Category: Newsletter

Have you seen what’s going on upstairs in our Education Wing? Lots of volunteers of all ages have been painting, spackling, hammering, sawing and otherwise just making a wonderful mess upstairs, all to transform an unused room into a delightful place for Children’s Church.

It’s called The Treehouse (a name chosen purposely to dovetail with the Youth Group’s theme of Roots), and the idea is to make it into a place kids can walk into and think: “Hey! This is really cool!” We want them to have a great time in Children’s Church. We want them to like it, and to have fun. (Wouldn’t it be great if kids really wanted to come to church?) And in the midst of all the fun, we want to make sure that they are hearing the Gospel of Jesus in a way that they can understand and respond to.

There’s always some who raise objections to presenting the Gospel to children. But research has shown over and over again that most conversions happen when a person is younger. Every decade a person lives, the liklihood of them becoming a Christian diminishes drastically.Read More

Right in the middle of all the snow we got after Christmas, I saw something that made me laugh out loud. My son-in-law was driving us from my Dad’s to my in-laws’ house in his 4-wheel drive SUV. As we were making our way on a snow-covered country road toward our destination, we saw another SUV coming toward us. The rear window on the driver’s side was rolled down, and out of the window stuck the heads of two of the happiest dogs you’ve ever seen in your life! They were loving the snow, and their noses in the wind, and just riding in the vehicle! After all the grim weather-casters predicting “snowmaggeddon”, and people worrying and complaining about the snow, those two dogs were, well, a breath of fresh air.

I don’t currently have a dog (and no, I don’t want yours), but I love dogs, and some dogs have been very old and dear friends of mine. So when one of my professors from college emailed me this column, it made me smile. And I think it’s good enough to share with you.Read More

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