Hypocrites and Tornadoes (Just Ask)

Question:  I am dealing with people in my family not wanting anything to do with church because of hypocrites. I need help in this area.  What can I do?

The word hypocrite comes from a Greek word that means “an actor on a stage.”  It describes someone who is able to play a role in a certain context, but who lives a very different life “off stage.”  This is certainly true of many people in the church.  The Bible is honest about their existence.  We also know that Jesus did not shy away from using the word in His confrontation with the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23).  We certainly have warrant to use our common sense and discernment to recognize people who are hypocritical.  They are not difficult to spot.

The existence of hypocrites in the church, however, does not give one warrant to reject the church.  Some would say that they can follow Christ without the church.  This concept is foreign to the New Testament.  Biblically it can be argued that one cannot follow Christ without the church.  Therefore, it may sound more noble to reject the church because of its hypocrites, but it is really foolish.  

Not going to church because there are hypocrites is like saying you will never again eat bananas because there are brown spots.  Yet exposing the illogical and foolish nature of the argument may only add to your frustration or sorrow in dealing with your family over this issue.  The best you can do is to continue to proclaim the gospel to your family and live it out before them.  Don’t be a hypocrite!  In the end it is important for your family to know that the hypocrite and those who despise them are all in the same boat, sinners in desperate need of Jesus.    Those of us who are not hypocrites are merely more honest sinners than they.  Jesus died for all - the honest sinners and the hypocrites alike.

Question:  What is Ridgecrest (the church I serve as pastor) doing as a whole to help the victims of the tornado?  I know other local churches have groups together and designed teams to go and volunteer; what is RBC doing?

This has certainly been a surreal week in our community.  13 homes in our church family have suffered minor damage to total destruction.  One family in our church suffered injury and has spent the week in the hospital.  Since the storms members of the pastoral staff, deacon body, and membership at large have been extremely active in our community helping families remove trees and salvage belongings.

This weekend there will be several opportunities to serve.  If you will contact the church office rcore@rbconline.net or jmann@rbconline.net we can share with you some specific work sites where you may volunteer.  We are also encouraging our people to partner with other works, churches, and organizations in our area.  Responding to a storm of this magnitude is a team effort.  No one can do it all alone.  Below are a few listings and opportunities that have been passed along to me.

The Birmingham Baptist Association - sending out teams daily, contact:  http://bbaonline.org/

ClayRidge Baptist in Clay is looking for volunteers to carry meals into Centerpoint on Friday and Saturday.  They especially need men to help through the weekend to help make delivery more secure.  There are also debris cleanup crews meeting and leaving from the church parking lot.  

The following note comes from Jae Skinner, one of our members and a teacher at Erwin Elementary:

Hey! If you don't have to work, we need HELP AT ERWIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL moving classrooms for the Centerpoint teachers. If you can come help, please do! I (Jae) will be there at 8:00. Call me 966-7133 and I will get you plugged in somewhere. Trying to get the school ready for kiddos so they can get back to a normal routine!

An Open Letter to My Congregation

There is no easy way to say goodbye to a group of people whom you sincerely love.  With a great deal of sadness a meaningful chapter in my life closes and with a great deal of anticipation a new one begins.  Since October 27 of 2002 I have faithfully served as pastor for the people of Ridgecrest Baptist Church in Trussville, AL.  On February 22, 2012 I will begin a new assignment as pastor for the people of Liberty Baptist Church in Dalton, GA.

In times like these we feel an array of emotions.  Shannon and I, from the time we realized this move was immanent, have experienced a range of feelings from anxiety to excitement, from sadness to joy.  Birmingham is very much home for us.  Until recently, even through some of our most difficult struggles, we never considered leaving Ridgecrest.  It took a great deal of convincing through prayer for us to accept this move.  We did not approach anyone at any time about going anywhere.  Yet the whole thing has been very providential and God’s call for us is unmistakable.  We love this area and its people.  We think its funny that you talk college football 365 days a year and that the sports guy on the news shares stats from practice.  Only in Birmingham will people have their homes destroyed by a tornado, but still be sure to have plenty of Milo’s sweet tea on hand.  We will miss living in a town with a 1:1 ratio of BBQ joints to Baptist churches.  We will miss your gigantic iron statue of a guy in desperate need of shorts and your milk jug yard torch things at Christmas.  Indeed there will be some in our congregation who are simply saddened while others may feel angry and betrayed.  However you feel, I assure you of this.  Shannon, the girls, and I love all of you and I count it a great honor to say that I have served you as pastor. 

Vision and leadership is not only about seeing where you are going, it is also about being honest about the end.  The worst mistake a leader can make is to continue leading past his vision.  While I see many great things ahead for Ridgecrest, God has made it clear to me and to my family that our assignment here has ended.  Over these past 9+ years, together, we have experienced no small changes.  Our path to where we are now was no easy one.  We have bought and sold property.  We have made difficult decisions and taken responsibility for the consequences.  We have dared to do something most people thought would not work in purchasing a warehouse on less than two acres of property and making it a launch pad of missions and ministry.  None of it has been easy and everything we have done has come in rapid succession.  There is yet more to do in finishing the final phase of our current campus and in realizing the financial vision for missions and ministry God has given us.  The vision itself is not over, but God has shown me clearly that it is time for another voice of leadership at Ridgecrest.

In recent years God has blessed Ridgecrest and it has become a growing congregation once again.  It is difficult to leave those of you who are new to RBC, especially those of you who are rising up to leadership.  We have some promising men and women in our church that I believe will become crucial to the church continuing to increase.  To these I charge you to keep your hand to the plow and don’t look back.  Yet I want to also express how difficult it is to leave another group of people, those who did not quit.  No matter how long God gives me to serve Him, no matter where I serve, there will always be a special place in my heart for those of you who never gave up, who endured the days before our relocation, who submitted themselves to the crucible of change God put us through, and remained faithful to the end.  You did what you said you would do and I love you dearly for what you have done.

Certainly this has been a difficult week for all of us, and my announcement does not help.  The timing of all of this is unfortunate but beyond my control.  As much as I would like to delay this announcement, it has been made known to me that the news is out.  Therefore, it was necessary for me to go ahead and share this with you.  I would much rather tell my story than have it told for me.  As I say often, if you are going to read my mind, please allow me to write the script.  I shared the story with the church on Wednesday night, and I will do so again on Sunday.  In hearing our story I hope you will agree with me that for us to stay in leadership at Ridgecrest would be blatant disobedience to what God is calling us to do in going to Liberty.  Knowing then, that this is the call of God for us, please realize, it is also God’s call for you.  We should not see this merely as an end, but as a dawning of expectation.  What does God have for us next?  In our prayers about this, Shannon and I sought to know clearly from God that if we left, Ridgecrest would have a great future ahead.  God has shown us that indeed this is true, our call away is no mistake, and it is necessary for us to move on so that Ridgecrest may grab hold of what is next.  Yet change is never easy and we are tempted to listen to the voice of fear rather than faith.  You may wonder, what if things do not go well?  We have wondered the same.  What if the people of Liberty do not accept our leadership there, what if we fail, what if it all goes wrong?  This is not the voice of faith, this is the voice of the enemy using fear to quench vision.

To encourage our faith it is important for us to place markers in our past, altars of blessing that remind us of God’s faithfulness in difficult times.  When I left Lantana Road and came to you, it was a difficult decision.  God called a godly man to be their next pastor and the church has continued to grow.  The church is now a leading church in Cumberland County, TN and they have built a great facility on the acreage we purchased just before I left.  I left there knowing I would not be the man that built the next building because God was calling me to you. Even in that certainty I experienced fear.  What if things go wrong in Birmingham?  Ridgecrest was a hurting church with an almost non-existent vision when I came.  The Ridgecrest that we are leaving is not the same church we came to.  God has done a great work here.  There is a great vision now that you and the next pastor can continue to build upon together.  I trust that you will.  I am following a godly pastor at Liberty.  It is a great church with a wonderful vision - we will work to continue what God is doing there.  It is not about what is ending, it is about what is next.  For all of us, Ridgecrest, Liberty, and the Branams we must not allow fear to be the dominant voice, but rather the voice of faith and vision; for such is the Kingdom of God.  

Please feel free to call us.  If you have questions I will gladly answer them for you.  May God be glorified, His Son lifted up, and the church be edified in the days ahead.

BB

Gal. 2:20

Panorama from Pilgrim's Rest

I went out again this morning to help those impacted by the storm.  From the information we have gathered, there are 13 families at Ridgecrest who have suffered minor damage to total loss.  This morning I spent some time at the Hickman home, pictured here in a panorama I took with photosynth.



http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=cecdf859-fc64-4ba7-8f64-7d17af07880f

Storm

We have had reports of several families in our church whose homes have been destroyed or damaged.  At this time we know of only 1 family with injuries.  Mr. Wheat (Jane Hikman's father), Hope Hickman, and Hope's nurse were hurt in the storm.  Mr. Wheat suffered the most serious injuries (broken ribs) and will be recovering at UAB.  Hope will be at Children's Hospital as her medical equipment and medicine were a total loss.  At this time the area is blocked from Deerfoot to Chalkville Mountain Road.  As always we will be partnering with the Birmingham Baptist Association for cleanup and relief.  For updates, see our wall posts on the Ridgecrest Baptist page on Facebook.  Please pray for our families and we will share information as it becomes available.

BB
Gal. 2:20

Random Thoughts on Friday 1/20

Since this weekend is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday I have only one random thought, that is actually more purposeful than random.  Pastor John Piper at DesiringGod.org is offering a free e-book Exposing the Dark World of Abortion.  Dr. Piper and the folks at Desiring God are very generous in making several great books available for free download.  After you download Piper's book on Abortion, I would also recommend Grudem's Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, also available as a free pdf download.

Work and Worship

When words are repeatedly misused or overused they quickly lose their meaning and in time come to describe something else all together.  I give you gay, awesome, and sick.  In times past a gay man could have an awesome day and the statement said nothing about his sexuality.  It meant only that a happy man witnessed something in the day that was truly awe inspiring.  Now awe inspiring things are sick.  Awesome things are merely above average.  “How was your cake?”  “Awesome.”  There was a time that no cake was worthy of awe and too much of it would make you sick. 

“Worship” is another word that has been victimized by overuse and misuse.  In modern church culture when one hears the word “worship” he or she is given to think in terms of who (as in who is leading), where (as in where will worship be held), and when (as in what time will worship begin and end).  Ironically the same thing has happened to work.  We think of it more as a place where we are employed rather than a task we are called to do.  Biblically speaking worship includes these elements; who, when, and where).  The “who” of worship has included Levites, choirmasters, and musicians.  Worship was never meant to be chaotic or thoughtless.  There is nothing spiritual about coming to the Lord without careful planning.  This is why we have Leviticus.  The “where” of worship has included the Tabernacle and the Temple but is now described in terms such as “in Christ” and “in the Spirit.”  In the Book of Revelation there will be worship around the throne.  Make no mistake, worship has its place.  The “when” of worship has included a liturgical calendar, carefully planned by God, giving His people markers throughout the week and the year that would remind them to come back to Him.  We are inescapably a people of the clock and worship requires time.

The mistake of the modern church is that it has come to think of worship only in terms of who, when, and where.  This has led us to make a serious theological error.  We have come to believe that what we do through the week is work.  What we do on Sunday is worship.  Creating this chasm between the who, when, and where of work and the who, when, and where of worship has led us to believe that work has nothing to do with worship.  We would even give ourselves to believe that when we work we are merely laboring under the curse, burdened by the punishment of sin – Adam and Eve’s children on the chain gang. When we worship we are not to work but sing.  In an era of poor theology work and worship have become bitter enemies.  Such thinking has even affected our eschatology (the way we think about the end of time).  We think that in the end we will worship God forever.  The image drawn to mind then is that we will sing to God and have nothing else to do.  We are afraid to say it for fear that we may go to Hell, but honestly, if eternity calls for us to do nothing but sing – it sounds rather boring.

To reconcile these concepts of worship and work we need only to follow the meta-narrative of Scripture.  God is introduced to us in Genesis 1 as a working God.  The more He works the better life becomes.  Every act of work brings forth good.  He rests on the seventh day (Gen. 2) not because he is tired, but because he is finished with the task at hand – creating a life giving, life sustaining world.  It is important to understand that in finishing on the sixth day that God was finished forever.  There was still work to be done.  To join Him in the work God created man.  As God’s image, man was to be God’s deputy and continue His work of bringing forth good.  Man was important to the continuing work of God, for without man there was a lot of dirt in the world producing nothing (Gen. 2:5).  Man was made to work.  Like God, man would work for something good.  God had worked to benefit man.  In fact the word “rest” implies the enjoyment of what God has done for us.  As God’s image, man would work, making a contribution to creation that would bring benefit to others – something good.  It is here, in imitating God at work that work and worship merge.

When you are “at work” today think not of it as cursed toil, but as an act of worship. This is not to say that your work is not burdensome or difficult – sin has impacted our work.  It is not as easy as it used to be (Gen. 3:17), but that does not mean that work has lost all its good.  Your attitude at work, the quality of your produce, what is accomplished at the end of a week ultimately reflects whether or not you think God is worthy to imitate – to bring forth something good for the benefit of others.  This happens long before you ever “go” to worship and sing a song.  In fact if you “go” to worship and sing a song to a God you have shamed in your work all week what are you saying to your employer, your fellow employees, and ultimately to God?  A poor week of work is neither worshipful nor beneficial to anyone.  Bad work is not good. 

So before you waste a day trolling the internet, tending to personal business, or making personal calls – remember you are not just “at work”, you are “at worship.”  You are called as God’s image to be a worshiper and work to bring forth good.     

Bowling for Cancer

In a struggling economy it has become increasingly difficult for local business owners to make a profit.  Despite such challenging times a business in our area did something this past weekend that made an incalculable difference to two children in our church.

As you may know the daughter of our Children’s Pastor, Julia Cobb, is at MD Anderson in Houston, TX undergoing chemo therapy for Ewing’s Sarcoma.  Julia was diagnosed the week before Christmas and since that moment life for the Cobbs has been truly turned upside down.  Jonathan and Jenifer have four children.  Jonathan is himself a cancer survivor so they are well acquainted with the road that lay ahead.  Until Julia is healed the family will be living 700 miles apart.  This will probably be the case for the Cobbs for most of 2012.  Though the family is concerned primarily for Julia there are other moments in a kid’s life that require celebration.  Cancer is no respecter of time or person and for the Cobbs it has already disrupted their children’s baptism, Christmas, and New Year celebrations.  But no matter how difficult life may be, we just can’t forget a kid’s birthday – that’s just wrong.

Julia’s older siblings, Jonathan and Jenna celebrate January birthdays just a few days apart.  When approached about the situation Lightning Strikes Bowling Alley here in Trussville, AL responded not by offering a discounted price (which is all we asked for), but by offering to host a full blown party for Jenna and Jonathan at no cost.  That may not sound like a big deal, but please don’t forget that Jonathan is our Children’s Pastor.  When the Children’s Pastor throws a party there will be kids – gobs of them.  The final calculation was three lanes, about 35 kids, and gallons of soft drinks for 2 hours.  I am not sure what that comes to in bowling bucks, but the bottom line for Lightning Strikes was that they gave this party to the Cobbs at a total loss.  This is not easy to do in any economic climate, but to be so generous to a community family at such a time as this makes the gift of these business owners that much more remarkable. 

If you are looking for something to do this week, go bowling at Lightning Strikes in Trussville, AL.  Their generosity will not be soon forgotten in our church family.  As a community citizen it is great to know that we have local business owners who are not here to simply make a profit from the community, but who want to make a contribution to the community.  Thank you to the ownership, staff, and management of Lightning Strikes – you helped bring celebration back into the life of a family and a church that desperately needed some good news.

Let’s go bowling!!!