Category Archives: Society

30-minute worship

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While driving from Dallas to Austin recently, I saw a banner with that phrase on it — 30-minute worship. My reaction was, Really? So who’s this targeting? People who just can’t be bothered to give more than 30 minutes out of their busy life to Jesus on Sunday morning?

I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t respond to a “30-minute cross” banner on his way to Golgotha.

If that’s offensive, I assure you I don’t mean it to be, but I would like us to take a look at our priorities.

  • We hurry home from an after-dinner rush to the supermarket so we don’t miss the beginning of Survivor.
  • We have our child at school 20 minutes early for her kindergarten “holiday program” so we can sit in the front row.
  • We quietly slink out of Sunday morning worship so we can beat the _____ (insert name of denomination) to Smok-E-Mo’s Barbecue and still make it home in time for the Cowboys kickoff.
  • After a late Saturday night, we just can’t get it going the next morning, so we totally skip Bible class and arrive at worship 10 minutes late. We only miss a couple of songs.
  • We’re on time for Sunday morning worship, but have some things to take care of, so we make a hasty exit after communion. At least we were there for the most important part.

Do I sound cynical in the least? Please feel free to kick me if you’ve never experienced (or been guilty of) any of this.

What are we “here” for, anyway? I don’t agree 100% with Rick Warren, but I do agree with him that our purpose on earth is to give praise, honor, and glory to the One Who put us here. Period. That’s why God created us.

I understand there are times when there are business trips on Sunday and there are airplanes to catch. Been there. I also understand that there are other things that take us away from worship, and these just can’t be avoided. Most of the time though, isn’t is because of a choice we make? We choose to be on time and to participate fully in the things that truly matter to us.

  • We choose to hit the snooze 3 or 4 times, and end up being late to worship.
  • We choose to be in our easy chair when Survivor (or Gray’s Anatomy, or whatever it is that you can’t miss) comes on the tube, and we don’t miss a second of the action.
  • We choose to have our 10-year-old son at his soccer game 15 minutes early so he can be a “starter”.
  • Anyone who’s ever had a child knows infants (and kids of all ages) have schedules of their own, but many times when we’re late, isn’t it because we simply failed to plan far enough ahead to get ourselves and our kids there in time for Bible class?

We can just as easily choose to make worship a priority in our lives. If it takes a full 60 or 90 or 120 minutes of our precious Sunday morning, day-off, day-of-rest time, then so be it. What are we here for anyway? How long was Jesus on the cross? (Hint: It was between 5 hours and 7 hours — Mark 15:25, 33-34.) I don’t think showing up on time and staying until the last “Amen” is too much to ask.

41 things married people ought to know

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My longtime friend Jim Martin is a minister of the gospel in Waco TX, and writes what is, according to recent stats, the #9 “Church of Christ blog”. Jim began a series of articles yesterday titled 41 Things Married People Ought to Know. In part 1 he lists the first 10, including these 5:

  1. Married people are called to move away from self-centeredness and toward self-lessness.
  2. Jesus can be disruptive to a marriage and family.
  3. Married people can become very lazy with one another.
  4. Every marriage has some kind of atmosphere.
  5. Something is very wrong when a married couple claims a commitment to Jesus and belongs to a church, but they have never allowed Jesus to have any kind of practical impact on their marriage.

Each of these has some bit of explanation as to why it’s on the list, so I encourage you to read the article on Jim’s blog A Place for the God-Hungry, where you can see what else is in the first 10. You’ll want to check back to see what the other 31 are too!

Our kids are baptized — then what?

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You don’t have to search very far to find some “doom & gloomer” tell you the church is dying. You also don’t have to go very far to see a church in which many of its young people “give their lives to Christ”, then a year or two after they leave home, most of those have also left the church.

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

I think we all believe that. I certainly do. But are the Proverbs “absolute, unbreakable rules”, just as the Law of Gravity is absolute and unbreakable? Or are the Proverbs “general principles” to guide our life, that will generally result in a positive outcome if followed? Is it possible to believe the latter without denying the sovereignty of God and the infallibility of His inspired Word?

Consider this Proverb:

The fear of the LORD adds length to life, but the years of the wicked are cut short. (Proverbs 10:27)

Is that really always true — will a true believer always live longer than a heathen? Of course not. “Oh, but he’s talking about eternal life”, you say. Read the chapter. I don’t think the context suggests that. How about:

Good people know the right thing to say, but evil people only tell lies. (Proverbs 10:32 NCV)

Really? I think I’m a pretty good person, by human standards, but I guarantee you I don’t always know the right thing to say. And evil people tell only lies? One hundred percent of the time? We all know Solomon meant this as a general principle — that you shouldn’t trust an evil person because you never know when he’s telling the truth or telling a lie.

Likewise, the Proverb at the beginning of this post is a general principle as well. To deny such is to deny human free will.

In a recent article in The Christian Chronicle, author Dudley Chancey points to research that shows that not only are our kids leaving the church when they leave home, but they stay away. He writes, “While many teens ‘commit’ their life to Christ, not much happens before or after that for many of our ‘churched’ teens. In sociological studies, a majority of moms and dads report that religion and faith are among the most important influences in their lives. And yet, over and over again, this is not lived out. The church — and particularly youth workers — get the blame for teens not being spiritual enough to make it on the outside.”

I’ve seen that; haven’t you? “If we only had a youth minister, …” Finish the sentence yourself. (Or “If we only had a better youth minister, …”)

Chancey also suggests we [parents] are not living out Deuteronomy 6:4-9, part of which I quote here:

6These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Again, I have to agree. I can remember having family devotionals as a kid. Granted, we didn’t continue that practice as my sister and I grew older, but I vividly remember the devotionals and to this day I remember my dad teaching me Hebrews 11:6, which I can still quote from memory. Yet I did not continue that practice with my own family when I got married and had kids of my own. In how many Christian households today does real Bible teaching take place? It takes place in 100% of them by lifestyle example, I hope, but I mean real sit-down, open-the-Bible-type teaching? This is one area where I fell short as a parent. We talked about Scripture for sure, and we took advantage of as many “teachable moments” as we could, but we could have done more teaching.

Near the end of the article, Chancey makes these statements and these pleas:

Parents, bottom line, it is still your job to rear your children and teach them to have faith in God. Elders, it is your job to shepherd our souls. Please stop sending money to Africa, Brazil, Honduras and other foreign countries to save souls when our own children are walking out on God. Please rethink church and ministry as equipping people to become mature in Christ.

I agree 100% with his statements — it is the job of the parents to raise Godly children and the job of the elders to guide us in doing that. I’d disagree with his third sentence in this quote if I really thought he meant to completely stop sending money to support foreign missionaries. I hope he doesn’t really mean that. His last sentence, I think, is the real point he’s trying to make. We do need to rethink how we should go about equipping young-in-Christ people (whether they’re young in age or not) to become more mature. If that means shifting budgets to do it, that’s what we need to do.