Have you ever seen the fire begin to grow?

You know, you’re in the woods and you try to get the fire started and the little branches you finally got to burn are putting out a lot of smoke and flames and so you’re looking around for some bigger pieces so the fire doesn’t go out?  Do you ever have that excited feeling?

I’m reminded of that little song in the 1976 Baptist Hymnal.  It starts like this,

“It only takes a spark, to get a fire going”

Expectations abound.  Anticipation at what will happen next!

And you see it in the lives of people.  You see the church respond.  The small pieces that are laid over the flames catch fire.  You see people respond to the Gospel.  You see a church respond to her calling.

The excitement grows with each passing week.

Just don’t mess it up, I keep thinking.  Don’t throw too big a log on the fire.  Or too many smaller logs so the flames are put out.  Keep fanning the flame.  Keep building on what you have…

Boy it’s good to see the fire grow!  A lot can happen with a good strong fire!

This week…

My wife and I are packing up several of our 3-6th graders and are headed to Middletown Maryland for Centri-Kid at Skycroft Conference Center.

Thankfully, as counselors, we don’t have to do anything.  We just have to be there for church devotions and one counselor has to be on campus at all times.  This will afford me, hopefully, a great opportunity to read most of the books for my doctrinal seminar in a month.  I’ll hopefully have some postings on what I’ve read so far.

Have a great week!

The Story of James Finlayson

I met this man yesterday. He called our church and told me that he just moved into town, and was having some surgery this week to amputate part of his foot. He had gotten frostbite on a mission trip with Saddleback - he had been at Saddleback for 24 years - and had parts of his feet removed. He just wanted someone to pray with him.

I met him at a public place, and he begins to throw out more names. One I knew, and knew to some degree his background. James said he knew this man, told of this man’s family and their profession and their growing up years. James even paid for my drink (non-alcoholic, though we were sitting at the bar).

He mentioned that he was homeless for the night, but never asked for money. He was going to stay in the hospital in the waiting room until he was admitted today.

Some things didn’t feel right, while others were so very convincing that it was hard to discredit. I took him to a hotel and paid for 1 night and gave him some money so he could walk across the street and get some food.

If in the front of your mind you are thinking, “David, you got scammed”, you were right.

We usually handle requests like this through a ministry called Love INC. The local group isn’t open on Monday, so I couldn’t call them to check on him, or ask them to pursue an interview with him. Today I called Saddleback and got the report from them, and I also emailed the person whose name I knew and got information back from them. Confirmed. A con man.
So I got scammed.

I John 3:17 But if anyone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need and refuses to help–how can God’s love be in that person? (NLT)

This verse haunted me yesterday and today. It was the basis for my thought process yesterday.

There are times when we invest in people and those risks pay off. People come to Christ or we help them and their lives are turned around. Other times, those risks don’t pay off and we get burned. Life is like that.

There are hundreds, even thousands of James Finlayson’s around. Some may cross your path some day. Be wise as a serpert. Have a process in place that helps you uncover the true motives of people like this. But in those times when your investment is a scam, don’t stop investing. Don’t stop loving. We can’t through the baby out with the bathwater.

EDIT: Here’s some pictures for you to see what Jamie looks like:

Truth: absolute, relative, or relational?

In this month’s Relevant Magazine, Peter Walker writes an article entitled “Missing the Point? The Absolute Truth Behind Postmodernism, Emergent and the Emerging Church.”  Towards the end of the article, the author includes statements from Tony Jones, Brian McClaren and Len Sweet about truth.

For Jones, “putting the qualifier absolute inform of truth is a modernistic fallacy.  Truth is not qualified by adjectives like absolute.” For both Jones and McClaren, the problem is not with truth but absolute.

Sweet rides the fence, however.  He states that he is both an absolutist and a relativist.  “You can’t escape absolutism.  To say there are no absolutes is in itself absolute.  The Pharisees were the absolutists.  Pilate was the relativist, asking, ‘What is truth?’  I find both of them within me.  But both the Pharisees and Pilate stared truth in the face and didn’t see it.”

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Eros Spirituality

I’m starting a new blog called Missional Ministry (www.missionalministry.com) that will deal with issues that I uncover during my doctoral work with Len Sweet (yeah, I’ll drop names :-D).  My first post there deals with an issue I noticed while doing a little research on one of the books I’ll be working through during this first class, entitled Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality.

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