Go Tell it On Hog Mountain . . .

Hog Mountain Baptist Church has decided to get a new name. Reading about the whole process of their decision-making made me think about our mission.

For 150 years the church has been know by that venerable name. It’s not the most unusual name I’ve seen for a church. There’s the Jesus Lives Here Methodist Church in Roan Mountain, Tennessee. And in Campbell, Alabama, you’ll find the Witch Creek Baptist Church. There’s the Happy Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or the Welcome Home Baptist Church in Mount Airy, Georgia (Great Hills Baptist Church can loan them some of their bumper stickers). I’m a little curious about why some churches chose their names: Rising Daughter Church in Camden County, South Carolina, or the Hanging Dog Baptist Church in North Carolina.

Hog Mountain Baptist Church was simply named after its community of Hog Mountain, an area in eastern Gwinnett County, Georgia. According to the article, “It was a high place on the ridge of the Eastern Continental Divide, where, the story goes, men would stop overnight while herding hogs to market. White settlers were there before the War of 1812. The Hog Mountain community saw Gwinnett's first courthouse and jail.” For decades, business signs adorned with large porkers proudly proclaimed Hog Mountain this or that.

But in recent years, Gwinnett County has developed considerably, including an upscale golf community. More and more, the area is known as Hamilton Mill. Long-established businesses have dropped “Hog Mountain” from their names in favor of “Hamilton Mill” this or that.

But when members voted to change their 150-year-old church from Hog Mountain Baptist Church to Hamilton Mill Baptist Church, it wasn’t without controversy.

“I think it's a shame to change the name,” said 49-year-old Claudette Miller, who has been a member since she was 12.

That’s what 65-year-old Charles Warbington said, too. “All the old people around here, their hearts are broken. What’re they going to do with the historic marker? Change it?” Not that he’s a member there anymore. According to the article, he’s been in a megachurch up the road for years. But it’s been my experience that moving one’s membership doesn’t keep someone from opining about what their former church ought to be doing.

Even the Gwinnett Historical Society weighed in on the name change. They wrote to the deacons at Hog Mountain Baptist, asking them to reconsider. But the vote passed on December 10.

As I said, reading about the whole event got me to thinking about a church’s mission. I can feel for those long-time members who saw that dropping the name “Hog Mountain” from their church was an act of disloyalty to their community heritage. But I’m on the side of the majority of the members whose eyes were on the future, not the past. Fewer and fewer people moving into the community saw it as Hog Mountain anymore. To them, it was Hamilton Mill. Even most business owners recognized this, and changed the name of long-established businesses.

Ironically, by changing the name, the church was keeping the mission they had known for 150 years. For nearly two centuries, they have ministered to the community known by most residents as Hog Mountain. They’re still ministering to the same community: it’s just that now the community--and the church--is known as Hamilton Mill.

The whole debate in this little church revolved around whether to preserve the church as a museum of past memories or position the church as a mission outpost to the community that has grown up around it.

When I served as pastor of the 175-year-old First Baptist Church in Eastland, Texas, I enjoyed leading worship in their new worship center. Twelve years before my arrival, a visionary pastor had led them to demolish the 1920s-era building so that a new worship center could be built on the site. The architect directed that the Tiffany-style stained glass windows be carefully removed from the old structure and incorporated into the overall design of the new building.

Ten minutes away in a First Baptist Church of another town, the members got a historical marker for their sanctuary.

H-m-m: a historical marker for a building that could never be changed, or a new worship center incorporating the beautiful stained glass of the old building into the fresh design of a new building for a new generation. I think the Eastland church got the better deal.

Do you make you church decisions based upon what will preserve the church’s memories . . . or what will propel the church’s mission?

(This article was sent to all subscribers of LeaderLines, my weekly e-newsletter to ministry leaders. If you want to subscribe to LeaderLines, click here.)

Physician, Heal Thyself

Those of us who are ministry leaders must remember we’re not just spiritual physicians. We’re spiritual patients, too. We lead others up the discipleship H.I.L.L. while making that vigorous climb ourselves.

Sam Hassenbusch can tell you something about being both a physician and a patient. In the current edition of Texas Monthly, Jan Reid has an article on Hassenbusch called, “Physician, Heal Thyself.” As Reid describes him:

At 51, Sam was full of energy, and his career was peaking. He was a senior neurosurgeon at the University of Texas’s M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, and an internationally renowned specialist in pain research and management. . . . His idea of recreation was to turn a three-mile commute in the snarl of Houston traffic into a fifty-mile cruise on his Victory Vegas motorcycle.

But when Sam couldn’t overcome his persistent headaches with Tylenol, he scheduled an MRI. It was when they found glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor that is one of the most aggressive of all human cancers. Says Reid:

Sam had treated about 500 brain cancer patients in the course of his career, and he had performed more than 150 surgeries to remove glioblastoma tumors. Whenever he had to break the news to patients that they had the cancer, he’d try to be upbeat about chemotherapy protocols and ongoing research, but he knew that glioblastoma typically kills half its victims within 52 weeks. With no hint of a cure, little progress had been made in treating the disease. It was a bitter dose of irony for a brain surgeon at the most celebrated cancer hospital in the Southwest to realize that the very kind of tumor that had most defied his training and skill was now growing inside his skull.

He knew he had a three percent chance of five years’ survival. But he also knew that God would provide for him. Again, from the article:

After his diagnosis, it took Sam about three days to steady himself, to “land on my spiritual base,” as he put it. He was brought up in the Reform Judaism faith in Saint Joseph, Missouri, where he met Rhonda when they were in their teens. He was educated in Catholic school, and one night on a date she gave him a copy of the New Testament as a gift. At Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, where he went to undergraduate school and continued with his medical training, picking up a Ph.D. in pharmacology along the way, he became a devout Christian. Sam is a lay biblical scholar and a fundamentalist whose faith is Scripture based. . . . He was an elder of churches when he and Rhonda lived in Maryland and Ohio, and in Houston they had joined a congregation called the Four-Square Church. A large part of its appeal to him was that 20 or 30 percent of the members shared his passion for riding motorcycles.

“In both Judaism and Christianity,” he said, “there’s a Bible passage of great importance: Genesis 22. Abraham is going up Mount Moriah with his son Isaac, who’s saying, ‘Where’s the ram? I thought we were going to make a sacrifice.’ Abraham doesn’t want to tell Isaac he may have to be the one offered, and he says, ‘God will provide,’ ‘Jehovah-jireh’ in Hebrew. And God does. They find the ram stuck in some thorns.” In different ways, through different vessels, he chooses to believe God will provide for him.

The surgery went well, and within a week he was back at work and within two weeks he was back on his motorcycle. Reid says, After he’d gone through the rounds of radiation and initial chemotherapy, he decided that he would keep his head shaved. He thought it enhanced his look as a biker.

Sam has actually become a “lab rat” for a new postsurgical option that he himself proposed, combining a chemotheraphy drug called Temodar with an experimental vaccine. From the article: Conceivably, the experiment could shorten his life, but the research opportunity was almost unparalleled. In addition to giving him a chance to fight the disease, it would enable him to become a part of his own medical team, to inhabit the roles of both patient and doctor in the same case.

So far so good, he says: “This observation from my blood tests on my white cells raises a whole new way that Temodar could be used to treat patients and even crosses over to a possible breakthrough in the treatment of patients with other kinds of tumors. Such is the fun of undergoing double-whammy treatment for the first time in humans with brain cancer.”

As a ministry leader, never forget that you will always be a spiritual patient as well as a spiritual physician. We never get to the point where we won’t have our own issues to deal with, our own knots to untangle, and our own dragons to slay. Even as we see after the soul health of those we lead, we have to see after our own soul, too.

This mentality has a number of benefits. For one, it keeps us from falling into the traps that have caught so many leaders who teach the Word but fail to rigorously monitor their own flaws. Also, openness about the fact that we’re still getting “treatment” from the Great Physician ourselves makes us more effective with those we lead. Someone said that we may be able to impress people from afar, but we’ll only influence people up close. And the only way we can get close with people is to be honest with them about who we really are.

“Praise be . . . to the God of all comfort,” Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

(This article was sent to all subscribers of LeaderLines, my weekly e-newsletter to ministry leaders. If you want to subscribe to LeaderLines, click here.)

Recommended Film: "Merry Christmas" (Joyeux Noel)

Have you seen “Merry Christmas” (Joyeux Noel). It was nominated for a 2006 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. If you don't like the audio/video quality of the trailer above, you can see a clearer version here.

It's inspired by the true story from the First World War, when something fascinating took place on Christmas Eve 1914. As Ravi Zacharias tells it:

In the midst of an uneasy silence of the guns at night, suddenly a lone voice began to sing a Christmas carol. Irresistibly, another voice joined in, and before one knew it, there was a wave of music because of Bethlehem, cascading across enemy lines, as both sides joined in reading the same script. The story of the babe in a manger, the Prince of Peace, was able to bring communion between warring factions, even for a few hours. This is how a songwriter tells that story. Unfortunately, I can quote only a few stanzas here:

Oh, my name is Francis Tolliver,
I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting
For me after school,
From Belgium and to Flanders,
Germany to here,
I fought for King and country I love dear.

'Twas Christmas in the trenches
And the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still,
No sounds of peace were sung.
Our families back in England
Were toasting us that day,
Their brave and glorious lads so far away

I was lying with me mess-mates
On the cold and rocky ground,
When across the lines of battle came
A most peculiar sound.
Says I, "Now listen up, me boys,"
Each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice rang out so clear.

"He's singing very well, you know,"
My partner says to me.
Soon one by one each German voice
joined in the harmony.
The canons rested silent
And the gas cloud rolled no more,
As Christmas brought us respite from the war.

As soon as they were finished
And a reverent pause was spent,
"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"
Struck up some lads from Kent.
The next they sang was "Stille Nacht,"
"Tis 'Silent Night,' " says I,
And in two tongues one song filled up the sky.

The film is PG-13 for what the MPAA calls "some war violence and a brief scene of sexuality/nudity." So, keep that in mind. But good film-making here, and a worthwhile story. If you've seen it, or if you decide to, tell me what you think.

Parody of Mac/PC Commercials

Clever clip. And there are a couple of others from the same creator here.

What To Watch on the Web

If there's nothing good on TV and you're between novels, there's a growing collection of good material on the internet.

For example, go here to view musicians and speakers at Baylor University chapel services. Enjoy outstanding Christian musicians such as David Crowder Band, Steven Curtis Chapman, Robbie Seay Band, Shaun Groves, and others. Also, check out Christian speakers, including Anne Graham Lotz, theologian N.T. Wright, psychiatrist Armand Nicholi, New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III, Ragamuffin author Brennan Manning, popular speaker Neal Jeffrey, and others.

Also, Os Guinness at his elegant best at KU here. You'll find Dr. Guinness among a list of speakers from KU’s “Difficult Dialogues” series. Soon to be posted: Michael Behe, biochemist who’s become a major spokesman for the theory of intelligent design.

On YouTube, you can watch Craig Blomberg. In this video Blomberg assesses the past and present scholarly trends in the search for the historical person of Jesus. This is part 1 of 6. You can find the remaining 5 videos on the YouTube page.

Also, you can watch William Craig Lane. In this video he discusses the origin of the belief in Jesus as the resurrected Son of God.

The Virgin Birth and Christian Faith

“Must one believe in the Virgin Birth to be a Christian? This is not a hard question to answer. It is conceivable that someone might come to Christ and trust Christ as Savior without yet learning that the Bible teaches that Jesus was born of a virgin. A new believer is not yet aware of the full structure of Christian truth. The real question is this: Can a Christian, once aware of the Bible's teaching, reject the Virgin Birth? The answer must be no.”

Read more of Albert Mohler's comments here. Albert Mohler is President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Poems VI: “Totally like whatever, you know?”

Okay, one more and I'm done: Taylor Mali's “Totally like whatever, you know?.” You really need to hear him recite it himself--

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences – so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not –
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Poems V: Believe in Poetry, Not Poets

What the poet Octavio Paz said about poetry could just as easily be said about preaching:

"I have a great belief in poetry, but not in poets. Poets are the transmitter, the conduits. They are no better than other people. Poets are vain - we have many defects. We must realize that we are human beings, and be humble. Poetry is very important, but poets are not."

In The Language of Life Bill Moyers says "Octavio Paz--poet, essayist, critic, editor, journalist, and translator--became the first Mexican to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1990). A man of conscience, Paz resigned as Mexico's ambassador to India in 1968 to protest his government's massacre of student demonstrators in Mexico City. He has taught at universities around the world and resides today in Mexico City."

Poems IV: "Famous"

Here's one from Naomi Shihab Nye, "Famous"--

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Poems III: "Early in the Morning"

Here's another favorite called "Early in the Morning," by Li-Young Lee . . .

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

In The Language of Life, Bill Moyers provides this brief bio: "Li-Young Lee was born in Djakarta, Indonesia, to exiled Chinese parents. His grandfather was the first president of the Republic of China, his mother was member of the Chinese royal family, and his father was once personal physician to Mao Tse-tsung. Fleeing persecution in Indonesia, the family wandered through Southeast Asia for five years before arriving in the United States, where his scholarly father became pastor of a small Presbyterian church."

Poems II: "Problems with Hurricanes"

Another favorite poem: "Problems with Hurricanes," by Victor Hernandez Cruz--

A campesino looked at the air
And told me:
With hurricanes it's not the wind
or the noise or the water.
I'll tell you he said:
it's the mangoes, avocados
Green plantains and bananas
flying into town like projectiles.

How would your family
feel if they had to tell
The generations that you
got killed by a flying
Banana.

Death by drowning has honor
If the wind picked you up
and slammed you
Against a mountain boulder
This would not carry shame
But
to suffer a mango smashing
Your skull
or a plantain hitting your
Temple at 70 miles per hour
is the ultimate disgrace.

The campesino takes off his hat--
As a sign of respect
towards the fury of the wind
And says:
Don't worry about the noise
Don't worry about the water
Don't worry about the wind--

If you are going out
beware of mangoes
And all such beautiful
sweet things.

Poems I: Otherwise

Posting that poem by Garrison Keillor got me to thinking about other poems I've collected over the years. Here's Jane Kenyon's "Otherwise"--

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

"His Mountains All Uncrossed"

Why do these lines from a Garrison Keillor poem always choke me up? This is from his 1987 book, Leaving Home:

Our people aimed for Oregon
When they left Newburyport
Great-grandma Ruth, her husband John,
But they pulled up in Wobegon,
Two thousand miles short.

It wasn't only the dangers ahead
That stopped the pioneer.
My great-grandmother simply said,
"It's been three weeks without a bed.
I'm tired. Let's stay here."

He put the horses out to graze
While she set up the tent,
And they sat down beside their blaze
And held each other's hand and gazed
Up at the firmament.

"John," she said, "what's on your mind
Besides your restlessness?
You know I'm not the traveling kind,
So tell me what you hope to find
Out there that's not like this?"

The fire leapt up bright and high,
The sparks as bright stars shone.
"Mountains," he said. "Another sky.
A green new land where you and I
Can settle down to home.

"You are the dearest wife to me.
Though I'm restless, it is true,
And Oregon is where I'd be
And live in mountains by the sea,
But never without you."

They stayed a week to rest the team,
Were welcomed and befriended.
The land was good, the grass was green,
And slowly he gave up the dream,
And there the journey ended.

They bought a farm just north of town,
A pleasant piece of rolling ground,
A quarter-section, mostly cleared;
He built a house before the fall;
They lived there forty years in all,
And by God persevered.

And right up to his dying day
When he was laid to rest,
No one knew -- he did not say --
His dream had never gone away,
He still look to the west.

She found it in his cabinet drawer:
A box of pictures, every one
Of mountains by the ocean shore,
In the mountains he had headed for
In the state of Oregon.

There beside them lay his will.
"I love you, Ruth," the will began,
"And count myself a well-loved man.

Please send my ashes when I die
To Oregon, some high green hill,
And bury me and leave me lie
At peace beneath the mountain sky,
Off in that green and lovely land
We dreamed of, you and I."

At last she saw her husband clear
Who stayed and labored all those years,
His mountains all uncrossed.
Of dreams postponed and finally lost,
Which one of us can count the cost
And not be filled with tears?

And yet how bright those visions are
Of mountains that we sense afar,
The land we never see:
The golden west and golden gate
Are visions that illuminate
And give wings to the human heart
Wherever we may be.
That old man by dreams possessed,
By Oregon was truly blessed
Who saw it through the eye of faith,
The land of his sweet destiny:
In his eye, more than a state
And something like a star.

I wrote this poem in Oregon,
Wanting the leaden words to soar
In memory of my ancestor
And all who lie along the way.
God rest their souls on the golden shore,
God bless us who struggle on:
We are the life that they longed for,
We bear their visions every day.

Record-Breaking Striper!

John Erskine, my future brother-in-law, caught a state record striper on Saturday, December 2, from the Guadalupe river.

It beat the previous record by 14 pounds. It was 36.65 pounds and 43 inches long, caught on a fly rod.

Find out more about it on his website, along with more photos.

Congrats to John!

Psychological Warfare in Waco

Pop quiz: Who said the following:

"My tertiary specialty in the Air Force was psychological warfare, and I was no mean student thereof. It is imperative to know everything conceivably possible about your adversaries and their soft underbelly -- and have the patience to await the most strategic moment to strike."

(a) Karl Rove
(b) Jack Bauer
(c) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

None of the above. It was written by Herbert Reynolds, past president of Baylor University, in an e-mail threat to Baylor personnel planning to release a book. The working title is Baylor Beyond the Crossroads: A Story of Aspiration and Controversy. The book covers the last few years at Baylor where controversy surrounded President Robert Sloan's "2012 Vision" designed to raise Baylor into the top echelon of research universities while strengthening its Christian character.

Reynolds sent a long, threatening e-mail, including the quote above, and the university backed out of their plans to publish the book. Now the book is in need of a new publisher.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article on the controversy. The site requires subscription, but you can read the article for free here. Dr. Sloan, a contributor to the book and now the new president at Houston Baptist University, expressed disappointment that Baylor's press was pulling the project: “I think it's always unfortunate when people give in to external pressure to suppress information. This is a very collegial disagreement that needs to be aired. That's why we have universities and books like these. The suppression of a book -- or threats that some have made if a book is published -- is completely antithetical to Baptist principles of academic freedom and open discussion."

Hear, hear.

I'm looking forward to reading the book when they get it published.