John 3:30

He Must Increase, I Must Decrease

Theology

2017 Arnold Report – 5 (Final)

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This is part 5 of a series.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Finally, I want to leave you with some thoughts of where I failed, my repentance, and God’s encouragement to me.

Even Christians who can rightfully be called *seasoned* evangelists and leaders are fallible men and will err. Allow me to describe the circumstance to you that we faced Saturday.

The cult called the Seventh Day Adventists (herein called SDA) has been noticeable for over a year now when I evangelize. The purpose of this post is not to prove they are heretical, but that fact is assumed. If you disagree, let me know and I’ll telly you why.

We encountered an SDA fellow Saturday. It took me a moment to recognize him but I remembered him from another outreach where he had tried to convince Kurtis and Nick that hell wasn’t eternal, and of some of their other errant doctrines with which they yoke people and try to seal the condemnation of others.

Matthew 23:4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

Dave actually chuckled about how quickly I exited the conversation with this man. He is divisive, and I see him as sent by demonic forces to obstruct our mission.

Titus 3:10-11 As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.

But the SDA folks immediately engaged our young people. A part of me wanted to stop it, but it was toward the end of the day so we weren’t really being diverted from the mission, because it had settled down by then. And, “Maybe our young people would engage the SDA folks and win them to Christ,” I thought.

From a team leadership perspective, I want to keep my team on task. So there are times I break up what may seem like enjoyable fellowship, to remind the team we are there for a reason, to reach the lost that we encounter. I also will try to keep people from being tied up with one person if it seems warranted.

But at the same time, I see the debate that ensues with an SDA as a chance for a young person’s faith to be tested. They are forced to consider their own hermeneutic as the SDA person references Scripture after Scripture to defend his or her cause. I was pleased to see this, and that our youth grew stronger in the faith once for all delivered to the saints!

But, alas, in our kindness and friendliness toward even those who are enemies of Christ, I believe I made quite an error at the end of our outreach. Before we walked to the car, we all gathered around to worship the Lord in song. I have a dozen waterproof hymnbooks I produced with about 54 hymns in them. As we were starting to gather two polite SDA ladies approached us and a couple of our members invited them to sing. I had an urge to tell them no they could not sing with us; that we did not worship the same God. But I desired to avoid that conflict and thought that it wouldn’t hurt if a person simply wanted to sing a song while we sang.

And had they simply joined on their own accord or been standing at a distance singing along, that would have been OK. But these ladies sang with us as if they were with us. And it made me very uncomfortable. Then, I noticed while we were singing, one of the women was passing out her heretical gospel-less tracts! What a failure on my part to stand up for what was righteous and good and separate from the world. But Christ gives grace and I rely on His righteousness to sustain me.

So finally, as if it were simply meant as an act of encouragement to me, the Lord who directs my steps directed me to take my children to lunch Sunday after church where we met a kind waitress named Tammy. What we didn’t know is that Tammy needed encouragement. So I wrote Tammy a ‘gospel’ note on the back of our receipt for I had forgotten my tracts, and Tammy responded by emailing me that she is a new believer who needed encouragement!

Praise the Lord for His providential will in the life of this child of His!

2017 Arnold Report – 3

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This is part 3 of a series.

Part 1
Part 2

While I was preaching outside the Arnold Classic, a man sat and seemed to listen for a long time. Kurtis noticed this and went over to talk to him. This was an excellent thing for him to notice.

Kurtis ended up talking to this man for several minutes and it ended with Kurtis praying for the man. Some people won’t let you do that in public, but this guy did!

Praise the Lord! Open air preaching resulted in this gospel conversation where Kurtis was able to minister to this man.

Next, I asked Kurt if he was ready to preach. Unlike most stories I’ve heard, he did not become afraid and back out! Kurtis grabbed his waterproof Bible and read John 3 in the open air, then used that text to launch into about a 20 minute open air sermon.

He was approached by several people who shook his hand, gave him a fist bump or hugged him! He got more hugs in his first open air sermon than I ever have. (Not to mention I think half my hugs have come from transvestites, but that’s another story).

Here is a photo of Kurtis while he was reading the Bible on High Street!

Kurt reading John 3

In addition to the good reactions he received, a man named Josiah and his friend Kevin sat down and were really excited about what Kurt was doing. They started a t-shirt business and were at the Arnold showing people their work. It was encouraging to talk to believers from another place in the USA and see them encouraged to hear Jesus preached in public.

Tune in Monday to hear more about this exciting day!

Google & International Women’s Day

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If you visit Google.com today (go ahead and click the link to open a new tab), you will see that for today’s doodle they have a nice representation of women who have done wonderfully heroic and academic things from all cultures. This is in celebration of International (Working) Women’s Day which is March 8.

A few quick thoughts:

  1. Watch the Google Doodle and you will notice that in almost every picture the woman is pictured with a child. It is as if Google cannot deny the importance of motherhood (which the good people at Google cannot).
  2. You will also notice that there isn’t a single depiction of a heroic, brave, woman having an abortion, going into an abortion clinic nor performing an abortion. It is as if this vital, empowering act of womanhood isn’t really something people celebrate when it is considered seriously.
  3. Finally, absent from the doodle are the woman who have risen up against the patriarchy to prostitute their bodies for men, display their talents in pornography or shake “what their momma gave ’em” at a strip club. What the doodler reveals to us unintentionally is the worldview that we are all born with written on our hearts (God’s law) which reveals to us the importance of women and their inherent value as made in God’s image, rather than what they can do for us sexually.

Even the average heathen has a conscience, one they cannot violate without consequence. Today is a day that many people celebrate the good contributions women make to our world – and a day many others celebrate their anti-God attitude toward a woman’s true, high calling from the Lord Jesus Christ.

So dear Christian, do you celebrate woman as God would have you? Do you want to tell others the good news that God Himself sent His only Son, Jesus Christ into the world to die for women who are sinners?

International Women’s Day is a cry for help. This isn’t a day that people finally have risen up to “stick it to the man” as so many are so certain. This is a day when women everywhere are being told their significance, their worth and their value are in how they contribute to a society, rather than found in another, Jesus Christ.

Women who pursue virtuous endeavors are to be lauded to the extent that they obey Christ’s commands for their lives and in the context where God has placed them, and this is righteous judgement for praising the accomplishments of a man or woman. Don’t get caught up in the social justice of it all.

I appreciate any comments you may want to leave for discussion. I have more to say, but want to keep the post under 500 words.

Why I Don’t Do Go Fund Mes

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You want to raise money for a worthy cause; I get it!

Go Fund Me is a website that allows you to do that super easily, and securely.

But there is a price – Let’s say you raise $2,500 for your worthy cause…well, Go Fund Me is collecting nearly $125 of that. Credit card processing fees will be another $75 approximately.

So your buddy who needs new stuff after a fire only gets $2,300 even though folks who care about him actually provided $2,500.  (This was purely an example, the actual costs may vary, but the concept is the same, you are paying for the service).

Note – I am not saying there is anything wrong with this. Go Fund Me is providing a valuable service to most people who use it by providing a website and payment collection system. 5-10% or whatever the agreed upon amount isn’t actually a terrible fee for the service.

But, in some cases, those things are not necessary. Let me provide 3 examples.

  1. There is a gofundme alternative at YouCaring.com. It is basically the same service with no fees. But when you donate there, you will be asked to make an additional donation to help keep the site running. At least in that case the donation and the amount is optional. YouCaring is also a crowd sourcing site like GoFundMe and I will explain the benefit of that at the end of this article.
  2. In cases where sending a check is sufficient (that is, the money is not needed the next day), you can save all the credit card cost by allowing people to donate by check. Imagine my scenario above, by sending a check for $100, you ensure the donation is received in full, rather than the person in need only getting approximately $94 or so.
  3. And, in the case like I did recently with Mike Stockwell, since I already have a website and a payment processor, I was able to receive credit card payments and only incur the very small fee I pay as a non-profit. And with the help of a kind donor who covered the CC fees, Mike will receive every penny that was donated.

The ability to collect a credit card payment is a necessary evil, as many people simply would not donate without that ease.

So, if you MUST create a crowdsourcing page, I recommend YouCaring.com as a way to do it without the same overhead as Go Fund Me. But consider the fees involved and maybe you’ll find another solution.

P.S. Sites that Go Fund Me and You Caring will try to get more donations than what you are able to get with your reach. They make money off every donation, so they make it their goal to simply hook up people with causes they care about. So if you have a really big need where you need to reach people outside your normal sphere of influence and those who would help you create a buzz, a crowdsourcing site like You Caring or Go Fund me is a great idea.

If you simply want a place where people you already know and maybe those who also know your Facebook friends can donate, then a site like I set up for Mike Stockwell is more sufficient – and, I’ll submit to you, a better form of stewardship.

Mike Stockwell Encouragment Fund

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As you may have heard, Mike Stockwell of Cross Country Evangelism was recently found Guilty in a court in the UK due to his faithful preaching of the gospel.

The prosecution is seeking approximately $5,000 in fines between Mike and his preaching partner, Mike Overd.

If you would like to donate money to help Mike with any expenses at all, use the link below and in the comments put, Mike Stockwell.  Your donation will go to a 501c3 non-profit where I can transfer the funds to Mike’s very easily.

This is simply a love gift for Mike, regardless of how things end up with the court and fines.  Mike solely lives off the donations of good folks like you, so I’m sure any gift will help him with his life and ministry.

Thanks for considering encouraging this brother in the Lord and sharing his burden.

(Please do put Mike Stockwell in the description field so I know if your donation is for Mike or another purpose)

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO MIKE

 

This link seems to have a lot of detailed information about the trial and verdict. Link

Responding Like a Pharisee

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Last month I received a card in the mail from Legacy Church here on the east side of Columbus, OH.

I posted a couple tweets with screen shots as you can see below.

 

 

 

I received one particular reply which I wanted to respond to in a blog post.

 

 

 

 

I want to give Lisa Manning the benefit of the doubt. Even though I don’t think she’s asking an honest question (I believe she’s making a point in the form of two questions if you include her hashtag), I want to respond graciously, explaining a few of my own thoughts.

First of all, let’s take a look at this statement

What if one person gets saved or changed their life because they change their thinking?

Change Their Thinking

It seems Lisa has deftly understood that I do not agree with the concept of the mailing I received. I do not think that man’s problem is that our thinking is negative, thus pulling us from our goals and potential.

So, in response to the second part of Lisa’s question, “what if someone changed their life because they changed their thinking?” my answer is that I don’t really care, unless of course that thinking was changed from whatever a person thinks to thinking God’s thoughts, which we know according to His Word.

1 Cor 1:11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual

If somehow a person changed their life because they changed their thinking, apart from salvation in Christ and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, although those changes could be positive changes, it is a not the purpose of the church to help people better their lives with better thinking. It is our purpose to preach God’s Word to people and let them fall under the conviction of the Holy Spirit where the only real helpful change occurs (cf Phil 3).

What if one Person Gets Saved?

Next, let’s consider the first part of Lisa’s question. What if a person changed their thinking and got saved? This sounds great on the surface.

In fact, don’t we always say, “such and such sacrifice would be worth it if it helps just one person?”

Well, let’s take Lisa’s tweet in context. She is recognizing that I am opposed to the use of the crude vulgarity on a church mailing. And instead of defending it as a righteous and good practice, she proposes that maybe it will attract someone who ends up saved. Either that or she recognizes that someone may come to church because they want to have more positive thinking, but find Christ while there.

This sounds OK, until we substitute some other verbiage to see if it makes logical sense. Let’s say we have a stripper pole at a church meeting, find some beautiful ladies willing to share what God’s blessed ’em with and invite men from the area to come and enjoy “God’s creation.” Sounds despicable, doesn’t it?

But what if one person gets saved?

“What if one person DOES get saved?” I’d ask.  Who cares? What bearing does it have on the morality of the act? None. Zero. The point is this, someone hearing the gospel and getting saved is a wonderful act of God’s mercy – but whether or not that occurs has no logical bearing on whether your method of getting the gospel to them was legitimate.

I would go so far as to say that if you are willing to sin, follow methods NOT prescribed by God for dispensing His Word, or use language NOT becoming of a Christian (Eph 4:29) in order to get the gospel to someone, then you probably are not saved, and you are just practicing a religion you call Christianity, with a god you call Jesus who forgives people of their sins…to assuage your own sin guilt.

Am I a Pharisee?

So does all that make me a pharisee? The implication here is staggering to me because of what pharisees were in Scripture (outside God’s kingdom). Lisa’s tweet goes from an honest question -> to a hashtag which effectively labels me as outside the kingdom of Heaven.

This is a big deal to me because Lisa seems to come from the easy believism camp of Christianity – which is nearly indiscernible from Universalism. My point is this, she seems to be almost a universalist, but she draws a comparison from me to the very people Jesus called a “brood of vipers!” (Mt 23:33)

Of course, maybe Lisa didn’t mean it so literally analogous to biblical pharisees as I took it. Maybe she was just asking me if I was being legalistic or if I was unrighteously judging (John 7:24).  I will leave that to you, the reader to decide. But remember, if you judge me to be unrighteously judging for passing any judgement at all, you are caught in your own trap.

I appreciate the good folks who wrote this post which sums up the problem with playing the pharisee card. I strongly suggest you read it.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, we need to be a holy people in a wicked and perverse generation. We need to do things the way God has instructed in His Word and trust Him with the results. And we need to keep in mind when we judge others that we ourselves are not committing the same errors we are correcting them for.