Monthly Archives: June 2009

One “We” Is Mightier Than Many “I”s

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Today, I had the great privilege of joining a Ministerial Association meeting in Crestline, OH. I’ve never been to their meetings. In fact, I never knew that we had one of those associations in the area. Stay for a while and I’ll tell you about it.

Joshua, Ana, Samuel and I showed up to the meeting early: 11 am. It starts at 11:30, but my friend, Jody, wanted us to meet some of the members beforehand. Jody lead us to a quaint brick house, which just happened to be the home of Pastor Diane who serves in the Trinity and Free English Lutheran Churches in Crestline. There we met the pastor herself and then a small host of pastors and their leaders in the Crawford area. Diane had just cooked a wonderful meal for the lot of us, and we ate, talked and got to know one another.

After dinner, we commenced with a meeting which revealed to us what they are all about–community events. They sponsor a number of them every year. A community vacation Bible school, an easter egg event which raises money to help families in the community and several other events and charitable projects were on the verbal list that they gave us today. Busy people.

My overall impression was that it was incredible to sit there with so many of these venerable ministers in a spirit of camaraderie and fun. Jokes flew across the table like the goldfinches flitting around in my backyard. No one took themselves or their denominations so seriously as to not join in the fun. At the same time, there was a healthy respect given to each member, for they all had something to contribute.

We had fun and were happy to meet many of the area’s leaders. May God bless the little town of Crestline and all of its wonderful citizens!

My Tools for Writing

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Okay, okay! I’ll admit. Let it be know to all unequivocally that I’m not a published author. I have no great successes in the world of books to speak of, except that I write. And that, my friends, is success in and of itself. Often in the blogs that I read, a writer will share the tools that they use to produce the product that they market. There have been so many times when what they are using has helped me immensely. So, I humbly submit the meager contents of my writing toolbox to you.

Gideon King’s Novamind is where most of my ideas start being worked out. This powerful mind mapping software is a phenomenal brainstorming tool because it allows you to dump information in the way and order that your brain thinks of it. Then, you can graphically rearrange the info where you need it to be allowing for quick analysis and edits. Any story requires thorough brainstorming of characters, settings and plots. Novamind is the place where I brainstorm all of it and then reference to when I’m writing the manuscript. This software has a wide range of editions to fit about any budget from $49 to $249.

Scrivener is the next stop for me. This is where I gather all of my research, storyboard the plot that I brainstormed in Novamind, bang out the first, second or third drafts and then export the complete manuscript in a Word file. To be honest with you, this software was one of the primary reasons that I switched to the Mac OS platform, as it does not exist for Windows. You can gather all of your research in one place and view it while you’re writing! Plus, it features some other amazing abilities such as a full screen view to write without distractions, a corkboard for storyboarding, the ability to import almost any picture file, .pdf file, html web archive, .doc, .rtf and a host of other files that are gathered in the research phase. There is a powerful search engine built in to the software by which you can find any character, scene or keyword quickly. Also, it features a target word count for goal setting. This software by Keith Blount is available for $39.95.

Apple software that I use are Pages ’09, Safari beta 4 and Dictionary. These all catch any part of the process of organization that the above mentioned programs will not do. Oh, and I blog with WordPress by using the Safari browser.

If this seems like a small list of tools, it is. That’s the whole point. I searched and believe that I’ve found the tools that work well for me and that keeps everything to a minimum. I have enough to deal with in the creative process that these tools make it oh so much easier.

If you write, what tools do you use?

Sharing to Save

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Getting Christians to actively share their faith is one of the toughest jobs of a pastor. Romans 1:16 tells us that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. If there ever was a part of the Christian’s job that Satan will throw his weight at, it is the duty of every believer to share his or her faith. He will hurl every fear, every excuse and every obstacle known to man at the Christian believer in the effort to strangle their witness.

As I considered the matter, I believe that the Holy Spirit showed me one of the most effective tactics that Satan has used to get us to be quiet. This tactic is essentially a misunderstanding of the purpose of Christ’s death and resurrection. There is a popular teaching in the Church today that Jesus died so that we might be freed from sickness, poverty and personal weakness which deter us from success (Oh, and He also saved us from hell, but that’s just a side benefit.). In other words, through Christ’s death on the cross, we are healed, made wealthy and successful in this life. If we’re not, then we hold God to the wall until He gives us our healing, money and success.

How does this affect evangelism? Simple. We believe that the Gospel is good news because it is a life enhancment anouncement from heaven that will cure every woe and sorrow, and accordingly, we tell everyone this in our evangelism efforts.

“Don’t you know that God has a wonderful plan for your life? The only thing keeping you from this wonderful plan is a little thing called sin. Yeah, it kinda separates you from all the good things God wants for you. So if you just pray this prayer with me, then you will have dealt with the sin problem and now health, wealth and success are yours!”

Great. But what if I’m sick? What if I’m in debt? Or lost my job? Do I still have any good news to share? I’ve got some news for all of us. Many of us are sick! Most of us are in debt! Most of us struggle daily to live life! Therefore, according to the above mentioned misunderstanding of the purpose of the atonement of Christ, most of us cannot share the Gospel with others because our lives aren’t perfect. The spread of the Gospel has been squelched by an erroneous doctrine within the Church itself.

However, if we adopt the correct view of the purpose of the atonement, that is, to save our souls from eternal damnation due to the BIG problem of our sin, then we are free to share the Gospel with anybody. In light of an eternity in heaven with God instead of our deserved punishment of darkness and unimaginable pain, I can be joyful despite the seasonal allergies that afflict me, the debt crashing on my shoulders and the failure of my plans and schemes for life.

We share the Gospel to save souls from hell, not earth. Now, go and tell someone.

Fiscal Prophecy?

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If the Church could be described in one sentence, the adjective prophetic has to be a part of it. Revelation 19:10 tells us that “…the testimony of Christ is the spirit of prophecy.” Everything that we do should be prophetic, for everything that we do is a testimony of Christ. Our behavior should be so radically, fundamentally different that others see it and know that Christ is alive and present with us.

When our actions are properly testifying of the power of Jesus to change our lifestyles, decision and ultimately, destinies, then in essentially the spirit of prophecy is in operation through us. This is why we work so hard to bring our behavior and decisions into agreement with God’s Word. If we let it all go and do what is easy or natural to us, then we have no testimony and no spirit of prophecy. Thus, we have ceased to be the Church.

For the sake of clarity, let’s define the word prophecy. Biblically, prophecy is both FORETELLING and FORTHTELLING. For example, when the prophets of the Old Testament gave oracles about the coming of a Messiah, they were foretelling future events. When these same prophets were telling the people of Israel and the nations of the world what the Lord was saying, they were forthtelling. The difference is in the dates. Foretelling is concerned with future events, which may or may not depend on the actions of the people to whom it was given. Forthtelling is concerned solely with the present decisions of those to whom it is given. Both are prophecy. Both must be in the Church.

This principle extends into every part of Church life, and in this post, I wish to talk about finances. Today, I have been working on completing numerous action items that were given to me in our Budget Committee Meeting last Monday. Naturally, my thoughts are in the realm of money. I began to realize as I worked on our budget issues here at TOP that we are prophesying through the very act of creating a budget. We are being prophetic with our finances!

We, as a church, are looking at the money God has given us and foretelling and forthtelling what it is going to do. We are, as Dave Ramsey says, naming every dollar. Instead of letting circumstances and whimsical desire dictacte the use of God’s money, we are ordaining the purpose of the cash even before it comes into our hands. Whether you are Calvinist or Armenian, we hope that you are not offended that every dollar at Tabernacle of Praise is predestined. Well, to the best of our ability anyway.

Prophesying to God’s money (It really is His, you know.) will give us a good testimony. We will be a witness to the world of the wondrous works that Christ can bring into our lives. Debts will be paid. Savings will be built. Ministries will get the money they need. New facilities will be erected. This will all be a message to all of the favor of God upon us. To Him be the glory!

Do you create and live on budgets? Why or why not?

Day in Amish Country

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I wanted to share a few pictures of our time in Amish Country with you all. If you haven’t been there, you really should check it out. We went to this place called Berlin, OH. I believe it claims to be the largest Amish community in the world, if I read the sign correctly.

We took TOP’s new intern, Kingsly, with us and he had a fun time seeing this part of Ohio. My wife had never been there before either and she loved rooting through the antique stores! It was rainy today, and so we were all a bit disappointed in the light buggy traffic. We wanted to see more horses, and Amish folk out and about! I know,we’re just like tourists. But it really is a different world over there.

Have you ever been to Amish country? What do you like best?