Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-30-23a

I recently have had cause to “describe what I do.” Because of a flurry of interviews and articles, I am being asked to list the activities and high points, such as they might be, of my career.

Some books, various jobs, a few awards, and lengthy prison terms (= three truths and a lie) routinely have been accepted, but I have had “pushback,” occasionally, about activities I label as “Christian apologetics.” Apologetics is something that has been exercised since the Resurrection of Jesus, and this blog site’s fare – my 14 years or so of sharing these thoughts every week – is an example of the form.

Some people evidently misunderstand the term, which infrequently is used except in the religious context; and less often even in that case. Because of similarity to “apology,” the word can carry the connotation of being defensive about our faith. Or whining about elements of theology. Or making excuses for Christians who commit offenses. No.

Christian apologetics is derived from the Greek word apologia, which simply means offering an explanation or a defense. In other words, it is a method of presenting the Gospel. One might think that all sermons or religious writing does that, yet that is hardly the case. Since the Disciples’ time (“the Apostolic Age”) and down through the centuries, writers and speakers also (or alternatively) have concentrated on teaching, or exhortations, or correction, or evangelism, or social action, or…

I have chosen in several books and these blog messages to know Christ and to make Him known, in the words of the motto of a church in which I worshiped years ago in Connecticut. This “calling” motivates me perhaps because that is what I needed most at points in my life – and still, often today. That is why in these essays I share my thoughts more than preach from a platform. I sometimes am encouraged to collect some of these essays in a book, and I would title that book Eavesdropping on God, because I have learned His truths by paying attention when He acts; and then sharing (“experiential apologetics,” to be precise).

Beyond the basics, no form of sharing the Gospel (“Good News”) is superior to the others – their utility and efficacy depend more upon the hearer than the speaker. Yet some of the great giants of the faith over 2000 years have been apologists: St Paul at times; early saints of the church, cited by the amazing historian Eusebius, who defended the faith during days of Roman persecution; Justin Martyr; Origen; Augustine of course; Anselm. History tends to persuade people today that philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment were “enlightened” because they developed intellectual arguments against Christianity, but the opposite was true: they largely discovered scientific proofs and arguments for the truth of the Gospel.

The philosopher, scientist, and essayist Blaise Pascal was one who defended the form of apologetics when he wrote: Men despise religion; they hate it [because they] fear it is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true.

In our day, perhaps because the world is desperate for it, many have chosen to help people know Jesus by adopting methods of apologetics. C S Lewis, most powerfully; G K Chesterton; Francis Schaeffer; my old friend Mike Yaconelli; Josh McDowell; John MacArthur; R C Sproul; Father Robert Barron; Jimmy Swaggart; and of course Billy and Franklin Graham.

Having explained the explainers and explanation, however, there are some who wonder why God Almighty does not make Himself known more directly. I have a friend who is a fervent Christian, but going through some personal crises. She cries out – as we all have in certain moments – why God does not make Himself appear to us, perhaps physically or audibly. Why faith is required when, for instance, the Disciples could see and talk to Jesus. “The Gospel of Jesus is easy to understand; but the person of Jesus sometimes is hard to know…”

Sharing the Gospel, employing apologetics, is the challenge and the privilege afforded to those of us who serve Him when dealing with such “assignments.”

• One reason I cherish story is because we can only “explain” and “defend” so much; ultimately the person of Christ, has to be met, not only described. We try, but there is no substitution.
• Do you yearn to see a physical Jesus? His Disciples walked with Him for three and a half years, yet when things got dicey, they denied knowing Him, and scattered. Would we be any different, in the midst of our problems?
• Thomas literally could not believe his eyes when the risen Savior approached him. When he beheld the wounds, Jesus said, “You believe because you see. But blessed are those who believe in me but who have not seen.”
• I employ apologetics when I bypass theological arguments and fire-and-brimstone, and simply explain to people that “I know that I know that I know.” We all can identify with such inner assurances. I have met Him – no; He has met me – in times of trouble and crisis. And no less in times of confusion and anguish. And joy. A difference between head-knowledge and heart-knowledge.
• I have witnessed miracles. And for all the glorious physical mysteries I cannot explain, least of all can I explain what He brings – “the peace that passeth all understanding.” The world can’t give that; the world can’t take it away.

So I bring no apologies for bringing apologetics to you. I can attempt the methods of historicity and theology and teleology and familiar threats of eternal damnation and promises of eternal life in Paradise – all courses of the same meal, as it were. But I have chosen to know Jesus and make Him known by sharing what He shows me, and what He has done in my life, and what I see He does in the lives of others.

Can I introduce you to my best friend? I’ve got a story or two to tell you…

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Click: Do You Know My Jesus?

12-5-22

An old friend of mine is Mike Atkinson, although he is not that old. But about 20 years ago we both worked at Youth Specialties, the youth-ministry resource outfit founded by Mike Yaconelli. It seems like Old Testament days ago, and our “Promised Land” was around San Diego.

I was a “Director of Product Development,” which meant editing several dozen books a year for youth pastors and yoots themselves. Mikey was lord of all web matters, computer stuff, and e-outreaches. I guess. Among YS’s activities was arranging three youth-worker conferences a year, each attracting 5-6000 registrants. Many superstars of Christian music gratefully received their first exposure at those conferences.

Since those glory days, I resumed my “work” as author, speaker, cartoonist, and… well, blogger. Mikey and his wife Stacy have been crowned Prince and Princess of Pacific-Coast Plumerias. That makes them petal-pushers, surveying the lei of the land in East County San Diego. He also continues to be an “it” guy (I think he means IT work) and hosts the daily web blast of humor and encouragement, “Mikey’s Funnies.” It is free, clean, and indeed funny – except when it is not. That is to say, occasionally he dispenses wisdom, and it usually is of the sort you tape to the refrigerator or share with your friends: the symptoms of good stuff.

This week he posted a list. I love lists, especially those that dispense advice or wise counsel. If I am feeling confident about life one day, I will try to remember all the items. If too many of them make me uncomfortable, I pretend to think that it is a multiple-choice quiz.

Since I began this blog a dozen years ago or so, I have listed Mickey’s Funnies on the list of recommended links on the home page. I hope you will visit some of them.

There is another touchstone I have with Mr Atkinson. He is a kidney-transplant recipient; as was my late wife, although she bested him by glomming a heart transplant too. God has blessed his health and the entire challenge he came through, since the experience. Mikey is also related by the marriage of one of his sons to a precious friend of mine. All that said, I would never describe him as a “sorry” individual. In fact he is just the opposite, which enabled him to share a list of ways for us not to be sorry as we wend our ways through life. Wend a willing ear to this:

You will never be sorry…

… for thinking before acting.

… for hearing before judging.

… for forgiving your enemies.

… for being candid and frank.

… for helping a fallen brother.

… for being honest in business.

… for thinking before speaking.

… for being loyal to your church.

… for standing by your principles.

… for closing your ears to gossip.

… for bridling a slanderous tongue.

… for harboring pure thoughts.

… for sympathizing with the afflicted.

… for being courteous and kind to all.

… Seriously.

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I recommend listening to this message’s song. It is a great arrangement from the Baptist’s Redback Hymnal. Neither Mikey nor I are Baptists, but those folks sure make some good music. We are not Catholic, either, but the singers are the Nunn Sisters. If they can’t decide whether they are Nuns or Sisters, it’s their business, but they sure sing purty anyway.

Click Video Clip: I’ve Never Been Sorry

9-26-22

God forbid, to coin a phrase, but sometimes I take for granted the love of God, the power of the Gospel, the New Life offered by Jesus. I don’t lose faith, although my faith loses its savor and blessings are forfeited, but I allow the “newness” of salvation to become “old.”

Have you ever been there? “The joy of the Lord is my strength”… and we become weaker when we lose that joy.

Knowing this is error, there are a couple things I turn to after scolding myself and beseeching the Holy Spirit to get me back on track. I will share one of these tools with you.

I fix upon a familiar (“too” familiar?) passage of Scripture and change the pronouns. No, this is not a grammar lecture. When holy lessons are given to us, they should not be seen as stories about Job or David or Peter… but Words spoken for us, about us, and to us, also.

Some of your Bibles will have certain words of Jesus, in the middle of a sentence, in italics. Have you ever wondered why? In some of those cases, the translators wanted to emphasize that the events were centuries ago, but Jesus speaks in the present tense to us today, whenever and wherever we are.

So in that way I feel secure that I am not violating Scripture or God’s intentions… and I read things in a new light, receiving fresh inspiration.

Here is an example. Many of us have memorized the comforting 23^rd Psalm. We hear it often, not always in worship situations. It is intoned at funerals and memorial services. But when I am alone on occasion, I marvel how the most personal set of loving promises of God can open my heart to a greater awareness of His loving comfort, when I change the object of the loving assurances… and see it in a new light.

It is almost like, instead of hearing David’s confessional prayer, I become aware of God’s focus on me, His promises, and my proper response. See if it might speak to you that way:

The Lord is your shepherd; you shall not want.

He makes you to lie down in green pastures: he leads you beside the still waters.

He restores your soul: he leads you in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you will fear no evil: for God is with you. His rod and His staff will comfort you.

He prepares a table before you in the presence of your enemies. He anoints your head with oil; your cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life: and you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

And I rejoice in the promise of “surely” as the Lord opens the eyes of my heart.

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Years ago when I was Director of Product Development at Youth Specialties, I proposed a book and video package, and training tracks, for instructional ways to approach the conducting of music worship; I approached some of the talent at our youth worker conferences, including Paul Baloche. The powers that be, or were, after Mike Yaconelli’s passing, nixed the idea, referring to Paul among others as being too old.

Well, Paul Baloche, neither then nor now, was too old. His song “Open the Eyes of My Heart” will always be a fresh call unto God… as fresh as the psalms of David himself, the Sweet Singer of Israel.

Click Video Clip: Open The Eyes Of My Heart | Paul Baloche

8-1-16

Tim LaHaye died this week. Many people know him from – indeed, were mightily affected by – his books, the famous Left Behind series.

I never met Tim, but had mutual friends across the landscape. I attended the church he pastored, Scott memorial, later Shadow Mountain, in California. A magazine I edited, Rare Jewel, promoted Beverly LaHaye’s organization Concerned Women for America, and we interviewed him. Likewise we profiled the Institute for Creation Research in El Cajon, which spun off the college Tim founded, now known as san Diego Christian College. My friend Stacy Hollenbeck from girlhood was a friend of the LaHayes, and Tim married Stacy and my buddy Mike Atkinson (I mean… he officiated at the ceremony). Finally, my agent, Greg Johnson, was Tim’s literary rep on many of his books.

It sounds amazing, actually, that we never met. In my San Diego years, I did get to know quite well some Christian luminaries (of different camps, truth be told): Mike Yaconelli; Wayne Rice; Jim Garlow; David Jeremiah; Miles McPherson;
Josh McDowell – forgive me for name-dropping, one of my cardinal sins. Which
reminds me, I saw a cardinal in my back yard yesterday…) Maybe I was just Left Behind.

The Left Behind books were a publishing sensation. Co-authored (actually written) by Jerry B Jenkins, they numbered more than a dozen titles and sequels; movies; and uncountable debates. They brought the Tribulation (the awful events at the end of history, foretold in many Bible prophecies), the Rapture (the physical disappearance of believers before the end of the world), and the apocalypse of Daniel and Revelation (and many other places in scripture), into mainstream discussion.

LaHaye’s views and books formed a sort of Second Blessing of Eschatology (study of End Times), following upon the wave of interest generated by Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth and other books in the 1970s. My wife was one of the followers of the Left Behind series, and followed the news with informed interest, finding Biblical parallels that LaHaye’s books made more evident.

The phenomenon peaked about a dozen years ago, and will, if the End Times do not come first and subsume humanity and rapture the faithful in the meantime, assert itself again.

Just as with the “other end” of the Bible’s timeline – Biblical archaeology – modern science is explaining things to us that once seemed like fantasy or even nonsense. Ancient cities and rulers once described by “experts” to be of mythology or legend… are appearing in diverse places like desert plains shorelines, and under Jerusalem’s streets. Likewise, coins and amulets with faces and names and dates, are now confirmed as real, not fictional. (Just wait – I have had a glimpse – until you see the National Center of the Bible, opening soon on the National Mall in Washington DC. It will open many eyes.) (Need I say? NOT sponsored by the Federal Government…)

It is remarkable, just as science is explaining, if not confirming, many of the “mysterious” events and occurrences of Bible prophecy. Thank you, God, for Your timing. Some of us have waited patiently (sometimes impatiently) for scientists to catch up with you. Our next chuckle is when some chucklehead with a degree realizes that the Big Bang is just tech-language for Genesis.

Having asserted all this wise-guy stuff, however – and no offense to the late Dr LaHaye – there are some things about End Times that pastors, theologians, fiction writers, and scientists will never explain. And I hope they never do.

The Book of Revelation – Jesus’s dictation to John on the Isle of Patmos – even specific letters to specific churches, are shrouded in the type of mystery that leaves us ever conflicted. Literal words? Imagery? Poetry? Warnings? Fearfulness? Hope? Of course, Bible prophecy is a bit of all these… but in what mixture, with what emphasis here, or there, I believe God means to be ambiguous.

The mysterious aspects of the End Times, to the extent they are mysterious, are intended to KEEP US ON OUR SPIRITUAL TOES.

It is a sin that eschatological questions often are the basis of angry disputes among believers. They can claim to be well-intentioned, but Christians think they can improve on God – who always has been quite clear when He wanted to be. Let us speculate: that is useful. But let us not obsess.

We’ll find out… maybe sooner than we think.

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Click: Midnight Cry

9-21-15

I once worked for a youth-ministry resource company, as “Director of Product Development.” Actually it was as editor, sometime conference speaker, and seldom directing the development of new products, despite the title; unless books are called Products, which I suppose they are.

Anyhoo, an excellent editor and I oversaw the publication of about 50 books a year. Now that I look back, even between the two of us, that was a book every week, which we did, yes, “develop,” from brainstorming sessions, to proposals, to outlining, to many author conferences, to helping design and work on cover art; along the way contributing gems of wisdom about people who might write introductions and endorsements, suggesting promotion and ad copy; ultimately to develop comebacks for a Christian bookstore in, say, Pittsburgh, that objected to the way a kid looked on a back-cover photo.

But, a book every two weeks, as we, Solomon-like, divided the chores. No wonder we went crazy. Holy crazy, of course; sanctified bonkerdom. Biennial conventions, various office duties, and office picnics broke the monotony if not the workload.

But it was a wonderful company, a for-profit “ministry,” and thousands of pastors and youth workers – and by extension multiple thousands of kids – relied on our books, conferences, and products.

While I was at the company, the owner died in a horrible auto accident – one of those deaths when you automatically say, “Too young, too young.” He was too young, and it still would have been a tragic loss if had been 108. His widow picked up the reins. Soon into said reign she inaugurated a monthly book review group. It was voluntary in the office; Christian books were assigned; and she led a free-flow discussion.

In one of the sessions, talk turned to being secure about going to Heaven, as it does sometimes among members of old-line churches and even among skeptics. Our leader announced that she was pretty sure she was going to Heaven, because she and her husband “had given so much money to charities through the years.”

I paused. One way to put my reaction.

We all live in a land that was founded and settled by Christians, in a society that largely was designed and informed by Protestant theology. It is not against the law for anyone to dissent from these situations and their implications. But to be ignorant of them – especially as the owner and life-worker in jobs devoted to sharing the gospel among churches – is astonishing.

It is very common in America for average citizens to be ignorant of dogma that onetime permeated Western societies, however. It is common for people these days to be quite unaware of doctrines and traditions of the churches they attend – if those churches, many of them, “independent,” even hold to such things.

And the surprise I evinced that afternoon might have been unwarranted, because I had developed doubts that any shade of orthodoxy inhabited any corners of that office. And these are days when popes question traditional doctrine, and pastors gut the gospel and newly interpret – or couldn’t be bothered to – the Bible.

But the logic of revealed truth, if there is anything to the Bible, and Christ’s ministry, includes the fact that we cannot buy our way into Heaven. We cannot fool God with promises, bribe God with good deeds, or impress Him (that is, unto Salvation) with good works. If so, rich people writing checks would elbow themselves into Glory… and we know what Jesus said about the rich getting into Heaven. Indeed, if salvation were that easy, Jesus’ incarnation, birth, ministry, miracles, teaching, persecution, torture, condemnation, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension, would all be worthless shams. Hoaxes. A cruel trick on the Christ, first of all; and then us. All in vain.

All through humankind’s history, people have been susceptible to “natural” curiosity about, say, reincarnation. Superstitions about karma. And false hopes that good deeds now and again will be sufficient to please a Holy God. Wouldn’t it be nice? And easy? The bad news is that it’s not true.

The good news is that there is a satisfactory substitute available to all. With our sinful inclinations, we cannot do it on our own, anyway – but God has provided the substitutionary and atoning death of His Son to pay the price of sin. Simple. Easy. Not cheap. But free.

Next, how do we live that new life with changed hearts? Jesus said to take up our crosses and follow Him. Yes, we should be Christ-followers. At the same time, as we are pilgrims and strangers in this world, we proceed forth, “stepping out in faith.” Alone? No, we know that Christ is there, leading from behind (as current phraseology goes)!

Over, under, above, below, however, the best we can ask for, and hope for, and have, is Jesus holding our hands. He will guide us day and night. He, working through the Holy Spirit, will correct us when we are mistaken.

That is, sometimes we follow; sometimes He is behind us; and sometimes it is best to hold His hand… the security of knowing that He is with us. At our sides; what a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the Everlasting Arms.

If we happen to slip into error or heresy… well, think of it this way: if you are persuaded to buy your way into Heaven through offerings or donations, if Jesus is holding your hand, it will be hard to reach for loose change or a checkbook. You will find yourself being reminded that charity is from a pure heart, and giving is the result of Salvation, not the price of a ticket to Heaven.

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The great gospel song by Albert E Brumley, “Jesus, Hold My Hand,” is a virtual sermon in song. It is a song I have sung solo in churches more than any other. Here is a heartfelt and, um, enthusiastic version by Jerry Lee Lewis.

Click: Jesus, Hold My Hand