*It is finished, the battle is over…*
Last night at 11:12, I emailed in my final project for my final class. I received word today that I made a 92, which assures me of an A. Though graduation isn’t until December, I have officially finished classes for my four year degree in biblical studies…27 1/2 years after graduating from Riverdale (GA) High School.
YEA, ME!!
I wonder if Good Morning America will be calling…
Channel 57, WATC in Norcross, GA, is a religious broadcast TV station that hosts a nightly live talk show called, Atlanta Live. A couple of weeks ago Todd Wright and I were asked by host Alan Parker to appear and discuss our book, JOURNEYS: Transitioning Churches to Relevance. That broadcast will be tomorrow night, August 26, from 7:00-9:00 pm. I do not know whether we will be on for the entire broadcast or, ala Jay Leno, for only a segment, but I’m sure it will be a good time. Tune if in you can!
Atlanta Live is normally rebroadcast the following morning at 7:00 on Channel 57, while a one hour edited version can be seen on the NRB Network (DirecTV channel 378) daily at 8:00 am.
On August the 2nd, 2008, after just under 23 1/2 years of life on this earth, our daughter, Beth, was married to Jacob Lancaster of Toccoa, GA. I cannot even tell how many people have asked, “Well, how are you doing?” I am doing fine!
Beth and Jacob did a wonderful job of having a beautiful yet simple wedding. Not surprisingly, the father of the bride had limited funds requiring a very thoughtful planning process in order to get the most for her money. Being the frugal gal that she is, Beth was able to stretch her meager funds to a beautiful site for the outside ceremony, an amazing reception featuring a fajita bar and a 4 layer wedding cake composed of a key lime layer, strawberry, butter pound cake and pumpkin spice layers. Quite amazing.
Those who know Beth and Jacob would not be surprised to note that the only traditional elements of the wedding were a dress, a preacher and walking down an aisle. Parents and grandparents were seated to Time Has Told Me, by Nick Drake, while the wedding party entered to Sigur Ros’, Hippopolli. For the first time that I am aware a wedding party had not only bridesmaids, but also a bridesman, Joey Holman, a friend of Beth’s since middle school. All the bridesmaids wore green dresses with red shoes and Joey wore a green shirt and red Keds. 
The groom and groomsmen wore simple white shirts and ties with gray pants and black Keds. The newly married husband and wife exited to “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” by R.E.M.
During the ceremony, I reminded Beth and Jacob that they had been held in prayer from about May of 1984, as soon as we learned that we were expecting our first child and the God had prepared them for each other. Having seen them come together as an answer to prayer, how could I be anything but thrilled for them? I’m so happy that they have begun their life together and have no regrets.
The wedding was held at the Cornelia (GA) Community House, a charming log and stone building built by the Kiwanis in 1936. It has a massive fireplace, hardwood floors, vaulted ceilings stone arches and beautiful grounds. A gorgeous canopy of oak trees shades the front lawn where the chairs were set up. A moss covered fountain provided a scenic backdrop for the wedding party and many of the photos.
We had prayed for weeks for cool weather which, in a Georgian August, is rather hard to come by. The weather had been hot and dry all week long and the day of the wedding was no exception. There was a nice breeze in the morning, but it rose to about 90 degrees with little air movement by the early afternoon. About 4:30 or so my Dad noticed that clouds were forming to the north and the sky was darkening. I really didn’t think that it would come south from that area, but soon the skies above us were clouding over as well. Within minutes, people all over were accessing radar on Blackberries, iPhones and televisions. It was almost without a doubt: a major thunderstorm was coming from the west and had high winds, thunder and lightening. Sometime between 5:00 and 5:30 the first drops fell and in short order there was a huge downpour near to a flash flood.
As we watched through the windows, most folks felt that it would blow over quickly and then the rain would stop and we could start at or near the 6:30 ceremony time. What nobody wanted to face was the horrible Georgia humidity that follows those summer thunderstorms. By about 5:45 the storm was gone, some faithful friends dried out all the plastic chairs and we set up the sound equipment. But how God answered our temperature prayer was pretty amazing. When the storm was over, the temperature had dropped from 90 degrees to 70 degrees and the sun never came out from behind the clouds to it stayed cool and 
comfortable with low humidity the rest of the evening.
As an aside, if you are getting ready for marriage and need a photographer, we would highly recommend Shannon Wright from Covington, GA. Shannon is an amazing photographer, really an artist using photography as a medium. She took all the photos on this page and can be found at Photography by Shannon. Her blog is here.
A few months back one of our 70+ aged senior adults met me and said, “You ought to preach on sex. If you’d preach on sex people would come to hear it.” I kind of laughed it off thinking, “Oh yeah. That would do the trick.” A while later, he approached me and said, “You ought to preach on sex. I saw on the news a pastor who did it and a lot of people showed up!” So I decided to give it a whirl. The message series, that is.
We were trying to find a creative title-one that would be pretty plain and yet capture the attention without being vulgar. We settled on “My Best Sex Now” which, of course, is a play on the title of a popular book by a guy who preaches about how to have money instead of how to have sex.
Immediately, my wife expressed her desire to work in the nursery for three consecutive Sundays or move her church membership altogether. I’m usually very transparent when speaking and she could already imagine me saying, “And then we did this on our honeymoon…” Since, I don’t typically use a lot of notes when speaking, I made a commitment to “stick to the copy” and not take any risks.
Our creative folks engineered a really good website video (www.mybestsexnow.com), some great posters and cool post cards that we mailed to about 750 homes around us…we focused on the closest subdivisions where we have some members. The post cards featured only a bed and nightstand with the website-nothing else. We only got three complaints. All from Christians as you might surmise.
Anyway, I’ve never shied away from preaching about sex and have always addressed the surrounding issues as the text required, but in reality Christian views about sex are almost limited to “homosexuality is a sin and I’m against gay marriage.” We have associated only “Thou shalt nots” with sex and sexuality, forgetting all the biblical “Thou shalts.” This, surely, is a sin of omission. Why do we rail against the darkness when we ourselves have abandoned shining the light?
Anyway, Song of Solomon is fast becoming my favorite book of the Bible following only Hebrews. Of course, Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines so he ought to save something to say about the subject. (I wonder if watermelon grows in the Middle East?)
Two more weeks to go in the series. Week one went well, I thought. We had one particular guest who, on Sunday afternoon, went to his particular locale and told everyone, “I want to church today and he talked about SEX!” I’ll take that publicity any day.
Our staff is attending the Willow Creek Leadership Summit again this year, this time at the satellite location in Norcross, GA. I have been more excited about this year’s Summit than the last two. This is probably the 4th or 5th one that I’ve attended.
As usual, Bill Hybels set the tempo with fantanstic talk on the process of making decisions as leaders, called “The High Drama of Decision Making.” Hybels rarely misses in this venue and my guess is that most of the narrow minded people who’ve consistently criticized him over the years have failed to actually listen to the man share his passion. There is no way that a person with a focused mind and open ears can hear Bill Hybels speak and not be moved by his passion for the lost, for the glory of God and for the local church.
Hybels outline began with the “4 Usual Questions” which are: 1. What does the Bible say? 2. What have others leaders said? 3. Go to your own PG&E Vault (the Pain of past decisions, the Gain of past decisions, the Experiences of past decisions) 4. Is there a prompting of the Holy Spirit in the decision?
The rest of the talk was a portion of Hybels’ new book, <i>Axioms</i>, a collection of his own leadership wisdom. One that was most important, especially for pastoral teams is “Promote a clash of ideas.” Do <b>not</b> try to reach a consensus as quick as you can. The best ideas happen when lots of ideas have been discussed.
Hybels also spoke of the study done at Willow Creek that resulted in some massive changes in structure and programming. This <i>Reveal</i> study cause much accusation and celebration from Willow Creek’s detractors last year when released as it showed that not as much spiritual growth had taken place at Willow as the leadership team had wanted. <i>Reveal</i> helped them to reformulate and redefine what needed to happen to actually get spiritual growth to another level. We are going to use a form of it at New Bethany sometime in the next 6 months. I’m persuaded that the reason more churches don’t do a similar evaluation is the fragile ego of the Lead Pastor could not take it.
The second speaker yesterday was Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission, an organization that exists to bring the goodness of God to those who are in some form of enslavement in our world today, an estimated 27 million people. I was absolutely shaken to the core by the video footage of forced child prostitution in Asia yet moved to the core with the footage of them being released, some 24 from one dungeon. To hear of one 16 year old Indian girl who was led to another city on false pretenses only to be drugged and forced into prostitution where she was raped 20-30 times a day, 7 days a week for her entire imprisonment was almost more than I could stand. I was ready to pack a suitcase, some brass knuckles and firearms and volunteer for a mission trip.
Haugen’s definition of <i>injustice</i> is revealing: the abuse of power to take from people the good things that God has given to them. When viewed in that light, it is no wonder that God was so consistently stirred up about injustice in Israel. If we don’t take victims of that abuse the living example of the goodness of God, are they really going to see it through the Red Cross or the Red Crescent. Haugen’s first point, Leadership that matters to God is leadership in areas that matter to God, should be enough to get the people of God involved in justice issues. I can’t wait to encourage out budget team to transfer some budget funds to support IJM.
More updates later.
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