2013 at Aspen Ridge

I’ve been preaching my vision for this year for a couple months now it seems.  I see Aspen Ridge Church as a group of people invading their world like a good virus - for Jesus Christ. Call it 'the long tail'. Call it 'the long arm'. Sunday services are for edification, worship, and encouraging one another.  I’m hope I’m not being too specific on my expectations but I’d love to see the halls, classrooms and worship center alive with interaction on Sunday mornings - discussions about seeds you've planted and conversations you've had during the week. I envision a church where we can’t wait to get to church to talk amongst ourselves of God’s faithfulness. I think 2013 is not about exciting new programs we’ve come up with or sermon series that bring people in off the streets. I think it’s about you and me being the church all week long.  Maybe this is too much to ask, but I don’t think so.  God is calling a people to himself who are committed to Him and the gospel in a shallow, self-centered, entertainment deadened generation.  He is still calling out a people for himself and He is using Aspen Ridge.  If not - no matter how big or small we are - we ought to close shop!  I refuse to look at size or money as the bottom line for success. Lets each one trust God to expand the tent poles of our lives and let God worry about expanding our church.   Meanwhile - ‘The Bible’ is the book of the month for March!  Let’s get at it!  It all starts this Sunday at church & Sunday night on the History Channel!

A modern parable

Once upon a time there was a business called ‘Blockbusters’.  It majored in renting blockbuster movies to the public - the bigger the better. One day little red boxes started popping up. Netflix followed. Many of the movies they listed weren’t well known. They had discovered a simple fact - there was more money to be made from lots of lesser known films that appealed to smaller segments of the public than from Blockbusters.  They were more efficient too in their nooks & crannies and by the US mail! Blockbusters soon went out of business.  Big hits & big names were the head but it had a very long tail of lesser stars that won the day. Imagine a dragon. The church is a lot like Blockbusters. We try to attract the public to come to us. Our big programs and great preaching is the head.  But stadiums don’t fill to hear George Beverly Shay sing and a gaggle of big name stars share their stories, and Billy Graham preach a sermon. Not any more. The world isn’t interested at best, and downright antagonistic at worst, toward the gospel nowadays or so it seems. Do we circle the wagons and hunker down for the siege? Or do we become ‘the long tail’ of evangelism where each one of us takes the gospel into our world as we listen and help people talk their way into the kingdom.  We are not ashamed of the gospel. We respect it most highly, highly enough not to present it for ridicule. We will boldly pray, serve and question our way into a person’s heart with the love that we carry into a hurting world.  A survey of 10,000 people found: 80% of new people came to church because you invited them - only 6% because they like the pastor; only 5% because they like the Bible study teacher; only 3% because of programs.  You see, we are most like Jesus when we are being the church not going to church!  You are the long arm of Aspen Ridge Church or is that ‘the long tail’?  You are God’s means to spread His love around in the nooks and crannies of life.

Cardiograms and God

I was having a ‘cardiogram’ (it’s a long story, I’m fine).  The cardiologist and I watched my heart on the monitor as it methodically and energetically thumped away. I was like a child in a candy store. ‘What’s that?’  Why is that bouncing like that? She patiently explained.  We both agreed that the heart is a wonderful, powerful piece of work.  I just laid it out, ‘Wow! I gotta say that I’m in God’s camp on this,’ I said.  ‘So am I.’ she responded. A little later I was chattering about the human genome - how they used to say that it was 85% evolutionary waste but now they have found that as far as they can tell, at least 65% of our DNA has a functioning role.  ‘One more evidence that our bodies were designed, I state triumphantly’.  I discovered that her book club had read ‘HeLa’ too and recommended ‘Unbroken’ for their enjoyment. “Unbroken” is not only a story of courage but of a man who finds Jesus Christ as his ultimate reason for living (written by a biographer who simply records the facts)! Just planting seeds - bringing God into the conversation wherever I go.  The long arm of Aspen Ridge Church.

An inconvenient adventure

My son and I were on our way to a hunting expedition.   We were stopped at a small town gas station in Illinois, in the middle of the night.  The trailor had blown a fuse and we had lost our tail lights.  As he went through the fuses looking for the bad apple he talked out loud. ‘It’s not this one,’ he said as he peered over a flashlight. As we neared the end of the fuses in the fuse box he spoke again, ‘God, I could use some help finding this fuse,’ he said.   Almost immediately a man and his son walked out of the shadows. After engaging in small talk the man said, ‘Have you thought of looking under the hood? There is often a fuse box there as well.’  Up went the hood and a new fuse box with the offending fuse was immediately discovered, and replaced.   As we went on our way down the road, toward a successful :)hunt, I found myself in wonder at how God had responded to a simple prayer and met the need of the moment. This is indeed a God-drenched world.  He is everywhere up to good. Haven't you seen it too?

A work of art

The ‘Pickers’ got a call from their old friend Joe who saw a ‘Von Dutch’    motorcycle that might be the XANW. The XANW was a custom motorcycle built by the legendary Kenny Howard himself in 1966.  If Elvis was the King of rock and roll, Kenny was the king of pin stripers.  The XANW had a Volkswagen motor, a Honda 450 gas tank and was built on a 1942 Harley XA frame.  It was a one of a kind. Joe thought he’d seen it, the original.  When the ‘Pickers’ tracked down their leads, they found a Von Dutch motorcycle in a shed, on a farm, in North Carolina.  Sure enough, it had the Von Dutch name etched by hand on the motor.  They paid $21,000 for a bike with flat tires that didn’t run. They commented that when all the lines lit up - they’d found a treasure. 

Made me think about how God is the master craftsman who is working his grand strategy in this world. He is drawing people to himself and each one of us has a bit part. It is his work not ours! We humbly and happily persist, even though we don't know how God is going to use what we have to offer! We offer a smile, encourage with a word or a gift, help where we can. When it all comes together - the grid lights up like a Christmas tree. Each one does his part but God is crafting a work of art.  Read about it in I Corinthians 3:7! 

 

      

 

Patti's God-drenched world

Two months ago my friend underwent brain surgery for cancer. This was followed by 6 weeks of chemo. Then a cyst grew where the cancer had been and she lost use of her left side. Another surgery and now she is home sleeping a lot as she awaits another round of chemo. I phoned from another state. I hadn’t seen her in two years. She hears my voice and warmly responds with - ‘Pastor Dean’.  I’m not sure what to say to encourage her. ‘God is good even when it’s hard,’ I say.  She responds, ‘Oh it’s more than that. I delight in God. He is wonderful. Every morning I look out my window and see a wooden cross. I say, Thank you Heavenly Father, wonderful Savior, Holy Spirit and comforter.  Every night before I go to sleep I look at that cross and I repeat my prayer.’  ‘Before surgery,’ she goes on, ‘My husband prayed over me. A nurse saw us and asked what we were doing. I told her we were praying and she asked if she could pray too. She joined us praying beautifully in Hebrew.’

“How God’s hand moves when we trust Him”, she goes on, “when we reach out to Him, His hand is moving out to us. He’s right there. One night I lay there while my husband slept in his easy chair in the next room.  I prayed. ‘God I really want to talk with Brian. Would you wake Him up?’  Immediately I heard him stir and climb out of his chair. He came into the room saying, ‘I don’t know what woke me up.’ But I knew!” 

She continues, ‘You know, I still have work to do, to reach people.’ ‘She ministers to everyone she meets’, Brian had told me. She goes on, “My doctor told me”, ‘I know your work isn’t done yet.  Your attitude is wonderful.’  She says, ‘I told my doctor one day that I saw green bushes along the way as I went to feed my horses. My husband told me there were no green bushes. The doctor told me that folks often hallucinate with my kind of surgery. But he said that they often see terrible things’.  She said, ‘Sometimes I see children on white ponies.’  Her doctor responded - ‘I love you, Patti. It tells me who you are as a person.’  

Whose doctor says that!? What a place this world would be if we all ministered in a God-drenched world like Patti does!

Chesterton in a God-drenched world

If we would see God everywhere in our God-drenched world we must aggressively resist our culture’s boredom with all things Christian. (yesterday’s blog) GK Chesterton writing 100 years ago from a ‘bored with all things Christian’ British culture, warned, ‘The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard.’  (“The Everlasting Man”) 
 
Chesterton goes on to say that we’ve come to admire anything but what is distinctly Christian. (Like Islamic culture in Senegal - again yesterday's blog)  But the fault does not lie in dynamic Biblical theology! Fallen man has given in to the ‘heavy bias of fatigue’ with what is familiar.  But our gospel is the power of God for salvation - to make things new! Our God himself gives everyone life & breath & everything else. He is not far from any one of us, for in Him we live & move & have our being. So reach out for Him & find Him. (Acts 17) Let’s discover, trust and celebrate our Lord at every opportunity!   

How surprised early believers might be, Chesterton suggests, to see The Church, ‘two thousand years afterwards rushing through the ages as the winged thunderbolt of thought and everlasting enthusiasm; a thing without rival or resemblance; and still as new as it is old.’