Nothing Seems the Same

Who is this King of glory?

The Lord, strong and mighty,

the Lord, mighty in battle.

Life up your heads, O ancient doors,

that the King of glory may come in.

Who is this King of glory?

The Lord of hosts,

He is the king of glory!

Psalm 24:8-10 (ESV)

Wow! I braved it and looked at my retirement account today. I kept hearing people say “the market needs a correction.” Well if this isn’t “a correction” then I’d have a hard time understanding what one would look like. I’m so grateful that I’m still employed. I anticipate my every-other-week paycheck will be in my account on Friday. My health insurance is still in place. I can work from home – for real.

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

But . . . my classes. I’m teaching three classes at Point this semester – and one directed study with two students. I have incredible students in all three. Occasionally some need some rather direct encouragement to get it in gear, but they are good kids and I can be direct when needed. They act like they think I have something important to say – and listen in class. Now, because of something totally beyond our control, we are “virtual learners.” That’s not the same, but I will do my best to make sure each of them gets the opportunity to finish well. Some of them are seniors and I will never have them in class again.

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

And . . . thirty-plus students and five faculty members were headed to an incredible learning experience in Italy and Greece over Spring Break. That trip obviously can’t happen. A group of students were headed to Central America to work with Casas por Christos. They were going to build a house for a needy family. That trip obviously can’t happen. There are countless Point students who are athletes and whose schedule is a spring one, not fall. The NAIA has cancelled their season. Some are seniors. Some were on teams that are the best in our conference, and with national rankings. Their seasons are over. Lots and lots of Point students have been preparing for junior and senior recitals, or spring concerts, and a variety of other fine arts related activities. Those events can’t happen. My spiritual formation team – students who help plan things like chapel and other special events – can’t meet. We likely won’t have another chapel service. Will I get to meet with this incredible group of students again?

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

Think about the reality that your last semester in college – one of the best of all the semesters – has come to an abrupt ending. You are required to move out of housing. People who have become your best friends – and who will be life-long friends – are now experiencing “social distancing.” Part-time jobs and ministries are somehow over in an instant. Will graduation even happen other than getting a diploma in their mailboxes? There are countless other moments like this – all of them have in common that they are “nothing like we thought our last semester would be.”

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

In my classes, students have group projects going on. How will we manage to complete those? A number of students at Point are doing internships this semester. How will that work out? Some students who are being asked to leave student housing, may be going home to circumstances that are less than “the best.” Fall 2020 recruitment is in full swing. How will our enrollment management staff figure out what is next? Student life staff are suddenly faced with all sorts of challenges that didn’t exist a few weeks ago. Registration for the Fall 2020 semester is in the middle of its roll out.

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

So far this is sort of “Point focused.” But . . . lots of people who love Point and support Point are facing all kinds of challenges. What do parents, suddenly faced with “on-line learning,” do to cope with the challenge? Some of us are dealing with loved ones who have compromised immunity because of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Some of our great supporters are looking at the stock market and wondering how they can continue to be so gracious to this kingdom outpost called Point University.

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

If you have loved ones in an elder care facility and have been reading the series published in recent issues of The Atlanta Journal Constitution, then you no doubt have great concerns right now. At their best, elder care facilities are challenged, and if the stories told in the AJC are remotely close to the truth, then this may be a particularly stressful time for you. Limitation on visitation, general concern for adequate health care, awareness of the issue in Washington state at the beginning of this crisis, and other related issues can generate great concern.

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

If you have friends and loved ones who unfortunately are in the Georgia prison system (or the prison systems of other states, particularly the south) then you no doubt are nervous. Again, the AJC has published disturbing stories about medical care – and the lack thereof – in the Georgia prison system. Our general population seems to think “out of sight out of mind” is somehow the Christian response to this issue. District attorneys, prosecutors, and judges appear to think the more they send people to prison with severe sentences, the more likely they are to be re-elected. Often Christians, concerned about “law and order” to borrow from a phrase rich in unpleasant and unjust connotations, routinely vote in the name of punishment not justice and mercy.

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

This could go on. If I have left out the area of concern for you – don’t think that was deliberate. My mind is flooded with how the people of God should deal with these new and unexpected challenges.

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

I’m no Pollyanna declaring “don’t worry, be happy” – everything will be okay. Chances are that “everything” – whatever that means – has changed and we must learn to deal with the new realities that are inundating us every minute right now.

But here is what I know. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

May we trust in Him in ways that are new and exciting in these difficult days.

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!

Kingdom Impact

Some of you reading this know that I worship with a small group of believers on Sundays. I have no agenda in terms of being "anti-big, medium, or small church." It's just that a group of people frustrated with their "church experience" asked me if I'd meet with them. After a year or so of pushing back and saying, "no" I finally decided to say "yes."

My personal disdain for the "rules and regulations, let's check the by-laws" approach to church is at rest with this group. We don't have any of those kinds of things. Again, no "anti-organizational structure" on my part - it's just that at least to this point, we haven't needed such.

We do pay small stipends to a couple of people - helping with children's church and leading music - but otherwise we don't pay salaries. I preach most weeks - but don't get paid. That's no "anti-paid ministry spirit" on my part nor is it a complaint. It's just that I have a job and get paid fairly for it - and don't need the group to pay me!

A part of our identity established before we ever met and carefully cultivated over the years is that we want to do more than "just go to church." So some Sundays, we "go and be Jesus" in a place where we can do authentic kingdom ministry. We always have a brief devotion, prayer, and the Lord's Supper - but we spend most of the morning serving.

We have generous people in our group and that, combined with the fact that we don't pay rent and our salary burden is minimal, means that we can give away most of the money given to the Lord through Grace Faith Community - the name we chose for ourselves.

In fact, the reason I am writing this is because it is so easy to make  kingdom impacts on the world in a variety of ways when your identity is to serve, and not be served. Big churches and little churches can do that!

Since the first of the year - Grace has done significant ministry, in the name of Christ, to others. Here is some of what we've done.

• We bought, planted, and staked over 50 trees at Woodland Christian Camp back in February in areas where pine beetles had destroyed much of the forest around the West Camp and Chapel.
• We fed about 50 students dinner at Bread Campus Ministry at Emory University, an activity we do every semester.
• We spent $1400 sending a Point student on a spring break mission trip to Guatemala to help build a house for a needy family.
• We gave $500 to the Fayette County Board of Education to help with student lunch debt for the county school system.
• We gave $500 to the Coweta County Board of Education to help with student lunch debt for the county school system.
• We sorted, packed and stored hundreds of canned goods at One Roof ministry in Newnan recently. 

In addition to that, we have taken care of each other, prayed for each other, and a variety of other things that help create a kind of fellowship that should characterize the church.

Again - none of this is to brag on Grace, nor to be negative about other kingdom approaches. But it does say that it is amazing what can be done in the name of Christ when believers determine that the kingdom of God is here to serve in the name of Jesus - the One who said "I came not to be served, but to serve, and give my life a ransom for all." (Mark 10:45) Many of those who "study the church" think that this model will become more and more important as the boomer generation continues to age and the funds to build huge facilities become harder and harder to find. We started doing this, by the way, before Francis Chan's new book Letters to the Church was published. (It is a very good book I recommend to your reading list!)
One more thing - we meet on most Sundays at the Point University facility in Peachtree City (800 Commerce Drive) at 10:00 a.m.  We would love to have you come visit. 

Presence

A week ago today was Ash Wednesday, 26 February 2020. Depending upon where and how you grew up, Ash Wednesday was an unknown reality, something weird Catholics did, or a meaningful spiritual experience that came around once a year.

I grew up in the context of Ash Wednesday as mostly an unknown experience, but my one Catholic classmate in high school did give up chocolate every year on Ash Wednesday. I don’t recall ever seeing her with ashes on her forehead on this particular day, but she was pretty vocal about the sacrifice of no chocolate until Easter.

While neither Ash Wednesday or Lent are, mentioned in Scripture, they are ancient Christian practices that most likely pre-date church buildings and the like, with which we seem to have no problem. The ideas behind the practice of Ash Wednesday and Lent are deeply embedded in Scripture. In a word, they are about repentance. I would argue that if you were forced to summarize Jesus’ teaching in one word, that one word might need to be repentance. I know Jesus said you could summarize the whole thing in two commandments: love God and love neighbor. But I’m not sure I can hear Jesus say that if first, in the presence the one in whom “all the Fullness was glad to dwell” (Col. 1:19, Kingdom New Testament) I am not struck by my need to repent.

After all, the first words Mark has Jesus saying are “’The time is fulfilled!’ he said; ‘God’s kingdom is arriving! Turn back, and believe the good news.’” (Mark 1:15, Kingdom NT). “Turn back” is a more literal translation of “repent” in this translation.

One of my roles at Point University is to oversee spiritual formation activities. A team of students who work with me helped plan an Ash Wednesday service as we do every year. We had a self-directed service in the courtyard of the Lanier Academic Center. Students, faculty, and staff could come anytime between 11:30 and 12:30 that day. Here’s how it looked.

Scriptures were written on large poster board displays. They include words from God from Matthew 6, Psalm 51, and Isaiah 58. These scriptures were arranged in four different sections. They were given an opportunity to write something down on a note and tape it to a cross we have used in a variety of ways on campus – it isn’t a pretty, shiny kind of cross, but made of old rusty iron and dry, faded wood. They could have ashes placed on their foreheads and were offered the body and blood of Christ in holy communion.

Students from my theology class and from my spiritual formation team served in a variety of ways during this hour-long event. I was privileged to participate at the beginning of the service and then just observe and occasionally help a student, faculty member, of staff member know where the next stop on the journey was.

The most important observation I have about that day is that when you combine creation (we were outdoors), Scripture (we read lots), quietness (I was amazed at how ‘quiet’ it all was without a word from anyone), and ashes (from dust we have come and to dust we shall return) the presence of God can’t be missed! Tom Wright may be on to something when he regularly talks about space, time, and matter!

But that idea is not new. Psalm 19 reminds of that in powerful ways. “The heavens are recounting God’s splendour, the sky is telling of what his hands made.” (19:1, The First Testament)  “Yahweh’s instruction has integrity, bringing life back.” (19:7, The First Testament) “Yes your servant take warning through them, and in keeping them there are great results.” (19:11, The First Testament)

That great psalm ends with what should be the hope of every human alive, “May the sayings of my mouth be acceptable to you, and the murmur of my mind before you, Yahweh, my crag and my restorer.” (19:14, The First Testament)

One student asked me if it was okay to write on the little note card to be taped to the cross that he wanted to give up his “foul mouth.” Of course it was okay! It made the day worth any effort extended.

No matter your faith tradition about Ash Wednesday or Lent – it is hard to think that anything we do that moves us toward the sayings of our mouths and the murmurings of our hearts becoming acceptable to God is anything but a good thing.

We’re only a week into the season of Lent. It isn’t too late to start a journey where space, time, and matter work together in the quietness of the presence of God to bring us closer to Him.

Finding a Voice and Using It

On a cold, rainy Saturday in December, 2018, my family and I drove from Tyrone, Georgia to Montgomery, Alabama. It isn't a bad drive - straight down I 85 for a couple of hours. But it was raining. It was cold. It was the near the end of the semester and I had lots of papers to grade! The whole time driving I kept thinking "Wish I were home."

But we went there to visit the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the Lynching Memorial.(museumandmemorial.eji.org)  Both were sobering opportunities to see a side of our history that often gets overlooked. I remember thinking as we drove home, "Boy, am I glad I came."

Today, on an unusually warm Sunday afternoon in January, 2020, my family and I went and saw the movie Just Mercy. I will admit to thinking, "what a great afternoon for yard work!"The movie is based on a true story from the life of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a movement started to defend death-row inmates in Alabama. Stevenson grew up in Delaware and graduated from Eastern University in Philadelphia and then Harvard Law School. He passed the bar in Alabama and moved south to begin this project.


Christianity Today recently included a very informative interview with Stephenson in its weekly email. (https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/january-web-only/just-mercy-film-bryan-stevenson.html?utm_source=ctweekly-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=16244355&utm_content=691363128&utm_campaign=email) 

(If you read this article - make sure you click the links with all kinds of important information about the level of incarceration we accept in the United States as "normal.")


I sometimes semi-jokingly say if I were 38 and not 68 I'd quit my job and go to law school and find a way to get a job at EJI. Statistics suggest that for every nine people executed, one person has been exonerated.  But it isn't just the death penalty. Here's a convicting paragraph from the CT article cited above:

"The US not only has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, we also have more people locked up than any other country in the history of the world. We also have more jails and prisons than degree-granting colleges and universities. In some areas of the country, there are more people living behind bars than on college campuses. Native Americans, Africans, Hispanics, and Southeast Asians are all grossly overrepresented within our justice system. EJI found that for every nine people executed on death row, one is found innocent and released."

The staggering cost of this stampede - often led by politicians who have has their re-election strategy a "lock them up and throw the key away mentality" - is staggering. Check this out: "The Vera Institute of Justice released a study in 2012 that found the aggregate cost of prisons in 2010 in the 40 states that participated was $39 billion." 

It is hard to know what to do.  Or . . . "how do we find our voice and start using it?" I really can't afford to quit my job and go to law school, but I don't think that means there is nothing to do. While the movie no doubt took some liberty in telling the story, that the county sheriff and prosecuting attorney knew that Walter "Johnny D" McMillan was not the murderer they convicted him of being is not a matter of dispute. But the sheriff kept getting reelected up until very recently, even though the Alabama Supreme Court exposed the injustice that resulted in McMillan's conviction in the early 90s.

I've never been a "one-issue voter." But I'm confident that when the 2020 elections come along, I will carefully look at every person I vote for from state legislators, to U.S. Congressmen, to U.S. Senators, to presidential candidates, as well as all other other local officials. Can you really be "pro-life" and adopt a "lock them up, throw away the key" approach to which laws get passed? Can you really be "pro-life" if you wink at some of the common practices in our judicial systems - such as "threaten an exaggerated sentence and push for a lesser plea deal?" Am I really "pro-life" if I routinely vote for people who really are better described as "pro-birth" but actually not all that concerned about "life beyond the delivery room?"

Obviously I don't think that all law enforcement officials, all court officials, and all elected officials are blatantly unconcerned about justice. And clearly I don't think that no one in prison deserves to be in prison. But if one person is in prison who shouldn't be or one person on death row is executed who actually was wrongly convicted - then I think I have a responsibility to "find a voice and use it."

The Other Side of Childhood

In using the Wizard of Oz story as an analogy, Richard Rohr in his book Falling Upward, suggests that after the experience of his education, he “was surely not in Kansas anymore.”  He goes on to say, “I had passed, like Dorothy, ‘over the rainbow.’”

He also notes, perhaps as a bit of warning to those engaging in becoming educated, “life was much easier on the childhood side of the rainbow.”

David Brooks, a national columnist for the New York Times, in a similar vein of thought, encourages his readers in The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, to think about the great value of a life of significance as compared to a life of mere achievement, even when the achievement is great. For Brooks, the primary distinctive between those “two mountains” upon which we may live is “selfish” versus “selfless.”

This semester we continue our “reboot journey.” Where are those moments when we may need to turn the machine off and restart? And sometimes, where are those moments when we need to do the “factory reset” kind of reboot?

College – especially in the context of a school like Point where we care about faith, we care about learning who we are and how we got here, we care about where we are headed – must be a reboot time in our lives. If you graduate from Point and “are still in Kansas,” then you missed the opportunity God placed right on your front door step. 

This really has little if anything to do with whether you are a better business person, counselor, teacher, criminal justice person, musician, ministry person, or any other skill. Life is about far more than “achievement” in the world of STEM. Life is about who you are and who, through Christ, you can become! Don’t misunderstand that to mean those other areas are unimportant, just that if that’s all that happens in college, you may end up back in Kansas! (No offense to Kansas.)

What if as we begin this new semester together at Point – either in classrooms in West Point or virtually for on-line students or in some combination of both options – we committed ourselves to focus on what we can do this semester that will help us “pass over whatever rainbow” we need to pass over in order to become the person of significance God has called us to be?

After all, Jesus said “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Through our faith in Him and commitment to follow Him, we can “pass over the rainbows” that hold us back and discover a life of “significance, not mere achievement.”

IF we do, we will discover “life on the other side of childhood.”