Sobering Reality

Early Sunday morning (20 September 2015) we heard the news that our good friend, colleague in ministry, and fellow alumnus of Point University, Joey Mullins, died during the night. In some ways it was not all that surprising, given the kind of cancer he had been fighting against; but in other ways utterly shocking because Joey put forth such a great, Christ-like attitude in the battle that you just assumed he would win. Should I ever face such a moment, I pray that I would be as strong as he has been. 

Of course in real terms he did win – but in more temporal terms that awful disease called cancer won. For Diane, he three sons Brandon, Jason and John, and daughters-in-law, grandchildren, brothers and sisters and a ton of friends there is that vacant spot in life once filled with a godly follower of Jesus. 

Vicki knew Joey longer than I did since they grew up together at Central Christian Church in St. Petersburg, Florida where Joey’s father and Vicki’s father were elders and worked with Curt Hess to build a great church in St. Petersburg. When he came to Atlanta Christian College a year behind us, he and I became friends in a kind of friendship that would last a life time. We were actually friends before Vicki and I ever had our first date – but that friendship was so strong for both of us that Joey was a groomsman in our wedding.

Joey and I were on a “youth team” as they were called back then, along with other friends our junior year in college and had lots of fun travelling all over the southeast. When Vicki and I graduated, we both went to graduate school in Cincinnati and a year later, Joey and Diane moved to Ohio and Joey preached at a church not too far from Cincinnati and enrolled in grad school as well. Vicki, Joey, and I often met at Stake-n-Shake for “ACC Alumni” meetings in the shadow of “THE seminary” as they saw themselves!

Our lives took different paths, but both in ministry. Joey served a church in Florida, and then in Bremen, Georgia. He was, in no uncertain terms, a very fine student of Scripture and a very good preacher. No church he served ever realized what a great person they had chosen as their preacher. While he was at Bremen, our paths crossed again because we both cared deeply about Woodland Christian Camp. Joey was born to be a camp leader and his presence at Woodland made my being a program director a piece of cake! I don’t know how many years we worked together at Woodland, but every time I was with him I was reminded of the blessing of a good friend.

Joey eventually became a leader in a group focused on better child care for poverty stricken children in Georgia. My youngest daughter, Bethany, worked with that organization for a while. He was greatly respected by his colleagues and his passion for being Jesus to children caught in the most difficult of circumstances was amazing.

Even though he didn’t spend the last part of his life in a local church as a preacher, folks at Bethany Christian Church in Carrollton where his brother-in-law Alan Howard was the preacher and later at First Christian Church in Carrollton were blessed by his ministry. He believed in the local church and was committed to sharing in its ministry.

During this extended period of battling with cancer, Joey wrote and posted some amazing blogs on a website called Caring Bridge. I – along with Vicki – followed those posts religiously. Back in the spring I talked with him about speaking for a class I facilitate at Point called “Healthy Congregations.” I wanted him to come and talk to the young men and women in the class – future kingdom leaders – about how to minister to critically ill people. In that conversation Joey told me he was putting those posts into book form and that the book would be published. The title of the book is Hezekiah’s Maple: One Man’s Journey with Cancer and Hope. It is available on Amazon.com. He was excited about coming to my class – and I was excited about what he could say to my students. I will have to purchase them a copy of the book – it is too important a subject to ignore.

Joey was just a year younger than I am. It isn’t all that unusual to see people in our age category to be listed alphabetically in the metro section of the AJC under the heading “Obituaries.” Yet it is still a sobering reality to think that such a good friend, a colleague in ministry, and just all around great guy is no longer among us.

I’ve been praying for Joey’s healing since the first day I learned of his cancer diagnosis. We saw him and Diane at the Cancer Treatment Center of America in Newnan several times – on one occasion delivering a Point University baseball cap he wanted.  Vicki regularly sent cards and notes – including the “40 cent” reminder of a childhood joke. Since early Sunday morning, I’ve been praying for Diane, her boys and their families, and so many people who have this idea that someone important is missing and no longer among us. I think about all the families served by Georgia Family Connection Partnership. They have lost a great advocate. I think about all the kids yet to come to Woodland Christian Camp who won’t get to experience a week of camp with him.

All of that is deeply saddening. But I also must think of our great promise of a day coming when the kingdom Christ inaugurated and in which Joey faithfully served will be fully consummated and the children of God will be fully revealed. Paul says that so great is that hope that even creation itself longs for it (Romans 8:18-25). Joey now knows that text better than I – but I suspect he might think creation at Woodland is on the verge of shouting about God’s glory, knowing that among the redeemed are Joseph Clay Mullins.

Vicki and I are sending a gift to Woodland this morning in memory of Joey. I’d love to encourage you to do the same.

God Forgive Us

As a follower of Jesus, I am very comfortable with the idea that Jesus Himself expressed when He told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36) That statement was no effort to relinquish his role as King, for he would follow that with a word to Pilate that too few of His followers remember, “You say correctly that I AM a king.” (18:37)

In the world in which He lived, there were religious people who were Sadducees who thought going to bed with the government (Rome) was the shortcut to success and prosperity. And there were Pharisees who thought that some hyper-legalistic view of the Law was the only way to please God. Put those two fatally flawed ideas together and you have God’s Messiah dying on a cross.

Some things never change. Headline news on the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for today – Saturday, 19 September 2015 – reads “Georgia ready to execute woman.”  Kelly Gissendaner – the woman Georgia is ready to execute – is not God’s Messiah. I get that and am not even remotely confused about that. But a boatload of people who claim to follow God’s Messiah are comfortable sitting by silently as the state executes her.

The short version of her story is that she arranged the death of her husband in 1997. Her partner in that crime worked through   a plea agreement, she went to trial. She was found guilty and sentenced to death. A host of complications – not unusual in death penalty cases – has brought us to this moment where, according to the AJC, a window of opportunity for the state to execute her has been opened for the state between noon September 29 and noon October 6. The state’s normal pattern is to execute such people on the first day of opportunity at 7:00 p.m.

Gissendaner is not shy in admitting that she arranged her husband’s death. But in prison, she has become a committed follower of Jesus and, according to news reports, become a very influential person among Georgia prisoners to actually take advantage of opportunities to reform their approaches to life. Any government official with a modicum of a brain would look at her story and think that perhaps the Georgia prison system would be more redemptive and more reform oriented if we allowed the Kelly Gissendaner kinds of people to continue living and being influential.

But that is exactly the outcome when followers of Jesus think that either going to bed with the government is the key to success or that being hyper-legalistic about “the Law” is the only option.  We crucify Jesus, execute Paul before he gets the chance to be the person God called him to be, and we support the state in its unjust decision to execute Kelly Gissendaner. We do that while patting ourselves on the back about our sense of holiness based upon “following the letter of the Law.”

Please.

A very respected and successful defense attorney in Georgia recently told me that the most difficult places in Georgia to address the issue of justice and redemption were places where evangelical Christians were the majority voters when it comes to electing judges and district attorneys. What sadder indictment of people who claim to follow Jesus could there be? Like the Sadducees of Jesus’ world, we think government trumps God; like the Pharisees, we think life is all about “the letter of the Law.” Put those two things together and we execute Kelly Gissendaner without even a flush of conscience.

For a number of years now the state government of Georgia has been elected by people who, by and large, would be in the category of “evangelical Christians.” The governor will sleep well because he doesn’t have the power to commute sentences. That is little more than the political claptrap that creates the challenges of our age. But he is elected by “evangelical Christians” who somehow have come to the conclusion that justice and redemption aren’t a part of the Jesus story.

God forgive us.

Georgia will likely execute Kelly Gissendaner. That will be a sad day. Her guilt is not a matter of dispute. Apparently the idea of redemption, renewal, and restoration is.

God forgive us.

Handbooks

n a little bit of friendly harassment with our director of human resources at Point University, I made  an edit suggestion for the employee policy handbook, followed with a parenthetical “and this coming from the guy who hates handbooks.”

She noticed that little friendly harassment and replied, “Don’t bad mouth handbooks – they make great doorstops.” Literally or figuratively, her statement is true. In the complicated, self-protecting world in which we live, we need doorstops.

One of the really interesting books I read this summer was Church Refugees, by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope. Packard is a sociologist who has written a lot in the area of church decline and Hope is working on a doctorate in sociology and has done extensive research in the area of religion. The subtitle for the book, which gives a great clue as to what it is about, says “Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with church but not their faith.” 

One interesting comment from a formerly de-churched person who had come back to church in the form of a very small Protestant congregation gets to the heart of the doorstop issue in church: “At the last church I went to before this one, they just seemed to put up more and more walls and barriers. It got to the point that just to have a simple meal in the church with some friends or a Bible study, we had to go through three committees. It just wasn’t worth it anymore.” (pp. 54, 55)

In response to that comment and others like it, Church Refugees says “They weren’t frustrated by the existence of structure; they were frustrated when they felt the structure actively prevented them from doing the work they felt called to do.” And then, in explanation of why so many church are in decline, “They’re walking away because they’re convinced that the structures and bureaucracy of the church are inhibiting their ability to serve God.” 

Depending on where the doorstop is placed, it can do different things. It can, if placed in a certain position, prevent the door from opening. But if placed in a different location, it can keep the door from banging against the wall when the door is opened. In most cases, the doorstop is functioning well in the second of those options, not the first. Of course there are times you may not want the door open and the first example would be useful – but that’s the exception, not the rule.

Handbooks and bureaucracies are much the same. Especially in life and ministry in church. Of course there are times when the doorstop needs to keep the door shut, but most of the time you just want to make sure the wall isn’t getting banged up when the door opens. 

But according to Church Refugees, and confirmed by my own personal observations, it can be easy to let the doorstop shut the door to ministry, opportunity, service, and kingdom advancement. Or to use their language, doorstops can “inhibit our ability to serve God.”

Without handbooks, manuals, procedural policies, etc. most organizations, including churches, would end up in chaos. But the smart organizations – including churches – will always figure out where to put the doorstop! When that happens, the “DONES” will become fewer and fewer.

That’s a good thing!