One In Jesus

[This story is true. And here end the reruns. I hope I’m well enough to post now …]

I was baptized when I was eight. I was short for my age, skinny, and proudly wore a butch cut. The kids would call it a buzz cut today.

My church had less than 100 members, and we met in a converted warehouse, sitting in folding metal chairs bracketed into rows.

The elders decided that if I was old enough to be saved, I was old enough to be put to work. So, on Sunday nights, it became my job to pass out communion. An older man would say the prayers, and I’d take the tray to the members. Continue reading →

[Obviously enough, I’m not only a Ray Vander Laan fan, his speaking and writing have greatly influenced me, teaching me to dig deeply into the Old Testament and the history and culture behind the New Testament. I’ve learned a lot and was thrilled to share this thought inspired by a lecture given by Ray.]

The Lord’s Supper was instituted as part of a Passover meal. The Passover, of course, celebrates God’s deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage.

By the time of Jesus, the meal was celebrated with four cups of wine, each reflecting a promise of God made to Moses and Israel at the beginning of their delverance —

(Exo 6:5-8)  “Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.'”

Ray finds that at least three of the cups were recorded in the Gospels’ account of the Last Supper. Continue reading →

Here’s the text of an email I sent to everyone at my office earlier today:

_____________________

Surgery was very successful. Both the leg pain and muscle spasms went away immediately after surgery. I was discharged from the hospital 3 days after I was admitted.

Since discharge, I’ve finally gotten the general anesthesia out of my system and am, overall, feeling much better, although I do have to take naps. I tire easily.

Despite all that, I’ve started having severe leg pains in the left leg. Before  surgery, my symptoms were over 90 percent in the right leg.

The left leg pain never goes entirely away, and at its worst, is like kidney stone pain — that is, it really, really hurts. But with medicines and staying off my feet, the pain subsides. As I type this, I’m hurting very little at all — thanks to a heating pad and large doses of pain killing medications. Continue reading →

[Most of my most popular posts are communion meditations. And for some reason, their popularity peaks on Saturday nights.

I try to be very brief — contrary to my nature — because I know that I’m not the point of the communion. My job is to point away from myself and toward Jesus or even toward his bride, the church.

But then again, because so many communion meditations are trite, cliché, or even self-indulgent, I try to pick out a single, well-worded thought to share. And so I usually write it down and read it, knowing that it’s my nature to speak too long and extemporize too much.]

The scriptures speak of the Lord’s Supper in terms of “breaking bread.”  For example,

(Act 20:7 ESV) On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.

Ponder for a moment why “break bread” became an expression for the Lord’s Supper. It’s really an expression for eating a common meal. Continue reading →

[Much to my surprise, this brief note is one my all-time most popular posts. On the other hand, I would not be the least surprised to learn that congregations have been deeply affected if they’ve tried a communion led in this manner.]

Sunday was Missions Sunday for us. We enjoyed a truly extraordinary day of worship and fellowship in anticipation of making a once-a-year offering to support our missions program. But without a doubt, the highlight was taking communion with our brothers and sisters in China. Our missions team arranged for the missionaries we support in China to be connected to our church by live internet feed.

Now, that was cool enough, but the communion service was led by a recent convert from China, Continue reading →

I’ve had this question posed to me several times. It’s not an easy one for a couple of reasons.

First, when the New Testament speaks of a Christian being “called,” it usually means called to obey the gospel. On the other hand, when Jesus calls James and John to follow him (Matt. 4:21 ff), they are being called to “be fishers of men,” a very specific task. Continue reading →

[I was checking to see which of my old posts had drawn the most hits, and this one was among the highest. I had no idea. In fact, I’m not sure I remember writing it, and it’s way longer than most of my material. And it goes into areas that most theology doesn’t.]

Social Gospel

As stated in the Wikipedia,

In the late 19th century, many Americans were disgusted by the poverty level and the low quality of living in the slums. The social gospel movement provided a religious rationale for action to address those concerns. Activists in the Social Gospel movement hoped that by public health measures as well as enforced schooling so the poor could develop talents and skills, the quality of their moral lives would begin to improve. Important concerns of the Social Gospel movement were labor reforms, such as abolishing child labor and regulating the hours of work by mothers. By 1920 they were crusading against the 12-hour day for men at U.S. Steel. Many reformers inspired by the movement opened settlement houses, most notably Hull House in Chicago operated by Jane Addams. They helped the poor and immigrants improve their lives. Settlement houses offered services such as daycare, education, and health care to needy people in slum neighborhoods. The YMCA was created originally to help rural youth adjust to the city without losing their religion, but by the 1890s became a powerful instrument of the Social Gospel. Nearly all the denominations (including Catholics) engaged in foreign missions, which often had a social gospel component in terms especially of medical uplift. The Black denominations, especially the African Methodist Episcopal church (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church (AMEZ) had active programs in support of the Social Gospel. Both evangelical (“pietistic”) and liturgical (“high church”) elements supported the Social Gospel, although only the pietists were active in promoting Prohibition.

In the United States prior to World War I, the Social Gospel was the religious wing of the progressive movement which had the aim of combating injustice, suffering and poverty in society. During the New Deal of the 1930s Social Gospel themes could be seen in the work of Harry Hopkins, Will Alexander and Mary McLeod Bethune, who added a new concern with African Americans. After 1940, the movement withered … . Continue reading →

[I remember well the day a fellow elder brought a stack of CDs to a meeting and suggested I listen to them (something like 9 or 10 hours of listening. Are you kidding??)

He said this Ray Vander Laan guy is truly amazing. And I didn’t believe him — too many bad recommendations from friends, you know. But he was right. These first 12 mp3s are not just worth the time to listen to … You should listen to them three or four times. Really. Trust me on this.]

Thanks to the work of David Scott, Ray Vander Laan’s lectures on “Follow the Rabbi” that were delivered at Focus on the Family are available for download. The links follow:

Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Lesson 6
Lesson 7
Lesson 8
Lesson 9
Lesson 10
Lesson 11
Lesson 12

Alternative Download Web Site

Now these are about 9 or 10 hours of lecture, and so I suggest you put these on CDs or download these as Podcasts to play on your mp3 player, rather than trying to listen to them all from your computer.

These are GREAT! I mean, they’ve been passed around my church, and I know people who’ve listened to all 9 or 10 hours 4 or more times. People are making copies for their kids and friends, and they are spreading like wildfire across the country.

The lectures cover some of the same material as the DVD series, but the DVD lessons are shot on site and are designed for Bible class use. The mp3 downloads are a day’s worth of fascinating, mind-blowing lectures. And there’s no problem with listening to both. They each shed light on the other, but they are not the same.

Oh, and you have to start at the beginning. Whoever was recording the series simply changed CDs in the recorder as each CD was filled, so the “lessons” tend to start in the middle of a lecture.

Good stuff.

Thanks to Scott.

NEW MATERIAL

David has found and posted 14 CDs worth of materials from a series of lectures by Ray Vander Laan delivered in Idaho.

And a lecture regarding Christmas.