St. Paul’s Helps Feed The Hungry

Once a month several of our folks shop for, prepare, deliver and serve meals for 100 or so hungry folks at the New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis. It’s actually very organized: we have shopping teams, cooking teams, etc. Last Saturday we did it again and I wanted to publicize it a bit here. So below are two pix (sorry for low quality and out-of-focus nature of the second pix) – the first is Mary W., Joh C., and Dustin E (who didn’t really want his pic here as people would think he’s Amish – gotta think of an appropriate nickname for him now) doing the cooking. The second pic is the same bunch plus Betty R and Sharon K, who together were the delivery and serving teams. They were actually much more focussed than this pic is!

Just another ministry that came up from the grassroots; another reason I love this church!

What Christmas Is All About

Do you ever get tired of liberals trying to shock us conservatives? Here’s a story on Yahoo News about an Anglican church in New Zealand, and their billboard which shows Mary and Joseph (Mary in something like a nun’s habit) in bed together. The caption on the sign reads “Poor Joseph. God is a hard act to follow”. (you can see the story here)

One yawn from this old guy, who remembers one of the Wittenberg Door’s front covers showing a picture of Jesus above a bed in which a couple are, well, doing a little more than lying there. Jesus, of course, is blindfolded. Now that was funny.

Sex. It was God’s idea in the first place. He invented it. My gut reaction to this church sign is “big deal”. Mary in a nun’s habit – wow, fuh-nee. Joseph and performance anxiety. Har-de-har-har. A church doing just about anything to show the despising culture around it that it can be as irreverent as they are. Whoopdedo.

What does amaze me is the thought process behind the sign:

“Church archdeacon Glynn Cardy said the billboard was intended to lampoon the literal interpretation of the Christmas conception story and highlight the real significance of the festival. ”What we’re trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about,” Cardy told local media.”

And what would that be, I wonder? Sex? Cashing in? Being cool enough in the eyes of the world to get their attention away from the ‘net?

“Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?”

There was no sperm, archjackass, so no that’s not what Christmas is all about. And the power of love in our midst (I cringe just typing that drivel – luuuuvvv) – you mean the love that brought scorn and ridicule on a young teenage girl?  That put the holy family on the run, and a whole bunch of boy babies in Bethlehem killed? Please!! And it’s not about the cultural cute and cuddly baby Jesus (there goes Ricky Bobby in my head again: tiny baby Jesus) that just inspires us so much we get all misty on Christmas Eve and then back to business as usual by the next Tuesday.

As I understand it, the virgin conception is about God doing what no man could (saving us from our sinful selves) in a way that no man could (without male participation); Jesus becoming completely human without human help. I know, Mary had something to do with it, but in those days women were considered just passive receptacles for the active working agent of male semen. The point being this was an accomplishment of God not man. A foretaste of what would be accomplished on the cross.

What Christmas is all about is the cross. For the Divine One to become an infant so helpless he has to have his diapers changed is the beginning of Jesus’ Via Dolorosa. No cross, no reason for Christmas (except for Hallmark). It was that bloody, disgusting. tortured death and inconceivable (pun intended) resurrection that was the point of Christmas. Not provocative posters.

This kind of stuff just makes me want to scream “Bah, humbug!!”

Santa Drew

Are you sick of these pix yet? Not me! I’d really love to get my arms around my little guy – maybe next Easter?

St. Paul’s New Telephone Prayer Line

St. Paul’s has a new telephone prayer line, thanks to the work of Sandi Haege and our Evangelism & Outreach Committee. If a person has a prayer concern, they can call 618-539-6181 24-hours a day and leave a message, which will be immediately picked up and passed on to our Prayer Warriors.

I’ve found this to be a valuable ministry in my previous church, as there were many people who spent lonely nights in need of some prayer and human contact. There we averaged 5-10 calls a day, several during the night. Here at St. Paul’s I don’t know how many people will use this ministry, but I’m very glad that our people, without my pushing or nudging, have been moved to make this ministry possible.

So if you have a prayer concern, or if you’re just curious about the prayer ministry, give the Prayer Line a call and leave a message, be it a request or a word of encouragement.

And if you’d like to join our prayer ministry, you can leave a message about that, too!

My First Grandpa Christmas Pics

Oh man, Sam recently posted several excellent pix of my grand-boy Drew – just a few posted here. It continues to amaze me, this experience of seeing my son be a father. I wonder what traits I’ve passed on, for better or worse; I wonder what Drew will remember, and what Sam’s remembering as he fills shoes I once wore. And the innocence, the virginity, the wonder in Drew’s face….I don’t think I can stand it!

Heaven and Hell

The afterlife is quite popular these days, judging from the popularity of books relating “near death” experiences. But what does the Bible actually say about heaven and hell? This is the subject of Edward Donnelly’s book Biblical Teaching On The Doctrines Of Heaven And Hell, and I’m finding it an excellent read. Donnelly points out that of course we don’t like to think or talk about hell; but we don’t hear much preaching or read much writing on the subject of heaven, either. His book is devoted to a Biblical exposition of both. And while it may sound quite abstract and theoretical, I’m finding it comforting, awakening, and pastorally helpful.

Here, for example, is one quote that clarifies what heaven is, and isn’t:

• It is interesting that the New Testament nowhere speaks of believers going “to heaven” when they die. Instead, they go to be “with Christ”. Paul writes from prison to the Christians in Philippi, explaining how eager he is for the life to come, “having a desire to depart” from his present existence. But what, or who, is the attraction in that future realm? Not so much, apparently, heaven itself. The apostle’s great desire is “to depart and be with Christ, which is far better” (Phil. 1:23)….For Paul, heaven means Jesus, so much so that the place and the Person are almost equated. Just as heaven is often synonymous with the glory of God, so is it inextricably identified with the Son of God, in whom his glory is revealed.

Tim Challies has reviewed the book and says this about it:

• Though only a short book, weighing in at just 127 pages, Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell still seems to be thorough. This is, I believe, because though the subjects of heaven and hell are mentioned often in the Bible, we do not receive a great deal of detail about them. They are so far beyond our experience that God can only give us glimpses of what they will be like by drawing comparisons to what we know and experience in this life. This is a book that dedicates equal time to both subjects, first allowing the heart and spirit to recoil at the though of hell but then comforting it with the knowledge of heaven. Throughout the book Donnelly is pastoral, often challenging the reader and continually returning to the gospel, ensuring the reader knows that the promises of heaven are given only to those who know the Lord and that the horrors of hell can be avoided by those who will turn to Him. For those interested in doing some reading on the subject matter, this book is a worthwhile investment in both time and money. I recommend it.

So do I. It just might make a good Christmas gift for someone who wonders what the “true meaning of Christmas” really is.

One Happy Guy

Our grandson Drew is a pretty serious little guy. So when he smiles it’s a real treat! I’m so glad his mom Jen put this pic and others on her Facebook page. Behold! One Happy Guy! May this face be in your hearts to bless you today!

And yes, that’s snow you see in Dallas…

John The Baptist, Coming Up

For the next two Sundays we’ll be hearing about, and from, John the Baptist. His fierce appearance and fiercer message seem so out of place in our time, when we approach Christmas with “holiday cheer”. So the lectionary reminds me that the we do not prepare for Christ the same way we prepare for Christmas, and that it’s the Word of God not the Word of Walmart that defines that preparation.

This Sunday’s reading is Luke 3:1-6. This is Luke’s description of John (John’s message itself will be the subject of the December 13 sermon) and here’s what struck me about it:

• Luke piles on the historical markers: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…”  Luke could have more simply said “in the 15th year of Tiberius’ reign” and left out Pilate, Herod, Philip, etc. But instead he piles on the historical markers. Why? I’ll say more about this on Sunday, but for now I just want to point out that Luke is doing something here. This piling on is intentional. What’s the intention?
• Luke continues: “the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah” – something about this rang a bell with me, but I had to do some research before it became clear. I think this is an instance where a reference can go completely unnoticed in our culture, while it would have set off alarms in the ears of at least some of Luke’s hearers. So here’s some homework for you – compare Luke 3:1-2 with
  • Jeremiah 1:1
  • Ezekiel 1:1-2
  • Hosea 1:1
  • Joel 1:1
  • Jonah 1:1
  • Micah 1:1
  • Zephaniah 1:1
  • Haggai 1:1
  • Zechariah 1:1
    • what parallels and echoes do you see?
• Luke continues to describe John by quoting Isaiah 40. Question about “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”: is this a command to all who follow Jesus, something we should be doing this time of year? Or is this a description of John the Baptist, a unique preparer for Christ?
• In Luke’s quote of Isaiah 40, who’s doing what? Who’s the subject of these verbs?

Good stuff. Let’s see what He’ll make of it for this Sunday!

Drew Turns Over!

Ah yes, the older one gets, the less one takes for granted things that used to come naturally. Like getting up without grunting. Anyway, here’s a video taken by my daughter Melinda when she and Joh were in Dallas – it’s little guy turning over. Ooooooohhh! One day I expect I’ll need help with that too!

Now he’s getting some help from his ma, aunt and granny – but isn’t it just fascinating that the human brain is hardwired to do things it can’t do you – to turn over so as to crawl, to crawl so as to walk, to walk so as to run, to run so as to run into the Wall, to run into the Wall so as to remember how baby-like and helpless we really are regardless of how fast we run…

Anyway, I’m too cheap to pay the upgrade to post videos directly to my blog, so here’s a link to my Facebook page with the video of (drumroll please) Drew Turns Over!

Veterans Day

Does anyone remember the origin of Veterans’ Day? The purpose? Or is it just another excuse to shop?

World War I was known as the “War To End All Wars” – by far the bloodiest, destructive and most savage war the world had known. Maybe we’re not impressed with WWI anymore because it seems so technologically primitive to us now – in that war, we used carrier pigeons in the field to communicate. But it’s precisely that primitiveness that strikes me – poison gas warfare, freezing and rain soaked in trench warfare – I don’t think we could take it these days. Talk about post-traumatic stress syndrome!

When the war was finally over (for good, we thought at the time), the treaty that ended it (the Treaty of Versailles) was signed at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Since then the name has changed (from Armistice Day to Veterans’ Day) and the date has changed (most recently it’s been returned to 11/11). And, I’m afraid, the purpose has changed.

I’d suggest that instead of going to the mall to catch all those wonderful Veterans’ Day Sales “values”, you spend an hour or two at the VA Hospital in South County.  Or spend some time getting to know folks of another nationality (yep, St. Louis has a big Bosnian population, and Vietnamese population, and Iraqi population). Or maybe spend an hour in some church sanctuary pondering how human beings are moved to make such sacrifices, and what it means to be a “nation under God”. Or you might spend an hour learning German, because that’s what we’d be speaking now if not for our participation in WWI. But hey, that would interfere with your selfishness now, wouldn’t it? It would interfere with your shopping.

We’ve largely forgotten “The War To End All Wars” now. In Freeburg there’s a statute of a WWI soldier calling his comrades into battle. It’s used by skateboarders these days. We’ve forgotten the nobility (yes, the idealistic, costly, naive nobility) of WWI and have settled, instead, for….shopping. We’re older and wiser now; we’re….shoppers. We’ve observe the sacrifices and suffering and ideals of our veterans by…shopping.

So, shop on brothers and sisters. Your consumerism has degraded you. And it’s leading you to another war, as our insatiable consumption of oil and all things cheap and Chinese are showing. Maybe one day, when our children and grandchildren are all speaking Chinese, they’ll institute another holiday: Shoppers’ Day, when they remember the incredible national selfishness that led to another war that finally woke us up…or not.

Rant over.

My Kids

My lovely wife and daughter are in Dallas this weekend, getting caught up with baby Drew. He’s making noises now! Chewing on his finger! What delights! What thrills! Wish I were there…

Anyway, here’s Sam and Melinda – they make a papa proud!

And here’s Joh and The L’il Guy!

Who’s having more fun here, really??

Renovated Sanctuary At Night

After our new piano arrived, I went to the sanctuary one evening to take some pix. It’s a beautiful place at night! These don’t really do justice to it, and these pix are just a touch blurry, but they give you the idea. Anybody wanna come sit here a while one evening and pray?

Tim Keller on White Horse Inn

You know if you’ve been reading this blog, I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s book The Reason For God and found it quite clear and helpful. Keller’s forte is discussing the Christian faith with “cultured despisers” of Manhattan. I just downloaded a recent radio program on White Horse Inn where Keller discusses his book with Michael Horton and the other program hosts – well worth listening to. You can go directly to the WHI site, or download the program here. Or, you can see a quick video of Keller discussing this book here.

New Confirmation Pix

Gene Kramer, our 7th Grade Confirmation teacher, has uploaded 3 new pix of his class – and a great bunch of kids they are! Here’s one, taken after the “Trapped In Sin” exercise. To see the other two, go to St. Paul’s website (www.stpaulsfreeburg.org), click on the “Pictures” tab on the left, and follow the links.

Old Folks Can Make Me Laugh

This Youtube video has been around for a while, but it still makes me laugh. Maybe it just gives me hope for my geezer years – still driving Red, though…

The Importance Of Hell

One of the books I’ve been reading is Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, which led me to poking around the internet for more about and by him. I found the website for his church (Redeemer Presbyterian – click here) and read one of his articles there entitled “The Importance Of Hell” (clickhere). Here’s a quote that caught my attention:

“Fairly often I meet people who say, ‘I have a personal relationship with a loving God, and yet I don’t believe in Jesus Christ at all.’ Why, I ask? ‘My God is too loving to pour out infinite suffering on anyone for sin.’ But this shows a deep misunderstanding of both God and the cross. On the cross, God HIMSELF, incarnated as Jesus, took the punishment. He didn’t visit it on a third party, however willing.

So the question becomes: what did it cost your kind of god to love us and embrace us? What did he endure in order to receive us? Where did this god agonize, cry out, and where were his nails and thorns? The only answer is: ‘I don’t think that was necessary.’ But then ironically, in our effort to make God more loving, we have made him less loving. His love, in the end, needed to take no action. It was sentimentality, not love at all.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way before. The “loving god” of people I meet who deny the reality of hell or the cross, is actually a squishy god, unable or unwilling to bear the cost of love. In my own experience with my wife and children, I know that love costs. And the deeper the love, the more the cost. But this ‘loving god’ who makes no demands, pays no cost, bears no cross, endures no hell, is more the figment of my self-absorbed and self-affirming ego than the God of the Scripture.

Funny how important hell is to my happiness.

New Header

You may have noticed that I have a new header on my blog. No big significance here, just wanted a change. Originally I had used a pic of the stained glass window above St. Paul’s altar – Jesus in Gethsemane. It’s a lovely window and a focal point of our worship. But one of my other passions is driving my delightful Miata – particularly at Deal’s Gap NC. Each year I go there just to drive and enjoy some solitude and creation. And I take pics, lot of pics! So my new header for my blog is now a shot of one of the roads at Deal’s Gap, taken over the shoulder of Red, my car. Here, BTW, is the entire photo:I enjoy the curviness of the road – it’s not high speed (maybe 45 mph) but it’s enough to be pleasant, calling for enough attention to focus on the road, but not so much attention that you can’t enjoy the scenery. The road ahead is often hidden, but does not come up on you so fast that you’ll be taken off guard.

Here’s another one that I took last July, from my modest motel (you can see more of the curves in the second pic):Oh man, it makes me ache for the road! The motel is out of the 50’s – it’s got yer basic a/c and indoor plumbing, and a shop to pick up some drinks or a snack. But the whole point is not the motel itself, but the road, the drive.

I can wax eloquent on this stuff – the road of life. I wrote a sermon once about how I often get so involved in cleaning my car, waxing my car, detailing my car, accessorizing my car, that I forget to DRIVE the car. Kinda like faith, I think. It’s meant to be trusted and driven, not tweaked and admired. Though tweaking and admiring are good, they’re not the main good.

So the new header is somewhat spiritual after all. Brothers and sisters, start your engines! None of us knows how much road we have left, or when the next curve will be the last. Don’t wait. Drive!

St. Paul’s New Website

Check out our new website – the address is still www.stpaulsfreeburg.org – but newly designed. Lemme know your thoughts – and we could use pics for our “Pic of the Week” section.

Quality, Quantity, and the Balloon Boy

Colorado sheriff sees no hoax in balloon incident – Reuters, Fri Oct 16, 2009 5:45pm EDT

Balloon boy case a hoax, says sherrif; charges coming – Reuters, Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:50pm EDT

I was driving home from a hospital call last Thursday, and heard on the radio about the “balloon boy”. And not just on one station – they were all over it! Following the balloon, reporting moment by moment on what was happening (or what they thought was happening). When I got home I saw that several TV channels were carrying the “news”, again with live video so we could watch every single moment. And on the ‘Net, my news homepage was full of balloon boy “news”.

Now, it seems, it might well have been an intentional hoax. We still don’t know, and I suspect it will take some time to know.

And isn’t that the problem with the “news”? So quick to report, so slow to analyze. The emphasis is all on quantity (=fastest) rather than quality (=what is actually happening here?)

It takes time to know what things mean. I suspect a look at your own life will tell you that. You lost your job – ok, but what will that mean in the bigger picture of your life? OK, you won the lottery, but what will that mean? It takes time.

In the meantime, I think it’s very distracting to have a river of “look at that” and “watch this” passing before us. (I’ve noticed that my local news guy/gal will actually say “take a look at this”, like I might not have my eyes glued to the screen and need to have my attention called to the image on the TV rather than on my wife sitting next to me).

The media, it seems, is fixated on getting it first, not getting it right. If we don’t ignore that blather and take the longer view of what things actually mean, we’re going to be continually blown about by every of wind images, unrooted, unanchored, and helpless on the fast road to hell.

New Website For St. Paul’s Coming

I’m hoping that St. Paul’s will have their new website set up by this Sunday, or shortly thereafter. It’s been an interesting process!

When our webmaster and choir director resigned, we found ourselves in the position of many churches –  at least, according to one excellent article that I read. According to this article, there have been many churches that had websites set up by creative, technologically oriented (“computer geek”) members. Those websites were creative and attention-getting, if not flashy. But those churches found that when their technogeeky members tired of the website, or otherwise moved on, they were left with a website no one knew how to maintain. Thus, the author of the article concluded, usability and maintainability are more important, in the long run, than technological dazzle.

So, when it came to developing a new website, I wanted something easy to maintain; something our church secretary or administrator could edit without having to learn HTML or other code. Something that was simple enough to be used regardless of change in personnel. And I found it.

Actually, Sandi Haege showed it to me. At Microsoft Office Live (click here) you can create your own website for free. Yep, free. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that “for fee” sites and software have. But it does the job quite nicely, in my book. Anyone who can use a word processor can use this site. Simple, easy, straightforward, basic. Kinda like our church, come to think of it!

So, God willing, our new site will be up soon. Our web address will be the same – www.stpaulsfreeburg.org – so I invite you to check it out and give us any feedback you have, good or bad.