The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Why Should You Read The (Jewish Bible) Old Testament?
Here is some familiar ground that we covered previously. The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) provides the foundation for understanding the New Testament. It is often neglected or only read in part. Because of the prominence of the Law in the Jewish Bible, the idea of the grace of God is almost lost to its modern readers. It is often pointed out by readers of the Jewish Bible that God appears to be a God of wrath and judgment. However, some Old Testament characters present God as a God of love and justice. (Moses: Deut. 4-6; Jeremiah: Jer. 9.23-24).

The Jewish Bible (OT) provides the historical background which allows us to understand the message of the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament echo the Jewish Bible over 600 times. Jesus constantly appealed to its teachings as did Paul and other New Testament authors.

The history of the Old Testament is primarily found in the first seventeen books (Genesis-Esther). We must remember when reading this history that it is theological history. It was history told with a purpose. The history that is told is selected history to demonstrate the purpose of God to bring salvation to his creation. The whole Bible is often called salvation history because the God of the Bible is a missionary God.

What does it mean that God is a missionary God? Dallas Willard in his book Divine Conspiracy speaks about a “barcode faith.” Like barcodes on store purchases it doesn’t matter what is inside the package, the scanner just responds to the external barcode. Todd Hunter, has been known to say something like; “Christianity has become a mental assent to a set of beliefs around one theory of the atonement. You get a barcode and that assures you that you can go to heaven.” In short, nothing on the inside of a person has to change.

Marcus Borg in his book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time closes his book by talking about the familiar Christian phrase — believing in Jesus.

For those of us who grew up in the church, believing in Jesus was important. For me, what the phrase used to mean, in my childhood and into my early adulthood, was “believing things about Jesus.” To believe in Jesus meant to believe what the gospels and the church said about Jesus. That was easy when I was a child, and became more and more difficult as I grew older.

But I now see that believing in Jesus can (and does) mean something very different from that. The change is pointed to by the root meaning of the word believe. Believe did not originally mean believing a set of doctrines or teachings; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean “to give one’s heart to.” The “heart” is the self at its deepest level. “Believing, therefore, does not consist of giving one’s mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level of one’s self. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one’s heart, one’s self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit.

Believing in Jesus in the sense of giving one’s heart to Jesus is the movement from secondhand religion to firsthand religion, from having heard about Jesus with the hearing of the ear to being in relationship with the Spirit of Christ. ¹

God is not merely interested in our believing him, but that through our believing that we become the “salt” and “light” to his creation. He is about saving his world, putting it to rights. We learn best how to become a part of this “mission” by reading, understanding, and then living into HisStory.

Reflections

• What is your definition of the Bible?
• Where did you learn your definition?
• If the purpose of Scripture is to share God’s missionary activity in redeeming his creation, then why do you think that we spend so much time reading it for other purposes?
• What do you think about Dallas Williard’s “barcode faith” theory?

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

The Purpose Of The Scripture
When we come to the Bible, we come to God’s word, written to communicate God’s truth to us. One might define the Bible as God’s word written in the words of men. It tells a story and affirms that God has acted on behalf of man for his salvation and restoration. God certainly could have chosen any way he desired to communicate to us, but the fact remains that he chose a certain method to communicate his truth.

The result of that choice by God is the Bible, which we may hold in our hands, the contents of which we may hide in our hearts, and live out in our lives.

Scripture tells us that God has spoken to us, but what has he said? For one to be in a better position for the Holy Spirit to communicate effectively to him/her the truths of God, one must at least know the purpose of the Bible. If you are to begin to have a proper grasp of the meaning of Scripture, you must decide what its purpose is. To know the purpose of any object helps you define its use. Let’s use a hammer as an illustration. The primary purpose of a hammer is to drive nails. If it is used for that purpose, the intended results will be accomplished. If, however, it is used for other than its purpose, the result could be disastrous. Suppose for a moment that a child was given a hammer without being instructed concerning its use. You may find a hole in the wall instead of nails in the studs. The same is certainly true about Scripture. If you are to discern its meaning, you must know its purpose. If not, Scripture usually gets used in all kinds of ways that it was not intended to be used and holey walls become abundant. That brings us to its purpose.

The purpose of Scripture is to share the redemptive history of God. It is meant to convey a knowledge of God, who is known chiefly by what he has done and in the person in whom he was incarnate. The religious interest of the authors of Scripture control their selection of events and the importance attached to them. They often write for other ends than to simply impart knowledge. They may, on occasion, desire to move their readers to adopt a certain attitude toward life, i.e., religious, social, or political. On the other hand, they may wish to encourage them or calm their troubled minds. The characters of Scripture really lived life and had all the emotions with which we all contend.

Paul, writing to Timothy (2 Tim. 3.16-17), gives us the purpose of Scripture in a simple and precise manner. Paul tells us “…All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for…

• Teaching: which provides instruction for us
• Rebuking: which shows us our sin and summons us to repentance
• Correcting: which restores us to an upright position
• Training in Righteousness: which directs us to walk in the right paths as opposed to wrong paths.

The end result, … so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (v. 17). The word “equipped” is the same word that we find in Mark 1.19, there translated “mending” (RSV, in the NIV it is translated “preparing”), and in Ephesians 4.12 where it is translated “to equip.” In each of the contexts it means “to be put together.” In the vernacular, it means that God’s Word taught to us helps us “get our act together.” As we look at Scripture, we should realize that its purpose is to “mend” us and make us conformed to the image of Jesus (Rom. 8.29). If one uses Scripture with this purpose in mind, there will be much less chance of misusing it. The purpose of Scripture then is to help us understand the following:

• How God has acted on behalf of his children.
• How God relates to his creation, i.e., humankind.
• How man should relate to him as God.
• How man should relate to man.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Some Objections To Reading Scripture
Many believers have a silent objection to reading the overall story of Scripture, or even reading some of the smaller stories completely in favor of reading a few unattached verses. They will seldom vocalize this because they do not wish to bring disapproval on themselves. If they do vocalize an opinion, it usually falls into one of the following objections:

Objection #1: The Bible Is Too Big. Where Do I Begin?
They are right! The Bible is a big book. In my personal copy of The New International Version: Textbook Edition (2011), there are about 1250 pages of text to read—and small type at that. But this objection can be overcome. There is an ancient proverb which says, “The longest journey begins with a single step.” I have provided a guide for reading the whole story in God’s EPIC Adventure ¹ and a reading plan called “Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days” to help overcome this objection. ² So, when you read the entire First Five Books of the Bible (Pentateuch), you may know how the story of God’s call and covenant with his people fits together.

Objection #2: The Bible Is A Dull And Boring Book!
I wrote a little booklet entitled: “It’s not the book that’s dull!” This tongue and cheek sense of humor was to get people to focus on some of the real reasons why they had the feeling that the Bible was dull and boring. Here are two reasons:

• The translation that most readers are reading may be difficult to read. So, when reading the Bible, secure a Bible translation which is up-to-date. If the translation you read is full of archaic language or nonsensical sentences, your tendency will be to see Scripture as just a dusty-old-history book written to a previous generation, and never read very much of it. My recommendation are the New International Version of the Bible (2011 Edition), or The Books of the Bible (a version of NIV without chapters and verses) or The Good News Bible. They are both good translations and easy to read.
• Another reason a person may find the book dull and uninteresting is because it is often read like a newspaper which has no value beyond the day of its reading. The Bible has had more influence on the world than any other book. One secular author has said that a person who has not read the Bible is an illiterate person. A strong saying! Think about it.

There are other objections, I am sure. These are the two which I encounter most often. My opinion is: if you learn to personally use materials like you are reading, with your family or your church community, and you read Scripture in an up-to-date translation, you will find that the Bible is not too big to conquer or too dull or boring to read. It will become alive and active in your life. Your job is to be impregnated with the sacred text so that you can imagine how you should respond to life situations and the improvise how to do respond. Remember: wholeness (as in reading the whole Story of Scripture) heals while fragmentation injuries!

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

The Importance Of Knowing
It has been my experience as a pastor and college instructor to note that many Christians do not read the Bible as a story. Therein lies the problem! They read their favorite stories or verses. They sometimes read in Psalms or Proverbs for devotions. While this style of reading is better than no reading, it still falls short of being helpful in understanding what God is saying and doing in the Jewish Bible. Each year many Christians make a New Year’s resolve to read the Bible through. They jet through Genesis, take an excursion through Exodus and have their last gasp in Leviticus. Leviticus has been the burial place of many New Year’s resolutions.

The Old Testament remains the book you always wanted to read and understand, but never did.

In his book Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, (0226327345) Will Herberg notes the following:

In the five years from 1948 to 1953, the distribution of Scripture in the United States increased 140 percent reaching an all time high of 9,726,391 volumes a year. People were apparently buying and distributing the Bible at an unprecedented rate. Furthermore, over four-fifths of adult Americans said they believed ‘the Bible to be the revealed word of God’ rather than ‘a great piece of literature’. Yet when these same Americans were asked to give the ‘names of the first four books of the New Testament of the Bible, that is the first four gospels’, 53 percent could not name one. (35 percent could name all four; 4 percent could name three; 4 percent could name two; 1 percent could name one.) The Bible can hardly be said to have entered the thought of Americans quite as much as their views on its divine inspiration and their eagerness to buy and distribute it might suggest.” ¹

I would suggest that Mr. Herberg’s analysis has not changed, even in the past fifty years. I have noted the same lack of knowledge of the Bible among thousands of believers. People who choose to read and study Scripture really want to know how Scripture fits together. They want some basic grid through which they can read it. As we previously suggested, readers certainly know some of the more familiar stories, i.e., Noah, Moses, David, etc. Sunday schools have done a good job of teaching these great stories. What they do not understand is how the Story of Scripture fits together. ²

In the December 1979 issue of Christianity Today the CT-Gallup Poll is overviewed. ³

Their findings are not unlike the findings some twenty years before. This poll was conducted with those 18 years old and over ⁴.

Of those polled in the general public, the following results were noted:

• Only eleven percent read the Bible every day compared to ten percent who read it weekly and seven percent monthly. Thirty-seven million adults never read the Bible.
• Fewer than three in ten correctly identified, “Ye must be born again,” as the words of Jesus to Nicodemus.
• Fewer than half (forty-two percent) could name at least five of the Ten Commandments ⁵).
• The findings among those who call themselves Evangelicals were not sufficiently different.
• Only six in ten could correctly identify, “Ye must be born again,” as the words of Jesus to Nicodemus.
• Only half could name five of the Ten Commandments ⁶.

In 1999-2000 American Bible Society distributed 4,494,991 Bibles, 11,713, 519 New Testaments, and 85,945,643 Bible portions and selections. ABS is one of the largest Bible distributors in the world. The International Bible Society, which is the owner of the New International Version, (now called Biblica) distributed 2,581,602 Bibles, and 11,371,473 Bible portions in 2001. These are only two distributors. This does not count all the publishing companies in the U.S. The point is there is a continual increase in the availability of Bibles, while at the same time there appears to be no increase in Bible literacy.

In the Fall of 2010 American Bible Society as for prayer for the United States in relationship to this issue:

Please pray for the Bible crisis here in our own country. Studies show that people may have a Bible on the shelf but are not reading it. This is contributing to a general lack of knowledge of God’s Word and a decline in moral values. ⁷

George Barna’s report “Six Megathemes Emerge from Barna Group Research in 2010” demonstrates the same conclusion:

The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
What used to be basic, universally-known truths about Christianity are now unknown mysteries to a large and growing share of Americans–especially young adults. For instance, Barna Group studies in 2010 showed that while most people regard Easter as a religious holiday, only a minority of adults associate Easter with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Other examples include the finding that few adults believe that their faith is meant to be the focal point of their life or to be integrated into every aspect of their existence. Further, a growing majority believe the Holy Spirit is a symbol of God’s presence or power, but not a living entity. As the two younger generations (Busters and Mosaics) ascend to numerical and positional supremacy in churches across the nation, the data suggest that biblical literacy is likely to decline significantly. The theological free-for-all that is encroaching in Protestant churches nationwide suggests the coming decade will be a time of unparalleled theological diversity and inconsistency. ⁸

Thus, the problem that needs to be addressed is to help you and others as readers of Scripture to fit the pieces of Scripture, in this case the Pentateuch, together in order to have a reliable grid through which you can read the Pentateuch completely delighting in what God has done and continues to do.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Two Ways To Read Scripture
There are at least two ways the Bible can be read by you as a reader. You can read Scripture as a book of past events, or you may read it looking for a present communication from God for your life.

If you should choose to read Scripture as past events, you will see the centuries from which the inheritance of the Western religious world came. You will encounter the enthralling stories of the ancient world, which bordered the Mediterranean Sea. You will have a glimpse of the rise and fall of many empires. All these events are told in action-packed narratives. You may observe, as you plunder through the pages, the roots of one nation emerging into world dominance, called by her God, and covenanted to her God to provide for humankind a redeemer. You might investigate some notes of comparison: Israel leaves Egypt for religious freedom—Englishmen left England for religious freedom; The Canaanites and the invading Hebrews—the Indians and the invading New Americans. You may hear the voice of the prophets calling Israel to honor the covenant or reap the consequences, as you hear the modern preachers calling for repentance. But, alas, it remains ancient and jumbled. Our modern mind notes how dislocated the material appears. The ordering of the books both Old and New Testament are not conducive to reading the storyline. The addition of chapters and verses cause us to pause at the wrong time in a story and slows down our reading to a snail’s pace. Our eye gladly stops reading these reflections and the book is put down, often picked again in the next day or so, but the same frustrations result. Those that have grown to read the fragments have developed a habit of reading that it’s hard for them to get their head around the idea that their just may be a better way of reading.

If, on the other hand, you read it looking for a present communication from God, you may miss the richness and importance of how God has dealt with his children from the beginning of time, thus knowing how he might deal with your community of faith or you in a present life situation. If you just dip in and out of the sacred text hoping that something will inspire you for the day, and while that may happen, there really is a better way of consuming Scripture. Reading whole stories at one sitting is surely better than reading a disconnected set of verses. Well, in my opinion, it is.

It should be said, however, that the first way noted above is much more apt to get you closer to hearing the real God of Scripture than the last way. This is not to say that one should abandon the latter way of engaging Scripture, but rather minimize it in favor of hearing and knowing what God originally said to the first hearers/readers, while wondering and asking what the author might have intended for his/her readers to understand. Why? Because whatever God said through the authors then, he is still saying today. The message does not change, it’s just often allusive when we read in a fragmented way.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Why Should You Read The Jewish Bible (Old Testament)?
The following series of posts cover the First Five Books of the Bible, often called the Pentateuch or the Torah. It will introduce the readers to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The World’s Best Seller
The Bible is heralded as the world’s all time best-seller. Most likely the most printed book but may be the least read book, at least the Old Testament portion. Readers tend to read their favorite parts but not the whole unless it is read as part of a reading program which chops it up into daily fragments that often doesn’t help the reader get the sense of the whole narrative. It has been translated into over a thousand different languages. Over ninety-five percent of the world’s population has some portion of Scripture, which is available to them to read. It is a collection of books whose message has changed lives over the centuries. It is important to read it, but it is also difficult to read because it comes from a different time and different culture. To help us understand the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), we must have some basic information to assist us.

The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) provides the foundation for understanding the New Testament. As suggested above, it is often neglected or only read in part. Because of the prominence of the Law in the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), the idea of the grace of God in the Jewish Bible is almost, if not completely, lost to its modern readers. It is often pointed out by readers of the Jewish Bible that God appears to be a God of wrath and judgment. However, some Jewish Bible characters present God as a God of love and justice. (Moses: Deut. 4.1-6.25; Jeremiah: Jer. 9.23-24). And after all, God is the main character of all of Scripture including the Jewish Bible.

An often overlooked point is that the Jewish Bible provides the historical background that allows us to understand the message of the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament echoes the Jewish Bible over 600 times. Jesus constantly appealed to its teachings, as did Paul and other New Testament authors. Without understand its storyline, the New Testament is out of the grasp of the biblical reader.

The history of the Jewish Bible is primarily found in the first seventeen books (Genesis-Esther). We must remember when reading this history that it is theological history with a missional point. It was history told with a purpose. The history that is told is selected history to demonstrate the purpose of God to bring salvation for his creation. The whole Bible is often called salvation history because the God of the Bible is a missionary. God’s overall purpose is to restore his original creation which the story arch of the Old Testament and New Testament: from creation to new creation.

The early church had only one Bible, although not in the form of a book as we have today. The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) was the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles as well as the church of Paul’s day. This indicates to me that it is needful, if not essential, that the church today knows something more than it already does about the Jewish Bible. The roots of Christianity are to be found in the Jewish Bible. It has been and continues to be my experience that the church does not understand very much about the message of the Jewish Bible.

Wright on Hell

Wright on Hell & Bell

Surprised by Hope (Paperback)

Surprised by Hope (Kindle)

The Story Before the Story is a straight forward presentation, which provides the reader of Scripture a simple but compelling introduction to reading Scripture as a story. This book interacts with four important concepts: foundationalism, fragmentation, story, and kingdom. Reading with a foundationalism concept without knowing it leads to a reduction of the text into principles, which produces patchwork followers of Jesus. The author believes that reading fragmentively produces fragmented lives in the followers of Jesus. Reading Scripture as a story is the antidote to foundationalism and fragmentation. Kingdom theology is the glue for the reader that holds the story together. This book is an invitation to read Scripture with both eyes open.

We have some interesting ideas about life. Most of them tied to Greek philosophy. In the church among follower of Jesus, we have tied our way of thinking, reflecting, and living around more Greek philosophy than Biblical theology. Here’s a recent presentation that deals with some of those issues.

Enjoy!

Opens September 23, 2011 at Select Theaters

Gerard Butler, Michelle Monaghan, Kathy Baker, Michael Shannon, Souleymane Sy Savane, Madeline Carroll

In this inspirational true story, Machine Gun Preacher is about Sam Childers, a former drug-dealing criminal who undergoes an astonishing transformation and finds an unexpected calling as the savior of hundreds of kidnapped and orphaned children.

Yesterday, I got an up close look at goats when the Westside Goat Girl brought a small herd of goats, fifteen of them, to trim back some of the blackberry bushes in my back yard. Here are some things that I saw while goatherding in the suburbs.

First, there was one goat who was clearly the leader of the group. Within three hours he had found a small break in the fence and led all the goats out of the back yard and into the neighbors’ yards and at one point led them all up the street away from my house. My neighbor banged on my front door and when I got outside what I saw was a bit humorous, my neighbors had turned into instant goatherders with brooms, rakes, and anything they could find to help corral this feisty group of goats. What struck me as I joined the fray was that the lead goat took the whole group from a perfectly abundant food supply to something that he may have thought was better just over the fence. I thought of how many times I have seen the “goats” in the church rally around a “goat” who led them away from an abundant supply of nourishment to something that was thought to be much more “nourishing” or shall I say thought to be “more spiritual.” And, like the goats from my back yard, just followed along and then were lost to find their way back, even with a good many folks trying to show them the way.

A second thing that I noticed was that when the “goat girl” showed up, (I had called her to let her know her goats were now free ranging) she began to call out to the goats by their names as she got out of her truck and by the sound of her voice and bit of racket from a bucket, the goats who just a few minutes before were all over the place began to gather around her and then followed her back into the back yard to the supply of food they had been brought there to consume. We’ve all heard it before, “sheep know the shepherd’s voice.” That was clearly evident. Approximately 8-10 neighbors, including myself, had tried to corral them and in less than five minutes she had them back safe and sound in their fold. I thought how wonderful it would be in the church if we actually believed that we can understand the shepherd and stop all the running hither and thither following the latest “goat” fad.

A third thing that I saw was one of the makeshift goatherders from the neighborhood trying to keep the herd from continuing up the road caught one of the goats by his horns and tried to cause the goat to have a change of direction. That didn’t work as the goat lowered his head and put on the breaks from his front legs. He was going to go where all the other goats were going and this good Samaritan was not going to change his mind. But, when the shepherd called him by name, he was one of the first ones to fall in line and got back to his lush pasture. What if we as followers of the good shepherd could lay aside our desires to follow the old goats of our lives and in the moment of hearing the shepherd’s voice, we lost our desire to be stubborn and quickly returned to the safety of the fold for the nourishment that the shepherd prepares for us.

Well, all in all it was quite an experience.

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques for my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it to say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
It’s rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
Eye am shore your pleased two no
It’s letter perfect awl the weigh
My checker tolled me sew.

Margo Roark.
The English Spelling Society

http://bit.ly/qe04RZ

Sunday, as I sat through a service at the local community of faith that my family attends, I had the following thoughts.

We are so impregnated with individualism and consumerism. But, unlike a pregnant woman, we don’t realize it. Individualism and consumerism affects the olders and the youngers. It is not a respecter of persons. But, it still surprises me.

In Sunday’s service, the speaker was ill and it was a struggle for him to communicate. What I was struck by was his individualism and consumerism. He first read Psalm 130. With the lens of individualism and the need to consume, it looks like this Psalm is a personal cry for personal help. But, a more thorough reading might suggest that this was not about the Psalmist crying out for his own personal relief, but for the relief of the nation of Israel, the community of God, (church) in the Old Testament because of their sins. Our speaker personalized the sacred text and in doing so made it appear for his listeners that it was about his own and their own personal needs. Is it wrong to cry out to God when in need? No! But, it might be wrongheaded to use this text to support such a cry.

Next, we then moved with no segue to the story of Bartimaeus. The essence of the presentation was centered around the request of Bartimaeus to be healed. Reading with individualistic, consumerism eyes, we often put ourselves in the place of Bartimaeus as he asked for healing. But, what might Jesus be doing in this story and what might Mark mean as he tells this story? Jews, with impediments like blindness, being deaf and dumb, hemorrhaging, being crippled, were excluded from full membership of the community. When Jesus healed them, it was not about meeting a need to be consumed by the individual. It was about being fully restored to the people of God. Tom Wright suggests: “The effect of these cures, therefore, was not merely to bring physical healing; not merely to give humans, within a far less individualistic society than our modern western one, a renewed sense of community membership, but to reconstitute those healed as members of the people of Israel’s god. (Jesus and the Victory of God. 192).

In the sharing time, I was struck by one comment that suggested that Bartimaeus got his identity by being blind as he was called “blind Bartimaeus,” in the KJV of the text, but that translation has not been held over in more current versions where he is referred to as “a blind beggar.” Surely, one may choose to see what one wants to see in a text, rightly or wrongly, but are we then free to submit our findings to a community already infected with individualism and consumerism without first, at least, identifying what Jesus may have been doing or Mark may have been teaching?

So, I wrote my friend a short message inquiring about the following:

What part of what you did yesterday fed consumerism among those gathered?

What did God get out of our time together? It’s really about him and not about us.

What if the way we go about receiving from God is backwards?

What if the purpose of our gatherings is not about what we desire to receive but about God desiring us?

Remember, he was already there when we arrived and remained after we left. What was he looking forward to as we gathered? Another time of sitting around asking that he meet our needs, or a time in which we simply worshiped him without any expectation of receiving anything, but the pure pleasure of worshiping him.

I only lived under my dad’s direct influence for eighteen years and only twenty-seven years in total before he passed on. I have lived longer without his physical presence (almost forty years) than I was privileged to live with his physical presence. Out of the many things he taught me three come to mind today:

First, he taught me to be truthful by allowing me to experience the consequences of untruthfulness. I skipped school one day and told him I had attended. I was expelled by the school for three days because he turned me in. I thought I was going to have a small vacation from school. But, my dad had talked my boss into putting me to work for those three days without any pay for the work I did. It was a vivid lesson.

Second, he taught me the value of working for yourself instead of the other guy. In his seventy-seven year life, he worked for the other guy for a total of six months.

Three, the power of working hard and taking vacations was important. He was a barber for most of his life and an entrepreneur and owned several other businesses. In my teenage years, he took a two week vacation every summer. He had to shut down his one-man barber shop for those two weeks, which meant there was no income. So, he worked hard the other fifty weeks to have a vacation the two weeks.

My dad was a wonderful father. I think of him often and miss him to this day.

What life lessons did your dad teach you?

What if church used Open Space Technology on occasion? The following are its four basic concepts:

• Whoever comes/is here are the right people
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
• Whenever it’s over, it’s over

I might add, everyone gets an opportunity to speak. What would that look like? Maybe we should ask Paul, he wrote about it somewhere!

googling God’s Will: Why Keep Searching For It When It’s Not Lost?
Winn Griffin
Harmon Press (January 7, 2011)

Years ago when I was first told that God loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life I believed it. I still do. But in recent years I have come to the conclusion that His plan for my life is not as elusive as I once thought. Dr. Winn Griffin, in his succinct little book, Googling God’s Will, agrees. While acknowledging an overabundance of books and websites devoted to the subject of seeking God’s will, he feels the need to offer his own insightful view using contemporary metaphors like Google, GPS systems, and power steering in an attempt to remove what he considers unnecessary barriers that muddy the water and prevent us from resting in God’s will.

Although I would have never phrased it this way, I used to suspect that God was playing some sort of cosmic hide-and-seek game with me. It was like he had this perfect will for my life but wasn’t about to tell me what it was, preferring to hide it from me, forcing me to search for it by trial-but-mostly-error fashion. Some days I would think I was warm but mostly I felt cold. I would wonder why it was so hard to know what God expected from me. These days that seems like a silly notion, and the way I have just phrased it to you it probably sounds silly to you, too. So, if it is silly, why do so many of us practice “seeking” God’s will in that way?

A particular insight Dr. Griffin helped with is that the worldview of the Bible (Middle Eastern) and ours (Western Enlightenment) are markedly different. If we are to understand the Bible’s intended message, we need to understand the context in which it was written. For example, one of the marks of “Enlightened” thinking is its emphasis on individualism, a concept that would have seemed strange to the Middle Eastern mind that thought more in terms of community than individuality, and pronouns we often read as personal are, in fact, collective. So, when we read “you” in the Bible it often, if not usually, means “you all.” Griffin writes, “When it comes to God’s will, we are often looking for answers in all the wrong places. We [Westerners] want to know what God’s will is for our individual life. What we often get as an answer by our teachers is a bandage, but the sore never heals, because we have never treated the root cause of our problem. God appears to act and guide from a community base than an individual base.… God’s will can be as simple as understanding our need for belonging … It may be said that God’s will for us is to be intimate with him … for the sake of others.”

Dr. Griffin’s book, though concise (just 100 pages), is one of those books that takes a while to read. It’s like a nutrient rich meal, a little goes a long way—it takes time to digest. But for me that is the mark of a really good book.

Winn loves spending time with his family, collecting baseball cards, watching movies, eating banana sandwiches (now with Splenda), traveling, reading mystery stories, and watching sports. He has received Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and two Doctor of Ministry degrees: the first was in Biblical Studies; the second at George Fox University, Portland, OR, in Leadership in the Emerging Culture. He serves as an adjunct professor at Bakke Graduate University, Seattle, WA, and he is the author of God’s EPIC Adventure: Changing the Culture by the Story We Live and Tell (Harmon Press: 2007).

Share something that you learned yesterday. Notice something today.

Technology is wonderful. Yesterday, I watched as my daughter, Jeramie Joy, who has a heart pace maker, put a pad over the area where the pace maker is and pressed a button to a monitor which collected information form the devise inside her chest and then automatically dialed her cardiologist and downloaded the information to his computer. Amazing!

Another Sunday has come and gone in which I spent a short period of time inside a building where we followed a pattern that has come to be called church. We gather. We drink coffee and have surface conversation. We sing. We hear announcements. We listen or not to someone teach/preach. We are invited to ask God into our broken lives or we are beckoned to an altar to ask forgiveness of our sins. We drop by a glass with wine or juice and broken crackers and dip and eat or small shot glasses reminiscent of a bar are passed around with juice or wine and we call it communion. Yesterday as I left this weekly routine, I asked myself the same question that the song title asks: “Is that all there is?” Surely, the answer has to be no!

One wonders when we will change our paradigm. When will we discover that Sunday is the day of the week that should remind us that in Jesus we live in a new creation as new human beings with the assignment of demonstrating that new creation to others around us. Tom Wight asked in his recent book, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today, the following question: “What are you going to do this Sunday that is creative, that brings justice and mercy, that offers healing and hope” (170). One has to wonder that instead of living to turn the world right side up, we continue to live in the world thinking its thoughts and practicing its actions. One wonders what would occur if we took Wright’s question seriously? One wonders why we are always inviting God to do something when he is working already nonstop? One wonders when we will comprehend that he is inviting us into what he is doing, inviting us into his unbroken world instead of us inviting him into our broken world. So, what are you going to do next Sunday that brings justice, mercy, healing and hope to your neck of the woods?

In the video below according to Seth Godin, megachurch is a factory. He also suggests that most leaders are managers and that a leader says what she/he believes and see who follows. He also think that if you help folks find what they want to do and then get out of the way and let them do it, success will follow.

It’s well worth the 7:05 run time.

I originally wrote this blog post May 28, 2003 and thought it would be fun to post it again.

Today while visiting a mall I took a moment to step into the “Christian Bookstore.” The store is about one-third books and two-thirds “Jesus Junk.” I guess to be authentic it should be called the “Christian Book and Jesus Junk Store.” In the book that I mention below there are two bookstores called “Christian Supply.” If you are a pastor I guess your can go there when you supply of Christians is running out and pick up some more.

When I decided to leave, I stopped and picked my very own copy of the newest and latest “Christian Business Directory.” The executive director thought it keen to say that this book had been published as a resource “for you to know where the Christians are in the marketplace and how you can find them.” And that by looking at the book you would get a “complete picture of the whole body of Christ working together for the sake of the Gospel.” Just what we need another Christian ghetto. Maybe we should put out an “UnChristian Yellow Pages” that doesn’t allow Christians to advertise therein so we can know who the real target of the church is.

I had to force my finger from entering my throat. My left hand was overworked from holding on to my right hand. I wasn’t even Biblical (whoa, did I really say that?) because in this case my left hand knew exactly what my right hand was doing.

The most fun was in the list of churches that managed to get listed in the directory. My son and I had a great time reading them. He gave me some of the ideas below to add to my own which appear inside the parenthesis.

We started out with the Anglicans but only one made the cut. Next came the Assembly of God (if only all their assemblies were of God). The Baptist were next: General Baptist Conference; Baptist American; Baptist Conservative; Baptist Fundamental Independent (there was only one of those); Baptist General; Baptist General Conference; Baptist Independent (I guess they don’t associate with the other Baptist); Baptist Reformed (this could only mean that all the other Baptist before were un-reformed); Baptist Regular (what? all the others must have been irregular); Baptist Southern (I guess if we can have Southern Fried Chicken in the Northwest we can have a brand of Baptist that are southern). Wow, I made it through the Baptist. Then there was Bible Missionary (you must own a Bible to be missionary?).

Next was Christian (I concluded that none of the other churches were Christian because this group was listed separately). Then came the Christian & Missionary Alliance; Christian Disciples of Christ (since disciples of Christ should be Christian can you have an unChristinan Disciples of Christ) and Christian Reformed (I seem to recall, yes there it is right above, something called the Christian Church; I concluded that that group must really be the unreformed Christians). Next listed was the Church of Christ and the next one really was funny to me, it was the Christ of Christ United, but it was listed separate from the Church of Christ (can that really be?). We moved on to the Church of God (wow! God finally made it into the name again) and the Church of God Anderson IN and the Church of God Cleveland TN (they are surely a long way from home on Sundays). Then, we have the Church of God in Christ (I wondered why the Holy Spirit didn’t make the cut). Next, we have the listing called Community (one could possibly conclude that none of the other churches listed were communities). Next, the Covenant and Evangelical Covenant were listed (I guess the former is not really an Evangelical church). Now in the “Es” we have the Evangelical Free (Free from what I thought). The next category was only one church: Family Fellowship (does that mean that you are only family if you attend there?).

We then have the Fellowship of Christian Association (do they really only fellowship with other Christians, no wonder the world is going to hell in a hand basket). Then we have the Foursquare Gospel (I have always considered that a really funny name, it always makes me think that the gospel is really square. Could you have a three or two square gospel?). Next were the Friends (I surmised that all the other churches probably didn’t have any friends because they were all in this place). The next one listed was Full Gospel (no part gospels will do and I guess that Paul might not fit there either). As if Full Gospel was not enough we have the Full Gospel Pentecostal (a kinda of Gospel and Acts thingy?). I thought we had left the Baptist (how many more can there be?) when I encountered the Fundamental Independent Baptist (only one, I guess that’s why they are independent, I guess we could call them the FIBs for short).

Then we have the General Assembly of Regular Baptist (can you be a Regular Baptist and not be a part of the General Assembly or does this mean there are irregular Baptist in all the other Baptist churches?). Next was the Independent (of course they are listed independent of all of the other churches as their name implies). But wait, we also have the Independent Fundamental Christian Association (an association of one, how strange). Then we have the Inter-Denominational churches (they can’t figure who they are a part of so they are listed as being in the middle until they grow up and discover which denomination they side with). Next were the Lutherans; the Lutheran (ELCA) [only those inside would know what ELCA would stand for]; and the Lutheran Missouri Synod (only one, there must be more in the home state of Missouri, don’t you think?). Then we have the Mennonite Brethren (Is this an all male church?); Messianic (are they the really anointed ones), and Methodist Free (maybe you can go to this church and the Evangelical Free church and it doesn’t cost anything). Next listed: Methodist United (but as above these United Methodist are listed separately). Then Methodist of North American was listed (I wondered if they were in South America if they would still call themselves the Methodist of North America, probably so!). Just when I thought it was safe and there were no more Baptist, up popped the Missionary Baptist (they must not be very missionary because there was only one of them listed). The next category was Missionary Church (I guess these folks decided not to be Baptist); and then the Nazarenes (I didn’t get how a group of natives from Nazareth would have a church in the Northwest). It was there on the page Non-Denominational Bible churches and then Non-Denominational churches (I guess that you don’t have to have a Bible to get into the second kind). I couldn’t believe my eyes: North American Baptist (how many more of these brothers and sisters are there?).

The Open Bible churches were next (do you think that they positioned themselves this way because the Bible is not opened in so many other churches?). The next listed group was Pentecostal (I guess they don’t consider the Assembly of God or Foursquare their Pentecostal brothers and sisters!). Right behind them and differentiated from them was the Pentecostal/Full Gospel (guess the other group only has part of the Gospel). The Presbyterian, Presbyterian Church USA and the Presbyterian Orthodox were next (the first group must be operating in the USA without permission while the second one must have permission while the last group suggest that neither of the other Presbyterians are orthodox). Next were the Salvation Army (do you have to enlist to go here?) and the Seventh Day Adventist (could you be a Seventh Day Adventist and subvert their dominate paradigm and go to their church on Friday or maybe Sunday. (I guess that would make you a Sixth Day Adventist or a First Day Adventist). Finally, the United Methodist (again united but listed separately, what are they thinking?).

Well that was the end of the list and not to soon for me. However, don’t think that because your church is not listed above that it’s name or group is any better off. You probably can’t do any worse! Just remember, the church names of today will be the fodder for twit tomorrow. I’m glad God has a sense of humor about all this name stuff. If he doesn’t we are in some deep stuff! So what’s in a name? Sometimes som’um and sometimes nuttin’! What’s in your church name?

What are some of the names of churches that seem strange to you?

Happy 1-1-11

While not the first English Bible to appear, the KJV was the most successful and long lasting, still dominating some church groups today. We have entered into the 400th year of its publication (1611-2011).

While I have not read this concept anywhere , but surely it is out there somewhere, the NIV plans its release of its newest translation in March 2011, yep, just 400 years after the KJV. Surely, there is some comparison to be made there.

Some will like the new NIV, some will not. What else is new? It seems that we get married to a specific translation and the translation becomes sacred, not the concepts it tries to express. It is helpful to always remember that a translation is an interpretation, yes, even the King James Version.

In this New Year, why not be a reader of the world’s greatest story in celebration of 400 years of being the story in a language of the common folk which, incidentally, opened the doors for the story to be translated into every language of the world, which has not yet been accomplished, but groups like Wycliffe have a mission to do so.

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” —Jimmy Dean

Goals are important. We either set them or we don’t. One thing is sure. If a person doesn’t have something to shoot at, she/he will most likely hit nothing or everything. Having no goals is like playing basketball without any baskets. One just dribbles and passes.

So in three areas, here’s what I’m shooting at in 2011.

Harmon Press
The goals here are:

• Publish 12 pbooks in 2011
• Publish 25-50 ebooks in 2011
• Publish 7 reprints

Personally, I have about 12 nonfiction books in different phases plus one novel. I would like to finish 3 of the nonfiction books and the one novel. In addition, I am writing two chapters for a book on Women in Ministry as part of a writing team. My chapters are: Why Is Interpretation Necessary and an Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11.2-16. This assignment should be fun.

Bakke Graduate University
Continue to serve in areas that will be helpful in forwarding the mission of that school along with a continued teaching role with students, helping them begin their dissertation process and helping others get a basic theological framework.

Personal
In 2010, I lost 36 pounds with a lifestyle change. I am aiming at 13 more pounds. To help my health along, I am starting a walking regiment very slowly so my heart can get a better supply of oxygen and I can burn off some of the excess sugar because of diabetes.

I wrote a paper for the Society of Vineyard Scholars which was accepted to be read at the annual meeting in February at the Vineyard Community Church in Shoreline, WA. It is their second annual conference. My paper focuses on a look at the Ten Commandments, looking at the idea that the first four commandments are the empowering commandments that give us impetus to live out the other six. Churches may be inadvertently producing sinners instead of saints by paying no attention to the literary structure of the Ten Great Words. In conjunction with that I am going to read five Psalms and one Proverb a day, completing the book of Psalms and Proverbs every month for the twelve months of 2011. Reading Psalms will help me continue my relationship with God, while reading the Proverbs will teach me more practical ways to live out the story of God with humankind.

I would like to teach a minimum of twelve times, once per month perhaps in churches around the Northwest or anywhere for that matter.

Sounds like a packed year, huh? So, there’s mine. What’s yours?

It’s been busy the last couple of weeks. I have had two cataract surgeries. The second one was a bit tougher than the first one. I can see colors that I had lost from my vision. I can see clearly now at a distance.

I am writing also writing two chapters for an upcoming book from the Vineyard with a working title: Women in Leadership in the Church: A Kingdom of God Perspective. I am writing “Chapter Three: Why Interpretation is Necessary” and “Chapter Eleven: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.”

I look forward to this time of year. But, for some reason this year, it has just flown by. It seems like it was just summer. Time drags along when you are a kid, but it seems to be in warp speed the older I get.

Here’s a link to our annual Christmas letter. I trust you have a Merry Christmas and the greatest of New Years.

Today, I am submitting a paper for consideration for the upcoming Annual Society of Vineyard scholars’ meeting which will be hosted at Vineyard Community Church February 3-5, 2011. The paper is entitled “Individuals As Sinner or Saint: Which One Do Communities of Faith Produce?”

Below is an introduction to the Society of Vineyard Scholars.