Seventeen82

  I live in a house with four kids, a wife, a dog, and have a rabbit and eleven chickens outside with plans for more creatures in the future. One of my goals with all that outdoor wildlife is to be self-sustaining as well as to teach our kids about the value of life and what needs to happen for their food to get to the table. I am a frustrated Agrarian in many ways. I’d give my left arm for more land and tractors and all the money that would take. It also provides me with something to keep my time full and gives me an experience that is not-ministry related, a stress-reliever of sorts. Yet out of all that something that can be said is that it means that I am never alone. There is always someone, or some animal, keeping me company. My children are young teenagers and older youngins. They have baseball, basketball, karate, and now driving and work to do. Being by myself is not a common occurrence, in fact it is a little unsettling when no one is around. However, for many people in ...

A controversy which has sparked again in Reformed and Confessional circles surrounds the question about who is allowed to speak from the pulpit, or a lectern, in the worship service of Christ’s Church. Is it Ministers only? Are Elders allowed to do so? How about Deacons? Or unordained men? What about women and children? Who exactly can, and why, and why it matters is going to be the main topic of this essay, but before we get into the technical details there are a couple bigger questions that should be answered first. Those inquires center around the nature of authority as well as the subject of what exactly is going on in worship on the Lord’s Day. Both of those need resolved before we get into the meat of the matter. We’ll open with the latter one. What is taking place on the Lord’s Day that makes it special and unique in a Church’s life? Part of the reason why this conversation even takes place is because there is confusion about the 4 th Commandment. The uncertainty exists...

  I've been thinking a lot about communication recently, particularly with the regards to the irony that we are more connected than ever before and yet we are worse communicators than we've ever been. I've heard it argued that this is because we are too busy to actually take the time to think about what the best way is to communicate with other people. And I agree. However, I think there are several other reasons why we struggle to communicate despite having countless media in which to do it.  First, I think most of us are overly consumed with ourselves and the lives of those we think are dependent upon us. We have unprecedented opportunities and choices before us every day. As a result, we have more responsibility than ever as we wade through these innumerable decisions. This necessarily causes us to spend the majority of our energy weighing all the options and making decisions that bygone generations either took for granted or didn't have.  Second, I think we are far ...

                             2020 was a different year for all of us. A previously unheard-of virus spread across the globe, killings thousands and functionally shutting down entire societies. For the church, the Covid-19 virus provided its own unique challenges. For many of our churches, an adequate response to the virus required an overhaul of the way we’ve always done things. Of course, this shift led to extensive online discussion about the ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ of worship in the midst of pandemic. One of the most important questions to arise out of these discussions is the question of worship. More specifically, is online worship truly worship as defined by the Scriptures?             Before I attempt to answer that question, I believe that we can make a few important distinctions that clarify this discussion. First, there...

Isaac Watts felt as if the Lord’s songbook was insufficient to teach young and old about the work of Jesus Christ, that they needed to be “updated” to get with the times. He is reported to have complained to his father on many occasions that the psalms were dull and lacked life, and it showed in how people sang them. In his estimation this was because they didn’t clearly enough proclaim Christ. To remedy this he set about writing new hymns and, again in his mind, updating the word of God to fit with the more full revelation of the New Testament.  Watts’ understanding of the psalms was, of course, hogwash , if not something even less pleasant.  This time of year likely his most well known composition is Joy to the World , a meditation on Psalm 98. It is mesmerizing to consider how daft Watts must have been not to see the fullness of Jesus Christ expressed in this portion of Holy Scripture. For centuries these series of psalms (96-98) were understood as speaking to the establish...

One of the most challenging stories for me in the Bible is the one is found in Luke 10:38-42.   In it, Luke tells us of an encounter with the three main characters: Mary, Martha, and Jesus.   Mary and Martha were sisters and the hostesses of a party. Jesus was the invited guest. Martha had a gift of service which she put to work. Mary did not have that same gift. She simply hung out at Jesus’s feet, learning from him. Martha was distracted with serving, and Mary was focused on Jesus, leaving Martha to complain to Jesus, for she needed and wanted Mary’s help.    Jesus’s response to her complaint was not what she wanted nor expected to hear. She wanted him to tell Mary to get up and help her. But, Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (verse 41-42). I can imagine Martha saying, with jaw dropped, “What? I’m trying to serve you. Is t...

We are living in some wild and crazy times, and we all know it. I haven’t spoken with anyone in the last 6 months who thinks otherwise. It also seems that we are all asking the same question: How are we supposed to live with everything going on?    We have heard a load of answers to this question from all kinds of different voices. (Some are better than others.) As a Christian pastor, I am convinced, however, that the only voice Christians should listen to is that of God, which we find in the Bible.    The Apostle Peter, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives us some really helpful instruction in his first letter on how we are to live at all times, but especially during those times of great uncertainty and confusion. I have identified 7 particular things we should be doing right now. Here they are.    1.       Trust the Lord Jesus with Our Lives (1 Peter 1:3-12)  – The first and most important thing any Christi...

                Tensions are high. For Americans, one of the most highly volatile elections of our time is quickly approaching. For Christian’s, there remains a significant amount of uncertainty concerning the future of the American church and of our religious freedom. For many of us, it has become increasingly difficult to decide where we stand as both political parties seem to drift further and further from basic Christian principles, begging the question, “how should we interact with politics in a secular society?”             As we approach the celebration of the protestant reformation on Saturday, there are, I think, a number of similarities that are worth our consideration as we ask ourselves how we should interact with a politically dominant culture. While there are notable differences between 1517 and 2020, there are a surprising number of similarities. In ...

I want to begin this post with a confession: I struggle with self-centeredness occasionally. Ok, you got me, I struggle with it a lot. That should come as no surprise to you or anyone else reading this post. You know that I am no different than you. You are also well aware that we both struggle with self-centeredness. Like the Apostle Paul, we fight the fleshly temptation to honor ourselves rather than God (Rom. 7:15-19). This is true for us even after our hearts have been transformed by the gospel of grace in Christ. I don’t know about you, but my self-centeredness is periodically seen in my attitude before, during and after corporate worship. This was true before I became a pastor, and sadly it’s still true. (Shh, don’t tell anybody. Pastors are supposed to be super-spiritual.) There are times when I don’t want to get out of bed, don’t want to get dressed, don’t want be around people, don’t want to sing the selected songs, don’t want to lead the prayers, and certainly d...

A term that has grown in popularity among counselors and in psychological textbooks is gaslighting . One hears it on TV, reads it in print, and sees it used in any number of contexts.  Gaslighting is the attempt to create a false reality which forces another person to accept or do something that they under normal psychological circumstances would never do. This term originates from a mid-20th century film (itself based on an earlier stage play) where the protagonist successfully convinces his wife, and others, that she is crazy by slowly dimming the lights and then denying it is happening, eventually leading to her being committed to a mental institution.  Gaslighting is wicked and destructive.  Yet, this is the way much discourse in the church and society at-large operates. Sometimes this shows up in passive aggressive attempts to motivate decision makers to move in the direction desired by the instigator, but usually it is a reactive action of a party trying to appease ...

  Battlefield             I am convinced that music is one of the greatest gifts God has given to us. In music we find joy, happiness, hope, and excitement. Music makes us feel things that mere words often cannot. Music, in all its various forms, is important for the soul. This is one of the reasons, I believe, that God has called us to worship through music.             A number of years ago now, a Christian hip-hop artist called KB released the song “Open Letter.” In this song, he describes these letters that he has received from various people coming to his concerts. They wrote to him about how encouraging his concerts has been. But, more than that, each letter sought something more of him. In the first letter, a girl named Ashley writes to him, telling him about her struggle with sin, singleness, and homosexual longing. As she finishes her letter, she pleads with ...

The children of Jeremiah and Nancy Brown, expelled from Forsyth County, Georgia, in 1912.   (Credit: Charles Grogan) It was in the early 90s. I was working full-time at Delta Air Lines and taking seminary classes at a small, inner-city, Bible College – Seminary, ministry of the Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship, called the Atlanta School of Biblical Studies. Along with five others, I was enrolled in Dr. Bill Iverson’s Systematic Theology class. Bill would come up for several weekends (Friday night and Saturday classes) per semester from Miami. One particular weekend was special for so many reasons. Bill had a friend who owned a large, multi-room, house in the North Georgia mountains, and he proposed that this particular weekend we would have a retreat there for our classwork.   So, off we went. The “we” was myself; Tim, a young white accountant; Katherine, a 30-something year old black lady from rural Louisiana; her future husband, Doug, a white brother from upstate Ne...