Rumblings and Ramblings

Who would have thunk it ……. It gets hot in the tundra.  Yeah, Sunday I was laughing because in my hometown 150 miles south they were at 103 while I was enjoying 85.  Then came Monday ….. 95 came and went by 11:00 am!!! Went to Pampa to visit with the DOM and a pastor friend …. It was 104 there at 3:00.  Took off for Perryton, got almost there and the news came on out of Amarillo.  The hotspot for the panhandle this hour is Perryton at 108 degrees.  Good grief!!!  So much for the cold tundra of the Panhandle.  Anyway, for good measure we squeaked out another degree…… 109 degrees on June 2, 2008.  I’m one of the wackos who does not believe in global warming …. but 109 sure makes you think.

My favorite weatherman out of Amarillo said it best,  “It was hot enough outside today that you could not only cooked your eggs but your whole breakfast …. the sausage, bacon, hashbrowns, gravy, and they might have burned if you left them on the sidewalk too long.”

By the way, at 10:30 last night it was still ……. 95.  It sure felt good then.

Hope you stay cool today.

You know it could be hotter?

Apparently Spiritual Samurai has decided it best not to continue the fight.  Whether this is from God or the mere frustration of the mess of our BGCT he has had enough.  He has been ridiculed, talked about, threatened, and who knows what else for being the one to bring light on a number of failings of our BGCT most notably Valley Gate.

Here are my thoughts ….. A true prophet is never welcomed because he is the vessel that shines light on things that people want hidden.  A true prophet is not always eloquent and rarely do they beat around the bush about something.  Most of the time what they have to say hurts, but it is needed.  A true prophet rentlessly demands for justice when wrongs are apparent.  When justice does not come in a timely manner, a prophet gets frustrated.  Unfortunately, most prophets are heard, but their words are never acted on by the hearers.  Instead, the prophet is plotted against, degraded, and vilified.  Prophets a lot of times don’t like to give their message, but they realize that the message must be given because it is truth.  A prophet is a speaker of truth.  The world needs to hear truth and yes the world needs to accept truth ….. even in the religious, Christian, Baptist, realm.

Not only has Montoya chosen to silence himself, but Rev. Burleson has chosen this as well for a season.  If it is from God, who can complain.  If it is not, I pray that they will continue to ministry of prophecy in our conventions.  Either way, a prophet is needed until repentance and restoration are realized.

Just my two cents from the Tundra.

Spent last night watching the finale of Dancing With the Stars and the showdown between David vs. David over at American Idol.  I was shocked that my man Jason Taylor got 2nd ahead of Cristian.  Really thought that Cristian would get the sympathy vote plus he danced better in the cha-cha than Jason.  First place was never in question with Kristi she was just too strong.

American Idol was interesting.  Archie just totally dominated with his song choices.  Cook was totally off (makes me wonder if he doesn’t want to win???).  Anyway, I have a pretty good feeling that Cook will come out on top despite his poor performance last night.

If your expecting something uplifting today ….. sorry.  Spent my time in front of the T.V.  By the way my Rangers have now lost 3 in a row.  I’m not very happy.  Maybe they can stay ahead of Seattle.

The BGCT is coming out of the dark ages, or at least trying to.  The past two days we have had the opportunity of watching our Executive Committee of the BGCT at work.  I only caught the last hour and a half this morning, and heard committee reports.  All were good but they saved the best for last, in my humble opinion.

Leo Smith, head of the Texas Baptist Men, gave his report.  Jokingly he said that he was in trouble with IMB because TBM were in China before the IMB gave him the go ahead.  Whether that is true or not, I don’t know.  But I’m proud that we are there ministering to what is a closed country for the most part to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Not only that, I believe that we are Indonesia waiting for permission to get into Myramar to minister to those people as well.  Over the years we have had a lot to gripe about with how our Cooperative Program dollars are spent.  The TBM is something we can be proud of.

One other thing that stuck a cord with those of us who watched the live stream was our TBM ministering to the kids of the cult outside of San Angelo.  TBM cooked meals, washed clothes, and whatever else they could do without speaking to the children because that was forbidden by the State of Texas.  One of the boys from the compound stared at one of the relief trucks and finally asked one of the volunteers why the Baptists were the only ones there helping.  Even without words, our TBM were witnessing through their love of actions.

Kudos to the BGCT for streaming the Executive Board meetings.  Kudos to all who are ministering in the name of Jesus.   Special Kudos to our TBM who go throughout the world to minister in the name of Jesus to those who are desperately in need.

Today, Key Heights Baptist Church went outside the box.  We dismissed Sunday School and morning Worship and went out into the community for the day and ministered to Perryton Texas the best we could.  Once again I thank Jeff Lanningham and FBC Vernon with giving me the idea to step out and lead our church to do this.

Here is a synopsis of what we did today.

We went to our town’s nursing home.  We took about 10 children from our church with us and we went and hung out with the residents at the nursing home for at least two hours.  The kids made crosses and gave them to each resident (46 in all).  We also had about a 30 minute worship service with the residents as well.  Most of our time was spent just visiting and loving on the residents there.

Our men had two “repair projects”.  One was to put on a new front door on a house that belonged to a single mother and her approx. 18 month old daughter.  Language was a huge problem, but we were able to hang a better door on her house to help her feel more secure.

Our other “repair project” was to replace a window at a widow’s house.  The only problem was that the window was the wrong size.  Our men caught it before the old window was taken out.  They are planning on putting the new window in when the new one arrives.  Because that project was shot, the went to one of our widow church ladies and repaired her fence that had been down for a year.  Not in the plans but they remembered the need and dealt with it.  I was proud of them for doing that.

A couple of our teenagers snuck over to our deacon’s house (our only deacon) and mowed his lawn while he was out hanging the door mentioned above.  They finally realized their lawn was mowed when they walked across to our celebration service tonight.  They were truly blessed by our two young men of our church.

This afternoon we held a Fun Day at the park.  Now realize that the wind was blowing 20-30 MPH out of the North straight from the Dakotas and the temp was in the low 50’s (wind chill in the mid-30’s).  We cooked hot dogs, played games, and had a Bible story with them.  The draw was the ID kits that we did on each kid that came by.  We got their name, address, parents name, finger prints, DNA swab, weight, height, and picture.  We then put all these items back in the envelope and told them to take it home to put it in a safe place.  We did over 60 ID kits.

There were a lot of bumps and things did not go as smoothly as what I had hoped.  It was hard to get a feel on the church family because we were busy during the day.  I was eager/apprehensive for the celebration service to hear from the church family.  Let’s just say all my anxiety was put to rest.

Our celebration service was a very special time.  We watched an 8 minute presentation/slide show of our day through pictures taken by one of our church members put to music.  We were so busy we were unable to grasp what we did until we saw the pictures.  Then I opened the service for people to share their impressions of the day.  The number one comment was what a blessing the day was to them.  Even though the weather was cool, they were blessed by being used by God.  I knew it went well when two of my men could hardly speak as they shared.  They felt important and used by God through the day.  God reminded in special ways what they could do for Him.  Our celebration service put things in perspective for me.

No one came to Jesus today, but a bunch of seeds were planted.  Last week I preached on that God has invested in us.  The question is what type of return are we giving on God’s investment.  Our people saw today that by investing themselves in others, they were allowing a return on what God has invested in them.  I think it will stick for a while. 

If you would like to try this at your church I’d suggest getting a hold of FBC Vernon, Texas and request their CD.  They were handing them out at the BGCT Annual Convention in Amarillo and I’m sure they would love to get a copy to you.

Who knows what God has in store for us next……….  We are excited.

Edit:  FBC Vernon has the material up on their website   www.fbcvernon.org

It is always good to experience the peace that  passes all understanding.  There are times in our life when we know something is going to happen.  We play out the scenerio in our minds and we think we know how we will respond.  Then when the scenerio actually happens, how we react is totally different than what we expected.

Saturday morning, April 12, I was up at the church at 6:30 am cooking breakfast for our Baptist Men’s breakfast.  I came into my office around 7:30 to get a devotional together and the phone rang.  It was my Mom telling me that Dad had a bad night and was throwing up blood.  She did not know how bad it was and wasn’t sure if I needed to come home.  The plan was for me to call after the breakfast and see how things were going. 

Within 15 minutes I had told my deacon that I was headed to Childress, told the guys bye and enjoy the food, went home, packed, and was on the road to Childress.  I got there around 10:30 am.  Dad was alert but weak, having a great deal of difficulty breathing.  The hospice nurse was there encouraging my Mom to get Dad to the hospital so that she could rest.  We decided that we would take him to the hospital that afternoon.

From 10:45 till about 2:45 I was able to visit with Dad and help him.  The ambulance arrived around that time.  They put him on the stretcher, we said bye to each other.  As Dad was carried out the house door, he went into a coma.  Two and a half hours later at the hospital, he went home to be with the LORD.  It was difficult, but it was nothing like I expected.  The peace that passes all understanding, the peace from God, invaded my life in such a way, that it cannot be explained.

This past Saturday was hard.  As the hours and minutes went by I remembered what I was doing with Dad the previous Saturday.  I would get discouraged, but God’s peace would invade my life again, and it would set me straight.  God is good, Dad is well, and God’s peace is totally awesome!  Never assume how you will react in a certain situation, because God will come along and upset the apple cart you have made.

Blessings

At least not in the traditional sense.  I’m leading my congregation to go out into the community and worship God through ministering on that day.  We will have three projects going on that day.  (1)  Helping a needy family with some home repairs  (2)  Loving on the residents of Senior Village (nursing home)  (3)  Doing a Back Yard Bible Club with the neighborhood kids around the church.  We will come back together around 5:00 pm as a family, eat together as a family, and share how God used us and what he taught us that day.  It is out of the box, but my congregation is willing to give it a try.

Model comes from FBC Vernon, Texas.  Tweaked their material for my setting.  I’m excited about what God will do.

Ok I’m going into the theological abyss here, because I’m going to be butting heads with Church Tradition.  The question is what day of the week did Jesus die?  If we are true to the Bible we can’t say that Jesus died on Friday, can we (Not even with Aggie math!)?  I spent about an hour and a half studying this yesterday.  The best I can come up with is that Jesus died on Thursday, possibly Wednesday.  Trying to jive the Jewish day and the Roman day got me confused.  Here are some questions that I have pondered as I look at this.
     1.  Jesus said that he would be in the grave 3 days and 3 nights (Mt. 12:40).  The Friday death would put Jesus in
          the grave only 2 nights.  To me Jesus meant 3 days/3 nights.
     2.  We know from Scripture that Jesus died before the Sabbath.  It seems that most think this was the weekly 
          Sabbath, i.e. Saturday.  However, special holy days of the the Jewish Faith are Sabbaths as well.  Thus  
          Passover would have been a Sabbath.
     3.  From what I understand Mt. 28:1 reads according the to the Greek text “Now after the Sabbaths”, not “Now
          after the Sabbath”.
     4.  We do know that the disciples found the empty tomb early on the first day of the week (Sunday).

Anyway, I’m curious to know what you smarter people think.   This is a hot topic among some of my church members.  Some carry it too far, but it does prove interesting discussion.

Why is this important?  Well, we need to be able to answer this question for those who are unbelievers, do we not?  What we celebrate and what Scripture seems to say does not jive with each other.  This is a potential stumbling block to an unbeliever.  In my opinion we must be ready to respond to this question.  What do you think?

Dr. Everett has been elected as our new Ex. Director of the BGCT.  The vote was 78-6.  A good, solid margin.  Now it is time for us to pray and watch.  I must say we pray harder.  No matter what you might think about Dr. Everett or the selection process, it is time to pray for him.  I still believe that prayer changes things, and I believe that as we pray for God’s will for the BGCT that God will work through the prayers of Texas Baptists.  I’m reminded of Jesus words in Matthew 7 “Ask and it will be given to you”.  Of course we realize that it is in the context of God’s will.  He will give us the desires of our heart when our heart’s become his.  A new day can dawn on Texas Baptist life as we seek the heart of God for this state.  Do we need to keep watch?  YES!!  But that does not mean that we don’t pray first.  So I encourage myself as I encourage you to pray for Dr. Everett, pray for the BGCT, and let’s get about the Kingdom Work.  God can turn this ship around, let’s let Him do it.

What if the vote is close tomorrow in the vote for the Executive Director?  Does Dr. Everett take the position?  How much of a negative vote would cause him to reconsider?  I honestly doubt this will happen, but that possibility is there.  There could be enough dissatisfaction from the Ex. Board members to cause Dr. Everett to reconsider.  Highly unlikely but probable.

What would happen if that would happen?  Things that make you go hmmmm.