Kidologist.com: Karl Bastian’s Personal Site and Blog
Archive for Christianity
August 9, 2008 at 9:26 am · Filed under Christianity, Life, Politics
I know I am late, but I wanted to post this testimony from Tony Snow for my own keep-sake. Tony was a powerfully articulate speaker (my favorite Rush Limbaugh substitute) who was appreciated and admired by friends and foes alike. I learned so much from him about how our country works. He made me proud to be an American and understood the issues of today better than most and supported his positions with facts and logic instead of just angry emotion like so many of his opponents. And he was always upbeat and positive and respectful. Below is his testimony as he was dying of cancer. (FYI: the same cancer that took my mom at the same age: 53. Way too soon for both of them.)
Tony Snow’s last televised briefing. Photo by Getty Images
This is an outstanding testimony from Tony Snow, President Bush’s former Press Secretary, and his fight with cancer. Commentator and broadcaster, Tony Snow, announced that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined the Bush Administration in April, 2006 as press secretary. Unfortunately, on March 23, 2007, Snow, 51, a husband and father of three, announced the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen, - leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but later resigned, ‘for economic reasons,’ and to pursue ‘ other interests.’
Tony Snow’s Testimony
(prior to his death July 12, 2008)
‘Blessings arrive in unexpected packages - in my case, cancer. Those of us with potentially fatal diseases - and there are millions in America today - find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God’s will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence ‘What It All Means,’ Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations. The first is that we shouldn’t spend too much time trying to answer the ‘why’ questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can’t someone else get sick? We can’t answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.
I don’t know why I have cancer, and I don’t much care. It is what it is, a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out. But despite this, - or because of it, - God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don’t know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.
Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of dying can send adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You think of nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the impact on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere. To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death, but into life, - and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many non believing hearts – an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live fully, richly and exuberantly - no matter how their days may be numbered.
Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable ease, - smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see, but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance; and comprehension - and yet don’t. By His love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.
‘You Have Been Called’. Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet; a loved one holds your hand at the side. ‘It’s cancer,’ the healer announces. The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa. ‘Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler.’ But another voice whispers: ‘You have been called.’ Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter, - and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our ‘normal time.’ There’s another kind of response, although usually short-lived an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tiny, and placed before us the challenge of important questions.
The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing through the known world and contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain), shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.
There’s nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue, - for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever could do. Finally, we can let love change everything. When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for himself, but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city. From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness, and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us, that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God’s love for others. Sickness gets us part way there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two peoples’ worries and fears.
‘Learning How to Live’. Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God’s arms, not with resignation, but with peace and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of love. I sat by my best friend’s bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment. ‘I’m going to try to beat [this cancer],’ he told me several months before he died. ‘But if I don’t, I’ll see you on the other side. ‘His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn’t promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity, - filled with life and love we cannot comprehend, and that one can in the throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future storms. Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don’t matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?
When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way. Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions know it. It is hard to describe, but there are times when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up, - to speak of us! This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.
What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don’t know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us who believe, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place, in the hollow of God’s hand.’
T. Snow
June 26, 2008 at 3:06 pm · Filed under Christianity, Devotional, Spiritual Growth
How many times have we prayed and asked God to bless our efforts… well, no more! Read on to discover why you should never ask God to bless your work!
We want God to look down from heaven, see what wonderful things we are doing for Him, and to bless what we are doing.
I was challenged to reconsider this common practice by my written mentor, Oswald Chambers, when he wrote: “Many a Christian worker has left Jesus Christ alone and gone into work from a sense of duty or from a sense of need arising out of his own particular discernment.”
This does not necessarily mean we are “sinning,” but that WE are generating the spiritual activity ourselves. Though as we get busy and drift from God, sin certainly can result! Oswald referring to our Christian activity, “There is no sin in it, and no punishment attached to it; but when the soul realizes how he has hindered his understanding of Jesus Christ, and produced for himself perplexities and sorrows and difficulties, it is with shame and contrition he has to come back.”
It sounded so spiritual, the old saying I latched onto as a kid: “God can’t move a parked car.” But in the end, this attitude of fast-paced service, disguised as a sense of urgency for the lost, is a deadly and unbiblical and has led many a sincere Christian worker to get going so fast and furious in their flurry of Christian work that they end up crashing due to a blind spot around a corner on the super service highway of spiritual achievement. What good is all your “work” if it takes you away from the very one you are supposedly serving so passionately?!? I know that I have been driven since a very young age to be “Busy for God” - and yet I am discovering that God is not in as big a hurry as I am. When I get stressed out I am learned to breath deep and release it all remembering, what God wants done will get done (with or without me) and what I never get to, He probably isn’t concerned about - as long as He has ME.
God has been at work throughout the ages, and is quite capable of accomplishing His goals and purposes without me being all stressed out. I get so worked up over all that “needs to get done” when God says, “It’s all done already, just walk with Me.”
Mark chapter eleven, in the Message, records Jesus saying, “Embrace this God-life. Really embrace it, and nothing will be too much for you.” When we are stressed, we are ahead of God. And He doesn’t hurry to catch up to us, I believe He often stops, and waits for us to notice we are alone, and to come back to Him, and then He will continue on with us at His pace. Jesus continued, (in the Message) “That’s why I urge you to pray for absolutely everyting, ranging from small to large. Include everything as you embrace this God-life, and you’ll get God’s everything.”
Oswald writes, “…get into the habit of steadily referring everything back to Him; instead of this we make our common-sense decisions and ask God to bless them.”
My challenge to myself first and foremost is this: Do not ask God to bless anything. If it is of God, it is already blessed! To ask God to bless it, is to hint that it may not be of Him to start with, even if it is a good thing.
Think about it, if God has asked you to do a thing, how silly to ask Him to also bless it! It may border on an insult to Him. And if He hasn’t asked you to do it, why would you want His blessing on it?
Instead, ask God what He would have you do, and then pray for the courage and strength and persistance to see it through despite any obstacles or resistance you may encounter as you obey. Now there is a prayer God can answer!
June 2, 2008 at 1:24 pm · Filed under Children's Ministry, Christianity, Family, Leadership, Life, Spiritual Growth
“Hi Craig, my name is Karl, and I too am a recovering ministry-a-holic.”
In the current issue of K! Magazine, there is an excellent article by my friend, Craig Jutila, former children’s pastor at Saddleback Community Church, where he very honestly and transparently talks about his own personal “crash” from being so addicted to ministry he found himself in an unhealthy place spiritually, emotionally, and relationally with his family. I appreciated his candor. I’ve attempted to be as open here on my blog (and even more so in one on one relationships) about my own “demise” as a children’s pastor nearly two years ago who thought he could do everything and keep his walk with God and family life healthy. Why are the best lessons in life learned so painfully?
Craig’s topic was “spiritual renewal” and he admits (as I will) that we can be so good at faking it and knowing all the answers even as we are dying on the inside - but unwilling to admit our need. He quotes an unknown person as saying we don’t change until, “you hurt enough that you have to” or you “learn enough that you want to.” We both admit, it wasn’t the latter for us. We had to reach that point of deep hurt and dispair until we could finally be honest with ourselves that we needed help!
I love that Craig admits going to counseling. Like me, he once thought counseling was for people who had “issues” and that, as Craig says, it would “require acknowledging that I didn’t have it all together and I was different than all the spiritual people I worked around all day, every day.” I think he must have the same counselor as I do - for he too was challenged to be a “human BEING” and not a “human DOING” - something that took me months to get my brain around too.
While I know crisis times are no fun (understatement!) one thing I have learned on my own journey is that God loves ME more than my ministry, my pride, my reputation, or anything I can do for him. I’m glad both Craig and I were able to get out of ministry enough to discover a Walk with Christ apart from ministry. The year I took off from all speaking/ministry was a difficult year - as I was still healing and dealing with the consequences of my crash - but it was also a spiritually wonderful year of discovery and renewal - a time during which I learned things I was completely unable to discover while in “ministry.” And that I fear I would have never discovered had I somehow managed to keep on keeping on - “never quitting” - as the common call is. Sometimes you have to be a Quitter before you can be a genuinely Learner.
A friend of mine recented teased me and said, “All you cm experts - you, Craig, Sue, Reggie, and Jim have left the ministry and gone full time with your side ministries.” (ouch) While Jim Wideman is now back on staff at a church, I think it’s true for the rest in that quote. (And I’m not sure I belong in that list!) It is hard to answer the question, “How can you advise children’s pastors on children’s ministry if you are no longer doing children’s ministry full time?”
Oh, there are the obvious answers - over fifteen years of experience, current volunteer experience, bachelors and masters degree in children’s ministry, experience, education, God-given insights, etc. But the bottom line has to be simply, the Call of God and obedience.
My life mission statement since age nineteen (except for the recent year I set it aside) is:
To reach and teach as many children as possible with the Good News of God’s Love, and in the process to Enlist, Equip and Encourage others to do the same.
However, while that missions statement still drives my focus and passion for ministry - it no longer drives ME. I am driven to walk with Christ and love my family. Period. And when and how God allows or asks, I love equipping and encouraging others on their journey in life and ministry too.
Someday I hope to be back in a local church ministry setting as a children’s pastor - but I no longer “need” that be have identity, purpose or value. I’m content being just me - the forgiven sinner and follower of Jesus, the loving husband, and hopefully the most fun, engaged, and intentional father my son can possibly have!
I am so thankful for those who have walked with me during these difficult past few years - those who put up with me before my blinders were knocked off - and for others on the journey, like Craig, who are honest enough to let me know, I’m not the only completely messed up child of God who’s got only one thing going for him - for some crazy reason, Jesus loves me. (and He loves you too my friend!)
May 1, 2008 at 9:34 pm · Filed under Children's Ministry, Christianity, Devotional, Leadership, Life, Spiritual Growth
I don’t remember who told me this story, or if I read it in a book, but it came to me at a period of my life when I was suddenly more teachable than ever before having come to the end of “myself” and it made a huge impact.
The story was of a pastor who had just gotten a call to a much larger ministry and wanted to seek out the council of a well known and highly successful pastor of an even larger ministry. He was excited to get a lunch appointment with this pastor and came ready to glean as much wisdom as he could from this one meal they would share. After they had ordered he explained that he was soon going to be going to a larger ministry and wanted as much advice as possible on how to survive and thrive in this new bigger ministry. The seasoned pastor smiled, and calmly responded, “Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” The younger pastor wrote down this first bit of advice and then looked up ready to write down the next pearl of wisdom this godly man would have to share… but no words followed. Seeing the look of bewilderment on the younger man’s face, the older man said, “Yes, that’s it. Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” I remember the younger pastor saying that he was kind of irritated and annoyed because he was really hoping to go home with more than just one quote. But years later he discovered just how wise that one piece of advice was, in fact, the KEY to success in life as well as ministry.
This has been a key part of my journey the past two years since I went full time with Kidology and stopped having two full time ministries. There have been seasons in my life where I was in such a hurry DOING for God that I forgot how to BE. Ruthlessly eliminating hurry from my life has become my passionate pursuit. But “hurry” has a way of creeping back in, it is still how I am naturally wired. So this week, as I began to feel the pressure building again, I made this wallpaper to remind myself not to lose any of the progress I have made.
Enjoy this wallpaper:
(Open above image in new window for larger view)
Let me encourage you to make this your wallpaper for a few weeks and ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life!
April 30, 2008 at 11:19 pm · Filed under Children's Ministry, Christianity, Devotional, Leadership, Spiritual Growth
A while back I found the articles linked below on pastors.com and they were exactly what I needed at the time. I have since shared them with many men and I offer them here, not as something I think you might need, but as something I NEEDED that you just might too.
I recommend you read and digest just one at a time and actually DO the recommended assignment provided in each PDF download.
Confessions of a Driven Pastor I (Download Part One)
It’s no longer safe to assume that people in ministry have healthy souls and just need a little coaching in the leadership area. - Pastor Lance Witt
Confessions of a Driven Pastor II (Download Part Two)
For years I intuitively knew that I was violating my soul. In honest and quiet moments, I longed to get off the treadmill but didn’t know how. - Pastor Lance Witt
I pray that you will find these artilces as convicting and as helpful to you as I did.
April 19, 2008 at 9:57 am · Filed under Children's Ministry, Christianity, Kidology, Parenting
Here is a SNEAK PEEK at the next Kidology Online Training Leadership Lab which is titled, “Partnering with Parents.”
There are two battles raging today in children’ ministry. The first battle is for the hearts and minds of our children. It is a battle that we are losing on many fronts. While in many places children’s ministry has “arrived” with it’s kid-friendly facilities and multi-media “edutainment” style of teaching, there is little evidence that all this “fun” and “excitement” is automatically translating into young, fully devoted disciples of Jesus Christ. This is a battle that we are all aware of for the most part, and are trying our best to engage and win.
However, there is a second battle I see raging in the Church that I’m not sure many recognize. It is a battle of the “Blame Game.” As parents and church leaders are waking up to the fact that, despite all the high-tech gadgets and endless resources, we are losing the first battle, they shift to this second one, turning on each other. Parents, who feel they are doing their best, are looking to the church for help and answers, and are feeling they aren’t getting enough. And the church, sensing the finger of blame pointing toward them, is trying to turn the finger back at parents. When I talk to children’s ministry leaders about the critical issues facing our children today, the word “parents” is often uttered with frustration or even disgust. Recently, at a national children’s pastor’s conference, a ballroom filled with hundreds of children’s ministry leaders cheered when a speaker spoke negatively about parents. As a father, daily doing my best for my own son, the laughter hurt. We, as children’s ministry leaders, are supposed to be supporting and encouraging parents, not blaming them or looking down on them as though they are somehow at fault for the negative stats we keep reading. The mantra is ringing loud and clear in churches around our country, “It’s the parents responsibility to raise and nurture children in the Lord,” as though that gets the church off the hook. And yet, while we toss the responsibility squarely at them, we still insist they bring their kids to church for us to take the lead in the spiritual input in their lives. We ask for Sunday School, Kids Church and often weekday clubs and other special events and teams. If it was truly all the parents’ job, then cancel the children’s ministry! No, it IS OUR JOB TOO.
While children’s ministry leaders can rattle off all the biblical passages that “prove” it is the parents’ job – that is too easy. I’m in agreement with all those passages and the primary role of parents, but a core component of the spiritual education of Jewish children was learning in the synagogue in the Old and New Testament. And don’t forget, Jesus’ command to “Go and make disciples of all nations” was not given exclusively to parents – it was given to the Church, to every believer whether they are a parent or not.
Yes, parents need to do a better job of owning up to their God-given responsibility to be intentional and strategic in the spiritual formation of their children, but we as church leaders need to own up to ours as well. We have in large part taken the job from parents, and then turned around and blamed them for not doing it. While we can be very pleased at the many advances in ministry tools and techniques, it is healthy to be reminded (or informed if you didn’t know) that the birth of the Sunday School movement, the predecessor of “children’s ministry,” had as one of it’s purposes to take from parents the primary role of the spiritual education of children because it was believed that the church could do a better job.
Note this quote from a leaflet published in 1818, titled Circular letter regarding the establishing of Sunday Schools:
“All parents are not qualified to instruct; and if they were, still the emulation excited by the organization of the respective classes, and by the rewards bestowed on merit, have animated children to commit to memory larger portions of scripture and a greater number of hymns, and also induced them to regard with more attention the instructions of the pious teachers than those of their parents (however capable) in private.”1
(Click image for larger viewing)
Granted, 1818 is a while ago! But how often do we quickly assume the roles that truly belong to parents? Pastor Kenny Conley wrote on his blog about how many times parents would come to him and say, “My child would like to accept Christ, would you pray with him?” Kenny admits that often he would, until he realized that instead he ought to simple coach the parent how to lead his or her own child through that important decision. I’m guilty too! For years in our “kids bulletin” I had a contest designed to help kids pay attention during the sermon during the summer when we took a break from children’s church. It was called the “Key Word Contest.” Quite simply, as kids listened to the sermon, they were to choose ten words that they thought were the “key words” of the message. I did the same. When the kids turned in the bulletins, I graded them and awarded points for a variety of the activities, but bonus points for any of their key words that matched mine. After doing this for several years I heard a challenge from a speaker somewhere: “What are you doing that parents should be, or could be, doing if you weren’t doing it for them?” (Ouch!) The next summer I added a box in the adult’s bulletin asking parents to write down ten key words from the sermon and then, over lunch, to compare theirs to their children’s and discuss them and reward them somehow for words that match. Not only did I not have to grade a hundred kids bulletins every week, but also parent after parent came to me and thanked me for helping create a Sunday afternoon discussion of the sermon. I got one of my first tastes of what it meant to partner with parents.
It has been reported by some researchers that in the very best case scenarios, most of our kids will spend a maximum of 40 hours at church each year. (They’ll spend over 400 playing video games alone.) Responding to the statistic, Kenny Conley notes, “Churches (Children’s Ministries) typically spend 100% (or close to it) of their time and resources on the 40 hours we’ll have with these kids. Wouldn’t it make sense to invest more time in the people who are truly influencing these kids? We won’t always be their pastors, but these adults will always be their parents. It’s just too simple, really.”
I sense that both sides know they need each other. Both parents and church leaders know they can’t do it alone. Both sides even know they shouldn’t feel like they are on opposing “sides.” They should be on the same side! But they’re not sure how to do it. They want to be partners, but right now it feels too contentious. They both want the same thing, and are desperate for answers – quickly! But they also don’t want to be blamed for the poor results so far. The church is desperate for parents to wake up and realize they are losing the battle – and parents are desperate for help, not blame.
In the next Kidology Online Training Leadership Lab, the topic is Partnering with Parents. While there have been many great books to come out in recent years on the topic, I believe there is a critical oversight that may just transform the way you do ministry to parents and families. I’m not talking about another program or special event. I’m not suggesting another resource to buy or technique to attempt. I will be presenting a radical new approach to partnering with parents that once you read it will make perfect sense – though it may be something you’ve never even considered before!
It’s time to stop “business as usual,” and it’s time to stop blaming parents for the alarming results we are seeing in the children who out-grow Christianity as soon as they out-grow church. There IS a way to partner with parents that may just turn your children’ ministry upside down. Begin praying now for God to open your mind and heart to a new way to partner with parents – and keep an eye out for a thought-provoking Leadership Lab, due out in just weeks.
Discussion of this article available on Kidology.org
1Circular letter regarding the establishing of Sunday Schools. Leaflet. Printed Epherma Collection, Portfolio 52, Folder 4. Boston, 1818. [http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/rbpe.05200400] Much thanks to Lois Darboone for the research help.
March 31, 2008 at 10:40 am · Filed under Christianity, Devotional, Life, Luke
We had a pretty big storm last night and at one point I was awakened by a HUGE thundering outside. I immediately thought of my little boy upstairs so I felt my way through the dark to his room and when I entered I found him not crying, but awake and wide-eyed with fear. As soon as he saw me he lifted his arms asking me to pick him up.
I lifted him out of his bed and sat down in the recliner cuddling him. He tightly gripped my shirt and within seconds he was fast asleep even as the storm continued to rage outside the window and rain pelted the side of the house. But it didn’t matter to him anymore. As long as he was in his daddy’s arms, and daddy wasn’t afraid, he no longer had an reason for concern.
When the storms of life hit, my Father also thinks of me and comes to me. And if I will simply reach out to Him, He will gently pick me up and hold me close. And with tight grip on Him, I too can rest in peace despite my situation or the things that try to strike fear into my heart. You see, He’s near, and He’s not afraid, so I no longer have reason for concern either.
Being a father has taught me more about my Heavenly Father than I ever imagined.
March 31, 2008 at 7:50 am · Filed under Christianity, Devotional, Discipleship, Leadership, Spiritual Growth, Uncategorized
This past weekend I was presenting at the GCSSA conference in Arlington Heights, IL, but as often happens when you are serving God, it turns out that’s not the only reason I was there. I was also there to meet a guy named Dave Wager and to be challenged by him. It’s an amazing thing I’ve been learning over the past two years - when I am focused less on DOING for God and more on BEING with Him, I end up seeing and hearing things I would have missed otherwise.
Dave is the president of Silver Birch Ranch in White Lake, Wisconsin. You can’t talk to Dave for long before his passion slips out - a passion for men to be intimate with God and to be men who are IN THE WORD daily.
Dave was explaining to me that as he travels around to speak to men at conferences, retreats, etc. he often asks the men if they desire an intimate walk with Jesus, and (of course) they all say ‘yes.’ But when asked how many believe they HAVE an intimate relationship with Jesus, few answer that they do. In fact, he told me that when he asks PASTORS how many of them are in the Word daily, most are not. (This was often true of me when I was lost in the business and never-ceasing activity of ministry.) He has found that most Christians spend more time reading books ABOUT God or ABOUT the Bible, than they actually do reading THE Bible which is the ultimate book about God!
Dave is a published author, but what I love about his books, is that they are simply a passage of Scripture, some reflective thoughts of his on the passage, but then two pages of blank lines for the reader to journal. As Dave says, “Men need to be reading the Bible and wrestling with it, that is how we grow and how we become intimate with Jesus, by listening to Him, talking to Him, having daily conversations with Him.”
I ended up changing one of my goals for Yosemite Summit after talking with Dave. Originally, I was going to challenge each man on the retreat to bring and read one entire book that dealt with the soul or Christian life. Instead, I bought a copy of Beyond the Compass for each man and we will be getting into the Word on this retreat. Not that we weren’t going to already, but the emphasis is going to change. I will say that I still believe that Christian leaders NEED to be reading what I call “soul books” - books about our walk with God and that explore how we are wired spiritually. Too many leaders (myself once included) read only “leadership books” and “ministry books” to the detriment of their souls. So I still strongly that we need to read more non-leadership and non-ministry books and read stuff that fuels our SOULS not just our ministries. But I’ve also been convicted that the Bible must remain our primary source of reading.
I am one who has learned the hard way that you can be flying high in ministry and be empty in your soul. In fact, it can be ministry itself that pulls you away from an intimate walk with Jesus. I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about how an addiction to ministry can spoil your walk with God and your marriage, and how blind you can be to it happening because everything you are so busy “doing” is so GOOD - come on! It’s minitry! How can it be bad? Let me tell you, it can be deadly.
So, all this to say:
HAVE YOU BEEN IN THE WORD TODAY?
YESTERDAY?
THE DAY BEFORE?
Here’s an idea that my discipler challenged me with in high school - that worked then, but I have long since abandoned. It’s really quite simple, but POWERFUL:
NO BIBLE? NO FOOD!
You see, we never fail to feed our body, but we often fail to feed our souls. Our body will crave nurishment and make it known to us, via grumblings, pains, even noises sometimes! But while our soul cries out for nurshiment, we often fail to hear it’s groanings. So use your human physical hunger as a reminder to provide nurishment to your hungry soul. Make a sticker that says “NO BIBLE? NO FOOD!” and put it wherever you need the reminder that you can’t eat if you haven’t spent at least a little time in the Bible. Obviously, the ideal isn’t just the reading, it is time with God reflecting on the Word and praying about it, but at a minimum, have read something - it’s can’t help but pull you in deeper.
Simply make a rule: YOU CAN NOT EAT IF YOU HAVEN’T READ A CHAPTER OF THE BIBLE.
I am re-instituting this rule for myself today. I’m tired of inconsistent time in the Word. Are you? Not only will you read more (much more) of the Bible this way, but you may just lose some weight too!
March 27, 2008 at 9:20 pm · Filed under Children's Ministry, Christianity, Discipleship, Family, Kidology, Parenting
When is a child truly EDUCATED? This powerful video asks that very question.
Back in 2000 I heard this most thought provoking poem on WMBI and tracked down the author to get permission to make the following video to show our parents at our church. Many of the kids in this video are now out of high school!
Every time I show this video, as I did yesterday at the Kidology To Go in Arlington Heights, Illinois (as part of the GCSSA conference) I am asked for a copy of it. Here is the video as read by some of the kids in my previous ministry. (Many thanks to Pastor Jim Crouter who did the editing for me on his PC)
Here are the words:
YOU MAY PURCHASE A DOWNLOADABLE COPY OF THIS VIDEO FOR ONLY $4 ON KIDOLOGY.org
(You will also get a Word document with the words of the poem)
March 17, 2008 at 11:02 am · Filed under Children's Ministry, Christianity, Devotional
Came across this image on a blog I follow called the Scripturist.org, and just wanted to post it so I’ll never lose it.
(click image for full size graphic)
God loves to use the unusable, which is the only reason He uses me.
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