Category: Newsletter

I love words. I fell in love with words early, through the venerable medium of comic books. The pictures caught my eye, but the words told the story. In fact, the words made all the difference: the same picture could mean something entirely different, depending on the words (e.g., Lois could be saying, “Superman! Thank goodness you saved me!” or “Put me down, you big lug!”).

Words are powerful. Speech writers labor long and hard over just the right words. They know that saying something the right way can win your argument, while saying even the right thing in the wrong way can mean ruin. The right words have stirred men’s hearts and been remembered by history. The wrong words have cost elections, ruined careers and destroyed families. Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue…”

Sometimes people try to say that words aren’t very important. I suspect the bottom line here is that they want to be able to talk any way they want, without anyone telling them “no”. Not too long ago I heard someone say, “I think Christians get too hung up on words. They’re just words.” Specifically what was being referred to was swearing or cursing… or cussing, if you like. The idea was that it didn’t matter if a believer in Jesus used foul language because, well, they’re “just words”.

But God takes a decidedly different view of the matter.Read More

Recently I heard a man explain why he and his wife had started a new coffee house. (It’s located somewhere in central Indiana; let’s just leave it at that.) They are Christians, and the man explained that they had been attending what he called “traditional church”. Then he said that he made an amazing discovery: “traditional church” is not in the Bible! (He didn’t say so explicitly, but it sounded like they stopped going to “traditional church”.) So, he said, they started the coffee house as a place for their community to meet. The coffee house seems to be a grand success; and, he said, they had met more of their neighbours in the few months the coffee house had been open than they had in the entire time they went to “traditional church” before. Well, glory, hallelujah! (Oops…maybe they don’t say that in coffee houses. My bad.)

I hardly know where to start.

I have little patience for those who want to completely dismiss “traditional church” ( and it really helps to find out exactly what they mean by that). In my opinion, they are throwing the baby out with the bath water. No pastor needs to be told that there are sinners in the church or that the church has flaws and shortcomings. All he has to do to know that is look in a mirror.Read More

It’s easy to criticize. It doesn’t take much effort at all. It costs nothing of the one doing the criticizing. It is free advice, and most often it is worth every penny.

I have observed, both in myself and others, that criticizing the church comes easily, especially to the young. When I was younger, I was filled with a certain iconoclastic zeal (iconoclastic means, “to cast down images”, like Gideon did in Judges 6:25-32). I looked at the way churches were operating, and I was absolutely sure that if they’d stop doing things their old dumb way, and just listen to me and do things my new smart way, why, the heavens would open, the church building would be filled, we’d meet our budget, and the millennium would begin.

Then I was called to pastor a church where they basically let me do whatever I wanted to do. I got to change almost anything I wanted, and enact any new program I thought best. So I did. And do you know what I found out? I found out I had as many good ideas that don’t work as anybody else.Read More

It’s hard for me to believe, but I have been the Pastor of First Baptist Church of Linton for fifteen years. You voted on me Wednesday, August 6th, 1997. (Coincidentally, August 6th is my brother Steve’s birthday. He’s older than fifteen. Not as old as me , though.) I still remember the phone call from the Chairman of Deacons. He said, “Well, you’re our Pastor now!” Five words that changed directions for my family and me.

I still remember how I felt the first time Rae Anne and I drove into the parking lot. I’d been contacted to fill the pulpit for a Sunday night, and I thought I was driving to the old building, downtown. (I’d been there once; Virginia Franklin had arranged for me to sing at one of your Sweetheart banquets. I sang in your old church basement. You told me you liked it, but I never got invited back.) When we pulled into the parking lot, we were both speechless. Entering the double doors, my first three thoughts were: 1)“Wow!” (more or less); 2)”Oh, God, you wouldn’t make me pastor a church like this, would You?”; and 3)”Go comb your hair before anybody sees you!” And yet I experienced that night for the first time how hungry you are for God’s Word, and how grateful you are when somebody tries to teach and preach it to you.Read More

While visiting our son recently, we had the chance to sail on a tall ship out into Lake Michigan, and got a closer look at a lighthouse, one of many that are scattered around the lake.

We also got to attend Sunday morning worship at the Moody Memorial Church, which stands like a spiritual lighthouse in Chicago’s Olde Towne. And what a wonderful experience that was!

We parked in the first-time visitor’s lot just across the street from the church, and we were greeted by dapper parking lot “attendants” in coats and ties. I asked, “How do we prove to you that we’re first-time visitors?” He smiled a million-dollar smile and said, “Just tell us ya are!”

When we got out of the car and stepped onto the sidewalk, we joined a throng of people streaming to the church from all points of the compass. And that’s when we started to feel the excitement. People were smiling and greeting one another with “Good morning!” (I think that’s the first time that’s happened to me in Chicago!) We immediately felt that we were surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ.Read More

We just finished a monumental week of Vacation Bible School. We had a high attendance of 82 (that’s just kids, not including workers), and I have to say that the whole thing seemed to run like a well-oiled machine. Every night that week the church was filled with a “joyful hubbub”. The kids sang louder and more exuberantly every night, building to an admirable peak in Friday night’s program. And the Gospel of Jesus was presented to them many times, in many ways during the week. We know of at least one child, and perhaps two, who prayed to receive Jesus that week; and the seed was sown in so many more young lives.

There always seems to be someone who asks, “Does it really do any good?” The only answer I can give you is: “It did for me.”

I called on the Lord Jesus at the close of a VBS session when I was ten years old. Nobody manipulated or coerced me. They asked if there was anyone who wanted to know what it meant to be saved, to come forward and somebody would talk with you. I went forward…bringing a friend with me! When they found out he only came because I asked him to, they let him go back to his seat. Nobody manipulated or coerced him, either.Read More

Last Memorial Day weekend I read this to our morning worship service. I wanted to share it with you again, in print. Here’s what I read:

This is Memorial Day Weekend. Memorial Day is observed every year in the United States on the last Monday of May… but it was not always so. In 1968, Congress moved four holidays, including Memorial Day, from their traditional dates to a Monday, in order to make a 3-day weekend. Before this, Memorial Day was always on May 30th, and was called Decoration Day.

Decoration Day originated after the Civil War. The sheer number of dead soldiers, from the North and the South, made remembering and honoring them a matter of great importance to their countrymen. People in towns all over America began decorating the graves of fallen soldiers. Following President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, memorial observances for the dead began to be held in May. As time passed, May 30th became the traditional date to remember fallen soldiers by decorating their graves. It became known as Decoration Day, though by 1882 some also began calling it Memorial Day.Read More

“God hates you! God is against sin and sinner!” Did you just cringe a bit? So did I. The above statement is how some Christians share the “Gospel.” Is it just me, or is something missing?

One could look to Scripture and see examples of God hating specific sins, and specific types of sinners. However, when it comes to being a Christian and being watched by the world, we need to be careful about how we present things we see in the Bible to the World. It’s called tact. I have a vague idea, but most unbelievers would probably shake their head and go: “God hates? I thought God was love.” Then they would turn, walk away, and close the door on any sort of witness we could ever have with them. Some Christians only seem to get half the message.

If we leave the message out there that ‘God hates sin,’ but we don’t speak of redemption, we’ve missed the point of the Bible. We’ve missed the purpose of Jesus’ life. Particularly when dealing with unbelieving ‘sinners,’ Jesus did not ignore their sin, but pointed to himself as the means of forgiveness. Consider the Woman at Samaria and Jesus not only acknowledging her sin, but pointing her to true worship of God:Read More