by Caleb Gordon | Feb 10, 2016
Football season is over. Men all over the country are in mourning.
The thing that really just blows my mind is how we as men take this thing called football so seriously. I know men who know every stat and every ounce of information that they can possibly know about certain players or team, and the sad thing is, they don’t really even know these players personally.
If I knew everything there was to know about you and your job…like what time you took breaks and your title and how well you did your job, you’d be totally creeped out, right? But yet we are OK with doing this with football players and sports guys in general. I think we need to take a hard look at how much time we spend focusing on these men.
Look at these verses, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (Heb. 12:2-3).
I think the reason we have so many issues and hardships with men inside the church world is because our focus is on what it should not be. We have made sports a god, and as a result, we grow weary. We put so much effort and stock in these men and these teams that when they “let us down” or lose, we grow depressed, sad, angry or weary. Why? Because we have turned sports into something that they were never meant to be. It should be entertainment, and that’s it. But sadly we’ve turned sports into a god.
The thing that I find really interesting is that these same guys who have memorized all of these stats about their favorite player and sports teams also say they have a hard time memorizing Bible verses. Bottom line is, we invest and do what we want to do. Men do things for a payoff. If we saw or viewed that there was a big payoff for spending time in the Bible we’d do it more. But the sad thing is, there is a massive payoff in time in God’s word! We grow closer to Jesus. That’s a massive payoff.
What would happen if we as MEN approached church, the Bible and Jesus the way we approach sports? What would happen if we put in as much time, energy, passion, resources and drive into the three things I mentioned? What would our communities look like? What would our church services look like? How strong would our families be? I think if men took all of the above things this serious, everything would change!
Let’s do something a little bigger and little different in church this year! Let’s invest! Let’s bring men to the foot of the cross!
by Caleb Moore | Dec 15, 2015
“The emotions that good hunters need to cultivate are love and service more than courage. The sentiments of the hunt then become translated into art.” James Hunt
Several years ago this city boy took up deer hunting. I began as many do with a rifle and have since moved on to bow hunting, which has yet to yield a deer but has increased my love for hunting altogether. I also love art. I draw at least one night a week and more if possible. I love watercolor the most. It’s a delicate dance of water and pigment. Pushing the paper as far as it will go, absorbing as much water as possible, but stopping right before it begins to break down and tear.
When I am hunting, I sit quietly in a tree that has just lost all its leaves. Even if I take someone with me, I sit perched high up in a seat made for just one, and only I can pull the trigger or release the bow.
When I draw, I am the only one who can move the brush. There is no coach leaning over my shoulder telling me what passes as an authentic artistic expression. It is just a blank slate and if I am satisfied that it expresses what I wanted it to say, nobody can tell me differently.
Art, hunting, long rides on my motorcycle, these isolated hobbies are not new. When I was young I frequently went bowling or to the movies by myself. Lately I have begun to ask myself if the hobbies I enjoy the most reveal anything about the current place my soul resides. Being a pastor is unlike any job I have ever had before. It is at one time very public and vocal; you are the face of an entire congregation and sometimes an entire group of people to the rest of the world. But it is also a very withdrawn and introverted job, lots of studying, hours with your nose buried in an ancient religious document. And then there is the inner struggle, making sure you live by the values that you extol to others on a weekly basis.
When your phone rings, it’s usually someone needing something. Sometimes it’s prayers, sometimes it’s money, sometimes they want you to comfort a loved one who is dying. Often times when people come into my office, it is a place for them to dump their conflicts and pain and walk out feeling relived, while I sit there in the pile trying to figure out what exactly to do with all of these secrets and concerns freshly vomited onto my shoulders. Now I know, I’m not supposed to fix everything, I’m not meant to carry their burdens for them, and that God is the one who carries them. I know all the theological things that go along with that stuff, but it doesn’t make it any easier. The hardest part is finding friends as a pastor. I’m not sure if I am the one who makes this complicated or if it is those on the other side of the table. What I do know is that I have let very few people into the inner circle of my life; the ones who seem least likely to stay are the ones who knew me as pastor before they knew me as a friend.
People have this weird relationship with their pastor. With one breath they say they want to be held to a higher standard, and with the next, they call you judgmental for trying to hold them to a higher standard. It’s just safer for everyone involved to keep the pastor at arm’s length. Give them a version of you that is flawed, but just flawed enough that nobody needs to know and nobody is really concerned. It’s the version of ourselves many of us present on a regular basis. Not too perfect where people think we are no fun, and not too corrupt that we might need real help. That however, just defines the ones that you tend to think of as your friends. The other group of people hear you are a pastor, and they wait eagerly for some sign of a moral failure to justify the fact that they want nothing at all to do with God. You become the scapegoat for their spiritual cowardice. I’m great for those kinds of people because you don’t have to hang around me long to find flaws in my machine. So stuck between a rock and a hard place is where I tend to find myself. I’m the guy people will call when their relationship is on the fritz, but I’m not the guy you call when you’re having your buddies over because you feel bad every time you use a swear word in front of me. I didn’t know being the swear word police was part of my job but apparently I have a badge on my shirt pocket because as soon as people find out what I do for a living they apologize for all the things they said before that.
I’ve even had people introduce me as a pastor, only to console their friends with, “don’t worry he isn’t that kind of pastor.” I know what they mean by that, but I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not. I guess it just depends on the crowd. This is the reason a pastor has to be very careful about who he lets into leadership around him. You hand people the ability to heal you or harm you. Too often I have handed people positions they were not ready for, and we both paid the price for that.
Often times, the people who are fighting to get close to you are the ones who scare you. This is because there is nothing particularly beneficial about being a pastor’s friend unless you are just power hungry and are under the false assumption that our job has lots of wonderful perks.
Whenever a young man tells me he wants to be a pastor, I assume either he is a glutton for God’s often-painful way of growing us or their ego tells them they should be in charge. I have fluctuated between both of those roles, and at least with God, the scars tells a greater story than any ego could imagine. The solitude of my hobbies does say a lot about me. They are not some cry for help or coping mechanism for the stress. They don’t mean that I need people to reach out and invite me out for fun. I simply think it is Gods way of balancing me and preparing me.
With some of the people that God puts into my path, we will paint something meaningful together. Much like watercolor, the Gospel will push them to their limits, but right before they break, the pigments spread out to the waters borders, mixing and swirling seemingly full of chaos when suddenly something beautiful takes place and an image is born. Other relationships are like hunting. Sometimes the Gospel is a trigger; it cuts them to their core. The deer kicks up the dirt, leaves a trail to follow, and when you arrive, the vulnerable truths about nature that cannot be escaped stare blindly back at you from the stained grass. My hope for those who call me pastor is that we will paint something beautiful together. But I am fully aware that sometimes the sinful nature of man will be as dangerous and unpredictable as nature itself. And in those cases when the Gospel is a bullet, I weep for their loss, while at the same time still enjoying the hunt. You see, the Gospel doesn’t really cause anyone to be wounded. The Gospel just shows people a wound that is already there. The true Christian finds that the blood on his shirt belongs to Christ, who took their wounds for them. They take that deep red pigment and paint with it. The others, they find that their wound is self-inflicted, and run back into the woods where there is not hope at all. Thank you to all who allow me to be me, who allow me to pastor, to call you my friend and allow me to do the few things I know how to do. I love people, and I love solitude. This is the dynamic that suits my calling. If you ever feel like your personality is not fitting to the Christian life because you are too awkward or too withdrawn, I would encourage you to realize that you are that way for a reason, and we must learn to rejoice and be glad in it. The world needs more weirdos.
by Tiffany Zylstra | Oct 1, 2015
I’m 33. Never been married. Not in a relationship. In my life, having a child won’t be an option for me. Due to health issues, I won’t be able to have a child. Thankfully, I know there are so many children in the community and world who need love. Should God place the desire for a child on my heart, I have options.
This message isn’t one of “poor me” but of one that of “be careful” what you ask or say jokingly. I attend a small church, we usually run less than 100 in worship. I know the people, and they know me. Jokingly someone mentioned giving up their child because he’d been really difficult that morning. They then turned to me, nudged my arm and asked “When are you going to have kids?”
They know me but don’t know anything about my background. I don’t have a maternal need. They don’t know that I’m not in a relationship. They don’t know that, because of health junk, carrying a child won’t be possible. Until God places on my heart that I need kids I get to be a really stellar aunt! Without pressure from others, I will rest in God’s grace, waiting and watching for His will and timing.
I have friends continually hoping that they’ll be able to hold a living baby in their arms but sadly have miscarried. I have other friends going through all sorts of infertility treatments with desperate prayers that they’ll be able to conceive that month. I have other friends who have been married for years, and they simply don’t have a desire to be parents.
I’m not saying any of these are right or wrong or trying to debate anything. I’m simply offering a gentle word of caution that unless you know someone closely enough to know their stance on children it’s really not up to you to ask something so personal.
Be very cautious wading into these wordy waters. Thankfully, I was able to tease back the person who asked me about kids and mentioned that I could just have theirs if he was up for grabs. But what if I’d been the person that, the day before, found out the infertility treatment didn’t work or hadn’t told anyone about a pregnancy and then had to grieve the loss of a child? You don’t know if a couple is working through relationship problems.
You don’t know how your innocent joke or flippant question will be received. You might be causing great stress, grief or hurt.
Ask someone about what they’re excited about right now or how their day is going. Ask about a hobby or if they want to join a book club. If or when someone wants to tell you about having a child, allow them to choose the words and timing without being put on the spot.
“Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.” Colossians 4:6
by Wade Crews | Sep 1, 2015
If I told you more people are killed by this one thing every year than we lost in the entire Viet Nam war and we could eliminate it, would you be in favor of that? Would you think we need an exit strategy? I doubt it. I think most people are fine with it and don’t really care.
That one thing is loss of life from drunk driving. For almost 50 years (roughly from 1960 to about 2010), we averaged between 40,000 and 50,000 deaths on the roadways. Nearly half of those from drunk driving.
According to the CDC, every day, almost 30 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This amounts to one death every 51 minutes.
The CDC also reports that a baby is aborted in this country about every 45 SECONDS. Planned Parenthood calls this Reproductive Health Care. I call it vile.
Exodus 1:17 says “But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded them, but let the boys live.”
You know, everyone killed in a drunk driving accident had parents, and their death wasn’t planned. The men and women who choose abortion as a convenient form of birth control don’t want to be parents and didn’t plan to get pregnant. So help me understand how they can call themselves “Planned Parenthood.” I’ve never seen a daycare option there while mom goes to work. Free lunch program? Kids can come by after school until mom or dad picks them up? Tutoring or basketball leagues? Just what part of the parenthood portfolio do they help with?
Mostly I think they are Anti–Parenthood. Come on, let the babies live.
by Wade Crews | Aug 27, 2015
Recently God made it clear to me that He doesn’t demand that we all be activists, but He does require that we are all active. See the difference? Col 3:17, right? “Whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord.”
So from the “How did that slide by?” file, where we also keep the documents on “The Supreme Court will never make same sex marriage legal” and “Abortion won’t be used as convenience for birth control”, we bring you the “They’ll never restrict religious liberty” story.
In my last blog When Unconstitutional is Unconscionable, I spoke about the recent Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling (based on the constitution of the state of Oklahoma) that required the Ten Commandments monument be removed from the State Capitol grounds. In that blog, I talked about how this Blaine Amendment is restrictive and limits the free exercise of a person’s faith. In this blogger’s humble opinion, our state constitution violates the first amendment in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution of the United States.
So how did that slide by? Sadly, I must report it may be much worse than even I had feared. I recently had this same discussion with some older and wiser folks and anonymous legal professionals who opened my eyes to some bad things. Here is the amendment in question.
Section II-5: Public money or property – Use for sectarian purposes.
No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.
What I want everyone to see and what has been made known to me is that the State Constitution supersedes all county, and municipal laws, and even overrides Governor signed legislation, (see the recent Supreme Court decision on the Ten Commandments). I was also informed, this language is way too restrictive, especially if you read it slowly and plainly. Each contention in the amendment can be used as a separate item. Let me give you an example.
“No public …. property shall ever be…used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit or support of any … church, denomination or system of religion or for the use, benefit or support of any priest, preacher, minister or other religious teacher …..”
Do you see what this really means? It doesn’t say “State property;” it says “No public property shall ever be used.” It doesn’t matter what it “meant;” it matters what it “says.”
No city park, no public arena or stadium, no campus, no lake, no city, county or state building, no road or public way, no prison, no state park, no softball field, no river……. NO PUBLIC PROPERTY !
Whoa! How did that slip by? This is not just about a slab of granite…..
The following are currently probable violations of the state constitution (based on S 2-5):
- FCA Meetings in schools
- See you at the Pole
- Church Youth Group retreats at a State Park
- A picnic and devotion under the pavilion at the city park
- A Franklin Graham festival in a public arena
- Chaplains in state hospitals and prisons
- Religious organizations on college campuses
- ….and if strictly enforced, your church bus or van can’t get on a public road to take kids to church camp
Call your or write your state legislator and senator. Let them know this is bad and violates our religious liberty. Let them know how you feel. This is very low-hanging fruit and shouldn’t be able to stand up to a United States Supreme Court decision, but we thought that before.
I don’t know how this slipped by…….but it has to go.
by Jimmy Kinnaird | Aug 26, 2015
- God will use anyone who will be used by Him.
The festival this past weekend would never have happened if it were not for a Deer Creek public school bus driver by the name of Joe Rainbolt. Joe prayed for years as he saw kids get on his bus for their safety and their souls. Watching through his bus mirror he personally saw the need for change in their life, for them to have the good news of Jesus that he had. Joe’s first prayer was for the salvation of our generation of young people. I know this, for Joe has been telling me this for four years. Joe began praying and then doing the things that needed to be done to get Franklin Graham here in Oklahoma City.
Allow me to expand on this, for there are many, many teens and adults who invited others who need Christ to this event. Because of their invitation, the lives of these were changed for eternity. A simple invite is all it took. What if believers in Christ would do this for their own church? Just invite those they know to come with them to their church. The attendance and impact of their own congregation would potentially double overnight. We should all be more like Philip who said to Nathanael about Jesus to just, “Come and see” (John 1:46).
- Perseverance pays off later, and the payoff is much sweeter.
Joe endured the skepticism of envisioning such an event. He endured the closed doors. He kept on praying and knocking on more doors. He personally set up appointments with community leaders, church leaders, denominational leaders and pastors. Some wouldn’t respond; some were lukewarm about the idea and others were supportive. It didn’t matter to Joe because he was just going to do what God put in his heart. They say the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. This pudding is really sweet; about 550 souls sweet, plus the online decisions, plus the Christian community energized, encouraged and trained!
- The BGEA is not about the BGEA.
The Billy Graham Evangelism Association, which put on the Good News Festival, is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. They are not about a Baptist Jesus or a Catholic Jesus or any other kind of Jesus. They are about Jesus, the Son of God. Period. The BGEA is not about themselves. They don’t promote themselves. They promote Christ. We all heard this over and over again from Franklin and from his staff in many ways. But they do promote the local church as well. They have come in and trained the members of churches all over Oklahoma City in personal Bible Study skills, prayer, how to share their faith and how to help new believers to grow. That alone may be the greatest and longest lasting imprint they have made. I know in our church, our staff tried to motivate all of our people to go through the Christian Life and Witness Training. Many did and were blessed. Others just didn’t want to. I know this because the BGEA made it available that anyone who really wanted the training could get it, even online.
- The humility of Franklin Graham
I was privileged this year to hear Mr. Graham in three settings. One of these was in conversation and prayer as part of a small group of ordained clergy. What spoke to me, as I reflect on these meetings, especially on the more personal one is the humble demeanor of Franklin Graham. He recognized that God’s use of him is not because he is the son of Billy Graham. He recognized that he is, by the grace of God, a son of God. God, the Father of Jesus Christ is responsible for who Franklin Graham is and what he can do. He knows that what he does must have the power of God behind it, or it will just be another religious event put on by religious people. There is a certain integrity that is refreshing to me. I hate to say it, but we pastors could use more of that in our lives. I think that we have become so enamored by celebrity that we have lost the power of God in the elevation of man.
- The professionalism of the BGEA local and national staff
Our local BGEA staff did a wonderful job. They never took their eyes off the goal and continually labored and did whatever it took to make this happen. The local staff office was helpful, kind and always supportive. They really did bend over backwards to help in any way. The same can be said for the national staff. Their experience brought credibility to the whole project.
My only wish was that, while we were involved in the Festival, we would have had more involvement. Our church was blessed by this event before the event even happened. We are thankful to all who helped this vision of a festival become a reality.