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The Leading Edge 3

This morning, Wednesday, we begin the last day of  “The Leading Edge”.  We were late last night talking about the major issues that divide the Church and hope to make a recommendation for the 100 largest churches at next general conference that might allow us to more effectively do the real work of the Church, bringing people to Christ and serving the world.  I went to a seminar yesterday with Mike Slaughter;  it was on stewardship.  His blue collar Church in  Tipp City Ohio has given over one million dollars to Darfur, even with the decline in this area fueled by the auto industry.  But he did say they needed new Audio Visual equipment badly but could not afford them at this time.  He had a lot of great ideas how a Church can focus on the importance of generosity, generosity that reflects one’s faith in Christ.  One idea I have long believed,  generosity is a spiritual gift, coming from the same place as Love, Joy, and Peace.  Also spent two hours with John Ed Mathison from Alabama.  He led the same Church, Frasier Memorial, for 36 years.  He was talking about longevity and effectiveness in the same Church.  I hope I can, at least come close, lead First Mansfield effectively for 20 plus years as well.   One thing he said I especially remember is the important idea  that churches must examine themselves regularly, as must their pastors, and then change and grow as needed to continue to be effective. The church can’t, and the pastor can’t just maintain things,  they must continue to be innovative in reaching the world for Christ in faith and mission.This is exactly what we are doing this year with our “Reveal” survey, strategic planning, and “Rethink” Church that begins next week. I have been both inspired and challenged by this amazing event.  Rhonda, also for the first time, met with Pastor’s wives form the large churchs;  met with Lynn Hybels, the spouse of Bill Hybels.  I know she was encouraged a great deal.   Hope to be back in Mansfield this evening if the thunderstorms don’t hold off.

The leading Edge 2

It is early Tuesday morning as we are preparing for the second day of this gathering of the Sr Pastors of the 100 largest attended Methodist Churches.  It is exciting to gather with these leading pastors,  Adam Hamilton who has written many materials some of our classes use, Mike and Carolyn Slaughter who put together Transformation Journal  our Bible reading program, Kirbyjohn Cauldwell who gave the invocation for George Bushes inauguration, Mark Beeson who was picked as one of the top 100 most influential pastors in the US.  As we connect, pray, and fellowship, we are talking about ways to revitalize the United Methodist Church we all love.  Three of the new topics we will be looking at is how we might come along the side of our Bishops to help them be successful, encourage and help direct our seminaries more effectively, and how we might revitalize smaller neighboring Churches who might be struggling.  There is a tangible sense of the importance of what we are doing, especially as we have been made aware that last year the Methodist Church lost 73,000 people in average worship attendance nationally. Something has to be done.  Maybe God will use these 100 Churches that have found a way to reverse this trend in our own communities. I anticipate a great day today as we look at ways each of our Churches can be more effective in our mission.  I expect to learn a lot.  On a side note, I am once again proud of our Church family.  This weekend you gave 11,000 in a special offering to help build The House of Community and Blessing United Methodist Church in Mexico.  With the 9,000 we already have this will be enough to match their gifts and complete the Church.  As we expand our Church in the Mansfield area, God is using us to help expand the Church in the Matamoros area.  Thanks be to God and Thanks for being one of the most generous churches in North America.

The Leading Edge

Monday through Wednesday of this week Rhonda and I will be at “The Leading Edge” an event for the Senior Pastors of the 100 top attended United Methodist Churches in the Nation.  This is the second gathering for this Event led by Adam Hamilton the Senior Pastor of Church of the Resurrection the largest Methodist Church in the world.  The purpose of these three days is for each of us to encourage, support, and give ideas for ministry to one another.  Large Church pastors very seldom get together, and it certainly seldom happens nationally.  It will be a blessing to us all and hopefully we will bring some of those blessings back to our individual Churches.  But this event is also designed to be a core piece of revitalizing the United Methodist Church as a whole around three major ideas; Worship, new worship services and churches,   Mission and its expansion locally and around the world, and recruiting and encouraging new young pastors to lead the Church into the future.  First Methodist has long been about these God given goals, but in this last year we have emphasized them even more, preparing to add new worship services, supporting the creation of a new Methodist Church in the Mansfield area, expanding our mission (we are excited to help build a Church in Mexico and wheelchairs will be on the way there on Thursday) and we are actively pursuing ways to recruit and train new young pastors.  Please be in prayer for me as I represent you in one of the most significant and exciting moments in the life of our Church.  In many ways the future of the Methodist Church is on the line.  It is especially meaningful because my twin brother,  Steve Ramsdell will be representing First Waco at this event as well.  We will certainly be the only twin brothers, or even brothers in the top 100 Methodist Churches.  I will be blogging each day from Jacksonville Florida updating you on what is happing.  I have high expectations.

thoughts on Wineskins

       Jesus said that we have to put new wine in new wine skins.  If we use the old ones they will burst.  He offers so much that is new, fresh, abundant, full,meaningful.  There is nothing better than life in Christ, both walking with God and living in the new way He teaches us.  Why is it so hard?

       I think it is hard because it is so difficult to give up the old.  When someone tells me they are going to start coming to Church and haven’t been.  i know it is going to be hard.  They are going to have to give up what they normally do on Sunday morning; or at the very least find some other time to do that.  As I write this it is 6:30 Saturday morning.  I am doing this as part of a devotional time.  But it is taking a concerted effort to not turn the TV on and flip from fox news and CNN to see what’s going on in the world;  not that the information I will gain is going to help me or anyone else.

Our Habits often own us, control us, dominate us, even own us more than our faith, values, and beliefs.  Addictions, Television, food, ETC.  Those habits become comfortable, known, familiar, patterns we easily fall prey to that often prevent the new from taking hold in our lives, things we do that control our future before God can give us a fuller one.  Can I find time to pray and connect with God.  What do I give up?  Can I find time to go to Church consistently?  What do I give up?  Can I find time to connect to my wife, family, friends, those important to me?  What do I give up?  Can I find time to serve, bless, love, and make a difference in the lives of others.  What do I give up?  If we did a careful inventory most of us would find our lives are full of things that really don’t count

A photo of Biblical wine skin.

 for very much, things that do not reflect our faith in Christ, or even who we really are.  Where does it begin?  What are we really willing to give up?

When I purchased my motorcycle a few years ago I made a very easy decision.  My little car made its way into the driveway.  The motorcycle gets the coveted garage spot.  What do we really care about?  To make room for the new that Jesus is calling us to, we have to begin moving out the old.

Thoughts on the New Heavens and New Earth

I got a great question from this weekends message on The New Heavens and the New Earth: 

“When you say God’s people are sealed against spiritual harm and will overcome in the end;  will this mean that everyone will be free of temptation and sin?  Will we live freely with no desire to sin or to break His law;  I just can wrap my mind around a world like that!”. 

The idea of the seal is how God marks us as His in this life as we wait for the new heavens and new earth. This mark is a spiritual seal that makes us fully His no matter what happens to us in this world;  cancer, rejection, martyrdom, Etc;  God will fully restore us to everlasting life.  In other words the believer will always win in the end.  This seal is opened as the Lamb’s book of life by Jesus Christ Himself,  and the names of all God’s people are in that sealed book.  Now the idea of living in an eternal kingdom with Christ that has no sin, death, or temptation, that I can’t wrap my mind around either.  It is a life beyond what defines too many of us and a new life defined by living as the redeemed;  the idea of living the restored garden of Eden, remembering that back in that time they had yet to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the first time they saw God after they disobeyed and ate, they hid, realized they were naked or exposed, and blamed each other and even God for the situation.  Imagine a restored garden of Eden; where God is accessible and we love each other without regard to any selfishness, fear, envy, jealousy, misunderstandings, etc.  I can’t imagine it, but I yearn for it.

thoughts on Bob

Monday morning I led the memorial service for Bob.  Bob was my friend and the friend of many of us.  Rhonda and I both ate at his home and went out with him and Paulette on occasion.  I went with Bob on  a Mexico mission trip, we drove together for 12 hours with a van full of college kids.  Bob worked with our homeless ministry, had a heart of compassion for the least, the last, and the lost. He cried as he served a child with Spina Bifida when she got her first wheel chair and stayed connected to her.  One of the things Bob enjoyed doing in our Church was standing in the Narthex and looking for people out of place, new folks he could help feel welcomed and guide to resources if they needed it.  Bob loved good food and new adventures as well as his grown children.  I did the wedding for two of them.  He loved Paulette and his life.  And yes, Bob deeply loved God and God certainly loved him.  But in the last few years of his life, possibly precipitated by a job loss some years ago, alcohol began to win. I don’t think any of us know the exact date when he lost control, Bob probably didn’t either.  Bob lost his family, his home, his car, and found himself homeless for the last year or so.  He died in a storage building in Arlington, where he was living.  He was found three days later.  And even here he attended and helped at the Salvation Army Church in the area.  He still loved God and God loved him.  But alcohol, even though it never stole his heart,  stole his life.  At the service we celebrated Bob’s life,  grieved the last few years of our and his helplessness,  as well as his death, and trusted Him into the hands of an Amazing Grace God.  As a pastor I have seen this before.  I am not a fan of alcohol;  it has too many victims,  Bob, his family, his friends, those he served and could have still served, and His Church.

Questions about Heaven

I had a couple good questions asked about “The Rapture” message especially related to 1Thessalonians chapter 4. 

 ”The scripture seems to imply that people who have died are just dead, and will be raised to heaven only at the time of Christ’s return.  Yet we all seem to believe, and state, that our deceased loved ones have gone to heaven and wait for us there.  Do our souls after death just go into some limbo state?  Or do our souls, as believing Christian’s, immediately go to be with God?

The Bible tells us that “To be absent from the Body is to be at home with the Lord!”  (2 Corinthians 5:8)  Thessalonians is talking instead about the great day of the Lord, when God redeems all His Church into His eternal Kingdom, dead and living, through the resurrection,  meaning when we die our Spirit is lifted to God and then waits for the day of the resurrection of the Body and the transformation of God’s people and God’s Church (sin and death done).  When Jesus died, His spirit immediately was lifted to God but 3 days later He experienced a bodily resurrection.   In Matthew 16:3,4 we have Jesus meeting with Elijah and Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration, two men that had died long before, and yet their spirits had been in heaven, too waiting for the full resurrection.  Jesus also tells the story of Lazarus, the rich man, who, while in hell looks up into heaven and sees Abraham in “God’s bosom”    The Bible speaks often of the spirit/soul in each person.  In Thessalonians the word “Sleep”  is used, a word often used for the death of a Christian meaning the Body is “Dead, asleep” but the spirit is still alive.  This has been the belief of almost every Protestant Church since the reformation, and I believe, the clear belief of the early Church. The spirit that God created and placed in each person is not going to remain in a grave until The Rapture, nor do I believe is capable of remaining in a grave, but will be reunited with the Body at the last day.  This is the purpose of redemption and salvation that Jesus already walked through for us.

The Picture is that Jesus comes back to earth with those who had ”been asleep” meaning their bodies are dead, and often dust, but their spirits are with him in the place prepared as John 14 tells us. Then the resurrection takes place, a transformation “Like unto His glorious body”.  God’s purpose since the garden has been to restore what had been lost This calls for the full resurrection of body as well as the soul which happens  for the Church at the point of the rapture. God will have His Church and will not lose His people.  The same God that created the earth will recreate it.

Revelation and Dispensationalism

I received a question basically asking me what I think of Dispensationalism.  This is a huge question.  For me to be able to answerat all I have enclosed a “classic” dispensational Chart.  Dispensationalism divides history both Biblical and Kingdom up into dispensations, with God often dealing differently with people during each dispensation.  For many who divide history up in dispensations we are now in the Church or grace age.  Some will also take the Church age, the last 2,000 years, and divide it up as well, with periods in Church history defined by the seven letters to the seven churches in asia, most who do this say we are now in the Laodicean Church period, the lukewarm Church.    But for those who structure salvation history by dispensations you can have many different divisions, names, and causes for that dispensation. There is the dispensation of innoncence or the time in the garden of Eden.  There is the dispensation before Noah’s flood, and then the dispensation of promise after.  There is the dispensation of the law, or Israel.  Included in dispensationalism is the age of a tribulation, a milliniual reign, Etc.  For the dispensationalist there are sucessive periods in history with each defined by a particular covenant with God, law is one,  grace is another.  This doctrine was originally defined by a Scottish pastor in the Bretheren movement named John Darby over 150 years ago.  Classic dispensationalists separate the Church from Israel and believe that God will keep Old Testament promises to Israel  as a nation, and that the Church has a separate line of grace that defines it.  The key componentof dispensationalism is that one day there will be a milliniual reign on earth, one thousand years, where Christ and His followers will rule the world from Jerusalem.  But again, there are huge divergences in beliefs and breakdown in dispensational teaching.  In recent years people lie Hal Lindsay and Tim LaHay have championed dispensational teaching.  Dispensationalists almost always believe in a 7 year tribulation preceded by a rapture of the Church and concluded by the 1000 year millenium, then Christ returns to judge the living and the dead and a new heavens and a new earth begins.  I will seek to address some of this in upcoming messages.  Now what do I think?  When people have tried to put God in a box they have almost always been wrong.  The religious leaders of Israel did this when they defined their understanding of the messiah and when He came they missed Him.  God is a God of surprises. What a surprise that He would die for us to save us.  What a surprise that He would deliver His people through a man named Moses.  Could we find a more unlikely character than Paul to be the apostle to the gentiles.  Who would have guessed that 2,000 years would go be before Christ has come when the early Church thought His coming was immanent.  I belive in Christ’s return one day.  I believe that one day there will be a new heaven’s and a new earth with no more mourning, crying or pain, a place where Christ is the light of that place.  I believe God will be faithful to His followers and will not lose one.  I belive that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved and that God loves me and I love God.  I believe God is a God of grace but I also believes He will one day judge those that turn their back on Him.  I believe in heaven, the resurrection, and that life is eternal.  Maybe dispensationalism is the way to understand the Bible, I have a tendency to think not and that God wishes we spent more time worshiping Him and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ rather than trying to figure out the future.  Again, I will say more about this in the messages to come.  I think Dispensationalism is fascinating and sincere people for that last 150 years have tried valiantlyto break down the Bible is more understandable ways.  Jesus did not do this as a teacher and neither did Paul, so maybe we go to far.  As we walk through Revelation together I hope we can come together on the Biblical truths that save us and define us, as well as understand the amazing time in history we live in.  What do I know for sure.  Jesus Christ will return to the earth one day.  God’s people will be separated from those who are not.  There will come a judgement.  The earth will end one day and God will bring a new one.  We will see Him face to face and not look through the mirror dimly one another.  No one can pluck us from His hand.  And as Peter tell us, “God is long suffering, not willing that any perish but all inherit everlasting life”.

Revelation

This weekend I began a message series on Revelation, the most misunderstood and misused book of the Bible. It was not written to just foretell the future, it was written to encourage the Christian. If I am not encouraged in the reading, then I either am reading it wrong, don’t understand who Jesus really is, or I have yet to enter into a saving relationship with a loving savior whose full character is not complete without the picture of Him shown in Revelation. Yes Jesus is compassionate and gentle, He died for our sins, was raised from the dead, teaches us how to live, but He is also Lord and King: “In His right hand He held seven stars; and out of His mouth came a sharp two edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining its strength, and when I saw Him, I feel at His feet as a dead man. And Jesus laid His right hand on me, saying, Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore and I have the keys of death and hell”! (Revelation 1:16-18)