's Content

2008-03-06T06:19:00.000-08:00

To those who read this blog for musings and instruction on counseling and TPM: That is now moving to another blog altogether. Too many of Gateway's attendees would rather I stick to mainstream issues here and deal with TPM in another forum. It will be a "members-only" forum, but if you email me at mikeinsac@sbcglobal.net I will give you the information to join once it is up. Watch this space for more details.

What is the Pastor?

2008-03-06T05:49:00.000-08:00

Now that I am in the midst of reading "Pagan Christianity" and should be finished by today, I have many questions. These come out of reading the book, but are not inspired by the book as much as they are stirred up by it. I guess that's what makes a good book...does it agitate you to think?

I will lay aside most of what Barna and Viola say about the pagan origins of today's church to another day. But here I will continue the discussion I started before I read the book. Where does the Pastor of today's church fit into the biblical scheme of what the church should look like?

On one major point, I completely agree with PC: Today's pastor is not what the Bible calls pastor. In the only listing of that particular word (Ephesians 4:11), the pastor shows up as the word "poimena", which means "shepherd". This is a radical concept for the early church to adopt, even in its biblical form, since the poimena as a religious figure was more Egyptian and Turkish than Hebrew. Of course, there were shepherds in Israel; that's not what I'm talking about. The religious shepherd was someone whose job it was to coach others in their spiritual pursuits.

The Church of England probably comes closest to that function with a title they give to some of their workers called "Curate". A Curate is a man or woman who gives "cure" to souls. That's a curious/unknown expression today, so let me explain. When you "cure" meat, you let it soak in certain chemicals or under low heat or both. The purpose is to give the meat flavor, to allow it to season properly and especially to prevent it from spoiling in cultures where there is no refrigeration. Cured meats have unique taste, texture and durability compared to other meats.

A Curate is a person who helps people in their pursuit of God to develop the flavor of Christ, the durability of a godly lifestyle and the sensibility of the Spirit. This is probably what was meant by the New Testament concept of Pastor. And just because this person is only mentioned once in the New Testament, it is in a list of Ministry titles that is short and includes all the major designations we adhere to still. So there is no reason to throw out the idea of pastor.

But is today's pastor a curate? For the most part...no. Not really. There are several reasons for this that owe very little to Greek and Roman paganism (with no apologies to Viola's research). First, the pace we live at now no longer affords most people the luxury of slowing down enough to be coached. Albeit, there are jobs that require personal coaching, or highly recommend it, but the average Christian probably doesn't have one. Coaching is not the same as mentoring or accountability. Mentoring is a process of skill transference. Accountability at its best is deep friendship that offers levels of intimacy to share the deepest need. No Shepherd can do that with more than one or two people: certainly not an entire congregation. A coach's job is to push someone who already has skills, and to hold them to a certain defined standard.

(Sidenote: It is curious that many pastors now are being urged to have life coaches. That just shows that pastors know very little about curating).

The second reason most pastors are not pastors is because too much is expected of them. They are expected to be in charge of an ever-increasing, ever-burgeoning expanse of people. If they are a successful pastor, their group will keep getting larger. As the group gets larger, the less contact the pastor has with any one individual. As Win Arn says "he moves from Shepherd to Rancher". Funny, I don't see "rancher" in any biblical lists. Why? Well, on this point, Viola is spot on. The early church had no interest in the size of the group. They just started more home churches. Bully for them. They had a culture that admired and encouraged coaching. We don't. But more on that in a moment.

The larger the church gets, the more today's pastor becomes CEO. If it does not get larger, the more courses in evangelism, counseling and marketing they must take. That leaves less time for giving cure to souls.

Finally, one of the biggest reasons that today's pastor is not the same as the biblical "pastor" is that we are educationally driven and not vocationally driven in our culture. Can we honestly say that the people who care most for our bodies are doctors? Can we say that the best people to inspire learning in children are teachers? Is it possible that those who love books the most may not be college professors or editors? (Please take note: many editors do not love books....they love 'their' books).

A pastor, in most circles, must complete a minimum of theological and practical training to serve in a church. In many places, this also includes some master's work, and in rare circumstances, a doctorate. This perpetuates the concept of a "book-smart, academic, hierarchical" pastor - one who does not resemble a Shepherd as much as a research scientist devoted to sheep.

So what is the answer? That is for the next installment tomorrow

A Pre-Book Review – A First For Me

2008-02-22T09:38:00.001-08:00

I am about to review a book I have never read.

I am going to read it as soon as it arrives from Amazon, but the purpose of the review is not to deal with the actual contents of the book (which I am fairly certain I already know, since the authors involved have made their positions clear in other books). My purpose is to deal with their central theme, which is well known. And I want to comment on why that theme shows up in nasty places right before those places became nasty.

The book is called "Pagan Christianity" by Frank Viola and George Barna. Viola may not be a common name to the average Christian, but pastors and church leaders have been reading his works for years. He is one of the world's strongest advocates for the House Church movement. He is also a "New Testament Scholar" and prefers to encase all of his theories in his particular views on what New Testament Christianity really is (was). Barna, until recently, is most famous for being the Christian equivalent of Gallup and his polls. Barna's organization (the Barna Group) studied every trend within Christianity they could get their statistical hands on. In fact, they are credited with studying more trends than they actually did. Too many preachers and teachers like to throw the "B" word into a sermon (i.e. Barna) to lend their own theories credibility. Last year, in this blog, I exposed one such "statistic" as fraudulent. The preacher was quoting Barna as saying that 50% of all Pastoral marriages are ending in divorce. Barna had never researched this (according to my documentation last year), but was credited with it nonetheless.

Lately, Barna has left the research business to spend time on his soapbox. He has every right to do so, for he has observed North American Christianity for several decades and personally found it deficient in many respects. In his book "Revolution", he sticks it to the organized church and announces he is firmly on the side of the unorganized, House Church movement. I assume this is how he and Viola got teamed up.

Now for my review. What Viola and Barna are going to say is that the modern organized church, lead by pastors, owes more to pagan roots than the Bible. The key to that statement is the phrase "lead by pastors". Viola sees very little New Testament support for the pastor and says that our modern iteration of pastorally-lead churches comes out of the pagan influences of Greece, Rome and the Germanic Empires of the Dark Ages rather than true and unadulterated biblical Truth. Therefore, we should all leave the modern organized church and join loosely structured communities of believers, such as House Churches. He will use some significant Scriptures such as 1 Corinthians 14 to suggest that there is a given New Testament structure for what the church should look like. He will also advocate a Plurality of Leadership model where no one person is allowed to be in charge. Barna will give weight to these theories by explaining that the Pastor-lead model of the church has created unnecessary hardships to people, done damage to the Priesthood of all believers and prevented people from realizing the calling that every individual in Christ has.

My review amounts to this: It's a well-intentioned load of crap.

Now, here is my explanation of that very succinctly stated conclusion. First, there is no New Testament vision or structure for the Church. Sure, the 1 Corinthians 14 passage seems to suggest a free-for-all small gathering of believers, each one commissioned with the role of adding to the overall content of the meeting. (And I would note that even in that passage there are guidelines to follow and recognized leadership roles that suggest a hierarchy). But then we look at a passage like Acts 15 where a Council at Jerusalem is telling the Gentile church that they need to avoid meat that is killed by strangling. They impose Kosher rules on non-jewish Christians. And they expect their pronouncement to be obeyed. They send it with Paul and Barnabas, whom it is assumed carry their authority. This is a Presbyterian form of Government. Then in the letters to Timothy and Titus, Paul gives them instructions about how to lay out the structure of the church. They appoint people. They make unilateral decisions. They tell people the will of the Lord as it was communicated through Paul. That suggests an Episcopal/Pastoral form of Government.

I could go on and on. There are so many different types of structure in the New Testament that it is ludicrous to suggest that there is one structure we are to follow. And who says that the structure needs to be contained in Scripture to be biblical. Perhaps God wants the structure of the Church to reflect the culture it is in. An Asian church will respect elders. An American church will want to vote on everything. An African church will focus on the Evangelist and the Healing gifts. The South American Church will demand strong leaders. Each of these is what we have now, and each is a reflection of the general culture. I don't think that makes them unbiblical.

Today's pastor is not the pastor of the New Testament. Today's pastor often plays the various roles of Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher. I would love to just be a New Testament pastor. But we have not raised up the other callings enough in local churches (though we are trying here at Gateway). We just use the term "Pastor" as shorthand for "Leader of the Pack".

Now for the nasty part. In church history, the concept of the House Church and the criticism of the organized church takes two forms. The first is good. During times of Religious Persecution (where everyone is required to be part of one national church) the House Church movement is a protest, both effective and necessary. Someone needs to stand against tyranny. But the second place the resistance movement shows up is a precursor to pre-cult formations. For instance, many people respect and revere the books of Watchman Nee This Chinese saint and sage wrote many of the finest books on Christian Living we possess. But later in his life, he preached against the organized church. At the same time, he also denied the Trinity doctrine (Note: Witness Lee has now inherited the Watchman Nee cult group that arose in China and Asia as a House Church movement during Nee's life). During the same century, one of Christianity's most profound Healers – William Branham – was used to bring healing to tens of thousands. But he also began to teach against the organized church and against the Trinity. Throughout history, almost every movement that breaks away to fight any organized church also embraces the Unity view of God. And almost always this results in the formation of cults which are much more hierarchical than the system they taught against. Ask any Branhamite or Witness Lee follower and you will see this is true.

Why is that? God has always been about establishing authority. Even within the Trinity, there is a person of the Godhead in charge: the Father. The way God wired us, if a leader is not designated, the strongest person becomes the leader. This is always true. Look at any group of people. If someone is not named as the leader, the one who has the strongest personality is always the one who heads the group. And when that person makes a mistake, the only recourse is rebellion. This is why God designates leaders in churches. Then when they mess up, God can correct them or remove them. God can use groups of people to do that also (as in the American Tradition) or can use Bishops to do it (as in the European Tradition).

As Churchill said about democracy, the current church system may be the most messed up – except for all the other ones that have been tried from time to time. As for Viola and Barna, here is their value. They point out the glaring weaknesses of today's church. We really need to raise up more leaders and use more accurate titles for them. Not all pastors are pastors. That needs to be recognized.

Threat to Christian Counseling

2008-02-15T10:47:00.001-08:00

The association with whom I hold charter membership as a counselor (the AACC, American Association of Christian Counselors) has just informed us of a serious threat to the carrying out of our ministries. Here is a portion of a letter we all just received:

Dear Members of the American Association of Christian Counselors:

I want to take this opportunity to share with you an important issue that potentially impacts our profession and may have some far reaching consequences.

In May 2006, the Ethics Committee of the American Counseling Association (not to be confused with our organization, the AACC) issued an opinion which directly questioned the ethical conduct of referring clients to therapists who work with their counselees to live according to a Christian view of sexuality. More specifically, the opinion designated a gay affirmative approach as the only correct ethical stance. Our analysis of the opinion is that it stands in direct opposition to those counselors who work with clients who choose not to affirm homosexuality in their lives. Furthermore, the opinion not only challenges the religious diversity of people, but also undermines a client's right to self-determination and the freedom of choice when it comes to a therapeutic environment.

Warren Throckmorton, co-chair of the AACC Task Force on Homosexuality, initiated dialogue with the ACA leadership in July 2007. In reviewing ACA policies, Dr. Throckmorton, in consultation with attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund, has determined that the ACA may have actually violated its own policies by accepting and incorporating the Ethics Committee opinion. Dr. Throckmorton has written a formal letter of complaint to current ACA President, Brian Canfield (please click http://www.aacc.net/email/media/ACA_complaint.pdf to download)

This is more serious than many people realize. If this is accepted, then it opens up to lawsuits any Christian counselor who tries to help people who have chosen a homosexual lifestyle. As Dr. Throckmorton has noted, this probably violates the rules of the ACA, but nevertheless, it can greatly hurt the genuine efforts of Christian counselors by threatening to take away any licensing they have through a spurious and vindictive lawsuit. Pray that this will be settled soon and according to God's will.

God is Not Raining…He is Reigning

2008-02-09T09:10:00.001-08:00

Since the fifteenth century, Amsterdam has been known for two things: the practice of modern capitalism and open prostitution. Some would say that in the history of the business world that the two are synonymous, and I will not attempt to discourage that notion. Let's just say that amid the Tulip Futures and Coffee stocks a few well-turned ankles have also been on display.

In fact, Amsterdam has the distinction of being the most open about all the recognized societal vices since the 1960s. They openly allow brothels to exist in their red-light district, and even allow the hookers to display their wares openly on the streets. However, that is about to come to an end.

In an article in Newsweek, the report has come in that they are buying up the properties in the red-light district and closing down all the brothels. The mayor is spearheading this campaign because he doesn't like the "sleeze, shady dealings, violence and crime associated with the sex industry".

Wait a second…the Dutch Liberals for years have claimed that the best way to eliminate crime is to legalize the things that people will commit crimes for: Drugs and prostitution. Now they want to eliminate those things because they cause crime? It sounds like there is a society that is finding out that God is not about raining on anyone's parade.

Most people assume (and I'm afraid that some Christians hold this in their hearts) that God just likes to outlaw fun. He is gleeful at raining on our parade of joy. History tells us that societies that voluntarily follow the ten commandments find a lot of peace, joy and low crime rates. That is not Liberal or Conservative…that is biblical. Liberals ignore moral imperatives and Conservatives ignore ethical ones (such as taking care of the poor, widows and orphans).

But any society that sees the value of moral living reaps the benefits. Have there been any societies like that? Granted, they were short-lived, but they do exist. Israel under Uzziah and Josiah saw unparalleled prosperity. So did Switzerland in the 18^th century under the Reformers. You can add Scotland in the 19^th century, Wales in the early 20^th century, Korea in today's current economy and modern Fiji. All of these societies outlawed moral crimes and rewarded moral living. They all saw crime rates at the bottom of the scale

A civic leader in Amsterdam had this to say about her city:

The crackdown fits into a nationwide backlash against the excesses of 1960s "happy-clappy" liberalism, as a conservative Dutch member of parliament recently put it. Over the last few years the Netherlands has adopted a stricter policy on selling marijuana, and a ban on hallucinogenic mushrooms is slated to go into effect later this year. "People in Amsterdam and the rest of the country are starting to discern real tolerance from bogus tolerance," says Asscher. "When Rudy Giuliani started to clean up Times Square in the mid-'90s, some people were warning that no one would ever again want to come to New York City. But as far as I know, it has had record tourist numbers each year since." Perhaps Giuliani, who this week dropped out of the U.S. presidential race, should run for office in the Netherlands.

They are learning that God's laws, no matter who adheres to them, are best for the creatures He put on the earth. That will always be true.

Remembering Donna

2008-02-01T11:19:00.001-08:00

As I sat on the platform of this massive church in White Rock, British Columbia, a strange thought occurred to me: "I've been here before". This wasn't a deja vu experience. I actually had been in this place before, both situationally and actually. 29 years ago, almost to the day, I stood in the pulpit of the same church (albeit in a different building on the other side of town) and delivered the eulogy to my grandmother who was a member of Peace Portal Church. Now, I was about to deliver the final message for my sister-in-law, Donna, who passed away after a 6-year battle with cancer.

I had already listened to one of her co-workers extol her virtues working as the Executive Assistant in a local school. What a wonderful person she was to all the teachers, students and principal. They all called her Mom, and they lauded her cookies and listening ear. I heard my own dear wife give her remembrances of her sister. I was so proud of her as she was able to do so with the torrent of emotion threatening to carry her downstream. As she said "I am losing my friend, my prayer partner, my mentor and guide through the teenage years (Donna was the older sister). Then Donna's oldest daughter got up on behalf of the kids and told us in intimate details what we always suspected: they had won the Mom lottery with Donna! Even when her greatest fault was revealed, it amounted to little more than doting on the girls while Dad's back was turned. Seeing her kids now and how successful they are at life, I doubt this did them any harm.

Finally, Donna's husband had his close friend read his own remembrances. I realized as he read the simple, heartfelt and tear-producing words, that I would have to get up and follow this. I have preached somewhere around 150 funeral messages in my time, but none that gripped my heart as profoundly as this scene.

I glanced at the clock and realized it was up to me to wrap it all up in 15 minutes. Those who have heard my sermons know that they are best measured by the calendar, and not the clock. However, God helped me improvise my planned out thoughts and I just focused on my wonderful sister-in-law that I am going to miss so much.

Here is one story I didn't get to share, so I'll do it here. Years ago, a young british preacher lost his wife also to cancer. He had four children under the age of 10 and the weight of this was ponderous and overwhelming as he prepared to go to the cemetary for internment. His 10-year old son was acting as marshall over the other three to help dad. The littlest boy, 3 years of age, was unaware of the awful nature of the scene, and thus was playing by the side of the road. He saw carriages coming by and he jumped out of the way of the shadows. As he did this, he got further and further away from the funeral party. His brother was disgusted by his lack of propriety, so he went over and grabbed his arm and dragged him back to his dad, scolding his brother for not honoring their mother's memory. Dad noticed the scene and asked what was happening. His oldest son gave an accurate report and then broke down crying. "I am going to miss mother so much" he sobbed.

At that moment, light passed into the pastor's soul. He took his oldest son and showed him the passing carriages and their shadows. "Son, do you remember the 23rd Psalm?" "Of course Father." Dad went on: "Do you remember what valley the psalmist passes through?" His son thought for a moment and answered, "The Valley of the Shadow of Death".

"That's correct son. This is what we face today. Just as you know that no shadow can harm your brother, he doesn't see it yet. He is too young. And the death your mother has experienced is the same. She has only been struck by the shadow of death. The Lord has her in his care now. She cannot be harmed by the mere shadow of this world's death. But we are like your little brother. We are too young in eternal things to grip its meaning. To us, the shadow of death feels dark. To your mother, it hurts not a bit."

I am comforted by his words. To me, Donna's death is a dark shadow. To her, it passes away in the light of the brilliance of Jesus' Presence.

You see: She believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. She will have life forever.

Lesson from the Mamas and Papas

2008-01-25T13:14:00.000-08:00

In the song by The Mamas and the Papas called "California Dreaming", John Phillips sings: "You know the Preacher likes the cold, he knows I'm gonna stay." The songwriter is saying that the preacher in California likes the fact that the cold of wherever this guy is from is driving him to California where he will settle down and stay. And everyone from Minnesota said, "Amen".

I was at a conference of Church Planters this week and at one dinner table we were discussing the financial collapse that is currently happening in our country. With dropping house prices and stagnant wages, it is going to be a hardship for many people (and already is for some). But is there a silver lining? If there is, it might have to do with Church Growth and health. When the economy turns in this country, people are much less likely to make risky moves. When things are booming, people are tempted to cash in the profit on their homes and move where the next fortune can be made. This causes the local church to suffer the difficulties of an ever-changing human landscape. Here in Sacramento, with double-digit percentage drop in house equity, threat of floods, rise in unemployment, and very little relief in sight, it is doubtful that anyone wants to make a huge move right now.

That may mean people will stay put for awhile and actually put down roots into the community. That, by the way, is the only way a community really has a chance of being a nice place to live: When the people who live there have been there for a long time.

This preacher likes the current economy. Well, perhaps like is too strong a word...maybe I can appreciate that there is a side to it that can work to God's advantage. There usually is. Remember Acts 8 and the great expansion of the early church which happened because a huge persecution arose against the church and spread them running to many regions of the world. God often uses hard times to get His work done.

Conference Season

2008-01-24T15:27:00.000-08:00

I have slept in my own bed now a total of three nights in the last twelve. But now all my commitments for speaking out of town are relinquished and I can get back to doing what I love: Writing, pastoring and counseling.

Expect new posts beginning tomorrow.

Also, pray for me and my wife. Her sister Donna passed away yesterday afternoon from her third fight with cancer. She is at rest and at home with her Lord now. Thank you to all who prayed.

Missionaries or Church Planters...or both?!

2008-01-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

A discussion started in response to my posting to church planters in Natomas. I pondered for several days whether to answer in a response, or to bring the discussion back to the main board. For those still reading down to response #29, I will add #30 to some minor issues brought up that I won't deal with here. But because most people stop reading after a couple of responses, there was one issue that I want to bring back here for discussion and my take on matters.

All I am about to say is cloaked in generalities. I cannot say it is true everywhere, or that there are not notable (and laudable) exceptions. However, there are statistics at the academic level that back up some pretty interesting conclusions about missions and church planting. Before making my own particular viewpoint known, let me just summarize some of the findings in recent years about the growth of the church worldwide and in the United States. And no, I am not going to take time right now to go get out all the books and articles to back up everything. Either believe me or don't (or do the research yourself).

1. The church outside of the U.S. doesn't need us as much as it used to. Most overseas (or Third World, Developing World, Flat World, depending on what paradigm you use to describe them) National Churches do not need our evangelism tools, our leadership skills or our theological knowledge as much as they used to. In fact, most overseas churches are usually only asking for money. I am not going to speculate on why that is other than we are the richest nation in the world and perhaps that puts us in a position to help them during this season of the church's existence. Perhaps that is why the Lord allowed the U.S. to acquire wealth...so the church worldwide could be supported.

2. North American Missions boards are reassigning multicultural workers to North America regularly now: With the exception of Wycliffe Bible Translators and New Tribes Missions (and perhaps YWAM), most denominational boards are relocating many of their multicultural workers. The majority of these are being assigned to Middle East/Muslim countries, but are actually there under assumed assignments. (Please don't ask me to elaborate as even the continued mention of this is dangerous for them. There are agents of these countries that do Google searches on particular words, which I have chosen to leave out of this paragraph. Let the reader be wary). The other field of re-assignment is here in North America. Cross-cultural workers are being brought home to serve their chosen ethnic group as it finds itself in the United States. Displaced ethnic groups are often much more open to the Gospel here in the U.S. than they were on their home soil. Much fruit has resulted from Hmong, Laotian, Vietnamese, Burmese and Cantonese-speaking Chinese outreach programs based here in the United States.

3. Church Planting in some countries has made missions redundant completely. The organization our church is a part of, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, signs a five-year agreement with the National Church in each country we send workers from North America to. When the National Church of that country feels that the church is strong enough and large enough not to need cross-cultural workers, they do not sign the contract any more. During the past two decades, we have left Vietnam, Zaire, Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, and a greater part of the west coast of South America. In many countries in Africa and Asia, as per our contracts, our workers do mostly seminary training and virtually no church planting whatsoever. In Africa, the Independent Church Movement is planting near 300 churches a day. I have no idea what the number is in America, but it is not even close to that. The Catholic Church itself used to proudly declare that South America was a Catholic continent. The recent trips by the Pope to South Am. were made because in the last 15 years the entire population of that continent has turned to Evangelical Christianity (read many issues of Christianity Today in the past year for confirmation of this). In particular, the Charismatic brand of Christianity is growing at a rate many times that of the population in South and Central America. Peru, Brazil, Argentina and Chile are now considered "Christian" nations because the majority of the population are active participants in Bible-believing, life-giving churches. The largest church in the world is in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The two fastest growing churches in the world are in Bogota, Colombia and Santiago, Chile. Nigeria and South Korea are over 50% Christian and most government leaders are evangelicals. In South Korea, 80% of the population attends church (as opposed to 15% last Sunday in America...even in the Bible Belt).

4. The proportion of people who attend church currently is higher in rural/smaller towns than in cities. There are many reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is that there are more churches per capita in smaller towns than there are in cities. Cost has much to do with this. The cost of land to build a church in Helena, Montana would be about $20,000/acre. In rural Kansas, it would be $2,000/acre. In Sacramento, it would be $750,000/acre. In Helena, the church would need 3 acres and the city would allow onstreet parking. In Kansas, it might take 2 acres and the neighbors could park in the field. In Sacramento, the city requires that there be one parking space for every 5.5 people attending the church. So, to build a church in Sacramento, a congregation would need to be about 500 people to afford to build a building. The parking for that amount of people would require 95 spaces. With the building and all its subsequent requirements, the building and parking lot would cost about 2-4 million dollars (depending on how nice the chandeliers are). The land requirement would be 4-5 acres. Adding up the cost of land (3 million) and the building (2 million), a congregation of 500 would need to have 5 million dollars to build. The congregation in Helena might need $800,000 (for the same size group). In San Francisco, there are no new church buildings. The cost for a 500 member congregation would be 10 million at least. That is why churches are now starting in Shoe stores in San Francisco. (There is an awesome book called "The Shaping of things to Come" that tells that story; but I digress). If there are less churches, there will be less people attending church - though it is possible that the churches will get much larger in the cities since there are fewer of them per capita.

5. Church organizations are now using the proceeds from deceased churches to fund new church plants. It is called "church recycling". I stated in a comment that older churches rarely reach new converts. I said rarely because it does happen. An older church could be defined as more than 50 years old. Here is the statistic that Fuller Seminary and George Barna put together: 80% of new converts came to Christ through the ministry of churches less than 5 years old. Our movement of churches regularly encourages congregations of less than 20 members to consider selling their considerably valuable property, closing the church and using the proceeds to plant new churches. Gateway was a recipient of money from that kind of source when we started.

So after saying all of this, what are my conclusions? This is difficult, because it will not apply to every missions board and church planting agency. But I believe it can be done and is being done all over our country. I am just observing what I see and this is what I think is happening.

1. Because so many people are moving to cities in our nation, that is where the church planting probably needs to happen. Cities such as Seattle, New York, San Francisco and to a lesser extent, Sacramento are in need of more churches. But these churches are going to have to change their vision of what the location is going to look like. Ideas like warehouse churches (e.g. Gateway Fellowship), meeting in schools, meeting in restaurants, theaters and pubs, renting and owning existing buildings, buying older churches that are dying...even having shoe store congregations all need to be tried. In the last example, the owners of the shoe store...its pastors if you will allow...hold bible studies several times a day. The members of the congregation never get to meet the rest of the church. Some people will bristle and say that this model is not "church", but it is working. Their weakness will, of course, be in the area of large group dynamics. But they will have the small group thing nailed.

2. Working with other organizations. Even within the same denomination, there are often four or more church plants in the same area. In Natomas, there is one denomination that has four different church plants all going at the same time. The same denomination! Another church planting organization allowed a second Natomas Church plant to start because the first one wasn't over 1,000 members after 3 years (yes, I heard that exact quote from the new church planter). Perhaps some of the groups that are looking to start in a new area could join forces, or existing ones that are too small to make a go of it could combine. Believe me, that would be just as difficult as two restaurants or two start-up companies combining, but I know that it has been done in Seattle.

3. Lay off the suburbs so much. Church planting has absolutely inundated the suburbs until you can't find a school without a church plant in it in California, Texas, Nevada, Arizona and Florida (notice how the warm states go first). The downtown, the urban areas, the university areas don't see churches starting as much because those areas are much more mobile, and churches like stability to form. So how did so many come into Natomas, really an urban area? Many of the church plants in Natomas were started with the idea that this would be a "unicultural" suburb. Surprise!

4.The deciding factor for church planting organizations in where to put a church plant should probably be the "churches per capita" statistic. In Kalispell, Montana for instance, there are 125 churches in a county of 100,000 people. That is a church for every 800 people. In the state of Georgia, the figure is one church per 250 people. We have approximately 720 churches for a population of 2 million in Sacramento County. That is one church for every 2,778 people.

Therefore we don't need less church plants in Natomas and Sacramento. They just need to be more spaced out and more strategic. And someone needs to say, "what about San Francisco", "what about New York" and "what about Seattle and Portland"? The somebodies that might say that are those that hear the call of God. I will never say that a single church planter heard God wrong in coming to Natomas. I believe any church plant could be successful here. But we must have a unity among us or the Lord will not bring his Presence and power on all of us. I felt God tell me a number of years ago that His purpose is that we all succeed at being one as He and Jesus are one. That has not happened yet, but that is my prayer. Will you make it yours?

Beer is Safe!

2008-01-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

I am sure I don't have to say anything else beyond the parameters of this story. This is from this morning's newspaper in Sacramento:

CITRUS HEIGHTS – Investigators were trying Monday to determine if a suspected drunken driver involved in a single-vehicle crash Sunday night failed to buckle his own seat belt even as the 12-pack of beer on the passenger seat was safely secured.
Witnesses told police they saw the man driving north on Van Maren Lane in excess of 60 mph before he lost control of his car, which slammed into a tree near Garden Gate Drive.
The driver suffered serious head and body injuries and he was rushed to a local hospital. He was found in the driver's seat, still unrestrained, next to a 12-pack of beer, which was still restrained by a seat belt.

The beer made it through the accident intact. The beer inside the driver probably did not.

Gallows humor; but drunk drivers so seldom pay their own price.

Open Letter to Church Planters (Especially Sacramento)

2007-12-26T09:30:00.000-08:00

Among other things, I have been a church planter. The current church I am a member of is an 8-year old church plant and started around the same time as dozens of other church plants in our area of Sacramento. But what I want to say is to all church planters and especially to those brothers and sisters of mine in Northern California.

It is time to stop the foolishness.

To illustrate what I mean, let me tell you a story. I am the oldest of the church planters in our area and I have found this truth to be genuine: God will never bless His church with all his promised blessings unless there is a sense of unity in a given area. Unity of God's people attracts the Presence of God and his blessings. Because I believe this, I have spent time getting to know the other church planters of our area. One of the best ways of doing this is to take them out to lunch...no one turns down a free lunch - especially pastors.

One gentleman went to lunch with me and we had a very nice time sharing together. I listened keenly to the vision he had for reaching out to people and was impressed with his honesty and genuine love of teaching the Bible. At the end, I extended my heart to him and asked if we could continue to grow as colleagues and friends. His answer not only startled me, it brought great grief.

"I don't need any more friends. Especially not other pastors. Thanks, and God bless you." Those were his exact words. I am not exaggerating in the least. He said all of this with a straight face and I am sure there is a very good rationale for his answer that I can't fathom at this point. Perhaps he is trying to manage his time better. Perhaps he has been hurt by other pastors and has chosen to be friends with those that he chooses. Perhaps God told him not to be friends with too many. Or perhaps he is dealing with years of thinking he needs to be everyone's friend and now has to obey God as to whom he befriends.

All of those are valid reasons and I can accept them. But subsequent experiences with church planters has lead me to see the possibility of another darker reason. Just by way of background for those reading this not familiar with this blog, I am not just a church planter. Being a counselor, I have also counseled a good number of church planters. In addition, I have been an instructor at several church planter seminars and have spoken to hundreds of planters and received their opinions on a number of subjects, including how they feel about other pastors.

Here is what I think may be happening with this group. Planters are the Entrepreneurs of the Church Society. As we all know, entrepreneurs are creative, hard-working, innovative, "outside the box" thinkers, aggressive, type-A, personalities. They take risks and have much higher failure rates than established companies. Yet, where would American culture and business be without them. They are the growing edge of finance and ideas in our world.

Every field of endeavor has their entrepreneurs. Medicine has the Patch Adams type. Computers have Steve Jobs. Anthropologists have Dian Fossey, poets have e e cummings, songwriters claim endless inventors. Even churches need the innovative and type-A thinkers. But with the positive side comes the flip side as well.

Entrepreneurs are lone wolves. They buck the trends. Because of this, they tend to be self-absorbed, overanalytical, neurotic, fear failure, and take too many financial risks. They value success in terms of size and numbers and see others in the same field as the "competition". As you can see, this does not lend itself to the Presence of God and the His blessings.

The community we started in has had 41 church plants in 8 years. For the most part, these pastors do not privately get along very well. Only the old guys do very much together outside of a few official gatherings. Some pastors have been known to rejoice when other church plants fail. Part of the reason they do this is because of a shift in American church culture. The fastest growing churches in America are almost all recent church plants. They are setting the trend for all who will follow. If you look at the histories of the most successful church plants in the past decade, they all have the same biography: We did it ourselves, we only work with ourselves, we are making a name for Jesus by ourselves and you will want to come and find out how we did it. What I observe in my community is a group of entrepreneureal church leaders who want to succeed and see other church plants as the competition. Granted, it makes our area a very innovate and creative place to attend church. However, when each one wants to be the next Saddleback or the next Bayside or even the next great new California "wunderkirk", it eliminates the possibility of really working together for a common goal. I doubt that is what God wants. The people who could be the greatest asset and encouragement to one another are perceived as the enemy. This has to stop now.

There are a couple of churches in America who are notable exceptions to this church planting debacle. In a follow up article, I will focus on those who have done it differently.

So here is my battle cry. Church planters: please, listen to the Holy Spirit and seek to do and pray things that don't benefit you in any way. The way we are acting right now is closer to the philosophy of Ayn Rand than it is the Bible. Ayn Rand taught that the highest virtue was dedicated self-interest. She taught that helping others doesn't help you or them. Is this what the Bible teaches?

I am curious especially what other pastors want to say about this subject. I welcome your input on this entry.

UPDATE ON THIS ARTICLE: I would be wrong not to publicly mention four men who have done much to try and help unity in Sacramento. One of them had to close his church, but he had a heart for Natomas. I thank Mike Stipech of Fountainhead Church for always showing that there is one church in Sacramento...with 31 flavors. I thank Pat McDaniel of the now retired City of Grace Church...you cared enough to love even when others ignored. I thank John Stone of Crosspoint Church...John, every time you call to pray and to encourage it is a Godsend. And to Ron Vanderwell of The Gathering Church. You keep plugging away at unity when everyone else is too busy (me included). You are loved by the Father and may your tribe increase.

Watch Those Toys...for Society's Sake?

2007-12-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

The health scare of 2007 was definitely lead. All of a sudden, if lead came within ten yards of a child's toy we should watch for the tell-tale signs of brain damage: excessive drooling, a sudden interest in Michael Bolton music and the desire to put Brittney Spears posters on the wall. Since we have had lead in our diet, our homes and cars and even in our bodies for at least 4,000 years, I don't think we have to run to the garbage cans any time soon. In fact, the chemical symbol for Lead is Pb, which stands for "plumbing". All plumbing used to be made of lead and none of our ancestors died obviously from lead poisoning.

But now the toy health scares are becoming toy mental health scares. In Seattle, a day-care center operator was noticing that certain patterns were showing up in the use of the Lego collection. Several workers at the Hilltop Children's Center noticed something about the children's building habits. According to one observer,

It seemed that the children at Hilltop were occupying themselves with building a Legotown, a model of a city complete with houses, shops, public buildings, and even air fields using lego building blocks. It was then that teachers Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin began to notice things that they found disturbing. There were disputes over the ownership of "cool pieces" and instances of older children bullying younger ones.

You will instantly observe that this is how all children play and therefore the workers at this day-care center should be prescribed Prozac and told to take a couple of extra days over Christmas.

However, their solution was that the children could only build publicly held buildings, cooperative housing developments that no one can claim any sense of ownership or pride in having constructed. And if anyone wants to change the structure they have to get the permission from the rest of the cooperative. George Will, writing for Newsweek calls this kind of approach to education "Ready, Fire, Aim" methodology. Or as Lewis Black observes about conservative and liberal policies on education, "Conservatives have nothing but bad ideas and liberals have no ideas."

However, as stupid and unnecessary as the action of the day-care workers, they do underscore a point my wife and I have made for years. My wife has observed children for decades (since her undergrad degree is in Developmental Psych) and notices that the most accurate showplace of a child's current attitudes about life will emerge in their use of toys. Toys are the tools of a child; the miniature skills and developing concepts that toys allow reveal how a child is perceiving the world around them. In some cases, this is easy to see. The child that makes everything from a carrot to a candy cane into a gun may be developing serious issues with rage. A child that draws pictures of the family and draws a second picture on the back of the page and places one parent there is definitely dealing with issues concerning that parent. The child that is always building schools with lego blocks should probably be considered for the advanced learning classes somewhere. Parents can learn a lot about what a child is thinking about the world around them by observing how they use toys, especially new toys.

Of course, not all toys reveal negative attitudes from kids. The child that uses fingerpaints on the walls of their bedroom may be designed in the framework of Martha Stewart (pre and post-incarceration, of course).

And the grandparent that buys fingerpaints and drum sets for their grandchildren have their own issues.

Merry Christmas.

CRI Answers Critics of Theophostic

2007-12-20T15:14:00.000-08:00

The pattern is about the same every time. A church member finds great relief and restoration through the Theophostic process. They desire that other believers find the same thing. But they don't want to do anything that their church will have problems with. So they go to the pastor or the elders and ask that they look into Theophostic before advocating it for their church. People who do this are trying to be helpful to their churches by submitting everything to leadership. But they also want to be helpful to everyone by bringing in a ministry that has shown to bear fruit.

The leaders of the church often do the same thing. They will do a Google search on the word Theophostic. If you do that, you will find a whole host of links that essentially go back to the same five or six websites that criticize this ministry. Most, if not all, the criticism is formed on four foundations:

1. TPM sounds like other therapeutic techniques that have been shown to be heretical. Often this is a result of doing an incomplete reading of the materials by people who have never been part of the training. Most often, TPM is associated with the Inner Healing, Healing of Memories and Memory Regression camps. It has nothing to do with any of those teachings.

2. Ed Smith has changed the way he words the description of the TPM process over the years in answer to legitimate criticism. Most of this criticism came from those of us within the training circle and was directed in how the training sounded more than how it was enacted. The criticism here is that if something is legitimate and from God it will never change. Not only is that unbiblical (for the Bible tells us that we need to grow in our understanding of the Truth) but it doesn't even make sense. All techniques of ministry have a man-made element and a Godly element. It cannot be any other way if you involve mankind. The man-made element must improve over time.

3. The use of any terms in common with Psychology. Because Ed doesn't use a Scripture verse every two paragraphs in his training manual, there are people who see him as relying too heavily on modern psychology. As a psychologist, I can tell you that there is little of modern Behaviorism in the model, and what is there is fairly accurate in its biblical understanding. The Bible knows more about the psyche of man than we do. Anything that accurately addresses our psychological profile is right.

4. The technique relies on God speaking to individuals. This goes against the majority of those in the so-called "Watchman" or "Heresy Hunter" camps. Since almost all of them are cessationist in viewpoint, they reject any revelation that comes from God to individuals. They have to do a song-and-dance routine in explaining how the Bible was written. It would be good to read Dr. Jack Deere's book "Surprised by the Voice of God" to get a historical perspective on how the Cessationist movement walked away from the voice of God. Dr. Jack used to be a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary until he started to hear God's voice. They wouldn't let him stay after that.

One of the best-known organizations dedicated to hunting down heretics and cults is the Christian Research Institute (CRI). They have done a very extensive amount of research into TPM and have concluded that the basic core beliefs of Theophostic are biblical. Here is the study if you would like to read it. Hopefully that counterbalances some of the heresy hunters and their criticisms. If you are one of those pastors or elders directed here to do research on behalf of your church, then I encourage you also to read the many thousands of blog entries and testimonies online concerning how much help TPM has given Christians.

Biblical Foundations of Theophostic - The Power of the Lie

2007-12-19T20:35:00.000-08:00

Theophostic Prayer Ministry seeks to rid the individual of lies more than anything else. The process ultimately relies on God to communicate Truth to the individual, and it is that truth that conquers the lie. But TPM is built upon an assumption - that a lie is powerful enough to radically change a person's life. Let's take a few moments to examine from Scripture whether that assumption is valid.

Adam and Eve: In Genesis 3, we see Adam and Eve frolicking around the garden, enjoying the fruits of God's place of paradise (the word "eden" means "delights"). The only restriction on their freedom is the command to stay away from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. At the beginning of chapter 3, the devil, in the form of the Serpent, speaks to Eve about this arrangement. In his dialog with her, he questions whether God is indeed telling her the truth. When she tells him that the penalty for touching the tree is death, the enemy tells a boldfaced lie: "You will not surely die" he fibs (Genesis 3:4). From this lie comes the fruit of sin and death. From this lie comes the fall of mankind and alienation from God. From this lie comes the barrier placed between us and the Tree of Life. That is one powerful lie. It transformed the people who believed it into completely different beings rapidly.

If you wanted to ruin a person's life, it would be best to have them believe a simple lie, either about themselves or the world around them. The earlier in the person's life you sowed that lie, the more harvest you would get from it. However, you would have to wait until the person began to make universal conclusions about their life...beginning somewhere between 4 and 6. Curiously, most of the fundamental lies identified in TPM are identified from the time period between ages 4 and 9.

So what power does a lie have? It truly can cut us off from the Truth of God. This is the testimony of Jesus on the subject in John 8:43-45:

43Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!

Believing a lie means that we cannot really comprehend what Jesus is trying to say (v. 43). Believing a lie means we belong to the devil, at least in that area of our thinking (v. 44). It can cause us to carry out what the enemy wants us to do in opposition to what God wants us to do (v. 44). We cannot believe God because he speaks the truth (v. 45), which sounds like a lie and the enemy speaks a lie which sounds like the truth.

Let me give an example of what this might look like. Early in a young man's life, he experiences pain in relationship to his older brother. The pain might take the form of ridicule at being clumsy. Out of that pain, the enemy lies to him and tells him that he will never fit in, no matter how much he tries. A series of painful experiences in childhood and early teenage years reinforce this lie and actually cause the young man to begin to isolate himself from everyone. When people seek to get close to him, he uses sarcasm and violence to push them away. To dull the pain of being isolated, he gets involved in online role-playing games and gets obsessed to the point of pseudo-hallucination (it happens more and more frequently these days). When his Christian parents speak of God, he laughs at them and says that God is just a cruel hoax. In fact, he cannot believe in God because of a simple lie that gets in the way. When he hears that God wants to love him and be close to him, he thinks that God is lying. He has fallen into the trap of the Father of Lies.

The only nickname Jesus gives the devil is to refer to him as the Father of Lies. All lies have their origin in devilish beliefs. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 reveals that God will allow the enemy to foist a worldwide lie on the human race which will speed the Last days to the final battle. Yes, a lie is powerful. It is more powerful than any dream, sin or action. Lies take the place of what Truth is supposed to do in our lives. Lies that we believe are like little cancers eating up the good cells in our bodies.

PC Pharisees

2007-12-12T20:18:00.000-08:00

Two Christian apologists have helped us define the moral dilemma that America has been in for at least a decade. In his book "The Christian in Today's Culture" Chuck Colson describes the death of what is called "A Moral Consensus". Moral consensus is a culturally shared belief that there is a set of right and wrong actions that all members of that society must adhere to. Though this is not the true basis of law, the principle of Moral Consensus is the only way that we can be truly outraged when someone does something wrong. Moral Consensus allows us to lay consequences on those who break the law. Moral Consensus allows us to censure those who will not live their lives according to accepted ethical and moral standards.

But with the development of the idea that we cannot tell other people how to act in their private lives we allowed our Moral Consensus to be eroded. We now have a molehill of moral imperatives where we used to have a mountain. No longer can we say that fornication is wrong, infanticide is wrong, debt is wrong, hatred is wrong, treating parents with contempt is wrong. If we do, we are meddling in the affairs of others. So instead of making moral statements, we have traded them in for a more innocuous, and perhaps more sinister form of societal censure. I am speaking of being politically correct.

Here is where Ravi Zacharias comes to our aid. In a series of messages he delivered at Yale University earlier this year, Ravi said that we have replaced our moral imperatives with a series of societally accepted phrases and haute couture ideas that really don't mean much at all. Instead of doing something about a morally offensive problem, we rename it in nicer sounding words so that people don't have to feel alienated. Someone isn't committing adultery, they are simply being polyamorous. We aren't in debt, we are investing in the economy.

Politically correct language has replaced Moral Consensus as the basis upon which we feel and express our ethical/moral belief system. Unfortunately, this is not much different from what the Pharisees did. Instead of honoring their parents, they found ingenious ways of giving their money to other religious causes instead of helping mom and dad. They became expert at sounding like biblical geniuses but only talked the talk...they didn't walk the walk.

Today's Pharisees are those who demonize how people word their criticisms of society instead of focusing upon the real moral issues themselves.

Christmas Music

2007-12-10T13:42:00.000-08:00

Our cell group spent some time this week discussing some of the new Christmas albums. We had an eclectic variety that was awesome and I want to give you two highlights from that list. I also invite you to respond with some of your new favorites.

New Fav #1: Relient K - "Deck the Halls and Bruise Your Hand". There are three songs that are worth the entire album. Their rendition of "The 12 Days of Christmas" goes beyond any of the others in both musicality and originality. But for some reason, the song-writer doesn't know what a "pear tree" is. The second one is "I Celebrate the Day". The lyrics are as powerful as "Mary Did You Know" but the music is even better. Their version of Handel's Messiah is off the charts original and punkish. If you're tired of Christmas elevator music, this one rocks your world.

New Fav #2: Celtic Woman - "A Christmas Celebration". This multi-talented celtic group does not let down their creativity to produce a pap Christmas CD. This has several songs that owe their allegiance to the Celtic music tradition. Listen especially to "Don Oiche Ud I Mbeithil", "The Wexford Carol" and "Christmas Pipes". This is one to load down to your MP3 player and take it with you to let friends listen to. They'll be impressed at how worldly-wise you have become.

Disclaimers

2007-12-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

At least one person has complained that I am painting too rosy a picture about both TPM and the entire process of Sanctification. Though I believe that God desires our inner man to be transformed and renewed in this life (see 2 Corinthians 4:16 which says "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.), I also realize that this is a process and doesn't happen quickly.

The question is raised "Are you saying that TPM always results in transformation inside?" "Always" would be a big word as would "regularly". Rather than try and answer that directly, I want to answer this one: Why doesn't TPM seem to work the same for everyone? If getting rid of lies is supposed to clean up our thought life and therefore set us free, why don't some who go through TPM feel free?

There are many reasons for this and I want to lay out some of them. This is not, by any means, an exhaustive list.

1. Not All Inner Problems Are Caused by Lie-Based Thinking: There are other emotional and spiritual problems we might have that don't really involve believing a lie. And there are physical difficulties that can add to a person's emotional well-being and trauma. I remember going to a chiropractor years ago and being treated for a back ailment. At the same time as he was treating my back, he also noticed that I was suffering from allergies. He claimed that chiropractic could help that too. He also claimed that diabetes and liver damage from drinking could be cured by his methodology. The same mistake can, and is, made with TPM. It is not a cure-all for everything that ails you. I too am skeptical of fantastic claims of success without any failures. Some depression is caused by hormonal imbalances, stress, tumors, bad diet and any number of other causes. A person may see some relief through TPM, but because the underlying cause is something other than a lie, they may not see the same level of relief that others find.

2. Clutter: TPM recognizes that not every problem we accumulate in a memory is a lie. There are other problems in the memories that can stay even when the lie leaves. These may include: unforgiveness, bitterness, unforgiven sin, resentment, sadness, anger, demonic attacks and vows. All of these are separate problems and often are dealt with in follow up sessions. I personally went back two years after my initial TPM session to do a follow up because some of the same symptoms I thought were completely gone were coming back. My clutter was a combination of bitterness and a vow I had made. This was in the same memory where the lie was dealt with.

3. Other lies/Other memories/Same manifestation: In a posting several years ago, I mentioned that some people have a tendency to manifest the same reaction to many different lies. This can lead people to believe that they are still in their original lie when they are actually free from one but in bondage to another.

4. Same lie/Other memories/Different manifestation: In the same light, there are some lies that take new shapes later on in a person's life. Dr. Smith describes this as a "morphed lie". At the same time, there are lies in our lives that are reinforced by several traumatic experiences and each of these memories needs to be visited in order for the person to report complete freedom. I did Theophostic with a missionary some years ago and they reported a small amount of freedom in their thinking. But the lie still felt true in some circumstances. They were greatly discouraged that TPM had not worked for them. They went to another colleague of mine who did TPM again and then a third time. Each time it was the same lie with a different memory. Dr. Smith calls this a "Memory-linked lie". Each link needs to be broken for the person to experience peace in that area of a lie.

5. Confusing TPM with Obedience: Just because we have been released from a lie doesn't mean we don't have to fight to be obedient to the Lord. It will always be a struggle to obey what God has commanded us until we come to the New Heaven and New Earth. There are patterns of behavior that we set down that still need to be confronted after we have been set free. I was doing TPM with a support group for Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior many years ago. One lady said she didn't have any more symptoms of OCD while the other four did. I thought maybe that TPM had worked for only one of them. A few months later, one of the ladies who saw her symptoms stay the same admitted "I like my symptoms. I don't want to stop". No one can make us obey the Lord. But she also admitted that her fear of not being in control was not the impetus for washing her hands many times a day. She just didn't want to stop. That's a much different story.

6. Guardian Lies: One of the most common category of lies we believe are called "Guardian lies". These are not the lies that we deal with that are affecting our behavior. For the most part, they are the lies that prevent us from continuing to get the restoration we need. Here are some examples of Guardian lies we see often in TPM:

-I am already changed enough
-This won't work for me
-God doesn't want this for me
-This is too weird for me
-I must be doing it wrong
-Others are lying...there is no real change
-Nothing happened to me.

7. The Unknown: I leave this one to those who can honestly say their problem doesn't fit into the first six. We don't know everything. There are problems that we just can't solve. I did TPM with one man several years ago and we seemed to get rid of many lies. And his doctor couldn't find anything wrong with him physically. All the clutter seemed resolved and the Guardian lies were not there. But he still reports that he has a sense of being unloved even though God tells him he is loved. I can't understand it either. But this I know. That is not the rule. Usually TPM difficulties fall into the first six areas. However, I have learned to keep the 7th one open. Maybe we'll learn more down the road. It is a mystery that only God can bring relevalation to.

Biblical Foundations of Theophostic - Sanctified by the Truth

2007-12-04T19:46:00.002-08:00

In John 17:15-17 we read:

15My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

This portion of John's Gospel is called "The High Priestly Prayer" of Jesus. As the God/Man he is representing humans to God as He intercedes for us in prayer. These three verses are the the pinnacle of that prayer. This is what He really wants for us. But what does it all mean?

If we were immediately taken up to heaven the moment we became believers in Jesus Christ it would be so much easier to know what is right and true. And the blessings of God would be all we would experience. But we are left here, not just to share with others about our faith in Christ (so that they might also believe), but also so that we can be made complete the same way Jesus was: By facing difficulties, challenges and hardships. With the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we can throw off the effects that sin has had on us. I believe that 2 Corinthians 5:17 ("Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!") is how God sees us and how He intends to make us on this earth as well.

That is why Jesus says he does not pray we will be taken out of the world, but that we be protected from the Evil One. And what does that protection consist of? Verse 17 says "Sanctify them in the Truth." The greatest protection we have is to become more like Jesus, which is the goal of Sanctification. This is the aim of Theophostic Prayer Ministry as well. As people come to realize the lies that they have been believing, and especially as Holy Spirit speaks Truth to their hearts, some of the effects of the curse of sin are broken. The more lies that are annihilated the more the Truth finds a home.

Jessica had always believed that she would be rejected by other people. This is not something she consciously thought of however. For the most part, she told people how much God loved her and how much it was wonderful to be in the Body of Christ where she was loved. But any time that she would do something that embarrassed her, she was overwhelmed with the idea that she was useless and unlovable. Though her head told her that she was loved, her heart did not believe it. During those dark days she endured this, she couldn't even read the Bible when it mentioned God's love. It seemed to mock her.

During a TPM session, God took her back to a memory when a neighbor molested her. During the memory, the idea came to her that it was her fault that the molestation happened. "I could have yelled for help" was the conclusion. As she tracked the memory, she felt shame and a sense that she did not deserve to be loved. Then we asked God to speak into the memory. God told her that she bore no guilt for what happened and that He didn't blame her. She released the lie and believed what Holy Spirit said to her.

Since that day, her husband reports that he doesn't have to do the "I love you" pep talks like he used to. She isn't constantly saying how much other people would be "better off without me".

Also, she has reported an increase in intimacy with Father God. This increase in intimacy has given her courage to begin working in a ministry she had always wanted to be part of but was sure she would not be qualified for. God's plan for her life is now being more freely released. She is being set apart for God's plan more and more. Though there may be more lies to be rid of, at least she is seeing more of sanctification's work.

As I said in a comment earlier in this series, TPM is not really about healing. Memories don't get healed in TPM. In fact, there is really nothing about the memory itself that needs to be healed. Memories are only storage containers where we place those events that meant something to us at the time. The problem with memories is that they can never be 100% accurate. We don't possess 360 degrees of perspective in any memory. We store the memory as we saw it. And no one sees the hearts and intents of all the people involved. So, like the scientists in Jurassic Park who filled in the missing DNA sequences of the dinosaur genomes, we too tend to fill in our memories with our own beliefs about their meaning. This is the doorway through which lies tend to be transfered into our lives.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 it says,

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our soul, with its storage container of memories and beliefs needs to be sanctified. Yes, it is true that not everything will be healed in this life. We will die some day. But that doesn't mean we can't strive for completeness in what we know and believe. That is available to us from the Spirit of Truth. That is what TPM strives to offer an opportunity to find: Truth.

Biblical Foundations of Theophostic - Hearing God

2007-11-29T10:19:00.000-08:00

Jon was a quiet, personable young man. He had been a Christian since he was a young boy and loved to serve God and be involved in church gatherings. But Jon also had a dark side. His depression and isolation from deep, meaningful relationships was getting severe. He came to me in desperation and told me about the many nights of loneliness and sadness he had experienced. None of his friends could understand it, since they all really liked him. He had been on several psych medications, gone for many rounds of counseling, and even considered putting himself in an inpatient treatment center for chronic depression. TPM (Theophostic Prayer Ministry) was a last resort to institutional committal.

As we went through the TPM prayer process, God brought Jon back to a memory of him sitting in his father's study on the floor playing. As he was playing, he noticed that no matter what he said to his father, the reaction was always that he was bothering his dad and that he should play quietly. Into his mind came a thought: “I am a bother. I am a bother to everybody”. As I mentioned in the last blog entry on TPM, little children often fall into the trap of universalizing a belief. The truth is that children sometimes do bother adults. That is a reality of life. However, that doesn't make them worth any less or mean any less. Nor does it imply they will be loved any less. It certainly cannot mean that the entire human race will always view them that way. But try explaining that to a 7-year old.

We asked God at that point (as is always done in TPM) to reveal truth in that memory. God's voice was quiet, simple and profound. He simply told Jon “You are never a bother to me. I always have time for you.” That was all God said. At the end of that session, Jon didn't look any different, and said that though he felt peace, he was skeptical that much had changed.

I ran into Jon about three years later. He came up to me at a conference and greeted me warmly. He explained who he was and asked if I had time for coffee. We went out and he told me the story of the intervening three years. The depression left that evening we had prayed together and never returned. He was developing deep friendships and was enjoying life.

Isn't that wonderful? All God said was “You are never a bother to me. I always have time for you.” Who would have thought such a simple truth could reverse years of destruction and futility? Yet this often happens in the ministry of TPM.

There is a wonderful biblical basis to this. It would take too long to describe all of what the Bible says about this (I am currently working on an entire book on the subject). But I do want to point out that God does speak to people today, and how that forms the foundation of what is practiced in TPM.

In John 10:1-10, we have the analogy of the Shepherd and the Thief. It is not a parable, as some have described it, but rather fits into the category of allegory. A parable is a story which is points to one major truth (sometimes two truths - but rarely). The details of the story are the spice in the soup and are not as important as the main point. One big mistake in interpreting parables is that people often make too much of the details. For instance, in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31), people often spend hours commenting on the meaning of some of the places mentioned like Paradise, Bosom of Abraham and Hell mentioned here. The meaning of the parable is that there is more to life than this life and that we will all have to answer for the decisions we made here. To make more of the story than that is dangerous.

But in John 10:1-10, we have a different kind of story. In this story, every aspect is meaningful. The Shepherd is Jesus. The Sheep are his followers. The Thief (also called the Stranger) is satan, the enemy of our souls. The Gate is also Jesus (he is the way into God). In verses 3 and 4, Jesus lays out the daily walk he desires all his “sheep” to have with Him:

3The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He
calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his
own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his
voice.

Notice that the only skill the sheep need to have in this process is the ability to listen to the Shepherd's voice. They follow because they listen to His voice. They go where He is going because they listen to his voice. They have salvation because they listen to his voice.

Now, look at v. 5:

5But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him
because they do not recognize a stranger's voice

The stranger's voice is unfamiliar to them. They actually run away from him because it sounds so different from the Shepherd. Therefore, listening to the Shepherd causes an ability to be formed in the sheep whereby they can then hear the stranger's voice as a dangerous and evil thing and run away from it.

In v. 9 it says

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.

The Greek word for "pasture" is a word which actually means “an expanding place”. The idea of growing, expanding and reaching further is inherent in this word. This has particular meaning to those going through the Theophostic prayer. The enemy's job is to restrict our life, to place artificial fences around us through lies and deception (we will go more into the lies of the enemy in the next blog entry). But when we hear the voice of the Shepherd, we follow him through the gate into an ever-expanding life that keeps feeling more and more free.

In John 8:32, we read “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free”. The word for know is a very carefully chosen word by Jesus. The Greek verb is in the middle voice, which when coupled with this verb “to know” means to come to an understanding of something by being lead there. It is the word used of a couple having sexual intercourse. It means that we know something not by learning it ourselves, but being brought into the truth by someone else. Only God can teach us these kinds of Truth experiences. When God interacts with the Truth in our lives, then we are set free to an ever-expanding life.

What is often missing from so much counseling is the inner voice of God speaking to those in need and in trouble. In TPM, the process opens up the opportunities for the voice of the Shepherd to come into memories where deluded and stinking thinking has invaded. Like King David and his Shepherd's sling, the voice of the Shepherd has the ability to chase away the lies, and they run like scattering wolves.

As I read the criticisms of TPM from several different publications, I have this observation to make. The majority of them have been written by those who hold to a cessationist view of the work of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, they do not believe that God speaks today outside of the Bible. They do not believe that Holy Spirit can speak to individuals in a personal way outside of biblical illumination. Therefore, it is logical that they would conclude that TPM is wrong. One of the core beliefs of TPM is that God speaks. The critics of this method would say that this opens people up to hearing a voice other than God's. I agree with that. It does open up that possibility. That is one reason that the facilitator works with the person receiving prayer. On a number of occasions, I have helped people to reject voices that do not agree with God's revealed Truth in Scripture.

But I also want to make this observation for all of us. When people read the Bible, there is a possibility of the enemy suggesting lies through the Scriptures also. That possibility is always there. That is why we have people help one another in their Bible Study. More cults have been founded upon an improper interpretation and application of the Bible than on supposed “Words from God”. We are not necessarily on better foundations by saying that we are just to trust to the “objective” Scriptures and to avoid the “subjective” voice of God. We need both. There is nothing objective about the Bible if people are skilled at manipulation. That is why 1 John 2:27 says that

“As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not
need anyone to teach you.”

He wrote this according to v. 26 to give them a way to deal with those who were trying to lead them astray. The “anointing” is the Holy Spirit. That is the historic teaching of the church. It is the voice of the Spirit inside of us that gives us the clear interpretation of Scripture. We need the Bible and the Spirit. And they always agree if we listen long and carefully. TPM agrees with that completely.

I find it offensive that people would call TPM heretical. For the most part, it simply disagrees with the cessationist view of the Holy Spirit. TPM has founded its methodology not on Psychology but on the simple statement “My sheep hear my voice.”

Biblical Foundations of Theophostic - What we Believe

2007-11-20T11:54:00.000-08:00

One of the core teachings of Theophostic Prayer Ministry (TPM) is that lie-based thinking contributes to many of the toxic decisions and reactions we have in life. Later in this series, we will talk about how the enemy of our souls contributes to the formation of lie-based thinking, but in this first teaching, I want to give a biblical basis for how our internal beliefs are formed in life.

In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul gives us his now-famous "ode to love" wherein he lists all the action attributes of love: Love is Patient, Love is Kind, Love does not seek its own etc. As lovely as this list is, and for all its popularity at weddings, it is a mocking list. You read through it and, if you are honest, you come away thinking "that sounds wonderful. It sure isn't the way I live". I don't believe God ever puts things in the Bible to mock us. So, the inclusion of this list of love's characteristics is supposed to spur us on to desire better things through the power of the Spirit.

In that context, verse 11 stands out. It reads, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. As I'm becoming a man, I put away childish things". There is so much in this verse to ponder and consider and much of it relates to lie-based thinking. Leaving aside the first phrase in the verse "I talked like a child", we come to the second phrase "I thought like a child". The word for thought in the Greek language that the Bible was written in is "phroneo". In all the lexicons, this word means "to form an opinion, or come to an understanding". In all the textbooks on child psychology, we recognize that children begin this process of forming opinions about themselves and the world around them somewhere between ages 4-5. That is why we see the emergence of the question "why?" so much at that age. They want to know and understand and relate to this wondrous and scary world around them.

As the child reaches these conclusions, they are rarely accurate in their assessments. This is because they lack experience to tell them that what they're observing does not always apply to all of life. For instance, a little boy may have big ears in first grade. It seems about that age that all boys have big ears. I think their heads grow faster than the rest of their bodies. At school, a few of the boys make fun of the ear situation. That causes the child distress and horror. There are people in this world that don't like them. They may even hate them, they do hate me, I am hated by people, I am hated by many people, I am hated by everyone. This may be the thought process that they go through before ever arriving at home. The problem? It is not true. The entire world has not met them yet. How can everyone hate them?

But their first sentence upon bursting through the door to mom is "Everyone hates me!". The tears flow and mom tries to stem the flood with cookies. But no matter how much mom tries to reason with the boy, he still firmly believes that everyone hates him. This is lie-based thinking. There are several different ways that we can believe lies. This one is the lie of Universality: Attributing an isolated incident to the rest of life. Other lies may include lies of Content: What we thought was happening was not happening. That may happen if a child assumes that a parent who leaves the home did so because the child was naughty the day before; lies of Context: What a child thinks was directed at them was actually directed at someone else (e.g. Dad saying "I hate my life" meaning "I hate my job, my health, etc." taken to mean that he hates the child). There are other kinds of lies that children believe, but we must come back to 1 Corinthians 13:11.

Paul's decision is that in order to be mature, man-like, he must put away childish things. The Greek word for "putting away" is actually much stronger than it sounds in the NIV. The word is "katargeo" and it means to render something useless, to destroy it or to destroy something by taking charge over it. For instance, the word is used in Hebrews 2:14 when he says "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil" The word "destroy" is "katargeo". It means to destroy something by taking authority over it. Light does this to darkness. The police do this to a criminal. Paul is seeing a situation where childish things do not automatically yield to the more mature. They must be confronted. They must be dealt with and destroyed.

And it isn't only childish observations and understandings that must be destroyed. He also says in v. 13 "I reasoned like a child". The word for reason is "logidzomai", which in many cases means to "come to a conclusion or course of action based upon logic". So a child makes faulty observations of life and draws conclusions from those. Out of those conclusions come decisions and courses of action that may affect the rest of that child's life, even into adulthood.

Let's come back to our situation with the poor big-eared boy. Concluding that he is universally hated, he must now decide how to deal with this at school the next day. Suppose he takes the innocuous course by wearing a hat. It's not such a bad thing to do psychologically, and it certainly beats out some of the alternative "logidzomais" such as becoming aggressive, living in fear, hiding away, becoming the class clown, or any other decisions. So, he wears his protective hat. And he keeps wearing that hat long after he observes that not everyone hates him. He goes through life wearing this baseball cap. Now, he is 25 years old. He is sitting at a bar stool and a man accidentally knocks off his hat. He becomes incensed and starts beating up this innocent man. The police are called and he is sentenced to Anger Management classes. As he sits in my class, I ask him "So what's with the hat?" He doesn't know the connection. Rarely do we think about why we have some of the reactions we do as adults. We just put it down to having a bad day, or explaining that this is the way we've always been.

Paul takes a much different approach. He decides it is time to eradicate these childish ways. This is what Theophostic attempts to do. Knowing that we have this ability to believe something deep inside and also accept theoretical truth in our minds, we have a problem. There is a childish belief that leans one way and an adult belief that goes the opposite. We find when we are in a crisis, we resort to the childish belief. We can't just cover up that belief with more and more teaching, because it is in the crisis that our true beliefs are tested, not in the classroom or the church service. This is why so many Christians can learn so much propositional truth and inexplicably cannot put it into practice in certain situations.

The lies need to be conquered, not smothered. They need to be gone, not ignored. That is what TPM does.

Introduction to New Blog Series on TPM

2007-11-19T11:34:00.000-08:00

Theophostic Prayer Ministry (TPM) is the primary focus of my counseling approach and is the only therapy that I currently mentor others to do. That is not to say I don’t recognize the validity of other therapeutic streams, but through years of experiencing many different types of emotional and psychological approaches to emotional health, TPM seems to show the most results.

But over the course of the last decade, many people have approached me and asked if TPM is biblical. Not everyone means the same thing by this question. Some imply that for something to be biblical, its entire approach must be contained in the Bible. I caution the reader in taking this viewpoint on whether something is “biblical” for it eliminates most legitimate approaches to serving God, including most evangelism and preaching. Other people believe that for something to be “biblical” it must at least be referred to specifically in the Bible. But, of course, this eliminates the work of the Creative Holy Spirit to do a new thing our midst. People who hold to this viewpoint try to eliminate modern worship (for it uses instruments not mentioned in the Bible) and criticizes church buildings (which are not mentioned in the Bible).

I don’t hold to those viewpoints on whether something is “biblical”. To be “biblical”, a belief or practice should adhere to the important and vital teachings of the Bible. While recognizing we will not always agree on application of truths, we can all respect the approach people take when they sincerely want to line up with the Truth claims of the Bible.

I believe that is what TPM does faithfully. In this six-part series, I want to lay the biblical foundation for what is practiced in TPM. My hope is that those who have doubts and fears about TPM’s origins and goals will set those to rest, or at least have another perspective to use in your search and journey.

Are You Still Paying for Books?

2007-11-10T10:07:00.000-08:00

For those who love to read, or those who simply like to sit down with a great book, here is one suggestion to save you a mint. Go to Project Gutenberg, one of the oldest websites on the Internet (meaning it has been around for at least 10 years) and download one of their more than 100,000 books available. That's right...over 100,000 books can be downloaded for free.

Now, there won't be any new books by Stephen King, Macomber or Vince Flynn, but there are some unbelievable titles you can read. In fact, there are many who believe that this project is saving books that will eventually deteriorate due to the acid in the paper. I just finished reading "The Crysalids" by John Wyndham and am going to read another two or three this weekend (probably "Beowulf" in advance of the movie).

One curious note however. They list the most popular downloaded books on that site. The most popular book on the site is "Manual of Surgery Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. by Miles and Thomson"

That freaks me out that there are so many people wanting to learn to do surgery. That is the "do-it-yourself" craze taken to a whole-new, and frightening, level.

Look over the list...are there any that excite you?

Save the Darwinian Cheerleader, Save the World

2007-10-31T07:11:00.001-07:00

I'm convinced that Darwinians (those who hold to Darwin's version of the Origin of Man and Natural Selection) are trying to find an altar to worship at. Or, failing that, at least a mythology to call their own.

Two recent pieces of entertainment convince me that even the Darwinians feel that people will leave their fold if they don't have a good story to tell. Hence the appearance of: "Heroes" (the television series) and "Darwin's Radio" (the book series).

Both of these series try and do something not attempted before. If Natural Selection is correct, then mankind should still be evolving into a higher and more adaptive life form. Both Heroes and Darwin's Radio theorize on what that higher life form will look like. "Darwin's Radio" is more scientific (wow, is it ever) in approach, while "Heroes" paints a better myth. If you haven't taken in either, let me summarize very quickly.

"Heroes" is a show about a group of seemingly ordinary people (a nurse, painter, japanese businessman, cheerleader, politician, watchmaker, porn actress, policeman, waitress) who each possess one quality that goes beyond human abilities (flying, seeing the future, traveling through time and space, ability to heal themselves etc). The story winds among them as they try and stop events that may end the human race. It is explained that they are the next stage in evolution.

"Darwin's Radio" and its sequel "Darwin's Children" are about babies born after a worldwide epidemic of pregnancies gone wrong. These new children are thought to have a virus that can wipe out humanity and new government agencies (similar to Homeland Security...yes, there are tons of politics in these books) are formed to wipe all these children out. But somehow a few of the children survive. They are also the next stage in evolution. The children can communicate in extraordinary ways with each other, can think better than most and have other almost unexplained abilities.

So why are Darwinians doing this? It is because their theory cannot be proved and it cannot be validated. All we can do is take the world as it is and suppose that natural selection is how it worked. We can't prove it because we can't observe a process that is supposed to take thousands of years at even minor evolutionary adaptations. Since the Scientific method has only existed for a small portion of that time, no one will ever live long enough to observe the evolutionary process. People who believe in it have to take the current situation and on faith believe in the process. Much the same way as Christians have to believe in the origin of man from God's power.

So, in order to help people see the possibilities of evolutionary selection, "Heroes" and "Darwin's Radio" have sped up the process so we can see it. The fact that it could never speed up this quickly if Natural Selection is completely random (meaning there is no Designer behind it) is not explained by either genre. The fact that all current evidence suggests that man's genetic code is deteriorating through its mutations, instead of evolving, is almost ignored. There is some evidence in the books and the television show that some early mutations were flawed. But it is amazing how the writers of both series wants evolution to work so badly they ignore the basic tenet of their belief system: It must take millions of years for each stage of Natural Selection to occur. It cannot happen any other way in their system.

In "Heroes", the super-evolved beings are told that if they save the Cheerleader (an archetype I suppose) they will save the world. I think it is Darwin's Cheerleaders that need saving. They are obviously losing their way in their own mythology.

Advantages of Sleep (Again)

2007-10-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

I have posted many articles on this blog about sleep. It is my favorite diversionary topic and hence I return to it once again.

I (and many others) have theorized that during many stages of sleep, the soul goes into times of rest and the spirit of man takes over and leads the show. The spirit of man is that part of us that exists in the spirit realm and has direct communication with the Spirit of God (if we are a believer). This probably is true during that stage of sleep called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep because it is during that part of sleep that we dream. It is during dreams that God often spoke to people in the Bible. He also does so today. It is also during dreams that we are made aware of our own fears, insecurities, anger, lust, envy and feelings of being attacked. Since we are not cognitively initiating this, it must be our spirit man doing it.

The soul is a collection of functions and those functions can be so tiresome that the soul more than any other part of us needs a long period of dormancy every day. One of those functions is memory. Here is an interesting article from the NY Times on memory and sleep. During the article, the author says this :

Now, a small group of neuroscientists is arguing that at least one vital function of sleep is bound up with learning and memory. A cascade of new findings, in animals and humans, suggest that sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, both intellectual and physical, and perhaps in seeing subtle connections that were invisible during waking — a new way to solve a math or Easter egg problem, even an unseen pattern causing stress in a marriage.
The theory is controversial, and some scientists insist that it’s still far from clear whether the sleeping brain can do anything with memories that the waking brain doesn’t also do, in moments of quiet contemplation.
Yet the new research underscores a vast transformation in the way scientists have come to understand the sleeping brain. Once seen as a blank screen, a metaphor for death, it has emerged as an active, purposeful machine, a secretive intelligence that comes out at night to play — and to work — during periods of dreaming and during the netherworld chasms known as deep sleep.

The article goes on to show that memory improves but is also augmented with deeper understanding as we sleep. To me, this simply underscores that there is much more to us than just our souls. And when we sleep, that other part of our unseen being, the spirit man, is brought to life and shows its colors.

Failure?!

2007-10-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

I was driving to the airport this afternoon, and a old dear friend of mine in the car was sharing his latest thoughts on the human condition. He has been noticing how many people of our age group (let's just say somewhere between 40 and 60...yeah, the dreaded baby boomer) are constantly struggling with the fear of failure. Our generation can't seem to get enough of the cocktail combination of fear, failure and a sense of uselessness. Though we have sought to accomplish more than any other generation in history, the sense of accomplishment seems to have been robbed from us. How did this happen?

At the same time, I just concluded a week teaching a group of twenty-something-age Christians (a group I would love to adopt and bring home with me btw), and I noticed this element missing among them: Though they probably haven't achieved any more of their life goals than their parents, they really don't have as much fear of failure as mom and dad. How did this happen?

As Andy and I talked, it occurred to me that the answer might be found a generation further back. The "Builder" generation refers to those people who survived the Great Depression and World War 2. At the conclusion of that time period, the Builders finally felt they had weathered all the disasters and started to have children at a record pace. In fact, 1957 marked the very heart of this Breeding Frenzy, a milestone marked by the veritable explosion of 50th birthday parties this year. More people were born in '57 than any other year in the history of the human race. The Baby Boom experience was a much different feel than the depressing and murderous years that preceeded it. So with the increased optimism of the Boom, why do the Boomers fear failing?

I believe it is a combination of two elements. First, the Builders themselves did not emerge from the Depression unscathed. Many of them adopted a mindset that centers on fear. As I have talked with many Builders, I hear a repetitive attitude that shows they fear the return of the poverty and violence that epitomized the 30s and 40s. This fear caused the Builders to work extra hard and to fear anything which might usher in disaster. This made the “Cold War” especially difficult for them. As a result, they are a careful, cautious and paranoid generation. But hard work often tempers those things and so they remain unphased by their bondage to this fear of poverty.

Not so with their kids. The Boomers grew up with a veritable song of fear playing in their ears. The Builder parents did not want their kids to slack off or to be victims of the atrocities they had to face. So to help them, they constantly spoke of the consequences of not working hard, of not achieving, of not doing more than their parents did. If the parents did not graduate from High School, that was a must for their kids. If the Builders had no college, the kids had to go. If the Builders were Blue Collar, the kids had to strive to achieve whitecollardom. How many of us were driven forward with the warning, "Do you want to dig ditches for a living?"

Try using that as a threat today. I think it would be fun to operate a backhoe.

It's strange. My wife and I are both professionals whereas none of our four parents were (though my dad did finally finish his engineering degree later in life before he died). But as I look at our kids, I see a strange metamorphosis. One wants to go into business; one wants to be a policeman; one is content to be a housewife; the last is currently hanging drywall and loving it. These are mostly jobs that our parents wanted us to avoid.

The Builder generation left fear as a legacy to their children. The Boomers took up that fear like a baton in a relay race and unfortunately did not temper it with hard work. Fear of disaster and poverty, without the modifying factor of hard work, is a breeding ground for the constant fear of failure.

In the Book of Deuteronomy, it says that God will visit the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. It is an inaccurate translation to say that he "punishes" to the third and fourth generation. What the Hebrew words are saying is that it takes God three or four generations to get rid of certain sins from a family or a culture. If you have seen alcoholism, child abuse, rage or any other familial problems running through your family, you know it takes awhile for the work of God to touch a new generation. Many times it takes several generations to rid a family of a sin.

In terms of our culture, God is working through the emerging generations to get rid of this constant focus on failure. The reason for this is simple. Failure really doesn't exist. It is an illusion, a shadow of the reality. Guilt exists. Pain exists. Broken dreams and sin exist. But failure is a hopelessness that settles in after these things. Failure is a lie that says no good thing can emerge after our goals are not accomplished. The opposite is actually true. God can turn any mistake into a positive thing. We can learn from mistakes and grow. But the fear of failure is that we will be stuck at that place forever.

I observe the generation from age 15-30 seem more willing to learn from mistakes without the misguided belief that they are now doomed to disaster and poverty when they don’t immediately meet their goals. May your tribe increase.

Fly in the Urinal - A Life Lesson

2007-10-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

Some parables are more graphic than others. This may be one of them.

Janitors cleaning restrooms in Amsterdam were complaining with each other in a bar one night, griping about the notoriously bad aim of Dutch men when using urinals. (Personally, I think it has something to do with legalized Pot in Amsterdam, but I digress). A researcher, overhearing this fascinating conversation, decided to do some research into the subject. He called several manufacturers of urinals and asked them why they designed their receptacles in their current shape. Supposedly, they answered that this shape is supposed to reduce the amount of spray that leaks over the side. The bowl shape is supposed to make it easier for men to aim and hit the mark.

Obviously that theory doesn't hold as much water as the experts thought it would.

So this researcher asked them if there was a "sweet spot" in the urinal that would make spray a thing of the past. Indeed, there was and they identified it for him. He went to a manufacturer of urinals and asked if they would do an experiment. Would they put a target in the urinal for men to fire at. The company agreed, and the researcher also got a hold of the janitors from the pub to see if they could arrange for these special urinals to be used in their buildings.

After making the necessary changes, they measured the degree of spray compared to the same buildings before the change. There was a noticeable difference. But the improvement was not enough to warrant the massive expense of replacing urinals city-wide. Something had to be done to improve men's aim further. No one knows who suggested it, but someone put forward the idea of painting a fly on the "sweet spot" of the urinal and then see if men aimed at it.

The "fly urinals" were tried out in the same buildings. Several more companies were now interested in the results. The testing on the surrounding area was done every day for over a month. The results shocked everyone. The floor and walls around these urinals were as clean as the floor in a hospital. They had achieved urinal perfection.

So what can we learn from this? Most of the goals we set in life are too unfocused, too vague and too unchallenging. Someone getting a college degree only thinks vaguely about their future job. Someone raising a baby hopes that child will grow up healthy. A husband only thinks in general terms about how his wife feels about him, and does very little to affect that.

In order to make the kind of changes we all want to see, we have to focus as clearly as we can on the target and then give ourselves incentive for achieving them. First, it helps to have an admirable goal. As a believer in God, I think that God helps me set the goals I need to obtain. His Spirit within me helps to refine those goals to my peculiar life.

For instance: I want to see the people I live with on my block come to my church. But that goal is too vague. How can I achieve that? I can preach to them, but I doubt that works very well any more. I can pay them to come, but I know that sends the wrong message. So my goal these days is to spend more time walking around the neighborhood. When I spot a neighbor, I ask God what he wants me to achieve with them that day. Recently, one of my neighbors was out cleaning his new Harley Davidson motorcycle. I was going out to get the mail, so when I spotted him, I asked God what I should talk about. "Ask him about the bike and keep asking until he gets tired of talking about it".

That was not a short conversation.

We went everywhere from the origins of the company (this was a 100th Anniversary bike) to all the bikes he has every owned, to the glories of Sturgis, South Dakota. After a half hour, he half apologized: "Look at me go on and on" he said. "you must be bored to tears." "Not at all" I said. And I wasn't. I was fascinated about what obviously had caused this man joy for years. In just a few minutes, he has asked me what I did for a living. I went down the list of my roles and he didn't flinch at all when I said "Pastor". We then talked about his church background. Then we found out our daughters had attended the same school (We later learned they knew each other).
I have a new friend and we have decided to do some things together. If I hadn't aimed at this mark, I might still be wandering the neighborhood aimlessly.

Nowadays, only my dog gets to spray indiscriminately.

Is There Anything to Learn from "The Secret"?

2007-10-02T14:13:00.000-07:00

The old adage says, "Nothing is all bad. Even a clock that stops is correct twice a day". I agree; nothing is all bad. We can learn from just about anything, even disasters that make us wince and wretch can show us patterns that teach. This is also true of this book, "The Secret". I have laid out how I feel this book is both logically and theologically full of nonsense. I have also made clear that this is not a new teaching, nor is it helpful.

But it has sold millions of copies. And there has to be a reason for that beyond the snake-oil-buying-natural-gullibility of the general public. In fact, there are four reasons this book tops many best-seller lists.

1. We all want to believe that we have a hand in our destiny. What the Secret really appeals to is a yearning in all of us to manipulate the seemingly out-of-control forces arrayed against us. All people want to believe that on some level they can tell the future to fall in line with our desires and expectations. And even though The Secret's methods of controlling fate seem slippery and almost impossible (for instance, who can hold onto a positive thought indefinitely without wavering), the idea that there is a way to be in charge of your own life is comforting to most people.

2. We all want more power and authority than we really have. This is the grand appeal of such things as American Idol voting, ordering a car from the factory and Starbucks: They all offer a chance at being in charge of something. The Secret lays out a scheme to take charge of a lot of things, least of which is our finances and health. In the larger picture, The Secret hints that all of life could change because of something one person might believe. No one wants to go through life believing they are insignificant or irrelevant. If Christianity did a better job at calling people to Intercessory Prayer, Mercy Ministries and Community Involvement opportunities, The Secret would fall well behind what God could offer. God wants us to make our Maximum Impact for God (MIFG), but we often relegate each other to a passive observer role. The Secret lets everyone be in charge of how much or how little we want to change this world.

3. We are all selfish and it is much easier to place that selfishness in a more positive light than to feel bad about it. This is why people like Susan Block and her Ethical Hedonism are also so popular. If you redefine sin as something positive, people won't feel so guilty trying it. Of course The Secret is popular: It legitimizes self-absorption and calls it blessed.

4. We want to believe again. Believing means we don't have everything figured out and are willing to suspend disbelief for a season. Faith is not irrational as it is hyperrational. We see that this complex world is beyond understanding (for more on this, see the teachings of Complexity Theory), and therefore no one can map out the future with any clarity. When Alvin Toffler wrote Future Shock in the 7os, everyone thought he was a genius for the short-term vision he had. But his next book, "The Third Wave" completely counts computers as irrelevant for the future. People are tired of figuring everything out. They want to believe in something, even if that something is as nebulous as "The Universe". When asked what he was looking for in his journeys around the galaxy, Arthur Dent (hero of the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") says "You know. What we all want. The answer". The answer to what? "You know, the answer to Life, the Universe, Everything". The Secret lays that out for us. It's weakness is that it does such a poor job.

Ten Biblical Reasons I Wouldn't Buy "The Secret" Even if it Came with Free Titleist Golf Balls

2007-09-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

Don't you hate it when part 1 of an article and part 2 are this far apart.

So now let me give you ten biblical responses to the book "The Secret". As you will quickly tell, my take is that "The Secret" has nothing really in common with the Bible and should not in any way be construed as a spiritually helpful book for those who hold to the Bible's teachings. These ten responses are not in any particular order. This is appropriate because the book is essentially just a collection of sayings all centered around the same topic. The topic, however, does not happen to be The Bible.

1. In this book, you and God get confused. Here is a quotation from Lisa Nichols, the most frequently quoted writer in the book: "“You are eternal life. You are God manifested in human form, made to perfection.” There are so many verses I could turn to in order to show that this is not biblical, but one will be enough. Deuteronomy 6:4 says "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one." There is only one God. We cannot be God manifested in human form. That is Jesus. I am not Jesus. My favorite t-shirt will always be "There are two essential truths: There is a God, and you are not Him". Many of the authors in the Secret confuse God with themselves or their readers. There is a true statement that if you make everything the same thing then nothing is that thing. If everyone is God there is no God. If all is beautiful, there is no beauty.

2. The Claim that Jesus is a Millionaire: This claim is made by two of the authors. It is not a new idea, but one that hadn't seen the written page in many decades. People who want to get rich, or teach others to get rich...and want to use Jesus as an example...like to claim he was wealthy beyond the average man. But Jesus' assessment of himself was quite clear: "And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” There is no evidence either in the Bible or in historical documents that Jesus was anything but poor. To suggest otherwise is to ignore truth.

3. The book claims that the Bible tells you to do three things to get what you want: Ask, believe, receive. It also tells you that you can have whatever you want, no matter what it is, if you do these three things. I assume that includes evil things as well. The book does not place any moral values on anything except that poverty and illness are evil. The Bible does tell us that if we ask anything according to God's will He hears us. And it also warns us that our prayers will not be answered if we ask with selfish motives. The Secret is all about selfishness, so it is hard to see that it lines up with the Bible at all.

4. God is called "The Universe" in 10 different places. The universe is said to have been created by God in the Bible. How can God be both creator and creation. That is a logical and biblical impossibility. We are told to worship God but never to worship any created thing.

5. The most frequent phrase used in the book is "the Law of Attraction". (see a previous post for more information on this). The author says that this is another way of saying Love. Therefore, she concludes, the Law of Attraction is what the Bible is all about since the Bible is all about love. First, the Bible is not all about love. It is all about God and man's pursuit of God. Love does come into it, but so do many other virtues. Second, love is much more selfless and profound than a rule that says I get to have whatever I focus on. If you read 1 Corinthians 13 where it says "Love is patient, love is kind, love does NOT SEEK ITS OWN" you get a picture of love that is absolutely the opposite of what Byrne says it is.

6. Bob Proctor in the book says that Quantum physics teaches that all matter results from thought. First, I cannot imagine a single Physic professor agreeing with that statement. But secondly, we are told that the Universe was spoken into being by God. If you can't even agree with the Bible on the origin of the Universe, then there is little else that the Bible and The Secret can possibly have in common.

7. Fred Wolf, another contributor to the book, says that we are recreating the universe with our thoughts. Once again, this makes us God. But it also disagrees with man's current place in the universe. According to Romans 8, the universe is groaning in anticipation for the revealing of the Sons of God. This revealing will take place when God remakes the new heavens and the new earth. Man is not creating the universe or making it better. The sin of man is what caused the universe to get messed up and it stays that way by the sin of man.

8. Their Universe (another name for God in this book) believes in speed. One author says it this way: " the Universe likes speed, so don't delay. There is no virtue in letting anything come slowly." We are told that God is slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. According to this book, the universe does not think anything about you, it only responds to you. None of this matches Scripture.

9. The Bible says that sin is selfishness. This book calls selfishness a virtue and the strongest force in the universe.

10. We are told in the Bible to renounce secret ways. The whole idea of this book is that these truths she is propounding are a secret and only the initiated will really understand them. The Bible is clear that all mankind understands what God has revealed through nature and through his Son Jesus. The old "mystery religions" of the first century made the same mistake as this book, as do most cults. God tells us clearly in Deuteronomy 29:29: "“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."

I could have mentioned dozens of other ways that The Secret directly contradicts the Bible. In essence, you either believe the Bible or the Secret. You can't have both.

Sorry

2007-09-29T19:23:00.001-07:00

It is conference season for me and my ilk. Later on tonight I have the next installment in the series on "The Secret" (the next one to follow tomorrow night). I apologize for not posting it sooner.

Where is "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" Now?

2007-09-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

The book that swept the nation the last five years is no longer the leading seller at the top of the advice book list. And it is not hard to see why. I believe it has done more damage to our economy than any book in the last twenty years.

The basic premise of the book is that rich dads teach their children that real wealth is accrued by using other people's money to accumulate properties and wealth. The assumption is that you can borrow against the equity position in hard assets (i.e. homes and property) and because these assets don't depreciate in value - in the long term - you will be able to use other people's money to make a fortune. Just use the equity of your own home, leverage it to buy nine other homes and you will be set for life.

This is, indeed what rich dads teach their kids. And because property values over the long-term go up, this concept does work.

But the problem with leveraging is that it only works for one group of people: Those who already have enough assets in reserve to make it work in the long-run. When the inevitable downturns in the market happen, most people with short positions on their investments (meaning that they have to continue making money or their loans will be called in) go broke or worse.

This is actually what is causing the housing crisis to worsen; not just the family that spent too much on a house financed with an Adjustable Rate mortgage. The prices would never have gone up so quickly if people all around the country had not been so eager to leverage everything.

What rich dads also teach their kids is this: When you run into a slowing housing market, hold onto assets and dad will help you pay for the lending costs. Poor dads, on the other hand, cannot help their kids when the short-term profits end. Therefore, poor kids panic.

See the difference?

Evaluating "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne - Part 1

2007-09-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

After the death of one of her parents in 2004, Rhonda Byrne began to explore various religions and religious teachings. Somehow, her quest brought a book to her attention by Wallace Wattles called “The Science of Getting Rich”. Through this book, Ms. Byrne had an epiphany of sorts and began to discover that the Truth claims in Wattles book were not distinct with him alone. Doing some cursory searches of the Internet, Ms. Byrne found many other authors, Self-help teachers, religious teachers and groups that espoused the basic principles that Wattles teaches in this book.

The book itself, published in 1910 is not even the best of its breed, outstripped by far in the writings of Napoleon Hill, Charles Fillmore and Norman Vincent Peale. Byrne was convinced that she had discovered a huge secret of how to live a dynamic and successful life. So smitten was she that she assembled a film crew and interviewed more than twenty proponents of New Thought, Unity School and Religious Science teachers and made a movie called “The Secret”.

Because Oprah is a closet follower of New Thought doctrine, she invited Byrne onto her program a few times and showed clips of the movie. From that introduction, Byrne had doors open to her and from Oprah's insistence published a book (also called “The Secret”) utilizing material from the DVD. Oprah had her back on the program after the book was published and it immediately became a runaway best-seller and has stayed in that position for more than a year.

I have had several people ask me what I think of the book. I had not bought it after it came out because a quick glance at both the names of the contributors and a few of the chapter titles told me all I needed to know. But I have had many Christians buy the book and profess that they like the conclusions it draws but feel strangely uneasy about the contents. Therefore, I am putting forward this three-part evaluation of “The Secret” in hopes that both Christians and non-Christians alike will see the book with more realistic viewpoints and get rid of the hype that so often follows the offerings of Oprah.

This first entry deals with the overall Truth Claims of “The Secret”. The next blog entry will focus primarily on how “The Secret” stacks up against the Bible's truth claims. And the third entry (by far the shortest) will focus on what value the book has for any of us.

By way of introduction, let me state what I mean by a “Truth Claim”. This is a statement which claims to be true but offers no concrete evidence or logical summary. Truth claims are simply what they sound like: A claim to have the truth. The reader either accepts them or not. The Bible is actually a book of Truth Claims. It does not prove the existence of God, His hand in Creating the world, His role in miracles etc. It just states who God is and claims all that it says to be true.

In the Secret, most of the Truth claims are based upon a principle Byrne calls “The Law of Attraction”. The author tries to claim that the Law of Attraction is actually a standard law of Physics. She never does say that this law is actually Gravity, (i.e. The attraction of two physical objects to each other) and there is good reason that she doesn't. If she called it Gravity then we would have no way of applying it to the realm of thought. She quotes Fred Alan Wolf, a physicist, a number of times claiming that the Universe holds together by the Law of Attraction. He does not call it Gravity either, because he must know that is not the only Law that holds the Universe together.

At the same time there is an attraction going on between bodies, there is also a repulsion going on. At the molecular level...inside an atom...we have both attraction and repulsion operating. That is first year college physics. If this were not true, the entire Universe would collapse into a black hole of unimaginably small size and unimaginably large mass. Every atom has a proton and a neutron with a number of electrons floating around. The electrons repel each other and therefore keep their distance. The neutron does not attract or repel. The proton holds the electrons, but the existence of other electrons keeps everything in balance.

Byrne claims that the Universe (capital U because the Universe is a living being to Byrne) operates on the principle of attraction. If you have a positive thought, positive results are attracted to you. If you have a negative thought, negative things are attracted to you. Many times in the book, the claim is made that all negative things that happen are a result of a negative thought. If you have a car accident, you must have had a thought that attracted that car accident. If you get a bill in the mail, it is because you expected a bill in the mail. Lisa Nichols (one of the participants) says that if you go to the mailbox and expect only checks, that is what you will get. Yet later on, Bob Proctor talks about taking his bills and whiting out the amounts whenever he gets them. This implies he gets bills. I guess Lisa attracts good things better than Bob.

Another truth claim is that our emotions are the only true measurement of what we're thinking. If you have bad thoughts, you will have bad emotions. If you have good thoughts you will have good emotions. Therefore, it also works in reverse. If you work at having a good emotion, you will have a good thought. This, of course, has been proven to be absolutely false to the uttermost degree. You can have hormones at work, you can have illness, injury or external circumstances at work. You can be grieving over the loss of a loved ones and yet only have love for them. The author also never specifies what a bad emotion or a good one is. Good emotions, we are told are the ones that make you feel good. Cocaine can also do that for you, so I guess cocaine would be a great substance for use with the Secret.

The author also claims that if you believe you will have something completely it will be yours. The other contributors claim to have received cars, boats, airline tickets, stacks of money, fame and fortune. One writer claims that a painter friend of his acquaintance wanted more girlfriends, more sex partners. When asked how many, he responded “three a week would be good”. So he painted paintings and left them around the house showing himself with three women in each one. Since that time, he has been dating three women a week (we can assume these are different women each time) and loving the experience. Claims are also made about healing from disease, changes in relationships, and even the ability to get the parking space you want almost every time.

What they don't address is the moral and ethical value of what you will be receiving. Two “for instances” should suffice, though you will immediately see how many more there could be. If a person who wants to have sex with a child thinks positive thoughts and can visualize having a child in their bed, according to these principles they will have what they want. If someone is positive that the world would be better off if we wiped out an entire people group, and approached that thought with joy and visualization and faith and determination, then that people group would be completely wiped off the earth. How completely mind-numbing that approach to living is. Yet, all through the book there is no claim to moral boundaries or ethical strictures. Anything you want is yours to have.

In addition, the book makes a claim that the more completely you believe something, the more the Universe has to give it to you. But it doesn't deal with the logical absurdity of that. What if two people are asking for opposite things and they both want it equally as much. Such as two football fans both visualizing their team winning. Perhaps you're thinking that the authors wouldn't take it to that extreme. But they do. They claim that you can end a bad marriage with the Secret. You can attract hundreds of millions of dollars to yourself with this Secret. You can get the house you want without even seeing the house with this Secret. At least 20 times we are told you can have “anything” you want by applying the Law of Attraction.

At its very core, the book has a flaw of approach. It claims that religions all over the world have been teaching this for centuries. It claims that most of the world's great thinkers agree with this. At one point, we are even told that Jesus himself was a millionaire, even though He Himself claimed to own nothing. But the only quotes that are used of some of the world's most famous people (e.g. Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon to name a few) don't actually quote them backing up the teachings of the book, but rather sprinkle quotes around which have some of the same wording but when found in context say something completely different. For instance, they quote Einstein as asking “The one thing we need to know is, is the Universe a friendly place?”. Byrne speculates that Einstein asks this question to get us to answer “yes”. For, if we answer “no”, the universe will be unfriendly to us. If we answer “yes” it will be friendly to us.

And, by the way, what is this Universe thing? Almost every page the Universe is referred to. It is seen at different points as the being that makes decisions about our life, but also a machine that we can control. It follows its own laws, but we can control it. It wants only good for us, but it is the source of evil. It is wealthy beyond measure but the wealth actually comes to us from other people. The Universe, as it is laid out in this book, is a logical impossibility.

One more logical inconsistency in the book. It claims that everyone can apply this and we can all be wealthy. But if everyone has a million dollars, that will make everyone's money worth less. At any given time, there can only be so much wealth. To have more wealth created without there being more production is called Inflation. Inflation causes all possessions and money to be worth less.

Here is the real rule of economics: The more wealthy people there are, the more poverty will exist. That is the rule of the world since the beginning of time. You can't just print money, or wish it into existence. That will increase the money supply and create inflation. When everyone is rich, paper will cost a fortune and food will be outrageously priced. It can't work the way the book says it will. Life is a zero-sum game. That means if someone wins, then someone else loses. If someone makes money on the stock exchange, someone lost money. If one of the authors of the book, Jack Canfield (of the Chicken Soup books) makes a million dollars on a book, it means that 100,000 people are $10 poorer for buying the book.

Finally, the author claims that the Secret has been hidden away and is only now being brought forward (that's why it is called “The Secret). That is a crock. This is basically just the teachings of philosopher Emmanuel Swedenborg, which morphed into Christian Science, Religious Science, Unity School, Ekankar, New Thought, and the Word of Faith Movement. There is not a single word in this book which did not derive from Swedenborg, Fillmore, Baker Eddy and Phineas Quimby.

Over the years, families have been destroyed by family members who tried to live out these truth claims only to find that they don't often work. Let's say a family has a small child with an infection. Instead of going to a doctor for antibiotics, they simply try and think positive thoughts. When the child gets sicker, they usually blame each other for not having enough positive thoughts. I have seen this pattern with so many New Thought, Christian Science and Unity school people. What I have never seen is more joy, more life, more vitality, or more money in these families. In fact, I have seen the opposite.

In the book, Bob Proctor claims that if you attract health to you, you will never get sick or injured. Since almost all death is the result of either injury or illness, no one in the history of the world has practiced this perfectly, if the standard is that we never have injuries or illness.

The underlying truth claims of the book are nonsense and don't work. But this isn't the greatest problem with the book. Next time, we will look at how the truth claims of the book stack up against the claims of the Bible.

Stop Studying the Incredibly Obvious

2007-09-05T08:36:00.001-07:00

In the last 48 hours, three studies have come out that make me sit up and wonder "Who gives grants for these studies?"

Study #1: Shows that men prefer...(gasp) good looking women!

Study #2: Shows that lack of sleep may hurt your libido.

Study #3: Rock stars are more likely to die younger than the general population.

Look at all three of these studies: They fall into the category of the mind-numbingly obvious. I guarantee you that some Sociology majors made a fortune designing and implementing these research grants.

Here are a few I propose for the 2008 Sociology degree graduates:

1. Does watching too much television lower your IQ?
2. Do people have more stress when they have more debt?
3. Do people who know God report more peace in their lives?
4. Do most people look up and see blue sky? (Do this study in Sacramento, not Seattle btw).

This Woman is Living the Gospel In Las Vegas!

2007-09-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

I don't usually reprint blog articles in their entirety...but honestly, Annie Lobert's website makes it a little hard to find stuff.

I am speaking of the Hookers for Jesus website. She is an ex-prostitute dedicated to helping get hookers off the streets and into a relationship with Jesus, especially in Las Vegas. Her website is www.hookersforjesus.net. Check out her testimony. It is incredibly uplifting (though long).

Here is what she wrote today:

Have you ever been arrested?

I have…and many times here in Las Vegas for prostitution and soliciting. AND--I used to RUN from the police …ducking behind slot machines in the casinos, trying to "hide"! (Never worked, by the way) But what is really funny to me—one of the police officers that I used to run from was Bill Young, former sheriff of Las Vegas. We soon formed a friendship…but not an ordinary one. Here I was, an escort, not admitting I was a prostitute. And then there was Bill and David, telling me that I needed to get out of the business…because I was too smart and beautiful. They also were concerned for my safety…they did not want me to end up murdered somewhere in a hotel room.

Many nights they would arrest me…in sting operations in hotel rooms or just walking through the casinos. They told me I would be safer in jail than on the street. As much as I did not want to admit, they were right! I WAS safer in jail than out cruising around risking my life…because the life that looks and feels so glamorous doesn't always reveal the bad part…and sometimes it's only after you're used and abused, or just outright DEAD! By then it is too late!!!

So how did this friendship with Bill and David start…and how is it today? Can I tell you one thing—sometimes people are put in your life for a REASON. Today, Bill Young is on my board of directors for Hooker For Jesus! How COOL it that? He has a heart to help the girls just like I do!

So, getting out of the business and finding Jesus has been the best thing that has ever happened to me! I want so much to pay God back for all the wrong that I have done, and am always looking for opportunities to do so. Now I know that doing good works will not earn my salvation….but by my faith in believing that I could make a difference and please God at the same time…this is what drove my desire!!! I really wanted to do something special for God and the women too.

So when I heard that my church (The Church At South Las Vegas) had a prison ministry…I was so excited to join it! I wanted to reach the women that were in the very jail that I was brought to when I was arrested…so I signed up for it.

When I walked into the jail…and looked into these beautiful, broken, and humble women's faces.... my heart just BROKE. Here they were, tears flowing down their faces, and completely worshipping Jesus with ALL OF THEIR HEARTS!!! I remembered that feeling of being so alone in jail!

Then the realization and guilt hit me…because many of the things that they were "busted" for…I SHOULD HAVE BEEN! I just never got caught!

Haven't we all somehow broken the law…and if we would have been arrested, would have served some time?

EVEN AS CHRISTIANS! Haven't we also broken many of God's laws, now that I mention it???

Be honest with yourself! Come on—let's be REAL. I don't know about you…but I could name a number of things that I have done over the years (that most of us do or have done) that I deserved "jail time" for!!!

Do we really KNOW how fortunate we ALL are? Think about it, most of us have found Jesus outside of jail….here these women are incarcerated, with no where to go!!! Didn't Jesus SAY that we are to visit these very people WHILE they were in jail??? At their LOWEST point?

How would you feel if you were in jail and no one came to see you???

OUCH.

This made me all the more thankful for Jesus in my life…because He saved me from this jail time…and also…the JAIL of my MIND!!!

So what DOES Jesus say about people that are in jail—or people that need our help in general?

31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' Matthew 25:31-40

Well, I have been to the jail to minister a couple times now…and cannot TELL you how extremely amazing that it has been! This past week I was able to share my testimony…there were MANY women in the audience that cried the entire time I was talking. Why was this…that they would listen to my story? Because I also have spent a little time in jail—and they know that I understand how they are feeling…

Two x-prostitutes came up to me afterwards and asked me if I could help them when they got out—many of them have no where to go. One is getting out next week!!! So I am going to help them!!! These women are so PRECIOUS TO ME!!! I want to do whatever it takes to stop this cycle of abuse so these beautiful women do not end up in jail again!!!

Some of you might know about of the Prostitution Reformation Program that I am currently working on with the courts. This program will allow the women to take educational classes to inform them of the dangers and realities of prostitution, and it will be available to them in lieu of their jail time. Every woman that is arrested will have a chance to "choose" to really change her life! There will be resources available to them after every class should they want a way "out". Yay!!!

Please pray for the women that I was able to talk with and minister to in jail. Please also pray for the two x-prostitutes wanting to really change their lives, that they will continue their relationship with Jesus and go into a healing program to finish what has started in jail…a place ironically where they had an encounter with "Jesus".

I want to thank all of you for your support and prayers…and for the donations. You know who you are!!! The donations not only help me run my administrative part of the organization…they have also been helping many women and CHILDREN of women that are prostitutes and x-prostitutes.

Would you like to see just one example?

A few days ago I took my good friend's (x-prostitute that is now saved) son (12 years old) shopping—because he did not have any clothes, shoes, or school supplies for school. He was so happy! I also gave as much as I could for food because his mother has a severe disability and is not working right now.

This very friend of mine (Deanna) is sold out for God and has been coming to my church for about 5 months now, and God has completely changed her life!!!

She needs her teeth pulled out, (she is in a lot of pain) she is in desperate need of ALL of her teeth being replaced with dentures! So I am hoping to do this for her as soon as I can….we both agreed that she would be a much happier person if she could talk and smile without covering her mouth! Please pray for finances to come for this very task!

Gleanings From My Bookmarks

2007-08-29T13:56:00.001-07:00

You know by now that I revel in the offbeat and less-traveled paths in life. That also includes websites. Every once in awhile, I come across lesser-known websites that turn out to be better than most of the sites everyone visits.

As I was cleaning out my "Bookmark" file, I was reminded of several that I use regularly which are so cool and helpful that I thought I would share them with readers of this blog. If any of them help you, please let everyone else know.

In no particular order then:

1. Pocketmod (www.pocketmod.com). You wouldn't think by looking at it that this little piece of paper could get almost anyone organized. But let me tell you: This will save you all the cost of a PDA or maybe even a laptop. This is like having a Personal Information Manager in your back pocket that never has to be booted up. Try it at least twice and you will be hooked.

2. Zamzar (www.zamzar.com). Have you ever received a file from someone that was in a format you couldn't read or work with? This site will convert it for free to the format you need. Just upload the file and then pick which format you want it in. Zamzar sends it to your email account.

3. Concisefreeware (www.concisefreeware.com). For years I have been a fan of Open Source Software. OSS is software that is designed and improved upon by the Online world. These programs also happen to be free. This site has a listing of the best of them. It was at Concisefreeware that I was first introduced to OpenOffice (which does a very good job at competing with MS Office), GIMP (an improvement on Photoshop IMO), and Audacity (the world's best audio editing program).

4. AirFare Prediction (www.farecast.com). You just heard your friend booked his flight to Hawaii for half of what you paid...on the same website! How did that happen? Well, he may have gone to AirFare Predictors. At this site, you can put in your destination and they will give you a very accurate prediction of when that airfare will drop in price...for what kind of seats...and for how long.

5. Bubble (www.bubbl.us). Bubble is my favorite new site. You can propose any idea and branch out from it with many brainstorming directions. Then, when you are finished, it can be printed out easily in a graphical format that gives you a single view of the entire project. I use this tool for my writing all the time.

Mixed Feelings about Ted's Letter

2007-08-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

When Ted Haggard left his ministry in Colorado Springs after admitting to sexual misconduct, I did feel a lot of empathy for his predicament, though no sympathy for his consequences. But now I have another ambivalent set of feelings toward him.

He has sent out a letter this month to thousands of members of his former church in Colorado Springs asking for money. This is the way it sounded in the Colorado Springs Gazette:

Ted Haggard, former megachurch pastor and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, is in the news again—this time asking gifts to provide two years of financial support while he and his wife Gayle study psychology and counseling at the University of Phoenix.
He sent an e-mail to reporter Tak Landrock of ABC affiliate KRDO—and from the way it appeals to “friends like you,” it sounds like it was sent to a lot of people...

So the first issue is simply that Haggard seems to be operating independently and ahead of those who were appointed to be his spiritual guardians. In so doing, he is not really showing that he is willing to submit to their discipline over him. Unfortunately, this has often been the story with Christian leaders who are caught in sexual sin. They begin remorseful and end resentful because people are perpetually peering over their shoulder.

The second problem with his letter is the actual mailing address Haggard’s letter gives where “friends like you” should mail their donations. According to watchdogs in the blogosphere (see this for a start, which has been linked on multiple other blogs), it is a defunct charity whose mailing addresses belong to a sex offender from Hawaii. Curioser and curioser.

But the biggest issue for me is Haggard's financial situation:

According to the Gazette:

Haggard received a salary of $115,000 for the 10 months he worked in 2006 and an $85,000 anniversary bonus before the scandal broke, according to church officials. The church’s board of trustees gave him a severance package that included a year’s salary ($138,000). He also collects royalties on his many book titles.

Haggard owns a home in Colorado Springs that has been for sale. It has a market value of $715,051, according to records from the El Paso County assessor.

My real struggle here is whether someone who has been making almost a quarter million dollars a year for over 10 years and hasn't saved enough to support himself through a few more years of training, ought to have a dime given to him. There are single moms whose husbands have left them in our Christian circle who would love the chance to go to school and have someone pay for them. In fact, I would give to that fund! And they haven't broken everyone else's trust.

But I am ambivalent. This may seem like a small point, but where does a career pastor go for a job when he finds himself out of work? It is not like there is a real market for ex-preachers. On those days when I wished there was a softer wall to beat my head against, I have looked through the want-ads (or Craig's List these days) and realized that if it wasn't for my counselor training, I couldn't get a job that would feed my family.

So I understand Ted's dilemma. He is preacher non grata. Some would say (I am one of them) that is the consequence of committing sexual sin when you are in a position of authority in God's church. But the other side, the compassion side, does feel for him.

Ted, perhaps trusting God to bring in the money instead of sending out letters may be a wiser move.

He Loves us This Much

2007-08-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a skit done on Godtube that will rock your world. The music is Lifehouse's "Everything" (one of my all-time favorite worship tunes) and it shows how much Jesus loves us. This could only have been done live.

View it at: http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ee73e63418003b47d7d5

Bursting the Bubble

2007-08-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

Duane had been a pastor for almost 20 years when he finally admitted to a counselor that he had a sexual addiction. The details of his addiction are unimportant at this juncture, since sometimes the details of an addiction can be as titillating to people as their own addiction can be. Let's just say that he felt shame most of the time.

Duane went to a Christian Counseling center and spent almost $20,000 for treatment. This happened about seven years ago now. He came out of the center several weeks later and went home to a nervous wife and congregation. Slowly, he meted out the details of his problem to all of them and sought forgiveness and reconciliation, which they heartily gave. In fact, so many people were impressed by the openness and honesty of this pastor that they gave him opportunities to speak about his "freedom" and how the Spirit of God set him on a new road of purity.

The requests to speak on this subject kept coming and people eventually asked him to write a book on the subject. He always intended to, but never got around to it. In fact, that was the reason he and I first met. It was at a Christian writers seminar. As we talked, he learned that I did counseling with pastors in the area of his addiction. A few weeks after we had met, he emailed me and asked if he could fly down to where I lived to do some counseling together.

It had been five years since he had "come clean" about his addiction and publicly began teaching about how to be free from addictive behavior. But he admitted to me that for the last year and a half, he had gone back to his addiction. And though it wasn't as strong as it used to be, it was still there and he now had the added guilt of speaking to people about Freedom in Christ without being free himself.

We began the process of Theophostic Prayer Ministry (TPM) which helped him to get down to the lies at the heart of his addictive behavior. As we saw the real reasons for his addiction, I suggested that he relinquish the teachings and the speeches on Freedom in Christ and just start living it.

I am not sure how much testimonies really help, to be honest. I hear testimonies these days that talk about absolute freedom and I wonder if that is even possible this side of heaven. Don't get me wrong...I think we can be set from the evil in this world. I believe in holiness and godliness. But we still have freedom of choice every day. Absolute freedom is our goal, but it is not the reality we have achieved. The purpose of a testimony is to give God credit for what He has done. But perhaps we exaggerate how much God has done in order to lift His name up even higher. I call that "evangelastics"...stretching the truth to give glory to God. However, in Duane's case, he really did feel free. Shouldn't he tell the world about his freedom? My question is this: Did Duane's ability to stay away from sexual addiction mean he was free?

Here is the bubble I want to burst. Most approaches to overcoming sexual addiction amount to some variation of "just say no" or "be accountable" or "ask the Lord to take this away from you". However, sexual addiction is different from other addictions. You don't have a relationship with alcohol. You don't have intimacy with drugs. But sex is the ultimate expression of familial love between a man and a woman. Sexual addiction has so many layers to it and so many things that may contribute to it....in fact, any relationship problems can trigger a relapse into sexual addiction. In a posting a few years ago, I mentioned how the same person could have a dozen different lies they believe, and yet every one of them can manifest the same way. How can you then tell which lie is being triggered if the outcome is always the same?

This is often the case with those who have symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive behavior. As we go through various lies that their heart believes, each of them results in OCD behavior. It is therefore impossible to tell just by a cursory glance what the root cause is by the behavior. This is why I have bailed out of behavioral counseling. I don't think it has the lasting power of the inner voice of the Spirit of God.

God has to show each person the root lies of their behavior. And none of us do anything randomly. Duane had a lie embedded in himself that told him every time someone disagreed with him they were going to find a way later to hurt him. When he felt this, he responded as he had always done: He pulled away from them. As he did this, they felt hurt and responded by pulling away from him or pushing him hard...either way, he would feel hurt and would pull away more. Eventually people in this process would pull away for good. When he felt this abandonment, he would always medicate it through his sexual addiction.

So what happened during the 3.5 years that he didn't medicate with sexual addiction? During that time, he was getting lots of props through the success of his speaking ministry. Speaking ministry is usually a one-sided relationship with the speaker giving and everyone else taking. Therefore, for several years, his old lies didn't get triggered as often. And because he really was relying on God to give him strength each day, that combination kept him from the most egregious behavior of his addiction. But there is a reason it didn't last. Eventually, the old lies began to trigger him more frequently. As he did not get his book written, people close to him began to suspect that he wasn't happy with his ministry. Several people confronted him on his inability to finish tasks. He went back into the lie that he would be hurt...and of course, he was. Now, when he tried to "just say no" and to quote memorized scriptures, the internal pain kept getting more intense. In one weak moment in another city, he acted out his addiction. Then, because he couldn't admit this to anyone, he buried the pain and it just got worse. Now he realized he would hurt more than just his wife and congregation if he came forward. He would hurt the many people who had heard his testimony. He was stuck. He did apply a lot of aversion techniques he had learned in therapy and these did help him stay away from the worst of the addiction. But he had to admit the desire to medicate his pain was still there. Poor Duane: He was stuck at a level of freedom that taunted him without relieving pain.

Duane's situation just underscores a lot of the danger of the public testimony. So many Christians I know (and pastors in particular) feel doomed once they talk about their freedom. Now, if they have a relapse, they will be ostracized and have fingers pointed at them. I think of young Christians that were popular before they got saved, like Alice Cooper, B.J. Thomas and the Korn guitarist, Brian "Head" Welch who all had marvelous testimonies only to later fall back into some of their problems. All of them later were very sorry they went public with their freedom before they really knew they were free. Now, all three of them are much more quiet about their faith and prefer to grow in anonymity except for the people they know in their local church setting.

I am not saying we should keep quiet about what God is doing in our lives. Or maybe I am. Perhaps what we should say is that God is doing an incredible work and that there is more to do, but I feel freer than I have for a long time. And keep working at sexual addiction or any other addiction, and see that it is a work in progress. But the desire to let the world know how wonderful things are with us can be more of a desire to put on a show than a desire to be free. Duane can tell you today that he hardly acts out on his addiction any more. Oh, he has some relapses, but they are small and manageable. We have identified five different lies that all triggered his addiction. As each new one comes up, Duane is not defeated...instead he is excited that one more piece of his addiction puzzle will go on the board.

That is a testimony worth telling. Only this time, Duane is keeping the audience much smaller.

Lies that Make Porn Easier

2007-08-20T19:40:00.000-07:00

One of the big misunderstandings perpetuated by those who do not struggle with porn is that it is all about sex. There is no question that porn focuses upon people as sexual images, two-dimensional objects of desire. But this does not mean that the subtext is sexual at its core. At its core, porn is focusing on medicating pain.

As I mentioned in the last post, more women than ever are viewing porn at least monthly. Because men and women tend to have similar kinds of pain in their lives (though the sources are often very different), we can assume that women are using porn to medicate as men have done for years.

This "medicating" process is not unlike the use of recreational or prescription drugs, alcohol abuse or workaholism in its approach to dealing with internal pain. This of course begs the question "why does pain still hang onto us?" As Dr. Ed Smith teaches concerning lie-based thinking, most pain which has the lasting power of years had its origins in young childhood. When one examines certain hallmark memories that contain pain, the pain usually emanates from certain lies that we believe. Therefore, porn's goal (whether understood or not) is to medicate against the ravages of lies that women believe.

What are the lies that porn may seem to help with? I can immediately think of six lies which often show up in Theophostic ministry sessions with women.

1. "My Life Will never be in my control". Someone who has been abused, used and had power taken away from them as a child may feel that internal helplessness, especially in the complex working out of relational problems. With porn, the fantasy is that the possessor of porn is completely in control of the images and the acting out of the fantasy. The men and women in the pictures do what you want them to do.

2. "I will be abandoned in all my relationships". This lie contains a mountain of pain and sends many people into suicidal jaunts. During the treatment of pain, porn can sometimes play a role for women. With porn, you can peer through the fourth wall and watch the lives of those who are engaging in intimacy. It doesn't take much to believe that you are part of that scene and experiencing a type of intimacy that really doesn't exist. But the porn stars do not leave you or abandon you. They can be brought back to the beginning any time the woman wants. That usually cannot be done in real life.

3. "I am a dirty person". This is called the "tainted lie" and often is found with women who were molested. Even if they can honestly acknowledge that they were not to blame for what happened they internally feel they will never be clean again. Porn simply plays upon that lie and proves it to the person. They enjoy the high of porn and then convince themselves it is because they are dirty. So they don't bother even to challenge the lie any more and just assume a way of life mentally based upon their pre-conceived notion of themselves.

4. "No one will love me". This ought to be obvious how this leads to porn use. And this doesn't have to just appeal to single women either. Married women might assume that their husband's lack of interest in sex, (or sexual interest of a lesser intensity than the wife) means that they do not love them. The viewing of porn gives a type of love which, though it is unsatisfying, is enough to get through the night.

5. "I am unlovable". This lie forces women to hide who they are. Since porn is all about false intimacy, they can revel in the sex life of another and assume that this is all they will ever have.

6. "I am afraid and this fear will never leave." The viewing of porn and the release of orgasm from masturbation has been shown to release chemicals that alleviate some of the lesser symptoms of Obseessive-compulsive disorder and any number of phobias. The longer that someone uses porn to escape fears, the more this becomes an addictive behavior.

The answer to all of these lies is to let God lead you to the Truth. For more about this, go to www.theophostic.com.

I Stand Corrected

2007-08-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

For years I have taught at Pornography seminars that porn is not really a problem for most women. I also intimate that women's pornography is in the realm of vicarious relationships: i.e. Soap Operas, Romance novels, Bodice Ripping stories etc. I still believe more women struggle with vicarious relationship problems than with visual porn, but I have to change my stance now.

Several recent studies have concluded that women are catching up with their porn watching. 40% of women are now viewing porn at least monthly. 17% of women have some kind of pornography addiction, according to the Cornell Daily News (which they gleaned from the 2006 National Report on Pornography in America). The two fastest growing groups of women struggling with porn are over 60 and under 15.

A friend of mine, Bryan Johnston has an excellent message which mentions some more of women's problems with porn. You can download that message from The Stirring (Redding, CA) website or from Itunes...it is called "The Dirty Little Secret". Bryan is one of the founders of XXXchurch.com which is a ministry to rescue people from porn, including those in the porn industry. Their website has an interesting debate with Ron Jeremy, the so-called "King" of the porn stars. In Bryan's message, he has some interesting things to say about their contact with Jeremy over the years. I advise you to listen to it.

I have also done a seminar recently on porn, and it can be downloaded here.

So why are women getting into porn more and more? Well, I don't really have a definitive answer, but I have a couple of theories.

1. Women have always been curious about the appeal that porn has for men. That curiosity seems to suggest to them that there is something they need to learn or know. Once again, the draw of this appeal is similar to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If you don't eat from porn's tree you might not know what is going on. This leads young women especially into a lie that says they must enter into porn's view of sex to be accepted and acceptable sexually.

2. Western women are becoming more visual in all aspects of life. The visual senses have never been more acute than they are today. Television and the preponderence of reading in school has lead us all down that road. This helps women to see sexuality as something visual as opposed to something relational. God help us (and I mean that) if women start to view sex as men do.

3. It has always been assumed that apart from Anais Nin and Virginia Wolff women do not constantly crave sexuality and the release of masturbation. Even women believed that for many years. At the same time women also are being told that sexual feelings toward other women are not wrong and that men actually get turned on by women who are attracted to other women (see Seinfeld, Friends and Scrubs as examples of shows that perpetuate this). Since much porn involves female homosexual encounters, porn gives women a way to enter into seemingly forbidden territory without the stigmas of having to "practice" in real life. The Internet has now divorced sexuality from the seediest parts of town.

4. Many women in video porn now are not as perfect looking as they were in the past, (read: skinny and perky) and this somehow empowers less-than-perfect women to believe that they don't have to look perfect to be sexual (that is true, btw...but getting this message from porn leads women into the dark caverns of porn's addictive nature).

Because women are now becoming more and more interested in porn, I will review in the next posting, six of the lies that porn plays upon and triggers.

Another Voice in the Greed Wilderness

2007-08-16T07:24:00.001-07:00

I had a number of friends lately criticize me because I have commented on how greed got the country into its current predicament with housing. We made loans to people who were assuming the market would keep up its steep ascent into worth and give them a chance to buy not only the house they wanted, but the loqued-out car, the pimped up boat and the trip to Tahiti they always wanted also...and all of this before they turned 35.

But here is another voice - Mike Baker, a freelance writer and former CIA operative. Here is what he has to say about the current housing "crisis":

Up until now we’ve heard plenty of people saying that the brokers and lenders are at fault… they were acting dishonestly or, at best, not being completely transparent in explaining the terms of the various mortgages. They took advantage of uneducated consumers who were unable to understand the process and were just trying to get a foot on the ladder of prosperity. Greed drove the lending side into screwing over the country, or so goes the blame-the-industry theory.

I’ve spent several years now in the private sector, working in the fields of business intelligence, due diligence and risk management. Do I think that there were brokers and lenders who operated with less than ideal ethics? You bet I do. You don’t need to be Moose and Squirrel to figure that out...
Here’s what I think about the consumer and the process of buying a home. Buy what you can afford. Notice that the last sentence doesn’t say, “Buy what you can currently afford.”

And it doesn’t say, “Buy above your head because surely the house will appreciate in value and you’ll be able to sell it for a profit before the rates rise and you get hosed.”

Buy what you can freakin’ well afford. Otherwise, rent. And save. And quit blaming others because you wanted more than you could ever logically afford and because you refused to wait until you could afford it. There. That should generate a few thousand nasty emails.

You can read the rest of his article here.

I was raised with the notion that you had to have 20% as a down payment on a house. We never thought it would be possible when we were 25. We were making the poverty level in wages, we had two small children and we lived in a town where every house looked like a ghetto house. Within five years, we had taken a beaten-up, run-down house that was in a bad neighborhood and fixed it up enough so that after living in it for five years, we could sell it during one of the upswings in the housing market for a $12,000 profit. That was enough money when we moved from that town to put the money down on a lower middle-class home which we fixed up (even though I had to rely on books to figure out how to do most of the things I did...and advice and help from people in the church). Our income rose substantially because we had some experience now, and the neighborhood we lived in got better. And, (and this is the main point), we never took a cent of equity out of our house. We made double-payments and were within 18 months of paying off that house by the time we moved to California.

Now we live in an upper-middle class neighborhood, we owe half of what we paid for the house and we still haven't taken money out of our house for "playing around with". And we have neighbors who are 28 who complain that they can't afford their payments and will have to move soon into a neighborhood not quite as good, after knowing the "good life" just a year after marriage that took us 25 years to accomplish.

I see the misconception at work. Do you?

Back Again

2007-08-15T18:51:00.000-07:00

This is a curious season for me. I am on the go about 12 hours a day and sleeping my normal 8. During the 4 remaining hours left to me, I have felt much less than motivated to blog. Part of that was the total lack of comments. I know by the statistics that we have around 300 readers every week, but so few were commenting.

I am currently writing my book on Hearing God's Voice and that is taking a lot of my writing time. But I have a thousand other things I would love to teach and write about...if anyone is interersted. If you are, please drop one or two sentences to this posting and it will encourage me to keep posting.

It's All Psychological

2007-07-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

A local reporter writing for the Sacramento Bee was commenting on the changing real estate market in Northern California. Currently, parts of the Sacramento region are seeing some of the largest price drops in the state. At the same time, other parts of the region are seeing little lowering of the price. What I caught was the comment of the reporter who concluded, "Part of this current real estate market is psychological and not based in reality".

I have several observations on that comment. First, almost every aspect of the real estate market is psychological. Someone might say that the part that isn't involves the cost of materials and labor. But that isn't even close to being true. I remember visiting a friend in Evanston, Wyoming in the early 90s, when the oil industry was tanking. That entire town survived on higher gas prices and prices were staying very low. 2,000 square foot houses were selling for less than $30,000. I guarantee you that this cost is well below the materials, labor and land value. But as soon as everyone got a whiff of the price plummeting, they all wanted to sell no matter what they got. Now, you can pick up that same 2,000 sq. ft. home for over $200,000.

Every aspect of real estate is psychological. If people sense that they won't be able to buy a house, they will pay more. Conversely, when the same people years later fear they won't be able to sell their house, they take less. The common soulish reactions to anything are all involved in real estate: jealousy, pride, fear, risk, greed, prejudice, tiredness and anger.

Second, what does the reporter mean by "reality"? Is she referring to the price people feel they ought to get, the price the Country assessor would like to see or the neighbor next door who has a fetish with the grass growing to heights of 18 inches or more? What reality? Every macro-market in the history of our country has been based upon how all people perceive their lives are doing. Post World War 2, people were tired of being poor, depressed and afraid. So they sunk all their fortunes into a house. Thus were suburbs born. After the sky-high interest rates of the 8os, people resolved never to get caught up in untenable mortgages again, and more people put at least 20% down on homes. At the turn of the Millennium, as the next generation grew up who hadn't experienced the pain of 15% mortgages, we went through the cycle of rising prices fueled by a group that thought they could survive forever on Adjustable Rate Mortgages and no down payments. All that is called Greed.

I remember telling a close friend to ignore the trend and go with a 25 year fixed mortgage. I said that low mortgage rates wouldn't last forever. He quoted three other friends (all coincidentally in the real estate or financing business) who assured him that he would be safe for at least ten years before the ARMs went up again.

Last year, he had to sell everything and move into an apartment. For some reason, he blames the economy, the government, the mortgage company and his parents. I haven't heard him blame himself yet, and I don't expect to. I guess blame is another one of those components from psychology that applies to real estate.

The Next Crusade? (I certainly hope not)

2007-07-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

Apparently I'm in one of those silly moods today. But this article in the Calgary Sun just took me by surprise. It's a story about a Christian Paintball park in Wisconsin. They have rules like "don't swear if you get hit in the head" and "no spiteful players" (I guess that means you have to feel repentant after slaughtering another player).

But I love the conclusion of the player interviewed by the reporter:

While glad to save the Promised Land, after a day embedded with God's play-army, I have lingering questions -- which I ask Ohio Christian player Dan Skinner. Would Jesus play paintball? And how well?
"The Bible talks about Jesus wrestling with his disciples," he answers. "I believe if he played paintball he would play just like anyone else.
"He wouldn't use his divine power to win, because that would be cheating."

Read the rest here.

Hospital Charting Bloopers

2007-07-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

Every profession has their own bloopers. I love to look at church bulletin bloopers and Psych chart bloopers. My wife the nurse collected these hospital charting bloopers. Enjoy!

1.The patient refused an autopsy.

2. The patient has no previous history of
suicides.

3. Patient has left white blood cells at another
hospital.

4. She has no rigors or shaking chills, but her
husband states she was very hot in bed
last night.

5. Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left
side for over a year.

6. On the second day, the knee was better, and on
the third day it disappeared.

7. The patient is tearful and crying constantly.
She also appears to be depressed.

8. The patient has been depressed since she began
seeing me in 1993.

9. Discharge status: Alive but without permission.

10. Healthy appearing decrepit 69-year old male,
mentally alert but forgetful.

11. Patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia
for lunch.

12. She is numb from her toes down.

13. While in ER, she was examined, x-rated, and
sent home.

14. The skin was moist and dry.

15. Occasional, constant infrequent headaches.

16. Patient was alert and unresponsive.

17. Rectal examination revealed a normal size
thyroid.

18. She stated that she had been constipated for
most of her life, until she got a divorce.

19. I saw your patient today, who is still under
our car for physical therapy.

20. Both breasts are equal and reactive to light
and accommodation.

21. Examination of genitalia reveals that he is
circus sized.

22. The lab test indicated abnormal lover
function.

23. Skin: somewhat pale but present.

24. The pelvis exam will be done later on the
floor.

25. Patient has two teenage children, but no other
abnormalities.

Getting the Most out of a Hot Summer's Day

2007-07-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

I was speaking this morning with a friend and they told me how little they get done on, and how little they enjoy, scorching hot days like Sacramento is currently experiencing. I shared some of the things I have learned over the years that have helped me. See if they don't help you. Also, if you have other ideas, feel free to add them to the comments.

1. Shift your Time Clock: Since the only time of the day you can really get work done in the yard without sweating to death is between 6 and 8 a.m., you might consider going to bed a little earlier and getting up earlier in the summer. Unfortunately, most people do the opposite. The sun is up later so they tend to go to bed later, which causes them (especially on the weekends) to wake up after it is time to get outdoor chores done. Also, because you are getting up during the heat of the day, your strength becomes sapped so much more quickly.

2. Keep Hydrated: Studies were done on workers in the forest industry concerning how much water was consumed versus how much work got done. They broke the group into three parts: A group that drank every hour, a group that drank every fifteen minutes, and a group that drank whenever they felt thirsty. The group that got the most work done was the one that drank water every fifteen minutes. The more hydrated you are during hot days, the more you will get done (even accounting for the time it takes to chug some H2O). The ones who could drink whenever they got thirsty only drank every 3-4 hours. And they got, by far, the least amount done.

3. Watch the temperature changes: If you keep going from very hot to very cold conditions (under 75 degrees) you will experience a lowering of your immune system's effectiveness. The drastic change in temperature signals your immune system that a crisis is coming and you tend to lose energy. It is best to put the A/C at 77 degrees or higher when the temperature outside is over 100.

4. Get at least 15-30 minutes of sun a day: The temptation at this time of year is to stay out of the sun because of the heat. But moderate amounts of sunshine will boost your spirits. Some people in warmer climates do not get enough direct sun in the summer and actually suffer from Seasonal affective symptoms because of it. A little sun will get rid of the blues.

5. Reruns weren't that good the first time: During the summer, there are very few good things to watch on television. Use the time you would normally spend in front of the tube to read, close your eyes, play a game or pray. Do it outside in the evening when the temperatures begin to drop. Remember to hydrate if you're going out of doors.

How Revival Spreads

2007-06-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

First, let me recommend the most accessible and inspiring book on revivals I have ever read (and I have read plenty). It is not the most extensive or scholarly, but after just an hour reading it, you will want revival to come to your town, wherever that may be. And isn't that the point? The book is called "Revival Fire" by Wesley Duewel. I have lent my copy out so many times that I only buy used copies now (it is cheaper that way). BTW...I always buy my used books from www.abebooks.com. The "abe" part stands for Associated Booksellers Enterprise and represents thousands of used book store inventories in this country, Canada and Britain. You can almost always find a used copy of any book there.

This book gives pretty clear indications of how revivals spread. In an entire section on the revivals around the world in 1858-1860, the author gives this account from Ireland. Just as an aside, he estimates that a quarter of the nation at that time became converted to Christianity during a one-year period of revival. Here is Mr. Duewel's account of how it happened in the small town of Derry (Note: Connor is a larger town about 30 miles from Derry):

"How did this Derry awakening begin? Four young men, converts from Connor gave their testimony in a crowded service in the First Presbyterian Church. Several thousand were present. Suddenly a number of people began to call out to God for mercy.

That night many of the people could not sleep. Some wept in their homes for hours. Others cursed and swore in anger. Monday night again there was a united service in the First Presbyterian Church. The building was overcrowded, but the ministers spoke calmly. "The meeting felt still as a grave; the stillness was fearful. Those who were present will never forget it. At length the silence was broken by unearthly cries, uttered simultaneously by several in different parts of the church." In a few minutes the vestry was filled with people "who lay in mental agony and absolute bodily prostration."

Here is one account from among hundreds in that service. A well-educated merchant of high morality suddenly saw hell opened before his eyes, and an irresistable power seemed to force him headlong into it. He looked around and said to himself, "I know where I am . This is the church where I usually worship. I am under a delusion." But as he looked down, there was hell!

He arose from his seat and seized the back of the pew in front of him. The smoke from hell seemed to rise in his face. He suddered and his heart cried out, "My sins! My sins! I am lost!" He staggered out of the building and went home "Had anyone asked me, where are you going? I would have answered, in calm despair, I am going to hell".

Upon reaching his room, for several hours he called out to God for mercy. Then God's promises came to his mind. He joyously seized them, and a "heavenly radiance" spread over his soul. He arose a Christian. he raced out into the night across town and knocked on his business partner's door. When the door opened, he called out, "I have have found Christ and I have come to tell you". They prayed together, and three days later his partner was converted.

Another Episcopal minister reported that of the five thousand people in his parish there was scarecely a family in which one or more members had not been converted during the weeks this revival burned on.

The evidence from the Bible is also the same. Whenever someone who had been part of revivals burning went somewhere else, the revival came to that place as well. Philip went down to Samaria and revival burned. John and Peter came down there and many were filled with the Spirit. Revivals all tend to have this flavor. Reading another account online yesterday, I found that the Saskatoon/Winnipeg Revival of 1971 (the revival that brought salvation to me), had the same flavor. Here is a portion of that account from Sherwood Wirt:

Some of my pastor friends in the Twin Cities knew I had visited the Winnipeg revival, and were curious to learn what I heard and saw. They expressed to me an interest in bringing some of the people involved in it to speak in their churches. A month later two laypeople who had been touched, a bridge engineer and his wife, flew down for a weekend. I made the arrangements, and on Sunday, January 9, Harry and Evelyn Thiessen spoke in four Minnesota churches, often in tears. Their testimony was received with warmth and amazement.
That night after the last service, we arranged an afterglow in the basement of one Minneapolis church, similar to the one I had visited in Winnipeg. Perhaps 25 people stayed for it. It started out as one of those dreadful gatherings — a prayer meeting in which no one wants to pray. I felt responsible for the disappointment since I had invited our Canadian friends, and so decided to "prime the pump" by asking for prayer for myself. The Thiessens invited me to kneel at a chair in the middle of the room, and some people gathered around, laid hands on me, and prayed for me. Then I was told to pray.
What I didn't expect was that God would turn on the spigot. Once started, I did what I had never intended to do — spilled out my disappointment with life and my bitterness toward people who had contributed to my discontent.
Four or five days after Evelyn Thiessen had uttered those words "And how!" at the afterglow I was sitting quietly in a living room chair at home when I suddenly realized to my astonishment that I had no more animosity toward anyone. It was absolutely incredible. Pascal's famous description of his own experience of rapture came to me: "Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy
Two laymen friends had also asked for prayer that Sunday night and had hands laid on them. They too had been revived, and when I telephoned them they enthusiastically echoed my feelings. On the next Sunday evening I had a preaching engagement in Duluth, 160 miles away, and they agreed to accompany me through the snow. What a magnificent journey of joy! We couldn't stop talking! The evening at the church was equally enthusiastic, and people responded; at the end they asked for an "afterglow." A week later we were back.
The Holy Spirit was at work. The dark night was over. The joybells have never stopped ringing. I have seen and taken part in revival "afterglows" in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, South Dakota, California, Texas, Mississippi, Arizona, Alaska — well, God knows; I have forgotten, but the blessings go on.

We had the same experience in Montana when revival hit Riverside Church where I was leading. A group of leaders went up to British Columbia to a meeting where some people from a church going through revival in Ontario were speaking. At that meeting, there was an incredible sense of God's presence, conviction of sin, healing, forgiveness, and power unspeakable. They came back to the church and invited people to their homes that next week to give testimony to what happened. I was one of those who came (because I was at a business conference while they were in B.C.) and I was filled with God, with conviction of sin and then with inexpressible joy.

This spread rapidly to the whole church and then to some other churches. A few weeks later, I was leading worship at a youth camp and God did the same thing there: Conviction of sin, repentance, great sorrow and then joy, miracles and changed lives. The speaker that week was from San Francisco. His daughter was mightily touched by God that week at camp. When they went back home to San Francisco, he asked his daughter to share what she had experienced at camp during an evening service. His 14-year old daughter explained what Holy Spirit had done for her and as she did, many people began to weep and mourn over their sin. Revival came that night to that church.

In years since, I have heard literally hundreds of situations where people came to Riverside, experienced revival in their souls, went home to their church and brought revival with them. That is how God works. He works in people that he has filled to bring his presence and yearning to another group of people. It is like a revival virus. That is always how it spreads.

Update on Inaccuracy of Pastoral Divorce Statistics

2007-06-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

Officially, this will be my last word on this subject. I have continued to research and seek out the sources for this misinformation on pastoral divorces. Go to the earlier blog entry for background. I contacted one website that claimed to have the source. I am surprised that I received a note from the author of the article himself. I had asked him for his source, which he claimed was "Focus on the Family". Here is his response in the email:

Mike -

Sorry, but I don't have source information. All the statistics I quote came to me via an e-mail from Bill Bright. I accepted them, because of where I got them, but do not know the source information. Sorry I don't have more, but if you find out otherwise, please let me know.

I will leave aside for a second that he had claimed to have the information from Focus on the Family in the article and go to the heart of the matter. He does not know the source. Yet, he claims the information as fact in his article. As I reported, this article is one of many that have sprung up like weeds in the past two months claiming that half of all pastoral marriages end in divorce. I contacted Bill Bright's website, but they could not verify that the information was correct. They do not know where they got it from, though they also claimed it came from Focus on the Family.

Preachers and teachers employ a science called "rhetoric" when we try to influence thought. But rhetoric has rules and as such, it stands or falls on those rules. An argument is only as strong as its adherence to those rules. One rule of rhetoric is that the presenter is more effective if they stay relatively dispassionate. Truth comes out better if the emotion of the presenter is not more powerful than the Truth they are presenting. This was exemplified in the Presidential Primaries three years ago when Howard Dean went off on an emotional tirade about his chances in the upcoming states primaries. It is largely believed that he ruined his chances for the nomination because of his emotional outburst.

In our situation, the rule of rhetoric broken is the rule that the facts need to be true, or they need to be understood as unprovable. For instance, in presenting an argument, we don't need to prove the statement "Men are attracted to women" in order to use it. Most people will accept that datum without question. But if you say "John Deere tractors are unsafe", you had better be quick with the statistics that prove this, or your opinion is a lost cause in terms of rhetoric.

When Driscoll et al do not have credible sources for their argument that half of all pastoral marriages end in divorce, it ruins the rest of their presentation. They were seeking to convince a group of pastors that the pastoral marriage is in trouble. The only thing that using an unverified (and probably false) set of statistics accomplishes, is it nullifies everything else said in the rhetorical argument.

Billy Graham never did this. He employed two people who constantly fact-checked his sermons. He realized that his credibility had to extend way beyond today's crusade: it had to stand the scrutiny of friends and enemies alike. Learn this lesson friends: If you seek to convince someone that your argument is valid and helpful, make sure you have all your facts correct. To lose even one key fact loses the argument, and maybe even a soul in trouble.

I Found Out Our Destination

2007-06-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

Well, my crafty wife never let on at all where we were going until we got on the second leg of our journey in Atlanta. I looked up and saw the sign at the gate: Nashville! Not only that, but she used our frequent flier miles to get us an upgrade to First Class. It was a delight to fly and a delight to be on this trip with her.

The first picture is of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. They had a mind-blowing display of American Watercolorists, covering all the art periods from the 1700s to the 1980s. I especially liked the pre-Rafaelite artists.

The second picture is looking down the center of Nashville's music street. This is where so many of the restaurants and bars have Country-Western and Bluegrass music playing as you walk down. What a trip!

Revival Is Not Far From the Heart of Teens

2007-05-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

I have been involved in two revivals first-hand. My initial experience was when I became a Christian during the so-called "Canadian Revival" of 1971 in Western Canada. It was a startling revival, filled with signs such as healing, prophecy and miracles, along with a deep sense of conviction of sin. The second revival I experienced as a pastor when my small congregation tripled in size due to the outpouring of the Spirit of God. In that revival, we saw miracles, marriages restored, hearts renewed and a general sense of worship and awe.

In both cases, it was the teenagers that reacted most fervently to it all. I learned later they were the ones praying hardest for God to pour out his Spirit.

I have many books on revival in my study. As I searched them the last week or so (mainly because my heart yearns for true revival in Sacramento) I read about so many revivals that were born by the midwifery of prayer through teenagers. One of those accounts is from Duncan Campbell, a man known for being at the center of two great Scottish revivals: Midargyl and the Hebrides Islands. But at one point between the two revivals, he personally fell away from the power of God and was not used by God very much at all. It is during that time, he recounts what changed his heart and readied him for the second revival. It was his teenage daughter:

Then one day...oh, how I thank God for that day...my young daughter came to me...thank God for her...a girlie of sixteen years of age—she came to me and said, "Daddy, I would like to see you in your study. I've been praying for you, Daddy. I want to speak to you." And she took me to my study, and she threw herself on my knees, as daughters sometimes do. She put her arms around my neck, and I can still see the tears streaming from her eyes, as she said, "Daddy, when you were a pilgrim in the Faith Mission, after the 1st World War, you saw revival in Scotland. You saw revival! Daddy, how is it that God is not using you in revival today? Tell me, Daddy, when did you last lead a soul to Christ?"

Thank God for faithful daughters! And I tell you, dear people, that shook me. Oh, it shook me! I knew! I knew! Campbell, a convention speaker...Campbell, the evangelistic minister...in his study smashed and broken by a question from his daughter.

Listen, I was booked to address the Keswick Convention that year. I went to the convention. Oh, the deceit of the human heart. I went to the convention and I had my address. And I was so thankful when it was over. The words kept ringing in my ears, "When did you last lead a soul to Christ? When did you last lead a soul to Christ?"

Determined to Leave the Ministry

Then God in His own wonderful way moved Dr. Tom Fitch to depart from the address that he had prepared and give his own personal testimony. Dr. Fitch gave his personal testimony and I went home resolved that unless God would do something for me and give me back what I lost, that I certainly would resign from the ministry. I was absolutely decided on that!

So, in going home, I said to my wife and daughter, "I'm going to my study and I want you to leave me alone. I'm going to seek a meeting with God."

And I went to my study. I shut the door. I put the rug down on the floor in front of the fire and I lay on the rug. I cannot take time to tell you all that God said to me in that hour. I'm thankful to say that He spoke to me the word of pardon, and the word of forgiveness, and the word of re-commission.

I cried, "God, won't you give me again what you gave me on the battlefield?" And listen, friends, God did it!

My daughter came in at 2:00 in the morning. She lay down beside me and she said, "Daddy, whatever it costs, go through with God." And I said, "Sheena, I'm going through whatever it may cost."

Cost to Pride

And God knows what it cost me—to stand in my pulpit the following Sunday and make a public apology for pretending what I was not in the midst of my congregation. Five of my office bearers left me within a week. They wouldn't have a fool in the pulpit.

Oh, that may happen. It sometimes happens, you see, in revival, that there's a subtraction before addition.

Baptized with Love and Power
But listen, friends, as I lay there, God the Holy Ghost came upon me. Wave after wave came rolling over me until the love of God swept through me like a mighty river! So much so, that there were moments...now listen, my daughter beside me put her hand on my shoulders and she prayed, "Oh, God, keep his reason to Daddy." I was never more sane in my life! But I was so wrought upon by the Holy Ghost that I cried and I laughed and I prayed.

If you know teenagers who love Jesus, will you have them read this with an open heart. God seems to choose young people to do his bidding because often us oldsters get used to religion that we have forgotten the radical nature of revival.

Manipulating Truth

2007-05-29T15:51:00.000-07:00

In a recent entry on Christianity Today's popular blog, "Out of Ur", the author quoted a popular Emerging Church leader Darrin Patrick from a message he gave at Marc Driscoll's Re-Emergence conference held in Seattle. In that message, Patrick quotes a number of statistics that he has supposedly gleaned from Focus on the Family and Barna Research Groups concerning divorces among pastors. The startling result he claims is that 50% of all pastoral marriages end in divorce. This is now the fourth time I have read that statistic in the past few months and at least I know where he got it from.

As far as I can tell by exhaustive research, he made it up!

I first heard about the stat from a message on Driscoll's podcast site. When I originally heard it I intinctively knew it wasn't true. I know a lot of pastors and I have sat on committees where we helped struggling pastors with their marriages. The numbers did not even come close to half the pastors I know. Then, in the next few weeks, I saw the same stat show up on a couple of pastor's wives websites which are dedicated to helping the pastoral marriage. I decided to do some research.

I contacted the websites of the pastor's wives circle and they directed me back to Driscoll for the stat. I contacted their office, but they couldn't tell me where he got the stat. I then read something by Barna, where he says that he doesn't believe the long-held stat about all marriages ending in divorce at a 50% clip is even close to true. He goes through the evidence and shows that the numbers are skewed, but we can believe more accurately in a figure of 25%. His research team has done the statistics on this and concluded that church-going people have an even lower level of divorce, not exceeding twenty per cent. This is what Barna says in public, so I was really skeptical now.

If the average church attender divorces twenty per cent of the time, are we to believe that pastors do it more than twice as often?

Then I checked out the site where Christianity Today got the information from Darrin Patrick. Patrick refers the readers to Marc Driscoll's site, who then refers the readers to Darrin Patrick's site. If you're confused, let me end the confusion. From all I can figure, either Driscoll or Patrick made up this statistic. I know why they would do it. Their subject at the conference was the pastor's family and all the stresses laid upon it. They were trying to show how much we need to have support as pastors for one another. I won't call someone a liar, but someone at that conference gave "evangelastically" improved statistics.

It wouldn't be the first time that has happened, I venture, even from the pulpit. So what is wrong with stating such wayward stats? Just this: they tend to become reality the more you use them. Barna warns that the inaccurate measurement of divorce statistics for society in general may have made divorce more palatable to the ones who read the statistics. It is amazing how much better we feel about something if we read that everyone else is doing it. Our mothers asked us that age-old question: "If all your friends jumped off the bridge, would you jump off too?" We all know the answer to that, don't we? We might.

I believe that if this misguided figure of 50% pastoral marriage failure keeps getting put out there for public consumption, some poor pastor and his wife might consider it as an option where they might not have thought of it before.

Scary what misinformation can do, isn't it?

UPDATE: in reviewing the comments here, I have spent several more hours checking out sites that you, the readers, have sent me. In over 40 contact points, the information still comes out the same: Someone has made these statistics up. It may not have been Driscoll or Patrick, but no one has yet shown a set of original research stats that can definitively say pastoral marriages end in divorce at a 50% clip. I am not even sure how they would be able to measure that. They can't do it through census data. And when people marry, they are not required to announce their profession. At last check, our denominational headquarters has never been asked for the statistics on divorces within our group of pastors - and we are the ninth largest organization of pastors in America. I doubt anyone has done the study. It would take years and be exhaustive and everyone in the pastoral profession would have heard something about it. Believe me, we are a very clandestine group - everything gets around very quickly when it's really happening. In 1985, Leadership magazine began doing a survey about pastors and inappropriate sexual activity. Though I was never interviewed, I heard from at least a dozen guys they were doing it. The results also surprised a lot of non-pastors, but none of the pastors. And this was on a subject that most people would have had to answer anonymously (a much harder statistic to collect by the way).

The long and short of this discussion is that I would like someone to show me where this study was done which shows pastoral marriages ending at a 50% rate. Then I will go quietly into the night and start a ministry to help save pastoral marriages (or at least start a country-wide prayer meeting to pray for pastors).

Asking Evolutionists To Own All Their Theory

2007-05-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

Stephen Webb, professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College has written a dead-on article in the latest issue of "First Things" Journal about the ultimate implications of Evolutionary theory and its proponents.

His first paragraph really lays down the hammer:

The dirty Darwinian secret is now out of the closet: If evolution is true, then it must be true about everything. Most Darwinians used to be very restrained about the relevance of their theory for cultural and moral issues, for obvious reasons. If evolution is true about everything, then randomness and competition are the foundations for the highest human ideals as well as the lowest organic life forms. Scientists have trouble enough restricting Darwinism to biology. What if that restriction is unscientific? What parents would want their children being taught that Darwinism explains not only speciation but also altruism?

In the rest of the article, he discusses the views of several biological and non-biological evolutionists. It appears that Evolutionists have finally braved the world of implication and reality. Instead of confining their theory to what may have happened in mankind's history, they now bring the whole theory to where you and I live.

Now they are beginning to ask the questions that they should have asked a century ago: What makes us love, have babies, work at the jobs we do, go to church, give to the poor, spend our money or save it, go to war, value beauty and end our lives? They try to explain these things following two primary conceptual straight-edges:

1. What mankind holds onto makes us stronger
2. Anything which makes us weaker as a species eventually disappears.

What you get when you read the implications of evolutionists is that we are completely determined by our biological destiny and there isn't a blasted thing we can do about it. They are more Calvinist than Calvin and less optimistic. Ultimately, we are determined only by our genetic makeup and the fittest will ultimately (and should ultimately) survive.

What they have failed for a century to admit is that there is no reason for any of us to recognize right or wrong. If we simply encourage everyone to do what they want to do, the resulting species of man will be stronger and more able to survive what the Universe will throw at it. It explains why the Turkish people in 1915 killed 2 million Armenians and why the Hutus and Tutsis used each other so sadistically in 1994. Apparently they needed to be "culled from the herd" as good evolutionary nomenclature would frame it.

If that sounds like a rude, brash and heartless paragraph, remember that it represents Evolution at its most bold and honest moment. There is no real reason to do anything to help another person unless that somehow biologically is your destiny. Then you have no choice but to help them. Don't talk anyone out of suicide, unless you want to...and that isn't anything you can claim as a virtue...you are simply helping out the survival of the human race. But perhaps you would allow another person to die because he ought to be eliminated from the human race as a weakling.

This, by the way, is the same logic used in World War 2 when the scientists in Germany proposed that all mental patients be incinerated along with those with spinal cord injuries. These were the weaklings diluting the purity of the Aryan Race. Selective attempts at Evolutionary manipulation have been condemned, but no one has ever explained what makes these genocidal experiments wrong by evolution standards. Aren't the strong surviving? Aren't the fittest proving it by their victory?

Christianity stands opposed to Evolution, not just on scientific grounds, but because it does not meet one basic minimum standard for the human race: It gives us no internal sense of hope or freedom. There is no hope in Evolution because we have no way of believing that our lives mean anything at all or that we aren't one of the weaker parts that need to be eliminated. There is no freedom because our biology already determines how we will act, feel, think and decide.

Christianity says that God loves us, protects us and offers us a better way in relationship with Him. His rules are laid out to protect the weak and give hope to the hopeless. Darwinian Evolution would allow the weak to waste away.

Now that all the cards are on the table, which hand would you rather play: Evolution's or God's?

I Could Be A Weatherman...

2007-05-19T14:37:00.001-07:00

...or many other professions for that matter, if I based it upon the expertise coming from the National Weather Service.

Here is what they say about the weather in the Midwest during June:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Temperatures and precipitation in the Midwest have an equal chance of being above or below normal in June, the National Weather Service said in its latest monthly forecast released on Thursday.That pattern could linger through August for the nation's key grain growing regions, U.S. weather forecasters said. Regions which could have a hotter-than-normal summer include the East and West Coasts and the coastal areas on the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, June precipitation on the coasts could be either above or below normal, the Weather Service forecast.

Let me take a crack at the stock market: "During June, stocks have an equal chance of going up or down". Or the NBA playoffs, "Detroit, San Antonio, Salt Lake or Cleveland may win the championship".

My name may or may not be Mike and I may or may not have written some part of this.

Freakonomics is Right Again

2007-05-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

One of the books I loved last year was Freakonomics. The authors attempted to explain societal phenomena by looking at pieces of data that no one else was examining. For instance, they sought to see a connection between falling violent crime rates and abortion rates. The authors, for instance, had predicted that violent crime would begin to fall in the mid-90s and level off around 2003/2004. That is exactly what happened. Government would love to tell you it was because of their programs and ground-breaking initiatives. Instead, because of abortion rates, less babies were born to single-parent and poverty-stricken homes, thereby causing the population to fall below the critical mass needed to raise crime rates among the groups most likely to commit crimes.

They also predicted that in 2006, the violent crime rate would rise. Unfortunately, they were right again. Go to this article to see the results. One paragraph is very telling:

Many youths have little parental oversight and are too easily influenced by gang membership and glamorized violence in popular culture.

As you read that, know what you're seeing: "little parental oversight" means a working mom and no dad. "Influenced by gang membership" equals poverty and minorities and father figures among gang membership.

How did Freakonomics predict this? They looked at when the abortion rate started to fall. And then they just added 16 years to that number and here is where we are at.

How can we interpret this? As one who does not think abortion is a viable option for society's ills, it is a disturbing trend to say the least. There is no doubt at all that violent crime is heavily tied to increase in gang membership. And the link between poor, single-parent families and gang involvement is also well established. As with many things in life, the real answer is more complicated than a few numbers can answer for us. It is a spiritual condition that has deteriorated since the late 1950s. I see four contributing factors:

1. A church in the 1950s that was more concerned with educating children in Bible stories than in teaching parents how to raise their kids.

2. A society that wanted to marginalize God so that the "free love" and drug cultures could be dominant. Well, the consequence of those moves is unwanted pregnancy, drug addiction and single-parent households.

3. The abortion debate that has lost its moral center for both sides at times.

4. The loss of a prayer focus in churches for the culture. Instead, prayer is now focused upon the needs of people instead of society as a whole. We are more concerned with being prosperous and praying the "Prayer of Jabez" instead of praying for the school down the block. Our prayer warriors used to be lead by our retirees in churches. Now those same people are watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune every night.

I just hope that Freakonomics is wrong in its next few predictions.

An Explanation on my Weight

2007-05-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I grew up and lived in Canada until about 17 years ago. One thing that has troubled, confused and pummeled me in recent years is that I weigh about 15 pounds more now than when I was living in Canada.

Theories abound on why this is. But this new one is my favorite. Read it here.

This Story Will Grip Your Heart

2007-05-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

Here is a posting of a story that I cannot get out of my mind. Tip of the hat to Michelle Van A. who told me about it:

Update: Here is an audio version of this story with slides. It might be easier to take in as Frank Jenner reads the story! But if you're a reader, follow below:

This all started a number of years ago in a Baptist church in Crystal Palace in South London. The Sunday morning service was closing and a man stood up at the back and raised his hand and said: “Excuse me pastor can I share a short testimony?” The pastor looked at his watch and said “You have three minutes.” The man proceeded with his story: “I’ve just moved into this area. I used to live in Sydney Australia. Just a few months back I was visiting some relatives and I was walking down George Street. You know where George Street is in Sydney going from the Business Area out to the colonial area. A strange little white haired man stepped out from a shop doorway, put a pamphlet in my hand and said: ‘Excuse me sir, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?’ “I was astounded by these words. No one had ever asked me that. I thanked him courteously and all the way home to London this puzzled me. I called a friend and thank God he was a Christian and he led me to Christ.”
The Baptists love testimonies like that. Everyone applauded and welcomed him into their fellowship.

The Baptist pastor flew to Adelaide, Australia the next week and 10 days later in the middle of a three day series in a Baptist church in Adelaide, a woman came up to him for some counseling. He wanted to establish where she stood with Christ. She said “I used to live in Sydney and just a couple of months back I was visiting some friends in Sydney and doing some last minute shopping down George Street. A strange little white haired man stepped out of a shop doorway and offered me a pamphlet and said ‘Excuse me madam, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?’ “I was disturbed by those words. When I got home to Adelaide, I knew this Baptist church was on the next block from me. I sought out the pastor and he led me to Christ. So I am telling you that I am a Christian.”
The London pastor was now very puzzled. Twice in two weeks he had heard the same testimony. He then flew to preach in the Mount Pleasant Church in Perth. When his teaching series was over the senior elder of that Church took him out for a meal and he asked the elder how he got saved. “I grew up in this church from the age of 15. I never made a commitment to Jesus, just hopped on the bandwagon like everyone else. Because of my business ability I grew up to a place of influence. I was on a business trip to Sydney just three years ago. An obnoxious spiteful little man stepped out of a shop doorway, offered me a religious pamphlet and accosted me with a question: ‘Excuse me sir, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?’ I tried to tell him I was a Baptist elder. He wouldn’t listen to me. I was seething with anger all the way home from Sydney to Perth. I told my pastor, thinking that he would sympathize, but he agreed. He had been disturbed for years knowing that I didn’t have a relationship with Jesus, and he was right. My pastor led me to Jesus just three years ago.”
The London preacher flew home and was soon speaking at the Keswick conventions in the Lake District and he threw in these three testimonies. At the close of this teaching series, four elderly pastors came up and explained that they too had been saved between 25 and 30 years earlier through that same little man on George Street, offering them a pamphlet and asking that same question.

The following week he flew to a similar Keswick convention in the Caribbean to missionaries. He shared the same testimonies. At the close of his teaching three missionaries came forward and said that they had also been saved between 15 and 25 years earlier by that same little man’s testimony and the same question on George Street in Sydney.
Next he stopped in Atlanta, Georgia to speak at a Naval Chaplain convention. Here for three days he spoke to over 1000 Naval Chaplains. Afterwards the Chaplain General took him out for a meal and he asked the Chaplain how he became a Christian. “It was miraculous. I was a rating on a Naval battleship and I lived a reprobate life. We were doing exercises in the South Pacific and we docked at Sydney harbour for replenishments. We hit King’s Cross with a vengeance. I was blind drunk, got on the wrong bus and got off in George Street. As I got off the bus, I thought I saw a ghost as this man jumped out in front of me, pushed a pamphlet in my hand and said, ‘Sailor, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?’ The fear of God hit me immediately. I was shocked sober, ran back to the ship and sought out the Chaplain. He led me to Christ. I soon began to prepare for the ministry under his guidance. I am now in charge of 1000 chaplains who are bent on soul winning today.”
Six months later that London pastor flew to a conference for 5,000 Indian missionaries in a remote part of NE India. At the end the head missionary took him to his humble little home for a simple meal. He asked how he as a Hindu came to Christ.

“I grew up in a very privileged position; I worked in the Indian Diplomatic Mission and I traveled the world. I am so glad for the forgiveness of Christ and blood covering my sin. I would be very embarrassed if people found out what I got into. One period of diplomatic service took me to Sydney. I was doing some last minute shopping, laden with toys and clothes for my children. I was walking down George Street when a courteous white haired little man stepped out in front of me and offered me a pamphlet and said ‘Excuse me sir, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?’ I thanked him very much but this disturbed me. I got back to my town, sought out our Hindu priest. He couldn't help me, but he advised me that to satisfy my curious mind, I should go and talk to the missionary in the mission home at the end of road. That was good advice because that day the missionary led me to Christ. I quit Hinduism immediately and began to prepare for ministry. I left the Diplomatic Service and here I am today, by God’s grace in charge of all these missionaries who have together led 100.000 people to Christ.”

Eight months later that London Pastor was preaching in Sydney. He asked the local Baptist Minister if he knew of a little elderly white haired man who handed out tracts on George Street. He replied, “Yes I do, his name is Mr. Jenner, although I don’t think he does it any more because he is so frail and elderly.”
Two nights later they went to meet him in his little apartment. They knocked on the door and this tiny frail old man greeted them. He sat them down and made them tea. He was so frail that he was slopping the tea into the saucer as his hands shook. The London preacher sat there and told him of all these accounts from the previous three years. This little man sat with tears running down his cheeks. He told them his story.
“I was a rating on an Australian warship. I was living a reprobate life. In a crisis I really hit the wall. One of my colleagues, to whom I gave literal hell, was there to help me. He led me to Jesus and the change in my life was night to day in 24 hours. I was so grateful to God; I promised God that I would share Jesus in a simple witness with at least 10 people a day. As God gave me strength I did that. Sometimes I was ill and couldn't do it, but I made up for the days I missed it at other times. I wasn’t paranoid about it. I have done this for over 40 years. In my retirement years, the best place was on St. George Street where I saw hundreds of people a day. I got lots of rejections, but a lot of people courteously took the tract. In 40 years of doing this, I have never heard of one single person coming to Jesus until today.”

You know, I would say that he has to be committed To show gratitude and love for Jesus to do that for 40 years and not hear of any results. That simple little non-charismatic Baptist man witnessed to perhaps 147,000 people. I think that God was showing that Baptist pastor from London was the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Goodness knows how many more had been arrested for Christ, doing huge jobs out in the mission fields.
Mr. Jenner died two weeks later. Can you imagine the reward when he went home to be in Heaven? I doubt his face would ever have appeared on Charisma Magazine. I doubt there would ever have been a photograph and a write up in Billy Graham's Decision magazine. No one except a little group of Baptists in Sydney knew about Mr. Jenner, but I tell you his name was famous in Heaven. Heaven knew Mr. Jenner and you can imagine the welcome and Red Carpet and the fanfare that he received when he went home to Glory.

Psalm 139 Rewritten

2007-05-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

Here is a rewriting of Psalm 139 by a friend of mine, Christine: (thanks for a beautiful rendition of this psalm):

Even more than I look at me, You look at me. You cup me in both Hands and bring me up to your face to look. No shadow keeps me hidden from You. Your light shines in every part of my being.

You see and understand whatever is a part of me. Before the thoughts speeding at me become even a speck in the distance of my mind, You know where they come from and what effect they will have.

In all my journeying back and forth during the day, and when I finally curl up on my bed at night with a heartfelt sigh, You walked next to me, watching every moment pass. You watched my preparations for the day; You watched me eat my hurried meals. You watched me smile and laugh with other people; You watched my head fall into my hands in the small moments of solitude I could catch during the day. As a loving Father knows every mood of His child, You know my hearts cries when they are inaudible. Not a word in my mouth is a stranger to You. You know why they are there and the wellspring from which they come. Nothing coming at me, nothing inside me, nothing falling away behind me, not one thing is veiled to You. But You don't stop there, You place Your hand upon me. The weight is too much - I have to bow. The burning is too much - I have to acknowledge You. I cannot understand You; You are an ocean in which I will drown.

When I run from You, I can always hear Your footsteps right behind me. No matter how hard I push and how much I exhaust myself in running away, You relentlessly keep pace. There is nowhere I can go where You are not. If I decide that its best for me to be alone, You do not leave me alone. When I try to tear myself loose from Your hand, Your other hand is waiting right below, ready to catch me. You will not let me go. I huddle, curled in the smallest ball I can make, waiting for horrors to overtake me and overwhelm me. As the edge of this blanket of darkness falls over me, I wait for the light around me to become night. But the hope that is Your presence inside me makes darkness impossible... night cannot happen. There is no absence of You, there is no lack of light, I am never abandoned by the Son. In the life that I have, there is no night. There is only the eternal dwelling place beyond the sunrise.

Who made me? What part of me was not touched by You, Oh Lord? You put a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and made it into a person. I was not put together in a haphazard lump of leftovers. I was thoughtfully planned out, painstakingly connected, and You delighted in every step of the process. Nothing escaped your notice, every atom inside of me was created by You. There is nothing inside me that You did not touch when You put me together, and every little piece was created just for me, by You. The recipe that makes up me is filed away in Your imagination, and there is not one other just like it. You knew what my life would be like, and what I would do with it, and yet you made me anyway. You set my feet on the path and whisper gently in my ear, knowing already which way I will choose to step. Oh Father, I will walk the path You choose for me. I will cling to You as I am alone. Holding Your thoughts as precious gems, I gaze at one and stagger in its brilliance, not realizing the thousands upon millions that are glimmering behind it.

You hold me in your hands, and bring me up close to Your face. As You look at every part of me, I can choose to open up to the light or close myself up and hide. Which will I do tonight? I know the morning will find me still cradled in Your hands. Is it safe? I dont know. But I know it is beautiful.

Reading it ALL

2007-04-22T19:19:00.000-07:00

The other day I was sitting in Panera Bread restaurant with my sweetie and we were both having a Diet Snapple. I started to read the label (I read labels...they are more interesting than you think) and this is what I read:

"No calories (then an arrow pointing to the bottom)...their agent wanted a multi-year deal."

Hilarious! I love it. Someone obviously came up with that in the marketing department at about 1:30 a.m.

Then I looked at my sweetie's bottle and this is what hers said:

"No calories....Yep, one day they just got up and left."

You miss so much when you read only the stuff everyone else reads. One time, I picked up a book at the library just because of its title. It was called "The First Men's Guide to Ironing". I couldn't care less about learning to iron any better than I do, but the title caught me. As I usually do, I read the acknowledgements. This time, I wasn't disappointed. Here is what he said:

"I would like to thank all those people who have helped me in my life to become what I am today. I would like to; but I can't. No one helped me. No one ever helps me. In this project, as with everything else in my life, I did it myself. No one carefully watched over the manuscript or fed me muffins when I had writer's block or held my hand when rejection letters came in. No, I did this all myself and I face either the scorn or the praise alone".

See what I mean? When you don't read it all, you can miss such classic lie-based thinking.

Revisiting the Stress on Megachurch Pastors

2007-04-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

In the series I did late last year on the Walmartization of the church, and the postings about Ted Haggard, I noted a trend concerning these megachurch pastors. The job they do is often beyond the ability of mortal man, even with the miraculous help from the Lord.

I personally believe that a large program-based church cannot allow a pastor the time and rest he needs to function as a normal human being. This is what often contributes to the moral and financial decline of men like Ted Haggard.

Just this last week, I heard two significant church leaders in our country bemoan the burn-out that they are fighting. One is the best-selling author and pastor of one of the largest churches in America, Rick Warren. The other is the pastor of one of America's fastest growing churches, Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Both men in public services,and again in their writing, have told of the dark days they have been going through as their energy has come to the end.

Will you pray with me for them? Also, will you pray that they will have the insight to divide up their congregations into many parts as men like Doug Murren have done so that they will not face this again in their lives. Either that or adopt the cell model of ministry. I expect the stories of megachurch pastors running into the proverbial wall will become commonplace in days to come. Perhaps fifty years ago, they could have done this job. But with email, cell phones, and the multiplication of time commitments, there is virtually no chance the pastor of a megachurch can avoid burn-out...or worse.

(Additional Note: I haven't been shirking my writing duties...I have several postings in final edit for this blog...you may find a lot of material coming very quickly. I apologize).

Medicine and Quantum Physics Join together Over Religion

2007-04-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

Quantum Physics teaches, among many other things, that you cannot observe events at the molecular level without affecting the results. Stated more simply, the act of watching atoms do their thing makes atoms do things differently. This is referred to as a Quantum State.

Have I bored you completely? Well, it gets more interesting when this theory is applied to the medical profession.

In a recent study done by the University of Chicago, they found that a patients' religious background had an effect on the quality and speed of their recovery. Here are some results from the study:

Among the more than 1,100 doctors who returned the survey, the results showed that 56 percent believed religion and spirituality had much or very much influence on health.

But only 6 percent believed religion or spirituality had changed “hard” medical outcomes.

Instead, most doctors believed that religion and spirituality:

- Often helps patients cope with illness (76 percent)

- Gives patients a positive state of mind (74 percent)

- Provides emotional and practical support through the religious community (55 percent)

But the intriguing finding is that the results changed depending on the religious background of the doctor. If the doctor was religious themselves, they saw more value in the role that religion plays in the life of their patients. Doctors with little or no background in religion recognized less of a role that religion plays in the patients in their care.

The question is this: Do Christian doctors actually provide a better foundation for God's involvement in the life of a patient than someone who does not believe in God? Are non-believing physicians ignoring what God is doing?

I personally think that a doctor who believes in God and expects God to be involved in the life of those they care for actually will see God do things that may not happen with non-believing doctors. I think I may look to be care for by Christian doctors in the future...as long as they have the same training and skills as my current doctor.

Proof of the Resurrection

2007-04-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

Dr. William Lane Craig has done a phenomenal job at explaining the reason for the Resurrection of Jesus and the proof of its authenticity.

As a teaser, here is a portion of what he has written:

"Man," writes Loren Eisley, "is the Cosmic Orphan." He is the only creature in the universe who asks, Why? Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has learned to ask questions. "Who am I?" he asks. "Why am I here? Where am I going?"

Ever since the Enlightenment, when modern man threw off the shackles of religion, he has tried to answer these questions without reference to God. But the answers that came back were not exhilarating, but dark and terrible. "You are an accidental by-product of nature, the result of matter plus time plus chance. There is no reason for your existence. All you face is death. Your life is but a spark in the infinite darkness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever."

Modern man thought that in divesting himself of God, he had freed himself from all that stifled and repressed him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had also killed himself.

Against this background of the modern predicament, the traditional Christian hope of the resurrection takes on an even greater brightness and significance. It tells man that he is no orphan after all, but the personal image of the Creator God of the universe; nor is his life doomed in death, for through the eschatological resurrection he may live in the presence of God forever.

This is a wonderful hope. But, of course, hope that is not founded in fact is not hope, but mere illusion. Why should the Christian hope of eschatological resurrection appear to modern man as anything more than mere wishful thinking? The answer lies in the Christian conviction that a man has been proleptically raised by God from the dead as the forerunner and exemplar of our own eschatological resurrection. That man was Jesus of Nazareth, and his historical resurrection from the dead constitutes the factual foundation upon which the Christian hope is based.

For the rest of this unique essay, please go here. Happy Resurrection Day this Sunday.

Bring Sanity to Your Daily Schedule - Part 4

2007-04-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

A popular misconception in time management is that you must plan every second of your day in order to be in charge. Not only is this misleading, it often does the opposite of what it intends to do. The idea is that if you control all the smaller sections of time, all of time will reap the reward. But there are several things that go wrong with those assumptions.

First, it all depends on what mood we are in as we plan the time. How distracted are we at that moment? How frustrated with our calling? How trivial in our outlook? If we come into a planning time with emotional upheavals, we may certainly fill up our future timesheet, but it is unlikely that it will be filled with life-giving, call-centered activities.

Second, this approach is not realistic. It fails to account for all the interruptions that we cannot avoid in a given day. Even the best manager has to face numerous challenges to the day plan. The best managers, however, know how to evaluate each interruption. They also know which interruptions are actually more important than what was planned. In John chapter 12, Jesus hears that a group of Gentiles are looking to meet with him. It is this interruption which prompts him to tell his disciples that the Crucifixion was now going to take place. It was the sign he was waiting for. We used to call it serendipity. Now, it is just good time management.

Third, the idea that we can or should control all our time will not be lived out by certain personality types. That approach may cause certain types to rebel constantly and thereby ruin all the good work they were doing. Creating a regimented approach for a person whose mind cannot function with extreme regimentation will cause more harm than good. If you are more interested in this, check out any site that gives good background on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and look at the difference between Judging and Perceiving people. Perceivers will not abide regimented time schedules.

So what is the answer? Go back to the idea that we must know what is most important to us in life. Every morning (or evening if that suits better) a person should take a few minutes to look at the next day. Is that person doing what matters most to them? Are they taking steps to make these most important things the centerpiece of the day? What can they remove to make sure the critical life goals are accomodated?

Here are three practical steps to take that will help make each day more controllable.

1. Before starting the day, write down at the most two or three things you really want to achieve.

2. At the beginning of your day, work on one of those things right away.

3. Watch during the day for moments when something unexpectedly opens up in your time. Instead of filling that with television or wasted activities, immediately work on one of the most important items. You will be amazed at how many times you can work on your critical goals when you were sure there wouldn't be any place to do them.

Bring Sanity to Your Daily Schedule - Part 3

2007-03-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

The problem with collecting all your internal courage and getting control of the time at your disposal is that you find you aren't very successful at corraling the 'beast'. Most of us can rearrange how we are spending our time for a few weeks, but we find that, like a rubber band, we keep snapping back into old habits. We promised ourself that we wouldn't get sucked into serving on that committee or watching that television program or being stuck with that annoying chore at work that is someone else's responsibility but tragically becomes the monkey on your back. What is the reason that time management feels like a "Pushmi-pullyu"? (reference Dr. Doolittle if you're confused).

As an homage to the first habit of Stephen Covey, we must assume it is our responsibility to make changes to our own lives. Therefore, if the fault is to lie anywhere in this failure to gain sanity in the daily schedule, it must start with what is happening inside of us. As anyone who has read this blog for awhile will testify, I see most of our psychological problems as a combination of lie-based thinking interacting with triggering situations accidentally prepared by unknowing people. Never has this been more evident than with time management techniques. All of them will fall short if we have not dealt with the four primary lies we face when we try to corral the wild stallion of our daily life. These four (in no particular order) are:

1. A Sense I will Never Fit In: This is a variation of the shame lie, a devious belief system that proposes to our inner man that there is something essentially wrong with who we are. As we marinate in that belief, our actions betray its presence in this way. We cannot stand the thought that we are this sack of damaged goods...or more to the point that others will discover it...so we do everything we can to present a picture of ourselves that others will find appealing. One way we often do this is to give them some of the keys to our time and priorities. We believe inside that by going along with their priorities for our life they will not get realistic and discover the shame we are trying to hide.

Let me give an example of what this could look like. At work, they are looking for someone to head up a committee that helps employees find places to do their continuing education. Rumor has it that this committee takes up many non-work hours and is completely voluntary. You have no desire to be on that committee because it requires skills you do not possess. But your boss comes along one day and tells you how much you would benefit that committee and how well it would operate with your presence. You would like to tell your boss that you do not possess the skill set to do that job, but you find you can't. Something inside is nudging you to take the position so as to allay any belief the boss might have that you are less than a desirable employee.

As with everything in this process of bringing sanity to our daily schedule, Jesus, the man of Truth, is the best example to go by when it comes to dealing with lies. Jesus truly shows us how to navigate this shame lie. In John 7 Jesus' brothers approach him with a proposition. Why doesn't Jesus go up to Jerusalem at that particular feast and announce his Messiah status? Instead of succombing to this pressure from his brothers however, he simply let them know that his priorities will not allow Him to make a public spectacle for the sake of proving something to his brothers. He was impervious to shame and the demands that shame makes, because he lived in the Truth always.

2. I'm going to Miss Out On Something: This lie is really not a lie at all. In fact, all of us miss out on most of life - if what we mean is we cannot experience everything everyone else is experiencing all the time. That probably wasn't a great dilemma a thousand years ago when the only thing you might miss out if you were having a molar removed is the latest taxing of the peasants by the local ruffians from the castle. However, this lie is a fear lie...it is a fear that by missing out on something, we may miss out on something critical. These days, we are aware of all the things people in this world are doing through television, gossip at work, text messages, blogs, podcasts, DVDs and more television. Other people have the latest video game, hobby, pasttime, sport, equipment, vehicle, concert, exhibition, club, church event, high tech gear, Fave Five, hot tickets, cool drinking place, job from Monster.com, contact list, etc., etc., etc. The idea that we will not be able to do what others are doing bothers many people so they seek to add as many things as can be crammed into a 24-hour day as possible. We even start our kids on it by driving them from one sport to another to another until by the age of twelve they are so burned out that sleeping in until 1 p.m. on a Saturday seems like Shangri-La.

Once again, in the life of Jesus, though he was one of the busiest men in the world, and though he accomplished more in three years than other people do in many lifetimes, we see someone who could sleep through a storm, find a quiet place to be alone, pick up kids while a meeting was going on and single out a blind guy for special attention in the middle of a crowd. He knew what he wanted to do and wasn't influenced by what others were doing. There is nothing wrong with setting your sights on the most important things in your life and allowing others to have different priorities. That is actually how any of us can be individuals: by choosing our own path, even the one less travelled.

3. There is Nothing I can Do About it: This is the helpless lie. It is at the heart of many time schedules gone awry. At the heart of this lie is a belief that we can fight the desires of others all we want, but eventually we will lose. That lie takes all the fight out of us. But here is the kicker: If you tell people often enough that you're not going along with their desire to control your time, eventually they give up. But usually we stop resisting long before they have time to give up. All of life is yelling at us "Resistance is futile". Why would the enemy say that to us if it really was futile?

Because it isn't. In spiritual warfare, the Bible clearly tells us "Resist the devil and he will flee from you". It doesn't say he will run away immediately. Jesus had to put up with several temptations in the wilderness, including a job (turn the stones into bread), a sport (bungie-jumping off the pinnacle of the temple with an angelic net), and a religious event (worship satan and receive the whole world as a prize). But it was someone else's job, someone else's favorite sport, and someone else's idea of religion. Eventually, the enemy left him and he went on his way stronger and more resilient. If you throw off this lie, you will find that even in situations where you seemingly will never be able to overcome, amazing things can happen. I know a young mother of three small children who could never get alone to think, pray or even have a breather. She gave up even trying. But one day, an idea occured to her. She instructed the kids that when "mommy has a towel over her head, that is when everyone must be quiet". She didn't think it would work. And the first dozen times she tried it, it didn't work. But then the kids began to catch on. They immediately quieted down and solved their own problems during those moments when the towel emerged. Eventually each of them would do the same thing when they wanted quiet. Eventually, the entire house practiced the towel/quieting technique. Only dad struggled with it during those months, and eventually he even caught on. It can be done, but only when the lie of helplessness is thrown off.

4. I Will Not Be Accepted: This is the classic variation of the lie "I will not be loved" which plagues the human race. We so desire to connect with others that we will give them the right to cross the proper boundary lines we place around our precious time and invade the values that direct the use of that time. It can be as simple as someone yelling from the other end of the house that we need to come and look at an ifilm clip right when we're praying. It can be a friend at work who takes off an hour early to go to a spa leaving us with the client from hell that always comes at that time of day. We won't say anything to them the next day because we want them to keep liking us.

Peter was Jesus' dear friend. He also never lacked for opinions, even on how Jesus spent his life. In the months leading up to Jesus death on the cross, he had tried to give Peter advance warning on this life-changing event. Peter didn't want to hear it. Peter even had the audacity one day to rebuke Jesus in public and tell him to put this nonsense out of his head. Jesus got angry with his friend because he had crossed the line. Friend or not, Jesus was not going to put up with someone telling him what the priorities of his life were. He was willing to damage the friendship at that point to keep the boundaries of his life secure.

On another occasion, a man approached him and told Jesus to order his brother to share the inheritance they had both received. Only the chief Rabbis had this kind of power. In one sense, Jesus should have been honored he was thought of so highly. But instead, he answered the man, "Who made me your accountant? Settle the issue yourself."

Was this a harsh statement? Yes, it was, but sometimes that is the only way to get a person off your back. Only those who are secure in the love God has for them can do this. Others will get sucked under the current of wanting others to accept, admire and love us: Even if it means giving them the keys to our values and time.

Bring Sanity to Your Daily Schedule - Part 2

2007-03-24T16:39:00.000-07:00

If you look at your schedule and, after honest evaluation, see more U's and C's than M's, a change must come if you want to bring sanity to the ever-increasing time pressures we are facing in today's culture. But before I lay out a simple process for doing that, let's look at what has to change inside before the external changes will work.

During one of Jesus' teachings he makes this grand statement in Matthew 11:29-30: "29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." This seems to be a study in contrasting ideas. First he instructs his disciples to take His yoke upon themselves. A yoke is a bar and chain you place on the shoulders of an ox in order to direct it while plowing. It is an instrument of work and toil. Yet, Jesus' next statement talks about finding rest for the soul. How can the thought progression go so quickly from work to rest? The next verse supplies the key ingredient that ties it all together. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. In essence, when Jesus gives us work to do, it doesn't feel like toil and doesn't sap our strength. God's calling upon a job actually keeps our energy level on an even keel rather than resulting in our demise.

Some things we do are callings from God. I am not referring to a life calling, like being a missionary or wife or President of the United States. I am referring to the daily callings where we latch upon the will of God for us that day and we do the work with the gusto that comes from his presence doing the work with us. The opposite of working from a calling is working from being driven. A driven person is fueled by a sense that what they are doing is necessary, even though there is no corresponding leading from God to keep doing it. Driven people and called people can work the same hours and produce the same amount of work, but the driven person will be exhausted and the called person will, for the most part, feel renewed.

Of course, no one besides Jesus has yet perfected a daily existence where they continue to work by calling and not by drivenness. But that is the goal.

Someone might ask "So do I need to quit all the things I'm doing that don't have God's call upon them?" Not necessarily. Many jobs can be transformed by submitting them to God and seeking to have adjustments made. When God transforms a task, it then becomes a calling.

Years ago, when I was foolish enough to be working 70 hour weeks, I used to dread coming home from the office. My wife had been all day with our small children and I knew she wanted an escape from talking to underage rapscallions. She wanted my time. But, by the time I came home from hours of counseling, office work and administration, not to mention my increasing work load through writing and public speaking, the last thing I wanted was to start fresh into deep, intimate conversations with her. I'm afraid that for a long while she got my emotional leftovers.

One day in my office, during a season where I began to clean up the drivenness of my work life, I opened the door to God so that He could help me evaluate everything. The first thing he put his finger on was the way I approached going home each evening. He pointed out that I felt this was a burden and an obligation and that I didn't ask Him what He wanted me to bring home. After that, I started to approach going home as if it was my next assignment. From that moment on I became much more sensitive, creative and helpful. It also transformed that time from a burden to a blessing for both of us. Within a month I was genuinely looking forward to that first 30 minutes of time we would spend together.

If Jesus' burden is light, and if we are not feeling rested in life, then we have to do three things to get there.

1. Look at everything you do from the perspective of being driven vs. being called.
2. Ask God to transform our tasks before we jettison the lot. The tendency that most people have when they begin this process of bringing sanity to their time is to abandon many of the commitments they have made to others simply because they did not begin as an essential element of their calling. But let us remember that there is virtue in carrying out our assignments and commitments. Kat and I have a friend who used to accept everyone's tasks, allowing the world to dump job after job on her. She was very capable with all of it, but it would invariably overload her. Then, in order to get control again, she would get rid of every commitment she had made and start over again. It got to the point that I advised ministry leaders in our church not to ask her to do anything. We could not rely upon her. The best advice I can give is to set a time limit on how much longer you will carry forward your commitment. Then, when that season is over, you have given them sufficient notice to find a more called person for that task.
3. Remember that all of us are called to do many things. That yoke has your name upon it. For all new tasks, bring them to God and allow Him to lead you into new territory.

Bring Sanity to Your Daily Schedule - Part 1

2007-03-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

I was leading a seminar recently on the reality of our time crunch. Everyone, everywhere, is experiencing a deficit in the time available any more. I mean, who cannot say in exasperation that they spend every day running from one event to another, from one commitment to another, from one important slot on the schedule to another. Intermixed with all this are family, work, recreation, church, friend and entertainment commitments.

For the next week or so, I want to suggest several ways we can bring sanity back into our daily lives. Of course there will be a degree of sacrifice, soul-searching and perhaps even deep sighs, but each person’s experience will differ.

First, what is the problem?

I mean, if we can’t figure out why we are so maniacally busy, is there any hope of turning off the spigot?

I believe an old fable tells the true story. Listen and remember the moral you were taught years ago:

"I shall have to sell that donkey of ours," said a miller to his son. "I can not afford to keep him through the winter. I will take him to town this very morning to see if I can find a buyer. You may go with me." In a little while the miller, his son, and the donkey were on their way to town.

They had not gone far when they met some girls going to a party. They were talking and laughing as they went along. One of them said, "Look at that man and boy driving a donkey. One of them surely might ride."

The miller heard what they said, and quickly made his son mount the donkey, while he walked along at its side.

After a while they came to a group of old men who were talking very earnestly. "There," said one, "I was just saying that boys and girls have no respect for the aged. You see it is true in this case. See that boy riding while his old father has to walk."

"Get down, my son," said his father, "and I will ride." So they went on.

They next met some women coming from town. "Why!" they cried, "your poor little boy is nearly tired out. How can you ride and make him walk?" So the miller made his son ride on the donkey behind him.

They were now in town. A man coming down the street called to the miller, "Why do you make your donkey carry such a load? You can carry him better than he can carry you."

At this the miller and his son got off the donkey. They tied the donkey's legs together, turned him over on his back; and began to carry him.

A crowd soon gathered to see the strange sight. As they were crossing a bridge the donkey became frightened at the hooting of the crowd. He broke loose, fell into the river, and was drowned.

The miller was angry and ashamed. He said, "There! I have tried to please everybody and have only made a fool of myself. After this I shall do as I think best and let people say what they will."

The man and his son switched the traveling arrangements four times to suit the observations and opinions of onlookers. None of these onlookers had the particular financial need which drove the man to sell his donkey. Yet, each one of their opinions added perceptibly to the eventual demise of, and loss of profit from, the donkey. What happened is that the man did not consider his goal of selling the donkey to be of greater importance than the opinions and agendas of bystanders. This isn’t far from what too many people face as they look at their schedules. Much of what we do is because others have grasped control of our daily lives and strewn their opinions and desires recklessly through our valuable time.

I am thoroughly amazed when I read biographies of great people. Recently, I re-read the autobiography of Lee Iaccoca, the head of Chrysler Motor Corporation. He is highly regarded for the role he played in rescuing Chrysler from the pits of dissolution hell and getting them back on their feet financially. They are now a very strong company due in part to his leadership. I was surprised to find that he only works 45 hours a week and will not allow himself to be interrupted on the weekends. We have been lead to believe that great business leaders become great by working themselves to death. Iaccoca shows that you can lead effectively by setting significant boundaries around your life and requiring those around you to honor them.

But how do you do that when you work for someone else? How do you do that when your family is in crisis, and health issues arise?

It starts with knowing what God wants you to do on a daily basis. That is the subject of the next blog entry.

But to prepare for it, spend several days examining your life. Keep a record of all the things you do each day on a scrap of paper or in your computer. Beside each entry write one of three letters:

M – beside an activity that is your choice primarily

C – beside an activity that is someone else’s choice, but you have committed to it

U – beside an activity that is someone else’s choice for you and you did not take control over it.

At the end of a couple of days, add up how many “C’s” there are. Are they the majority? If they aren’t, then the next few blog entries may help.

An Atheist Looks at Prayer

2007-03-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

Hemant Mehta, an avowed atheist, made a lot of headlines a while ago by posting his soul on Ebay. He sold his soul to the highest bidder, promising that he would attend the religious services of whichever religion paid him the most money. For every ten dollars bid, he would attend for one hour. I invite you to read the results of what he found as he spent 50-some hours in many churches in the Chicago area after a Christian outreach organization had the winning bid. His book is called "I Sold My Soul on Ebay" and is a quick read.

Outreach Magazine did an interview with Mehta and asked him to describe his experience with various church groups. He had several conclusions and one of them had to do with prayer. Here is what he said,

Then, there were prayer services where people were asking God for things I figured they could just take care of themselves. You have a problem in your relationship? I think you should talk to the other person and work it out. You don't like your job? Then work on finding one that suits your passions. I think atheists are a lot more confident than Christians in their own abilities to make things happen.

This has been the atheist/agnostic/deist party line about prayer for a long time: god helps those who help themselves ("god" comes with a little "g" because these groups only acknowledge the idea of a god and not the actuality, which they say cannot be proved). I actually agree most with his last statement "atheists are a lot more confident than Christians in their own abilities to make things happen". There should be no doubt that this is true. What has bothered almost every other religion is that Christianity exalts the weakness of man and the Strength of God to provide man with help where he is weakest. The Apostle Paul says it in this bald statement: "When I am weak then I am strong. God's strength is made perfect in my weakness".

Christianity teaches that the strength of man is just an illusion. We are as helpless in the face of uncontrollable circumstances as a blade of grass is toward the approaching brush fire. The illusion of atheism is that it can control much more than it really can. Alcholics Anonymous has learned this so well. Only when the substance-addicted person can say that he is helpless to overcome his addiction without the help of someone outside himself can the recovery really begin.

What I like about Mehta is that he got this; he understood that Christianity teaches that we can be strong, but only when God's strength is helping us. What I pity about Mehta is that he relies completely on his own strength. This strength amounts to little more than a flower that looks nice for its few short moments on this earth and then fades away. That is not enough meaning for my life. I wonder how it can be enough for his.

If The Man Were Honest...

2007-03-02T07:49:00.001-08:00

This just in from Fox News' Jonathan Morris:

This week “Titanic” director James Cameron and Canadian television director, Simcha Jacobovici stood proudly at the New York City library to announce the release of a new book and documentary called “The Tomb of Jesus.” They claim to have uncovered the remains of Jesus and his family, including Mary Magdalene, (Jesus’ supposed wife) and their child, Judah.

If he were honest, this is what Mr. Cameron would have said to the press:

“My dearest friends in the media,

Thank you for being here. I must admit, I am pleasantly surprised so many of you have come. Our public relations company had quite the challenge to convince you our commercial projects were headline-worthy. After all, what we are peddling is pseudo-science based on old and discredited news. But we obviously hired the right company. They came through on their promise that you wouldn’t remember, or wouldn’t care, that when this tomb was discovered twenty seven years ago, the Jewish archeologist in charge of the investigation, Amos Kloner, determined it was not the tomb of Jesus and his family and that, in fact, it is unlikely Jesus and his relatives even had a family tomb. To think that not a single respected archeologist from the Holy Land region is willing to go on record that our claims are true, and still you are here with us today, is mind-boggling. How can we thank you enough?

We really got scared when people like Joe Zias, who spent 25 years as an archeologist at Rockefeller University in Jerusalam, called into question our integrity. I think he said publicly “Simcha has no credibility whatsoever.” And even though the great archeologist, Amos Kloner, tried to rain on our party when he said, “The claim that the burial site has been found is not based on any proof, and is only an attempt to sell,” you were not deterred. You are here, and we are so happy!

By the way, did you hear our book is now in the top five of Amazon.com? Amazing! I am thinking about doing some other projects where I set science — even pseudo-science — up against religion. I think I’ll release them during the annual “slam Christianity season” — Lent and Easter — featuring a New York City press conference. We’ll win every time. Christians will be quiet. They won’t set cars on fire or blow anyone up, precisely because they believe in the Resurrection, that Jesus’ way of peace is better. They will, however, get nervous because they don’t really know much about their faith and will buy the book and watch the show.

This brings me to the real point of today’s press conference. Today is my day for revenge. When I received my Oscar for best director a few years ago, I looked out into the crowd and proclaimed, “I am the king of the world”. That’s what I felt on that day and I wouldn’t have said it, if I didn’t believe it. But some of my Hollywood colleagues have looked down on me ever since. They thought I was exaggerating. As my movie credits prove, I’ve been sidelined since that day. But when I found the two-thousand year old scribblings on a tomb wall and, with the help of mathematicians, extrapolated that Jesus’ tomb was not really empty, that he may not have risen from the dead, as two billion people believe today, I realized how true my Oscar’s acceptance speech really was. It was kind of prophetic, I guess. The real king of the world — James Cameron — calls into question the King of Kings.

Busy Can Become Stupid

2007-02-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

I am trying desperately to figure out this article from the Sacramento newspaper, and its implications for our society. Here is a clip to get a flavor of it:

A 28-year-old Chico man was killed Monday after he lost control of his car while working on his laptop computer while driving, according to the California Highway Patrol.
"We have reason to believe he was operating his laptop because it was still on and plugged into the cigarette lighter," said CHP Cmdr. Scott Silsbee.
Shortly after 8:35 a.m., the CHP received a report of a head-on crash on Highway 99 south of Yuba City between O'Banion Road and Highway 113.

In the past, I have read of people reading the newspaper while driving, changing their clothes, and even practicing their violin on the way to a rehearsal. I have personally witnessed people putting on eye makeup, text-messaging on cell phones, and disappearing altogether from the driver side going "who knows where".

But what does all of this mean? One part of our culture calls this multi-tasking, meaning that all of these functions can, and should, be performed at the same time. Last week, we witnessed someone almost get into an accident lighting a cigarette and my father-in-law said he felt that should be outlawed: smoking in a car. Though few would agree with FIL, many people are currently debating which tasks should be allowed while we drive. Which would we allow a pilot to do while flying? Which would we allow a surgeon to do while surgering (or is that 'surging'?)?

The busyness of our lives has pushed us to the breaking point. And I mean that as someone caught up in the rush (somewhat). Next week, I will be presenting a seminar on how to bring some sanity back into our busy lives. After the seminar is completed I will post some of the ideas here. But what do you think...what causes sane people to do some of the things that are being tried in cars these days? Is it a sign of the times?

This is how Bill Gates Became So Rich

2007-02-21T10:30:00.000-08:00

Many things that Bill Gates does are commendable and ought to be lionized by most writers and analysts. But this article suggests that his greatest achievements may have to do with the children he is raising. Read this about his attitudes toward how his own children use the Internet.

To summarize, his 10-year old daughter is only allowed on 45 minutes a day and his younger son is not allowed on at all. When his son asked him if he would have restrictions on the Internet all his life, his answer was "no, some day you will move out and then you can do as you like".

This guy impresses me more than most people. Yes, he is the richest man in the world, but he is giving over half his wealth away and now he shows that he raises his kids with wisdom. No wonder he has handled his business and money so expertly.

Can Evolution Handle This?

2007-02-08T07:23:00.000-08:00

It looks like Calvin Klein is replacing the Kama Sutra in the hearts of many women. Look at this recent survey reported by Reuters yesterday. It claims that the majority of women prefer new clothes to sex with their partners.

According to the study,

Women on average say they would be willing to give up sex for 15 months for a closet full of new apparel, with 2 percent ready to abstain from sex for three years in exchange for new duds, according to a new survey of about 1,000 women in 10 U.S. cities.

Sixty-one percent of women polled said it would be worse to lose their favorite article of clothing than give up sex for a month.
"Some people say clothes make the man, but the right clothes can even replace him," fashion designer, said stylist and TV personality Carson Kressley"

Men, apparently we are doing something wrong if a nice pair of Pradas holds more attraction than our bristling abs. I mean, if we had bristling abs. What on earth is Evolution coming to? How will there be the survival of the fittest if the fittest are preferring a fitting to a flirtation? I guess we can assume that the minority of women who prefer sex to clothing may actually be the fittest and therefore they obviously will be the ones to reproduce and carry on the species.

Or it could mean that men need to sharpen their appeal. Just in time for Valentine's day. Who knew that what she really wanted was a Coach purse more than a coach ride up Blueberry Hill?