TikTok, MLK, and Jesus

Posted January 20, 2025 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,


“…that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth…” (Philippians 2:10)

There was the sound of gnashing teeth and loud moaning in my youth Sunday School class yesterday. It wasn’t because of the extremely frigid temperature outside or the news of the severe famine in Somalia. In fact, most of my students don’t know where Somalia is. Instead of the cold of the Colorado morning and the malnutrition of African children, the students were weeping over the end of TikTok, or rather the end of their access to TikTok. They had been greeted with a warning that rivaled the Surgeon General’s words now printed on every pack of cigarettes, except worse. Smokers still have a choice. Tik Tok’ers don’t.

I pondered the “tearing of their cloaks” through the rest of Sunday. On Martin Luther King Day this morning, millions of African Americans remember what injustice was in life-altering ways before the Civil Rights Act. They faced much more than being unable to access videos on their cell phones. They were excluded, separated, diminished, abused, ridiculed, and characterized, at best, as second-class citizens. They didn’t have a voice, and their cries fell on deaf. After the Civil Rights Act, they still had to face oppression, exclusion, and persecution. Government legislation rarely is able to erase the hatred that is harbored in the hearts of people.

Interestingly enough, on this date in 1918, during the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, all the places of worship were closed, and all religious instruction was outlawed. In essence, Jesus was told to take a hike from the country. Hundreds of Russian Orthodox bishops and priests were executed. Protestant Christians were imprisoned or sent to mental hospitals. Churches became the property of the government. It was a campaign to eliminate religion from Russian society.

Life is populated with injustices and adjustments. The two are often mingled into one. Because of their inconvenience, life adjustments are often characterized as injustices. Whereas, some of them could very well be, in other situations we have come to see that we are entitled to have them. For example, the uproar from students at my middle school when cell phones were banned from being used during the school day as a result of how they were impacting classroom instruction.

Meantime, injustices are often accompanied by adjustments. In Russia, the underground church developed as a result of religious persecution. The Jesus Who was told to take a hike was still a resident in the hearts and minds of His followers.

African Americans adjusted to the injustices of racial oppression by expecting it and protesting in non-violent ways about it. The images of people being beaten and churches being bombed gained a hearing from those who were appalled by the inhumanity.

I sympathize with the loss of TikTok, at least temporarily, for those who have come to use it on a daily basis. Like our expectations that the flight we booked a few months in advance will be on time and then we’re told at the airport that it has been cancelled, the inconvenience and frustration we experience makes one want to bang his head against the wall.

Head-banging and having your head banged are two different plot lines. In a way, one is self-inflicted, and the other is inflicted on us. There’s a difference. Just read what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 11. Now, there was some serious injustice and persecution!

Comments: Be the first to comment

Reading the Wise and Passed-On

Posted January 12, 2025 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

“The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: for gaining wisdom and instruction;
    for understanding words of insight; for receiving instruction in prudent behavior,
    doing what is right and just and fair…” (Proverbs 1:1-3)

I’m reading the words of the deceased this year, those who have passed on but sought to cause us to reflect on scripture, the ways of the Lord, and the deeper truths of the Walk. I recently wrote about reading Tim Keller’s daily devotional on the Psalms (The Songs of Jesus). A friend of mine recommended Eugene Peterson’s As Kingfishers Catch Fire, so I picked up a copy and started exploring its riches. This year my study and reflection emphasis will be on those who are not concerned with selling a lot of books or being on someone’s top ten list. Like Keller and Peterson, I’m on the hunt for those who have left us but not left us empty.

Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship sits on my shelf waiting to have its pages ruffled. Ron Sider’s Rich Christians In An Age of Hunger seems like a timely read. Actually, a re-read since I read it back in the 70s. Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus also beckons me to think of Jesus’s relationship and view of politics.

And then there’s C.S. Lewis whose books cover a wide space on one of my shelves.

All have passed on, but whose wisdom and insight still live. I’ve grown past the books that dot my shelves on church growth, church leadership, and how to tame a deacon gone ballistic. I still find myself savoring Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace? (but he’s still with us!) and less interested in how one speaks to younger generations without looking like an old, decrepit doofus.

In a culture that worships the latest and greatest, I’m more interested in the late departed. Keller and Tony Campolo have both passed in the last two years (Campolo last November 19 at the age of 89). The Community of Christ-followers is poorer at their loss but richer because of their ongoing impact.

Honestly, I think more about the final journey these days as I watch the list of those I have known be shifted over to the deceased column. There’s a serenity to my ponderings but an ache anchored in it as well. Like the first time I ate a poppyseed muffin, I wondered what all those specks were, and then I experienced how much they added to the bread.

As Paulo wrote to the believers in Corinth, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)


Comments: Be the first to comment

Deep Thinking

Posted January 5, 2025 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

 “Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd.  After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone.” (Matthew 14:22-23)

I’m not a philosopher. I wouldn’t even be so bold as to label myself a theologian. When I was in seminary, I’d sometimes have to resort to reading the theology of Pannenberg or Moltmann audibly in order to not go off the side of the road in mid-paragraph. Simple minds struggle with page-long paragraphs. But I struggled through it.

Ask me a history question, and there’s a much better possibility that I know the answer, even the nitty-gritty details of the occurrence. How I grow spiritually happens more in the quiet moments of contemplation rather than grabbing a theological work of Hans Kung off my bookshelf. I do better at reading a chunk of scripture and letting it roll through my mind rather than trying to read through the Bible in a year. I get lost around the time I hit Lamentations, which accurately expresses my demeanor at that time as well.

I went to the local Christian bookstore to find a yearly devotional and was amazed at the wall of possibilities but lukewarm about the product. I settled on a Tim Keller devotional, The Songs of Jesus, a devotional that focuses on the Psalms. Short readings each day that help me ponder and consider. If I can mine the riches in the Psalms this year, I’ll be blessed in more than a hundred and fifty ways. (Keller’s book, The Prodigal God, is still one of my favorites.)

The seminary professor who had the greatest impact on my life in the three years I was a student at Northern Baptist Seminary was Dr. Tom Finger, a professor of theology, who had an incredible way of making me think through why I believed what I believed. Analogy-wise, he caused me not just to dig the hole but to consider why I dug the hole in the first place.

Deep thinking requires slowing the pace, putting my cell phone in another room, maybe shutting the door, and not hurrying God to give me a pearl of wisdom. I’d be more of a swine than a follower if I did that. Deep thinking considers the grace of God from different angles, moves it around like a Rubric’s Cube that never quite gets completed.

Deep thinking looks at forgiveness and ponders how we pretend its existence and hold back on its potential. Deep thinking unmasks the tint of self-centeredness it can include while identifying the depths it can go to. It feels the ache and rejoices in the softness of its calling.

Honestly, we reside in a culture that too often is focus-deficient and swayed by how the moment feels. Our view of intimacy with God is prone to being dependent on the smoke-and-glitter of the last praise song. That sounds cynical because it is. I just wonder (There I go again!) if the Almighty would sometimes like to speak to us in the deepness of silence.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Lock-In Looney

Posted December 31, 2024 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , ,

“Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47)

My wife, Carol, reminded me that I’m not any spring chicken and that BYF (Baptist Youth Fellowship) is a few decades in my rearview mirror. The initials that more accurately apply to me these days are AARP. Nevertheless, I planned the youth lock-in at church for Saturday evening through Sunday morning, an 18-hour marathon fueled by two pots of coffee.

Why, you might ask just as Carol did, would I not only agree to but plan and encourage a lock-in for young people whose objective is to run the whole race of insomnia? After all, the last youth lock-in I headed up was in 1983 at the First Baptist Church of Lansing, Michigan. I can still remember the names of the excited kids: Steve Landon, Laurie Landon, Shirl Kentner, Jon Daniels, Jimmy Michels, Greg Nash, Michele Nash, Brian Baker, Becky Epps, Suzy Epps, Sara Epps, Becky Landon, Jenny Landon, Rachel Knox, John Girard, Phil Girard, and on and on. Perhaps the fond memories made me jump off the cliff for another go-around at lunacy.

Or maybe I remember how spending several hours together ended up being a bonding experience for the adolescents who came. It wasn’t like coming to church on Sunday with their families and being amongst a congregation of mostly older people. During that lock-in, they were the church, the Body of Christ, freed up to participate in the silliness of teenagers, talk about the topics of their world, and be who they were without feeling like someone was looking over their shoulder all the time. They could even run in the building and laugh long and loud.

In essence, this lock-in forty-one years later mirrored the one in 1983. Bonding and hilarious hysteria abounded. They enjoyed themselves and even settled down to focus on what they hope the Lord will do in their lives in the coming year. We shared communion together around midnight before doing something you can only do at a youth lock-in…watch “The Princess Bride” on the big screen in the sanctuary while munching on popcorn and drinking Coca-Cola (with caffeine!). At 4:30, we played the fast-paced group game that Jim Berlage taught us back in the 80s, “Mr. Boodle.” We went for a solid hour, and my voice began to give out at 5:30. They begrudgingly agreed to stop, and for almost an hour and a half, a silence settled over those who had been fighting the sleepies. I even grabbed forty minutes lying on a thin pew cushion with chiropractor implications.

The senior pastor, Dan Schumacher, and I have both discussed what we realize, and that is that only a clueless clergyperson would think that a thirty-minute sermon on a Sunday morning would be able to take care of the spiritual nourishment of a teenager. In fact, not just teens but anybody connected to a congregation. Okay, put another thirty minutes of prayer, singing, and sharing communion there. Even an hour of the community in worship doesn’t do it.

Young people need time together to bond. It is not a weekly lock-in, mind you! I can only do two pots of coffee every once in a while. Rather, occasional gatherings that create a fabric of caring, laughing, and being comfortable in the presence of their peers. It’s the youth equivalent of the early church.

And now, I’m working on building up my immune system for a weekend winter retreat. A good forty-two hours in a remote location where I pray there are shower facilities for the boys. A retreat with scented candles is one thing, but aromatic boys could be the death of me.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Unrestful Peace

Posted December 24, 2024 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,


“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)

There have been times in my life when peace is about as far away as the South Pole. Unrest and uncertainty cloud my mind.

I almost flunked out of college and wondered what my life would look like if I couldn’t pursue my calling. Would I be waiting on customers at the Borden Burger fast food place in town or selling shoes in Unger’s Shoe Store?

A few years later, I was a newlywed, out of seminary, and employed as the Minister of Youth and Christian Education at a church in Michigan. It was tumultuous as I ran into resistance to some new ideas I had about youth ministry. I had come with experience working with youth in Young Life, a small town church, and a large suburban church. Experience was no match for the wall of opposition I encountered. Carol had to walk with me in that first year of ministry. My stress and unease could be felt by her. The bliss of being newly married felt bloodied and beaten by a few church people.

And then there was our move to Colorado to pastor a church. I was naive about the tension in the congregation that revolved around an excitement that many had to move forward compared with those on the other side who wanted the church to stay the way it was. The place of peace had been vacated on Sunday mornings.

When I read the Christmas story, I feel the unease that settled upon its main characters. Unexpected pregnancies have a way of unnerving people, especially when one of the pregnancies is of the young woman, probably in her mid-teens, who is engaged but unmarried. The Message paraphrase of Luke 2:29 describes Mary as being “…thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting (the angel’s) like that.”

The shepherds in the fields are characterized “as terrified”, Zachariah is “paralyzed with fear”, and Joseph is described as “chagrined.” Peace had taken a hike.

It is vital to the nativity narrative and for our stories today that peace rains down upon what was and what is now. God knows our hearts that are unrested. He knows the travails of our journeys and the troubling thoughts that rob us of sleep.

However, the same man who wrote in Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” wrote in Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” When our world seems to be crashing in on us, God is close at hand and faithful.

Peace is as close as His extended hand toward us.

Comments: Be the first to comment

New Jesuses

Posted December 20, 2024 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)

I read recently in the Wall Street Journal that there is a growing demand for white males in Utah with long blonde hair and beards to pose in family pictures as “white Jesuses.” Who knew that surfer dudes could step in for the Messiah.

Of course, Jesus has been the go-to name in several situations. Not family names, mind you, but rather ascribed nicknames for extraordinary people. At a recent high school basketball game, a player was going-off with long-range jump shots and spectacular moves. A few of the high school students sitting in the bleachers started calling him “Basketball Jesus.” A minute later, Basketball Jesus was fouled on a three-point attempt and then promptly missed all three free throws. Jesus had come back to earth, so to speak.

Jesus gets affixed to people in business, finance, service organizations, sports, and even entertainment. He’s black, white, red, brown, green, lavender, and polka-dotted. Interestingly, our culture, which is becoming less Christ-based, brings the Son of Man into the descriptions of outstanding performances. We have “Lightning Jesus” for track, “Chef Jesus”, and “Genius Jesus. Notre Dame has ha “Touchdown Jesus” for decades. There’s probably even a “Preacher Jesus.”

Humility never seems to be an ingredient and one of these spontaneously named Jesuses. In fact, in many cases performances by the present-day messiahs are punctuated with endzone dances and the flexing of muscles after a massive dunk. Jesus never sought the spotlight, but nowadays, “Jesuses” like to have their performance pulpits elevated by actions and words. “Blessed are the meek” is old-school and too St. Franciscan!

This may reveal my bias and disdain, but I wonder, in the next few months, how many “Jesuses” will enter the pearly gates of the transfer portal?

Comments: Be the first to comment

Gift Packaging

Posted December 18, 2024 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized

I can not wrap a gift. When I do, it looks like the package equivalent of an extremely “bad hair day.” If a piece of wrapping paper is sticking out, I smother it with tape. I am able to use half-a-roll of tape to wrap a small jewelry case that holds a necklace. Gift bags were invented for dysfunctional packaging guys like me.

Last Sunday, in my youth Sunday School class, I gave the students a T and F test on what the Bible says about Christmas. Twenty-five questions were laced with falsehoods that sounded so true. For instance, weren’t there three wise men since we sing the carol “We Three Kings?” And, wasn’t the place where Jesus was born made out of wood because that’s what all the nativity scenes are made of?

I emphasized to my students that they were to answer according to what the BIBLE said. The results brought some reality to the hybrid Christmases our culture has created. If I would have updated my test as opposed to giving the one that I have had for three decades, I could have put questions on it about “Elf”, the movie; eggnog, Christmas tress, mistletoe, the Grinch, fudge, and fruitcake.

Like my amateur wrapping abilities, the Christmas many of us have come to believe has wrapped the Christ-child in so many layers of glittery paper that He’s been mummified. The truth has been expanded, and the expansion has become the dominant story. Scrooge is better known than the poor shepherds and the elves are on center stage more than the heavenly hosts who appeared to the shepherds.

If we listed the books of the nativity, some would inadvertently reply, “Matthew, Mark Twain, Luke, and John Grisham.”

I would say, “Bah! Humbug!”, but some might mistake that for being the words uttered by King Herod…as he watched “Miracle on 34th Street” with Rudoplh’s nose shining in he sky above.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Back Row Baptist Peace

Posted December 12, 2024 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,


“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:3)

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

On Sunday mornings, when I’m not filling the pulpit at First Baptist Church in Simla, Colorado, I’ll be in attendance at the morning worship service of Colorado Springs First Baptist. First, I teach the youth class of energetic middle and high schoolers, and then I go to the back row on the right side of the sanctuary for the 10:30 worship service.

I like the back row and, even more than that, the outside corner of the back row. It’s my place of peace. Sometimes, peace is a rare commodity in church. It’s like water in the midst of the Sahara. You value its existence whenever you’re able to find it.

Interestingly, churches are frequently places of chaos, tension, and conflict. People with life issues and unhappiness have a way of trying to overpopulate the boat with others who, after being dragged onto the Titanic, will proceed to sink the ship.

My back row spot is my place of contemplation, my calm amid the week’s tempests. A 95-year-old man sits in the pew in front of me. A young married couple relocated from Tennessee sits beside him. They did not know each other before the couple started attending, but they felt a bond of peace as they worshipped alongside one another.

In my four decades of pastoring, there was more than one Sunday when I could feel the tension in the sanctuary as I led worship. Some of those inner unrest moments were self-inflicted, and others resulted from people’s pet peeves or pettiness surfacing in a rash of anger on sour faces. Nowadays when I hear of church conflict and the unjustified things people do toward others, I shake my head.

My back-row seat is my sanctuary. I enjoy Pastor Dan’s messages, which are meaningful, thought-provoking, and absent of homiletical fluff. The music is superb without trying to turn the worship service into a concert, and the congregational care is evident.

From my refuge, my soul is stilled. Some churches pass the peace when there is no peace. I’m at peace in a place of peace with folk who are peace makers.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Hearing God With Faulty Ears

Posted December 9, 2024 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , ,


“Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)

Hitting seventy has seen me hit a few other things as well: my first cortisone shot in my knee, kidney stones, frequent trips to Walgreen’s to pick up prescription refills, earlier bedtimes, and doubts of being able to rise back up everytime I kneel down.

But one thing that I’m stubborn enough to not admit is my suspect hearing. I continue to tell myself that it’s not my hearing that’s the problem but rather people mumbling like toddlers who haven’t learned to enunciate their words. The result of my ignored deafness is my frequent misunderstanding of what someone has said to me.

For example, at basketball practice last week our team captain said a couple of things to me that didn’t make sense…to my hearing. Why was she asking me of my opinion about snow? When I replied that I don’t mind it, that there’s something kind of nice about getting a blizzard with a foot of snow she looked at me with confusion written all over her face.

“Coach, what are you talking about? What’s that got to do with asking you how my free throw form looks?”

“Oh. I thought you asked me what my opinion is of snow.”

Faulty hearing. I should say that faulty hearing results from my unwillingness to admit my increasing tendency to misunderstand and misinterpret. I can blame it on the loud rock-and-roll music I listened to back in the 70s, or the earbuds I’m wearing right now as I write these words, or the constant chattering of middle school students, but the truth is my ears are my originals that I can’t trade in for a newer model.

Transfer this “hearing dilemma” to the leadings of God. In a culture that could most accurately be characterized as self-serving and self-centered, there is an epidemic of misinterpreting the leadings of God. Sometimes, we hear what we want to hear and ignore what we prefer to avoid. If it feels good, it must be of God. If it hints of pain and discomfort, it’s not from the Holy.

Our suspect spiritual hearing leads us to places and positions that God not have in mind for us. When we only listen to God when the time is right or our schedule permits, it’s comparable to a math student trying to understand calculus right after he has learned the multiplication tables. The missing steps of his math journey will lead him to a disaster of gigantic mathmatical proportions. At best, he will look like a fool. Most likely, people will look at him with apprehension and distance themselves from his cluelessness.

Church congregations have faulty hearers. We can’t believe that we can hear the whisperings of the Holy Spirit when we only look to encounter him for an hour on some Sunday mornings. God does not slur His words, but we have a habit of slurring their meaning.

How can I know what God is saying to me? Get closer to Him. He won’t cringe or move away from me.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Being Content

Posted November 30, 2024 by wordsfromww
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

 “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry,whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all things through him (Jesus) who strengthens.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

The last cat we had, affectionately named Princess Malibu by our kids (or Boo for short!), loved to crawl up into our recliner and take an undisturbed nap. If I came into the room, Boo would stretch out her legs, flex her claws, yawn, and resume her slumber. She was a picture of contentment, not needing anything else. For a cat, contentment comes easy.

For people, it seems to be a fogged-in utopia that the ship never quite reaches. Contentment is a foreign language, undecipherable, undefinable word that is as misunderstood as a vegan carving the Thanksgiving turkey.

In a time of plenty, it seems that few people are content. More seems to be the remedy for their discontentment, except more never seems to be more enough. The epidemic of discontent has its tentacles in all the arenas of life.

Kids have become Amazon consumers. Their parents salivate for the next-level-up vehicle that the TV says will arrive in the driveway with a giant red bow on top. Instead of not being content with the level of their play, more and more college athletes aren’t content with their NIL money amount. Work production is down while employees’ discontentment with their wages is up. There is middle-class discontentment about the amount of taxes that the rich are paying, and discontement amongst the wealthy about the rumblings of them having to pay more taxes.

One needs to fetch high-powered binoculars to find people who are at peace with life, at peace with God, and content with their surroundings.

The Apostle Paul had lived life on the extremes, well-fed and hungry, with money in his pocket or even a wallet that was empty of any buying power. He had discovered that the strength of life was in the One who gave His life. Ironic as it seemed, contentment was connected to the One who hung on the cross. More money is not the answer, although there was a price that was paid.

I need to remember that the next time the high-priced BMW races by me through the school zone, or the next parent of one of my basketball players expresses discontentment about his daughter’s playing time or the lack of jump shots she is getting in game situations. I’ll nod my head, smile, and say to myself, “I can do all things through him who gives me strength.”

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »