Lost: What to Make of Jacob and non-Locke

For all you Losties, what do you make of the identity of Jacob and the non-Locke, the “Man in Black”?  I’m thinking there’s a Yin/Yang thing going here, but the writers are (in)famous for misdirection.

Doc Jensen:

Consider again the scene in ''Lighthouse'' in which Jack picked up The Annotated Alice. ''I used to read this to you when you were little,'' Jack said, waxing nostalgic. ''You always wanted to hear about Kitty and Snowdrop, they were Alice's...'' But Jack never finished his sentence because his angry adolescent huffed out on him. This was a really conspicuous choice, and I remember thinking that I should really follow up on it and investigate what Lost had decided to leave unsaid.

…

What Jack wasn't allowed to say was that Kitty and Snowdrop were Alice's kittens. And if David had stuck around and engaged his father in literary exegesis about the book, they may have together noted the following detail, which should blow up any self-respecting crazy Lost theorist's brain:

One kitten is black, and one kitten is white. One is bad; one is good. Kitty's the black one; Snowdrop's the white one. Kitty's the bad one; Snowdrop, the good one. Think: black and white rocks in The Caves; think: the black and white stones in The Cave of Names; think: Man in Black and Jacob; think: John Locke's backgammon story. ''Two players. One black. One white.''

…

Perhaps in the story of Lost, Jacob is…taking the raw material of castaway lives and desires and redeeming it with shape, purpose, and future. Or at least, he is trying to. After all, these characters do have free will, and they can choose to use it to produce a quality of life that's beyond salvaging.

As they say, stay tuned…

Links to Your World, Tuesday March 2

The internet will replace newspapers? We’ll be buying books online to read on our computers? Bah. (Newsweek--from 1995)

Where its hardest to believe: A chart created by CT illustrating the places in the world where social hostility and government pressure combine to make it hard to practice Christianity.

The power of touch in promoting learning, providing encouragement, and strengthening relationships.

What's in Household Dust? You Don't Want to Know

Study links violent video games to violent thought, action

The Merits of Napping. Really.

50 Famously Successful People Who Failed At First

911 dispatcher fields call from wife reporting son is choking.

Posts at Get Anchored since last Tuesday:

Free Audiobooks

Song of the Week: "In Like a Lion" by Al Petteway & Amy White

Does Having Biological Roots to Our Attractions Justify Acting On Them?

The Literature an Author Immersed in Calvin Can Produce

At Cross-Purposes

LeaderLines: Examining the Impact of Our Leadership

Winning Ways: No More Hermit Holes

"A Better Chance of Keeping the Doors Open to the Kind of Old-School Communication That Matters Most"

Free Audiobooks

ChristianAudio.com offers a free audiobook download each month. For March, they’re offering 2.  Get Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic The Cost of Discipleship and John Piper’s Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die.  Click here.

Song of the Week: "In Like a Lion" by Al Petteway & Amy White

With all these cold fronts, and the calendar turning to March this week, it's time for "In Like a Lion" by Al Petteway & Amy White

Does Having Biological Roots to Our Attractions Justify Acting On Them?

In an opinion piece for the LA Times, Dean Hamer and Michael Rosbash say that, since homosexuality is based in biology, “fundamental rights” naturally follow, including, they say, gay marriage.

Is this the logical inference, though? The same field of study unearthing a biological basis for homosexuality is exposing a biological basis for things like alcoholism and aggressive behavior. Simply identifying the biological contributions to our impulses and attractions doesn’t really settle the question of the rightness of acting on our impulses and attractions.

I’d love to know your thoughts and reactions at Get Anchored’s Facebook fan page.

The Literature an Author Immersed in Calvin Can Produce

Marilynn Robinson, author of Housekeeping, the celebrated Gilead, and Home, says that three insights from John Calvin’s thought guide her work. Thomas Gardner of CT summarizes them:

* The glory of humanity: Made as we are in the image of God, “the great energy that rips galaxies apart also animates our slightest thoughts.”

* The fallenness of humanity: All of us turn away from God's presence, failing “to acknowledge what ought to be obvious.” She calls Calvin’s exposition of fundamental human corruption the “counterweight to Calvin's rapturous humanism.”

* The election of humanity in Christ: True perception—”the radical understanding of the presence of God, and of his nature as manifest in Christ”—is something God must grant a person. It is not natural to our fallen state.

Interesting. For my part, the Pulitzer-prizewinning Gilead sits near the top of the list of my favorite books, Housekeeping (written 25 years before Gilead) disappointed me, and Home is on my to-read list.

At Cross-Purposes

Chris Tomlinson explains “Why The Cross Matters”:

At the cross…

…We see God’s sovereignty—reigning with absolute control over humanity’s greatest sin.

…We see God’s purpose—making known the mystery of His will prepared before time.

…We see God’s plan—to unite all things, on heaven and on earth, in Him.

…We see God’s judgment—requiring recompense for guilt.

…We see God’s holiness—demanding the perfect sacrifice.

…We see God’s power—crushing the Son of God according to the purpose of His will.

…We see God’s wrath—punishing the wretchedness of sin.

…We see God’s sorrow—wailing as only a forsaken son can.

…We see God’s mystery—the Son, as God, separated from the Father, committing His Spirit to God.

…We see God’s compassion—pleading to the Father to forgive the ignorant.

…We see God’s gift—His one and only Son, bruised and broken on our behalf.

…We see God’s mercy—making unrighteous sinners righteous.

…We see God’s love—Christ dying for sinners.

…We see God’s rescue operation—delivering us from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of His Son.

…We see God’s proposal—pledging Himself to His bride forever.

…We see God’s revelation—the Word of God speaking His last so He might speak on behalf of many.

…We see God’s victory—disarming His enemies, putting them to shame, and triumphing over them.

…We see God’s glory—the name of the Father being magnified for the sake of all peoples.

For four Sundays in March at Hillcrest we’ll work through a sermon series called Cross-Purposes: Four Reasons Why Jesus Died For Me. Pray as I prep for that.

LeaderLines: Examining the Impact of Our Leadership

As a pastor I’m often honored to provide a “letter of reference” for someone’s application process. But it’s interesting to read what Paul considered a leader’s real reference letter. He said it was the spiritual maturity of those we’ve been leading. Paul reminded the Corinthians, “You yourselves are our letter [of recommendation], written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry” (2 Cor. 3:2-3).

If you’re a leader at Hillcrest, take a few minutes to reflect on what our leadership is producing within the Hillcrest family.

Timmy Brister posted “21 Questions I’ve Been Asking (Myself) Lately” on his blog. I want to highlight some of the questions that made me pause.

If our church would cease to exist in our city, would it be noticed and missed?

Is our church known more for what we are not/against than what we are/for?

These are questions of how our church is perceived in our city. We’re to lead our congregation to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7).

If all the [church staff was] tragically killed in a car accident, would the church’s ministry cease or fall apart?

How many people know and are discharging their spiritual gifts in active service and building up of the body of Christ?

These are questions of equipping. Pastors are God’s gifts to the church “to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up” (Ephesians 4:11-12).

If the only possible means of connecting with unbelievers were through the missionary living of our church members, how much would we grow? (I ask this because the early church did not have signs, websites, ads, marketing, etc.)

Are the people we are reaching more religious or pagan?

What can we learn about our evangelism practices by the kind of people are being reached with the gospel?

How many people do I know (and more importantly know me) on a first name basis in my community and city who do not attend our church?

These are questions to probe how far the Hillcrest INVITE Strategy has worked its way into the daily living of the Hillcrest Family.

If our members had 60 seconds to explain to an unbeliever what our church is like, what would you want them to say? How many do you think are saying that?

This is a question of how clearly our people grasp the vision of our church, which is to be a community where people can find and follow Jesus together.

In what ways have we acted or planned in unbelief instead of faith?

If money and space were not an issue, what is one thing we ought to dream for God to do in our midst where it is impossible for anyone to get the credit except for the omnipotent hand of God?

These are questions to probe the bigness of our faith in the context of our decisions. Our congregation will receive the renovation recommendations from our First Impressions Team in a couple of months, and this will be a big test on the bigness of our Family’s faith.

How would you answer these questions? And how are you doing as a partner in the Hillcrest leadership to ensure that we raise up a church that makes God smile?

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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.

Winning Ways: No More Hermit Holes

“God told me it was time to come out of the hole. But I don't know if I have the energy.”

I love that line.

It comes from an old Boston Globe story about Thomas Johnson, an ex-con and drug addict. For 10 years he avoided society by wandering deep into a Boy Scout campground on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts and burrowing 8 feet underground.

Then a deer hunter stumbled over his stovepipe jutting out of the ground, and soon federal agents and state health officials were demanding he abandon his unauthorized hideaway.

He surrendered to the inevitable. “God told me it was time to come out of the hole,” he told the Boston Globe with a shrug, adding, “But I don't know if I have the energy.”

Like Thomas Johnson, believers are tempted to burrow down into bunkers in escape from the world around us. But God has told us its time to come out of our holes. He has told us to go into the world to make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20), to fish for people (Matthew 4:19), and to be preserving salt (Matthew 5:13).

At Hillcrest, the acronym I.N.V.I.T.E. helps us remember the steps we should take to accomplish this. Across the last 5 weeks we’ve looked at each of those steps in turn, and this Sunday we wrap up the series. This week we’ll share a very simple explanation of the gospel that you can use to communicate the message of the cross with your friends.

We should always hope that our friends will get to the same point that the Samaritan woman’s friends got to in John 4. There we read of a woman’s encounter with Jesus at a well. By the end of their conversation, she became convinced that he was the hoped-for Messiah, and ran into town to tell those she knew. After the Samaritans spent 2 days with Jesus, they told the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world” (John 4:42).

Isn’t that what you hope to hear from your friends?

I hope this Sunday morning series has been helpful to you. We all need a fresh reminder to come out of our hermit hole and re-engage with the world for the sake of the good news we have to offer!

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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.

"A Better Chance of Keeping the Doors Open to the Kind of Old-School Communication That Matters Most"

Gary Ledbetter:

Just because we can impulsively tell our rapt audience we're having Spam for breakfast or that we strongly dislike the governor is no reason that we must tell them. If we'll run counter to the stated purposes of some communications tools, if we'll think half a tick about our readers and our priorities before hitting "send," we stand a better chance of keeping the doors open to the kind of old-school communication that matters most. We might find people drawn to what we stand for rather than confused or offended by what we appear to be.

Read the whole thing. It's a warning particularly for pastors and other church leaders, but all of us need rein in our impulse to spout off. That way "we stand a better chance of keeping the doors open to the kind of old-school communication that matters most."

Links to Your World, Tuesday February 23

When a 2-inch LEGO gun gets you kicked out of school, “zero tolerance” has gone too far.


American mothers want the fathers of their children to stick around, help with the kids and go to church. Who knew the formula for being a successful dad was so simple?


9 Ways to Wake Up Ready to Rock


The 10 Most Addictive Sounds in the World


“An itinerant, footloose army of available and willing retirees in their 60s and 70s is marching through the American outback, looking to stretch retirement dollars by volunteering to work in parks, campgrounds and wildlife sanctuaries, usually in exchange for camping space.” (An article to spark the imagination of an ambling soul)


Off the Coast of India, Another Language Dies. This one caught my heart for some reason.


“Establishing Boundaries With Adult Kids.” Some of the examples may be extreme for your context (then again…). But the advice is still sound. “You can’t paddle another man’s canoe.”


“To maximize on the restorative powers of vacation, people should take multiple short breaks over the course of the work year, instead of saving everything for one long trip” (Time magazine reports on a study published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life).


“Get Anchored” Posts Since Last Tuesday:

5 Myths about the Religious Life of Emerging Adults

Someone To Watch Over Me

Song of the Week: "Can I Go With You?" by Bruce Cockburn

How to Turn a Bible Book into an Audio Book

Should Hillcrest be a Friendly Place...Or a Place for Friends?

Terrorists in the Church

LeaderLines: A Place for Seekers

Introverted in an Extroverted World

Good Neighbors and Effective Inviters

Generational Labels

Winning Ways: "Powerless to Shut Up"

Free Audiobook: Religion Saves and 9 Other Misconceptions

5 Myths about the Religious Life of Emerging Adults

Collin Hansen looks at the National Study of Youth and Religion and extracts 5 myths about “emerging adulthood,” the period between the ages of 18 and 29.

Sociologist Christian Smith and Patricia Snell analyzed the National Study in Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, a follow up to the groundbreaking 2005 book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.

Myth #1: Emerging adults serve the common good. “Emerging adults are far less likely than their parents or grandparents to volunteer or contribute to charitable causes. They share no qualms about materialism and long to someday live the American dream with a large salary and large home.”

Myth #2: Emerging adults reject their parents’ religious influence. Most emerging adults fall into their parents’ religious patterns one way or another.

Myth #3: Emerging adults behave similarly, whether seriously committed to religion or not. The good news: This is largely a myth and young adults who take their faith seriously are much less likely to engage in destructive behavior. The bad news: “Only 5 percent of emerging adults are so devoted to their faith that they attend religious services weekly or read scripture as much as once or twice per month. And that group includes Mormons, Muslims, Jews, and all Christian denominations.”

Myth #4: Emerging adults have abandoned liberal Protestantism.

Myth #5: Emerging adults tend to fall away from faith in college. In reality, young adults who do not attend college are more likely to drop out of religious involvement. Why? “There are a greater number of evangelical faculty members who support like-minded students. The modernist enterprise with its secularizing agenda has all but collapsed. And evangelical campus groups flourish.” On the other hand, college ministries are much more successful at retaining a faith that students bring with them than they are at making new disciples on campus.

Read the whole thing.

Someone To Watch Over Me

In Sunday's Los Angeles Times, David Zucchino tells the stories of drone pilots. They patrol the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan, but they live and work in the United States.

7500 miles away, they hear soldiers in need and come to their aid.

We have our equivalents as believers in spiritual warfare. They are called angels. That should serve as comfort as you fight the good fight.

Song of the Week: "Can I Go With You?" by Bruce Cockburn

How come no one's covered this one in all these years. Way back from 1976 here's Bruce Cockburn singing "Can I Go With You" (music player at Get Anchored):



Lyrics:

When you ride out of the shining sky
To claim the ones who love you
Can I go with you?
Can I go with you?

When the angel shouts from the heart of the sun
And the living water flows down
Can I go with you?
Can I go with you?

When the earth and stars melt like ice in the spring
And a million voices sing praise
Can I go with you?
Can I go with you?

How to Turn a Bible Book into an Audio Book

If you're someone who likes to listen to audiobooks instead of read the dead tree editions, here's a free way to turn a Bible book into an audiobook for your mp3 player.

I followed this process this morning to turn the Acts of the Apostles into an audiobook. I'm preparing to preach through Acts starting Easter Sunday, so I'm listening to it on my iPhone as I do my morning workouts. I'll hear it 5-10 times before I start preaching through it.

The following can work for an entire Bible book or just selected passages that you want to hear.

First: To find the passage you want in the English Standard Version, search at this website.  If you're copying a long section, I suggest you break it apart. For example, I broke the Acts of the Apostles into sections of 7 or 8 chapters at a time. Here's the page for my first download.

Second: Download the file. Right-click the "Listen" link and follow the instructions on the drop-down menu to save the file as an mp3 on your hard drive. If you're going to break a large section of scripture into smaller portions (like I did with Acts), I suggest you rename the files something that place them in sequential order. For example: "Acts1" then "Acts2" then "Acts3" and so on. This will be important as you take the next step.

Three: Download the free program "Merge MP3" here. This little program will stitch your audio files into a single mp3 file. This isn't absolutely necessary in order to put your files on an mp3 player, but it sure makes it easier to manage. Once you've downloaded the program, follow the directions to stitch your mp3 files into a single mp3 file. For me, that allowed me to have a single audio file of the entire book of Acts in sequential order.

Four: Load your mp3 file into your player.

Five: If you have an iPhone or iPod, you can take an additional step to turn the mp3 file into an audiobook. This makes it much easier to manage: In audiobook format, an audio file will start playing where you last left off instead of starting from the beginning of the file each time you return to it. In iTunes, right-click the mp3 file you want to convert. In the drop-down menu, click "Get Info." Click the "options" tab and look for "Media Kind." It probably says "Music." Click the down arrow and you'll see some options. Click on "Audiobook," then click "OK."  Your file will disappear from your music library and appear on your audiobooks library. When you sync your iPhone or iPod, it will available for listening.

Should Hillcrest be a Friendly Place...Or a Place for Friends?

Mark Galli:

Why are we so taken with the idea that the church should be seen as friendly? Why do we conduct surveys about it and chide ourselves if we are not as friendly as a bar?

Let me put it another way: We all recognize how much cultural cache the church has lost in the last century. The reasons for that are broad and complex, but I wonder if one reason is that too many churches strive to be perceived as friendly.

I heard a wise man say, "People are not looking for a friendly church; they're looking for friends."  There is a difference. Last week's sermon was about involving our seeking friends with us in the life of our church. The point is not to be a "friendly" place but to be a place for friends. As Galli puts it:

More than anything, they want to meet with other people who also struggle with life's deepest questions. They want to be with people who also know they are loved by a God who died for them. They want to join a company whom the Father in Heaven steadily draws closer to himself. They want to join a company of the committed who want to do more than be entertained at church or meet people in bars, who want to give themselves to a hurting world, even if it hurts....In a place where people really belong, they are free to talk about the most uncomfortable things—sin and salvation, hate and forgiveness, suffering and hope, death and life. And they learn the fine art of forbearance and forgiveness. Merely friendly churches avoid such unpleasantness. But churches that take people seriously cannot avoid it.

This is a superb article, and it ties directly into this week's focus in our I.N.V.I.T.E. series.  Read the whole thing.

Terrorists in the Church

Sent via email this week (Thanks, Maedel):

Latest news reports are that five terrorist cell groups have been operating in many of our churches.. They have been identified as: Bin Sleepin, Bin Arguin, Bin Fightin, Bin Complainin, and Bin Missin.

LeaderLines: A Place for Seekers

Last Sunday at Hillcrest we talked about involving your THEMs with your church family in the process of witness. I hope you’re working through the daily devotional material that Herb Ingram prepared for that subject.

Now, how does this truth impact us as church leaders? If our congregation begins to take up the task of involving their THEMs at Hillcrest, what kind of environment are we creating for THEMs to enter into?

You see, a church will fall into one of four categories in its attitude toward spiritual seekers.

I know . . . I know. The word “seeker” has fallen out of fashion like an old tie. Believe me, I’m tempted to drop the word, because it’s been so derided in some circles. Then again, when I read Bible texts such as Acts 15:17 and Acts 17:27, I remember I’m in good company when I try to identify those in my community who seek God.

So, where does our church fall in our relation to seekers? Can you identify your Sunday School class or Common Ground group in the following taxonomy? How about your own approach to non-believers?

Seeker-Hostile: Church groups with this mindset view non-believers as a threat. Most in this mindset, of course, would say that individual believers must be kind to non-believers and look for ways to share the gospel. But they would insist that corporate life of the church is no place to involve a non-believer. Therefore, the study topics, conversations, and even jokes in the Bible study classes or worship services create an environment hostile to a seeker’s questions or objections.

Seeker-Indifferent: Church groups with this mindset are indifferent to the concerns and questions that non-believers have of the faith. They believe the job of the church is simply to provide Bible studies and activities that meet the needs of believers. Churches that are seeker-indifferent may have evangelistic activities and support mission causes, and they may encourage the individual members to witness to non-believers. But it simply doesn’t occur to these churches that they have a responsibility to engage the concerns and questions of spiritual explorers.

Seeker-Sensitive: Church groups with this mindset focus on building believers while connecting with the seekers that believers bring with them. In one sense, the aim of worship services and Bible study groups in these churches is the same as it is in seeker-indifferent churches: That is, the church exists to build a strong community of believers. But seeker-sensitive churches pursue this goal with sensitivity to non-believers who have begun to be attracted to the faith through their friendship with believers.

Seeker-Targeted: Church groups with this mindset direct everything they do toward reaching the non-believing world with the gospel. The music, the sermon topics, the approach to Bible-study... it’s all done with the aim of catching the attention of non-believers and persuading them to embrace the gospel truth.

I want us to be a seeker-sensitive church. I do not believe that we should ignore non-believers as we conduct our worship services, but neither do I believe that the main reason for a worship service is to connect with non-believers. At Hillcrest, worship services exist to build believers, but they also exist to connect with earnest seekers that believers bring with them. I believe we should be a place where people find and follow Jesus together.

Among several of the speakers and writers I enjoy, the word for this kind of church is “missional,” and maybe I should keep up with the times by adopting the new label. Still, whether a church is labeled “seeker-sensitive” or “missional” isn’t nearly as important as whether the church deserves the label! Let’s make sure that what we do as Hillcrest leaders will contribute to the salvation of spiritual seekers in our community.

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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.

Introverted in an Extroverted World

Adam McHugh:

Churches sometimes unintentionally equate faithfulness with extroversion; we draw up a composite sketch of the "ideal" Christian--gregarious, with an overt passion and enthusiasm, eager to participate in a wide variety of activities, shares their faith with strangers regularly, assumes leadership positions quickly, opens up their home to others often--and this ideal person starts sounding suspiciously like an extrovert. Add on top of that the talkative, mingling informality of many churches and you've produced an environment that is intimidating to many introverts, who may find these settings distracting for developing their spirituality.

I can identify, being a bit of an introvert myself. I'm grateful that, though the evangelical culture tends to expect extroversion as the ideal, God doesn't use a cookie cutter when he creates us for his uses. Again, McHugh:

I find the fact that God uses people of all different sorts of gifts, abilities, and temperaments, incredibly comforting. Introversion is not a category in the Bible, but the patriarch Jacob was called "a quiet man" and the great prophet Moses protested God's call by saying he was "heavy-mouthed" and ineloquent on a public stage, something that some of us can relate to. Jesus' mother Mary was deeply introspective and reflective. And God clearly did great things through those biblical characters.

(Adam McHugh is the author of Introverts in the Church. You can read more about him at Sophia Dembling's blog, hosted at Psychology Today.

Good Neighbors and Effective Inviters

 

Tim Keller:

How do Christians relate to Muslims when we live side by side in the same society? How can Christians be at the very same time a) good neighbors, seeking their good whether they convert or not, and still b) attractively and effectively invite Muslims to consider the gospel?

These are the two questions behind the project I'm developing for April called "The Neighboring Faiths Interviews."  And these two questions aren't just in relation to Muslims but also in relation to Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists who are our neighbors and coworkers. We want to be (a) good neighbors and (b) attractive and effective  at inviting them to consider the gospel.

Find out more about the Neighboring Faiths Interviews here.

By the way, Tim Keller's question about relating to Muslims comes from his blog post, "The Big Issues Facing the Western Church." He outlines five "big issues"--

1. The opportunity for extensive culture-making in the U.S.

2. The rise of Islam.

3. The new non-western Global Christianity.

4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel.

5. The end of prosperity?

It would be worth your while to review his brief post.