and Make Disciples
Short term mission trips aren’t the most efficient way to tell other people about Jesus. In fact, It’s probably one of the least efficient ways that most churches participate in. Take our church’s current team to Ecuador for example, we have 10 people going who are paying roughly $1550 to go, half of which is airfare. So we are spending $15,500 for 10 people to spend a week doing a little bit of labor and leading a VBS. If we were so inclined we could probably hire construction workers and local people to do all that we would do for much less, probably around $2,000 if we were just being generous. So 80% of our cost is money that isn’t directly helping the people we say we are going to help.
This whole line of thinking has lead many churches to abandon short term mission trips, for books to be written on it including Toxic Charity, and for people to even harass those who do go on these types of trips. And I get it. I understand the frustration of seeing money that could be used to pay for a pastor’s salary for an entire year in Ecuador being used just to fly our group down there for one week.
I was fortunate enough to spend roughly 16 weeks in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina doing disaster response. We usually had over 100 people a week coming from different churches to work with our organization. In all that time we only had two groups come through that weren’t connected to the church. Both groups worked harder, longer, and frankly even better than any of the church teams. They brought with them construction workers, doctors, and other skilled workers and they were there to really make a difference. The other teams were there to be on a mission trip. What I mean by that is they followed the call to GO, but that was the end goal for them. Their good deed was going on a mission trip. The secular teams goal was to help people. Hopefully that distinction makes sense to you.
We saw hundreds of crisis care kits come through. They were gallon ziplock bags filled with all he essential toiletries and even had toys in there. We tried to pass them out, but a year after the hurricane people didn’t need that kind of help anymore, however, the kits kept coming in. We had entire rooms filled with these kits, each one probably costing between $10 and $20, so thousands of dollars were just sitting in storage while people were just trying to figure out how to get back in their home. I remember becoming bitter about those kits and thinking that if people would just send the money that they would have spent on the kits to the organization that they could hire a case worker who could do some real good. I eventually had to go back to college and left, the crisis kits were still in storage waiting for the next disaster to hit so they could be passed out, and as bitter as I was about those kits and all the other wasted things, I would do all of it over again in a heartbeat.
You see when I was on a mission trip to Mexico, I received my call into ministry while sitting on the roof of a church we were building on to. When I was in New Orleans I saw real miracles happen and my journey with God was forever changed. When I was in the Philippines for two months, I learned more about poverty, the international church, humility, and prejudices than all my college courses could ever teach me. Sure, each time I went on a mission trip I saw things that we did things wrong, or where money could have been spent better. But I have also seen people catch a spark for helping others, for giving of themselves to where it hurts to give someone else a chance of meeting Jesus... to literally saving a couple’s life because they re-roofed the wrong house.
God does more with short term mission trips than we give him credit for. He has been doing work there before the teams get there and he’ll continue to do work long after we’re gone. These trips can have such a big impact on the people who actually go that it’s worth being inefficient. It’s worth it to see them develop a heart for the lost, the widows, the orphans and the sojourners. Short term missions might even be less about the people that we go serve and more about developing the people who go into better disciples of Jesus. May God forgive us if we are wasting resources, but don’t let that excuse stop you from trying to follow his command of “Go and make disciples”.
Nathan Persell serves as our Youth Director. When he's not leading devotions and playing basketball with teenagers, he enjoys disc golf and bike riding. Learn more about Nathan here.
Politics or Jesus
Christian and Political
There are three things you aren’t supposed to bring up in polite conversation: Religion, politics, and money. I guess we can go ahead and mark this blog as impolite… Last week Bernie Sanders had an interesting encounter with Russell Vought. (Lori Ferguson’s son Daniel did an amazing blog on it which can be found here) https://whychurchblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/13/what-bernie-sanders-got-so-wrong-about-christianity-and-what-christianity-gets-so-wrong-about-outsiders/
While this small section of dialogue has sparked a lot of other conversations, the central theme to these exchanges revolves around how we handle being Christian AND political.
Looking at the Issues
Last year before the elections our youth group did something a little different. We took the top three candidates and the top 10 issues (abortion, immigration, gun control, etc.) and looked at each issue from a purely Biblical perspective. We then marked which candidate had the most biblical perspective on the issue. It sounds simple, but it was one of the hardest things for some of our more politically minded people to handle. One thing that made it difficult is that the Bible never mentions guns, doesn’t mention abortion, or directly mention a lot of the other issues that we talked about that night. And sometimes when it did talk about what we were looking for, there’d be another verse somewhere else that seemed to go against that first verse. So for all those people who are looking for that one verse that completely justifies their political position, that verse probably doesn’t exist. At the end of the night we looked at how the candidates stacked up, and it wasn’t good. None of them completely matched what the Bible said, I think the best one had 6 out of 10.
The Point
The point of that night was to get students to think about politics and the Bible differently. Jesus was never a republican or a democrat, but it’d be a mistake to think that Jesus was never political. There is an amazing book that I think anyone who wrestles with politics and christianity should read called “The Politics of Jesus” by John Howard Yoder. Basically, the book explores “the Gospel narrative to reveal how Jesus is rightly portrayed as a thinker and leader immediately concerned with the agenda of politics and the related issues of power, status, and right relations.”
Following Jesus
If we, as Christians, are called to be imitators of Jesus, then we need to be involved in politics like Jesus was involved in politics. But that doesn’t mean that we support party before God. And the even harder thing to come to terms with is that it doesn’t even mean we pick country before God. Jesus was born an Israelite in a time where Romans ruled over them. He was expected to save his nation (or at least that’s what they thought the Messiah would do) and he never once talked about Israel first, or Israeli rights. He talked about the Kingdom of God in ways that we still don’t understand. It goes against our ingrained logic of what politics should be, so much so that most of us don’t see an issue with the picture of an American flag flying over a Christian flag. We are supposed to be Christ followers before anything else, and as Christ followers we will get involved in politics because we’ll be fighting the cause of the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners in our midst. We’ll care about the hungry and poor, we’ll even care about those who live a lifestyle different than what we think is acceptable. Politics and religion can get messy, and maybe we should avoid talking about them in polite conversation. Maybe instead we should talk about them where it really matters and follow in Jesus’ footsteps.
““The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19”
Nathan Persell serves as our Youth Director. When he's not leading devotions and playing basketball with teenagers, he enjoys disc golf and bike riding. Learn more about Nathan here.
Strong
Timothy, my dear son, be strong through the grace that God gives you in Christ Jesus. You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.
Endure suffering along with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. Soldiers don’t get tied up in the affairs of civilian life, for then they cannot please the officer who enlisted them. And athletes cannot win the prize unless they follow the rules. And hardworking farmers should be the first to enjoy the fruit of their labor.7 Think about what I am saying. The Lord will help you understand all these things.
-2 Timothy 2:1-7, NLT
What do you think of when you think of a strong person? Do you think of someone who never gives up? Someone who trains hard, fights hard, and gives 110% to the very last second? Someone who is trying to become a champion?
Or maybe, you think of someone who is battling some type of sickness and does so with a smile on his or her face. Someone who smiles even when it's a hard day. Someone who always puts others first and enjoys every moment in life.
Maybe you think of the mom or dad that has dedicated every day to raising a child or children, making sure that child knows she is loved and can become whatever she sets her mind to. She can imagine the world however she wants and even shape the world into something new if she so wishes.
Maybe still, you picture one of our military men or women, or one of our civil servants, who wake up every morning ready to give his or her life protecting others. He trusts the people standing next to him to have his back and the person giving him orders to be leading him in the right direction.
No matter who you imagine as a strong person, none of these people are truly strong without God on our side. At the same time, with God we can all become strong through his Grace and love. We can have the strength to go through our lives and not only survive but thrive as his sons and daughters.
This week, we will be looking into this idea of Grace more as we conclude our sermon series, Amazing Grace. I hope you'll join us.
Blessings,
Faith
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Faith Parry serves as our Associate Pastor and has been at the church since 2015. When she's not preaching and teaching, she enjoys documentaries and TV. Read more about Faith here.
Is the Bible Sacred?
A friend of mine who is a youth pastor in Texas is bracing herself for the aftermath of burning a Bible in front of her teens. You read that right, and there are no typos, she is burning the Bible. If it helps, she’s ripping out some pages first.
You might be experiencing some anger, curiosity, or panic right now, and that is perfectly natural. She is doing this as part of an illustration on the importance of scripture. I know it sounds counter productive to that thought, but here’s her play. Tonight she is going to ask her students to recite all the scripture they know, and as they do she’ll rip out that verse of the bible and give it to them. Once they’ve recited all the scripture they know, which if we’re being honest will probably be less than a handful of verses per student, she’ll burn the rest of the Bible. The students will be left with just a few short verses, most of them probably clinging to “Jesus wept”. The point she’s making is that scripture is something they “need to KNOW, to memorize scripture because someday they might not have it otherwise. That there are people all over the world who don't have it. And for them to neglect their study of scripture is way worse than me burning the Bible.”
She has already taken a lot of flak from other youth pastors who are horrified that she’s going to burn the word of God. But then again, I’ve had a pastor yell at me for laying my bible down on the pulpit and not holding it while I read scripture. People have been upset about seeing a Bible on the ground. I had a really old Bible that was falling apart and pages were missing from years of use, I didn’t want to just throw it away in case someone saw me so I wrapped it up in another bag and threw the bag away. There is this ideology about protecting or treating the Bible with respect. I’m one of the few that thought it was an awesome idea and thought about stealing it for our students.
As angry as I just made some of you, or as angry as everyone else is at this friend of mine, you would think that the Bible is incredibly important. Her illustration sparked conversations about how to treat a book, something that isn’t God but merely a representation of the word of God, and most people got seriously close to equating the paper and ink with God himself. People couldn’t get past a burning Bible to realize that the thing they felt so deeply about losing was the thing they neglect 99% of the time and the exact reason she was burning the book in the first place. If you were to ask me how many verses I have memorized, I’d stumble through a couple dozen or so but I would have next to nothing compared to what was burned.
A lot of people who care so deeply about not burning a Bible are the same ones who don’t care about it enough to read it every day. How angry are you that she’s burning the Bible? How angry are you that some of her students haven’t ever read the Bible outside of church activities? Jesus often had fun with the pharisees, who by the way loved the scriptures. I feel like they would be in the camp of never burn a Bible. But Jesus said “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” The Bible is important, the most important book we have, but it isn’t God. The book itself isn’t even anything special. And unless we are doers of the word as well as hearers, it means nothing.
Nathan
Nathan Persell serves as our Youth Director. When he's not leading devotions and playing basketball with teenagers, he enjoys disc golf and bike riding. Learn more about Nathan here.
Grow
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Titus 2:11–13, NRSV
Last time, we looked at how God’s grace worked in our lives to enable us to cross the threshold of faith and become followers of Jesus. Now we want to see how God’s grace is necessary for our on–going growth in that relationship.
Healing
By way of analogy, we could look at how our body deals with disease processes. We could be living our lives as we always have, all the while, noticing a pain or other malady in our body. Most days we can function very well, but other days, not so much. We may see other symptoms, as well that indicate some is just not right. Think of that scenario as God’s grace drawing us to him. God is pointing out a problem and that problem causes us to seek a solution.
Eventually, we see a physician who diagnoses the problem and maps out a course of treatment for us that includes surgery and a change of lifestyle. She even gives us some directives to follow so we don’t end up causing further damage.
Decision
We now have a decision to make. Will we trust the doctor’s skill and diagnosis and go through with the surgery, or will we decide that we know better than she does and keep doing as we always have? It is a huge choice. We can’t do anything about what is wrong with us, except to stop resisting and give ourselves into the care of the professional. This is analogous to God’s grace forgiving us and granting us new birth.
We finally decide to trust our doctor, and the surgery goes off perfectly. However, the cure is only temporary if we do not make certain changes to our lifestyle. If we do not, there will be nothing else that can be done medically. So, we decide to make the necessary changes; and they are difficult. This third stage is growth or sanctification.
Now, any analogy breaks down if you push it too far, but it does illustrate the point.
GROWTH
God’s grace does indeed convict us and draw us to Christ. It also enables us to make a decision to give our lives to Jesus, but that is not all. In 1 Corinthians 3:1 Paul calls some of the believers “infants in Christ;” In John 3 Jesus says we must be born again. In many ways, when we begin our walk with Christ we are infants. You would never take a new born and expect her or him act as a full-grown adult. It is the same way with spiritual babies. As a new Christian, a person needs to be fed and nurtured so that they will grow; that is what God expects of us as well.
For the rest of our lives, we will be learning to respond to God’s grace in our lives, and as we do we will grow, if we respond positively that is. In this week’s sermon, we will look at the ways God’s grace enables us to grow and mature in Christ. I hope you will join us.
Blessings,
Alan
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Alan Cassady serves as Senior Pastor at Navarre UMC, and has been at the church since 2011. When he's not preaching and teaching, he enjoys sci-fi movies and FSU Football. Read more about Alan here.