Words from WW Blog

WORDS FROM WW June 18, 2009
“Conveying Our Bad Side”
Las Vegas has a pretty effective, as well as sleazy, ad campaign that uses the catch phrase “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” The idea is that you can come to “Sin City,” get caught up in some activities that you wouldn’t dare be involved in back home, and word of those activities will never leak out or back . . . to your bosses, spouses, or kids. Vegas is promoted as being a place where you can allow your “bad side” to live freely before returning to the real world.
Conveying our bad side has never been so popular! Taking care of our cravings has climbed the list of what seems to be acceptable behavior. I realize that there are many as well who try to hide their addictions and obsessions, and therefore don’t live authentically. That’s another situation for another article. “Bad sides,” however, in many people’s eyes are in!
But there’s a catch! What seems cool for the moment is beginning to have repercussions a little later on. For instance, employers are starting to ask potential new employees whether or not there is anything on their social networking communications (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) that shows bad decisions or inappropriate conversations. I’ve been amazed at some of the communications and photos that people put on Facebook. In other words, are there evidences of our “bad side” that could cause embarrassment to the employer down the road? Even “sexting” decisions are coming back to haunt young adults.
A report that came out last week from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism said that binge drinking in on the rise amongst college students. Dr. Marc Galanter of the New York University School of Medicine says, “The heavy drinking during college not only results in severe consequences at that time, but it also primes college students for later alcohol addiction. Heavier drinking at this age is a predictor of later alcoholism and is likely a major causative factor.”
During the college years, however, throwing down a few beers is conveyed as being the natural thing to do.
I think we’ve come to that point in our “freed” civilization where exhibiting a bad side is applauded and high-fived. It’s affirmed in the immediate without regard to the future.
Which brings me to another disturbing question! Is it becoming more acceptable, or should I say more encouraged, to promote one’s bad side than it is to be a person of high values and morals? Don’t misunderstand my question here. None of us are without fault. We all have checkered pasts and errors in judgment in the present, but are our errors being lifted up just short of exalted? I’m as “bad” as anyone else, but I guess I don’t trumpet it as a sign that I’ve arrived. Is “being a person of faith” something that now comes toward the bottom of a resume in small font? I fear that it is. The Bible talks a lot about persistence and perseverance. These days perseverance gets applauded in the Olympics and also the two-minute human interest stories at the end of the nightly news. It rarely makes the cut in the daily tough decisions of a person’s life.
We’re edging closer and closer to being a society that thinks it’s cool to live on the edge.
Speaking of edges and ledges and mountain tops, I think I’d like to write a book on how Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount might relate on a culture focused on our “bad side.” The problem is that it might show up at Barnes and Noble in the “humor” section . . . even if it wouldn’t be intended for that!
Pastor Bill
Highland Park Baptist Church

WORDS FROM W.W. June 3, 2009
“The Tendency to Talk To Ourselves”
There are occasions when I talk to myself. It’s usually when I’m confused by something that I don’t understand; or perplexed by something someone else is doing.
Most of the perplexing moments happen in the midst of driving down the road.
“Go ahead! Obviously you’re more important than anyone else on the road!”
“Ma’am, there’s two lanes. Pick one!”
“If you’d get the cell phone out of your ear maybe you could not be so clueless about what is happening around you.”
I can be obnoxious when I’m talking to myself. Let me control the conversation and I can sink to new lows. Of course, the people I’m talking to don’t know I’m talking to them or about them…and probably don’t care either! By focusing on their wayward ways I can feel a little vindicated and self-righteously elevated.
There’s a tendency in churches to also talk to ourselves, either at the exclusion of others or with the complete unawareness of others.
We exclude others by using language that is known to us, but foreign to others. I’ll always remember the story of a church in New York that was situated by the main route that led people to the beach. In the summertime the road was a constant congested line of vehicles heading for the sand, sun, and water. The church put up a sign out in front of their building and along the road that read “Have You Been Washed In the Blood of the Lamb?” The meaning was fairly clear to the people from the church, but was completely misinterpreted by many of the beachgoers that drove by.
Think about it. If you were unfamiliar with Christian terminology and beliefs, what would you think about being asked to wash yourself in a young animal’s blood?
The challenge of the church is not to de-mystify the gospel, while conveying truth in understandable ways.
We also talk to ourselves when we think we’re speaking to unbelievers, but both sides “have their windows up.” It’s like bemoaning the low turn-out for a church event by asking those who ARE there why there aren’t more? Sometimes we talk about the need to Jesus to those who already know him and stay away from those who don’t know him, and are unaware of not knowing him. After all, a vast majority of the American population list themselves as “Christian.” If all they need to do is check a box on a census survey what else do they need to know?
“They need to know Jesus!” we tell ourselves. “If they knew Jesus like we know Jesus they would have a lot less problems,” we keep saying…to ourselves.
When we talk in “we” and “they” statements the windows are rolled up and no one is listening.
Talking to ourselves convinces us that we’re spiritual, and others aren’t. We’ve decided who the goats are and who the sheep are. Who’s going to burn and who isn’t?
And if we can convince ourselves that someone else is eternally doomed, it’s somehow easier to not have to look at our own relationship with Jesus.

WORDS FROM W.W. May 27, 2009
“Blessed Apathy”

I find that it is increasing rather than decreasing. The root causes are as numerous as the dandelions in my front yard. It seems that when I spray one dandelion three others pop up their heads a few feet away.
Apathy is alive and “weedy” in our society.
But, there are exceptions!
Go to a professional football game.
Watch the body language of a parent whose son’s is sitting on the team bench during crunch time.
Be outside Walmart at 5 a.m., on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving. (Last year an employee got trampled to death when the doors opened!)
Have your connecting flight cancelled. (There are no apathetic passengers on Southwest Airlines, especially at any gate of Southwest Airlines!)
Apathy diminishes as personal inconvenience increases. It’s a “social new math equation.”
Second social new math equation: Apathy increases as a person’s understanding of being blessed by God decreases. In other words, the more a person believes the world revolves around himself or herself the more apathetic that person becomes about the blessing of God in his or her life.
Apathy moves in when passion moves out. Apathy is the curse of a church that has lost its passion. It is also the by-product of a group that has lost its voice, or perhaps more accurately, has been given no voice.
There are many reasons why a new wave of churches are being raised that are comprised mainly of young adults, but one of them is that the apathy of the church towards what they are saying has created an apathy in the “twenty-somethings” towards what the “mother church” is doing.
There’s a lot of finger pointing and hypothesizing, and yet none of that recognizes the fact that we have been blessed in so many ways.
The comment may now be stated by many readers: “Well, you don’t understand….”
I agree. I don’t understand. How can we be so apathetic about being blessed?

WORDS FROM W.W. April 15, 2009
“I Just Don’t Get It!”
I admit! I’m naïve in a lot of ways. I remember a date during my high school days that I’m still haunted by. I walked the young lady to her front door at the end of our date. The front porch light was on. She asked me if I would like her to turn it off, and I replied “No, that’s okay!”
Hello!
Another high school memory is from driver’s education. I was driving for the first time and as I turned the corner I just about gave my teacher a heart attack since I was looking at the center of the steering wheel instead of the road. For some reason I thought the crown symbol in the center of the steering wheel needed to be in the upright position for the car to be going straight…which it did…but I hadn’t thought about what I was to do if a pedestrian was crossing as I was focused on the crown!
So…I admit, I’m naïve!
But I just don’t get almost all of the Christian programming I see on cable TV religious channels! Or there are a few that are more than worth their weight in gold…like Charles Stanley, Ed Young, and a couple of others, but a large percentage of them just leave me shaking my head.
Did I mention that I’m naïve?
I’m perplexed by the prophesying! Not that I don’t believe in prophesy, I just have an uneasiness about how a person can prophesy about approaching calamity one moment and then ask for money in the next moment.
I’m confused by “the production” of a worship gathering that is filled with the glitter, but no glory. There are a lot of hallelujahs, but I’m missing the Holy.
We have about ten Christian channels on our satellite TV plan. Some nights I flip between them until I can’t take it anymore. I am more drawn to The Weather Channel!
In analyzing my uneasiness I think…I think…I’ve been able to narrow things down to three points, although they are all from my point of view. Assuredly, countless people will disagree with me.
• The absence of spiritual “authenticity”– I don’t experience a connection with God as I view the worship happening on my TV. That is not to say that worship isn’t happening in that location, but I’m just not drawn to praising Jesus by watching it happening. Perhaps it’s the switching from one camera angle to another to another. One moment you’re watching a singer on stage and the next you’re watching a lady in the congregation praising God with her hands in the air, and the next you’re seeing the guitarist in action. The “production” is effective in one way, in that it looks like a television production, but for me it creates a mindset that says I’m watching simply that…a television production.
• The Un-Targeted Target Audience– As I watch the production I can’t avoid the question: Who is their target audience? Religious broadcasting is marketed in a way that its viewership is mostly Christians, while it promotes itself as reaching non-Christians. Their funding comes from believers, so there is an obvious lean towards keeping the Christian viewer interested enough in the program, and believing enough that non-Christians are watching the production. I could be wrong…
• The Re-discovery of Creativity– Ed Young, pastor of Fellowship Church in Dallas, made the statement in a Leadership journal interview, “We want people to come and hear the Gospel, but it’s also about creativity. I think church should be the most creative place in the universe.” Creativity has been put in the storage cabinet most of the time in our churches. It’s the strange cousin that we don’t like to talk about. It makes us feel uncomfortable at certain moments, ask probing questions the next, and, God forbid, remember scriptural principle in different images, and with more than two of our senses- hearing and seeing. When I flip channels to religious programming I see an emphasis on the glitter and what one talking head (the pastor) is presenting, but an absence of fresh revelation.
Like I said, I’m naïve. I just now found out what “lol” stands for. I thought it meant “little old lady.”
When it comes to religious programming, however, I just don’t get it!

WORDS FROM W.W. “The Suspicions of Good Intentions”

There’s a paranoia that is gripping more and more of the inhabitants of our communities. It’s a suspicious paranoia about people who desire to do good. The tragedy is that this suspicion is not unwarranted. There have been a number of experiences in recent years of so-called “Good Samaritans” who have cheated people out of money and possessions.

Without going into a lengthy story, a couple of months ago I was approached by a young man and sixty-ish woman who were looking for financial help. As the story goes, her Social Security check was late in arriving and they just needed a little money to get some groceries.

Just didn’t feel right! Maybe it was the fact that she was standing there smoking a cigarette with a 7-11 Big Gulp in her other hand that made me a little pessimistic about the need, but I just…kept…walking.

Rip-off artists are in greater numbers these days than artistic artists. (I’m not sure if “artistic artist” is really a title or not. It’s kind of like saying “he’s a baking baker” or “she’s a drawing cartoonist.”) We’ve all been burned by somebody. There are so many checks that have gotten lost, evidently, in the mail! And they seem to strangely get lost after we’ve forked over the money loan to the other person.

Can you feel “the burn”?

And so the ripple effect is that good intentions are scrutinized, analyzed, and even rejected. It was evident in the wide range of reactions that people from our church received last Sunday when we went out into the neighborhoods around our church building and gave out packets of flower seeds. It was intended to be a gift to our neighbors as a way of saying “Happy Easter.”

Some people were touched and deeply appreciative.

Others responded that they attended a different church. Understand that the purpose was not to get them to change churches, but simply give them a gift that could be used to help beautify our neighborhood, but…some church folk immediately went to the “I attend another church” trump card.

Some people weren’t interested.

At one house our people heard a number of people talking inside, rang the doorbell, and then heard the people inside debating about who was going to get up and answer the door. Nobody did.

A couple of people said they weren’t interested in giving a donation. Hey! We hadn’t even hinted that we were interested in receiving a donation. They just assumed that since they were receiving a gift that we were going to ask for money.

It’s a new challenge for the people of God. It’s not that we’re “do-gooders.” It’s that we desire to do good, to help others. Good intentions are a good thing. Jesus himself said, “…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” (Mark 10:45)

But, of course, people were a little wary of the early believers. Acts 5:13 says that “No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.” But then it goes on. “Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. As a result, people brought their sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.” (Acts 5:14-15, NIV)

There will always be the suspicious, the doubtful, even the bittered, but there will also always be the opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Over time, and through an abundance of prayer, the suspicious may very well take notice of our good intentions. It may not even be noticed until later…later as in, we’ve already passed by and they are simply looking at the backside of our shadows as we’re helping the next person along the way.