Inner Conversation Starters

Gordon McDonald advocates for a regular “debrief” with yourself and God. He lists some “inner conversation starters”--

• What have been the beautiful moments in which God may have been revealing himself to me? And what have been the evil moments when the worst in me or in the larger world showed itself?
• What happened this week that needs to be remembered, perhaps recorded in a journal so I can return to it in the future and recall the blessing (or the rebuke) of God? Making such a record is like those monuments and altars God had the Israelites raise up when great things worth remembering had happened.
• What have my prevailing feelings been (and what are they at the present)? Has there been a preponderance of sadness, of fear, of anger, of emptiness? Or has it been a time where joy and enthusiasm has been the dominant mood?
• What have been the "blessings," those acts of grace that have come through others or—as I perceive it—directly from God himself? Can I express praise and appreciation (sometimes even written in a thank-you note or journal)?
• Have things happened for which I need to accept responsibility, perhaps leading to repentance? Why did they happen? Were they avoidable and how can they be prevented in the future?
• What have been the thoughts that have been dominating my leader think-time? Noble thoughts? Escapist thoughts that woo me away from more important or challenging issues? Superficial thoughts that lead to nowhere?
• Is there a possibility that I am living in denial of certain realities? Painful criticism, sloppy work, habitual patterns that are hurting me and others?
• Are there any resentments or ill feelings toward others that remain unaddressed, unforgiven?
• As a leader visualizing myself in the company of spouse, children, friends, colleagues: am I a pleasant person to be around? Are people challenged, elevated, enthused when I enter the room? As someone has observed, "Some people bring joy wherever they go; others bring joy when they go." Which am I?
• What is God trying to say into my life today? Through Scripture? Through other readings? What has he been saying through those in my inner circle of relationships? Through critics? What insights swirl up and out of the deepest parts of my soul? Which of them needs to be repudiated, and which needs to be cultivated?
• What are the possibilities in the hours ahead? Where might there be ambushes that would challenge character, reputation, well-being?
• What are the things I might do and say that would make the people in my inner circle feel more loved and appreciated?
• Am I mindful of the socially awkward, the poor, the suffering, the oppressed in my local world and in the larger world? Am I in tune with appropriate current events in the world and perceiving them through the lens of biblical perspective?
• What specific steps will I take today to enhance growth as a follower of Jesus?

The label “Christian” means nothing

Oh this is too good not to re-post in toto. From Abraham Piper’s blog, 22 Words:

To refer to peregrinating Celtic monks and fundamentalist lobbyists, Origen and Oral Roberts, the Desert Fathers and Tim LaHaye, Dante and Tammy Faye, St. Francis and the TV “Prosperity Gospel” hucksters, Lady Julian of Norwich and Jimmy Swaggart, John of the Cross and George W. Bush, all as “Christian” stretches the word so thin its meaning vanishes. The term “carbon-based life-form” is as informative.

David James Duncan, God Laughs & Plays, 49

I might extend the thought to the label “Baptist” as well. Does it helpfully define anyone when left-leaning folks like Bill Clinton, Tony Campolo, and Jimmy Carter have the same “Baptist” label as right-leaning folks like the late Jerry Falwell or Albert Mohler?

Winning Ways: “An Immigrant’s Tale”

Image via Wikipedia

What’s the best way to observe our nation’s Independence Day this Sunday? How about with some stories of those who immigrated here?

Most of us have spent all our lives in the United States, but Sunday I’ll introduce you to three active members of our church who moved here as adults. They have some stories to tell about what God has taught them and how God has blessed them through their move to America.

Henriette Shomba and her family moved here from the Democratic Republic of Congo ten years ago, speaking only French. Her husband, Andre, is a deacon at Hillcrest, and they have four children. I was at their swearing-in ceremony in 2005 when they became American citizens.

Nora Flores moved here with her husband and youngest son three years ago from Mexico City. She has just accepted a job teaching Spanish in the Round Rock school district. I love when they sit behind me and sing the worship songs in Spanish during our congregational singing. Nora is still a citizen of Mexico.

Mieke Varenbrink is a native of Holland. While she was a girl, she and her family lived in the Dutch East Indies. After Japan invaded, she spent time in an internment camp. As a young adult she emigrated from Holland to the United States. She attributes her move to America as one of the major factors God used to bring her to himself.

I will interview these three sisters in our 10 a.m. service this Sunday, July 4. It’s a chance to gain a new perspective for, and appreciation of, our American experience. But it’s also a chance to remember again that as believers we hold two passports: We celebrate the experiences that God has given us as Americans even as we remember we have a far more important citizenship: To the Philippians (who were as proud of their Roman identity as we are of our American one) Paul wrote, “Our citizenship is in heaven” (3:20).

Join us this Sunday for this special presentation!

Also, don’t forget: it’s not too late to participate in our summer “personal mission project.” We’re packing in-home health care kits for Baptist Global Response. Learn more about it, and get the shopping list and packing instructions, at www.hillcrestaustin.org/healthcarekits. Bring it to the Hillcrest auditorium by Sunday, August 1, and add it to the growing stack of buckets on our platform.

_______________________________

Each Wednesday I post my article from "Winning Ways," an e-newsletter that goes out to over 950 subscribers. If you want to subscribe to "Winning Ways," sign up here.

Links to Your World, Tuesday June 29

“Every time I read Exodus and see verses about the building of the ark, I like to add the phrase “from Hobby Lobby” to verses in the same way people add words to the end of fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants. For example, ‘All the skilled men among the workmen made the tabernacle with ten curtains of finely twisted linen and blue, purple, and scarlet yarn … from Hobby Lobby.’” (Jenny Acuff)

 

After five years and 300 interviews, Sherry Turkle, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Initiative on Technology and Self, has found that children of parents who are continually online via smartphones, computers or multimedia devices often express feelings of "hurt, jealousy and competition." Turkle says, "Over and over, kids raised the same three examples of feeling hurt and not wanting to show it when their mom or dad would be on their devices instead of paying attention to them: at meals, during pickup after either school or an extracurricular activity, and during sports events." [nytimes.com, 6/9/10; HT: Plugged In Online]

 

The nurse whose photograph being kissed by an exuberant American sailor in Times Square in 1945 became one of the iconic images of the end of World War II has died at the age of 91 (story):

 

 

Ruth Carlisle, who died at age 102, was the International Mission Board's oldest retired missionary. She arrived in Uruguay in 1940 by ship. (IMB Story)

 

What Happens to Your Body If You Drink a Coke Right Now?

 

Study: Devout are less stressed than non-believers

 

Coast Guard finds unconscious man on pool float a mile from shore

 

I’ve heard of “gearheads,” but here’s a Gear Heart (HT: Curtis):

 

 

Posts at “Get Anchored” since last Tuesday:

It’s Not Nice to Make the Preacher Cry Before The Sermon

 

“The risky thing means staying exactly where you are”

 

“Artificial constructs that allow men to talk to each other”

 

“The ambition, speed and scale of Chinese involvement in Africa is extraordinary”

 

Where Adolescent Girls Can Find an Empowering Message

 

“An Unintended Consequence of Roe v. Wade”

 

The International Conference on Yawning?

 

LeaderLines: Since Strangling Isn’t an Option…

 

The Gospel in 800 Languages

 

"This is a sign that we must be up and doing"

 

“Maybe we're all reading too much too fast”

 

Believers on the U.S. National Team

 

E-Mail and the Breakdown of Trust

 

Winning Ways: Be a Barnabas!

It’s Not Nice to Make the Preacher Cry Before The Sermon

Those of you at Hillcrest yesterday heard incoming high school senior Joanna Raymund play “Gabriel’s Oboe.” It comes from one of my favorite films, The Mission. Here’s a clip from the film, when Father Gabriel reaches out to the tribe that had just martyred another member of his Jesuit order:

And here is the piece from the soundtrack:

“The risky thing means staying exactly where you are”

Blaine Hogan at Catalyst, on when to go—and when to stay:

For you, the risky thing might be to leave. You've needed a good kick in the pants out the door a long time ago, but the comfort of (fill in the blank) has just been too comfortable to give up. For you, taking a risk might mean getting the hell out of dodge - and fast.

But for others of you the risky thing means staying exactly where you are. Breathing. Letting yourself go. Putting down some roots. And letting your community have its way with you.

“Artificial constructs that allow men to talk to each other”

Steve Tuttle:

Women don’t need to manufacture reasons to chat—they just do it in any old setting. Guys need excuses like outings or organized events. Fantasy baseball, hunting camps, and poker games are artificial constructs that allow men to talk to each other. Sure, work stress or prostate issues might happen to come up, but as long as the playing cards keep getting dealt, we can pretend not to be aware of the actual awkward discussion that’s taking place.

…

I hope if this column is good for anything, it offers this solace for the fairer sex: if your man heads out on a bowling or poker night with the guys, be happy. Chances are good he’s not fleeing you and the kids—well, maybe he is a little—but he’s also running toward the conversations he can only have with other men, and he’ll come home the better for it.

From Newsweek, “Drink, Pray, Sing: My Annual Male Pilgrimage”

“The ambition, speed and scale of Chinese involvement in Africa is extraordinary”

During my 5-week teaching trip to Zambia last summer, I saw this reality first-hand:

The ambition, speed and scale of Chinese involvement in Africa is extraordinary. According to Chris Alden, author of China in Africa, two-way trade stood at $10 billion in 2000. By 2006, it was $55 billion, and in 2009 it hit $90 billion, making China Africa's single largest trading partner, supplanting the U.S., which did $86 billion in trade with Africa in 2009. Today the Chinese are pumping oil from Sudan to Angola, logging from Liberia to Gabon, mining from Zambia to Ghana and farming from Kenya to Zimbabwe. Chinese contractors are building roads from Equatorial Guinea to Ethiopia, dams from the Congo to the Nile, and hospitals and schools, sports stadiums and presidential palaces across the continent. They are buying too. Acquisitions range from a $5.5 billion stake in South Africa's Standard Bank to a $14 million investment in a mobile-phone company in Somalia.

Read more of the Time article here, where they ask two questions: How is China changing Africa? And how is Africa changing China?

Where Adolescent Girls Can Find an Empowering Message

Ruth Graham at Slate found “a surprisingly empowering guide to adolescence” in the booming industry of Christian young adult novels--despite all that Christian-y stuff:

The new popular source of girl power isn't a hyper-sexed Miley Cyrus video or Candace Bushnell's recently published Sex and the City prequel about Carrie Bradshaw's teen years. If you look past the Bible-study scenes, young-adult novels from evangelical authors and publishers are offering their young Christian readers a surprisingly empowering guide to adolescence.

But, you know, you have to “look past” the artificial intrusion of the Christian social mores in these novels to find the affirmation of all the values we’d want teen girls to hold. Again:

Created as a "safe" alternative to mainstream fiction, books for Christian girls include wholesome heroines, lots of praying, and absolutely no cursing….Amid all of this piety, however, are explicitly positive—even feminist—messages like positive body image, hard work, and the importance of not settling for just any guy….

Why Graham considered that “however” was the perfect word choice in that sentence is what I want to know.

Mind, I know next to nothing about Christian YA fiction and I’d be willing to assume we’re not talking prose to match a Flannery O’Conner or Marianne Robinson. And I might be safe to assume these books are a seedbed for the Number-One religion of most teens and young adults--Moral Therapeutic Deism.

But Graham’s unwilling to see that what she dislikes about these novels isn’t peripheral to what she likes. 

It reminds me of my time in the Cayman Islands. Secular people would decide to move to the island thoroughly charmed by the culture—and then proceed to rail against some of the very things that made the culture charming. They had been attracted to a culture that had been created by old-school Christian values and had no clue that by undermining what they disliked they’d eventually lose what they liked.

“An Unintended Consequence of Roe v. Wade”

James Taranto:

How did the [Supreme Court] become so partisan? It was an unintended consequence of Roe v. Wade.

Roe itself was not decided along party lines. Its author, Justice Harry Blackmun, was a Nixon appointee; of the six justices who concurred with Blackmun, four were nominated by GOP presidents and two by Democrats. The dissenters, White and Nixon appointee William Rehnquist, were a bipartisan pair too.

The current politicization of the courts did not begin with Roe v. Wade; a Democratic Senate had already blocked two Nixon appointees, Clement Haynsworth and Harrold Carswell, for being too conservative, and Democratic senators later made an unsuccessful effort to block Rehnquist's appointment.

But by intervening so heavy-handedly in a matter that over which there was not yet a political consensus, the Roe court prompted a powerful backlash, the rise of the antiabortion movement, which became a key part of the Republican constituency. The pro-abortion side in turn became ever more immoderate and powerful within the Democratic Party.

Since 1980, each party's position on abortion has been so extreme as to be out of step with the vast majority of Americans. Since the court has left very little room for legislation on the matter, the practical consequences of this have been minimal--except when there is a Supreme Court vacancy.

By finding a right to abort in the Constitution's mystical emanations and penumbras, the court federalized what had previously been a state matter. Rather than remove it from politics, as the justices must have thought they were doing, this heightened the politics around it, almost all now focused on the court itself.

Roe v. Wade. The Dred Scott of our time.

The International Conference on Yawning?

Okay, how do you explain to the customs official that you’re in Paris for the International Conference on Yawning—and you’re the keynote speaker in chasmology (the science of yawn studies)?

Read the London Telegraph story here.

LeaderLines: Since Strangling Isn’t an Option…

I read a New York Times article entitled, “Help, I’m Surrounded by Jerks.” Maybe you can identify:

Certain mortals have the power to sink hearts and sour moods with lightning speed. The hysterical colleague. The meddlesome neighbor. The crazy in-law. The explosive boss. A mélange of cantankerous individuals, they are united by a single achievement: They make life miserable…. Everyone knows at least one person who can set the blood boiling. They can be found in corporate offices, on co-op boards, in church choirs and on university faculties. They are the office Cassandra who predicts doom for every project her team initiates, the intimidating boss for whom nothing is ever good enough, and the unreasonable receptionist at the motor vehicles office.

According to the story there are “scores of seminars, workbooks and multimedia tools to help people co-exist with those they wish did not exist.” Consider some of the colorful titles of the books:

• 151 Quick Ideas to Deal With Difficult People
• Dealing With People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst
• Thank You for Being Such a Pain: Spiritual Guidance for Dealing With Difficult People

Then there’s my favorite title for a book on this subject: Since Strangling Isn’t an Option.

In addition to books individuals can read, there are seminars that employees of entire offices can attend:

• Duke Law School offers a workshop called “Dealing With Conflict and Difficult People.”
• Harvard Law School has a seminar called “Dealing With Difficult People and Difficult Situations.”
• The Graduate School at the United States Department of Agriculture has scheduled more than half a dozen seminars entitled, “Positive Approaches to Difficult People.”

Why the increased popularity of such courses? Nan Harrison, the vice president of training resources and publication sales for CareerTrack, which every month presents more than 50 public “difficult people” seminars across the country, says it’s because of a desire to improve workplace skills in a time of corporate downsizing and a more competitive job market.

Of course, not everyone sees difficult people as a problem to be solved. “Having somebody who is really difficult can actually be good for the workplace,” said Jo-Ellen Pozner, a researcher in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. “If everyone really hates this one person, it becomes the basis of social bonding for the rest of the group.”

Um, well, that’s one way of looking at it! Hopefully that was said in jest.

It’s good to know that personnel leaders in the business world have recognized that people need help in getting along.

The Apostle Paul heard of difficult people in one of his favorite churches, the church at Philippi. Writing to them, he addressed the battling believers by name: “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord” (Philippians 4:2). Obviously, clashes between believers arose even in the earliest churches two thousand years ago.

Paul used a tender word—he said “I plead”—and he used it with each woman: I plead with Euodia, I plead with Syntyche. As an apostle of authority, he could have said “I command.” In fact, he did command some things in his letters. But here he sets his authority aside, he lays his dignity down, in effect he gets on his knees in front of these two women and takes their hands, looks with kindness and pleading into their eyes and says, “I beg you both to mend your differences.”

I wonder what created the tensions between Euodia and Syntyche in the first place. Do you think it was because Euodia wanted blue carpet in the church building and Syntyche wanted green? Maybe Euodia was passionate about a particular project she wanted the church involved in, and Syntyche stood in the way. Could it be that one had been in the church longer than the other?

Whatever the reason, ironically enough neither one lived up to their names. Do you know what “Euodia” means? A eulogy is what we share at a funeral—a “eu-logy” means a good word. “Eu-odia” means a “good odor.” Euodia means fragrant, aromatic, sweet-smelling. But Euodia was raising one holy stink in the church at Philippi!

On the other hand, Syntyche is the Greek word for “fortunate.” But I don’t imagine the Philippian church felt very fortunate to have Syntyche disrupting things!

So, even though the church at Philippi was Paul’s favorite congregation, you find out that people in the almost-perfect-church were still, well, people. And there’s no doubt that Euodia and Syntyche weren’t the only ones who had locked horns: I’m sure they had their supporters and sympathizers in the Philippian church.

Isn’t it sad that the only thing we know about Euodia and Syntyche is what we read here in Philippians 4. Wouldn’t it be sad if the only memory people had of you was some controversy you stirred up, or some difference you refused to mend, or some decision of the church you just couldn’t put behind you. Let’s make a commitment to be remembered for far better things.

But Paul doesn’t stop there. While still on his knees, before Euodia and Syntyche, he turns to someone he calls his “loyal yokefellow” and says, “Help these women make their peace.”

Sometimes believers are like Euodia and Syntyche: we have to lay aside our animosity and distrust so we can work out our differences. But other times believers are called to be like this “loyal yokefellow” and bring battling believers to the negotiating table.

It’s a word to pay attention to as we work to get along in our families and our offices. But it’s especially applicable to the church we lead.

No, I’m not referring to anything specific going on at Hillcrest. But it’s important in a time of peace to point out what to do to mend things in the inevitable times of conflict. We can’t afford to get sidetracked from our mission. Our purpose is to get people on the path (evangelism) and up the H.I.L.L. (discipleship). When difficult people distract us from that calling, we have to deal with the difficult or fail our mission.

________________

(This LeaderLines article originally appeared in January 2007)

Each Thursday I post my article from "LeaderLines," an e-newsletter for church leaders read by more than 300 subscribers. If you want to subscribe to "LeaderLines," sign up here.

The Gospel in 800 Languages

Check this out. Here’s a website which has Gospel material in over 800 languages. In most of the 800 languages you can:

• listen online to the New Testament
• listen online to Old Testament stories (while you look at pictures)
• watch the JESUS film
• read the Bible
• read a Gospel Tract
• read about the role of the Holy Spirit
• ask a question of our online missionaries in your heart language

(HT: Glenda Miller)

"This is a sign that we must be up and doing"

"My favorite quote comes from the Roman general Epaminodas," Joshua said, "In A.D. 70, he was rallying his troops for battle one day, when he sat on a chair and it collapsed underneath him. His men freaked out. It was a horrible omen. But he stood up and announced, 'This is a sign that we must be up and doing.'"

May all your chairs collapse today.

(Quote from 'The Council of Dads' by Bruce Feiler)

“Maybe we're all reading too much too fast”

Newsweek:

The Slow Reading movement is hardly a movement at all. There's no letterhead, no board of directors, and horrors, no central Web site—there are Web sites, several, in fact, all of them preaching, in various ways, the virtues of reading slowly. But mostly the "movement" is just a bunch of authors, schoolteachers, and college professors who think that just maybe we're all reading too much too fast and that instead we should think more highly of those who take their time with a book or an article.

Believers on the U.S. National Team

Several members of the U.S. National Team playing in the 2010 FIFA World Cup are not shy about discussing their Christian faith. BPSports caught up with five of them.

E-Mail and the Breakdown of Trust

In Rockmann and Northcraft's study, 200 students were divided into teams and asked to manage two complicated projects: one having to do with nuclear disarmament; the other, price fixing. Some groups communicated via e-mail, some via videoconference and others face to face. In the end, those who met in person showed the most trust and most effective cooperation; those using e-mail were the least able to work together and get the job done. (Let's hope they weren't the ones working on disarmament.)

Read more:

“Why E-Mail May Be Hurting Off-Line Relationships”

Belinda Luscombe for Time

Winning Ways: Be a Barnabas!

His parents called him Joseph, but his friends had another name for him.

Barnabas.

The nickname means “Son of Encouragement.” People looked at Joseph and said, “His father must have been the embodiment of encouragement itself, and Joseph’s a chip off the old block.” Every time we meet him in the pages of Scripture, he’s cheering someone on.

What does it take to be a Barnabas?

First, seek out new or unconnected church members. Barnabas did this in Acts 9:26-27. When Paul quit persecuting the believers and joined them instead, the other believers were slow to receive him. It was Barnabas who took him in. When was the last Sunday you stepped outside the tight circle of those you already know at Hillcrest to befriend someone new?

Second, offer special attention to new believers. Barnabas did this in Acts 11:22-23. People today are coming to Christ with little church background or knowledge of the Bible. Do you look for ways to cheer them on?

Third, encourage Christian workers to keep going. Barnabas did this in Acts 11:23. Not only did he build up the new believers in Antioch, but he strengthened the Christians who had led them to the Lord. When was the last time you thanked someone for serving at Hillcrest?

Fourth, employ unemployed kingdom citizens. Barnabas did this in Acts 11:25-26. When he looked at the new Christians in Antioch, he said, “I need someone to help me—and I know just the person!” He traveled to Tarsus to get Paul, and he introduced him to what would become Paul’s lifelong ministry to Gentiles. Do you bring out the full potential of those you know?

Fifth, encourage those who need a new opportunity after failure. Barnabas did this in Acts 15:36-41. John Mark, an immature young man, had deserted Paul and Barnabas in the middle of their first missionary journey. As they planned their second trip, Barnabas wanted to give the young man a second chance. How quickly do you give up on people?

If you’re grateful for those who have encouraged you, learn to be a Barnabas to others! Someone once said, “Perhaps once in a hundred years a person may be ruined by excessive praise, but surely once every minute someone dies inside for lack of it.” This Sunday, June 27, we’ll dig a little deeper into these five challenging qualities of Barnabas. Join us @ 10!

_____________________________________

Each Wednesday I post my article from "Winning Ways," an e-newsletter that goes out to over 950 subscribers. If you want to subscribe to "Winning Ways," sign up here.

Links to Your World, Tuesday June 22

10 Toughest Questions Kids Ask Their Parents

 

“People making travel plans may unwittingly heed a strange rule of thumb — southern routes rule. In a new experiment, volunteers chose paths that dipped south over routes of the same distance that arched northward, perhaps because northern routes intuitively seem uphill and thus more difficult, researchers suggest” (Wired)

 

The Shortest Possible Game of Monopoly: 21 Seconds

 

'Totally Worth It,' Claims Grown Man Limping Off Softball Field

 

Have you discovered the Texas-based “Dude Perfect” and their amazing basketball shots?

 

“For each insurgent killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 250,000 shots are fired that hit absolutely nothing.” On purpose: this is suppressing fire. In the post, “(5 Ridiculous Gun Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks to Movies)”

 

I wrote a devotional based on the “gun myths” article here.

 

You're on Vacation, but the Brain Is Wired to the Office; Some Tactics to Detach: The WSJ explores why relaxing is hard work.

 

Exercise Fights Depression

 

Posts at “Get Anchored” since last Tuesday:

“A vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven"

Churches in Service to Public Schools

Why boredom is a precious thing

Colbert Interviews Prothero

Spiritual Warfare and Suppressing Fire

The Council of Dads

A New Mockumentary Set in Austin? Should Be Interesting

Pro-life Women Advancing in Politics

"A vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven"

Flannery O’Connor’s collection of short stories in Everything That Rises Must Converge is populated with amazing characters, well-drawn, from a South just before the civil rights movement.  But nearly all the stories are cheerless tales of parent-adult child conflict, and I admit in this chapter of my life history I'm more inclined to the whimsy of something like Salman Rushie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I completed before this book.

“Revelation,” though, stands out from the rest of the stories in this collection. It's about a woman whose estimation of the worth of people gets a little supernatural correction. A portion:

Until the sun slipped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. Turpin remained there with her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge. At last she lifted her head. There was only a purple streak in the sky, coming through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk. She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead. In a moment the vision faced, but she remained where she was, immobile.

At length she got down and turned off the faucet and made her slow way on the darkening path to the house. In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.

Churches in Service to Public Schools

When the WSJ reported on public schools seeking corporate and charitable sponsors in these tough economic times, Jennifer Levitz and Stephanie Simon didn’t open with an example of corporate sponsorship:

When his budget for pencils, paper, and other essential supplies was cut by a third this school year, the principal of Combee Elementary School worried children would suffer.

Then, a local church stepped in and "adopted" the school. The First Baptist Church at the Mall stocked a resource room with $5,000 worth of supplies. It now caters spaghetti dinners at evening school events, buys sneakers for poor students, and sends in math and English tutors.

The principal is delighted. So are church pastors. "We have inroads into public schools that we had not had before," says Pastor Dave McClamma. "By befriending the students, we have the opportunity to visit homes to talk to parents about Jesus Christ."

I expect many will ignore the fact that the only thing the church is doing on campus is providing school supplies: communicating the church’s message is being done when the opportunity arises “to visit homes to talk to parents about Jesus.” 

Case in point:

At Christmas, the school connected the church with parents who said they wouldn't mind being visited at home by First Baptist. The church brought gifts, food and the gospel. Of about 30 families visited over two weekends in December, 13 "came to the Lord," says Mr. McClamma [Dave McClamma, the church's senior associate pastor of evangelism and missions], a 58-year-old motorcycle buff who drives a black sports-utility vehicle with the bumper sticker "Christ First."

The church’s message was only shared during these in-home visits, visits to “parents who said they wouldn’t mind being visited at home by First Baptist.” In fact, those who held no interest in a visit by the church still had a favorable impression of their interaction with the congregation:

Loretta Deal, a Combee parent, says she's not a churchgoer, but she appreciates the help from First Baptist, particularly after the church brought her gift certificates at Christmas. Ms. Deal, who is disabled from a stroke, says the church encouraged her to come to their church but she felt comfortable refusing.

Mind you, I think if this new interface between corporate/charitable sponsors and public schools is the wave of the future, some careful policies will need to be followed. A church, for example, will need to carefully distinguish between the time/place to assist the school’s goals and the time/place to pursue its own evangelistic mandate.  It seems that the FBC in this story has been (so far) successful in keeping the spheres separate.

What think ye? Get on Facebook and tell me.

Why boredom is a precious thing

Peter Bregman at the Harvard Business Review explains why he returned his iPad: It was taking away something valuable: His boredom--

Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that's where creativity arises.

My best ideas come to me when I am unproductive. When I am running but not listening to my iPod. When I am sitting, doing nothing, waiting for someone. When I am lying in bed as my mind wanders before falling to sleep. These "wasted" moments, moments not filled with anything in particular, are vital.

They are the moments in which we, often unconsciously, organize our minds, make sense of our lives, and connect the dots. They're the moments in which we talk to ourselves. And listen.

To lose those moments, to replace them with tasks and efficiency, is a mistake. What's worse is that we don't just lose them. We actively throw them away.

Colbert Interviews Prothero

My “Neighboring Faiths” interviews would probably have been more entertaining had I taken a few lessons from Stephen Colbert. Here’s his interview with Stephen Prothero, whose new book, God is Not One, was reviewed in an earlier “Get Anchored” post. It’s an important book. The Colbert Report interview:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen Prothero
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Spiritual Warfare and Suppressing Fire

So, in Iraq and Afghanistan, how many shots are fired for every insurgent killed?

250,000.

This website (citing this 2005 post), pointed out that our troops expend a quarter of a million bullets for every enemy killed. The ammo is expended laying down suppressing fire, which limits the ability of the enemy to fire and allows your own troops to move into more strategic positions.

How come we believers don’t follow that philosophy in our own fights?

Scripture speaks of the Christian life as spiritual warfare—a fight for purity. And what’s our typical strategy? Maybe we attend a single worship service, and maybe not even weekly?

How about a few more bullets? Let’s start with attending the worship service weekly instead of, oh, monthly. Let’s add a small-group experience to that. How about daily Bible reading, and choosing books from Christian authors that will help you grow in your understanding and application of the Word? Socialize with other believers who are trying to make the same life choices you’re trying to make. Make sure the soundtrack of your life is populated with music that turns your thoughts to God and his ways.

Let’s be willing to expend a quarter of a million bullets for each spiritual “enemy” we face.

The Council of Dads

When doctors told him of the malignant tumor, the first thing Bruce Feiler thought about was his 3-year-old twin daughters.

“I kept imagining all the walks I might not take with them, the ballet recitals I might not see...the boyfriends I might not scowl at, the aisles I might not walk down.”

And thus was born “The Council of Dads,” which Feiler wrote about in a new book by the same name. The 43-year-old author of the best-selling Walking the Bible enlisted a small group of friends to be ready if he was no longer around—ready to step in and say the things he would have said when his daughters failed a test, won a prize, or fell in love.

Feiler’s latest tests show him to be cancer-free for now, but his Council of Dads has not disbanded. His project is now tied in with the National Fatherhood Initiative and he’s inviting soldiers—men who live with mortality and separation—to convene their own Council of Dads.

Some things come to mind as I read Feiler’s book. With Father’s Day this Sunday, it would be good to reflect on these things.

What values do you want to impart to your kids? Convening a Council of Dads is a way to ensure that what you hope your kids would hear from you would be passed along. So, start there: What values do you want your kids to hold by the time they leave the nest? Even if you never take the step of actually convening a Council of Dads, this is a good exercise to go through. It will make you a better father.

What friendships are you developing? Once you’ve determined the values you’d want to pass along to your kids, do you know any man well enough to confidently entrust him with that work if you weren’t around? Again, even if you never took the step of actually convening a Council of Dads, it would be worth your time to think about whether you’re developing relationships with men you’d be willing to enlist.

Who is on the Council of Your Dads? Feiler’s book is from the perspective of a father who fears he won’t be around to raise his daughters. But I think every young adult male needs a short list of men he looks to for guidance. Who’s on your list, and are you meeting with them enough?

God bless all the dads at Hillcrest!
_________________________________________
Each Wednesday I post my article from "Winning Ways," an e-newsletter that goes out to over 950 subscribers. If you want to subscribe to "Winning Ways," sign up at www.hillcrestaustin.info/subscriptions.

A New Mockumentary Set in Austin? Should Be Interesting

James Poniewozik anticipates the ABC mockumentary debuting this Fall, “My Generation”--

The Premise: In 2000, a documentary film crew followed a gaggle of high school seniors in Austin, Texas. Ten years later, it's back to catch up with them and see how actual life is living up to their optimistic, pre-9/11, pre-market collapse, pre-adulthood expectations. Among the characters that this high-school-reunion drama (with some comic notes) checks in on are an overachiever-turned-bartender, an overachiever-turned-political aide, the class wallflower, the class beauty queen, the rich kid, the school rebel now married to the class' top jock (and pregnant), and a sweethearted nebbish yearning for kids of his own. Some have been stuck in town since graduation, some have just returned because of personal crises. And.. roll cameras.

…

The mockumentary as drama has its...challenges, and on paper I wouldn't expect this one to succeed….Yet something grabbed me about the full version of the pilot. As gimmicky as the setup is, the show has a voice and some nice light touches that keep it from wallowing in premature worldweariness….I'm still not totally sure what to make of My Generation, but if nothing else it's one of the most interesting and ambitious broadcast pilots for the fall.

Pro-life Women Advancing in Politics

Ramesh Ponnuru:

There are many millions of pro-life women, but there are only 13 in the House. The Senate has no pro-life women. Even Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas Republican who votes with pro-lifers on many issues, says she favors Roe v. Wade.

But that’s about to change:

Two pro-life women won Republican nominations for the Senate this week. A Tea Party favorite, Sharron Angle, and the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina are running for the Senate from Nevada and California, respectively.

A third pro-life woman, Susana Martinez, became the party’s nominee for governor of New Mexico, and a fourth, Nikki Haley, a South Carolina state legislator, is expected to be a gubernatorial nominee in her state. If they win their primaries, Kelly Ayotte, the former attorney general of New Hampshire, and Jane Norton, the former lieutenant governor of Colorado, will also be pro-life Senate candidates in November.

None of these candidates is a single-issue pro-lifer. But these women have not been shy about discussing the issue, either.

…

Some of these pro-life women are bound to win their elections, and that will surely change the tenor of the national conversation about abortion. For instance, previous abortion debates in the Senate have pitted Ms. Boxer against Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania. Next time the gender divide won’t be so stark.

Links to Your World, Tuesday June 15

“Father’s Day is the Rodney Dangerfield of holidays, the get-no-respect little brother of Mother’s Day….But that’s OK. We’re not sensitive Moms; we’re macho Dads. We don’t need a lot of recognition. That’s our story, at least, and we’re sticking to it.” Erich Bridges

 

Dad can burn his own message into his steak with this BBQ branding iron. (HT: 22 Words)

 

“A new period of life is emerging in which young people are no longer adolescents but not yet adults” (NYT article, “Long Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer”)

 

The Science to Catching a Bouquet at a Wedding

 

“Blame the media, blame the schools, blame whoever, but start by blaming the person you shave for blithely accepting it when others show a total lack of respect for those around them by displaying gutter mouths in public” (on foul language, in Boundless)

 

Posts at “Get Anchored” since last Tuesday:

“He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man”

“Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence”

Why Marriage?

The Big 12 Breakup, Baylor, and “Culture”

LeaderLines: A Leader’s Mic is Always On

Work, Laugh, and Pray

Winning Ways: Pack a Kit--Serve the World

“He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man”

Hanna Rosin, in The Atlantic’s “The End of Men,” reports on the cultural sea change taking place between women and men:

To see the future—of the workforce, the economy, and the culture—you need to spend some time at America’s colleges and professional schools, where a quiet revolution is under way. More than ever, college is the gateway to economic success, a necessary precondition for moving into the upper-middle class—and increasingly even the middle class. It’s this broad, striving middle class that defines our society. And demographically, we can see with absolute clarity that in the coming decades the middle class will be dominated by women.

We’ve all heard about the collegiate gender gap. But the implications of that gap have not yet been fully digested. Women now earn 60 percent of master’s degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees, and 42 percent of all M.B.A.s. Most important, women earn almost 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees—the minimum requirement, in most cases, for an affluent life. In a stark reversal since the 1970s, men are now more likely than women to hold only a high-school diploma. “One would think that if men were acting in a rational way, they would be getting the education they need to get along out there,” says Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. “But they are just failing to adapt.”

And the results are already showing up in pop culture:

American pop culture keeps producing endless variations on the omega male, who ranks even below the beta in the wolf pack. This often-unemployed, romantically challenged loser can show up as a perpetual adolescent (in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up or The 40-Year-Old Virgin), or a charmless misanthrope (in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg), or a happy couch potato (in a Bud Light commercial). He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man.

…

Of all the days in the year, one might think, Super Bowl Sunday should be the one most dedicated to the cinematic celebration of macho. The men in Super Bowl ads should be throwing balls and racing motorcycles and doing whatever it is men imagine they could do all day if only women were not around to restrain them.

Instead, four men stare into the camera, unsmiling, not moving except for tiny blinks and sways. They look like they’ve been tranquilized, like they can barely hold themselves up against the breeze. Their lips do not move, but a voice-over explains their predicament—how they’ve been beaten silent by the demands of tedious employers and enviro-fascists and women. Especially women. “I will put the seat down, I will separate the recycling, I will carry your lip balm.” This last one—lip balm—is expressed with the mildest spit of emotion, the only hint of the suppressed rage against the dominatrix. Then the commercial abruptly cuts to the fantasy, a Dodge Charger vrooming toward the camera punctuated by bold all caps: MAN’S LAST STAND. But the motto is unconvincing. After that display of muteness and passivity, you can only imagine a woman—one with shiny lips—steering the beast.

“Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence”

Ashlee Vance in NYT:

The Singularity is coming — “a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when…human beings and machines will so effortlessly and elegantly merge that poor health, the ravages of old age and even death itself will all be things of the past.

…

Some of Silicon Valley’s smartest and wealthiest people have embraced the Singularity. They believe that technology may be the only way to solve the world’s ills, while also allowing people to seize control of the evolutionary process.

…

“We will transcend all of the limitations of our biology,” says Raymond Kurzweil, the inventor and businessman who is the Singularity’s most ubiquitous spokesman and boasts that he intends to live for hundreds of years and resurrect the dead, including his own father.

…

“Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence,” he continues. “This is the destiny of the universe.”

Somehow this doesn’t bring me the confidence it brings Mr. Kurzweil. I’m inclined to Paul Simon’s dystopian critique in “The Boy in the Bubble”--

It's a turn-around jump shot
It's everybody jump start
It's, every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,
Medicine is magical and magical is art think of
The Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle,
Lasers in the jungle somewhere,
Staccato signals of constant information,
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby,
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all o-yeah,
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry don't cry

 

Why Marriage?

In this week’s Newsweek, two authors list a host of reasons against marriage. I’ll give you one reason for it.

In “I Don’t,” Jessica Bennett and Jesse Ellison say, “Happily ever after doesn't have to include ‘I do.’” They list off all the things that remove the need for marriage:

• Legal protection? You can get a lawyer to litigate anything.
• Financial security? A rising number of women are more educated and higher-wage earners than their potential husbands. Besides, federal tax laws take more from dual-income households than from singles.
• Stability? “The numbers are familiar but staggering: Americans have the highest divorce rate in the Western world; as many as 60 percent of men and half of women will have sex with somebody other than their spouse during their marriage.”
• For children? “We know that having children out of wedlock lost its stigma a long time ago: in 2008, 41 percent of births were to unmarried mothers.”
• For sex? “Please. As one 28-year-old man told the author of a new book on marriage: ‘If I had to be married to have sex, I would probably be married, as would every guy I know.’”

Now that last line's a line to think about.

Of course, some of their stats need closer examination. For example, they point to Europe, where the majority of couples live together without tying the knot and yet “their divorce rate is a fraction of our own.”

Um, I’m guessing it’s a no-brainer to identify why the divorce rate within a population that tends not to marry would be lower than the rate within a population that does.

Still, they amass a daunting list of reasons why marriage is unreasonable.

But its not just that they consider marriage unreasonable. Adults in their 20s and 30s are commitment-shy because of their upbringing. For one thing, the authors say, they were brought up to believe they could do and have anything:

We are the so-called entitled generation, brought up with lofty expectations of an egalitarian adulthood; told by helicopter parents and the media, from the moment we exited the womb, that we could be "whatever we wanted"—with infinite opportunities to accomplish those dreams. So you can imagine how, 25 years down the line, committing to another person—for life—would be nerve-racking. (How do you know you've found "the one" if you haven't vetted all the options?) "We've entered the age of last-minute tickets to Moscow, test-tube children, cross-continental cubicles and encouraged paternity leaves," write the authors of The Choice Effect, about love in an age of too many options. The result, they say, is "a generation that loves choice and hates choosing."

Oh, I’m gonna use that last line sometime soon: “loves choice and hates choosing.” But the authors point to another aspect of their upbringing that makes them commitment-averse:

Boomers may have been the first children of divorce, but ours is a generation for whom multiple households were the norm. We grew up shepherded between bedrooms, minivans, and dinner tables, with stepparents, half-siblings, and highly complicated holiday schedules. You can imagine, then—amid incessant high-profile adultery scandals—that we'd be somewhat cynical about the institution. (Till death do us part, really?) “The question,” says Andrew Cherlin, the author of The Marriage-Go-Round, “is not why fewer people are getting married, but why are so many still getting married?”

And yet they are. The authors say:

Maybe it's a testament to American crass consumerism, but despite those odds, we still manage to idealize the ceremony itself, to the tune of $72 billion a year. Weddings are the subject of at least a dozen reality shows; a Google search for "bridezilla" turns up half a million hits; and there are four different bridal Barbies.

In fact, they hedge their bets in the article:

A caveat: check with us again in five years. We're in our late 20s and early 30s, right around the time when biological clocks start ticking and whispers of "Why don't you just settle down?" get louder. So…we permit you, friends and readers, to mock us at our own weddings (should they happen).

Jessica Bennett and Jesse Ellison lay out a compelling argument against marriage. But I have one compelling argument for marriage:

God’s marriage to us, his people.

“I wrapped my cloak around you…and declared my marriage vows,” he said in Ezekiel 16:8 (NLT). Here God is comparing his relationship to Israel like the relationship of a husband to a wife. The text continues, “‘I made a covenant with you,’ says the Sovereign Lord, ‘and you became mine.’”

The Bible says God chose us (Ephesians 1:4), but he did more than that: He publically declared his commitment to us in covenant.

Really, the whole story of the Bible is a story of God’s faithfulness to his marriage vows, so to speak. Over and over again, the Bible says that he stands and stays with his people because he is a God who keeps his promises:

Leviticus 26:44-45 (NLT), “I will not cancel my covenant with them by wiping them out. I, the Lord, am their God. 45I will remember my ancient covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of Egypt while all the nations watched. I, the Lord, am their God.”

Deuteronomy 4:31 (NIV), “For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your forefathers, which he confirmed to them by oath.”

2 Kings 13:23 (NIV), “But the Lord was gracious to them and had compassion and showed concern for them because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

Isaiah 54:10 (NIV), “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed,/ yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken/ nor my covenant of peace be removed,”/ says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

Notice in all of those verses that God points back to his vows, his covenant, and says, “I’m sticking with my people because I’ve made a promise. The integrity of my word is on the line.”

The fact that God made a covenant with his people is the Number One reason why you should make a covenant with your partner. Huge numbers of couples, even those who know Christ, have decided to live together, maybe even have children together, without a wedding ceremony. But if we want to reflect the heart of God to the person we love, one thing we need to recognize is that God was willing to announce his love for us publicly. He was willing to declare his commitment to us before the world. And when things get tough in his relationship with us, over and over again in the Bible we see him saying, “I made a promise to my people, a public promise, a covenant, and I’m sticking with it.”

I acknowledge this argument doesn’t carry weight with anyone who hasn’t experienced God’s covenant love. But as believers, we get married--and we stay married--because God has set the example for us and we want to follow God.

The Big 12 Breakup, Baylor, and “Culture”

Terry Mattingly thinks “culture” may play a role if Baylor doesn’t get an invitation to the Pac-10. It can’t be because of performance (well, in everything but football):

[Baylor] just came within a strange call or two of beating Duke, the eventual champion, and marching into the NCAA Final Four in hoops — for men. And the women on this campus recently won the whole shooting match and have one of the nation’s flashiest young players. If you add up all the sports on campus, this cultural misfit has been a Big 12 powerhouse (but not in football).

Mattingly doesn’t discount the part that television markets play, but he commends columnist Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman for highlighting the ‘culture’ angle—

Baylor has tried to play politics to usurp Colorado and be included in the Big 12 exodus to the Pac-10. I don’t think the Bears will succeed.

First, the Pac-10 is partial to Colorado. Always has been. The Pac-10 seems to sense a kindred spirit in the Buffs. Boulder is sort of Berkeley East; a funky, liberal bastion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

And no way is Baylor attractive to the Pac-10. The Pac-10 always has been allergic to Brigham Young, another church-based school. Baylor is the nation’s largest Baptist university. A Baptist friend of mine says Baylor actually is quite liberal in Baptist eyes, but I don’t think that’s a concept Berkeley recognizes, liberal Baptist.

“So,” Mattingly asks, “are we about to see a world in which there are conferences that are divided by ‘culture’ as well as by TV market shares?”

LeaderLines: A Leader’s Mic is Always On

Who are you when you think the microphone is off and the cameras have stopped rolling?

When Gordon Brown was campaigning for re-election as British Prime Minister a month ago, he was filmed in conversation with 65-year-old Gillian Duffy. As Duffy complained about the number of foreign workers taking jobs in the UK, Brown nodded and politely listened.

“Very nice to meet you,” he concluded as he climbed into his car. He heaved an exasperated sigh and complained to an aide about having had to speak to such “a bigoted woman.”

Unfortunately for him, he was still wearing a mic from a previous interview with Sky News. The comments were broadcast for all to hear, hastening the demise of his already failing campaign.

Reflecting on this, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, at the Harvard Business Review, urges leaders to “act as if the audio is always on…There is no ‘off’ switch for leaders.” She concludes:

It’s a dangerous leadership trap to believe that you can keep anything private that might be embarrassing or worse if revealed….Leaders are wise to behave with a consciousness of how other people might view what they do — and the awareness that people probably will view it. That requires truly authentic leaders whose characters are not mental constructions faked for the job but run deeply in their hearts and souls. In the age of social media, instant video feeds via cell phones, and hidden surveillance cameras, this advice about authenticity increasingly applies to everyone who aspires to leadership.

Moss Kanter wrote this advice to business leaders. How much more should church leaders heed the warning: We need to be “truly authentic leaders whose characters are not mental constructions faked for the job but run deeply in their hearts and souls.”

A dictionary may separate “Competence” from “Character” for the purposes of definition. In the world of leadership, though, the concepts are inseparable.

Tom

I am grateful to a post at David Murray’s weblog for pointing me to the Rosabeth Moss Kanter article.

__________________________

Each Thursday I post my article from "LeaderLines," an e-newsletter for church leaders read by more than 300 subscribers. If you want to subscribe to "LeaderLines," sign up here.

Work, Laugh, and Pray

Philip Yancey:

The human species is distinctive in at least three ways, said poet W.H. Auden. We are the only animals that work, laugh, and pray. I have found that Auden's list provides a neat framework for self-reflection.

W.H. Auden ends his reflection with this warning: "A satisfactory human life, individually or collectively, is possible only if proper respect is paid to all three worlds. Without Prayer and Work, the Carnival laughter turns ugly, the comic obscenities grubby and pornographic, the mock aggression into real hatred and cruelty. Without Laughter and Work, Prayer turns Gnostic, cranky, Pharisaic, while those who try to live by Work alone, without Laughter or Prayer, turn into insane lovers of power, tyrants who would enslave Nature to their immediate desire--an attempt which can only end in utter catastrophe, shipwreck on the Isle of the Sirens."

Finding God in Unexpected Places
Pages 245 & 249

Winning Ways: Pack a Kit--Serve the World

Help people help people help people.

Actually, that sentence makes more sense than it seems at first.

Thousands in southern Africa die each year from sicknesses like AIDS, cancer, tuberculosis, malaria and other life ending diseases, and often the only care they will receive is at home. Missionaries and nationals connected with our International Mission Board want to minister to family caregivers in these homes. Assembling an In-Home Care Kit with Baptist Global Response (BGR) is a way to help people help people help people.

Last Sunday I challenged you to join Diane and me with this project. You can participate as an individual, as a family, or as a Hillcrest Bible study group.

The challenge is pack at least one BGR In-Home Care Kit and bring it to Hillcrest by Sunday, August 1.

The BGR In-Home Care Kit is a compilation of medical and hygiene supplies to assist caregivers of home-bound, terminally ill patients. Items in this kit will make the caregivers’ tasks much easier, but more importantly, will ease the suffering of the ones affected by the illness. The BGR In-Home Care Kit consists of a 5-gallon, heavy duty bucket with a sealable lid. In Africa a bucket is a very valuable item that can be used to haul and store water, store food away from rodents and insects, and store other goods away from inclement weather and environmental challenges. Inside the bucket are items that assist in keeping patients clean and dry. There are also items to protect their mat or mattress from soiling. Medicated lip balm and lotion help treat the skin problems that those suffering from AIDS battle. Other items are included that make life easier and less painful.

By putting together at least one kit, you will help provide a physical and spiritual touch to those in sub-Saharan Africa who are dying from AIDS and other illnesses. Our local Baptist and field partners in Africa will distribute the buckets in a way that gives dignity and hope to each family receiving a kit.

Everything you need to participate in this project can be found at www.inhomecarekit.org. We will have print copies of these documents at Hillcrest as well. We’re asking you to do four things:

1. Purchase the products from the shopping list.
2. Pack the bucket(s) according to the BGR instructions.
3. Pray for those who will receive your bucket(s).
4. Bring the bucket(s) to church and add it to the growing collection on stage.

This year, BGR wants to provide 5,000 kits to help 5,000 families in need. Diane and I are packing six. How many will you pack?

Tom

P.S., To kick off this project, I showed a 5-minute video that you can view here.

______________________________________________

Each Wednesday I post my article from "Winning Ways," an e-newsletter that goes out to over 950 subscribers. If you want to subscribe to "Winning Ways," sign up here.

Links to Your World, Tuesday June 8

“A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older…. Stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s.” (article at NYT)


“If there is one extraordinary fact here, it is this: Notwithstanding a pro-choice orthodoxy that dominates our film, our television, our press and our colleges and universities, strong moral qualms about abortion have not gone away” (William McGurn, “Gallup's Pro-Life America: When will our media reflect America on abortion?”



Which schools do the best job crafting technology leaders? In answering that question, Stanford and MIT probably spring to mind; maybe you think of Duke or Cal-Davis. Baylor ranks at 15^th.



Zombie Workout: Get Fit Enough to Fight the Undead



The 50 Best Free Games for iPhone and iPod Touch.



Interfaith marriage “fail at higher rates than same-faith marriages. But couples don't want to hear that, and no one really wants to tell them.” The Washington Post story says this problem will only increase: “If you want to see what the future holds, note this: Less than a quarter of the 18- to 23-year-old respondents in the National Study of Youth and Religion think it's important to marry someone of the same faith.”



Excellent devotional on handling life's disappointments, reflecting on Armando Galarraga denied his Perfect Game.



Posts at Get Anchored since last Tuesday:

Song of the Week: Johnny Cash's "No Earthly Good"

“In 40 years of service in Zambia, they influenced a generation”

Woodenisms

“Whenever media become more abundant, average quality falls quickly, while new institutional models for quality arise slowly”

Review of Peter Thuesen’s “Predestination”

“I never got de-oathed”

“The Shack's wild success doesn't reveal how Bible-thumpy this country is. It shows how alienated from religion we've become.”

The History of the Book

“We are becoming pancake people—spread wide and thin”

LeaderLines: Bullseye!

“Liquid Honesty”

Summertime Reading

A Heapin’ Helpin’ of Lost Commentary

“People who stay grow”

“Socially conscious, cause-focused and controversy-averse”

Winning Ways: From Bunker to Beachhead

“More impatient, impulsive, forgetful and even more narcissistic”

Tara Parker-Pope at the NYT on the toll of technology:

Has high-speed Internet made you impatient with slow-speed children? Do you sometimes think about reaching for the fast-forward button, only to realize that life does not come with a remote control? If you answered yes to any of those questions, exposure to technology may be slowly reshaping your personality. Some experts believe excessive use of the Internet, cellphones and other technologies can cause us to become more impatient, impulsive, forgetful and even more narcissistic.

Song of the Week: Johnny Cash's "No Earthly Good"

This morning's message is on combining service in the name of Christ with communicating the message of Christ. Seemed fitting to feature Johnny Cash singing "No Earthly Good" for this post.

Click here to hear Johnny Cash singing "No Earthly Good."

Purchase the song here: No Earthly Good.

Lyrics:

Come hear me good brothers come here one and all
Don't brag about standing or you'll surely fall
You're shinin' your light yes and shine if you should
You're so heavenly minded and you're no earthly good

No earthly good you are no earthly good
You're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good
You're shinin' your light yes and shine if you should
You're so heavenly minded and you're no earthly good

Come here me good sisters you're salt of the earth
If your salt isn't salted then what is it worth
You could give someone a cool drink if you would
You're so heavenly minded and you're no earthly good

No earthly good you are no earthly good
You're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good
You could give someone a cool drink if you would
You're so heavenly minded and you're no earthly good

If you're holdin' heaven then spread it around
There are hungry hands reaching up here from the ground
Move over and share the high ground where you stood
So heavenly minded and you're no earthly good

No earthly good you are no earthly good
You're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good
Move over and share the high ground where you stood
So heavenly minded and you're no earthly good

No earthly good...