Almost There!

It’s Wednesday morning, and graduation is on Saturday. I’m really trying to not get excited about it yet, but that is really hard to do. I’m taking Thursday afternoon off so I can get some stuff ready for the weekend. I’m spending the whole weekend with my parents, and going to The Village on Sunday morning for Mother’s Day. That is such a weird weekend to have graduation on, but I definitely don’t want to postpone it a week!

Last night we did “On-Location.” That’s what we call it when we don’t have worship through music or Bible study, instead we go to either UTT or TJC and meet a need of some kind for the students living on campus. We try to do it once a month so that we’re not just hoarding ourselves up in a room all the time doing our Christian thing and not showing our mission field that we care about them. Last night we passed out scantrons since it’s finals week. There was a pretty good response! We got permission to go in 3 dorms (West, Lewis, and Claridge), and we handed some out to students that we passed on the sidewalks while walking to and from the van. We had cookies with us to give out as well. We won’t be able to do it again until the Fall, but I hope that we’ve started something that the school will want us to continue.

I heard a question asked that has haunted me, and I’m going to post it on here and then I guess I’m through for now. Here it is: Do I simply agree with Biblical truth, or does that agreement morph into complete obedience? 

Trial and Error

I’m not good at the trial and error game. I think that has to do with the fact that I’m not really a patient person. Although it seems for the most part that I end up waiting a while for the things that I want. Maybe I should work on the patience thing a little. You know what they say though, if you ask for patience you may end up like Job. I’ve never really understood that though because yeah, life sucked for him for quite a while, but in the end he was tremendously blessed. Anyway, I’m getting off subject now.

The reason that I’m writing is to say that God really dealt with me last night as I was laying in bed. I began to wonder if there was something that I could do to better reach the college campuses here in Tyler. I think there is. Maybe it’s time for me to be open to the trial and error of college ministry. If something works then continue it, but if it doesn’t then stop it. We’re going to start taking one Tuesday a month for the rest of the semester, which will actually only be two opportunities left this semester, and go to the dorms and simply serve. I taught last night on Matthew 5:1-3 and in small groups we’ll talk more tonight about that. I realized last night that this will be a lot of talk about something, and that is a good thing. I am leading my students to have an awareness that we should be poor in spirit, but I need to lead my students in the action also. It’s easy to lead in conversation about what we should be doing, but it is hard to lead in action.

My goal in this is to provide a forum for students to be lead in the action of kingdom work as they are being taught about kingdom work. Not only will this be an opportunity for students to do kingdom work, but it will be a great way to minister to the community that we are in. Who knows, God may even open doors for us to share the message of hope found in Christ with someone whom He has prepared in advance for us.

I think this has the potential to really become something that the students look forward to each month. That’s my prayer at least.

Homosexuals: Are we really commanded to reach all kinds?

What does it mean to “love the sinner, but hate the sin”? Living in good’ole East Texas I don’t deal with homosexuality on a daily basis. Mostly that is because East Texas is in the heart of the Bible belt and frankly homosexuality is still considered by most to be a detestable lifestyle. Simply because I don’t have to deal with it much doesn’t mean that I don’t have questions about how I would or should deal with it in the future. I had a conversation with someone last week about how we as the church should deal with the issue. How do we as the church truly “love the sinner, but hate the sin”? I think too often we’ve made it clear that we “hate the sin” and too little clear that we “love the sinner.”

In our Christian sub-culture though, I feel that we are put in a box. If someone sees you reaching out to homosexuals and inviting them to dinner or spending time with a homosexual then they label you as a liberal and a sell out. At the same time, if we don’t do that we can’t reach them. The sub-title to Mark Driscoll’s book The Radical Reformission says it best, “Reaching out, without selling out.” That really is the big question. How do we reach out and not sell out. Or to say it as I stated earlier, How do we “love the sinner, but hate the sin”?

I am fully aware that all I’m doing is asking a lot of questions, but that really is all I can do at this point. I don’t know the answer. Dr. Bradley, at Criswell College, made me aware of a man named Michael Rydelnik, who lives in Chicago, who has a tremendous ministry to the homosexual community there. He says that Rydelnik simply shows love to them. I really think that is the answer, but does it work in East Texas? I think it would if the church would get behind that. I’m not trying to turn this into a church bashing, I’m simply pointing out the obvious there.

What got me thinking about this was an article in the Baptist Press about how a church called The Journey is receiving all kinds of flack for attempting to reach people and they are being accused of selling out. That church started a Bible study in a bar, and are seeing fruits from their labor. Yet there are accused of selling out. I wonder how people would respond if I started going in to the places where homosexuals meet and loving them? My hope is that they would see someone loving sinners and desperately wanting to see a change in their lives. Maybe that’s how we should view what The Journey is doing, instead of judging their hearts.